The American Chronicle - Hollywood Part 1

The American Chronicle.

Hollywood.

Gore Vidal.

ONE.

1.

SLOWLY, WILLIAM RANDOLPH HEARST lowered his vast bear-like body into a handsome Biedermeier chair, all scrolls and lyres and marquetry. "Tell no one I'm in Was.h.i.+ngton," he commanded. Then, slowly, he blinked his pale blue eyes at Blaise Delacroix Sanford. Although Blaise was now forty-one and the publisher of the Was.h.i.+ngton Tribune, he was still awed by his former chief and mentor, gone gray in his fifty-fourth year, the most famous newspaper publisher in the world, owner of dozens of journals and magazines and, most curiously, the recent begetter of that world-wide sensation, a photo-play serial called The Perils of Pauline.

"I won't, of course." Blaise sat on the edge of his desk, flexing leg muscles. Unlike the Chief, Blaise was in excellent physical shape: he rode horseback every day, played squash in his own court, fought age.

"Millicent and I've been spending the winter at the Breakers. You know, Palm Beach." The Chiefs face was Indian-brown from the sun. Just past Hearst's head, Blaise could see, through the window, a partial view of Fourteenth Street until, with a dry soft sigh, the Biedermeier chair crumpled in on itself like an accordion and Hearst and chair were suddenly as one with the thick Persian carpet, and the view of Fourteenth Street was now un.o.bstructed.

Blaise leapt to his feet. "I'm sorry ..."

But Hearst serenely ignored gravity's interruption of his thought. He remained where he was on the floor, holding in one hand a fragile wooden lyre that had been an armrest: the Orpheus of popular journalism, thought Blaise wildly, unnerved by the sight. "Anyway, what I sneaked into town for was to find out whether or not there's anything to this Zimmermann-telegram thing, and if there is, how are you going to play it? After all, you're the Was.h.i.+ngton publisher, I'm just New York."

"And everywhere else. Personally, I think it's a hoax. ... Why don't you try another chair?"

Hearst put down his lyre. "You know, I bought a whole houseful of Biedermeier furniture when I was in Salzburg and I s.h.i.+pped it back to New York, where I never got around to uncrating it. Don't think I will now." As slowly as Hearst had sat so, majestically, he rose to his full height, at least two heads taller than Blaise. "Sorry I smashed that thing. Bill me for the damages."

"Forget it, Chief." In his nervousness, Blaise called Hearst the name that he was known by to all his employees but never to his equal, Blaise. As Hearst settled himself into a fortress-like leather armchair, Blaise picked up the so-called Zimmermann telegram. Blaise had received a copy from a reliable source at the White House and so, apparently, had Hearst. The telegram had been secretly transmitted from London to President Wilson on Sat.u.r.day, February 24, 1917. It was now Monday and, later in the day, Woodrow Wilson would address a joint session of Congress on the subject of war or peace or continued neutrality or whatever with the Central Powers, specifically Germany, in their war against the Entente Cordiale, or France and England and Russia and, lately, Italy. If authentic, the telegram from the German foreign minister, Arthur Zimmermann, to the German amba.s.sador in Mexico, a country for some time more or less at war with the United States, would end once and for all the neutrality of the United States. Blaise suspected that the telegram was the work of the British Foreign Office. The boldness of tone was the sort of thing that only a desperate country, losing a war, would concoct in order to frighten the United States into coming to its aid.

"My spies tell me that the telegram has been sitting around in London since last month, which means that that's where it was written, if it didn't start here first." Hearst withdrew his copy from a pocket; then he read in his high thin voice, " 'We intend to begin on the first of February unrestricted submarine warfare.' " He looked up. "Well, that part's true, the Germans are really giving it to us, sinking just about every s.h.i.+p in sight between here and Europe. Dumb of them, you know. Most Americans don't want war. I don't want war. Did you know Bernstorff was Mrs. Wilson's lover?"

