Echo House (27 page)

Odd, he said. These things come and go and for a day or a week you're obsessed by it. Then it's settled one way or another and you forget about it as if it never existed, as in a way it never did.

"You handled Lambardo well, Alec."

"Thanks," Alec said. "He's an idiot."

"No, he isn't. And stay in touch with him. Mister Red Lambardo's going to get into a lot of trouble one of these days or, more likely, get someone else into a lot of trouble. He talks too much, about the wrong subjects to the wrong company. He underestimates people. He underestimated you. But I like his friends, and when Red lands in the hot water I'd like to be in a position to help out. That makes his friends our friends."

Leila was suddenly between them, saying that the party was over, it was time to go home.

"I was just telling Alec," Lloyd said. He put his other hand lightly on her arm, moving his fingers, smiling blandly. "I think it'd be a good idea if Alec came aboard with you and Hugo and Jo as general counsel. You're going to need someone to examine the contracts, give advice when you ask for it. More important, not be shy to listen to advice when you don't ask for it. Alec's in the picture."

"I'll buy that," Leila said. "I know Hugo and Jo will, too."

"Small detail," Alec said. "How do I advise from Chicago?"

"That's the other thing," Lloyd said. He was talking to Alec but looking at Leila. "I've been thinking about it a while. I'm selling my stake in Fisher, Gwilt. Let's leave Chicago to the true-blue Chicagoans. I'm itching to return to our national capital and establish a new firm altogether. And I will call that firm Fisher and Behl. Congratulations." He winked at Leila.

"What a wonderful surprise!" Leila cried.

"And I know you won't mind coming back home," Lloyd said.

Then they were all talking at once, Alec and Leila laughing, Lloyd looking on paternally. There was enough wine for a single glass, and they each sipped from it. Lloyd offered a final toast. Leila looked around her, puzzled. Where was Wilson? He was there a moment ago, and now he'd vanished without a trace. Did anyone see him go? He was sitting right
there,
Leila said. And now he was gone like a thief in the night.

"That boy has got to watch his tongue," Lloyd said.

Late that night, in bed at Echo House, Alec asked Leila if Lloyd had already told her about selling Fisher, Gwilt and moving to Washington. He'd mentioned something about it, she said vaguely; no details. She was sworn to secrecy. It's wonderful, isn't it? And even better that you'll be working with us, Hugo and me and the others. We don't know anything about organizing a business that'll be part private, part government. It's uncharted territory, she said, sort of like the Tennessee Valley Authority, except what we're selling is ideas. She went on to talk about the evening, how well it had gone despite Jo Broch's filibuster and Wilson's unfortunate remark at the end. What got into him? He doesn't know how lucky he is But thanks to Red Lambardo there was a serious commitment from the federal government, two studies right away, with more to come. Wilson's handling one of them, an analysis of the Cuban army's order of battle. He's absolutely first-rate, you know, ran away with all the honors at MIT and he's in very tight with the administration. Do you know someone called Ed Peralta? From the Defense Department, supposedly.

Yes, Alec knew Ed Peralta.

Is his word good?

Good as gold, Alec said.

We'll be reporting to him, Leila said.

She continued to reprise the dinner. Alec listened half-heartedly. He was pondering his return to Washington, working with a man he had known intimately for ten years, in the office and after hours in the Loot). At times Lloyd treated him like a son, at other times like anything but. Alec knew about Lloyd's father's mismanagement of the firm and Lloyd's struggles to save it, including the corners that had to be cut. He knew that Lloyd's voice thickened after the second martini, and at those times he liked to talk about his days in Berlin after the war; besides that, Chicago wasn't so much. It was only a place to make money and he had no children to give the money to, so what was the point? He was not popular with the five other lawyers in the firm or with the elite of the Chicago bar, because he had no interest in bar politics and rarely socialized at the Chicago Club or the Tavern, preferring instead the raucous dining room of the Morrison Hotel with an alderman, or the old world west-side Polish restaurant with André Przyborski.

Lloyd Fisher never belonged in Chicago despite the ancestral offices on La Salle Street and the fine apartment on the near North Side, the cottage in Door County, the country club memberships, and all the rest. Of course he grew rich, practicing law and marking time, always happiest when preparing his monthly visits to Washington, his business always vague, except he was now welcome again at Echo House for Wednesday lunch. Back in the game, Lloyd said.

