12

That spring, Linc began to confide more about his difficulties with Nell; given the rules of Lordly friendship, Charlie figured the romance was almost over. The subject was broached gingerly, infrequently, and almost always as a bothersome subplot of the grander drama, the quest to get the Rathburnian diplomatic future squared away. The eternal Gid-Linc fandango had reversed itself: now Gid was the insider, and Linc desperate to prove that he was not some sort of pariah. It was embarrassing for a diplomat of his abilities to be excluded from the new team; he needed Russia.

Nell didn’t. She didn’t understand the intensity of Linc’s need; she didn’t scour the morning papers each day, looking for signs that Gid was preparing an ambush; she had little sympathy for Linc’s seriousness, which, under strain, tended to become ponderous. Linc was frustrated and tormented by this, and hurt: if Nell really cared about him, she would understand that this was one of those nuanced, absolutely crucial moments. She would tolerate his occasional impatience with her cleverness; she wouldn’t tease him quite so much. His career—his real career, not the lawyering and rainmaking—was at stake.

Finally, over dinner at La Colline in late April, as Charlie kept the ambassador-designate company on the night before his confirmation hearings, Rathburn seemed to explode with frustration. “Half the time, I get the feeling she’s mocking me,” Linc said. “Everything is so damn coy. She doesn’t take anything I do seriously.”

“Sure she does,” Charlie said, remembering Nell with her head tilted back, listening hard—a proud, proprietary listening, it seemed—as Linc explained something over dinner at Lynn’s house. The memory was vivid, indelible; it was one of the ways Charlie always pictured Nell.

“She’s been angry ever since I told her that I was going to Russia,” Linc admitted. “She said that if I really loved her, I wouldn’t go. What nonsense! I asked her to marry me! And she laughed. She said she might come over, try it out, see if she liked it. Can you imagine? An ambassador living in sin?”

“There is a tradition,” Charlie said, preoccupied by the sudden rush of news: Linc had popped the question. Nell had said no. Wow.

“Franklin and Jefferson?” Linc laughed, oblivious to Charlie’s efforts to restrain his curiosity. “Two hundred years ago.”

“You could probably find more recent examples.” And, Charlie thought: if you really were desperate for her, you’d find a way.

“That’s not the point. She doesn’t really want to come over,” Linc said glumly. “She wants me to be someone different. Look, even if I weren’t going to Russia, this thing would be in trouble. . . . By the way, she wanted me to invite you to a party she’s throwing—a good-bye party for me, at her place on May eighth. It’s no big deal. You don’t have to come.”

“I’ll be there,” Charlie said, hoping not to seem too eager—and failing miserably.

*    *    *

Arabella Palmerston lived in a loft on the Lower West Side of Manhattan, just north of the more fashionable downtown sectors. Her building had a dull, industrial authenticity; there was a heavy steel door and a serious alarm bell of a buzzer downstairs—like the period-change bell at West Des Pointe High School, Charlie thought—and then a slow-moving freight elevator. When the lift lurched to a stop at Nell’s floor—it was remarkable that an elevator could move so slowly and still lurch when it stopped—an elderly Hispanic woman with a tray of champagne greeted Charlie at the door and pointed him past a startling expanse of polished blond wood floor and white walls to a long, broad terrace that overlooked the Hudson River. The sun was setting in a rolling splash of pink and purple over New Jersey; a soft breeze off the river hinted summer. Charlie was thrilled, breathing deeply, feeling free—the awful Parkinson winter was finally, palpably, over.

He saw Linc standing alone near the parapet, looking forlorn. Charlie made his way over, scanning the other guests, none of whom he recognized. They seemed an exotic lot. “Well, I’m sorry about this,” Rathburn immediately apologized.

“About what?” Charlie asked. “This is fabulous.”

“She invited none of my friends, except you.” He took Charlie by the elbow and maneuvered him into whisper range. They stood shoulder to shoulder facing the river, with their backs to the rest of the party; it seemed rude. “I don’t know what’s going on,” Linc confided. “She said it was a going-away party for me. But these aren’t people I know, except for the members of her family—her brother, her cousins and so forth. And she knows I don’t have much patience for them. Utter nincompoops.”

Charlie felt an arm slide through his, felt lips on his cheek and smelled the familiar perfume. “Hello, stranger,” Nell said, and he wondered how much of their conversation she’d overheard. “Let me introduce you to everyone.”

She laced her fingers through his—she had taken his right hand—and leaned her head on his shoulder. “Along the way,” she said, ignoring Linc, “we could discuss arms control.”

He was speechless, guilty and swept away—off into the party. They moved effortlessly from group to group on the terrace; Nell seemed able to orchestrate every conversation, making graceful, unobtrusive introductions and then moving along to the next group. “You will not be expected to remember names or PAC contributions, or promise to attend any festivals,” she whispered at one point, her lips accidentally brushing his ear. “No feed barons here. This is a night off, Senator.”

No feed barons, indeed. Not many nincompoops, either. Charlie didn’t want to seem too interested in these people, out of loyalty to Linc, but—there was a storklike woman writer-in-residence at Princeton; a gay investment banker who specialized in Central America, and his architect lover; a woman with a long gray braided ponytail who owned an antique bookstore; there was Nell’s older brother, Ted, who was a goateed, rail-thin furniture-maker who lived in Brooklyn—and there was Nell’s exhusband, Lucius Belligio, a serene, strikingly handsome homosexual, who was of some exotic West Indian-Italian-Creole provenance. The dress was colorful and skewed, ranging from ball gowns to denim, with not many stops in between. Indeed, Martin and Rathburn were the only men present wearing business suits and ties (Nell was done up fairly traditionally, too—a sleeveless black silk cocktail dress; but she was barefoot). Charlie felt as if he were in one of those 1930s screwball comedies where everyone was clever. There hadn’t been many evenings like this in Des Pointe, or in Washington, for that matter.

Having swept him through the crowd, Nell clapped her hands and announced, “Hey, everyone, dinner!” and then she escorted Charlie inside to a long wrought-iron and glass table, which ran horizontally next to the row of French doors that opened onto the terrace. She seated him immediately to her left. As she went off to seat the others, he checked out the room: there was an odd, distended Manhattan loft spaciousness to it, with vast acreage between the various venues—the stainless steel kitchen way over there, the living room way in the opposite direction. The French doors and terrace seemed to define the place: Nell had made her home a patio. The living room was wicker and rattan, arranged on an enormous jade Chinese deco rug. Severe isosceles Chinese flags, of rich and unexpected colors like coral and turquoise, were draped from each of the supporting pillars, which were of thin, fluted iron; the flags gave the place a jaunty but regal informality.

“Senator, what are you reading these days?” the woman seated to Charlie’s left asked, interrupting his reverie. She was very dramatically done up with a black lacquered pageboy haircut, scarlet nails and lipstick and an extremely low-cut vermillion ball gown.

What was he reading these days? “History, mostly,” he said. And he did try to keep a book or two going. “Actually, I’m reading this terrific book about Germany at the beginning of World War One, called Rites of Spring.”

“By whom?”

He couldn’t remember the author’s name. It was not an easy one. “Ahhhh . . .” He realized he was blushing. “It’s a fellow who teaches up in Canada.” And then—phew!—he remembered: “Modris Eksteins. By the way, I can’t remember your name either. . . .”

“Gwyneth Coxley, one of the dreadful cousins.” She had a wonderfully alto Carolina drawl. “Do you think World War One was romantic, or the opposite of romantic?”

“The opposite of,” Charlie said as a vivid, unexpected flash of battle—the heat, the stench—collapsed his chest. He shook his head abruptly, reflexively, to clear his mind.

“What?” Gwyneth asked and then answered herself, “Oh, of course: memories. I’m sorry.”

“The poets were good,” Charlie recovered. “In Flanders fields, the poppies blow/Between the crosses, row on row. . . .”

“Memorial Day,” Gwyneth said. “They recited that every year in our little town when I was a girl.”

“And what are you reading?”

“Anaïs Nin.” Charlie wasn’t quite sure who or what Anaïs Nin was—he guessed European, artsy, nineteenth century or early twentieth. “An American in Paris in the twenties,” Gwyneth bailed him out. “A lot of orgifying—that was a reaction to World War One as well. Are you interested in sensuality, Senator?”

