9

There is no moment in political life quite so benign as an inauguration. All is forgiven, for a day or two. And, in the transitional euphoria, Sylvester Parkinson’s diet crimes seemed eminently forgivable. The New York Times exegesis of Sly’s Walnut Hill stay had been huge, but impenetrable-in the Times’s manner, stuffed with qualifications and smudgy ink. Sly had not allowed himself to be interviewed for the article—it was standard operating procedure, preconfirmation, to lie low—but he’d issued a statement, in which he’d admitted to being a bit too enthusiastic in his dieting strategies. The Stanton spinners produced some very good surrogates on the Friday night talk shows, and they dismissed the problem derisively; the fact that Letterman and Leno had fun with the story—the carrots (Letterman wondered if Sly was preparing a defense strategy against Elmer Fudd) were as prominent as the pills—didn’t hurt, either.

By the Sunday morning shows, Sly was a footnote. His “scandal” seemed a passing squall. The big news was Stanton’s proposed budget—which included tax increases, and not the slightest hint of the tax cut he’d been promising when he’d whipped Charlie Martin in the primaries. Henry Burton was on Meet the Press, very smooth and very young; the vice president provided midmorning nap time on Brinkley.

On the evening of Jack Stanton’s inauguration, Lanny Scott gave a dinner for the Lords in a private dining room at the Mayflower Hotel. Everyone looked crisp and stately, blindingly formal in black tie and ball gowns—even Sly, whose shawl collar tented up behind his neck and whose left cuff was linked with a paper clip. “Fancy haberdashery,” Charlie said, when Sly’s contraption was revealed as he reached for an oyster fork to demolish his appetizer.

“Lost my cuff link,” he said sheepishly. He was sitting one over from Charlie—Delia Scott, Lanny’s wife, was between them—toward the middle of a long oval table.

“You’re going to need a valet, you want to survive the Pentagon,” Charlie said, only half kidding. “Generals are neatness freaks,” he explained to Delia Scott. “You’re wearing scuffed shoes, and they won’t take you seriously.”

“No kidding!” Parkinson agreed. “I was meeting with Art Lance”—the chairman of the joint chiefs—“and he asks my cholesterol level. Can you imagine? I’m proud I’m nudging two hundred after all this . . . stuff. Then he tells me his: one sixty-five.”

“You can bet that every colonel in the building keeps track of his.” Charlie touched Delia on the arm and added, “And the more ambitious ones probably know what the competition’s is, too. It’s a warrior culture, beneath all the planning and purchasing. They go one-on-one on everything.”

“Sounds like my health club,” she said.

“You work out at Lord of the Flies?” Sly asked, and Delia laughed. She had chestnut hair and freckles, and an entirely sweet disposition. Lanny and Delia were high school sweethearts, out from Charlie’s neck of the woods. They had come from nowhere, all the way to the pinnacle—and they still managed to communicate a slight, quite healthy sense of skepticism and amazement about it all.

Charlie looked around the table, dividing the Lords and their ladies according to province. Gid Reese sat at the far end of the table, pinched and precise, ever the reluctant reveler. He was from Boston, extremely so; Mike Coleman, New York, quietly so. The world of Washington was no big deal to them; it was, in many ways, less daunting than their hometowns. Linc was Indiana, and still powerfully moved by the grandeur of the nation’s capital; Sly was from New Jersey—but he lived in the space between his ears and was oblivious to Potomac seductions. Lynn sat between Mike and Gid, the picture of demure Pacific Northwest beauty, listening intently to Gid—gathering information, a role that she performed with grace and diligence; she lived for such moments, she still felt privileged—as Charlie did—to be part of such a gathering. . . . And then there was Nell, interrupting Charlie’s train of thought, sitting between Gid and Lanny Scott, diagonally across from Charlie: she was wearing a subtle, metallic brown ball gown, with a neckline that plunged in a narrow V and did not reveal much except for her neck, which was bare and long. She was talking to Lanny, working her hands as if she were mixing something; they moved together in clever little flurries. Lanny was laughing, chatting back, more animated than his usual puffed, magisterial anchorliness. Charlie wanted desperately to know what they were talking about.

