Because Galvin had decided that I had professional expertise in the area of party giving—had I not been editor of The Social Bible of Washington?—I was designated as the event planner. He told me to spend whatever was needed—more than was needed, this had to be the best party ever given in Washington. I wasted a day in urgent, useless activity before turning sheepishly to my erstwhile employer, the owner of Reveal. I told her frankly that I was desperate—it had fallen to me to organize the party of the year and I didn’t even own a tux. She was of course high on the guest list, I explained, since it was her magazine that had launched Galvin in Washington. So, in that sense, it was her party too. And would she—could she—possibly offer some advice?
It will not surprise anyone familiar with the folkways of our nation’s capital that my former employer, who only days before had been addressing me with four-letter words, readily agreed to help. In a city of courtiers, there is only the eternal present; with each movement in the constellation of power, the past is instantly and entirely obliterated. The owner knew this, as she knew all things. She was happy to suggest the right caterer, the right florist—the right orchestra, bartender, valet parker, liquor purveyor, grocer, tent provider. Representatives of these worthy establishments scrambled to meet us and present their bids; the owner would study the quotations, demand a 25 percent reduction in price, settle for a 10 percent cut—and then hand the contract to me to sign. Galvin wandered in on one of these negotiating sessions and gave her a look of unqualified, unfeigned approval—which was all the compensation she could want.
Soon trucks began arriving at the house, unloading crates of china, tables and chairs, tents big enough for P. T. Barnum, a dance floor the size of a baseball infield, a jungle of fresh flowers and enough booze to float a battleship. Galvin observed all this activity with genial contentment. He would come in from the tennis court, pleasantly fatigued after a lesson with the pro who seemed to be perpetually on duty, and see me hassling with some purveyor or victualer.
“How many shrimp did you order?” he would ask. “Two thousand,” I would answer—four for every guest. “Double it!” he would shout back. And the same with the stone crabs, oysters, caviar and smoked salmon. When I told him what each particular bit of excess would cost, he would smile happily. What a lucky man, his face said, to be hosting such an affair.
By the afternoon of the party, I was so nervous that I decided it would be wise to take some drugs. That was a vestige of my sentimental education from the 1970s—experience in the ways of self-medication. I called my doctor in search of Valium, Klonopin, cough syrup, anything!—but she was away, and her nurse cruelly refused to help—so I opted for the lower-tech but still effective brain deadener known as the martini. Thus fortified, I put on my rented tuxedo and drove my Honda out to the plantation. I was the first to arrive and gaze, with genuine wonder, on what our labors had produced.
WE HAD CREATED AN imaginary landscape. The trees that bordered the long driveway had been decorated with tiny golden lights, so that they shimmered and sparkled in the evening breeze like the pathway to an enchanted palace. At the bottom of the drive, the great redbrick house was illuminated by a dozen spotlights. The whole place seemed to be glowing, as if it had just landed on that spot from another galaxy. Inside, the house was in bloom, with garlands of fresh flowers and the supernatural colors of Galvin’s art collection—to which he had recently added a phantasmal Diebenkorn and a stark red-and-black Motherwell. But the interior was no more than a passageway this evening, to the pageant of color and light out back.
The wonder was that the weather too had obliged Sandy Galvin. It was a perfect, cloudless evening in late September, the very last trailing edge of summer—as if the gods above had taken a particular interest in the play that was about to unfold, and wanted an unobstructed view. A full moon was rising to the east, over the river—perfectly round, ghostly white and improbably large. It was too bright outside to see the stars, but they were up there, too—one for every grain of sand in the ocean, one for every drop of ink in Mr. Galvin’s newspaper. As I walked through the French doors into the open air, I could hear the sound of a violin, testing a few notes of a Strauss waltz, stopping to retune and gaily starting up again.
