Star Time (25 page)

“I hope you’ll be more flattered when I tell you the reason: I’m in love with you.”

Chris was not even mildly amused by his flirting. “Do you really score in Washington with a line like that?”

“I’ve never used it before. But then a lot of years have passed since I was in love with anyone.”

“Senator Chandler—” she began.

“Please call me Ken.”

“Senator Ken,” she said tartly, not about to assume familiarity, “according to well-founded rumor, you have taken up temporary residence in every bed between New York and Guam. One would expect that falling in love was something you did as often as showing up on the Senate floor for roll calls. Or am I overestimating your professional diligence?”

His expression remained serious. “I said I hadn’t been in love with anyone in a long while. I didn’t say I’d never been in bed with anyone.”

“So we’ve all heard.” She did not smile. “I’m offended, really.”

“I meant it.”

“Even if that’s true, it’s foolish. All you know about me is the professional image I project on your TV screen. I’m only a small part of that person.”

“Then imagine how much more I’ll love you when I get to know the rest of you.”

“Have you been drinking?”

“I don’t drink. It used to be a problem.”

“I’ve heard that, too.” The private frailties of movers and shakers was as casually discussed by the rest of Washington as a john’s tastes was by call girls—usually for the same reasons.

“For one thing I’m not the playboy you seem to believe I am. I’m really a little bit shy.”

“Senator Ken, please spare me your stab at appealing boyishness. Offhand I’d say you usually have better luck when you play the man of power who says he’s looking for a woman he can be just plain Ken with, can shed a tear with. You know, commanding, but sensitive. They tell me the President gets a lot of mileage out of that one.”

“I don’t know how much command I have, but the rest of it’s true.”

Chris frowned. “Your material probably plays better with wide-eyed administrative aides and rural campaign workers.”

“I think you should be less cynical. I intend to marry you.”

Chris instantly turned to people on her other side and ignored him the rest of the evening.

# # #

Increasingly, only a small provocation could ignite Greg and Diane’s vexation with each other. Sometimes a single question was enough to do it.

“No,” he replied crossly, “I will not spend my summer vacation with your father. We have him over for dinner. We go out to events with him. I work for him. My vacation time is my own.”

Greg had long since given up hoping that time with his father-in-law would improve his chances for promotion. Since the marriage, Barnett had talked very little with him about FBS. Greg suspected the reason was to keep from raising his expectations unreasonably.

Seated in the rear of a limousine, the sound barrier up to seal their talk from the chauffeur, Greg and Diane were on their way downtown to a formal gala in Battery Park City’s glass-enclosed Winter Garden. She had just informed him that her father was renting a large house in Cap
Ferrat
for the summer and had invited her and Greg to join him. She was excited by the prospect.

“Oh, Greg, I know the house. It’s wonderful, very big and right on the water. We’d have our own suite. And the French Riviera is such great fun in August. Everyone will be there.”

“A couple of months ago I mentioned maybe going up to the woods in Canada, just the two of us and a guide.
A cabin on a lake, fishing, hiking.”

Diane was laughing. “I’m sure I didn’t agree to anything like that.”

“It would be a chance for us to get away from all this. To be alone together and really get to know each other again.”

Diane had become serious. “Greg, if you want to take a weekend and go hiking somewhere, that’s fine, but it isn’t something I’d really be comfortable doing. Cap
Ferrat
would be for all of August.”

“You seem to be able to take off from your job whenever you like. I can’t. Two weeks is the limit.
And a week in the winter.
That’s what I get.”

“Daddy wants to have a lot of dinner parties and for me to be his hostess. He wants both of us there,” she concluded with a firmness that must originally have been communicated by her father.

The Chairman wanted his daughter with him for the month of August, Greg supposed, but was reconciled to having to take the husband as well.

For Barnett the world outside his home was divided into two groups: employees and those he needed. Greg slopped messily over into both categories. As far as Greg could tell, Barnett had never worked out how to treat him or how to value him and continually refused to take him seriously, except as a potential problem to be contained.

“You can do whatever you want

you usually do. I’m going to Canada.”

“What do you expect me to tell my father?”

“Tell him the
truth, that
we fight all the time and are resentful in between.”

“I wouldn’t want to upset him. And it isn’t as bad as you make it sound.”

“At least nothing that money wouldn’t cure, right?”

“You seemed very happy with my money when we first got married.”

“I like your money very much. It frees our lives from all the material care nearly everyone else in the world is bent over double by.”

“It’s just me you don’t like?”

Greg stared at her in the shifting light cast through the car’s darkened windows.

“No, I like you, Diane,” he admitted. “What I don’t like is either the person you want to turn me into . . . or the person I’ve become.” A slight smile invaded the gravity of his expression. “I never understood before that Prince Philip had the hardest job in England.”

Her anger now showed itself. “I am not about to give you control over my money.”

“That’s what it always comes down to for you,” he said sadly. “All I want is what I’ve always wanted: for us to make the important decisions together.”

“You can make all decisions yourself that you’re prepared to pay for,” she snapped. “And I’ll make mine.”

More than the financial imbalance was irreconcilable. He wanted so much from her that had no price or status, things she would not or could not provide. Above all, he realized, he wanted very much to want her. And he didn’t.

The car came to a stop. Diane looked out the side window. “We’re here.”

A moment later the chauffeur opened the rear door.

“Why is it,” Greg asked her, “that our important conversations are slipped in while we’re going somewhere?”