“Did you like the speech?” asked Anne Reese, who was sitting to his left.

“It was okay,” he said absently—Nell was wearing an odd two-color satin shawl, which slipped off her right shoulder as she was gesturing; it was a regal shoulder, slim and square. He had missed saying hello to her during cocktails because he’d been to a home-state Democratic party reception and had arrived just as dinner was served.

“You were up on the stage with the celebrities,” Anne tried again. Charlie realized that this was business: Anne was Gid. She was austere, hawklike, dark hair parted severely in the middle and pulled back tight; a navy blue satin dress with a high collar, long tight sleeves ending in little lacy frills at her wrists. She would have been perfect in period costume at Sturbridge Village. She taught poetry at Wellesley.

“Damn cold out there,” he said. He’d sat next to Bart Nilson, the Senator from Wisconsin who’d been a fellow loser in the presidential primaries—and they’d been struck by the moment: Jack Stanton taking the oath of office. “But Jack looked just right,” he said to Anne. “He looked like a president. I was sitting next to Bart Nilson, and we were reminiscing about New Hampshire—thinking about Jack back then, and now: the duckling becomes a swan. I think he’ll be fine,” he added diplomatically.

And indeed, Charlie found that he truly wished Stanton the best. He’d asked Nilson if he could imagine himself standing there, taking the oath. “Only when I’m fooling myself, shaving in the morning,” Bart said. “You always think you can make the decisions better than the guy in the office, right? But it’s funny, you never imagine yourself standing out here, with your hand on the Bible. That’s a level of . . . of history most of us can’t handle. . . . And you?”

Good question. A year earlier, Charlie had thought he’d had the answer—but he’d been wrong, monumentally so. And now, he simply could not imagine himself standing there—at least, not without making some changes in the way he went about his life. Most of all, he could not imagine himself standing up there alone.

Stanton had Susan, who glowed that day; no matter how strained their marriage, there was a ballast to it, a solidity that kept them afloat in the roughest times. And ballast had turned out to be crucial in the gusty upper atmospheres of presidential politics. But, sitting on the inaugural podium, Charlie wasn’t really thinking about politics: he was sick to death of his own solitude. The realization was a jolt, a physically painful thing. His chest ached, the way his absent fingers sometimes did; he was chestless. The loneliness, reinforced by the frigid blasts of wind sweeping down from the northwest, shook him; and the chill had lingered. He looked over now toward Nell, who felt him staring; she glanced his way. He nodded, smiled and turned.

“Are you going to live here?” he asked Anne Reese.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said exasperated: he’d touched a nerve. “Part of the time, I guess. You know Gid. He’ll sleep on the office couch two out of every five nights anyway, so what’s the point?”

“And you’re teaching?” he asked. “Or are you one of those professors who just hang out and act smart?”

“Well, it’s not a very heavy load,” she admitted. “But I do have a Yeats seminar. Do you like poetry?”

“I’d like to like poetry,” he said.

She laughed and said, “Gid really appreciated your help in putting out the fire on Sly’s nomination.”

“It wasn’t much of a fire and I wasn’t much help,” he said. “I’m getting pretty aggravated by all these scandals, Anne. . . . It’s as if a fast-moving, low-grade stomach virus has settled in over the city. You’re flat on your back for twenty-four hours and then it disappears. Everyone catches it sooner or later.”

“Illness as metaphor,” Anne Reese scoffed.

“Better than sports,” Charlie replied.

