by Janice Weber
My date sniffed a white rose from a gigantic arrangement. “When do you expect the guest of honor?”
“He’s on his way.”
“My God! We’d better find the oysters before he does!” Fausto took me to the rear salon, where a hundred guests clustered buffet and bar. The men looked corporate, the women excited: Marvel the Magnificent was about to touch them. Another calcium-deficient septuagenarian approached. “You’re the violinist, aren’t you? We saw you in Paris. You wore a divine St. Laurent.”
“Really! What did I play?”
Her eyes bulged, as if I had just asked her age. “I love classical music.”
She loved being seen at events with exclusionary ticket prices. Fausto downed two glasses of champagne as she castigated the government for abandoning the arts. America was becoming a nation of barbarians.
“Correct,” he agreed, spearing a strip of smoked salmon and dangling it high above his mouth before swallowing it whole. “There’s no self-control in this country anymore.” Four olives went down the hatch. He sidled his leviathan stomach inches from the woman’s plate of hors d’oeuvres. “Thank God Bobby’s in charge.”
She hesitated: even his most adamant supporters knew Marvel was one of the lamest presidents in memory. “Think of the alternative.”
“I do! Every day!” Fausto delicately harvested three chicken livers from a passing platter. Suddenly he stopped chewing. “Look what the wind blew in!” We left the woman floundering with a mouthful of tapenade. “If only money bred class,” Fausto sighed, waving to friends. “Or even wit. Hello, Justine. That dress is absolutely volcanic.”
Duncan’s beloved, attired in a spin of red feathers and red spandex, glared back. “Thank you.”
“How’s your wrist, Duncan?”
“Mending,” he scowled.
Justine wrested her eyes from my necklace. “Shouldn’t you two be home practicing for your little concert?”
“You know how it is. Every so often you’ve got to give the digits a rest.” Fausto swallowed his last chicken liver. “I hope Bobby’s oiled his tongue tonight. Judith’s packed the place with horny women. Yourself excepted, of course.”
“Oh for God’s sake!” Duncan interrupted. “I need a drink! Come on, babe!”
We watched them huff away. “Isn’t he on his high horse,” Fausto said. We circled the room, garnering many sidelong glances: were we or weren’t we, and if so, how? Fausto seemed to be enjoying our degenerative game of Beauty and the Beast. I played along, clinging to his arm, curiously shielded by his girth and wealth. Nothing got to me without first passing him: tonight, I was grateful for that. But there was not much call to even open my mouth here. Fausto’s jewels did all the talking for me. That was the up side of consorting with the rich.
After a while we retired to the backyard, where the air was dense with camellias and imminent rain. A harpist swished Ravel in the corner of a tent as white-jacketed waiters fussed over silverware. “You’ve got to see Judith’s orchids,” Fausto said, leading me past a dozen round tables. “They’re the only reason for coming here.”
At the edge of the lawn stood a conservatory about the size of the Jefferson Memorial. Through the huge panels of glass, beneath yellow lights, I saw a riot of green: into a jungle again, damn him. At once I began to tremble and sweat. “Do you garden?” Fausto asked, turning a brass doorknob.
“No.”
“You should.” He closed his eyes as air gravid with perfumes enveloped us. “Ah. Smell that chlorophyll. Beautiful.”
Heart lumbered against rib: last time I had been in a place like this, death had stalked half a pace behind. I followed Fausto along the narrow flagstone path, shuddering as palm fronds swished my sleeve. Where was the cacophony of insects, the screech of unseen birds, the sweet smell of decay? This jungle, like everything else in Washington, was a fake. Fausto greeted many plants by their Latin names, bending over them to sniff and fondle. Finally we got to the orchids. Judith grew dozens of varieties, from waxy, prom-date white to droopy pink to the frilly purple I had received in a bouquet three times now. Again, Fausto knew each by name and again, as I watched his fingertips caress their voluptuous, hooded splendor, I wanted him. Strange. “Mother adored orchids. The house was always full of them,” he said. “But I prefer roses. Hyacinths.”
“Why?”
“Fragrance. Something to keep me company in the dark.”
