20
ON THE SAME NIGHT, AFTER MY FATHER FLEW BACK TO WASHINGTON, I HAD a late date with Modene. She was returning to Miami on an evening flight, and we were going to a safe house. She did not like hotels. “Miami Beach is a very small world to its residents, and I am highly noticeable among them,” she had told me.
After that, I chose a small but elegant place on Key Biscayne that had been leased to Zenith by a wealthy Cuban who would be in Europe for the summer. I was ready to gamble that it would present no problem for a few meetings. I used to pick her up at the airport in my white convertible and wheel us over Biscayne Bay along Rickenbacker Causeway to the villa off North Mashta Drive. We would spend our nights in the master bedroom, and waken in the morning to a view of royal palms, white habitations, mangrove shore, and pleasure boats in Hurricane Harbor.
I was, of course, balancing a set of lies between Harlot and the safe-house desk at Zenith, but the risk seemed small. Hunt was the only intelligence officer in South Florida who had the right to ask me what I was using the safe house for, and while he would be routinely notified of the fact each time I signed a chit for safe-house use (and Hunt was the man to know a good address by its name—North Mashta Drive would certainly alert his attention), still, I was protected by our procedural restraints. The villa, for purposes of signing out, was merely listed as Property 30G. If I was using it a good deal, Hunt, if curious, would still have to look up its address and owner by way of a classified in-house manual; why bother? Given our hordes of Cubans, we were using safe houses all the time. So, I had little to fear. Once, in a dream, I did awaken long enough to see Hunt’s ski jump of a nose peering around the master bedroom door to take in the sight of Modene and myself in carnal clutch, but that was a dream. I was impressed by how little distress I carried compared to what I would have gone through if it had been my first year in the Agency. Perhaps I was beginning to live with Harlot’s dictum that in our profession we learn to get along with unstable foundations.
So I could feel pride in my illicit use of La Villa Nevisca. The stucco walls were as white as any edifice on the South Florida shore, and its name in English, House of the Light Snowfall, proved worth repeating to Modene who exhibited such naïve pleasure in the translation that I began to wonder how long it had taken her father to get accustomed to his money. Sometimes, when her precise way of speaking—the product of years of elocution lessons—began to pall on me, I confess that I began to see all Midwesterners as simple. In defense of such large prejudice, I must say that whenever a building was possessed of charm, or a touch of history, she was too impressed. She liked windows with odd shapes, wood filigree porches, pastel-colored edifices in general, and romantic names—La Villa Nevisca was perfect! She was even impressed with replicas of Southern mansions in Key Biscayne. (It became important to me, therefore, not to compare her in any way to Kittredge.) All the same, I could not keep from envisioning Modene’s childhood on well-to-do Grand Rapids streets and concluded that her contempt for my low station in life—“I guess you’re the poorest man I ever dated”—was more than equalled by her bottomless awe of my attainments: Yale, and a profession I could not talk to her about. I did not even try to tell her about St. Matthew’s.
I am being unfair. She knew what she knew, and her self-confidence was absolute on certain matters. She loved to dance, for instance. After a couple of evenings in a nightclub, however, we more or less gave it up. I was adequate on the floor, and she could have been a professional. If she showed me variants of the samba and the merengue, the cha-cha and the Madison, if she could go into a triple lindy off a double lindy, it was only to demonstrate her skill: She had no desire to raise my abilities through collaboration—it would make her feel silly, she explained. The aristocratic reflex of an artist was in her rejection: One does not wish to dull one’s talent. In preference, forswear the art.
On the other hand, I came to recognize that my accent fascinated her. She declared that she could listen to it all night with as much pleasure as if Cary Grant were speaking. I came to recognize that Cary Grant was her point of reference for people whose minds were occupied with niceties, and I understood then why she would not teach me how to dance, no, no more than I would spend a part of my life teaching her to speak. She spoke well enough. If it could pall at times on my ear, well, she had other virtues.
Once she said to me (and I heard echoes of Sally Porringer), “You’re such a snob.”
“Do you know,” I said, “so is your dear friend Jack Kennedy.” Then I could not resist the cruelty—“Wherever he is.”
“He’s trying to win an election,” she answered, “so how could he have time for me? Of course, he doesn’t.”
“Not even for a phone call.” My jealousy was scalding my heart as directly as boiling soup on a tender lap.
“He’s not a snob,” she said. “He has an intense interest in everyone around him. Unlike you, he’s the best listener I ever met.”
I was not. She would start to speak and my mind would wander over to her carnal virtues. I never saw her but in a cloud of sexual intent. I did not have to listen to her—she was so much more than what she was saying. Soon, we could go to bed, and then I would find her brilliant again, and delicate, deep and fierce, yes, dear, greedy, generous, warm, and her heart would be ready to melt in sorrow and joy, all this for me on any night when we could transcend each and every annoying impasse of the evening and get to bed. Then I did not have to worry whether I knew how to dance.