The garden had been decorated to resemble the scene depicted by Renoir in his famous painting of an outdoor dance in Moulin de la Galette. That had been Galvin’s idea, and I’d thought he was out of his mind at first. But now that I saw the final effect, it was breathtaking. Paper lanterns were hung from the trees and across the yard, casting a delicate play of shadow and light. Two great tents bounded the sloping lawn—one for dining, one for dancing. Beyond the tents, the trees had been dotted with tiny gold lights like those along the driveway. They twinkled and sparkled like an orchard of Christmas trees. The orchestra was rehearsing in one tent, and the catering staff was hurrying to the other with platters and chafing dishes laden with food and hors d’oeuvres.
I caught sight of Galvin upstairs in his bedroom. He was looking out through the picture window at what he had created. It was a wary, expectant gaze. He was waiting for someone. He had constructed this perfect stage, and now he needed the players to arrive—one in particular, whom he could see in his mind but who was still invisible to me.
TWO HOURS LATER, THE garden was full. I could tell it was going to be a good party—people were actually drinking. Normally, people at Washington parties made a point of being abstemious. Drinking would mean relaxing, letting go, taking the risk of saying something foolish or being unprepared or making a mistake. When you were drinking, you were not working, and people in Washington never stopped working—especially the journalists, who had become the most abstemious and risk-averse of all. But tonight was different. It was as if relaxation and decompression were the price of admission.
Galvin’s guest list was masterful. His rule seemed to be: Magnanimous in victory. He had invited the Hazens and the Crosbys—not just the younger men and women whose votes had carried the day, but the old gentlemen as well. The families had taken several tables to themselves in the buffet tent and were accepting handshakes and best wishes with the good manners of General Lee at Appomattox—all except Ariane. She was making the rounds, introducing Galvin to people he needed to know—advertisers, corporate vice presidents, loyal family retainers. He was lucky to have her; he would need some link to the past to have any chance of succeeding.
Galvin made his way among the crowd like John D. Rockefeller handing out dimes. Everyone wanted to talk to him. This was his party, of course, but one sensed that on this night, at least, it was also his town. In a city of transients, the newspaper was the one permanent store of value. It was the market maker in the goods that were traded here—influence, power, reputation. When the newspaper changed hands, it was like a change of government.
Striding among the guests in his French garden, bathed in the soft glow of his paper lanterns, Galvin looked like an artist’s creation himself—tall and muscular, dressed in finely tailored clothes that conveyed an easy elegance, greeting the world with a face that seemed unmarked by a sleepless night or a day of worry. He was the man for this season. It’s said that George Washington was an inevitable choice to become our first president because no one had ever looked better riding a horse. There was something of the same inevitability about Galvin.
I lurked at the edges of the party, looking at all the famous faces. Three justices of the Supreme Court had come, enough for a powerful dissent, at least; the Speaker of the House was here, popping out of his tuxedo like the Pillsbury Doughboy. The secretary of the Treasury arrived and departed early, looking as thin as a whippet and slightly stooped, as if bent over by the weight of all the money he had to worry about. The secretary of state came too, although she kept disappearing inside self-importantly to take telephone calls; it was rumored that she was on the way out, but who knew? The Vice President was over in the dancing tent, doing the Temptations Walk with his wife—probably the same steps the
y’d done when they first met at a tea dance in high school, thirty-five years before. It was deemed a credit to the man, in the current environment, that one could imagine his bouncy wife having an affair more easily than him.
And everywhere were the journalists, leaning against tent poles, sizing up the guests, talking mostly to each other (for who could be more interesting?). The President was finished, they were saying. His position was deteriorating; the polls showed it. It wasn’t what he had done, but the appearance of what he had done, someone was saying. No, it wasn’t that, someone else said. It was that he didn’t appear to be truly sorry about what he appeared to have done. They knew everything and nothing, this crowd. You wouldn’t find the journalists over by the raw bar, scarfing down free shrimp—not anymore. They made more money, in their virtuous passivity, than many of the businessmen and lawyers. And I was one of them. Why did I dislike them so?
