After ten minutes she stopped. “You diggin’ it, Otter? No, you ain’t, you not with it, you a orfan from the blues. You need educatin’, Otter.”
He swallowed. “I’m always open to improvement, Ruby.”
“Man, you gonna go limp when you hear what I bought me this mornin’-know what?-piano solo of Jelly Roll doin’ ‘The Pearls.’ You gotta hear that, an’ then you gotta come up to my place an’ hear Duke Ellington an’ his Wash’tonians doin’ ‘Rainy Nights’-listenin’, you ain’t ever gonna be exactly the same, Otter, you gonna be no more orfan, you gonna join up an’ belong like Ruby Thomas here.”
He had been holding his breath. Now he let it go with a wheeze. “Are you extending an invitation to me for a musical concert in your apartment, Ruby?”
Her almond eyes held on him a moment. Then she said softly, “You always been welcome, Otter. Fact is, my machine needs some adjustin’ an’ I ain’t got the money for it yet, but you always sayin’ you got mechanical ways-”
“I’m a wizard with a monkey wrench, Ruby. I’ve never tinkered with a hi-fi, but I bet I’ll have yours perfecto in two seconds and a jiffy. That’s a deal, if you say so. I’ll bring a bottle of J and B, and some tools, and you can give me my first jazz lesson.”
She pushed her glass aside. “You done got a deal. When you wanna come up?”
Before he could reply, a hollow, echoing voice intruded upon their conversation, coming from the left. He looked off. A well-dressed Negro customer had walked through the door, holding a transistor radio, and was making his way to the bar. The radio’s volume was on high, and an announcer’s voice boomed, “-gave his first press conference in the Cabinet Room of the White House today. President Dilman told fifty reporters very little that they did not already know. He sidestepped any direct commitment to the Minorities Rehabilitation Program, was evasive about reporting the results of his conversations with the visiting President of Baraza, and would make no comment on the New Succession Bill. However, the President did speak of reopening a summit conference with the Russians. He came under greatest fire, during the questioning period, over his appointment of the Reverend Paul Spinger, director of the Crispus Society, to investigate the electrifying kidnaping, down in Mississippi, of-”
As abruptly as the radio news program had assailed him, it now ended. Beggs could see that Simon had leaned across the bar to speak to the customer, who had then lowered the volume.
Turning back to Ruby, Beggs suddenly realized that he had lost all track of time. The radio program reporting on Dilman’s press conference reminded him that he was to report for duty, to guard Dilman, at four o’clock. He looked at his watch and was horrified that it was seven minutes to four.
“Ruby, what time do you have?”
“Five to four.”
“Christ, I’d better find a cab.” He pushed free of the booth and jumped to his feet. Fumbling for his wallet, he found it and laid down three dollars. “Sorry to run out on you like this, Ruby.”
She smiled. “Like I was sayin’, you is doin’ man’s work. But, Otter, you ain’t answered my lil question-when you fixin’ to come up an’ see me?”
The haste went out of him. Impulsively he reached down and touched her hand. “Soon as I can, Ruby. My first free day off. Tell you what, see you here same time, day after tomorrow, and we’ll set a-a rendezvous.”
“I’ll be waitin’, Otter dear.” She turned her palm upward, caught and caressed his fingers, then released them. “I wanna be with you.”
He winked at her, started away, turned once to wave back, and then hastened outside to hail a taxi. For the first time in the Secret Service, he would be late on the job. Yet he did not give a damn what Agajanian said or Gaynor said, or in fact what President Dilman might say. All that mattered was what Ruby Thomas had said: Otter dear, I wanna be with you.
Sighting the parked taxi down the block, he hummed to himself as he hurried toward it. The girl had said that she wanted to educate him. Great. Nothing suited him more. He had reached the time in his life where he wanted action, action and a little more learning. Whatever Dilman did with that colored broad of his, if he did, he could do better, if he dared.
“The White House, Pennsylvania entrance,” he ordered the cab driver. “Half a buck extra if you make all the lights.”
He was moving again, he was rolling, Jelly Rolling along, and everything was good, real good, once more.
Edna Foster and George Murdock ate an early and hasty dinner at the Chez François on Connecticut Avenue near H Street, and by five-thirty they had left the modest French restaurant and headed in the direction of Lafayette Square.
Edna had not enjoyed the rushed meal. She liked the comfort gained from leisure with George, their time for small talk and confidences, and she resented any deadlines imposed upon their dinners. Lately she had been more and more burdened by work, so that she often stayed on at night to clear her desk for the following day. Not that President Dilman was being more demanding than T. C. had been, for, in truth, he was almost diffident about summoning her for dictation or special assignments. No, it was not Dilman per se, but rather the atmosphere of conflict and tension that his presence in the Oval Office had created. Her desk, it sometimes seemed, had become a fort (her typewriter a machine gun), a surrounded outpost in an alien land, vainly trying to survive the cannonading and strafing of an overwhelming enemy.
More difficult than the upsetting atmosphere was the concrete problem that she was no longer a personal secretary to the President alone. Under T. C., she had worked for him and no one else. Under Dilman, a subtle change had occurred. She worked not for the Commander in Chief exclusively, but for his aides, his staff and allies as well. It was as if a half dozen of them did not trust Dilman to perform solo, and intruded themselves as a chorus (so there might be less likelihood of detecting a sour note). Edna found herself doing what Dilman wanted, little enough, and also what Talley, General Faber, Eaton, to think of only three, wanted done for Dilman.
Tonight would be one more night for her to reduce the overload of work. Besides, Dilman was having his last conferences with Kwame Amboko before and after his first State Dinner, and Flannery and the wire-service men and syndicated columnists (like George) would be standing by in the press lobby. She might be required to help Flannery and his girls if there were any press releases, which she did not mind as much, since indirectly she would be helping George.
But more than the haste of their dinner, what disturbed her right now, as they strolled hand and hand toward the square and the White House across from it, was George’s mood. Whatever his shortcomings-no one is perfect, her father always used to say, although it does not hurt to try-George Murdock was almost consistently cheerful and lighthearted. Rarely was he pensive. When he complained, and usually he did it in a joking way, it was not about the $150 a week he earned from Tri-State Syndicate, but about the fact that the twelve newspapers in his string were small, obscure, and so no one in Washington ever saw his stuff. As a consequence, he had no permanent slot in the Press Room off the West Wing entrance, and no standing among his colleagues or with the administration. This indignity, added to the chore of having to be his own photographer, sometimes became a matter of annoyance to him. Yet most of the time he enjoyed his work, what standing it did give him, and he lived economically in his bachelor’s quarters, his only extravagances being his numismatic collection, Indian-head coins his specialty, and his gifts to Edna.
From the time they had begun going together, she had wanted to help him succeed, because instinctively she knew that she might be helping to liberate herself from spinsterhood and improve her own condition of life. While she could have been of enormous value to him numerous times, by slipping out to him scoops or beats or whatever the reporters called exclusive stories, she had refrained from doing so. By her rigid standards it would have been unethical and unthinkable. George had always been a darling about this, and had never pressed her. Sometimes she had ached to let him in on a secret a few hours or days before it would become public, so that he could benefit by it and become famous. She had never done so. The main consideration was not that such an act might cost her the job she had once cherished, but that the respect in George’s eyes would have been lost to her. They had always discussed T. C., of course, but usually in relation to his public politics or known gossip or nonsense about her own work. However, since Dilman had come to office, there had been even fewer of these discussions, because her intuition had warned her that Dilman was more vulnerable to loose talk and more opposed by the press.