“How?”
“Oh, we charter a boat with a captain and a deckhand and head out to the Gulf Stream to see what we can hook. I’ve never done it, and it would relieve the boredom of ten days in Florida.”
Jack sighed. “I’m not sure how my cardiologist would like it.”
“Fuck your cardiologist,” she said with a big smile. “Look, Jack, life is to be cherished, for sure. But life is to be enjoyed, too. It’s not to be hoarded like a miser’s money. What do you want to do? Stop living so you can keep on living?”
Jack nodded. “My wife Anne knew for almost three years that she was dying. She kept it from us and lived her life as if it wasn’t happening, until almost the last.”
His lips and chin stiffened, and he stopped, holding back tears. Diane touched his hand.
“When can we get this boat?” he whispered.
Four
THE BOAT RUMBLED OUT OF THE INLET AT EIGHT-THIRTY THE next morning. Diane had chosen it: a rugged, unglamorous little boat with a sixty-year-old captain and a teenage deckhand. It was painted white with light-blue trim, and the deck was not varnished but painted. One icebox was filled with bait, another with beer and sandwiches. They wore what they had been told to wear: knit shirts with long sleeves to protect their arms from the sun, and hats with wide brims to protect their foreheads and necks.
The captain gave Jack and Diane brief instructions on how to handle a fish if they got a strike. The boy baited their hooks and cast them overboard.
For an hour they trolled without a strike. Then Jack got the first strike. He reeled in a bonito about thirty inches long—not an exciting catch. The boy sliced off fillets for bait and threw the rest overboard.
Diane got a strike and pulled aboard a mackerel, another lackluster catch. The boy put it in the bait box. It was edible and would wind up on his family’s table or on the captain’s.
Diane and Jack popped beers. The captain changed course, chasing something he thought he saw in the water that would lead to fish. By now the coastline was out of sight.
Jack tossed his beer can overboard. A minute later he got a hard strike. The captain grabbed his pole and gave it a jerk to set the hook.
“Good’n,” he said. “Y’ got work to do. Ma’am, reel in so’s the fish don’t tangle lines with you.”
It was more strenuous work than Jack had imagined. The fish broached, and he saw a big sailfish that was determined to fight the hook that was painfully lodged in its mouth. The boy took the wheel, and the captain stood anxiously beside Jack, instructing him on how to play the fish. It was arduous. Jack had to haul up on the pole, dragging the fish a few feet closer, then reel in line. Again and again. He began to sweat.
Diane unstrapped herself from her chair and came to stand behind Jack. She wiped the sweat from his forehead on the sleeve of her shirt.
He began to gasp for breath.
“Jack, maybe you ought to let the captain cut it loose.”
He glanced up at her. His eyes were wide. “No way,” he grunted. “This sumbitch’s not gonna beat me.”
He fought the sailfish for half an hour. And defeated it. But it defeated him, too. Once it was aboard, he struggled out of the chair and dropped to his back on the deck, lying parallel to the fish. The captain screamed at the boy to head for home, throttles open.
“No,” Jack muttered. “Just a little short of breath. It’s okay. Be okay in two minutes. Diane hasn’t caught hers yet.”
She knelt over him and kissed him.
In the two minutes he had specified, Jack rose and sat in his chair. “Turn around,” he said, pointing out to sea. “What’s the matter? Never see an old man get tired before?”
The captain looked at Diane. She nodded. The captain told the boy to turn again. Diane took sandwiches and beers from the cooler and sat down on the deck beside Jack’s chair. The captain measured the sailfish and announced it was six feet eleven inches long, by no means a record fish but a very respectable one for sure.
Jack did not put out a line again. He sat in his chair and watched Diane. She caught another bonito, then a five-foot barracuda that gave her a long struggle and was another very respectable catch.
In the middle of the afternoon they turned toward shore. The captain suggested that Jack and Diane get in out of the sun. They went inside the Spartan cabin and sat on a bunk where, seized by impulse, Jack threw his arms around Diane and kissed her hard. She had been seized by the same impulse and hugged him and returned his kiss.
