Mortal Friends (5 page)

L
ater that week, Violet came into the shop with Cynthia Rinehart in tow. It kind of irked me to see them so palsy-walsy together, but I understood that Violet had a weakness for celebrities, and Cynthia was definitely the celebrity du jour. Celebrity or not, however, Cynthia seemed to understand that Violet was socially influential, a good person to cultivate if you wanted to break into the older, more permanent social circles of Washington, which included most of the city’s big philanthropists.

I figured the two of them had come in to browse around, but in fact they’d come with a definite purpose in mind. Violet proudly announced to me that Cynthia had just bought Gay Harding’s old house. I was stunned.

The late Gay Harding, heiress, philanthropist, and kingmaker, was the last of Washington’s great grande dames. Her locally televised funeral at the National Cathedral some years back was tantamount to a state occasion. Set back on six acres of prime real estate on R Street, her house had been sold to a dot-com billionaire from Virginia who never moved in. It had been discreetly on the market for the unheard-of sum of fifteen million dollars for a couple of years now. This purchase was clearly part of the tsunami Cynthia was riding into Washington.

I congratulated Cynthia and told her how much I loved that house. At which point, Cynthia asked me if I wanted to decorate it for her.

“Violet says you’re the best,” Cynthia said. “And that’s good enough for me. You interested?”

This was like asking a starving person if they’d be interested in a banquet. Violet knew all about my financial woes, of course. She’d offered to help me on several occasions, but I wouldn’t hear of it. The “neither a borrower nor a lender be” credo had been drummed into me since childhood by my parents. However, Violet knew full well that a big decorating job like this was the answer to all my debts, and I was grateful she’d strongly recommended me to Cynthia. Violet was truly my best friend.

“I’m interested,” I said brightly.

I’d only taken a couple of decorating jobs since opening my shop, because I just didn’t have the time. Neither was as major as this one, but they’d both turned out extremely well. The clients were pleased, plus I’d managed to make some extra money because I was able to furnish the jobs with some of my own stock. Monetary benefits aside, however, I knew it would be fun to redo Mrs. Harding’s old house, not to mention a big feather in my cap.

We all agreed to meet at the house that afternoon. As Cynthia browsed around the shop, Violet took me aside and asked me if I’d heard from Bob Poll. When I told her I hadn’t, she said that she and Grant had taken a table for the PEN/Faulkner evening at the Folger on Friday night. She suggested I call Bob and ask him if he wanted to be my date.

“Sometimes you have to give these guys a little push,” she said.

Call me old-fashioned, but I never think it’s a good idea to call a man when he hasn’t called you first. That doesn’t mean I haven’t done it, of course. I rationalized calling Bob by remembering he’d sent me those roses. He seemed to enjoy the company of social heavy hitters, and the Boltons certainly qualified as such. I knew that Grant would put together a good table, with a sprinkling of political luminaries as well. I bit the bullet and called Bob’s office, since his home number was unlisted. I was put through to his secretary, an officious-sounding woman who clearly thought of herself as Cerberus at the gate. When I asked to speak to Bob, she asked me who I was, why I was calling, if “Mr. Poll” knew me, and so on. I answered her questions politely and issued my invitation. She said that she was sure that Mr. Poll had “something on his calendar that night,” but that she would “pass along” my request. She asked for my telephone number and my e-mail address, “just in case Mr. Poll doesn’t have them.”

I told Rosina what I’d done. Naturally, she thought it was a bad idea. “You should always wait for a man to call you. Otherwise you set a bad pattern.”

I didn’t really disagree with her, but I had to defend my action. We were arguing back and forth about the merits of women making the first move when the phone rang. It was Bob’s secretary, Felicity, as she introduced herself. She informed me that “Mr. Poll would be pleased” to attend the dinner with me and that he would “have his chauffeur” pick me up at my house at six thirty sharp on Friday evening. They had the address.

“See how fast he got back to me,” I said to Rosina after I hung up.