Voices down the path. Fausto let a heavy blossom slip from his hand. First a suit, then our hostess, resplendent in jersey, cut through the fronds. Next, Bobby and Paula Marvel and another Secret Service agent. For a moment we all stared disbelievingly at each other, like the expeditions of Stanley and Livingstone.
“Judith! We were just admiring your treasures.” Fausto kissed Paula’s hand. “You’re looking lovely tonight, madam. As always.”
The First Lady was wearing another of those dresses with large bows that matched her pink shoes. Tonight her hairdresser had gotten stuck somewhere between Jackie O and Gidget. Paula’s little kewpie mouth barely moved as she accepted Fausto’s kiss. In these confines, the two of them hogged more space than a pair of Steinways in an elevator. “I understand you’re performing tomorrow night, Fausto,” she said.
“My God! Are there no secrets in this town?”
“Not when you spill half of them.” Paula smiled thinly. “Thank you for sending that ointment.”
“Chickie already thanked me profusely. Just let me know when you need a fresh supply.”
Paula drilled me with purest blue eyes before asking Fausto, “Where is your friend Miss Mason? I’m still waiting for that tea she promised.”
I looked slowly at Bobby, whose face remained lively as concrete. “You’ll get your tea, I’m sure,” Fausto responded after the tiniest of eternities. “The girl is probably off harvesting it herself.”
“She rather led me to believe I’d be getting it right away. Nothing else seems to be helping my arthritis.”
“Do you know that pain can be stress related? And you have so much of that, poor thing.”
As if Fausto were her personal physician, Paula engaged him in an intense discussion about degenerative diseases. Each time she made a point, one of her pink bows shook. I tried to maintain a rigid, cocktail party smile while Bobby did a good imitation of a dugout canoe. The Secret Service men kept glancing into the trees, on the lookout for killer apes. Meanwhile, poor Judith was about to explode. On one hand, this fatuous conversation fascinated her; on the other hand, she hadn’t dragged the Big Bananoids into her greenhouse to discuss cortisone with Fausto. She was savvy enough to realize that Paula’s little sidebar had nothing to do with tea or arthritis but that the longer it continued, the more her stock would slide.
Fortunately Bobby came to the rescue. “What are those flowers over there, Judy?” he suddenly pointed, glowering at Paula. “Tiger lilies?”
Taking the cue, Fausto ducked into a handkerchief as Judith basked in her minute of glory with the ruler of the land. No matter that his wife had contemptuously meandered up the path. Just as well, in fact: no woman, not even a seventy-year-old, would want Paula around when Bobby was revving up the bedroom eyes. Soon Justine, minus Duncan, rushed up the path. Her booze breath blended nicely with the smell of peat. Addressing her old flame, her enunciation reverted from duchess of Windsor back to hillbilly of Kentucky. “For Christ’s sake, look at the time! Everyone’s expecting you inside, Mr. President.”
“Aw Justie! It’s much more fun out here!”
Chortling under his breath, Fausto took my hand. We started for the door. Suddenly, whimsically, inches from Bobby’s orchids, he stopped. “Do you remember Leslie Frost, Mr. President? She played in the East Room last week.”
“Of course. How do you do.” I curtseyed with the eyelashes, he barely twitched. Great performance: not even Fausto would guess Bobby had already had four joints inside of me. Marvel turned toward his wife, a hot pink mirage in the far-off fronds. “Paula! Tim
e to go!”
Fausto stepped deferentially into the dirt, allowing the First Lady enough room to pass. “Remember my tea,” she admonished before her blue eyes settled on Judith. “It is hotter than goddamn hell in here.”
The hostess actually apologized. Paula didn’t hear a word. “That’s some dress,” she told Justine. “You look like a little rooster.”
Justine, sixty pounds lighter than her accuser, merely smiled. “Thank you.”
“My wife’s had a rough day,” Bobby explained to no one in particular.
“Just shut up, would you?” his wife snapped. “Let’s get out of here. I need air.”
Fausto and I remained in place until the door slammed. “Hail democracy,” he said.
I swatted peat moss from my shoes. “Do they all get like that once they’re elected?”
“You’re putting the cart before the horse, sweet. If they weren’t like that in the first place, they wouldn’t go into politics.”