“Just barely. And if you must indulge, you should be more precise: these scandals are more debilitating than a stomach flu. They leaves lesions. One never totally recovers.” She paused, stared across the room at her husband. Gid had aged significantly since Saigon. His youthful softness had wizened, his features were now as tight and spare as his personality. He’d lost most of his hair, his perfectly ovoid head an imposing dome now, his rimless glasses punctuating the ancient, clerkish quality of his presence. Anne was right: Gid had the look of a man who had suffered a debilitating illness and just barely recuperated. “It’s been a long road back for Gid,” Anne said now. “And his virus is still there, dormant. You wait, Charlie—they’ll use it against him yet. He’ll have to be so tough. Do you know how exhausting toughness is?”

At that moment, Lanny Scott clinked his glass and stood up. “Twentyseven years ago, we were kids together in Saigon. Now, I look around the table and I see the secretary of defense-designate, the national security adviser, a United States senator . . . and”—he suddenly remembered Linc, who smiled, betraying nothing—“various other dignitaries. A more modest member of a more modest group might say, Who’d have thought it? Who would have imagined this back then, back in Saigon? But looking around the table and remembering what you—what we—were like, I can only say: what took you so long?” Laughter. “This is going to be hard for me,” Lanny continued. “I’ve known you all so long, and I don’t want to compromise my journalistic integrity. But . . . now that it’s you guys in charge of the world, I can only say: I’m scared to death.” Applause and laughter. “But I toast you anyway, and I thank you, in advance and as always, for any and all services rendered—to me. Seriously, gentlemen, congratulations on this new day.”

Lanny sat down, and Linc stood. “I’m not scared to death,” he said softly, quite seriously. “I’m very proud. This is what we dreamed—and, sometimes schemed—about for nearly thirty years. And no, I’m not scared. Because I also remember what we were like back there, even what you were like, Lanny. I remember how clearly we saw what was happening to Vietnam, how hard we worked to change the result, how anguished we were by our inability to do so. I know we carry those lessons with us—lessons,not scars, as some would have it. Lessons that will inform the way we conduct diplomacy and, God forbid, military action, in the years to come. I hope you act wisely, I know you will act honorably. I salute you.”

There was a gasp, a burst of applause. Anne Reese had tears in her eyes. No one seemed to know what to say to Linc—he was, arguably, the most qualified person at the table, mentor to them all, and he was out in the cold. That thought, punctuated by an embarrassed silence, seemed to occur to everyone at the table simultaneously. It was up to Gid to respond; the entire table seemed to turn his way. He shook his head, “I can’t compete with the master—”

“Right, Gid,” Lanny Scott said, trying to lighten what had become a grave and emotional room. “You can only be inspirational when you’ve got a quarter of a million antiwar kids screaming for you at the Washington Monument.”

Gid let that slip. Charlie was always surprised by Reese’s height: taller than expected, his size diminished by his slightness, the academic stoop of his shoulders. Gid’s manner had always been distant and diffident, but now his withered physical presence rendered him a wisp of a shadow, as if every calorie he consumed was immediately metabolized into strategic analysis. “Linc is right,” Gid said, his voice thin and taut as piano wire. “This is the work we were meant to do. And, Linc, I hope you’ll join us in doing it. The President wants you to join us . . . and Spaso House is not too shabby, now is it?” So, Charlie thought, they really were trying to send Linc off to Russia. It seemed crude, indiscreet and vaguely insulting to mention that now. An unusually careless lapse, which Gid seemed to realize belatedly. “But that’s a discussion for another time. . .”

A door opened. Barney Rubin came up behind Sly Parkinson, whispered in his ear. Sly betrayed nothing but said, “Excuse me,” and disappeared. Maggie Parkinson, seated between Lanny and Linc, shot a quick glance of concern at Charlie—what’s this all about? Charlie shrugged, uncertain.

“For now,” Gid continued, pretending to be oblivious to the distraction, but rushing to a conclusion, “I’d like to toast all of you, and all we’ve seen and done together, and all we’ll do—and I would like to also raise a glass to the President of the United States.”