“He
didn’t. His secretary did. Not a good sign.”

Rosina was like a freaking soothsayer. Still, I was pleased.

As I walked over to Gay Harding’s house that afternoon, I wondered if Cynthia was aware that Violet had her own little history with that property. Right after Mrs. Harding died going on ten years ago, her heirs put the house on the market. Grant and Violet wanted to buy it. But Rainy Bolton had been a great friend of Mrs. Harding’s, and for some reason she considered it unseemly for her son to own such a well-known property. She famously proclaimed: “That house will always be Gay Harding’s house, no matter who owns it.”

At the time, Violet suspected that her mother-in-law was just jealous and didn’t want her son to have a grander house than she did. But Violet saw this as an opportunity to further ingratiate herself with the Boltons, so she sided with them against Grant, which I thought was a big error. Violet explained she had her reasons, however, and I have to say it was impressive watching Violet tell Rainy that she too didn’t think it was appropriate for her and Grant to own Gay Harding’s house, when all the while I knew she coveted that house more than anything in the world. Violet was a master at not letting her true feelings show.

Grant got back at Violet years later after the house came on the market again for fifteen million dollars and he refused to buy it for her, even though she begged him to and even though he loved it too. By that time Rainy’s opinion didn’t matter to her so much.

Grant told Violet, “Yes, I love it. Yes, I want it. And yes, I can afford
it. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay fifteen million dollars for a house I could once have bought for six.”

The Harding house sat in the middle of a big wooded lot on the corner of Twenty-ninth and R, directly across the street from the old Oak Hill Cemetery and Montrose Park. I arrived first, and believe me, I checked to make sure no one was lurking around in the bushes. It was impossible to forget that a murder had occurred very recently and very nearby—practically across the street. The four-story limestone was in pretty bad shape. Withering ivy had clawed its way over most of the facade, and untended bushes mushroomed throughout the grounds.

Gay Harding had been a friend of my parents. Gay and my mother always stayed in touch, even when my parents moved back home to New York. When Gay heard that I’d moved to Washington, she invited me to several of her parties. At first the high-powered company terrified me, and I felt very out of place. But Gay made me feel right at home. In fact, it was at her house that I first met Grant Bolton and his parents. I don’t know if she’d purposely wanted to fix us up, but Grant and I did wind up having a few dates.

I was standing on the front steps recalling those carefree days of my youth when a black stretch limo pulled into the gravel driveway. Violet and Cynthia got out. Stretch limos were not remotely Violet’s style, and we exchanged a knowing glance as she walked up to the house. Cynthia looked around the grounds like a conqueror surveying captured territory. The three of us paused in front of the door with its antique brass lion’s-head knocker while Cynthia fumbled for the key in her large crocodile bag. As she opened the door, Violet joked, “Shall we carry you over the threshold?”

“No one carries me anywhere, honey,” Cynthia snapped. “I go places all by myself.”

Violet and I just looked at each other. This gal had no humor. None. Nada. Zero. Zippo. But she did have this great house, which tells you something.

It had been several years since I’d been there. The interior reeked of mildew and neglect, a sharp contrast to the delicious aroma of baking apples that had once greeted visitors in autumn. My mother told me how Mrs. Harding had ordered her chef to keep a pot of apples
simmering on the stove in the fall so their delicious scent filled the air. Run-down as it was, there was still an aura of Old World grandeur about the place. We walked through to the famous living room, whose walls had once been described as “the color of burnt roses” by Folly Pritchard, another Georgetown socialite, also gone.

In its heyday, that room had been the social pinnacle of Georgetown, packed nightly with testosterone, power, and ambition. Everyone who was anyone had come to Gay’s famous salon—presidents, heads of state, senators, congressmen, cabinet members, ambassadors, supreme court justices, journalists, television personalities, philanthropists, socialites, top military brass, business leaders, as well as Gay’s pets of the moment, many of whom, like myself, had no special perch on the rungs of power, but were simply people she liked. Gay was grand enough to entertain anyone she pleased.