“Oh, Jesus, lady,” he muttered in her ear. “You know what? You’ve brought me back something I’d lost and needed bad.”
“What’s that?” she whispered.
“My optimism,” he said. “You’re a flowing spring of it. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it . . . appreciate you.”
Diane felt she could not stay in Florida beyond the end of January. Jack was supposed to stay through February. He summoned a corporate jet to the airport at Fort Lauderdale. On Thursday, February 1, it took off for Washington, carrying him and Diane. Before she left the plane at Washington, they kissed, and he promised her he would be back in Washington within two weeks.
Five
MARY CARSON CALLED A MEETING AT THE PETROLEUM CLUB in Houston. On an evening in March she sat down with Billy Bob Cotton and Raymond l’Enfant
When they’d had drinks and had chatted socially for a few minutes, she asked a question: “Has either of you seen Jack Lear lately?”
“No, not since the heart attack,” said Ray.
Billy Bob shook his head.
“Well, he was away from the office, away from the business, for three months. When his wife died, he was away longer than that. To be brutally honest, I think Jack has lost it. He’s going to be sixty-seven this year, he’s had a big heart attack, and he’s looking over his shoulder for the Grim Reaper.”
“I wish you wouldn’t say that,” said Billy Bob. “I’m gonna be sixty-five shortly myself.”
“But you haven’t had a major heart attack,” Mary retorted. “What’s more to the point, he’s lost interest. If you want to face the truth, gentlemen, Jack Lear has never been wholly devoted to LCI. The fact is, he has always devoted too much of himself to outside interests.”
“Carlton House,” said Ray.
“Well, that and his personal life,” said Mary. “Jason Maxwell didn’t call him Le Maître for nothing. You know who he’s sleeping with now? Cathy McCormack, Dick Painter’s former secretary. Christ, she’s sixty-two years old! I’m surprised he hasn’t tried to hit on me!”
“Disappointed?” Ray asked with an amused smile.
“Sort of,” she said, smiling as broadly as he was. “But he’s away from the office a lot now for another reason. He’s got a girlfriend. I mean, it looks like something serious. She’s a congresswoman from New Jersey named Hechler. He flies a company plane to Washington twice a week.”
“Why are we sitting here talking about this, Mary?” Billy Bob asked impatiently. “You asked us to come. You must have something in mind.”
“I do. I think we had better start thinking of alternatives to Jack as CEO.”
Billy Bob shook his head and frowned. “You mean, take the company away from him?”
“Keep him as chairman of the board. Let him have his office and perks. Give someone else day-to-day operational control.”
“‘Someone else,’” said Ray. “Meaning you.”
“A company cannot be run by someone who has less than complete devotion to it. A chief executive officer works fourteen hours a day. Jack Lear never has—not since I’ve known anything about LCI.”
“Well, you’d have to outvote him in a stockholders’ meeting.”
“Each of you gentlemen owns 5 percent of the stock,” she said. “My father left me 5 percent, and I’ve bought another 13 percent on the q.t. Those shares are not in my name, but I control them. I can vote 18 percent. You can vote 10 percent. Dick Painter still has the 1 percent he was given when he c
ame to the company, and he’ll be with us. That makes 29 percent, enough to control most companies—except a closely held one, which LCI is not.”
“Don’t forget that Jack has his own allies. Harrison Wolcott had 6 percent, which he left to Joni and Linda. Joni has bought 2 percent more. Frederick, Durenberger, Morrill, and Sullivan got stock bonuses way back when and still hold their shares—1 percent apiece, making another 4 percent likely to vote with Jack. Sally Allen owns 2 percent, and she probably figures she owes Jack something. Of course, he has 10 percent of his own. Have you added all that up?”
“Okay, 24 percent—which ain’t as good as 29 percent. Besides which, we can pick up some proxies.”
“So can he, and he’s got a hell of a big name,” Ray reminded her.