They stood for that—Maggie staring at Sly’s still-empty place—and raised their glasses, and said, “The President of the United States.” And, solid citizens that they suddenly were, they truly meant it.

Linc and Nell traveled with Lynn and Charlie to the Midwest Ball, which was to be held at the Air and Space Museum; Lynn had valetparked her Audi, and drove. Charlie rode shotgun. Nell was directly behind him; he couldn’t see her. He could see Rathburn, though, blond hair haloed in the Connecticut Avenue headlights—and Linc was in a less high-minded mood than he’d been at dinner. “What do you think was going on there?” he asked Charlie. “Trouble? Gid seemed even more his desiccated, jejune self than usual.”

“Lynn,” Charlie asked, “this Audi come with a dictionary?”

Parkinson hadn’t returned to the room. An aide had finally come for Maggie, and whisked her out. Gid’s beeper had gone off; he and Mike Coleman left, too. Dessert had been left on the table.

“Anything international and I would have been beeped,” Linc said. “It’s got to be—God, I hope it isn’t—another Sly story.”

Charlie pulled out his cell phone and dialed Hilton. No answer. He’d given D-2 the night off, so he decided not to page him. He tried Donna at home. She said there’d been nothing on the news; she hadn’t heard anything. Linc checked his voice mail; nothing.

“I thought it was a very moving evening,” Lynn said, filling dead air.

“Until it moved elsewhere,” Charlie said, but that was thoughtless, dismissive of Lynn. He reached over with his right hand and put it over hers on the wheel. “But you’re right, hon. You gave a great toast, Linc. . . . Hey, Nell, that’s a major Rathburn talent—he sure can do serious. Can’t tell a joke to save his life, but he gives great profundity.”

“So what’s Gideon Reese’s problem?” Nell asked. “He strikes me as the sort of man who could use a blood transfusion and a laxative.”

Lynn inhaled, Charlie cracked up.

“I don’t know about that,” Linc said, laughing. “Gid’s not big on sentiment. And he was sitting on some new information, tonight. He was suffering. You could see that, Charles—right?”

“Dunno,” Charlie said. “Lynnsie, you were pumping him. He divulge anything?”

“Well, he said he was pretty tired,” Lynn reported. “But exhilarated. He watched part of the parade with Stanton, and he told me that all the stories about the President not caring about foreign policy were just nonsense. I asked which areas Stanton was particularly interested in.”

“Good for you.” Charlie gave Lynn’s elbow a squeeze and then regretted the gesture: it seemed patronizing.

“Russia and China,” Linc predicted dismissively.

“He had a lot of wonderful things to say about you, Linc. Seriously. He did.” Lynn paused skillfully. “I didn’t know your relationship was that bad.”

There was a burst of laughter in the car. “Touché,” Linc acknowledged.

“Still,” Charlie sighed, “I wonder what the hell is up.”

Happily, there was valet parking at the Air and Space Museum. They walked in, two by two. Lynn was wearing a good Democratic cloth coat—royal blue, with black velvet collar and cuffs—over her ball gown, which was a robin’s-egg blue—and had a kind of Jane Austen look, a high waist marked by a big bow just below her breasts. Her hair was up, and curled in frosted ringlets; it was clear she’d spent a fair amount of energy working at this. They stood together in the cloakroom line: Lynn was a good soldier when it came to chatting up Midwest Ball types, Senator Martin’s monied constituents, but he was sure she would have preferred one of the more prestigious parties—and Linc, too, no doubt, especially now: the Parkinson story, if there was one, would be percolating elsewhere. This was bound to be a gossipy night, and they were consigned to the Flyover Ball.

“Senator Martin.” A big fellow with a crew cut nailed him. “Jack Carter, Hollowell Feeds. Great to see you.”

Hollowell Feeds: five thousand dollars from CornPAC for the presidential campaign; $37,000 in bundled contributions from the executive suite.