The Chief had a disconcerting habit of moving from subject to subject with no discernible connection; yet there was often some mysterious link that connected his staccato musings. Blaise had indeed heard the rumor that the German amba.s.sador and the widow Mrs. Galt, as the second Mrs. Wilson had been styled a year earlier, had been lovers. But then Was.h.i.+ngton was not only Henry James's "city of conversation" but Hearst's city of fantastic gossip. "If they were lovers, I'm sure it was all over by the time she married the President."

"You never can tell unless you were in the room, as my mother keeps telling me. The money my mother has! And she's pro-English, too." Hearst began to read again. " 'We shall endeavor in spite of this to keep the United States of America neutral. In the event of this not succeeding we make Mexico a proposal of alliance on the following basis: Make war together, make peace together, generous financial support and an understanding on our part that Mexico is to reconquer the lost territory in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.' " Hearst looked up. "At least whoever wrote this isn't promising them my place in California."

"Who do you think wrote this, if not Zimmermann?"

Hearst looked grim. "Thomas W. Gregory, the attorney general. That's what I hear. He's pus.h.i.+ng Wilson harder and harder to go to war now. Luckily, the rest of the Cabinet want Wilson to hold out because," Hearst squinted at the telegram, "this part here is what this war is all about. I mean, Zimmermann or Gregory or the English or whoever wrote it suggests that the president of Mexico approach the j.a.panese and get them into the war against us. Well, that's the big danger!"

Blaise moved off his desk and into his chair. Back of him hung a life-size painting of himself, his half-sister and co-publisher Caroline, and their editor, Trimble. Blaise knew, everyone knew, that whenever Hearst was in need of a scare story for his newspapers, he would invoke the Yellow Peril. Although Blaise was neutral on the subject of j.a.panese expansion in China, others were not. On February 1 when Germany had delivered its ultimatum to the United States that all s.h.i.+pping from American ports to those of the Allied Powers would be fair game for German submarines, or U-boats as they were popularly known, the Cabinet had met, and though Gregory among others was eager for a declaration of war, the President, remembering that he had just been re-elected as "the man who kept us out of war," wanted only to sever relations between the two countries. He had been unexpectedly supported by his secretaries of war and Navy; each had made the case that the United States should allow Germany its head in Europe and then, at a future date, the entire white race would unite as one against the yellow hordes, led by j.a.pan. Hearst had played this diversion for all that it was worth. Blaise had not.

Trimble entered the room, without knocking. He was an aging Southerner whose once red hair was now a disagreeable pink. "Mr. Hearst." Trimble bowed. Hearst inclined his head. Trimble said, "We've just got a report on what the President is going to say to Congress ..."

"War?" Hearst sat up straight.

"No, sir. But he is going to ask for armed neutrality ..."

"Preparedness. ..." Hearst sighed. "Peace without victory. A world league of nations with Mr. Wilson in the chair. Self-determination for all."

"Well," said Trimble, "he doesn't say all that in this speech." Then Trimble withdrew.

Blaise repeated the week's Was.h.i.+ngton joke. "The President wants to declare war in confidence, so the Bryanites-the pacifists-in his party won't turn on him."

"Not to mention me. I'm still in politics, you know." Blaise knew; everyone knew. Hearst was preparing to run yet again for governor of New York or mayor of New York City or president in 1920. He still had a huge following, particularly among the so-called hyphenates, the German-Americans and the Irish-Americans, all enemies of England and her allies. "Did you see The Perils of Pauline?"

Blaise adjusted easily to the sudden s.h.i.+ft of subject. The Chiefs mind was a wondrous kaleidoscope, uns.h.i.+elded by any sort of consciousness. Like a child, whatever suddenly bubbled up in his brain, he said. There was no screening process except when he chose, as he often did, to be enigmatically silent. "Yes, I saw several of them. She's very handsome, Miss Pearl White, and always on the move."

"That's why we call them moving pictures." Hearst was tutorial. "She has to keep running away from danger or the audience will start to run out of the theater. You know, on this war thing, I'm for staying out just as you are for getting us in. But I'll say this-if the people really want a war, then I'll go along. After all, they're the ones who're going to have to fight it, not me. I'm going to ask for a national referendum, get a vote from everybody, you know? Do you want to fight for England and France against your own people, the Germans and the Irish?"