He would return from the capital with a morning's worth of involved anecdotes signaling change in the way business was done. He hadn't worked out the implications, but it was obvious that the American government and American business were no longer enemies, despite Kennedy's angry rhetoric. In some ways there was very little difference between government and business, and the universities, too. You could call it a partnership or you could call it a cartel; the new relationship had aspects of both. Managing the transition would be the lawyers, now emigrating to Washington in huge numbers. I don't know what it means, Lloyd said, except that we're all going to be much, much richer than we are, thanks to the Cold War.

And what will you be leaving behind in Chicago? Leila asked.

But he didn't answer her question because he wasn't sure what he was leaving behind or if he was leaving anything. They had been together for five years, inseparable insofar as their work allowed. Leila was often absent, performing chores for Lloyd or for the Democratic National Committee. Then, the year before, Hugo Borne had offered her a job in the boring Bureau of the Budget and she had accepted at once, because it was a chance to return to the capital on her own terms; she and Hugo had talked for years about forming their own consulting company. Leila said she was the happiest she'd been and pleaded with Alec to join her in Washington. There isn't anything for you in Chicago, she'd said. And you could help me out. Do you have any idea how hard it is for a woman in this town just trying to get her foot in the door. It isn't Flo, is it?

Once a month he had dinner with Flo and her dull husband, Flo as animated as ever and single-minded about the White House, some day, some way. She and Leila had never gotten on and now with Leila gone Flo was candid about exactly what she intended to do. Jackie Kennedy had proven that you could seduce the public but there was much more to be done than musical evenings and shopping for antiques. Flo bullied her husband into a congressional race he had no chance of winning; and in due course she found her way to Alec's apartment, seeking advice on how to talk to Chicago newspaper reporters. Instead, they talked about Leila.

Why doesn't she like me? Flo asked. Leila's a little bit of an outlaw and she thinks you're the sheriff. Alec said. She thinks you're smarter than you let on and she wonders why you don't let on. Are you afraid of them? And she drinks beer from the bottle and you don't, Alec added, and at that Flo laughed and laughed. She said, Leila has to learn that there are two ways to skin the cats, an axe or a scalpel. I prefer the scalpel. The scalpel suits me. But I know how to use the axe, too.

She stayed for a drink and one thing led to another, as it was bound to do. Flo resisted a little and then she didn't resist at all. Life is full of surprises, she called from the shower. What fun! I never would've guessed. Don't you sometimes feel like just letting go? At heart I'm a bourgeoise, a suburban wife and mother of two with an unusual ambition. I'm supposed to be considerate and tactful and tentative, and that's not me at all. At least it isn't me when it counts. This was just stu—

He started, expecting the rebuke.

—pendous, she concluded.

Then she appeared from the shower, dripping wet, still talking. Her skin glowed; she gathered a towel around her middle. She stood in the half-light, bending to towel off, laughing again, looking as if she was posing for Renoir himself. Looking at her, Alec thought that in another life they might have been ideal for each other. At heart he was a bourgeois, too. And he preferred the scalpel to the axe.

To everyone's surprise the dull husband enjoyed campaigning and won his seat—thanks in part to Flo, who proved a superb speaker in small gatherings, her tiny twin daughters seated on her lap, saying that politics was an effort to secure the future for children, these children, your children, children everywhere. The girls were good as gold and always clapped adorably when their mother had finished. When Alec sent a bottle of Champagne on Election Night—he was conveniently in Washington—she replied with a box of golf balls.

Chicago was attractive, all right. He liked his apartment and the jazz club under the El station four blocks away. He especially liked it when mail came to him misspelled. Alec Bell. That never happened in Washington. Really, he didn't know what to think about Chicago, Flo, the firm, and their places in the general scheme of things. Probably this time was a parenthesis in the middle of a long-running sentence that would begin and end in the capital. He had to learn about Washington again, Leila's world as well as his father's world. Perhaps there would be Palm Beach weekends in the future, the President and the First Lady and Axel and La Bella Figura, with Red Lambardo to mix the drinks and record the conversation. Surely it was only a matter of time before Flo found her way to the White House, initially a state dinner, later the quiet evenings of French food and witty conversation. He could hardly believe that Axel had taken Paulina to meet the President, though Sylvia was not far wrong in suggesting that he was feeling like a boy again; acting like one, anyway, where Paulina was concerned. So if he saw more of Axel, he would see more of Paulina also; and no one would ever misspell his name again.