“Just great to see you, Jack. You should have called, given me some warning,” the senator said. “You’re in town from . . .”

“Minne—”

“—apolis. Right,” he said.

“And this is my wife, Marianne.” Dark hair, sharp blue eyes, diamonds and more diamonds, and breasts. “And you probably know Brendan Lofton—from our Washington office.”

“Of course. Hey, Bren.” Charlie had worked, for years, at preventing Brendan Lofton from getting too close to him. He had won and lost at this: he usually spared himself the humiliation of being personally greased and slathered—he rarely let Lofton into his inner sanctum—but he almost always wound up voting the way Hollowell Feeds wanted; it coincided with the needs of Charlie’s constituents (although not, perhaps, with the long-term best interests of anyone but the Hollowell executive suite).

“So, you think Stanton’s gonna murder us?” Carter asked, with a level of subtlety appropriate to a midwestern feed baron.

“It’s too early to tell,” Martin said senatorially. “But it’s clear there’ll be some sort of tax increase in there.” Nell had come up; she was watching this intently, Linc-less.

“So long as it’s fair,” Jack Carter said, wrapping a very strong arm around Charlie’s shoulder, squeezing hard and whispering, “Don’t want them messing too much with ag—”

“Right,” Charlie grunted, expelling air from the force of the squeeze. “We’ll make sure it’s fair.”

Nell was wearing an amber teardrop necklace and earrings; since it was chilly in the concrete and glass museum, she had kept her wrap, which was startling—brown velvet, more chocolaty than her dress, on one side; a very light turquoise on the other. And again, Charlie was having trouble assimilating all the different parts of her. Her beauty seemed complicated, a collection of nuances and subtleties—from some angles, she was striking; from others, ordinary. Jack Carter was looking straight past her, toward Ames McMahon of Nebraska, who sat on the Senate ag committee. But Charlie couldn’t stop looking at her. Her outfit seemed just right, effortless, as if she’d not worked very hard at getting herself ready for this. She had a nice, full lower lip; her mouth was slightly open, her head tilted rakishly. Her eyes were sharp, ironic. Charlie was discomforted by them; without saying a word, she made him feel transparent. He didn’t want her to know the disconcerting impact she had on him. But he was certain that she knew.

“Senator, howwww-dee.” A white-haired man with black-rimmed glasses, wearing a pig pin on his left lapel, and a cow pin on his right. “Ben Thompson, from the Payute City—”

“Stockyards,” Charlie said. Five thousand dollars, StockPAC; $23,000 from the stockyards executives. “Haven’t seen you since Rodeo Days.”

“Good memory, Senator.” Not really, Ben. A little below average for a politician. “And you remember my wife, S—”

“—arah, of course.” Nell was smiling at this. Charlie gave her a nod. Linc had come back from the men’s room, or wherever, and was talking to Lynn. “And how’s your daughter?”

“Nancy?”

“The twirler? Right?” With the great figure.

“Oh, that’s Joanne,” Ben Thompson said. “She’s off to Mason.” The state college of agriculture. “Nancy’s in vet school there, too.”

“I was just up there,” Charlie said. “The biogenetics lab is pretty darn impressive,” he added, home-state-style. “We got them some nice money in the higher-ed title of last year’s ag bill.”

“Shows. Mason’s about three times as big as it was when I was there,” Thompson said. “Hey, you been listening to the Muffler Kid?” It was interesting: home-state folks always assumed you were home all the time, and also in Washington all the time.

“I’ve seen the ads,” Charlie said. “Pretty funny.”

“The radio show’s what everyone’s talking about,” Thompson said. “Just started. Sarah won’t miss a day. Honey, what’s he doin’ you said was so funny?”

“The adventures of Slime Porkington,” Sarah said. She had permed gray hair and butterfly glasses, and a canary satin gown that amply demonstrated the degree to which she had been doing her patriotic duty on the local barbecue circuit; she was wearing pig and cow pins, and a stalk-of-corn pin as well. “He’s the guy who’s up for secretary of—something.”