Blaise laughed. "I don't think they'll let you put the question like that."

Hearst grunted. "Well, you know what I mean. There's no real support out there. I know. I got eight newspapers from California to New York. But of course it's too late. This thing's gone too far. We'll get a war all right. Then England will cave in. Then the Germans will come over here, or try to. Have you thought about flags?"

"Flags?" This time the Chiefs unconscious mind was ahead of Blaise.

Hearst pulled a copy of the New York American from his huge side pocket. On the front page there were red-white-and-blue flags as well as several stanzas from "The Star-Spangled Banner." "Looks nice, don't it?"

"Very patriotic."

"That's the idea. I'm getting tired of being called pro-German. Anyway I'm about to start a photo-play company, and I'd like you to come in with me."

Blaise adjusted to this new s.h.i.+ft with, he thought, admirable coolness. "But I don't know anything about the movies."

"n.o.body does. That's what's so wonderful. You know, while we're sitting here, all over the world illiterate Chinese and Hindus and ... and Patagonians are watching my Pauline. You see, to watch a movie you don't need to know another language the way you have to when you read a paper because it's all there-up there, moving around. It's the only international thing there is. Anyway the point is that Mother, who's the rich one, won't lend me the money and I don't want to go to the banks."

At last Hearst had startled Blaise. It was true that Phoebe Apperson Hearst controlled the vast mining wealth of Hearst's late father, but Hearst's personal empire was more than enough to finance a photo-play company. Of course, Hearst lived more grandly than anyone in the United States on, it was said, five million dollars a year, much of which went for the acquisition of every spurious artwork for sale anywhere. "Well, let me think about it." Blaise was cautious.

"What about that sister of yours, Caroline?"

"Ask her."

"You don't want to sell me the Tribune, do you?"

"No."

Hearst rose. "That's what you always say. I've got my eye on the Times here. It's a lousy paper, but then so was this till Caroline bought it and fixed it up."

Blaise's sudden pang of envy was, he hoped, not visible to the other. Caroline had indeed bought and revived the moribund Tribune; then, and only then, had she allowed her half-brother to buy in. Now, jointly, amiably, they co-published.

Hearst stared down at Fourteenth Street. "Four," he said, "no, five movie theaters just on this one street. I've got my eye on a place up in Harlem, an old casino, where I can set up a studio." Idly, he kicked at the remains of the Biedermeier chair. "I have to stay in New York. Because of 1920. War or not, that's going to be the big political year. Whoever gets to be president then can ..." Hearst tapped the Zimmermann telegram which lay on Blaise's desk. "I think it's a fake."

Blaise nodded. "So do I. It's too convenient. ..."

Hearst shook Blaise's hand. "I'm heading back to Palm Beach now. We'll get this war anyway, like it or not. Remember my proposal. I'm only starting up in Harlem because New York is my base. But the place to be from now on is Hollywood. You got that?"

"No," said Blaise. Like a circus trainer, he led the great bear to the door. "But I'm sure you've ... got it."

2.

THE d.u.c.h.eSS WAS LATE. As Jesse Smith waited for her in Madame Marcia's parlor, he studied or pretended to study Dr. Janes's Vermifuge Almanac, a thick volume filled with lurid charts of the heavens and strange drawings of even stranger creatures of which one, a monstrous crab, gave Jesse or Jess-"No final 'e,' please, boys, that's only for the ladies of the emporium"-heartache as well as heartburn, for in his recurrent nightmares there often figured a giant devouring crab of utter malignity; and Jess would wake up with a sob, according to Roxy, on the few times during their short marriage that they had spent an entire night together.

Quickly, Jess turned over several pages until he arrived at a neutral pair of scales, more soothing than the lobster with the sting in its tail or the menacing lion. It was not that he feared being eaten by crab, lobster, lion. Suffocation was the night terror, as heavy lion's paw covered nose and mouth.

