Act of Darkness(13)

He went up to the bar, wedged himself in between the lobbyists, and got a Scotch and water. One drink was all he was allowed at cocktail parties, and he usually saved it for late in the evening. This evening, he thought he should have taken it before the party started, for medicinal purposes. He was sweating.

He said hello to Clare Markey, who was sitting on one of the few barstools, and then headed across the room in the direction of Dan Chester and Kevin Debrett. They had tucked themselves between a pair of Jasper Johns abstracts that hung on the west wall and had been deep in conversation for over half an hour. Stephen thought it was time to break them up. At five minutes past eight, he was supposed to make an announcement, and he needed someone standing next to him while he did it. Because Janet appeared to be unwilling, Dan Chester was going to have to do.

Janet was standing next to her mother, looking like a plucked chicken next to Victoria’s honey blond sequined majesty, a contrast that always annoyed Stephen to distraction. Janet pretended he wasn’t there. Victoria stabbed him with one of those lethal stares that always made him feel like a bug. On her torso, the oversize heart-shaped ruby brooch made her look like she was being vivisected.

He retreated, quickly, and almost ran to Dan and Kevin at the place against the wall. His heart was pounding and the back of his shirt was soaked through under the protection of his Aquascutum blazer. He felt exactly the way he had the time he had been caught cheating in history class, and Professor Thomaston had made such a fuss about it.

“Jesus Christ,” he said, as soon as he was close enough to Dan and Kevin to whisper and not be overheard. “She wants my scalp tonight, she really does. What’s the matter with her?”

“Patchen Rawls,” Dan Chester said.

“She knows she doesn’t have anything to worry about with Patchen Rawls,” Stephen said. “My God, Dan. We’ve been through this a hundred times before.”

Kevin Debrett coughed into his drink and spattered his face with Scotch. “Never mind,” Dan said. “I’ll talk to Janet later. Are you all ready to make your little speech?”

Stephen nodded. He was never really ready to make a speech. He hated making speeches, except on television, where they didn’t last very long. He was always sure he was going to say something stupid, or quote something he’d heard once without attribution, or do any one of a hundred different things that got politicians in trouble when they forgot to keep their mouths shut. He couldn’t imagine having been a politician in the days of William Jennings Bryan or Theodore Roosevelt, when politicians never lost an opportunity to pontificate. It was bad enough to imagine himself sitting in the White House with a State of the union   Address to deliver.

“Janet,” he told Dan Chester, “isn’t going to be with me.”

“Of course she’s going to be with you,” Dan said.

“She won’t even talk to me.”

“Give me a minute.” Dan put his drink down on the occasional table under the Jasper Johns on the left, next to a vase of roses, and headed across the room to the cluster around Victoria Harte. Stephen watched him go with some apprehension, and felt that apprehension rise when Dan leaned over to whisper in Janet’s ear. But Janet didn’t slap him, which was what Stephen had expected her to do. She simply gave her drink to her mother and marched across the room to the coffee table where they were supposed to stand while he told the world about his great new project to put compassion back in government.

Kevin, who had been watching it all too, said, “He’s wonderful, isn’t he? Dan. He can do anything.”

“Yeah,” Stephen said. “He even knows the anything he’s supposed to do.”

“He’s coming back,” Kevin said. “He’s right, you know, Stephen. You ought to do something about Patchen Rawls. She’s getting—sticky. I know the signs.”

“So do I.”

“I’m sure you do. If you don’t intend to divorce Janet and marry her, you’d better get around to unsticking her. Remember what happened to Gary Hart.”

Stephen was sick of remembering what happened to Gary Hart. Fortunately, Dan was back.

“Get moving,” Dan said, beginning to drag him across the room.

Stephen began to feel nauseated, the way he always felt nauseated in front of a crowd, and the nausea was quickly being joined by the physical feeling he liked least of all: prickling. For some reason, whenever he was very nervous or very frightened, his skin began to tingle and then to pinch, as if he were undergoing some kind of involuntary, psychic acupuncture. After a while, it began to feel as if he were being stuck straight through all the layers of muscle and bone. He saw Patchen, in from the terrace, and shuddered a little. She looked even angrier than Janet. Worse, she was unpredictable. If Dan didn’t get to her and deflect her, she might make a scene. In a way, she was making a scene now, pushing through the crowd to him, elbowing in next to Victoria Harte, reaching out to touch his sleeve. He felt her hand stroking against the fabric of his blazer and then a crescendo of hot little needlelike pricks, like ectoplasmic hypodermics invading the soft skin at the side of his neck. He jumped, and Dan Chester grabbed at him.