“Defense?” Charlie offered.

“Yeah, right. The pill popper.”

“I think he kicked the habit,” Charlie said.

“He did?” Sarah seemed surprised. “The Butler Muffler fellow had this skit, with Porky hopped up, bouncing off of walls, launching atom bombs on McDonald’s. ‘Die, you commie cheesegurgers! Die!’ Then he had another one. . . . It’s a hoot.”

“I’ll bet,” Charlie said. Finally, they’d reached the head of the cloakroom line. “Well, great seeing you, Sarah. Ben.”

“You’ll be there for Rodeo Days this year?” Ben asked.

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Charlie said, and made a mental note to have Mary Proctor in his Des Pointe office assign someone to listen to the show every day. Better still, he’d call Pat Dunn—who, no doubt, hadn’t missed a minute of Muffler Kid.

They walked in the general direction of the party, toward loud, blarey music echoing off the glass and concrete—a big band, in tuxedos, on a podium with a presidential seal hanging behind it; they were playing excruciating covers of Rolling Stones songs. Charlie had Lynn’s arm, she was wearing long velvet opera gloves—like the girls on the motorbikes in Saigon; she was smiling and nodding at the people who smiled and nodded at him.

Nell came up beside them. “So this is what you do,” she said to Charlie. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a politician working up close before.”

“Just another day at the office,” he said, and felt idiotic having said it. Lynn glanced sharply at him, then at Nell; she noted the nervous chemistry between them—high school chemistry—and considered remarking on it, but she couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t seem heavyhanded.

“Senator!” Jim Waterfield, from Waterfield Tractors. Five thousand dollars from TracPAC, plus $86,000 personal, a maxed-out contribution from every member of his extended corporate family. He was trailed by Elaine Engstrom, the state Democratic party chair and her husband, Arne, usually described in the Register-World as a prominent Des Pointe lawyer (actually, he was one of the more powerful state lobbyists—Waterfield Tractors was a client, natch).

“Hey, Lainey,” Charlie said, hugging her. “I’m sorry I couldn’t stay for dinner tonight. We’ve got everything set for tomorrow, right?” A lunch meeting with all the home-state honchos, letting them vent on legislative priorities. Donny O’Brien had given Charlie one of his conference rooms in the Capitol, and promised he’d do a “surprise” drop-in. They’d like that.

“Charlie.” Jim Waterfield again. “We’ve gotta have a sit-down about trade. I’ve got this China deal cooking—and Stanton’s acting like the Chinese are Hitler.”

“I’m with you on this one, Jim. You know that,” Charlie said. “And I’ll bet you anything the anti-China stuff was just campaign talk from Stanton.”

“Maybe. But you and I should sit down and talk strategy. Can I have my girl call your girl?”

“Of course, Jim.” Charlie suppressed a wince. “Have you met Lincoln Rathburn? He knows an awful lot about China. Linc, this is Jim Waterfield. . . .”

“Waterfield Tractor, of course,” Linc said. “You really thinking of putting up that assembly plant in Wuhan?” He actually seemed interested. And Lynn had gotten caught up by Amy Rogers, the wife of CBS White House correspondent Sam Rogers—who’d gotten caught up by a horde of midwestern autograph hounds; Amy was a lawyer with House and Case, she did serious ag lobbying, which was why she’d dragged Sam to the Midwest Ball, and she also was one of Washington’s leading freelance gossips. And she was all over Lynn, who seemed relieved to find a familiar face.

Which left Nell standing there. “You want to dance?” she asked. “Or should I have my girl call your girl?”

“My girl leaves my dancing to me,” Charlie said. The band was now massacring the Beatles, but slow ones: “I Will” . . .

