“Amen,” the assembled guests murmured.
Lissie kissed her father on the cheek. “Congratulations,” she said. As Joanna offered her cheek to her, she extended her hand instead. Their eyes met. Joanna took the hand.
“Good luck,” Lissie said.
With so many musicians in attendance, it would have been surprising if no one played the piano. There were, by Joanna’s count, six genuine pianists at the wedding and at least a dozen other musicians whose second instrument was piano. Politely but pantingly, they waited their turn at the Kreuger piano bench, and the wedding guests were treated in succession first to Scriabin’s Sonata No. 1 in F Minor (in its entirety), next to the Allegro and Adagio sections of Mozart’s No. 17 in D Major, then to Lanner’s Valse Viennoises and finally to a melody composed on the spot in honor of the bride and groom, the pianist using a system of note-for-letter substitution wherever a letter actually signified a note — as it did with F, A, C, E and E, G, B, D, F.
As the piano-playing and musical hijinks continued in the living room, the caterers — cleaning up the debris of the wedding feast — tried to be as quiet as mice in the kitchen. After-dinner drinks were still being served, and now that the sun had finally come through, the French doors that led from the living room were open to the sloping vastness of the lawn outside. As sunset stained the western sky, some of the guests wandered out onto the grass, drinks in hand. Cameras clicked every thirty seconds. Professional models, even though they were not the stars here today, seemed to sense the exact instant before a shutter-release button was pressed: the smile magically appeared, the hair was tossed, the champagne glass lifted to just the proper height. Looking at the developed prints later, Joanna was astonished to see how many background people automatically leaped into the foreground with dazzling white smiles and sparkling eyes.
In the dining room and in the living room, in the kitchen and on the lawn, the conversation and the wine and the music flowed. And in what the architect had called the “milk room” and what Melanie still referred to as the playroom, the Rutledge kids gathered together as they did at most parties where there were grownups and kids, isolating themselves from the adults and filling each other in on what was happening where. What they talked about mostly that afternoon and evening was the five-part series the New York Times had begun publishing the Sunday before, under the modest headline VIETNAM ARCHIVE: PENTAGON STUDY TRACES 3 DECADES OF GROWING U.S. INVOLVEMENT.
The kids had not been surprised by the immediate response from the Nixon administration. As soon as the second installment was printed last Monday Attorney General John N. Mitchell fired off a telegram to the Times, citing the espionage law and ordering the newspaper to stop publication of this highly classified material. The Times had responded with a flat refusal, claiming the government was acting in violation of the First Amendment by invoking prior restraint where freedom of the press was concerned.
The kids all felt it was about fucking time the Establishment, as represented by no less stately a symbol than the New York Times, was getting a small taste of the same kind of shit they’d been getting for years. It seemed ironic to them that the issue revolved around the Vietnam war, which all of them had been yelling about forever, only to have their First Amendment rights violated — if not through open suppression, then certainly through ridicule, contempt or intimidation — each and every time they opened their mouths. But oh what a lot of yelling and hollering when the New York Times turned champion of the First Amendment now. As far as they were concerned, this was simply a matter of Establishment vs. Establishment, and whoever won the battle it was still all a lot of bullshit.
Somebody idly asked if anybody was holding.
One of the kids said he was, and they all went out on the lawn together.
Lissie went out on the lawn with the rest of them.
The plan was to spend the night at the Rutledge Inn, an authentic eighteenth-century coaching house, and then drive Lissie back to New York with them in the morning. They had left the reception at six o’clock, checking first with Esther Klein, who assured them Lissie was sleeping over with Rusty that night, and then slipping out the side door while someone in the living room was playing Schumann’s No. 2 in G Minor. At the inn, they made clumsy love in a huge old fourposter bed, called down for drinks and a snack at ten-thirty, watched the eleven o’clock news on television, and then turned out the lights. In the dark, they both agreed that if their marriage lasted as long as the reception that had followed it, which for all they knew was still going on, they’d be doing pretty well.
“Nobody there gives us a year,” Joanna said, suddenly very solemn.
“Who says?”
“I know,” she said.
“They’re wrong,” he whispered, and kissed her gently. “It’ll last forever.”
He was awake earlier than Joanna the next morning, and had showered and shaved even before she began stirring. He went to the bed, gently nudged her, and asked if she wanted him to order breakfast. He called down to room service, and then looked up the Klein number in the directory, and dialed it. It was 9:00 A.M. by then, and he wanted to make sure Lissie was up and around; they had told her yesterday they’d be picking her up sometime between ten and ten-thirty.
Rusty answered the phone.
“Hi,” Jamie said, “this is Mr. Croft.”
“Hi, Mr. Croft,” she said.
“Lissie awake yet?”
“Uh... yeah,” Rusty said.
“Could you call her to the phone, please?”
“Well... yeah,” Rusty said. “Just a second.”
He waited. There had been something strange in Rusty’s voice, a hesitancy, a wariness. No, he was imagining things. He waited. Across the room, Joanna sat up, stretched lazily, yawned, and then plunked her head down on the pillow again. Jamie waited.
“She awake yet?” Joanna murmured into the pillow.
“Well... I guess so.”
“I didn’t get enough sleep,” Joanna said.
“Better get up, hon. Breakfast’ll be here in a minute.”
“Okay,” Joanna said.
“Honey?”
“Okay.”
She sat up, blinked into the room, sighed, and then got out of bed and padded to the bathroom. Jamie waited. He looked at his watch. “Come on,” he said, under his breath. A knock sounded on the door. “Just a minute,” he said. Into the phone, he said, “Rusty?” He put down the phone and went to the door. “I’m on the phone,” he said to the waiter, “just put it down anyplace.” He went back to the phone, picked it up, said, “Hello?” and got no answer. The waiter put the breakfast tray on a coffee table between two wingback chairs, and then brought the check to Jamie to sign. Jamie added a tip to the total, and then signed the check. The waiter went out of the room. There was still no one on the other end of the line. “Hello?” Jamie said. “Rusty? Hello?” In the bathroom, he heard the toilet flushing, and then the sound of water splashing into the sink. He waited. Joanna came out of the bathroom.
“Did you get her?” she asked.
“No, not yet,” he said.
“Well, what...?”
“Hell-o?” a voice said.
“Lissie?” he said.
“Hell-o, Dad,” she said.
The voice sent a sudden chill up his spine. It was the voice of...