Before she could speculate further, she felt cool, strong hands on her naked shoulders, and turned around to find herself looking up at Arthur Eaton.
“Business concluded,” he said. “I’m glad you came up here, Sally.”
“I thought you might need a secretary.”
He held her arms, squeezed them. “I might need someone who needs me.”
“I hoped you’d say that. I-I was unhappy the President interrupted us. It was going so well.”
“I was sorry, too, but it was important. He brought Baraza into line tonight. Not that it was so difficult. But I’m afraid he needed something affirmative to shore up his pride. In all my existence I’ve never been witness to anything like the social rejection that took place downstairs.”
“It was terrible. I hope he doesn’t blame it on me.”
“On you? Nonsense. You did what you could.”
“I swear, ninety-six of them accepted-accepted. Do you know how many showed up tonight? I counted the cards. Fifty-seven. I checked with my office right before dinner. And then with Edna. There was such a flurry of notes, telegrams, telephone calls, terribly apologetic, everyone fallen ill at once. I’ve never known an epidemic like that to sweep Washington. And the worst part of it was the cruel timing, the heavy last-minute declining, so that by the time I realized what was actually going on, it was too late to remove the table settings and chairs. I mean, it couldn’t be done, there was no time left. So there they were, those embarrassing chairs. I’m sorry for him. It’s so humiliating. It’ll be in all the columns tomorrow, you can be sure. No matter how many faults he has, he didn’t deserve this.”
“I don’t like it either,” Eaton said. “Whatever one’s views, there is such a practice as observing the social amenities. We have a generation of gauche boors.”
His usage of gauche brought to her mind what had been there a minute ago. “At least his friends showed up, the Spingers, the Abrahams, all-except one.”
Eaton’s eyebrows raised. “One?”
Sally savored her tidbit. “Have you ever heard of Miss Wanda Gibson? She works for Vaduz Exporters… no, of course you haven’t. Well, she lives with the Spingers, and as far as I can guess is an old friend of the President’s. He specifically invited her for tonight, and when she didn’t answer and I asked him what to do this morning, he went into a long thing about how she would show up anyway with the Spingers. He disowned any personal interest. He said that her export company traded with Baraza, and she would be someone Amboko and Wamba could feel at home with. Well, the President was mistaken. Miss Gibson did not appear. And also, I don’t mind telling you, and this I don’t understand at all, he was mistaken about Miss Gibson’s Vaduz company being involved with Baraza. I wanted to make conversation with Ambassador Wamba before dinner, so I mentioned Vaduz, and he looked blank, perfectly blank. He’d never heard of it. Do you think Wamba was bluffing? Or that the President didn’t know? Or-I know this is awful of me-that the President invented an excuse for inviting Miss Gibson?”
Eaton’s hands still held her arms, and he smiled and said, “I haven’t the faintest idea, Sally, but I do know you are the best representative the State Department has ever had in the White House.”
“Arthur, don’t make fun of me. I only want to be of help. I’d do anything for you.”
“Well,” he said lightly, “there are some of us who’d give a good deal to find out what the devil the President has in mind about that minorities bill, and a few other matters.”
“I can find out,” she said eagerly.
He shook her playfully. “I was kidding, Sally. We don’t need a secret operative in the White House. We’re both working with the President. If we do our jobs well, that is enough.” His smile went away. “I prefer you as you are, not as Mata Hari.”
She lifted her fingers to his neck and caressed it. “Arthur-before-you were saying before how much you missed me-how you wanted to see me more often-alone… I’d like that.”
“Right now I want to kiss you,” he said.
Her eyes went to the entrance doors, worriedly, and then to the balcony doors to her left. “Let’s go outside a minute.”
“You’ll freeze.”
“You’ll keep me warm.”
He released her, and she went to the first sash wood door. Opening it, she stepped out into the darkness of the Truman Balcony and stood beside the moist green pad that covered the white metal settee. He came to her in the shadows, and she went quickly into his hard arms, feeling her breasts flattened against his chest as his parted lips rubbed against hers and finally held to them. They clung to one another, and when his lips freed her, she gasped, “I love you, Arthur. I want you-you say it.”
“Tonight,” he said.
“Tonight.”
“When you’re through here, come straight to the house. You don’t have to go home tonight.”
“Will the servants-?”
“They are off. Just us, alone.”
“Yes, Arthur.” She heard her exultant heart beating wildly, and brought her hands up to hold his face, and kissed him quickly. “There’ll be a million years of time tonight.” She pushed herself from him and sought his hand. “Let’s get downstairs, before we’re missed… No, wait, I’ll go first, then you… I can’t stand these next hours. You do love me, don’t you, darling? You won’t be sorry, you won’t be sorry at all.”
In the middle of the front row of seats in the white-and-gold hall that was the East Room, President Dilman sat impassively, his arms resting motionless on the arms of his chair like the paws of a sphinx, as he watched with distaste the show being performed by the Hollywood and Manhattan entertainers.
His mood had been good an hour ago when he sat down with President Amboko and waited while the guests noisily took their places. His good mood had continued as the entertainment began with the five-piece orchestra on the raised platform before him doing its lively medley of George M. Cohan songs, ending on the rousing “Yankee Doodle Dandy.”
Then after the provocative blues singer, Libby Owens, backed by her own accompanist at the ornate mahogany grand piano with its gilt eagle legs, had rendered “St. Louis Blues” sweet and low, Dilman’s mood of well-being had begun to deteriorate. Just as he and so many of his fellow Negroes resented aggressive liberal whites who buttonholed them in ostentatious and determined displays of equality, speaking to them with proper indignation of nothing but Negro problems, he resented the slant and content of this show. The white entertainers, out of misplaced eagerness to parade their tolerance (look-we-are-on-your-side-fellow), had loaded their program heavily with both serious and humorous Negro sketches and songs. Dilman detested this kind of patronizing, well-intentioned though it may have been. If a Jew were President, he asked himself, would this same crowd have presented Yiddish jokes and songs?
He stared at the stage with displeasure. There was Herbie Teele, the brash nimble-limbed colored comedian, propped high on a stool, derby lopsided on his head, homely black face feigning solemnity, then wide-grinning after each burst of applause, twirling his cane and spouting his half-bitter inside integration stories and jokes. Why Herbie Teele tonight? Why this special routine? Would this same crowd have offered the same program to T. C., to The Judge, to Lyndon Johnson, to John F. Kennedy? Dilman doubted it.
He cast a sidelong glance at Amboko and then down the row at other members of the Barazan entourage, and they seemed appreciative enough. They were chuckling, beaming, and the constant eruptions of laughter from the rows behind indicated that Allan Noyes, the Party’s national chairman, had cast the evening right. At last Dilman once more had to blame himself for his own thin-skinned sensitivity, but he felt the way he felt, and there was no use trying to feel any other way.