“Even the women?”
“Especially the women. I see Paula and Justine are still fighting over Bobby.” He drenched his handkerchief under a spigot. “Marvel barely noticed you.”
“Why should he? I’m not raising a fortune for his war chest. What was all that business about tea?”
“A few weeks ago I brought a woman named Mason to a fund-raiser. She and Paula hit it off like firecrackers and matches. They got into a powwow about herbal remedies. Mason was considered an authority in the field. If you noticed, the First Lady loves to discuss her maladies. She thinks it makes her husband feel guilty.”
Dream on. “So why didn’t she get her tea?”
He looked long and hard at me before answering. “Because Mason left.”
Unless my antennae were fried or Fausto was the greatest liar in history, he did not know that Barnard was dead. If only I could be as sure of Paula Marvel! “Mason left?” I repeated. “And stiffed the First Lady?”
“Some people play games.”
“With Paula? Not too swift.”
“She didn’t give you the time of day either, I noticed.” Fausto daubed his forehead with a handkerchief. “Guilt by association.”
Association with whom? “What would we have talked about, fifty ways to tie a bow?”
“Paula’s a sharp cookie. Don’t underestimate her.” As soon as we left the greenhouse, Fausto lit a cigarette. “Sorry. I know you disapprove.”
I watched his lips grip the tiny cylinder. Down, Smith. “Why’d Bobby marry Paula?”
“Simple. He wanted to be president. She’s got the brains and the venom he lacks. Not to mention pedigree. Her family’s been lawyering in Washington for nearly a century. Paula’s intimately familiar with the workings of government.”
“Why’d she marry Bobby then?”
“Same reason, sweet. She wanted to be president too. And Bobby’s a lovable marionette.” Fausto gazed moodily across the lawn, where guests were beginning to drift under the tent. Finally, when the first apathetic drops of rain let go of the clouds, he asked, “Are you up for speeches and dinner?”
“Only if you are.”
As we drove away from Judith’s party, the rain began in earnest. Fausto’s melancholy filled the car. “Sorry,” he said finally. “I just realized I’d rather be practicing the piano than yapping with the president. I must be losing it.”
I watched hundreds of tiny drops, persistent as hope, reappear on the windshield immediately after the wiper blade had passed. “Are you sorry you stopped playing?”
“That would be like missing an amputated arm. You just accept the loss and try to get by as best you can.” He braked, or maybe ran out of gas, at a red light. “And now the arm has miraculously reattached itself. Makes me think about the last thirty years.”
The car behind us honked. Fausto rolled forward. “I had forgotten about the ecstasy of shutting myself away with a piece. About time standing still as you become nothing but will and sound, about the odd dislocation as you try to function in reality while music is always playing in the back of your mind. You know what I’m talking about. What’s going through your head now?”
Besides lust? “The last movement of the Brahms sonata. What’s going through yours?”
“Saint-Saëns. Thank God we’re equally disadvantaged.” He took my hand. “I stopped because I knew I couldn’t have a career. Halfway never cut it with me. But I didn’t realize until this week how dreadfully I’ve missed the music. I don’t know whether to thank you or curse the day we met.”
I kissed his fingers. “Are you up for tomorrow night, Fausto?”
“Of course. I’m an exhibitionist at heart.”
In his driveway, I unclasped his mother’s jewelry. The pearls felt warm as a handful of quail eggs. As always, the cold, immortal gleam of diamonds took my breath away: returning them pained me. “Go practice,” I whispered.
A cassette from Bendix Kaar awaited me at the hotel desk: Fausto Kiss performing his piano sonata. I had completely forgotten about this, his note lied. But since you asked… Clever man, Bendix: of all his tapes, he knew I’d be most likely to listen to this one. But not now. I tossed it on the bed and changed into black leather.
The storm pounded Washington until midnight. I waited it out at the cinema in Fairfax, this time with a romantic comedy about two divorced parents. Nobody laughed much except at the sex scenes. Afterward I visited the zoo, checked the serial number of the Smith & Wesson I had lifted from Louis’s bookshelf. He had bought it six years ago in Florida. I phoned Berlin.