“I divide my time,” Charlie replied, “between sensuality and nuclear proliferation.”

“Very good!” Gwyneth said, delighted that he could play. “I always thought nuclear proliferation was very sensual, myself. All those missiles.”

“Gwyn loves missiles,” said Cousin Grigorii Urgovich—the son, Charlie later learned, of Aunt Mush (Michelle) and Uncle Yuri (the Ukrainian mechanic who had fixed Mush’s plane when it crashed near Kiev in 1934). Grigorii, now well into his fifties and looking splendidly Brit in houndstooth, his hair gray and sweeping, his eyebrows pitch-black, was a wine importer. “She’s a sculptrix,” Grigorii explained. “Tell the senator what you sculpt.”

“Things,” Gwyn admitted reluctantly.

“Men’s things,” Gregorii said.

Charlie looked over toward Rathburn, who was down the other end of the table, geographically and emotionally; Linc shot him an angry look, annoyed that Charlie seemed to be enjoying himself.

“I’m surprised, Senator,” Grigorii, clearly the family blowhard, went on, “Gwyn hasn’t asked you to sit for her.”

“Senator,” Gwyn responded, glaring at Grigorii, “don’t you agree that Slavic men are swine? And anyway, Grigo, I believe Cousin Nell has dibsies on the senator.” Gwyn whispered to Charlie, “I think our Arabella is sending your friend Mr. Rathburn a message. This is not a going-away party. It’s a sending-away party.”

Charlie turned to Nell, who put her hand on his knee and squeezed it. “Did I introduce you to Lucius?” she asked. Lucius was sitting directly across from him, on Nell’s left. Charlie started shaking his head no, then nodded yes, preoccupied by the worry that he might be some part of the message that Nell was sending Linc. “Lucius is my business partner,” she explained, “and a real pal . . . sometimes men and women can be pals. Lu, what do you think of Senator Martin’s pal potential?”

“I think,” Lucius said, smiling evenly—he had a quiet, elegant manner—“he must have something going for him.”

“What does that say for Mr. Ambassador?” Gwyn asked, tweaking Nell. “He’s way down the other end of the table.”

“He’s symmetrical,” Nell said.

“Perfectly,” Gwyn laughed. “Look at him. Blond hair and blue eyes. Blue shirt and yellow tie.”

And in agony. Linc was in agony. Charlie was sympathetic, but agog: Linc was symmetrical. His eyes and shirt did match, as did his straw-blond hair and pale tie; his clothing seemed a perfect, self-referential reflection. What a remarkable thing to notice.

“I think I’m going to go home,” Linc said as soon as an exit was plausible, as the main course remnants were removed from the table. He stood, placed his napkin on the table. “I have a lot of work. Charlie, where are you staying?”

“Oh! Linc! But you mustn’t,” Nell said. “I haven’t made my toast. I haven’t served my special Linc-related dessert. Excuse me, excuse me,” she said, hugging Lucius, kissing his forehead. She pushed back from the table, but the chair caught, tipped back and would have fallen over if Charlie hadn’t grabbed it. “Oops,” she said, standing abruptly. She clasped her hands to her heart, batted her eyes at Charlie, said “My hero,” and tousled his hair. “I’ll wait on my toast,” she said. “But now, kitchenward!”

When Nell stood, so did everyone else. The party moved back onto the terrace. Charlie joined Linc, standing at the parapet, staring out at the river. “She’s kissing me off,” Linc said. “And you’re helping.”

“Jesus, Linc, what do you want me to do?”

“Stop looking at her as if—”

“As if, what?”

“As if you were half in love with her yourself.”

“What?” Charlie said, too quickly, as Grigorii and Ted joined them.

“So congratulations,” Grigorii said to Linc. “You’re going to my father’s fatherland: . . . Would that make it my grandfatherland? Actually not, I guess: the Ukraine is a separate country now. My uncle-land, perhaps?” Linc smiled politely. Charlie drifted off, upset by Linc’s bitterness, needing to clear his head—he wondered if he was slightly tipsy, or perhaps it was just the company. He wandered back into the loft. There was a broad staircase near the entrance, with stairs up and down. He went halfway down and saw several rows of design tables, each with a mannequin, in semishadow, illuminated only by a distant fluorescent; bolts and swatches of dramatically hued Lycra leaned in a long, open closet on the far wall. A row of bathing suits drooped, pretumescently, on a rack nearby. Hanging above the rack, a poster of a Picasso-inspired mermaid—the company logo: MerMaid. Charlie had forgotten about that part of Nell, the business part, but now he remembered her conversation with Elizabeth Makrides at the convention party, and he felt a stab of nostalgia for the unencumbered, fresh, first-time experience of meeting her. And curious: this was an uncomfortable evening, but still—he’d invested ten months in stray fantasizing about Nell Palmerston, and this would probably be the last chance he’d ever have to investigate her life. He turned and went back up the stairs, up a flight to the bedroom floor, on a recon mission. He wanted to see her bedroom.

There was a wide white corridor, lined with family photographs—some ancient, some recent: her parents, grandparents, children. Her children: where on earth were they? There was a picture of the two of them on a weathered porch with dunes in the background: the girl, older and more Caucasian-looking, with blondish hair and straight features and Nell’s smart, sad eyes; the boy was darker, with dark eyes and Lucius’s soft, curly black hair—he was staring at the camera, his sister was more oblique, bored or just innately uncooperative.

Down the hall, he saw a striking photo of Nell—young, in Paris perhaps, flirting with the camera, very close-up, wearing the sort of felt pillbox hat that Charlie dimly remembered his mother wearing, with a fishnet veil. The hat was a joke, and yet alluring—and in her eyes, through the veil, a very Nell-like look, the perennial hint of . . . what? It was as if she had just found out something embarrassing about you. Or perhaps, she had just caught you in the act of surreptitiously being yourself. He wanted to linger, to study this—but he didn’t want to be discovered staring, especially not by her, and so he moved down the hall toward what appeared to be a family room. And there, among a jumble of giant pillows, dimly lit by an amber table lamp on a polished maple steamer trunk in a corner, sat Lucius with Nell’s children—his children, too, of course—watching Ren and Stimpy on a big-screen television.

“Hello,” Lucius said, muting the television, which precipitated a struggle over the clicker with his daughter. “No, Pims!” he said, holding it aloft; the daughter got up on her knees, grabbing for it. “Don’t be impolite.”

“But, Lucius,” she said, “we’re missing.”

“It’s not that heavily plotted, Pamela,” he said. “We can catch up. Senator Martin, this is Pamela. . . . Pimster, this is a friend of Mother’s.”

“A new boyfriend?” Pamela scowled. Her face, even more Nell’s miniature than it had seemed in the photo, was too subtle for her body, which was long and stringy and profoundly preteen.

“I don’t think so,” Lucius said. “There’s still Mr. Rathburn.”

Pamela stuck out her tongue. “Oh, guck, Lucius. You’re way behind. That guy is so two months ago.”

Lucius gave Charlie a look, and a smile. “And this, under here, is Robin,” he said, pointing the clicker at the bundle of curls filling the cavity beneath his left arm perfectly, as if the child had been measured for the space. Robin looked up from the television at Charlie, an even, intelligent look.

“So, you into Ren and Stimpy?” Pamela asked Charlie. “Or are you lost, or are you just snooping around? I mean, Lucius, am I supposed to be, like, polite for-ever?”

“Forever, Miss Pim,” Lucius said gently.

“Guck,” said Pamela. “So?” she said, to Charlie.

“Lost,” he said.

“Bathroom?” she asked. He nodded.

“Do you have to go bad?” Robin asked, looking up, lapsing into lightly carbonated giggles, then deeper chuckles, self-tickled.

“Real bad,” Charlie lied, doubling over, knees together.

Robin laughed harder still.

“So funny I forgot to laugh,” Pamela said. “Turn around. Second door on the left. See ya.”

Lucius shrugged, unmuted the television. “See ya,” Charlie said.

Second door on the left. He didn’t have to go, but he went. At a certain point in life, you can always go a little. The bathroom was long, narrow and industrial: a big duct, painted aquamarine, ran through it. There was a glass—walled steam shower down the end, and lots of chrome-fixtures, pipes, spigots. The walls were blank, except for several carefully placed sketches of the same scene: dunes, reeds, the upper story of a beach house behind. Hers? There was a basket for magazines—World of Interiors, House & Garden, Vogue; nothing political—next to the loo.