The owner of Reveal wafted by, dressed in a poufy yellow dress that might have been worn by an old-time TV star like Dinah Shore or Florence Henderson. She looked beautiful, in the completely artificial manner of those olden days. She was on the arm of the former northern Virginia Car Dealer of the Year—the man we’d been about to profile a few issues back and had replaced at the last minute with Galvin. He had recently left his wife, it seemed, and was stepping out! Perhaps there were happy endings, after all.
I wandered over toward the stone wall that overlooked the river. The moon was higher in the sky now, casting a bone-white shadow on the slow-moving water. I had come there to rest. It was wearying, all this unearned status and derivative glory. People were being nice to me now, for no reason. I wanted to say something unpleasant to each and every well-wisher: Where were you the day before yesterday, when I was a pathetic stick figure with no money and a broken-down Honda? But I was instead shaking hands and half smiling back—already a bad sign.
Two men had ambled up to the stone wall a little farther along, deep in conversation. One of them was Galvin. He was gazing down the river toward the distant lights of Washington, sipping a glass of champagne while the other man talked. This other gentleman was seated on the wall, below Galvin. He was paunchy, with thinning blond hair and a weary look. He was probably about Galvin’s age, late forties, but he looked far older. He had a big glass of whiskey in his hand and, it soon became clear, was quite drunk. It took me a moment to realize that it was Howard Bacon, the editor of the Sun.
“I’m too old to be polite,” Bacon was saying. “I’ve put in too many years and worked for too many different newspaper owners. So I’m just going to ask you straight out: What are you going to do to the paper?”
“Make it better,” answered Galvin. “With help from you, and everyone else.”
“Well, that’s a nice thought. It’s hard to disagree with that. But better for who? For the advertisers, who think we’re the devil? For the President, who whines every day that we’re not being fair to him? For the President’s enemies in Congress? For the Black Caucus, and the American Jewish Committee, and the AARP, and the Harvard-Yale club—have I left anybody out?” Poor man, he was definitely in his cups.
“Better for readers,” Galvin answered gently.
“Of course, of course. Don’t pay any attention to me. I’ve got too many miles on my tires; they’re worn down, and sometimes they squeal. And I’ll admit I get sick of all the complaints about the paper, yes I do. But I’ll say one thing for us: We seem to piss people off in all directions, so we must be doing something right. Eh?”
Galvin frowned. “I don’t get that part about how it’s good to piss off all sides, Howard. Why do you think it’s good for people to hate you? Maybe there’s a reason they don’t like the Sun. We’ll have to talk about that.”
“Sure. Absolutely. We’ll talk about everything. You’re the boss now. I’ve tried to do what I can to improve the paper, but I’ll be honest: I get stuck in a rut sometimes—have trouble remembering why I got into the business. The sharp edges get worn down, the picture gets fuzzy. You know what I mean?”
He looked up at Galvin. “No, probably you don’t. But for the rest of us, it’s not easy. We could all use some new ideas. I just want to be sure they’re good ones.”
Bacon was talking in that tone of sad bemusement that men discover in middle age, when they begin to add up the accounts and see that things don’t quite balance. It was a quality I had begun to notice among the fortysomethings I knew—that spacey, where’s-the-rest-of-me look. But interestingly, I had never seen it in Galvin. He was still climbing, aspiring, searching. The phrase Is this all? had never crossed his lips. He was bored by Bacon’s middle-age angst and changed the subject.
“What are people saying at the paper? The reporters and editors. What do they think?”
“Honestly, they’re scared shitless. They don’t know much about you, but what they have heard, they don’t like. They’re worried you’re going to fire a lot of people, and do focus groups to create new sections—Television Today, Fun Facts from Abroad—and generally dumb it down. They like the newspaper the way it is. They’re proud of it. They don’t want to see it change.”