“Tough day at the office, I figured you needed a coffee break,” she said. She was easy in his arms; her cornet-brass hair brushed his cheek; it wasn’t soft hair, but thick and rough—a vital presence. Her wrap had slipped down around her elbows and Charlie had a good look at her neck and shoulders, which were pale and creamy and elegant; there were tiny, occasional, provocatively placed beauty marks on her neck; the muscles in her upper arms were clearly defined—and he caught a whiff of her perfume again, the same subtle, intoxicating scent as before.

“Not so tough a day,” he said. “You should’ve seen those birds when their passive loss provisions went down in ’86.”

“Passive loss provisions.” She played with the words, rolled them around in her mouth. “How thoughtful—one should always provide for passive losses.”

“I always sort of liked the term.” Charlie acknowledged the wordplay, and reached to keep up his end of the deal. “So much warmer than . . . accelerated depreciation.”

“The story of my life,” she said. “Accelerated depreciation.” Her gray-green eyes could be so sad when she worked them that way.

“In your case”—he paused melodramatically—“I wouldn’t say the depreciation was anything more than minimal.”

“Minimal!” she said. “A gentleman never acknowledges depreciation, however minimal.”

“See, now: I’ve suffered a passive loss of your esteem.”

“I’d say, it was a pretty active loss—”

“But you’re right, providing for passive losses sounds as if it might be an act of kindness, a sort of solace,” he said, working to keep the riff going. She made him feel light on his feet. “How many times in my life I’ve said the wrong thing—or, more accurately, not said the right thing—and suffered a passive loss that needed providing for.”

“The senator from Dorkland?” she said. “I doubt it.”

Charlie pulled back. “What color is that dress?” Which gave him a chance to check her out frontally.

“Let’s see how good you are,” she said, knowing he was looking, inviting him to look. “What color do you think it is?”

“Sort of an red-orangey-brown with a metal backbone,” he said, playing with her. “Wait a minute. In the Crayola forty-eight colors, when we were kids—it was like, what? Copper.” She shook her head no. “Bronze!” he said.

“In honor of the Bronze Age,” she said. “When metal weapons were introduced, and barbarism institutionalized.”

“You see parallels in the Age of Stanton?”

“Don’t you?”

“Not really,” he admitted, hoping that he hadn’t missed some obvious reference—hoping not to seem too slow for her.

“Me neither.” She laughed. She pulled him in closer and whispered, “Charlie, should Linc go to Russia?”

“No,” he said. She squeezed his arm, thrilled that he’d be an ally; it was very depressing. “Linc should keep doing what he’s doing,” he said. “Travel around, chat up people like that tractor guy, Waterfield, and wait for Stanton to come to him. He will, too. When there’s trouble.”

“You’re a good friend,” she said, bestowing a painfully chaste kiss on his cheek. “So what is it about Gid and Linc? Weren’t they friends once, too?”

“Yeah, they were,” he said. “But they kept bumping into each other. They both wanted the same seat at the table.”

“They couldn’t work it out?” she asked. “Take turns? They’re diplomats. Isn’t that what diplomats are supposed to do? Work things out?”

He didn’t know what to say. How to explain the tangle of loyalty and resentment in twenty-five words or less? Talk about passive losses.

“Boys,” she scoffed. “So have you talked to Linc about Russia?”

“Sure.” Not really.

“Veddy big . . . Russia,” she said. When he didn’t respond immediately, she grimaced, pulling back her chin and wrinkling her brow: “That was a reference, Dorkland: Noël Coward, Private Lives.” Again, Charlie had no comeback: he desperately wanted to amuse her. They were quiet for a moment, moving together easily; he found himself growing aroused, to his profound embarrassment.

“Noël Coward,” he said, pulling back abruptly. “A contemporary of the Marx Brothers.”

“Hail Freedonia,” she said. “Do you ever get to New York, aside from political conventions?”

“Sometimes, why?”