Jess took a deep shaky breath. Madame Marcia's apartment smelled of boiled chicken and stale incense from a bra.s.s Benares dish filled with what looked like the burnt contents of a pipe but was actually the latest Indian Hindu sandalwood incense, to which Roxy had also been partial.

Madame Marcia's parlor was separated from the inner sanctum by a curtain made of strings of different-colored beads to give an Arabian Nights effect; but the beads were so dull that the effect was more like threaded penny candies. Nevertheless, half the great men and women of Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., were said to have come here in order to glimpse the Future and so circ.u.mvent-or hasten-inexorable fate. A functioning sorceress, Madame comfortably advertised herself as "A president-maker and a president-ruler." Behind the cascade of beads, Jess could hear Madame humming to herself in a toneless voice that suggested the higher realms of spirit until one caught from time to time, the lyrics of a brand-new song made popular by the Ziegfeld Follies of 1916, and heard, for almost a year now, on every Victrola in the land. Jess gazed without much interest at a gaudy diploma on the wall that admonished one and all that, by these presents, one Marcia Champrey was a minister in good standing of the Spiritualist Church.

Madame Marcia had been Daugherty's inspiration. "I've never been to her. But they say she's just what the doctor ordered, and the d.u.c.h.ess needs a lot of doctoring." Like all politicians, Daugherty spoke code; and Jess, who had grown up in the actual shadow of his Ohio hometown Was.h.i.+ngton Court House's actual colonnaded courthouse, understood the code. Also there was nothing that he would not do for Harry M. Daugherty, who had befriended him when he was first starting out; done his legal work for nothing; introduced him to those Ohio politicians who always came to Daugherty for aid at election time-their elections, of course. Although Daugherty had been chairman of the State Republican Committee and was now forever a part of history because he had nominated William McKinley for governor in 1893, thus launching the sun, as it were, into the republic's sky, Daugherty himself had no political luck; had failed by seventy-seven votes to be nominated for governor; had now settled for being the hidden power behind whatever throne he could set up. Of course the highest throne of all was currently empty or, to be precise, occupied by one Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, an unnatural state of affairs which would be corrected in 1920 by the election of a Republican president. But that was three years away, and there were certain arrangements that must first be made. Madame Marcia was one.

"Is she always so late?" Madame Marcia glided into the room, at an odd angle to the floor. She had once been a dancer, as she had told Jess on his previous visit, with the Frank Deshon Opera Company. "At sixteen," she would add, in case someone were to count the years that had pa.s.sed since her name had appeared in very small letters on a very large poster whose date marked her as an artiste from the long-ago age of McKinley. Now the dancer was a spiritualist minister and a guide to the stars in the dark days of Woodrow Wilson when every day, for Republicans, was like today, February, with wet snow falling and a cold north wind.

"No. The d.u.c.h.ess is the soul of punctuality." Jess rose, as he always did, when a lady, any lady, entered a room, any room. "The weather ..."

"The weather, oh, yes." Over the years, one by one, Madame Marcia's Brooklyn vowels had gradually closed until she sounded refined and deeply spiritual. She wore priestess black, and a string of pearls. Only the thick scarlet hair struck a discordant Frank Deshon dancer note. Jess had first met her with Daugherty, who swore by her, whatever that meant. Although Jess believed fervently in every sort of ghost and ghoul, he had no particular interest in any spirit world other than the one in his hall closet where, back of an old winter coat and a stack of galoshes, horror reigned. Only his driver George dared enter that closet; and return unscathed and sane.

"Mr. Micajah is keeping well?" Madame Marcia sat in a straight chair, and smiled, revealing pearl-like teeth rather more authentic in quality than the pearls she wore. Micajah was Daugherty's middle name. Real names were discouraged by the lady. "Otherwise I might be influenced when I consult the stars." Daugherty maintained that she had no idea, ever, whose horoscope she was casting: hence her high price. She was a legend in the capital and much consulted by some of the highest in the land, usually through intermediaries, as the faces of the highest would have been recognizable to Madame Marcia, thanks to photography and the newsreels.