“No surprise,” Maxine yawned. “But I hope you don’t think he planted it.”
“Why not? He’s paranoid. He knows people are after him.”
“So he rigs a gun to blow away the first person who comes to his house? Come on. Someone’s playing games with you. And it’s not Louis. I doubt he’s been home since July.” As she yawned again, I thought of the bouquet of orchids and the card welcoming me back to Washington. “I traced his call to the FBI. Listen.” She patched me in.
“This is Rhoby Hall,” said a female. “For your protection, our conversation is being recorded. With whom am I speaking?”
“I can’t tell you over the phone,” rasped Louis. “Just connect me with someone in charge. I have confidential information concerning national security.”
Rhoby Hall was unimpressed by her fiftieth crackpot of the day. “We suggest you come in during office hours tomorrow. We’d be happy to speak with you personally.”
“You don’t understand! People are trying to kill me! I know their secrets!”
“Could you be a little more specific, sir?”
“Goddamn it! How much more specific do you need?” Behind Louis, booming thunder’. “Let me spell it out for you. Someone’s just assassinated Jordan Bailey.”
“Vice President Bailey? I believe he was still alive as of the six o’clock news.”
“Meet me out front when your shift is over. I’ll explain everything.”
Less patiently she replied, “I’m sorry. You’ll have to speak with my superior before we determine a course of action.”
“I risk my neck and you won’t leave your desk?” Louis was beside himself. In the background, campus clocks chimed four. “What was your name again?”
“Rhoby Hall. What’s yours?”
“Not over the phone! I’m coming over right now! My life is in your hands!” Louis hung up.
“She tossed him in the wacko bin,” Maxine said after a few seconds. “He does sound completely lunatic.”
“Did she meet him?”
“Don’t know. But she’s still working at the FBI.”
I pulled Rhoby Hall on screen. Big-shouldered brunette with a jaw that could crush spark plugs. Blasé college, blasé degree. Looked familiar.
“She’s Vicky Chickering’s significant other,” Maxine said. Right. I had seen her at Ford’s Theatre. “Maybe you could take Chickering to lunch. Get to know her a little better.” When that suggestion bombed, M
axine asked, “Does she go to Fausto’s for breakfast?”
Who the hell didn’t? “If I see her next time, I’ll chat her up. But she’s never brought Rhoby along.”
That was now my problem. “How was the fund-raiser?”
“We ran into the Marvels in the hostess’s greenhouse. Paula grilled Fausto about some tea that Barnard had promised her. Evidently the two of them had met at a previous fund-raiser.” I tried to keep my voice neutral. “Barnard was Fausto’s date.”
The Queen didn’t care about that. “Why’d Paula bring it up? Do you think she really wanted the tea? Or was she fishing?” Maxine blew on something, maybe cocoa, maybe a custom-made bomb. “Think she knows what happened to Barnard and was getting a rise out of taunting the poor fat boy?” Another couple puffs. “Subtext is god. I hope you were watching.”
I was watching all right. My date’s lips. “We didn’t stay. Fausto got bored.”
“I thought he lived for that stuff.”
“Lately he prefers to practice piano.”
The Queen only chuckled. “Did you ask him what he was doing in Belize with Louis? Or don’t you know him well enough yet?”
“I can’t push this, Maxine. He’s too clever.”
“You’re right on that one. Did I tell you that Louis called Fausto before dialing the FBI? Call only lasted fifteen seconds. Plenty of time to arrange a rendezvous.”
More pain in my gut: Fausto knew everything. “Did you get anything on Louis’s problem at Oxford?”
“Oh yes. The lad was caught helping himself to a few items at the school morgue. Said he needed them for his experiments. He was studying chemical imbalances in the nervous system. His professor got him off the hook by swearing that Louis was the most brilliant research assistant alive. A few months later, the kid went to ’Nam. No problem with organ donations there, I bet.” She took several long swallows of something before asking, “Have you seen Bendix Kaar lately?”
“No. But he’s keeping an eye on me. Just sent over a cassette of his music. What’s Tuna up to?”
“He spent the day at the National Gallery of Art. Funny how all these boys have suddenly become aesthetes. Why don’t you go see if Fausto’s practicing now.”
