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worse for wear.

One night, he made a point of asking George, his valet,

to pick them up in the Ford Crestline. The top, she noticed, had not come down though the early-August heat was oppressive.

“Have you ever been to Hains Point?” he asked.

It lay at the tip of an ersatz island, dredged up from

the confluence of the Anacostia and Potomac rivers and



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threatening under any heavy rainstorm to return. The slow

drop in elevation, coupled with the steaminess of the night, left her feeling queasily subterranean. After a few minutes, the car slowed, then lilted to a stop. The engine switched off.

Jack murmured:

“How about you take a smoke break, George?”

George had neither a cigarette nor a lighter, but he was

already stepping out of the car, shutting the door after him and strolling toward the river, where the lights of the capital lay trapped in air-amber. She waited. Then, as if suddenly remembering something, he curved a hand around the back of her head and leaned in. She could feel his razor stubble, lightly abrading her jaw and neck, his free hand deftly unbuttoning the top button of her dress and taking a speculative walk down to her clavicle. She recognized what her role should be—to withdraw, to deny—but the cloud of

his breath seemed to find a parallel cloud in hers. A humuslike heat rose up around them, and his free hand ventured farther, and she silently called it further, and there was no telling how far things would have gone had there not come two quick raps on the window.

It wasn’t George returning from his smoke break but

an officer from the U.S. Park Police. A mounted officer, drawn by their fogged-out windows and pinning them now with the full force of his flashlight. Expecting, probably, to put the fear of God into two kids from Sidwell Friends and finding instead a young woman yanking up her bra

strap and a somewhat older man suavely drawing out his

House ID.

182





LOUIS BAYARD


“Oh, gee, I’m sorry, Congressman! Guess I didn’t see the

tags. Listen, you folks have a good night!”

Jack waited until the horse clops died out, then turned

back, expecting to resume, but she couldn’t. The embarrassment of being caught in the back seat like a horny teenager with bobby pins flying—nothing could survive that. Jack gleaned her position at once and, without another word,

rolled down the window and called for George. She gave

him this much credit. He didn’t sulk or wheedle or nurse

hard feelings. He just packed up his lemonade stand, as it

were, and carried it away.

By midnight, she was able at last to pull her bedsheets

over her and recall that stolen interval with a smattering

of pleasure. She recalled, in particular, his face in the car’s shadows, a perfect mask of desire. Recalled, too, how pow-erless she had felt in the face of her own desire. She was a girl of her era and so could never be entirely free of shame, whether it came from her mother or, more comprehensively, the One True Faith, with its incense and ashes, the trapped air of its confessional booth. As secular as she was, she hadn’t yet divested herself of the hope of salvation.

But what was salvation to Jack, who was all the more

attractive for being so indifferent to souls, his own or anyone else’s? And so as she allowed her own hand to finish the journey he’d begun—over the clavicle, down the abdo—

men, past the pelvic bone—it was Jack whom she conjured

up. His cedar scent in her nostrils, his bony weight pressing down—not crushing so much as guiding her toward her final destination. When it was over, she lay there for some time,



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her chest lightly rising and falling, sweat in bands along her brow, wishing he could see her.

The next day, he called her at work. “Sorry about that

interruption,” he muttered.

Oh, she had to restrain herself from saying. We got there.

TWENTY-TWO

T hrough all this, Jackie and I were, by common consent, carrying on with our Sunday outings. Jack was

never at liberty to join us, but wherever we went, his spirit followed. Jackie was always wondering if he’d like it there, too. (The answer, often as not, was no.) What would he be ordering? What kind of wiseacre remarks would he be making? She was compulsive about scanning the clothes of passing men to see which would suit him. “He likes navy, doesn’t he?” “I think he’d look well in chalk stripes” “Maybe a wool necktie, just for the holidays.” And I’d find myself saying things like “Not with that Duke of Kent knot” or “Double-breasted, are you kidding? It’s got to be two-button or he won’t look at it.” But when she hit it just right, I’d cry:



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“Wrap it up, missy! We’re taking it home.” And she’d grin

like a child at a carnival.

When the talk flagged, she’d beg me to tell her something else about her new boyfriend. Were the members of the Choate Muckers really expelled? she wanted to know. Yes, but only for a few hours. Had Jack really bet me a hundred bucks to take off my clothes and sing a Mae West tune to

Mr. Kennedy? Well, yes, but I blanched at the last minute.