Suddenly I realized that I was caught in the middle of a family argument. I also realized that the key to the whole thing, Richard Garrett, was on my side, whereas the other half of it, Hortense Garrett, which I had at first taken for granted, was what was blocking me. Apparently Mr. Garrett didn’t know why but meant to find out.
“Hortense, will you please tell us what your objection is? I confess, this thing appeals to me a lot more than hospitals do or some angle on education or the various eleemosynary activities I’m constantly being asked to support — as an outlet for this money that’s piling up, and—”
“Richard, it also appeals to me, as I said. I’m for it. I’ll be glad to help Dr. Palmer in any way I can. If you want to endow his institute, that’s fine, but I won’t be its den mother, which is what I think you want.”
“Well, somebody has to be.”
“Somebody else, not me.”
“That was a song.”
“I know.”
He sat there, snapping his nails against his ballpoint. He was obviously annoyed, but no more annoyed than I was. To come so close and yet miss depressed me. He asked: “Will you give me a memo on it, something I can refer to if the subject ever comes up? No hurry. When you get back to Nebraska will be soon enough.”
“Maryland,” I corrected. “The senator comes from Nebraska, but I’m at the University of Maryland, where his son is a student. He got into a scrape once over marijuana, which I was able to get him out of. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
“Well, I should hope so.”
“Where do you live in Maryland?” she asked me.
“College Park. It’s a little town near the District—”
“Oh, I’ve been to College Park. Are you driving there now?”
“Why — yes, of course.”
“He’s putting ideas in my head,” she said, turning to her husband.
“Oh,” he said vaguely, “you mean that car?”
“That you left there,” she finished for him, sounding a bit waspish. “I was going down with Jasper tonight to bring it back, but—”
“I’m sure Dr. Palmer would be more entertaining company, if he cares to give you a lift.” Then, to me: “Would you haul my wife down to Washington when you go?”
“Of course. I’d love to.”
For a moment I must have given it a blank stare, because they started talking at the same time; explaining that for various reasons having to do with ARMALCO, the conglomerate he was president of, he maintained a branch office in Washington and an apartment in Watergate. Three times a week a courier — Jasper — went down there at night with a pouch containing correspondence, memos, and tapes and then drove back in the morning with a pouch from the other end. Mr. Garrett had left the Cadillac at the Watergate apartment some days before when he had business with a friend who had brought him back in his private plane. Mrs. Garrett had expected to drive down with Jasper to bring the car back, but fortunately, here I was instead.
For a moment I glimpsed the world of patents, lawyers, lobbyists, and fixers that they lived in, but then, there she was, wagging her finger at me and bending forward so that those attachments bulged.
“And you stop sulking!” she said. “I really am for your institute. I mean to help you get it, just so long as you leave me out. In fact, I have one or two ideas that could actually get you somewhere.”
“Go to it, Dr. Palmer,” Mr. Garrett said with a kind of grim look. “At least you’ll have her for two hours as your captive audience.”
“No, I’ll have him for two hours as mine.”
Apparently her bag was already packed for the trip she was to take, because it took only a minute for the Swedish maid to bring it, as well as two coats — one a sort of light spring cape and the other a standard mink. Mr. Garrett took the coats and I took the bag after putting on my own coat and hat, and we went downstairs to the parking lot. I put her bag in the trunk of my car and the coats on the back seat. Then I helped her in.
Mr. Garrett put his head in the window and kissed her. Then he came around to my side of the car and shook hands. Nothing more was said about the institute project. He stepped back and waved as I started the motor and drove out to the street.
When we stopped at the first light and I turned the air-conditioner on, I could smell her. It annoyed me that I wanted her. I was still sulking, and not feeling very friendly toward her, but I felt the same hot lech I had felt when she swept into the living room. I tried to fight it off, with no success whatsoever.
“The light’s green,” she said quietly, and for one throbbing moment I thought she meant her light.
“Oh — thanks.” My voice sounded as though I were inside a bass drum.
2
Not much was said until we were outside Wilmington, rolling on Route 40, when she suddenly sounded off: “Dr. Palmer, to clear up why I’m interested in your institute and at the same time want no connection with it — no personal connection, that is. My husband’s interest in it is genuine. He respects, reveres, achievement, which is what biography honors, so there’s nothing phoney about what he told you. Just the same, there’s a little more to it than what was said, on his side as well as mine. Genuine interest or not, his immediate concern is to use this thing as bait, to dangle it in front of me, to get me to take it over so that we’ll shift our base to Washington — our secondary base, that is — because, of course, Wilmington would still be home. He thinks that by giving me this toy, I’ll be so excited about it, so excited about the prospect of running a high-toned salon for the great, the near-great, and the would-be-great who’ll be getting themselves written up, that I’ll fall all over myself to move down and become the new Marjorie Merriweather Post, patroness of the arts, encourager of the intelligentsia, and chief cook and bottlewasher of all that’s fine and beautiful. I will — in a pig’s eye. What’s your name?”
“Palmer.”
“Your first name, Dr. Palmer?”
“Oh. Lloyd.”
“Mine’s Hortense, if you’d like to call me that.”
“Hortense, I’d be honored.”
“Lloyd, the reason is simple, and it’s not subject to change after a sales talk, even from you. In Wilmington I’m a great big beautiful frog in the biggest puddle on earth, and I’m not trading that off for something tiny, like a tadpole in a millpond, which is what I’d be in Washington.”
“Washington is tiny?”
“Compared with Wilmington, yes.”
“I never heard that.”
“Now you have.”
“Just how do you measure ponds?”
“With money. How do you?”
“Why, with power, for one thing.”
“Money is power.”
“That’s one of those spread-eagle statements that’s true every foot of the way, not true for every inch. In other words, it’s as true as you think it is, but that still leaves the beautiful frog. She is beautiful — every inch, every foot, every yard—”
“Every mile? I’m not that tall.”
“Get on with what you started to say. Are you talking about Du Ponts or what?”
“Something wrong with Du Ponts?”
“Not that I know of, no.”
“They don’t blow their horn, that’s true. It’s one of the characteristics of money that it does not like its name in the papers — except for pictures, of course. For us beautiful frogs, that’s permitted, and I confess that I like it. I like seeing my photograph in print, with my shadows touched up just a bit with mascara. Do you like my shadows?”