The warmth of those parties had chilled into history. The living room’s once voluminous gray curtains hung in shreds from the windows, like silk spaghetti. The place was stately but sad, like a decrepit dowager in a tattered dress. Aside from a few pieces of insignificant furniture, the only thing that remained from the old days was Gay Harding’s portrait above the mantelpiece. Draped across a beige velvet sofa, wearing a blue dress, a long strand of pearls, and a cool gaze, she epitomized the elegance of a bygone era. But the artist had captured her steeliness as well.

As we studied the portrait, Violet said: “Here’s an interesting fact. The man who bought this house from Mrs. Harding originally insisted that her portrait ‘convey,’ as they say in real estate lingo. Apparently, he needed the painting here to remind people whose house it had once been—as if anyone could forget.”

“Trust me. People forget,” Cynthia said.

“I hope not. It was such a magical time,” I said wistfully.

Cynthia turned around and glared at me with something akin to belligerence.

“Let me offer you another perspective. It was all very well and good to be Gay Harding in those days—or any of those snooty Georgetown hostesses. But try being just about anyone else.
Forget it!
Those gals were a bunch of tough old birds, from what I’ve heard. If they didn’t like you,
God
couldn’t help you. Know what I’m saying?”

I actually did know what she was saying. Gay and her set wielded
an immense amount of social power. Everyone wanted to be in their orbit. They were a social junta—revered and feared at the same time.

“Her picture’s gotta go. Time to clear out the cobwebs and bring some new life to this old town,” Cynthia said.

“How about a portrait of
you
up there?” Violet said. I knew she was putting Cynthia on.

Cynthia shrugged. “Maybe. At least people would be looking at the future, not the past.”

Violet looked at me and rolled her eyes. Cynthia may have been her new best friend, but that didn’t mean she particularly liked her.

As we toured the rest of the house, it became clear that Cynthia was about as interested in decoration as I am in campaign finance reform. Her attitude was basically “Do it and call me when it’s done.” She only had two firm requests.

“Give me some tradition—you know, some antiques that look like they came from my great granny, ’cause Lord knows I don’t have any of my own, and that’s what they seem to go for around here,” she said with a gleam of defiance. “And some good shades. I hate light. Particularly in the morning when I’m trying to sleep.”

“You and Grant.” Violet sighed.

Grant Bolton was a neurotic light hater. He carried a roll of duct tape when they traveled to seal the edges of the windows and block out appliance lights in hotel rooms. The glow of a cell phone was like a klieg light to Grant. Ten years ago, when I helped Violet do some minor decorating, I’d blitzed their bedroom with expensive, handmade, lightproof shutters. I told Cynthia I’d order the same ones for her if she didn’t mind the cost.

“You can either have those shutters or a private plane,” Violet remarked.

“I’ll have both,” Cynthia remarked. “Money is no object.”

I hadn’t heard those words in a while, and they were music to my ears.

When Cynthia was inspecting another room, I took Violet aside and told her rather excitedly that Bob Poll had accepted my invitation to the PEN/Faulkner evening. Violet threw her arms around me and gave me a big hug.

“That’s fabulous! We’ve got a great table. I’ll seat you next to him so you can work your wiles.”

F
riday evening, Maxwell, Bob’s chauffeur, picked me up in front of my house, at six thirty sharp. I settled into the creamy leather back seat of the Rolls next to the neatly folded green mink throw, feeling pampered and, admittedly, quite excited. I was looking forward to the evening. I’d made a special effort to look my very best, and though I do have my off nights, this wasn’t one of them. I wore a clingy midnight blue velvet sheath and swept my hair up in a soft chignon. I wanted to look elegantly sexy. I checked myself out more than once in my compact mirror and thought, I may not be as luscious as Melody Hartford, but Bob won’t be ashamed to be with me.