"Yes. He's gone back to ..." Jess stopped himself from saying Ohio. "Home. But his-uh, friend is here. The d.u.c.h.ess's husband."

"An interesting-even significant-horoscope." Madame Marcia had been given nothing more than the date and hour of birth of the d.u.c.h.ess's husband. Of course she had a Congressional Directory in her inner sanctum and she could, if she were so minded, check the various birthdates with the one in hand, a.s.suming that its owner was in the Congress. But, as Daugherty said, even if she knew whose horoscope it was, how could she predict his future without some help from the stars or whatever? The whole town knew that she had predicted the elevation to the vice presidency of the current inc.u.mbent, Thomas R. Marshall. Without supernatural aid, this was an impossibly long shot.

"I've never seen such a cold winter. Worse than New York ever was. ..."

"Why did you come to Was.h.i.+ngton?"

"Fate," said Madame Marcia, as though speaking of an old and trusted friend. "I was a.s.sociated with Gipsy Oliver at Coney Island. Mostly for amus.e.m.e.nt's sake. But"-Madame's voice became low and thrilling-"she had gifts as well as-worldliness. Dark gifts. Amongst them, that of prophecy. I was, I thought, happily married. With two beautiful children. My husband, Dr. Champrey, had an excellent practice, specializing in the lower lumbar region and, of course, the entire renal system. But the spirits spoke to Gipsy Oliver. She spoke to me. Beware of the turkey, she said one day. I thought she was joking. I laughed-more fool I! What turkey? I asked. I know turkeys, and don't much care to eat them-so dry, always, unless you have the knack of basting, which fate has denied me. Well, lo! and behold the next month, November it was, I was preparing a Thanksgiving dinner for my loved ones, when Dr. Champrey said, 'I'll go buy us a turkey.' I remember now a s.h.i.+ver come over me. A chill, like a ghost's hand upon me."

Jess s.h.i.+vered in the stuffy room. This was the real thing, all right. No doubt of that.

"I said, 'Horace, I'm not partial to turkey, as you know. Just a boiled chicken will do.' " She exhaled. Jess inhaled and smelled boiled chicken, old sandalwood. " 'Why not splurge?' he said. Then he was gone. He never," Madame Marcia's bloodshot eyes glared at Jess, "came back."

"Killed?" Jess had always known that he himself would one day die violently. Roxy said he was mad as a hatter. But Jess knew; and so he was never alone in an empty street or alleyway or, for that matter, bed, if he could help it. When George did not sleep with him, one of the clerks from his emporium would oblige. In Was.h.i.+ngton he always shared a room with Daugherty, next to the room of the invalid Mrs. Daugherty. Whatever town Jess was in, he cultivated policemen. He read every detective story he could get his hands on to find out how to survive the city jungle with its wild killings, human swarm, dark alleys.

"Who knows? The son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h," she added, suddenly soulful. "Anyway, I had had my call." She indicated the Spiritualist Church diploma. "I don't need any man, I'm happy to say, except when I feel we've known one another in an earlier life." She smiled at Jess, who blushed and took off his thick gla.s.ses so that her face might blur; he adored women but, what with one thing and another-like his weight problem and diabetes-what was the point? as Roxy had said in the third month of their marriage. Jess had wept. She was firm, yet loving. Roxy would never go for a turkey and not return. She just went for a divorce, and as Jess was worth even then a small fortune, more than one hundred thousand dollars, he could keep them both in high style. Today they were better friends than ever, each devoted to gossip; each able to remember almost to the week when a couple was married so that when the first baby was born they could-she without fingers, he with-work out the time of conception and whether or not it was blessed in the Lord's eyes. Each delighted secretly in the fact that the d.u.c.h.ess's son by her first husband was born six months after the wedding which was to end in divorce six years later. Roxy shared Jess's high pleasure in this sort of knowledge, proving that there were, Jess decided, blessings yet to be counted, particularly if Roxy should end up in Hollywood as a photo-play star, their common dream-for her.