“Linc needs friends,” she said. “Especially when he comes over to my house and is surrounded by my friends, none of whom is very well versed on East Timor.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to have timorous friends,” he said, kicking himself as he said it: he was trying too hard, way too hard.

“But you must come over for dinner sometime,” she said. “With your kids?”

She laughed. “No, not the infernal tykes. I wouldn’t dream of inflicting SpaghettiOs and Niblets on you.”

“What are they like?” he asked, suddenly quite curious because they were her children.

“What are they like?” She was tickled by the intensity of his interest. It was the sort of question that men rarely asked; Linc never had. “They’re . . . Have you got a year?” The music was over. They started toward Linc and Lynn, but Nell stopped abruptly halfway. “You know, I never noticed kids before I had them. Never went ‘kitchy-koo’ when confronted with a baby. Never sighed and said ‘Ohhhh, how darrrrling.’ I thought I had zero maternal instincts. Boy, was I wrong about that—they’re . . .” Her eyes filled unaccountably with tears. “They’re my liberation from the family curse. . . . They’re normal. Well, sort of . . .”

“You know,” he began, “maybe you could help me. I have a—”

“Charlie!” Lynn said, moving out on the dance floor to get him. “You’re not going to believe . . . Amy Rogers was just telling us that the Post has a story tomorrow that one of Sly’s former staffers says he once pinned her up against the wall and tried to kiss her.”

“And there may be others,” Linc added, joining them.

“Shit,” Charlie said, distressed by both the information and the interruption. “This has got to be nonsense. I mean, why now?”

“It sounded pretty serious,” Lynn said, eyeing Charlie carefully. “Amy said the woman was on the record, with corroborating witnesses.”

“Did Amy say whether this woman had filed a sexual harassment suit?” he asked impatiently.

“I don’t—” Lynn started.

“How much you wanna bet she didn’t?” he said. “Funny how these things just pop out of nowhere at the most interesting times.”

“But—”

“But look what happened to me, dammit,” he said. Charlie’s eyes had gone icy, murderously cold—Nell was shocked by the change. A few heads turned; Lynn seemed stricken.

“What happened to you was isolated and clearly questionable,” Linc said, reaching out to calm him down, and then stepping back into analytical mode. “This is a lot more difficult—and it’s going to be hard now, with the pills and everything else, for Stanton not to pull the plug.”

“Aw c’mon, Linc,” he said.

“Well, you wonder why Sly didn’t tell us,” Linc said.

“Maybe,” Charlie said, “because it never fucking happened.”

“Charlie—” Lynn started.

“It’s a public humiliation!” Charlie was almost shouting; he’d just lost it. “Jesus, we’ve known Sly how long?” But had they known him? Of course they had. As well as you could, which was why Charlie was beginning to lose steam—because the story about the disgruntled staffer sounded right. Because his flash of anger had been, at bottom, about the trouble Sly was going to cause him. The chances were, this wouldn’t be clear-cut. These things never were. There would be Sly’s story, and hers, Madam X’s. There would be witnesses—but not eyewitnesses; indirect ones, friends who’d been told. Maybe. Or maybe not. It was going to be a mess, and Charlie was locked in: Sly’s lead defender. “Look, I’m sorry,” he said, cooling down. “It’s just that everyone in town—all the gossip junkies . . . I mean, talk about an addiction—all the assholes are getting a buzz off Sly’s bad fortune right now. He’s raw meat; he’s carrion. They’re feasting. Another banquet for assholes. It just turns my stomach.”

“Charlie—” Linc tried.

“Maybe we should go,” Lynn said, scalded by the outburst.

“Absolutely,” he said. “Let’s go.” He remembered Nell, and was suddenly embarrassed. He looked to see if she was appalled by him. But no, there was only concern in her gray-green eyes, and a fretful network of wrinkles above her eyebrows, which were raised—the inside tips were raised (how did she do that?)—empathetically: she had seen right past the anger to whatever it was, the loneliness and disgust, festering below that.