“Change is always painful.” Galvin put his hand on Bacon’s shoulder. “I’ll be honest with you too, Howard. I do have some new ideas. I’ll save the particulars for another time, but I don’t want to play games. I do intend to shake the paper up. That is a fact. I think it needs shaking up. And I want editors who can help me do it.”
“I hear you,” he said noncommittally. “Message received.” Bacon stood up from his perch on the wall. He looked shattered—his face wasted by too many years of stress and booze and late-night deadlines. He wobbled unsteadily for a moment. The worst thing that could happen to a journalist was happening to him. “You will forgive me, sir,” he said, “if I go in search of one of your lavatories.”
Galvin watched his editor walk away and then turned back toward the house. As he did so, he saw me standing in the shadows. “I suppose you heard all that,” he said.
“Yup. Pathetic. Mr. Bacon is not what I would call a titan of journalism. But I hear they’ve got a smart new guy coming in as Lifestyle editor.”
Galvin smiled. Nothing could put him off his good mood this evening. “Never judge a man when he has a glass of whiskey in his hand,” he said. “Always a mistake.”
THE PARTY LASTED LATE into the night. People didn’t come and go; they came and stayed. That was another Washington rarity. The usual rule here was lights out at eleven o’clock, so that everybody would be bright-eyed for school the next morning. But perhaps Galvin was rewriting that one, too.
I continued to meander; I knew I hadn’t seen half the guests yet, it was such a big party. The orchestra had started another set in the music tent; they were playing old-time dance favorites—Glenn Miller, Broadway show tunes, even that waltz I’d heard the violinist practicing hours ago. Drawn by the music, I wandered into the tent. A cordon of people was ringing the dance floor, watching one couple dancing all alone. I opened my eyes, at last, and it was like a blow to the head.
Galvin was holding Candace gently in his arms, moving her with a tilt of his shoulders, a brush of his thighs. I hadn’t seen her until that moment, what with so many people and my hiding much of the time in the shadows. She looked magnificent. Her blond hair was swept back from her face in a way that accentuated the beauty of her cheekbones and her graceful neck. She was wearing a string of white pearls and a long black dress that seemed to be made of chiffon, it was so light and delicate. In all my years of admiring Candace, I had never seen her look so beautiful.
The music stopped, but they remained together on the floor, talking. He whispered something in her ear and she laughed—there it was, that wispy smile of his, boyish and irresistible. The music resumed, and they started up again. You could see from the way they moved that they had danced together before. Her body seemed to understand his, to float with it, like a leaf carried on a powerful gust of wind. Nobody else danced; we didn’t mov
e; we were transfixed. The new owner of the Sun was dancing with the paper’s foreign editor. When the music ended, we all applauded.
I had been so stupid. Even when it should have been obvious, I hadn’t seen it. When Galvin quizzed me about my lunch with Candace, I had thought what a clever boy I was, to be giving him such good information. When he confessed to me that he was buying the paper for love, I thought he was joking. I hadn’t even understood when he looked down from his bedroom window a few hours before, that the absent face he awaited so tenderly was hers. Perhaps this entire party, over which I had labored so diligently, had been a piece of theater, created for Candace.
I wandered about in a daze for a half hour or so. It shouldn’t have hurt so much. God knows, I had no claim on her, but Candace had been my only fantasy. Though I had never spent an intimate moment with her, I had somehow developed the lover’s pride of possession—the notion that I alone could appreciate her specialness. Yet after watching them together on the dance floor, I knew that my claim was entirely fraudulent and absurd. It was such a powerful feeling of defeat; I cannot fully explain it.
It was time to go. My party was over. As I walked through the house toward the front door, I passed the small study, where Galvin and I had spent hours preparing for the party, making plans for what we would do at the newspaper. The door was ajar, and I could just see into the room. They were sitting on the couch—not kissing or holding hands, but just talking. I heard laughter. He was remembering something funny from long ago, and she was giggling about it. It was a sound I had never heard from her. A peal of laughter. The sound of pure pleasure.
The Sun King Page 9