Alec had no particular affection tor the law, and in fact what he did had little to do with law. It had to do with regulations and procedures. It had to do with disputes between one man and another, the disputes arising from ego as much as from equity. He introduced one man to another man and handled the marriage ceremony if it worked out and the divorce if it didn't. From Lloyd he was learning to march his verbs up the hill and down again, feinting, thrusting, maneuvering, never quite surrounding. He remembered the cases because of the amusement they afforded, and the fee at the end of the day; but he had never cared much about money, and in that way he was his father's son. He did have a leather book filled with clippings from the
Tribune
and the
Daily News.
But he could as easily have been in medicine or business or diplomacy or journalism or films; he admitted a certain attraction to bright lights, perhaps his name in bright lights, but that never happened outside the criminal law. Alec supposed that, like Lloyd Fisher and his father, he belonged in the federal triangle, internist to the nation's metabolisrn. A famous internist, he thought suddenly, an internist who performed miracles. Axel always believed that all serious work was done in the shadows; but Axel had been wrong before.

Nothing at all? Leila said after a moment.

Some good friends, Alec said.

No matter, Leila said. You belong here.

Why do you say that?

Because this is where the edge is. It used to be in New York but it's here now.

I suppose it is, Alec said.

I thought Red Lambardo was having an orgasm, meeting you. You fit in, Alec. The President knows who you are. The President! You already have your foot in the door, and now mine's there, too.

B
Y
1973 Sylvia was back in Washington with Willy Borowy. A chance meeting on Fifth Avenue had led to lunch and lunch to a long weekend on Nantucket. Willy had come into some money and had bought a cottage by the sea. The weekend became a year and then five years. The move to Washington was Sylvia's idea, though Willy did not object. He wanted to test his perverse theory of Richard Nixon as the capital's true son and heir, and Sylvia wanted to see more of Alec and her grandchildren. She had been away almost a quarter-century.

And she returned in triumph. Nantucket—so distant, so silent, so spare, so cold—had forced her to begin to write again. After a long fallow period Sylvia had published two books in two years, and these had brought her prizes and praise from her contemporaries. She was frequently in the news because she gave such marvelous readings. She was in her early sixties and looked it, her hair gray and her Modigliani face filled out. She had dimples in her cheeks. But her voice had the range and timbre of a youngster. Sylvia was an irresistible performer in her jeans and signature black cardigan, gold medallion at her throat—Aries, the Ram—peering myopically over half-glasses, either reading from her own work or appearing on the conference circuit, giving studied answers to Simone Weil's great question, What are you going through right now?

It's a wonder what boredom can do, she said. Boredom is the ur-inspiration of poets, better than Scotch, better than sex—so long as it isn't allowed to go on forever. Her work needed a new twist, something beyond Cold War and feminism. She wondered whether she could smell the corruption in Washington, actually
smell
it, like onions or sweat or brimstone. As for Willy Borowy, he was happy to go along. He believed that calamity was at hand and wanted to see for himself how the capital would comport itself. Who would supervise the running of the tumbrils on Pennsylvania Avenue? And if it turned out to be another carnival act—well, Nantucket was only a few hours away.

At first Sylvia was disconcerted. She had forgotten how pretty the city was, how spacious and composed its vistas. The autumn of 1973 was a masterpiece, long golden afternoons that seemed to last forever. The streets smelled of leaves and fresh-baked bread. Each day she took meandering walks to reacquaint herself, strolling along the towpath and in Rock Creek Park, up M Street and Pennsylvania Avenue to Lafayette Square, along Embassy Row to the National Cathedral, and at last to Soldiers Cemetery opposite Echo House. She took a turn around the winding footpaths, stopping at the Behl plot and obscurely pleased to find it beautifully manicured. The old senator's stone was shrouded by Behlbaver roses. Then Sylvia turned to look at Echo House, the mansion grander and surlier than ever behind its high iron gates. Axel was not at home.