There was a knock at the door. “You in there?” Nell. Whispering.

He opened the door, and there she was. “Dessert’s ready,” she said, closing the door behind her. She spotted herself in the mirror, ran a hand through her straggly hair, which teased out, electrified: “Disgraceful,” she said. “You, on the other hand, have really good hair—and you probably don’t even have it streaked or anything. . . . You know, I’m not going with him. That’s what this is about.”

“Good,” he said, and she kissed him. It was a serious, grown-up, no-messing-around kiss and he reciprocated, but he found himself distanced from it, his mind wandering: too fast, this was. His “good” hadn’t been that enthusiastic. It was intended to convey something like: I think that it’s probably for the best that you aren’t marrying Linc and going to Russia, because I’m not sure it would have worked out well for you or for my friend Linc . . . and . . . how odd. He was suddenly where he’d wanted to be, where he’d fantasized being, and he wasn’t quite there. Maybe it was because he hadn’t precipitated the kiss; she had . . . and . . . it was a really terrific kiss. Physically phenomenal; her lips were warm and full and soft, her tongue was careful, emotionally intelligent, her mouth was . . . her arms were around his neck. His neck was burning and, down below, the object of Gwyn’s aesthetic interests pushing suddenly through his boxers against his zipper. He was thinking about everything; he was thinking too much.

“I was hoping you’d say something like that,” she said, pulling back finally, stumbling a little. But what had he said? “Dizzy,” she explained. “You’re good,” she added. He hadn’t thought at all about his part of the kissing. She kissed him again, on the cheek, and took his hand, his right hand, and said, “Okay, dessert.”

Linc was outside in the hallway waiting for them. “My darling,” he said, an even tone, but his mouth was taut and his eyes cold, “and my pal. Having a meeting?”

“A meeting of the rump caucus,” Nell said, snaking her right arm through his left. Now she had them both. Charlie tried to catch Linc’s eye, but Linc was looking down, beginning to negotiate the stairs. “All right, fellas!” Nell said, too cheery by half. “Time for my toast . . .”

Downstairs, again. A cheesecake sat in front of Linc’s spot at the head of the table. Upon it, the words “bye bye” were written in strawberry syrup script. Grigorii was opening champagne, then pouring it; people were standing about. Nell tinkled her glass with the cake knife. “Let’s all take a sip first,” she said. “I want to say that Mr. Ambassador Rathburn is going off to Russia to buy me a hat. . . . Make it mink, Linc!” She took another sip of champagne, leaned an elbow on Charlie’s shoulder. “And I say to him, Congratulations and au revoir . . . and however you say it in Russian.”

Linc stood, staring at his cake. A return toast was in order. He lifted the glass slowly, to eye level, sighting it like a rifle. He glanced at Charlie, stared at Nell. “Na zdorovye . . . is how it’s said in Russian. I will surely miss my unforgettable mermaid—and ensemble. To you, Nell,” he said, and took a sip. “And mink it shall be.”

They were out the door and on the lift very quickly, Charlie tagging along behind Linc, who was silent, staring straight ahead as the elevator creaked back to earth in a rattle of chains and turbine hum.

“I’m sorry . . . about the bathroom,” Charlie said.

Linc ignored him.

“Nothing happened, you know.”

“Don’t,” Linc said, “insult my intelligence.”

*    *    *

And for a while it seemed that nothing, indeed, had happened. Linc went to Russia. He and Charlie still talked by phone most days, but no longer about personal things: Charlie had the distinct sense that Linc believed their discussion of his Nell troubles had led, somehow, to the bathroom betrayal. Charlie also had his own doubts about Nell: had she just been using him as part of her sending-away tableau? He realized this was an irrational, adolescent sort of reaction—but then, the entire evening had been a high school sort of situation. And yet the kiss, as he recalled it, had not been at all devious or theatrical; it had been terrific. Still, Charlie didn’t hear from Nell afterward, and he didn’t call her. He was sorely tempted to call, especially on his very occasional visits to New York. But that would have been a premeditated betrayal of his friend, as opposed to a tipsy indiscretion. A summer slipped by.

Four months later, he didn’t even recognize her name. “A Mrs. Belligio from New York called,” Rosemary said. “She says she knows you.”

“Uh-huh,” he said. “What time for Hufsteter?”

“Four,” she said. “And Mrs. Belligio? She had your private number.”

A New York fund-raiser, perhaps? An internationalist do-gooder? “Call her back,” he said. “Find out what it’s about.”

Bernie Hufsteter, of the United Auto Workers, promised to be a difficult meeting. The UAW would be smart; they knew they wouldn’t be able to get Charlie’s vote against free trade with Mexico, the current hot topic among the talking heads—his state’s farmers and feed companies loved overseas sales—but the union would be looking to leverage that, and get his help with something else. He’d had Marvin Tam check to see what he’d done for them lately: he’d voted for Stanton’s budget, he’d even held his nose and pushed the defense contract for the new helicopter the Navy didn’t want (but the UAW did, since it provided about eight thousand jobs spread over eighteen states). He wasn’t proud of either vote, but they would be ammunition when Bernie asked him for whatever he was going to ask him for.

“She said it was about ‘arms control,’ ” Rosemary said, ducking back in. “Mrs. Belligio.”

“Arms control?” A do-gooder.

“It was strange,” Rosemary said. “I asked her, ‘What, specifically, about arms control?’ And she said, ‘Oh, I don’t know. If that doesn’t work, try Most Favored Nation status.’ ”

“Italy,” Charlie said, experiencing an involuntary, adolescent chestly tingle. “You have her number?”

The meeting with Hufsteter didn’t go well. The union wanted an advance commitment of support for Stanton’s health care plan. “Too soon,” Charlie said. “I’ve got to see what’s in it.”

Bernie Hufsteter was not your usual labor skate. He was thin, pock-marked, balding, horn-rimmed glasses: the working-class kid who’d been good at school. He had a law degree from a state university in the Midwest, one of those giant education factories that offered high-quality meat-and-potatoes learning. “Senator, you’re not with us on trade, which is real important to our members. We don’t expect total loyalty. But”—he paused, but not too dramatically—“you have an election coming next year. It may look like a walkover now, but you never know when you’re going to need some friends.”

“I also have a job to do,” Charlie said, “which includes finding out what’s in a piece of legislation before I support it.”

“Thanks for the civics lesson, Senator,” Hufsteter said calmly. “Your evasion will be recorded in The Book of Life.”

Could he have handled this better? Most likely. Would it cost him with the UAW? Most likely not. Labor needed all the friends it could get. Still, Charlie was displeased with his inelegance, and Donna—who’d sat in on the meeting, in strict adherence to the rule of three—saw it: “Tired?” she asked. “Distracted?”

“Not tired,” he said. “Maybe a little rusty.” But mostly distracted. Donna left and he dialed the number, got MerMaid, was put on hold—and was surprised by the constriction in his throat when he heard her voice.

“Mrs. Belligio?”

“You remember Lucius.” Yes, but he hadn’t remembered Lucius’s last name. “Anyway, that’s my official name,” she replied. “I figured that I should be official when calling a senator. How are you, anyway?”

“Fine, and you?”

“Fine.” She paused. “Linc said you were coming to town for the UN.”

“Linc did?”

“He still checks in,” she said. “You know how he is.”

“All the world’s a local call,” he said. “You having second thoughts about going to Russia?”

“Oh, Lord, no,” she said, vehemently. “I mean, could you imagine Pamela in Russia? Robin, maybe. But Pamela? ‘I mean, like, Moth-errrr, what’s there to, like, do?’ ”

But that was about the kids, not about her. “And I,” she continued, thinking along with him, “well, MerMaid’s in a little trough and I want to stay on top of it and—well, Linc was always more of an interesting concept than a reality, you know what I mean?”

She stopped. He wanted to say something—something clever. About Linc, maybe. The problem was, he wasn’t exactly sure what she meant. “Look, you want to come for dinner when you’re here?” she asked abruptly, filling the silence.

“I don’t know, I’ve got all these . . . functions,” he said.