We swung by to pick up Bob at his office downtown, in one of the big modern buildings around Fifteenth and M. Maxwell had telephoned Bob just as we were about to arrive. He was waiting outside, dapperly dressed in black tie with a black cashmere coat thrown over his shoulders and a long white silk scarf hanging around his neck.

“There she is,” he said to me as he climbed into the car. “Maxwell take good care of you?”

“Very good, thanks.”

He kissed me on the cheek and sat down with the green mink blanket between us. Maxwell started driving without having to be told where to go. This was obviously a familiar routine to both of them. I casually wondered if Bob ever picked up a woman himself or if he always sent his driver. However, now was not the time to inquire.

“I’m going to let you in on a little secret,” Bob said as we drove
along. “I was already going to this dinner. I always take a table. Good cause. Nice evening. But when Felicity told me you’d called, I asked a friend to fill in for me because I wanted to sit with you.”

I was flattered, except that I was dying to say, “If you wanted to see me so much, how come you didn’t call me and invite me to this evening yourself? How come I had to call you?” But I didn’t. I just took the compliment as it was obviously intended.

The cozy little Shakespeare Theatre was packed. This was the big PEN/Faulkner gala, where a group of writers read short little pieces on a common theme. The theme of the night was love. I was certainly in the mood for that. Bob and I sat with Violet and Grant in the third row. Cynthia was seated next to Grant, and there was an empty seat next to her. I asked Violet who the missing body was, and she said, “Senator Grider. But God knows if he’ll show up.”

The writers droned on. Finally it was over, and we all trooped into the famous Old Reading Room, a scholar’s paradise, designed to look like the great hall of an Elizabethan house. Many round tables set with pretty spring flowers filled the tranquil, opulent space. There was never any need to decorate that room for parties. The carved oak paneling, Renaissance tapestries, mammoth stone fireplace, and treasured stained-glass window depicting the “Seven Ages of Man” speech from
As You Like It
were sumptuous decoration enough. Dinners in this room were somehow enhanced by the depth of knowledge it contained.

The Boltons had put together a good group at their table. Nearly every table included one of the twelve writers; we drew the estimable Dorrit Dearing, whose reading had been one of the best received of the night. Her rumpled, myopic husband, Milton Dearing, was a professional bookbinder. Then there were Roland and Peggy Myers. Rolly Myers was a prominent African-American lawyer, known as “the eminence noir” because of his influence in the highest precincts of power. Peggy was president of the Capitol Symphony, and a good friend of mine. There was also Jean Herrend, a prominent congresswoman, and her husband, Sanders Herrend, an influential businessman who had built his own center for the arts, the Herrend Auditorium, which everyone agreed was an architectural and acoustical
triumph and a great addition to the artistic community. Finally, there was Senator Grider, who was obviously meant to be Cynthia’s date. Heavy hitters all.

Violet had assured me she was seating me next to Bob Poll. But somehow the place cards got switched around, and I found myself between Senator Grider and Milton Dearing. Cynthia had landed on the opposite side of the table, between Grant and Bob Poll. I didn’t like this one bit. She looked almost elegant in a black satin suit and very little jewelry, more toned down than usual, in keeping with the bookish nature of the event. Cynthia was younger and richer than I was, not to mention a budding celebrity. In other words, tough competition.

To make matters worse, Senator Grider was a no-show—
again
. I was stranded with only Mr. Dearing to talk to. While I found him to be a gentle, thoughtful man, he was obsessed with the subject of bookbinding. After a short time, I grew quite bored. There’s only so much one can hear about natural adhesives.

Meanwhile, Cynthia held forth. Both Grant and Bob looked quite enthralled with her. She was clearly not afraid to speak her mind in a town where the men do most of the talking. Her competitiveness seemed to invigorate all the men at the table, except perhaps good old Mr. Dearing, who kept droning on about glue. Bob stared hard at Cynthia as she spoke, looking as if he were either fighting gas or an erection.