“Because that’s the only time we’re forced to talk to each other.”

They stepped onto the sidewalk.  Greg took her arm and led her toward the Winter Garden entrance. Diane hated it when Greg tried to assert himself by becoming difficult.

Barnett had already arrived at the reception and was speaking to people when they entered. Greg drew him aside.

“Barnett,” he said, “
thank
you for inviting us to the Riviera. But I had plans to go fishing in Canada.”

Barnett glanced pointedly at his daughter.

“Just for the first week of Greg’s vacation,” she said lightly, “and then I’ll join you in Cap
Ferrat
.”

Her gaze shifted to Greg, waiting to know whether he would yield as she had.

Greg finally turned to his father-in-law. “Yes, we’re looking forward to it.”

Diane’s relief showed instantly. She hugged her father’s arm and kissed him on the cheek. “We’ll have a wonderful time. We always do in Cap
Ferrat
.”

During the three weeks
following
the dinner party, Chris refused to take Ken Chandler’s phone calls and had overlooked his messages.
Twice she
dated a news producer employed by a different network. No sparks, but they had had fun together.

One aftern
oon a male reporter with whom she was friendly passed by Chris’s desk in the press room and handed her an envelope printed with the return address of Chandler’s Senate office. Chris was about to toss it away when the man stopped her.

“I promised not to leave until you read it.”

“Do you know this guy?” she asked.

The other reporter nodded.

“Well?”

“As far as I can tell, he’s an upright guy.”

“For a politician, you mean.”

The man nodded. No group was more scornful of politicians’ morality than the reporters who covered them, interpreting officeholders’ every act and statement solely in light of their desire to retain their jobs at the next election.

Chris tore open the envelope and read the handwritten note.

Dear Chris,

Doesn’t a good reporter check out the facts before making up her mind?

Ken Chandler

He had guessed correctly that appealing to her professionalism would probably move her to consider whether a prejudice had caused her to jump to an incorrect conclusion. Having an easy schedule for the next few days, she launched an investigation of the Honorable Kenneth V. Chandler, Democrat senator from the State of New York, graduate of Cornell University and Columbia Law School, summer volunteer to register black voters in the South, former assistant district attorney, state assemblyman, and Congressman.

What began to turn up—despite her skepticism—was confirmation of his sincerity. He was a thoughtful, reliable man who kept his word and not the playboy she had pictured. His divorce seemed to have resulted from incompatibility and not infidelity on his part. Since then he had dated well-known and not-so-well-known women, but usually discreetly. Notoriety had come when a famous actress he was dating leaked a steamy story to the press for publicity; he was immediately labeled a Casanova.

In their phone conversations, Marian had been urging Chris to accept a date with “Senator Ken,” as they had fallen into the habit of calling him. Now, she was insistent.

“You owe it to him, Chris, after the things you said to him.”

“But if he’s not a phony, then he’s crazy. Nobody in his right mind tells a woman he barely knows that he loves her and intends to marry her.”

“You’ve been a reporter too long. Think of it as romantic. A man sees a woman on television or ‘across a crowded room’ “—she sang that part—”and falls in love at first sight. Besides, crazies do not get elected senator.”

“Want to bet?”

“All right, I take that back. But admit you misjudged him. I think you owe it to him to go out with him at least once.”

Chris paused to think about it. No doubt in light of what she had learned she had treated him rudely. “Okay, once. That’s all.”

Chris phoned Ken at the Senate Office Building and invited him to dinner at Citronelle. The dessert, she assured him, would be humble pie.

“No,” he said.

“You’ve been asking me out for a month.”

“If it means letting you buy me dinner, I won’t do it. I wouldn’t feel comfortable.”

“Tell you what then, a picnic on the Potomac. I’ll bring the picnic. You bring the cherry blossoms.”

“Fine.”

For some reason Chris could not fathom, her buying the food for a picnic was acceptable to him, her buying the meal at a restaurant was not. He would bring wine and dessert.

Annette Valletta’s previous series had been successful, but the large-eyed comedienne had been turned into a superstar by her zany TV comedy series
Loving
Luba
. In it she played a red-haired Russian immigrant married to an American rock star. Within weeks after premiering, the FBS show had shot to number one in the ratings, which allowed the network to dominate Thursday nights.

Annette had known Sally Foster since both were struggling to make it in Hollywood, and she was the most loyal of friends. Sally had been invited to dinner at Annette’s house, where she was now living with her new husband, Johnny. Sally had introduced the couple. When her rehearsal ended, Annette phoned Sally Foster’s house. No one answered and the answering machine was turned off. Sally never arrived for the dinner and, again, didn’t answer any phone calls. Annette grew worried. Sally had become increasingly forgetful lately; she seemed to be at loose ends.

Finding herself unable to sleep because of her concern, at two in the morning Annette dressed, left a note for Johnny, and drove over to Sally’s house.

Since the demise of her series, Sally had appeared in a made-for-television movie and two pilots the networks had not picked up. She entered into a marriage that was canceled faster than her series and took up some hobbies. One was self-pity. Another was untrustworthy men. A third was rumored to be cocaine.

Annette had attempted to talk to Sally about the problem several times. Sally swore that she had only tried coke once or twice and had not used it for years. Annette wanted to believe her and used her influence to find Sally acting jobs,
to
little avail. Even when Sally was hired, she was often late, unreliable in front of the camera, and quickly fired. She always had a good reason why it had not been her fault. Studios grew leery of hiring her.