“Oh, well, of course.” She seemed flustered, for once. “Well, anyway . . . if it’s no, it’s no.”

“It’s not no,” he said, figuring: WTF. “There’s a dinner at the UN ambassador’s residence on Tuesday. Would you consider coming with me?”

“All Linc’s friends will be there,” she said. “I haven’t been uptown since—”

“I’m one of Linc’s friends,” he said. She was quiet now. “Well, if it’s no—”

“It’s not no,” she said.

*    *     *

The UN ambassador’s residence is a most unlikely piece of government real estate, located high in the Waldorf Towers. Charlie and Nell agreed to meet at the clock in the hotel lobby. Charlie was late; he’d been on the inevitable Middle East Peace Prospects panel, sponsored by a Jewish coalition in a midtown synagogue. He’d been a lesser member of the panel, third fiddle to Yitzhak Rabin and the Israeli UN ambassador, Uri Savir, plus the assistant secretary of state assigned to the Mideast. Afterward, he’d been buttonholed—not by Rabin or Savir (they didn’t have much to say to a mere senator) but by several of the American Jews in the audience who couldn’t shove close to Rabin and were too sophisticated to allow themselves to appear “pushy,” yet ever intense in their devotion to the cause. Charlie found himself considering their suits, to see what distinguished them from his own, which were five-hundred-dollar D.C. and Des Pointe jobs. He couldn’t tell; the effect of money on couture in these precincts was subtle, beyond his ken.

“How can you tell a really expensive suit?” he asked Hilton, who had accompanied him and would be along for dinner, too (a senator was allowed a retainer at such events), as they walked Fifty-fourth Street from Madison to Park, and then down toward the Waldorf. The streets were clogged with limos. The UN put on this show each September, an elaborate and nearly effective reminder of its existence.

“Fabric, fit,” Hilton said. “There’s a creamy, perfect feel to a good suit. It just hangs right.”

“But it’s not obvious, right?”

“A cheap suit is obvious,” Hilton said.

“Are my suits obvious?”

“No-oh,” Hilton said.

“ ‘No-oh’? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means they’re not obvious. They’re serviceable.”

“ ‘Serviceable.’ That sounds like—” But the sight of Nell caught him short. She was standing beneath the clock, looking . . . fabulous:a greenish silk dress, the color of a copper roof exposed for decades to the elements, knee length; dark hose and moderate heels. But it wasn’t what she was wearing. It was something more complicated, in her eyes and smile: she was thrilled to see him. The reaction was unequivocal, a rare clarity for her—everything had always been camouflaged and ironic. But the sight of him had caught her short, too. She hadn’t had time to prepare, to mask herself; nor had he. They were startled by their mutual delight at seeing each other.

His impulse was to take her in his arms, and he started the move—but stopped. She noticed that, of course. Always that slight hesitation, she thought. If he ever made a fully confident, unencumbered move on her, she’d be lost. But she was semilost as it was, floating in his gaze, which seemed guileless. No, she was more than semilost.

“You look wonderful,” he said, squeezing her left arm gently, just below the shoulder, as he kissed her cheek. She moved toward him; a kiss and linger, her hair against his cheek, her perfume insinuating itself, extending tendrils, binding him. And then they looked at each other, pulling back slightly, perfectly in time, his hand still on her arm—and it was done: everything that needed to be said, and without a word. She smiled at him slightly; he nodded, almost imperceptibly, in acknowledgment. His hand slid down her arm, resting briefly at her elbow and then to her wrist and they held hands, still staring at each other, their fingers interlaced.

Hilton thought it was one of the most romantic moments he’d ever witnessed, but who was this woman? The boss had never mentioned her. She had an old-fashioned look and, clearly, she knew how to put herself together: she wasn’t straight-line uptown, she was opaque and interesting—there was a mindfulness to her look—the sort of woman Hilton had always thought Charlie Martin deserved, but despaired that he’d never find. They simply didn’t exist in Washington or Des Pointe. But New York—perfect. Who was she? He gawked at the two of them, which broke the spell. Nell glanced over, saw that Hilton was with Charlie . . . and also saw that he had understood what had just transpired. She felt extremely calm; it was an unexpected, almost narcotic feeling. She extended a hand. “Nell Palmerston,” she said.

“Hilton Devereaux,” he said.

“Mississippi or Louisiana?” she asked.

“Mississippi,” he said. “But you—”

“South Carolina,” she explained. “And a bit of Sussex. And you work with Senator Martin?”

“Sometimes against,” Hilton said. “Always for. I handle the press.”

Hilton saw that Nell was one of those people who would not need an explanation: she knew he was gay and more—she did not mind; indeed, she seemed a bit relieved by it. Whoever she was, she wasn’t in politics.

“He a difficult boss?” Nell asked as they glided—effortlessly, on air—toward the elevators.

“A pussycat,” Hilton said.

There were other people in the elevator. “Senator.” A man greeted Charlie, who nodded. Nell linked her arm through his, and reinforced the move by placing her left hand on his shoulder, attaching herself to him—but lightly. He looked at her, smiled with his eyes. She looked at Hilton, who smiled, too.

There was candlelight upstairs. The ambassador stood just inside the door, greeting all comers. She was extremely tall, a former congress-woman from Montana, the daughter of a prominent mining family, a widow with a hard, weathered western face. “Good evening, Senator,” she said.

“Madame Ambassador,” Charlie replied with a smile. They knew each other well from their days in the House together. “This is a friend of mine, Nell Palmerston.”

“And a good thing, too,” she said. “A French speaker. I’ve deputized her for the evening. The French ambassador. Our dear ally. Oh, Charlie,” she added, noting his bemusement, “you think I don’t do my homework? It’s the diplomatic equivalent of constituent service. Arabella Belligio née Palmerston. MerMaid swimsuits. Friend of Linc Rathburn’s. Daughter of Harry Palmerston and Susannah Coxley; cousin of you know who . . . and a delight. We had a terrific chat by phone the other day. In French. Had to be sure the table placement would work. You will entrance him, won’t you, dear?”

“Pâté in my hands,” Nell said. “I’ll ‘do pretty’ with him.”

“Ver-ry good!” the ambassador said, laughing. Charlie was bowled over. For a languorous soul, Nell could be lightning fast. “What was that from?” the ambassador asked. “ ‘Doing pretty.’ I remember reading it a long time ago. It’s always been there, somewhere in the back of my mind.”

“Trollope,” Nell said. “Lady Glencora.”

“Trollope?” Charlie said, with a skeptical look at the ambassador—he thought of her as a tough, western populist.

“Teenage acne,” the ambassador explained. “Time on my hands. In any case, ‘doing pretty’ is a great marching order for women diplomats.” She turned to Charlie. “An advantage you’ll never have.”

“Oh, he can ‘do pretty,’ ” Nell said.

“Yes, of course,” the ambassador said, smiling, picking up the chemistry. “Of course he can.”

At the entrance to the cocktail room, a waiter stood with a tray—white wine, bubbly water, champagne—and Nell reached for the champagne, then thought better of it: she didn’t want even the slightest alteration in the way she was feeling.

“No drink?” Charlie asked.

“I’m high on life,” she said, squeezing his arm again. He took some bubbly water, and Hilton, a flute of champagne.

“To the two of you,” Hilton said. “Or maybe, just to you—Ms. Palmerston. I toast him every payday.”

“I should have a glass to raise in response,” she said. Charlie handed her his. “To each of us,” she said, “fulfilling expectations.”

And then they were engulfed by the party. Charlie fell into chatter with The Washington Post’s New York correspondent; and Nell, with a series of familiar sorts, starting with Fred Trostman, the chairman of the board of the Council on Foreign Relations, who still associated her with Linc, and who launched a conversation about the upcoming parliamentary elections in Russia, and the chances that communists and neofascists might do well. “Is Linc concerned about the threat?” he asked.

As if she’d know. It was the sort of moment that had appalled her in the past—but now it was peripheral, the main event was taking place down by her right hand, which was wrapped around Charlie Martin’s left arm: the ease of it, the utter comfort. Nothing else mattered. “Linc seems to be doing just fine,” Nell said, not quite responding. “He’s especially happy that the residence has a satellite dish.”