The d.u.c.h.ess was in the room. "I let myself in." The voice was dry and nasal and whenever a word had an "r" in it the d.u.c.h.ess made that poor letter go through her thin dry lips, over and over again, as if she were French. But she was quintessentially a Mid-westerner of German extraction, born Florence Kling. The head was large, the body small. The d.u.c.h.ess suffered from what Madame Marcia would call renal problems, and her ankles were often swollen while her sallow normal color was often dull gray with illness. She had only one kidney, which obliged her to drink quant.i.ties of water. Often bedded with a hot-water bottle on even the most stifling of summer days, she would try, sometimes in vain, to sweat. But today the small blue eyes were bright and there was even a suggestion of color in her cheeks due to the north wind, while the end of her somewhat thick nose was also rosy-moist, too. Like a trumpet, she blew her nose into a large handkerchief and said, "I hate incense. So foreign, so bad for the air."

"Chacun a son gout." Madame Marcia was gracious. "Let me take your wraps." As the d.u.c.h.ess was divested, she turned to Jess. "We're invited to Mrs. Bingham's but ..." The d.u.c.h.ess was about to name her husband; then saw the dark brown myopic eyes of Jess so unlike her own small gray far-sighted ones; remembered the rule of omerta. "... but I don't want to go alone. So you can take me, can't you?"

"Sure thing, d.u.c.h.ess."

"Now, Madame Marcia," the d.u.c.h.ess made the priestess sound like the patroness of a disorderly house, "I've been hearing so much the last couple of years about you and I'm really glad to meet up with you though I can't say I'm all that much a believer in all this." The d.u.c.h.ess's face set in what Jess was convinced she believed was a jovial expression but the long sheep-like upper lip and thin mouth produced an effect more alarming than not.

"Dear lady," Marcia sighed and blinked her eyes. "We are such stuff as dreams are made on. ..."

"I don't like Shakespeare." Jess was always surprised by how much the d.u.c.h.ess knew and, usually, disliked. But then she had had a hard life which was probably not going to get any easier. She could hear storm warnings more clearly than anyone else he knew, like those animals that were able to antic.i.p.ate earthquakes, much good it ever did them. "I saw the Frank Deshon Opera Company once." The d.u.c.h.ess did a complete reversal; she was also a perfect politician when she chose to be. "They played Cincinnati. I went with my ... brother. That was way before your time, of course. ..."

"Oh, my dear lady!" Madame Marcia was properly hooked.

"Now what do I do? I feel like I'm at the dentist's." Madame Marcia took her client's arm and steered her into the back room. "It will be painless, I promise you."

"Now, don't you listen, Jess." The d.u.c.h.ess touched the beads.

"I never listen when I'm not supposed to."

"Says you! Those big ears of yours flap like nothing I ever saw outside the circus."

Jess resolved not to listen; and heard everything. "The subject," as the d.u.c.h.ess's husband was referred to, "was born November 2, 1865, at two P.M. in the Midwest of the United States. Jupiter." Then something, something. Then, "Sign of Sagittarius in the tenth house." Jess stared into the small coal fire set back in an iron grate. Was.h.i.+ngton was just like Ohio, nothing big city at all about these R Street brick houses. But then everyone liked to say that Was.h.i.+ngton was just a big village which happened to be full of big people of the sort Jess was naturally attracted to as they were to him.

Lately, Jess had started to keep a notebook in which he recorded the name of every important person he met in the course of a day. In Was.h.i.+ngton his fingers soon got tired, adding up the day's score. Even so, he was looking forward to Mrs. Bingham's reception. A wealthy widow, Mrs. Bingham conducted what Jess had first thought was a political "saloon" like a bar and grill until it was explained to him what a salon was. Mrs. Bingham was also the mother-in-law of the publisher of the Was.h.i.+ngton Tribune, a paper most friendly to Ohio Republicans, unlike the Was.h.i.+ngton Post, whose owner, John R. McLean, an Ohio Democrat, had died the previous summer, leaving his son Ned to do right by the d.u.c.h.ess and her husband. Ned and his wife Evalyn were now their close friends; and so, marvelously, was Jess, who had never dreamed that he would be taken up by a rich and glamorous couple of the highest society. Evalyn was especially magnificent, with the most diamonds of any one woman on earth, among them the Hope Diamond, a bluish chunk of old bottle to Jess's eye, worn on a long chain about her neck and as full of evil, it was said, as Jess's downstairs closet. But unlike Jess, Evalyn was unafraid.