I flung Violet several hapless glances. She shrugged and shook her head in dismay as if to indicate she couldn’t understand how the place cards got switched around.

Halfway through the entrée, Senator Grider finally arrived. He went around the table, introducing himself, shaking hands with everyone, looking deeply into their eyes as he repeated their names, then quickly moved on, like a good politician.

“Long, tough session,” he announced as he sat down beside me.

“Well, now you can relax,” I said.

He didn’t answer. He ordered the waiter to bring him a Diet Coke and launched into a conversation with Congresswoman Herrend, whom he seemed to know. Myopic Mr. Dearing and I had just exhausted another facet of his craft, namely gilt tooling, and I grabbed the opportunity to change the subject.

“So what else are you interested in—aside from bookbinding?” I asked him.

He had launched into the joys of calligraphy when I noticed that Senator Grider was sitting up stiffly, staring straight ahead, as if he were mentally twiddling his thumbs. I politely tried to draw him into our conversation.

“We were just talking about what interests us, Senator,” I said.

“Uh-huh,” he said, supremely uninterested.

“Aside from politics, what interests you?” I asked him.

“An early night,” he said.

Senator Grider had the sturdy, weatherworn look of a farmer. His brown hair was combed in pencil strings over a balding pate. He wore square wire-rim glasses and an air of earnestness coupled with determination. His closely set lead gray eyes glinted with judgment. His lips were as thin as straw. I suspected there was precious little humor under that stern veneer of righteousness. He seemed more blunt than grim, however, so I went on.

“You know, the last time I was seated next to you, you didn’t show up,” I said.

“Uh-huh.”

“Last month at the Symphony Ball? Do you remember?”

“Nope.”

The minute his main course arrived, Senator Grider attacked the Cornish hen as if he hadn’t had a decent meal in days. The bookbinding man was engaged in conversation with his other dinner partner, so I made a few more stabs at polite conversation with Grider. He returned my questions with grunt answers and continued shoveling in the food. Talking to this man was like talking to hay.

Finally, after several rebuffs, I said, “Don’t they feed you in Congress?”

That got his attention. He put down his knife and fork, leaned back in his chair, and fixed me with an inquisitive stare. Taking a slow, deliberate swig of Diet Coke, he asked, “So, what’s the story with this shindig tonight?”

“You don’t sound as if you enjoy these
shindigs
much,” I said, putting as distasteful an emphasis on the word as he had.

“Want the truth?”

“Oh, please don’t do anything that’s against your principles,” I said.

“Well, that sure tells me what you think of politicians.”

“Actually, I try
not
to think of them if I can help it,” I said.

He raised an eyebrow. “Truth is, I hate these things. Big waste of time, most of ’em.”

“I see. So why do you come?”

“To have a look-see. Always important to have a look-see in my business.”

“Okay, well, let’s try and make this a nice evening for you. What do you want to talk about?”

“Anything but politics,” he replied.

“Good. Because I don’t know anything about politics.”

“My dear young lady, this town is full of people who don’t know anything about politics and who talk about nothing
but
. Talking heads with nothing to say.”

“Young lady, eh? I’m so flattered.”

“Which half is incorrect?”

“I plead the fifth. So what state are you from?”

He froze for a split second as if I’d slapped him. “
Nebraska
,” he said, like it was a fact any schoolgirl should know.

“Guess what state I’m from?” I said playfully.

“Ignorance,” he replied, without missing a beat.

“Ha. Ha. New York. Originally. Are you a Democrat or Republican?” He shook his head in perturbed disbelief. “Don’t take it so personally. I don’t know what party anyone’s from.”

“Know what party the president’s from?”

“Don’t make me answer that.”

“You better not be one of these people who complains about the country all the time.”

“What do you mean?”

“’Cause if you don’t make it your business to find out who’s running the country, you have no business complaining about it. Who’d you vote for last election?”