Everything, their movements and conversations, seemed choreographed. They’d be together, talking to someone; then separate; then back again. All of it, easily, subtly, in slow motion. At a cocktail party, there are bees and flowers—the bees buzz about, searching for the right conversation; the flowers suffer the bees. Together, Charlie and Nell were a most exquisite bloom, radiating—jointly now, he imagined—a slight, subtle perfume; her perfume.

Then, dinner. Separate tables. At each, a foreign head of state paired with an American official. Charlie sat near the president of Lithuania, a former music teacher—they talked big bands (the Lithuanian had just read a biography of Artie Shaw), to the astonishment of the woman between them, the wife of a prominent American banker. Nell had her Frenchman, a beau-laid of the Yves Montand species, but they were a sideshow at the table where Mike Coleman was placed adjacent to the president of Ghana, who proved quite a showman and seemed more interested in catching Nell’s eye than in the light policy conversation that usually obtains on such evenings. At one point, Charlie was able to glance over at Nell—she was at 270 degrees, a serious twist over his left shoulder, but not impossible—and caught her feigning extravagant outrage, her hand against her brow, palm out, as the Frenchman laughed. And then, sixth sense, she glanced over at Charlie and smiled, as if to say: whatever is happening between us is still happening, at least for me. Mike Coleman happened to catch this, and gave Charlie a mischievous look.

Charlie was preoccupied: what comes next? Afterward? He was staying at the Sheraton on Seventh Avenue. Entirely utilitarian, but not very romantic—a place for an assignation, not for a transcendent moment. In any case, he couldn’t say to her, “Would you like to come to my hotel room?” He would have to offer to take her home. His mind was crowded with questions, details. He was, he realized, nervous.

In the event, everything happened wordlessly. As the dinner ended, she was at his side. They said good night to their hostess, the ambassador, who gave him a knowing, you’re-not-just-sitting-in-for-Linc-are-you? look, and a nod of approval. “I am many years past MerMaid,” she said to Nell. “But I’ll tell my daughter you seem the sort of person who’d make an interesting swimsuit.”

Nell curtsied and said, “I’m glad someone like you is here, doing this—very prettily, I must say.”

They went down the elevator with Hilton, who was grinning like an idiot. Nell gave him a hug and a kiss, and whispered, “Wish us luck.” And then, she and Charlie were out onto Park Avenue, waiting on the cab line . . . when the French ambassador called out, from his car: “Nell! Madame!” He rushed out clumsily. “Where do you go? I have a few blocks only—to the UN Plaza—” He acknowledged Charlie, understood that they were together. “Senator, would you accept a ride in my car? It will take you anywhere. . . .”

“Will there be diplomatic implications?” Charlie asked, with a smile.

“I certainly hope so,” the ambassador said.

They sat three across the backseat, Nell in the middle. “Madame Belligio, you are a delight,” the ambassador said. “Do you often come to Washington?”

“Only when invited,” she said.

“Then the Senator must invite you to accompany him to one of our evenings,” the ambassador said. “If he is careless, I will be sure to. But the Senator is not a careless man?”

“Occasionally,” Nell said, “he is less than careful.”

“Not anymore,” Charlie said to her. And then to the ambassador: “We’d be delighted to see you in Washington, as always—”

“It will be arranged,” the ambassador said. “And now, I am here at my hotel. And the car is yours. Where will you be going?”

“Tenth Avenue and Seventeenth Street,” Nell said.

“SoHo?” the ambassador asked.

“Not quite, but the same general principle,” Nell said.

“Oui, downtown. La vie de bohème. Very exciting, Senator,” he said, with a nod to Charlie. “Very.”

And then, they were alone in the backseat—and kissing lightly, briefly. She nodded toward the driver, whose eyes were riveted to the rearview mirror. She smiled. They watched the city together. When they reached her address, and he began to ask . . . she took him by the hand and led him from the car. She pulled a prodigious set of keys from her purse, and opened the door to her building. Inside, she pushed the elevator button—there was a grudging click and a hydraulic whir—and she turned to him, and put her arms around his neck and kissed him dreamily. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said.

His mind was cluttered with tactics, logistics, objectives, preparations—field command obstructions. He wondered how aggressively to move, whether to kiss her again when she pulled back. (She kissed him again.) And as she was kissing him, and he was beginning to feel aroused, whether to move against her. (She moved into him.) And the logistics of getting their clothes off, and what about birth control—and then, there were the children. And how would he get back uptown in the morning?

Out the elevator. Up the stairs. Down the hall, to the family room, where Lucius sat, watching an old movie. “The dreadful tykes?” she asked.

“Splashdown,” he said. “Hello, Senator.”

Charlie nodded. A whole new set of questions crowded his brain. Does Lucius live here? And why would that be? Did he and Nell still have . . . Was Nell infected?

And they were in the bedroom. “Does Lucius live here?” he asked.

“Mmm,” she said, kissing him, moving to remove his jacket. She was remarkable. She was kissing him, both her hands in his hair. He found the zipper in the back of her dress, and tried to unclasp the tiny thread clasp at the top, but that wasn’t so easy with one and a half hands, and she said, “Let me,” and she did, and then her bra. There were stretch marks on her breasts, but they were round and . . . just perfect—she took his right hand, which was suddenly cold, and put it there, and shivered, kissing him, reaching down into his pants. And—

“Are you okay?” she asked.

He blushed.

“Is it war-related?”

“Opening night jitters,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

Their next attempt was, if anything, more embarrassing. A week later. They had talked every day, but there was an underlying tension—at least, on his end. He’d invited her down to Washington, to a dinner at the State Department in honor of Benazir Bhutto, hosted by the Vice President. Nell was much taken by the art and antiques in the public rooms on the seventh floor; Charlie, too nervous to be entirely charming.

In the receiving line after the dinner, Bhutto said, “Nell!”

“Hello, Pinky,” Nell said warily. “I was hoping you wouldn’t remember me.”

“You think I’d ever forget Blake Foley?” Bhutto said. She was tall, and slim, and looked stunning in a lime and gold silk shalwar kameez. She shook Charlie’s hand and said wickedly to Nell. “Who’d you steal him from?”

“He stole me,” Nell replied.

The Vice President, standing next to Bhutto, gave Charlie a smile. “I know Nell, too,” Tom Atkinson said, more personable than he’d ever been during their days together in the Senate. “Pinky—Prime Minister Bhutto—and I were at Harvard together. Blake and I played basketball. Nell was . . . what were you doing there again?”

“Art history, for a while,” she said. “It was a drive-by.”

“It was a heist!” Bhutto said, then turned to Charlie and abruptly changed the subject: “Senator, I know you’re skeptical about the F-16s. But I’d love for you to come visit us, meet with our military, and get a better sense of our current difficulties, and”—she paused and smiled at Nell—“if you can bring her, so much the better.”

Then Bhutto leaned over and whispered something into Nell’s ear. They separated, laughing. “I’m sorry,” Nell said.

“I’m not,” Bhutto replied.

In the car on the way back to his apartment, Charlie asked, “So what was the whispered bit at the end?”

“She said that if I hadn’t stolen Blake Foley, she might not have become prime minister of Pakistan.” Nell snuggled closer to him, put her hand on his thigh.

“I didn’t know you went to Harvard,” he said, somewhat daunted, very much a state university graduate from the Midwest.

“I barely knew it myself,” she said, hearing his uncertainty. “Admission was a family legacy. It didn’t take.”

This time, après Bhutto, Charlie erred on the side of aggressiveness. He kissed her, hard, in the elevator; she staggered backward. He felt foolish. It was the first time they’d been clumsy together. They walked into his bland, horizontal apartment and—it was as if he were seeing it for the first time, through her eyes: a hotel room. No one lived there. At least, no one interesting.

She was, again, spectacular. She seemed supremely unnervous. He rushed into her.

“Close,” he said, five minutes later, embarrassed. “But no cigar.”

“Cigar,” she corrected him, “but not close.”

He was stung by her honesty. The hydraulics had worked, but there hadn’t been much intimacy: he realized that he’d been thinking, worrying, about his performance without giving much thought to whom he’d been performing on, or how she was reacting. He looked at her now, and felt foolish, boorish. “We may have to work on this.”