"I feel extra-marital entanglements may cause grief." Madame Marcia's voice richly hummed through the beaded curtain. The d.u.c.h.ess's nasal response was pitched high. "That's somebody else's husband you got there. But that's all right. Go on."

"The stars ..." Madame Marcia's voice dropped to a whisper and Jess sighed voluptuously as he thought of all the sin in the world, and so much of it of the flesh. The d.u.c.h.ess suffered because her husband was a ladies' man and there was nothing she could do but turn a blind eye, as she did to their neighbor Carrie Phillips, wife of James, who, like Jess, was a dealer in dry goods, as well as fancy and staple notions and infants' wear.

Carrie was handsome and golden and well-born-related to the Fulton of the steamboats, it was said. She was also part German, and that was cause for many a quarrel in the parlors of Was.h.i.+ngton Court House and of nearby Marion; worse, of many a quarrel between Carrie and her lover, who was obliged to placate both his pro-German and anti-German const.i.tuents. On this subject, Carrie could be fierce; otherwise, she made the great man happy, thought Jess, whistling softly to himself "My G.o.d, How the Money Rolls In!"

"That," the d.u.c.h.ess's voice rasped, "was all pretty interesting. I'll say that. Food for thought." As she strode into the sitting room, Jess thought of what her husband had once said about her: "She can't see a band without wanting to be the drum-major." She liked people to think she was her husband's dynamo, but Jess doubted this if only because he liked people to think that she was his spur. Daugherty thought they were more of a team, like a pair of old-time oxen pulling a cart, with her bellowing the most and with him pulling the most. But thanks to Jess's mother and to Roxy and to her mother, he knew more about women as people than anyone, and it was his view that the d.u.c.h.ess was a joyous slave to her apparently lazy, charming, lucky husband, who called the shots.

"Jess, you'll settle up?" The d.u.c.h.ess was now safely inside her various wrappings. Madame Marcia's smile was sweet and faraway.

"Okay, d.u.c.h.ess." Jess was aware that the "D" of d.u.c.h.ess had produced a sudden jet of saliva. Fortunately no one was drenched. He dried his lips with the back of his left sleeve; he would have to dry his thick moustache later, when un.o.bserved.

"You'll pick me up at Wyoming Avenue. Five o'clock sharp. Wear something spiffy."

"Yes, ma'am."

The two ladies parted, amid powerful a.s.surances of mutual high esteem and deep-on Madame's side-compa.s.sion.

"What's the damage?" asked Jess, reaching for his wallet.

"The damage," Madame Marcia gazed ethereally out the window at the black afternoon sky, "has been done." Then she blinked her eyes, as if coming out of a dream. "Mr. Micajah's paid already. The lady's not very strong," she added, probing, Jess could tell. "She has a renal complaint."

That was on the nose. Impressed, Jess nodded. "She's been sickly quite a lot lately."

"Bright's disease, I should guess, not having done her horoscope. He's sickly, too."

"The picture of health." Again, she was on target. Jess was impressed for the first time. The subject's fluctuating health was one of the few secrets in public life; private, too. When he went off to Battle Creek, Michigan, the town thought that he was just getting away from the d.u.c.h.ess and politics, but he was actually trying to bring down blood pressure, moderate his heartbeat, dry out his system. Jess had gone with him once and was amazed at how pale the ruddy face became once he'd stopped drinking, and how frail he was for all his highly visible not to mention remarkably handsome robustness.

"I think you should tell Mr. Micajah-as he is paying-what I did not tell the lady." Madame Marcia drew the curtain against the February sky.