“I think he’s the most attractive man in Washington.”
“His wife thinks so, too,” Hoyt Watson said with a wink. He pecked Sally’s cheek, turned to go, then halted. “Tell your mother I may be late for dinner. I’ll try to call her later.”
He was gone, leaving Sally with a flare of resentment at his having referred to her stepmother as her mother. But the irritation was quickly dispelled as she tried to recollect everything her father had said about Arthur Eaton and his position in government today.
After stacking the dishes on the side of the sink, she went to her vast cream-colored bedroom. She pulled the drapes open, to find the day halfheartedly sunny. She went to her double bed, a mess from the gyrations of her restless, drunken sleep, and quickly drew the blanket and quilt over it. She moved to her tall mirrored dressing table, pulled her long green housecoat around her, and sat on the bench to make up.
Her gaze fell on the framed color portrait of her taken two years ago, just after T. C.’s inauguration, when she had played the Southern belle in that silly satire at the Press Club. She examined the portrait with detachment. When Arthur Eaton looked at her, was this what he saw? Her blond hair was combed high and curling to one side, her frank, emerald eyes were what countless crude young men had called “bedroom eyes,” her nose was small and agreeably tilted, the beauty mark at the left of the mouth accentuated her full crimson lips.
Of course, she reminded herself without swinging to the mirror, the portrait was two years old. It did not reveal the shadows under her eyes, born of twenty-four months of drinks and barbiturates. Nevertheless, she remained hypnotized by her color portrait. Her complexion was marvelous, milky white and flawless, then as now. Yet, it was not a usual pretty-Southern-girl face. There was something hidden behind it that was wild and pitiful, although its outer aspect was childish and moody. But interesting, she decided, interesting, and not too much of its attraction had been traded for the liquor and pills that she used to fight the insomnia and emotional self-hate of unlovely fornication. Then, too, there was more for Eaton that no portrait could reveal.
Impulsively, not bothering about the morning’s makeup, she came to her feet, unfastened the housecoat, and threw it across the bench. She made her way to the center of the bedroom, and slowly paraded, as poised as one can be in lace brassière and clinging panties, before the high mirror. The ravages of inner imbalance had not marred any feature of her slender, lithe figure. Her breasts were high and large, her belly flat, her hips boyish, her thighs and legs long and nearly perfect.
Satisfied, she returned to the bench and, casting the housecoat aside, sat down to devote herself to her makeup and Arthur Eaton, lucky man. Merging memory with hope, she relived her short, happy life with Arthur Eaton, and almost miraculously her hangover evaporated.
She had always been conscious of him, at least in the two and more years he had been Secretary of State, conscious of his incredibly handsome face with its contained sensuality, and of his breeding and manners. But then, she had not thought about him too much, certainly no more than she had ever thought about a motion picture hero, because he had often had his wife, that immaculate, haughty icicle, Kay Varney Eaton, on his arm, and there was no real connection to be made with him.
But Sally was a receptacle for gossip, sought gossip, welcomed it, stored it, and among the tidbits of gossip that had come to her was one, from a reliable source, that Eaton and his wife had separated. This rumor had been given some credibility six weeks ago, four large parties ago, when she had found herself sitting next to him at the dinner party given by Secretary of Defense Carl Steinbrenner. Eaton had been alone. No Kay Varney Eaton anywhere. She had discovered him similarly unattached at Tim Flannery’s crowded and raucous outdoor barbecue. And when the national Party chairman, Allan Noyes, had given his large cocktail and dinner affair during the hot spell, and many of the guests, including herself, had gone swimming in the pool late at night, she had been more certain than ever that Eaton had rid himself of that monstrous wife.
Finishing her eye makeup, she reexamined her relationship with Arthur Eaton. The first of their three public meetings, the Steinbrenner one, had been largely exploratory. She had perceived that Eaton had become conscious of her not only as an individual but as a glamorous and pretty girl. He had wanted to know about her, rather formally but persistently, and she had told him all that she believed he should know.
At the Flannery party he had come in sports coat and slacks-gorgeous man-and she had been wearing the open-necked jonquil silk blouse and yellow shantung skirt, and been bare-legged and gay, and he had sought her out, remembering things she had told him about herself, and then for the first time telling her something of his own life and feelings.
The Noyes party had been the best. After most of the guests had departed, he had been one of the few top-level ones to remain. He had sat in a deck chair near the pool, drinking brandy steadily, and his eyes had followed her from the cabaña to the pool. She had known that in her tight white two-piece swimming suit she was a feast for any male’s eyes. Later, drying, she had sat at his feet, joining him in the brandy, and when it was very late and they were almost the last, she had realized that her father had gone and that she must call a taxi. Eaton had insisted upon driving her to Arlington.
She still remembered the drive. They had both been drunk, or rather she had been drunk and he had been high, and she had sat curled close to him and held one of his hands when it was free from the wheel, and he had covered hers firmly with his own. In the darkened street before her house he had kept the motor idling, and then, never taking his eyes from her face, he had turned off the ignition.
“You are quite a young lady,” he had said. “I don’t think I have ever met anyone quite like you before.”
“I hope not. There’s no one anywhere like me.”
“I suppose you have a hundred young men to keep you occupied.”
“I could have. I don’t. Not one.” She waited, but he was silent, troubled, and so she had helped him. “I have no patience, any more, for immature children. I’ve had all the young intellectual buzzards, dedicated patriots, ex-collegians-on-the-rise I can stand. Too tiresome. If I can’t have what I want, I’ll pass.”
He had taken an eternity to say the next. “What do you want, Sally?”
Despite her intoxicated state, she had maintained her control. “Oh, I don’t know. Someone like Mrs. Eaton’s husband.”
“You’re teasing an old man, Sally. Not fair.”
“You’re not old at all, and I’m not teasing one bit.”
“I see… I must make a confession, too, Sally. I’ve found you more refreshing than anyone I’ve met in ages. I don’t have much free time, except occasional evenings. Perhaps you would let me call you for dinner sometime.”
Her heart had almost burst. “Anytime!” She had sat up in the front seat, gone across the wheel, taken his surprised face in one hand, and kissed him on the lips. “There,” she had said. “Now I’m a fallen woman, and you can’t abandon me. I’ll be waiting for that dinner.”
The morning after had been her best morning in years. But that entire day, and in the several days following, he had not called, and she had begun to believe that she had invested too much in his promise and her hope. Either he had been drunk and indiscreet, and had now sobered and forgotten the flirtation, or he had weighed it and decided that a married Cabinet officer could have nothing to do, no matter how innocent, with the neurotic half-his-age daughter of a senator. Then, in her misery and consequent drinking, Sally had decided that it was his wife who was to blame. Despite flimsy rumor, Kay Varney was his wife, and was coming home or was home already, and that was it, the fact of it, and good-bye rendezvous and good-bye dinner.