She didn’t say anything. “How much time do you spend here?” she asked, surveying his bedroom. There were a few photographs of home on the walls—Charlie and Buzz, laughing on the front porch at Oak Street; Charlie and his mom and some of the kids from the East Side Center. There was a television on a metal stand; there was a queen-sized bed, mahogany night tables and straight-up lamps; there was a bureau and a closet with cheap, sliding plywood doors.

“Not much,” he said.

“That’s good,” she said. “If you actually lived here, I’d be worried. . . .”

“I live in my office,” he said.

“Depressing.”

“Well, you do, too,” he said. “Right?”

“Above it,” she said. “But yeah, I guess you’re right . . . But that’s not—I really have a home. You—I mean, is the furniture rented or something?”

“Or something,” he said. “I’ve just never had enough time to think it through. Not like my office.”

“Maybe we should try doing it there,” she said.

“You have to go back to New York tomorrow?”

“Mmm,” she said, yawning. “When can you come again? This weekend?”

“Gotta go home,” he said. “Work the folks.”

“How often do you do that?”

“Too often,” he said. “You want to come?”

“Kids,” she said. “Weekends with kids. There’s all sorts of chauffeuring.”

“And Lucius couldn’t do that sometime?” he said. “Or maybe you could bring the kids.”

“Seems like a lot of lugging,” she said, resting her chin on her hands on his chest, looking up at him.

“For a little loving?”

“Don’t get down on yourself, buster,” she said.

“Not down,” he said. “It’s a half-decent lyric: a lot of lugging for a little loving. Got to try it out on Buzz—my dad. I think you’d like Buzz. He’s very hep, or was—when it was hip to be hep . . . and he’d like you. Sweet stems, he’d say. And oh, with regard to kids,” he added, determined to unpack all his luggage, “there’s something I ought to tell you: I . . .”

“Have one,” she said. “Yeah, Linc told me.”

He was stunned by the thought of Linc and Nell together, talking about him. He was stunned by the thought of Linc and Nell together. And he was mortified by the thought that Nell now had the most immediate sense possible of their relative merits—and that she was seeming distant, disengaged from him.

“So,” she said coolly. “You have a habit of poaching Linc’s girls?”

“Is that what this is?” he asked.

“No,” she admitted.

“The first time wasn’t really anything,” he said, certain that it was only that—coincidence, not symmetry or, heaven forbid, a pattern. He thought of Linc’s other women: a very impressive brigade, but he hadn’t been particularly attracted to any of them.

“Tell that to your son,” she said. “You sure this isn’t about some weird thing you have with Linc?”

He sat up, and so did she. “Positive,” he said. “This is about a weird thing I have with you.”

“That’s a compliment?” she said, trying to steer back to safety, but she was worried. This had taken an odd turn. She had enough experience with men to understand that thoughtful lovemaking came slowly, more often than not, if it came at all—men were so overwrought, so foolish that way. But she had expected more from Charlie; she had expected everything.

“What’s a good compliment? What would work?” he asked. “I’m a desperate man.”

She shrugged, turned, fluffed her pillow, eluded him.

“You want to watch Nightline?” he asked, reaching for the clicker, a nervous, thoughtless, reflexive reaction. It was what Lynn always did after making love: turned on the late news.

“Somehow I get the feeling that’s not a question,” Nell said. “What is it with you guys in politics? You watch more TV than my kids—Oh, dear.” She put her hands on her cheeks and made her mouth an O, like the Munch painting The Scream. Linc was on Nightline. “A ménage d’électronique!”

The topic was Chechnya. There was a Russian foreign ministry official, a Chechen exile from Berlin—and Linc, from Moscow. Speaking very slowly, soberly. Extremely concerned. Internal matter, but it must be resolved quickly. Anything we can do to help. The Russian rumbled slowly uphill, something about organized criminal elements. The Chechen responded forcefully. Then a commercial break.

Charlie looked over at Nell, who was suddenly asleep or pretending to be, her head under the pillow: not at all interested in Linc? Or perhaps she had had it with both of them. He realized that he was feeling very competitive, and that he might be losing the competition. He stared at her back, the exquisite undulations of her body, her long legs, stretched out, tapering perfectly from waist to ankle. He didn’t want to blow this.

He clicked off the television, turned off the light, stared into the gloom. He massaged his left hand against his stomach: it was always there, the idiot skin hook, something to think about. Between the hand and the naked, high-wire formality of his work—the possibility of getting caught off-guard, making a wrong step, getting Schollwengened—there didn’t seem to be much room left for simply living his life. He tried to remember the last time sex had been something more than sex. . . . It had happened, he knew the feeling—a lightness in his chest—but it hadn’t been since . . . when? He remembered Johanna in a fluttery stare one day, when he was all caught up in the kids at the East Side Community Center—he had seen her smitten, and perhaps he was, too: they became lovers almost immediately after that. Love had been a passing moment of weakness for Johanna, and perhaps for him. He hadn’t been in love since.

Normally, the last thing he’d do before bed would be to assess the three-by-five card with his next day’s schedule that Donna thoughtfully provided as he pushed out the door—he’d scan it, preparing for the peaks and valleys, the moments where he’d have to concentrate and the meetings where his presence was merely a formality. Now the index card was sitting in his suit-jacket pocket; he hadn’t even thought to look at it. He’d check it out over breakfast. Breakfast: what did he have? What would she want? He thought about his refrigerator. Would she see it as barren as the rest of his apartment? Undoubtedly. Breakfast was coffee and instant oatmeal. She’d want—what? He was boggled by breakfast. He tried to think back to what had happened the morning he’d awakened at her loft a week earlier; but he’d dashed out, embarrassed. Her hair had been morning wild, crinkly, in her face—he did remember that; she was wearing an old seersucker robe. He couldn’t wait to see her again in the morning, but was afraid that he was well on the way to losing her. He would take her out to breakfast, to the Jefferson Hotel.

The phone rang. Linc, from Moscow. “You saw it?” he asked.

Nell stirred. “Who is it?” she asked.

“It’s Linc,” Charlie said.

“Who’s there?” Linc asked.

“A friend . . . you think it was wise to go on Nightline like that?”

“Coleman asked me to do it,” he said. “You don’t think I’d be careless enough to . . . a friend, huh?”

“Of course I do,” Charlie said. “Anyway, there’s always the possibility that they’re putting you out there, setting you up—”

“Yes, and there’s also the possibility that they don’t have anyone else around who can string two coherent sentences together on television,” Linc said with mock weariness. “You’ve seen the secretary of state on the air. And you won’t see Gid doing anything public. So . . .”

“You’re the fall guy.”

“Charlie, there are reasons for everything,” he said. “You should come out here. You owe me a visit.”

He certainly was right about that.

“I’m going to visit Linc in Moscow,” he said abruptly the next morning. “Next week, I think.”

“Why?”

“Well, you saw it on TV last night, Chechnya—” he lied, and saw that she was seeing through him. “I also want to tell him about us.”

“What about us?”

“That we’re seeing each other.”

“Why?” she asked coolly.

“It doesn’t feel right—”

“It doesn’t feel right?” she said, disappointed: his precipitous insistence on going all the way to Russia to break this news didn’t feel “right.” It was premature, at best. It seemed a teenage boy’s fantasy of the “honorable” thing to do. And then he actually said it:

“It’s the honorable thing to do, if we’re going to be seeing each other.”

But they weren’t quite seeing each other yet, at least not with the clarity she had anticipated—the clarity she’d experienced in that first instant at the Waldorf, after not having seen him in four months; the startling moments of clarity that had been there every other time she’d been with him. She had always sensed—no, she’d always been certain—that Charlie saw her, had gotten her, in a way that few other men had. Perhaps she’d been snookered by his politesse—that odd, immediate and yet casual intimacy, the private joke they seemed to share from the very first. Was it just some sort of vaporous political parlor trick, the illusion of an ironic intelligence? No. Not possible. She’d met more than a few politicians now, and none of them was even remotely like Charlie. But this rather silly, melodramatic flight to Russia was cause for concern; she couldn’t understand why he was so uncertain about himself, and impatient. She would have liked him to wait until the emotional bond between them was stronger, until he had established some sort of friendship—or level of tolerance—with the children. There were so many things that could go wrong.

She didn’t want to tell him that, though. There were some things you couldn’t discuss with a man, not even one with Charlie’s potential for breaking past the standard masculine physical dumb pride. There were some things you needed to be sure a man could find out on his own. There was also the extremely remote possibility that he knew what he was doing—that this trip was somehow necessary. And on that gossamer string of possibility, she decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.