“Let me throw something else into the equation,” said Mary. “I don’t think Jack gives a damn, and I don’t think he’ll fight. All we have to do is toss him a bone so he’ll save face, and he’ll shrug and walk away. You can count on it.”
Billy Bob shook his head. “I wouldn’t count on it, Mary,” he said. “Jack Lear’s not the kind of man you can toss a bone to. He built the company. He built it from nothin’. He’s not going to give it up.”
Ray l’Enfant sighed audibly. “It’d be the end of an era,” he said sadly.
“Everything comes to an end,” said Mary. “Good things. Bad things.”
THIRTY - NINE
One
1973
JONI HELD DAVID’S PENIS IN HER HAND. “YOU KNOW WHAT I like about your cock?” she asked him.
“Not its size, I should imagine,” he said. “It’s nothing extraordinary.”
She sucked his foreskin between her lips and ran her tongue over it. His shoulders stiffened, and he drew a loud, deep breath.
“I’m going to make a confession to you,” she said. “Only two living people know this. This is how much I trust you. I like this cock because it’s so much like the first one I ever saw, ever touched. You want to know whose that was?”
David raised an eyebrow skeptically. “Do I want to know?”
She lowered her head and ran her tongue over his scrotum.
“I’m going to tell you. It was my brother’s. He was like you. I like cocks that haven’t been surgically mutilated—circumcised.”
“Your brother?”
“My brother who was killed. I used to suck his cock all the time. You want to know why I sucked it? Because he got me pregnant doing it the other way. I had to have an abortion when I was fourteen years old.”
“My God!”
“I loved him. He loved me. I mean, we loved each other that way, besides loving each other as brother and sister. But I learned to suck cock at a very early age.” Joni smiled. “Not a bad thing to learn. I may be the last big star who—”
“Don’t kid yourself. I know it’s not supposed to happen anymore. But the money and fame and glamour involved—”
“It’s a matter of power, isn’t it?” Joni suggested. “It happens everywhere, anywhere and everywhere.” She shrugged. “I can’t get hysterical about it. I wasn’t forced. I was never forced or raped. It wasn’t an ordeal for me.”
“Humiliating,” he suggested. “Debasing.”
“The first time, yes.”
“You’ve done it more than once?”
“Be realistic, David.”
“Recently?”
“Not recently. Uh, change the subject. I’m going east for a few days. I hope you can come with me.”
“Going anywhere with you is like going to heaven.”
“We’re going to a wedding. My father is getting married again.”
“That’s rather sudden, isn’t it?”
“He says at his age you don’t have time to diddle around.”
Two
DIANE HECHLER WAS A SURPRISE TO EVERYONE.
Kimberly and Anne had been exquisite beauties. Diane was an attractive woman but not one who would turn heads on the street. Her face was long and thin. Her eyes, under sleepy lids, were gray. Her mouth was wide, her lips narrow.
She was tall and tended to hold her chin so high that many people, on first meeting her, judged her haughty and formidable. A few minutes with her was enough to dispel that impression. She never lost an iota of her dignity, but she tempered it with a quick and earthy sense of humor.
The weekend before the wedding, most of the Lear family trekked to a New Jersey country club, where a hundred politicians and lawyers gathered at the cocktail hour to gape at the broadcasting tycoon who was marrying their representative to Congress.
“A hundred of us would have liked to do what you’re doing,” one politician told Jack. “She’s jus’ the greatest ol’ gal in the world!”
Diane’s parents greeted Jack with enthusiasm. William Hechler was an active trial lawyer, with the characteristic flamboyance of a successful trial lawyer. Diane had practiced in his firm until she went to Congress. Diane resembled her mother, a tall slender woman.
Diane’s sister, Nelle Davidson, looked nothing like her mother. She was three years older than Diane, and now that her children were grown, she was chiefly a country-club drinker.
“Should have been here twenty years ago,” the same politician said to Jack with a big grin. “Nelle was on the fourteenth tee. She had on these skimpy shorts and a halter. She took one hell of a swing, and her tits popped out! She didn’t know it She just watched her ball and watched her ball. Not one of the guys around the fourteenth tee had any idea where her ball went, I can promise you!”