Libido may be inner conviction, but libido rampant is megalomania. My mind would tell me that I was the greatest lover she had ever had; somewhat later, libido, by three parts out of four consumed, I became again the man who did not know how to dance. Sinatra knew how. So did Jack. They knew.
“You’re mad,” she would say to me. “Jack Kennedy has a bad back. He got it in the war. We never danced at all. It didn’t matter. I wanted to listen to him when he talked and I loved to talk while he listened.”
“And Frank? Frank doesn’t dance?”
“It’s his profession.”
“Dancing?”
“No, but he understands it.”
“And I don’t?”
“Come here.” Lying in bed, she would kiss me, and we would commence again. I would scourge the fourth part of my libido. Next morning, I would be in a towering depression. It would seem to me that I was nothing but a pit stop in the middle of a race. Kennedy would be back; Sinatra might always return, and Giancana was waiting. How crude were my emotions now that they were exposed to myself!
I do not know how well I was prepared, therefore, when a communication came in from Harlot on August 1.
SERIAL: J/38,854,256
ROUTING: LINE/ZENITH—OPEN
TO: ROBERT CHARLES
FROM: GLADIOLUS
10:05 A.M. AUGUST 1, 1960
SUBJECT: BABYLONIAN PARTOUSE Call me on SEEK.
GLADIOLUS
His conversation was brisk: “Harry, I had one hell of a time collaring this transcript. It’s BLUEBEARD–AURAL on July 16th of convention week in Los Angeles. Buddha has kept it not only in Special File, but Select Entry. Still, I plucked it forth. Pressure points pay off.”
“How soon,” I asked, “can you get it over to me?”
“Will you be at Zenith four o’clock today?”
“I can be.”
“Expect my man at your desk on the dot.”
“Yessir.”
“Are you mermaid-witting yet?”
“No, sir,” I lied, “but on the way.”
“If it takes too long, it will accomplish less when you get there.”
“Sir?”
“Yes?”
“Partouse. It’s Parisian slang, isn’t it?”
“You’ll see soon enough.”
At 4:00 P.M., a man I recognized as one of the two baboons who had been in Berlin with Harlot four years ago, came into my office, gave a short nod, handed over an envelope, and left without requesting my signature.
“July 17, 1960. AIRTEL TO DIRECTOR FROM FAC SPOON-OVER, subject SELECT, recorded July 16, 7:32 A.M. to 7:48 A.M. Pacific Time.”
MODENE: Willie. Please listen. It just blew up with Jack.
WILLIE: It just blew up? It’s nine-thirty in the morning here. So it must be seven-thirty your time. What’s happened? Not one phone call all week.
MODENE: What I mean is it blew up last night at three in the morning, and I haven’t slept since. I’m waiting to get on a plane. I’m at the airport. I didn’t sleep.
WILLIE: What did he do?
MODENE: I can’t tell you yet. Please! I’ve got to be orderly about it.
WILLIE: You really are upset.
MODENE: He put me up at the Beverly Hilton all week and said I was his guest, but I felt awfully tucked away. I never knew if I was going to be alone with room service or he would call me out late at night.
WILLIE: Did you go to the convention?
MODENE: Yes. He had me in a box. Only, I think it was the number-four box. There was the Kennedy family in the first one, and more family and friends in another, and then there was a third where I saw a good many important-looking people in the box next to mine, but my box was odd. Some of Frank’s friends were installed there, whereas Frank was in the Kennedy family box. My box was second-rate people, I don’t know how to describe them. Boston politicians maybe, gold teeth practically, although not that crass. And one or two women I most certainly did not like the look of. Very expensive hair-jobs, like, “Do not ask who I am. I am the mystery woman.”
WILLIE: But you did see him?
MODENE: Of course, nearly every night.
WILLIE: How many nights did he miss?
MODENE: Well, three out of seven. I used to wonder if he was with one of the women in my box.
WILLIE: He must have been feeling equal to dynamite.
MODENE: One night he was so tired I just held him. A wonderful glow came off him. So deeply tired, so happy. One night, he was wonderful. Full of energy. His back, which usually bothers him, was feeling absolutely relaxed. Jack Kennedy is one man who should have the right to go around with a healthy back, because it’s just right for him.
WILLIE: He probably had a shot of painkiller. I’ve heard that rumored.
MODENE: It was a consummate night and I had nothing I wanted to keep in reserve for myself. But then I didn’t see him for the next couple of nights. Then, the day they chose Lyndon Johnson for Vice President, Jack was very tired and I just held him, but last night . . . (pause) Willie, I don’t want to turn the faucet that opens the waterworks.