“Godspeed, Charlie Martin,” she said, when he called from the airport a week later, agreeing to meet him in New Orleans two weeks hence, for some sort of political thing he had to attend.

“Everything is going to be . . . fine. Nell, I promise. We’ll have a great time in New Orleans. You’ll see,” he said.

We’ll see, she thought.

*    *    *

The gloom at Sheremetyevo Airport was seriously Slavic. The sky was lowering, with occasional fizzes of ashen snowflakes. Most of the lights were off in the terminal, and Charlie wondered if the darkness was due to an energy conservation effort or a shortage of lightbulbs. The customs officers, who’d seemed so stone-faced in the Soviet era, were more human now—the women wore makeup, some of the men had facial hair, a few were listening to rock-and-roll music on tinny transistors. There was a mordant edge to the usual brutish sluggishness: Russia had taken a national WTF, but Charlie wasn’t very interested.

He wondered how his talk with Linc would play out. Charlie wasn’t sure about the status of Rathburn’s feelings toward Nell, the depth of his disappointment when she had refused marriage and Russia. But he was absolutely certain that his recent intimate awkwardness with Nell had its roots in his guilt about Linc.

A junior foreign service officer met Charlie at the gate and deposited him in the VIP lounge while papers were passed, and then whisked him into an embassy car, a black Mercury sedan, for the trip into town. “Here’s your schedule, sir,” the young diplomat said.

“Factory tours?”

“Those days are over, sir. There are no model factories anymore.”

“Thank God,” Charlie said. “And you are?”

“William Finneran. From Port Sallesby, sir. A constituent of yours.”

“No kidding!” A Rathburn touch. “So how is the ambassador doing?”

“Oh, gosh,” Finneran said reverently as they bounced over rutted roads on the way into Moscow, new advertisements—gaudy splashes of capitalist color—impinging on the austere broadness of Leningradsky Prospekt. “He’s my fifth ambassador. This is my third country. And it’s the difference between black and white and Technicolor. Everything gets attention, everything is thought through. Most ambassadors are reactive; he’s proactive.”

Charlie masked a wince. He hated that nonword: proactive. It was redundant. But maybe Linc needed something like that, a modifier that expressed something beyond “active”—one that didn’t deprecate, like “overactive” or “underemployed.”

“And when do we see the great man?”

“Cocktails at Spaso House. He’s put together—”

“A little fiesta,” Charlie finished. “How many hundreds?”

“Just a few dozen.”

“Of course,” Charlie said. “And before that, you’ll test my jet lag with economic, military and intelligence briefings at the embassy, right?”

Finneran smiled. Early afternoon was the worst for new arrivals in Russia, still predawn back on the East Coast. Charlie had done the calculations on the plane—he and Linc wouldn’t get down to business until after dinner, which would be late afternoon back home. That was good: he’d be more awake then, at less of a disadvantage.

Actually, when the time finally did come, Charlie found himself on much firmer ground than he’d expected—thanks to the presence, at dinner, of Marisa Carter of CNN, whom Linc had placed to Charlie’s right, the hostess slot. Marisa was black, and considerably more attractive than television good-looking, and considerably smarter than television-smart. She had been a Wilson School fellow at Princeton, a Russian specialist, and she was—quite clearly—ticketed by CNN for a larger future than Moscow correspondent. She also seemed to be ticketed for a fairly significant role in the life of Lincoln Rathburn, though that didn’t become clear until after dinner when Marisa lingered after the other guests had left, joining Linc and Charlie in the ambassador’s study, which was an exceptionally warm and pleasant room on a bitter Russian evening—the staff had the fireplace prepared and blazing—a north wind pelting the windowpanes with icy snow pricks.

“Did I do the job with Grushkin?” she asked Linc.

“You were brutal.” He smiled. “Join us for a brandy?”

“I’ve got a standup in two hours.” She glanced at Charlie, and explained: “They usually want me live for ‘World Report.’ Six o’clock at home is two A.M. here. Hence—”

She was all business, a human hospital corner: crisp and tucked together perfectly—except for her hair, which was pressed and bobbed, a bit too old-fashioned and churchified for someone her age. She was railthin, with high cheekbones and full lips—but her beauty emanated from her intelligence rather than her physical features; there was an effervescent confidence to her, the sense that she didn’t miss a trick. She stood in front of the fireplace, in a blue blazer over a white blouse and long gray flannel slacks; Linc slipped into an easy chair and Charlie flopped on the couch, his feet up on the coffee table, facing the fire. He watched Linc watching Marisa until Linc caught him at it; Charlie dropped his eyes, sloshed his brandy around the snifter, then asked her, “What was ‘the job’ with Grushkin?”

“Tell him the truth about foreign aid. Again. And do it in a way our government officials”—she nodded at Linc—“can’t, diplomatically. It is just a-maz-ing what these Russian so-called economists don’t know about economics. Of course, the ambo over here isn’t exactly a whiz on the subject either,” she said affectionately, hitching a thumb in Linc’s direction. “He likes more traditional diplomacy, peacemaking, haggling, line-drawing, the discussion of cultural exchanges. But you must know that, Senator.”

“Come on, Marushka,” Linc said, with a decidedly un-Lincolnian softness. “I read the Aslund paper.”

“You flunked the quiz,” she said with a smile, then turned to Charlie: “And worse—he’s an idealist. He thinks we can actually reform these folks past the Mafia phase.”

“We can educate th—”

“You don’t need to educate people about economic self-interest,” she said, cutting Linc off, continuing to focus on Charlie. “It’s hardwired. Senator, what we’re doing here is dumb—giving them money for stock market regulatory commissions and suchlike, as if they won’t be completely corrupted within eighteen minutes. Your average Yuri thinks we’re giving foreign aid directly to the Mob, and he’s got a point. It’ll take them a generation or two to get past the Mafia phase, just as it did for us. If they’re lucky, the muzhiki throwing their weight around now will be the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers of the twenty-first century.”

“She wants us to fund social services,” Linc said dismissively, but smiling, with obvious admiration. “As if we can provide a social safety net for a couple of hundred million—”

“It’s PR,” Marisa said, interrupting him again: this was an argument they’d had before. She sat down next to Charlie, addressing her remarks to him—but with the real focus on Linc. “It’s symbolic. We do some stuff for the veterans of the Great War.”

“Vet centers?” Charlie asked.

“Exactly. With food,” Marisa said. “Some of them are pretty hungry. Pensions wiped out by inflation. And we do something for the kids. Friendship Camps.”

“Band-Aids,” Linc said. “Cosmetics.”

“We have the smartest, hippest culture in the world. Why do we have to have the very squarest government? Hey, I’ve gotta go.” She stood, shook Charlie’s hand, gave Linc a peck on the cheek. “You know, Mr. Ambassador, if you weren’t so damn good-looking, you’d have more respect for the power of cosmetics.”

And she was out the door, before Linc could get up and escort her down to the foyer.

“Whew!” Charlie said.

“Isn’t she extraordinary?” Linc asked.

Which is not to say that Charlie’s subsequent confession went smoothly. Linc admitted nothing with regard to Marisa Carter. He was clearly smitten, but furtive when it came to divulging details; the relationship was a work in progress, perhaps not yet consummated—and Linc guarded the mystery zealously.

“You’re hooked!” Charlie said.

“Am not,” Linc replied, playground-style, trying to deflect Charlie’s interest in the situation by making fun of it.

“She’s great,” Charlie said hopefully. “And great-looking, too.”

“She could be the most important foreign correspondent of her generation,” Linc replied.

“And which generation is that?”

“Ours,” Linc said, putting his feet up on the coffee table, perpendicular to Charlie’s. “Almost.”

“Almost: you wish.” Charlie sat up, leaned forward and let the big one drop: “Linc, Nell and I are seeing each other. We’re in love.”

“What?” Linc seemed astonished by the news.

“You’re surprised?” Charlie asked. “Really? I thought it was so obvious. You said I was half in love with her—”

“Disappointed,” Linc said. “Hurt.”

Hurt? “You’re kidding.”