Nelle’s son, George, it turned out, was casually acquainted with Liz Lear. They had seen each other in the library at Harvard Law. He was a year ahead of her. He attached himself to her as though it had been arranged in advance that he would be her date for the evening.
The wedding presents from New Jersey were on display in a room adjacent to the dining room. Diane’s parents’ gift was a silver-gray Mercedes-Benz sedan that was parked outside. The Republican Party of her district gave a set of sterling silver. President and Mrs. Nixon sent a sterling creamer and sugar engraved with the Great Seal of the United States.
The Lear family attracted reporters and cameramen to the country club. Reporters read the cards and made notes.
Joni was swarmed by reporters, one of whom had the temerity to ask who pretty, seven-year-old Michelle was. She answered, “None of your fuckin’ business.”
Joni and even her father were eclipsed by the big football star, LJ Lear, who still toted around the cheerleader named Gloria. LJ had a keen instinct for public relations, and Gloria carried a portfolio of glossy photographs that LJ would sign at the least suggestion.
Liz still despised him. She was pleased to see that George made no effort to meet him.
After the cocktail reception the families gathered in a private dining room. Diane had forbidden speeches, even toasts, and had put place cards on the table in order to mix the two groups. Observant, she had slipped into the dining room just before dinner and moved George’s card to a place beside Liz.
Just before midnight George knocked discreetly on Liz’s door at the motel where the Lears were staying. She let him in. He left at six the next morning.
Three
THE WEDDING WAS AT ELEVEN-THIRTY ON THURSDAY MORNing, April 12, in the living room of the house in Greenwich. The minister of the Diamond Hill Methodist Church conducted the ceremony. Diane wore a knee-length white silk brocade dress and carried a tiny bouquet of white flowers. After the brief ceremony, the families and a few friends and neighbors shared a champagne brunch. Not long after one that afternoon Jack and Diane were driven to Westchester Airport where a company jet took off for San Francisco. They would spend their wedding night at the Fairmont Hotel and in the morning catch their flight to Tokyo. Their wedding trip would include Tokyo, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Tahiti, Hawaii, and a return visit to San Francisco.
They had a light dinner delivered to their suite. As they ate and drank a little wine, they exchanged
caresses and knowing smiles—thinking of the bed that awaited them.
Diane had told him she was a virgin. At forty-seven, she had never been to bed with a man. They had talked about it over dinners and while traveling. She had been unwilling, she’d explained, to do it casually and had never met an unattached man she wanted to commit herself to. She had never made any determination not to have sex, but occasions for it had slipped by year after year.
Jack had never done more than hold her and kiss her. He had never undressed her. He had never touched her breasts or her legs. He wondered how she would react when he did.
When they had finished their dinner she asked him to stay in the living room while she went to the bedroom to change. “My sister helped me pick out a nightgown. I hope it’s—”
While she was in the bedroom, Jack wheeled the dinner cart out into the hall, keeping only the ice bucket and some champagne.
Diane opened the bedroom door. A white silk lace-trimmed bra lifted her breasts. A lustrous white silk gown attached to the bra fell smoothly to her ankles—but only to either side, because a long wedge of sheer material, beginning at the center of the bra and widening below, displayed all of her from her breasts to her ankles.
She paused in the doorway and smiled at him. It was the first time he had ever seen Diane short on confidence. He realized that in a sense he had married the equivalent of a teenage girl. She had never shown herself to a man before and was not sure how he would like her. What was more, she was apprehensive about what was going to happen next.
“You are gorgeous,” he said quietly. “The nightgown is beautiful. Perfect.” He stood and stepped toward her. “I’m the most fortunate man in the world, and I hope you have some idea of how much I love you.”
When she saw his penis she said it was the first one she had ever seen. She’d looked at pictures, of course, but had been unable to gain a sense of how big her husband’s organ would be.
“Oooh!” she whispered. “That goes inside me? All of it?”
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