WILLIE: If you can’t cry around me, you are in double-duty trouble.
MODENE: I am in a public place. At a pay phone. Oh, damn, it’s the operator.
OPERATOR: Will you deposit seventy-five cents for the next three minutes?
WILLIE: Transfer the call to my number, Operator. It’s Charlevoix Michigan. C-H-A-R-L-E-V-O-I-X, Michigan, 629-9269.
MODENE: On the last night, the parties went on forever. Toward the end, Jack took a group to a friend’s suite at the Beverly Hilton and he whispered to me to stay, so I hovered around the edges, and that is an embarrassing position. I stayed as long as I could in the bathroom fixing my hair, until it was down to a few of his top political workers and himself and me, then I drifted into the bedroom, and he came in and sighed, and said, “At last, they are all gone,” and I went into the bathroom again to undress. When I came out, he was in bed, and I couldn’t believe it—there was also another woman, one of the ones I had seen in the convention box. She was just about out of her clothes.
WILLIE: My God, is he taking lessons from Frank?
MODENE: I went right back into the bathroom and dressed and by the time I came out, the other woman was gone. I couldn’t stop shaking. “How did you ever find the time to manage all this?” I asked. I was awfully close to screaming. I couldn’t bear it that he was so calm. He said, “It did take a bit of juggling,” and I came very near to slapping him. He must have seen the look in my eye because he said he hadn’t done it to offend me, he just thought this part of life was an enhancement. “An enhancement,” I said. “Yes,” he said, “it’s an enhancement for those who can appreciate it.” Then he told me that he once loved a French woman very much who delighted in such arrangements, even had a name for it—la partouse. P-A-R-T-O-U-S-E. If you were ready for it, there was no harm done, he said, although obviously, as he could see by my reaction, he had certainly made an egregious error.
WILLIE: Egregious!
MODENE: Yes. I said, “Jack, how could you? You have everything,” and he said, “It’s all over so soon, and we do so little with our lives.” Can you believe that? He’s such an Irishman. Once they get their mind fixed, you need a pickax to break into the concrete. He started to fondle me, and I said, “Let go, or I am going to scream.” And I left him there. I went to my room and drank Jack Daniel’s until dawn. I didn’t answer the phone.
WILLIE: Oh, Modene.
MODENE: I’m not even drunk now. I am cold sober. There is too much adrenaline in me. He had the gall to have eighteen red roses sent up to my room with a bellhop. Just before I checked out. It had a note: “Please forgive the stupidest thing I’ve ever done!” Well, I want to tell you, I spent well over a hundred dollars and ordered six dozen yellow roses to be delivered to him right away, and signed, Modene. He’ll get the message.
WILLIE: Does he know about Sam’s yellow roses?
MODENE: Of course he does. I made a point of telling him. I liked to tease him about that.
WILLIE: It sounds to me like you’re cooking up a welcoming party for Sam.
MODENE: No, not Sam! Not now! I have to see what kind of mood I’m in when I get back to Miami.
WILLIE: We’re going to have some crazy time if this guy gets elected president.
MODENE: Willie, I’m hanging up. I don’t want to start crying.
I had an odd reaction. I asked myself whether I would ever try to bring another woman into bed with Modene, and knew I would not, but that was only for fear of losing her. If she ever brought a woman to our bed, well, that I might like very much. There were times, especially lately, when—St. Matthew’s be damned—I thought we were here on earth to feel as many extraordinary sensations as we could; perhaps we were supposed to bring such information back to the great Debriefers in the sky.
Soon enough, however, I began to recognize how much real anger I was holding. It seemed to me it was all Sinatra’s fault, and I could understand my father’s propensity for terminating life with one’s bare hands. What a pity that Sinatra would not come through the door of my cubicle at Zenith at this instant—my rage was in my fingers and as palpable as a ball of clay. I muttered to myself, “Modene, how could you have done this to us?” as if she was as responsible for her past as for her present with me.
Yet, time, soon enough, picked up: We pretended Jack Kennedy did not exist. It was almost a viable proposition. I did not know whether she saw me as a dressing station in the great hospital of love’s wounded, and I was the pallet on which she could recover, or whether she loved me magically, which is to say, had been struck by love on the night she returned to Miami, and I was her man. She kept speaking of how good-looking I was until I began to peruse my face in the mirror with the critical self-interest of a speculator going over the daily listing of his stocks each morning.
All the while, I was trapped in work and fearful of the day when the baboon would show up at the desk with new transcripts from Harlot and I would learn that she was seeing Jack Kennedy again.