“It’s not about you and Nell,” Linc said. “It’s about you and me. I mean, it’s over with Nell—that’s obvious enough. She’s fabulous, but we weren’t right. She wasn’t one for this life.” Linc raised his arms, to encompass Spaso House. “Was it going on when—”

“No. Not until a month ago.”

“She was with you that night I called—after Nightline. I knew it,” he said, although it was obvious he hadn’t. Linc stared at the fire.

“So?” Charlie said. But he knew: there was something unseemly about jumping in on a friend like that.

“So I’m disappointed in you.”

“I’m disappointed in me, too,” Charlie said. “In a . . . recessive sort of way—the dominant feeling is . . . just wild. I really do love her, Linc. It’s a physical sensation I’ve never experienced before. It’s—well, you saw it. I don’t know what it is, but it’s been there since the first night I met her. The Democratic convention.” He felt an utterly ridiculous and inexplicable need to be absolutely candid. “I see her across a room and, before I’m consciously aware it’s her, I’m smiling. I can’t wait to find out what she’s going to see, what she’s going to say next. I know there’s weirdness there. And she’s difficult in all sorts of ways. She’s got a temper. And she’s got the kids, and I haven’t had a chance to really get to know them yet. And there’s Lucius, in-house. But it’s worth all the—at least, I think it is. . . . Is this how you felt about her?”

“No.” Linc looked at Charlie, making a final evaluation: he would never be president. “I didn’t lose my head.”

He said it quietly, without heat—but it was devastating, a clinical judgment upon a lesser person. They would remain friends. A clean break would be too violent, too drastic. Linc did like, and even admire, Charlie. But he wasn’t sure that he respected him anymore. There was an emotional weakness, a debilitating romanticism—and the fact that Charlie had this odd tendency to pick up where he’d left off with women. They would be friends, but no longer quite equals. Not in Linc’s mind.

The question of sloppy seconds bothered Charlie as well, but it was a peripheral concern. In that moment, sensing Linc’s condescension, Charlie also understood the difference between them: what Linc saw as weakness was really the possibility of fresh air. What Linc saw as an admirable form of emotional restraint, Charlie now believed was a deficiency. It was a failing that he and Linc had shared: an inability to be unimportant—to submit, to make themselves disappear.

This seemed a simple enough human concept: the primacy of other-regard. Charlie had always paid his respects, and some dues, at the shrine of selflessness, but it seemed a rather grand and public thing, the essence of altruism, it meant being the way his mother was; selflessness didn’t seem very intimate, and not at all humble; it was about giving, not surrendering. He imagined that the act of surrender—the opposite of success in war and politics—would not be easy for him. But surrender was essential: it was the only way out, the only escape from the strangulation of self-regard.

“Linc,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’m an idiot. I’m going home.”

And when he saw her again, in New Orleans, he found that he was able to forget about strategy and tactics, about Washington and Des Pointe. He forgot all about the Moderate Democrats, whose convention he was supposedly attending. He forgot about Linc, and Lucius, and the children, and—for a while—about himself. She was standing, waiting for him at the gate, smiling hopefully, holding a peach-colored rose. “I found this,” she said, “for you.”

“How lovely,” he replied, without thinking about how unusual it was for her to have brought him a flower, without noticing what she was wearing and without reaching for a clever response. Without inflection or hesitation or nuance of any sort, he took the rose, which resembled the sunset he’d seen from her deck that evening in May, peach deepening to a rich maroon at the outer tips of the petals. How remarkably easy it all was.

*    *    *

“Do you think all the beds in New Orleans are this high?” she asked afterward.

“I don’t know,” he said. “More important, did I hear you say ‘yippee’ when we were, you know . . . ? I’ve never been with a woman who said ‘yippee’ at the critical moment before.”

“It wasn’t ‘at’ the critical moment.” She stretched her arms straight out toward the ceiling, then clasped her hands behind her head, the sheet slipping off her breasts. He replaced it gently. She smiled, ran the back of her hand along his cheek. “It was after. And it was commentary rather than exclamation.”

“After?” he asked, up on an elbow. He wanted to stroke her stomach with his left hand, which was the one available, but he was wary about breaking new ground and spoiling the moment. He could never be sure how a woman would react to his deformity, afterward. Afterward wasn’t the same as “before” or “during.” It was tougher. And, of course, it had to be the damnable hand that ruined everything, that brought him back to the world.

Nell noticed Charlie’s uncertainty and thought it endearing. She wanted to take his sad hand, and kiss it, and put it wherever he wanted to put it—but that would require an untangling, a significant change in her position. She wanted the gesture to be right; it would be an action more intimate than making love, in a way. She rehearsed it in her mind: up on her left elbow, facing him; taking his left hand with her right, stroking it, holding it on her stomach. But would that be too obvious, now that she’d taken the time to think about it? She didn’t want to embarrass or patronize him. The movement had to come naturally, artlessly.

“It’s too bad about the room. I mean, look at this,” she said, pointing a naked arm, a perfect beanpole of an arm, straight up at the ornamental Woolworth’s-quality ceiling fan. On the other hand, it was wrong that they weren’t touching each other, she thought. The air-conditioning, and the distance between them, raised goose bumps. “How tacky. And the chintz. I was hoping for something more decadent, more Tennessee Williams; more humidity, blowsy white cotton, a brass bed at least. . . . What I mean to say is, I’m so happy we’re here.” She made the move now: up, taking his hand, kissing it gently on what was left of the palm. He exhaled; she forced him onto his back and rested her head on his chest. “You were worth waiting for.”

He circled her back with his left arm, the hand resting lightly on her ribs; she had slim, square shoulders and a wonderful back. Great women had great backs. He kissed her hair. “I told you,” he said. “I had to get things straight with Linc.”

Men say a lot of things, she thought, when they’re having problems. But she didn’t say that. “You got things straight, all right,” she said.

“You want to go out and wander?” he asked. “We could hit the Acme Oyster House, get replenished before we meet the MoDems.”

“Replenished, eh?” She asked. “Does that mean one needs a certain energy to meet the Moderate Democrats? Or merely that you’ve been depleted?”

“No way. I’m not done with you yet.” He turned her over, kissing her full on the mouth, then moving down to her breasts. She felt him stirring—a witless, primal stirring—as he slid down her leg.

“Okay, cowboy,” she said, pulling his head up from her chest with both hands. “That wasn’t a challenge.”

“Sounded like one.”

They stared at each other, at close range. “So, it was okay?” he said, with a smile.

“Yippee,” she replied. “I always knew we’d be fine, eventually.”

“When did you start thinking that—you know?—we’d be . . .” he asked.

“Oh, early on, for sure,” she said. “Maybe the time we were dancing, and you asked me what my kids were like, and actually seemed to mean it. And you?”

“The sound of one and a half hands clapping . . . and the perfume,” he said. “That first night, at the convention. It wasn’t quite love at first sight. But damn close. First and a half sight, maybe.”

“You didn’t seem that interested,” she said. “You had the Asian child.”

“You’re fishing,” he said. “You knew.”

“A woman my age assumes that a man your age would be more interested in an Asian child than in a woman my age,” she said.

“Well, she was pretty good-looking,” he said. “But this sort of thing isn’t just about looks.”

“Thanks a lot,” she said, pushing him away.

“I love the way you look,” he said. “And you know that. You’ve always known that. Don’t bullshit me.”

“I’ve always acted as if I’ve known it because that’s the way I act,” she said. “But I didn’t know it.”

“Bullshit,” he said.

“Then why didn’t you call after the party?”

“Which party?”

“At my house. Last May. When we sent Linc off to Russia and I kissed you in the bathroom.”

“I wanted to,” he said. “But there was Linc. But that doesn’t matter now. . . . Hey, listen: here’s what I want. I want to get to know the kids.”

“Thanksgiving’s just around the corner,” she said.

But there was only one possible place he could be for Thanksgiving: the Clarice Martin Community Center on the East Side of Des Pointe.

“What?” she asked. “No response?”

“Holidays are work days for a politician,” he said. For the first time ever, his job seemed an encumbrance.

“Are work days holidays?” she asked. “When do you play?”

“Right now,” he said, kissing her cheek and then, gently, her lips. She took his left hand, holding it easily, as if it were just a hand. “Whenever you want to play. Except holidays. And work days.”

“Oh, brother,” she said.