“I never vote. It only encourages them, as they say,” I said, staring him down.

His straw lips twitched into what seemed to be his version of a smile. He cranked out a rusty hinge of a laugh.

“Very funny,” he said, mirthlessly.

Senator Grider was the human equivalent of string.

Throughout the dinner, I kept glancing at Bob, who was talking a little too animatedly with Cynthia. I was careful never to let him catch my eye. But I was irritated that Violet hadn’t switched us at the beginning of the meal. Now it was too late.

Toward the end of dinner, Douglas Reed, the president of the Folger, ambled up to a standing microphone in front of the cavernous stone fireplace to thank the writers and all of us for supporting PEN/Faulkner. At the very end, he said, “And now I have a surprise announcement. I’ll be brief because I can’t compete with all the great writers here tonight. But what I have to say will enhance the future of writers everywhere. The Cynthia A. Rinehart Foundation is donating ten million dollars to our beloved Folger Shakespeare Library! Cynthia, will you please come up here and say a few words?”

Cynthia rose from the table, accompanied by strong, appreciative applause. Senator Grider popped up like a periscope. His chilly eyes focused on her as she snaked her way through the room. At the microphone, she assumed a pious position, hands folded, head slightly raised, as if she were addressing angels in the rafters of that vaulted room. She launched into a speech about philanthropy, calling it “global goodness,” and how it had always been her dream to be a writer.

“But my talent lies in giving, not writing,” Cynthia said earnestly.

Grider leaned in and whispered to me: “She the one just donated all that dough to the Kennedy Center?”

“The very one,” I whispered back.

“Generous gal,” he murmured, narrowing his eyes.

I remember thinking I wouldn’t have wanted Zachary Grider squinting at me like that. He watched Cynthia wend her way back to her seat. She was stopped en route by a few people offering her their congratulations. Grider didn’t take his eyes off her until she sat down at our table again. Then he turned to me and said, “You know her?”

“Kind of. She’s just bought Gay Harding’s old house, and she’s asked me to decorate it for her.”

“You a decorator, are you?”

I explained that I hadn’t been a decorator for years, that I owned an antiques shop, but that the offer to decorate Mrs. Harding’s old house was just too tempting to turn down.

“So this Rinehart gal bought Gay Harding’s old house, did she?”

“Yup. She paid fifteen million dollars.”

Grider didn’t respond, but I sensed a file drawer opening in his brain.

“My wife liked to decorate. Wouldn’t let her decorate my office, though.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t like knickknacks. She was a great one for knickknacks, my wife was.”

Everyone at our table congratulated Cynthia except for Grider, who sat there like a big old hayrick without uttering a word. He stood up abruptly and announced to the table: “Folks, I’ve enjoyed my evening. Pleasure to be with you all. Good night.”

“Happy lawmaking,” I said with mock cheer.

He reached inside his pocket and handed me his card.

“You ever want to visit the Senate, give me a call.”

Soon after Senator Grider left, everyone got up. Bob Poll walked over to my side and whispered, “You’ve made a conquest.”

I looked at him askance. “You
must
be kidding. Senator Grider’s as dry as a dust bowl.”

“I don’t mean him. I mean me.”

On the way home in the car, I made reference to Cynthia—something about how she was “the girl who had everything.”

“Everything except the ability to listen,” Bob countered. “She’s a little too full of herself for my taste.”

I was so relieved to hear this, because I assumed that she’d charmed him. Bob was more eager to talk about Senator Grider.

“I’ve never seen Zack Grider so taken with a woman,” he said.

“If you call that taken, the old toad…. What happened to his wife? He alluded to her in the past tense. Are they divorced?”

“Nope. He’s a widower.”

“I’m sure he bored her to death.”

Bob laughed. “See? You’re irreverent. I bet he loved that. A breath of fresh air. So many of the women we sit next to at these events are dull because they’re so careful.”

“How do you mean, careful?”