The Rake (6 page)

Boulder, February 1987

Amy dropped her handwritten letter off at Henri's apartment early the next morning. The envelope was marked:
En route to Aspen, skiing.
The lettering on the envelope was large and distinctive.

The missive read, “Glad you came last night! I spotted you, and hoped to catch you afterward, but you had already left. I think Senator Castle is quite smashing, and who knows, we may all be hearing from him from a higher platform in a year or so. And Priscilla's—well, I've known her since she was sixteen. I almost wrote sexteen. Enough said.

“I mean, enough said on
that
. Henri, I've known you nearly two years now, so I'm going to give you some advice. Big-sister advice, since I'm a dozen years older than you. It boils down to: Get around a bit. This campus is, well, maybe not
teeming
with attractive disengaged males, but there are some nice people here. They may not be in the same league as your Mr. Durban (sorry, I've never known his first name), but…. Well. How many years since he died? I guess as many years as Justin is old, if I work it out right. Justin is divine, but you can't very well cohabit with him and anybody else at the same time.

“I warned you early on about my reputation. J. is a junior
now, one year behind my Allan. You can't send him away yet, not for a while, but at college time, he should certainly go away. Leaving you with a little privacy. Don't be sore at me for poking into other people's business. How can anybody
help
other people
without
getting into their business? You can always tell me to shove off, but I don't think you will. And I don't think you should.”

Henrietta walked into the kitchen, Amy's letter folded in her pocket. Justin was eating his cereal absentmindedly, his eyes on the television screen. Henri looked up. The caption on the Sony read, “Senator Reuben Castle speaking at Democratic rally.” The camera zoomed back and showed Priscilla Castle, gazing devotedly at her husband. Seated next to her was their son, who looked to be about eleven. He was wholly detached from the scene. His jacket and shirt seemed to grow larger as the seconds ticked on, but it was an illusion, as the boy wearing them mentally distanced himself, shrinking from the proceedings. But when the crowd broke out in applause and the boy's eyes moved toward his father, Mrs. Castle could be seen discreetly nudging him.

The television commentator took over. “Senator Castle, with his family looking on, complained about the policies of President Ronald Reagan at a meeting sponsored by the Democratic Caucus of the University of Colorado. He was well received, and there is talk that Democrats might find his name on the national ticket, if not next year, then perhaps in 1992.”

The television image gave way to a commercial.

“Maman? Il est bien fort, ce monsieur, non?”

“Yes. He's very attractive, and very impressive. Justin, have you thought of going away over spring break?”

“You mean to Paris?”

“No. I was thinking of a skiing vacation. Your friend Charley is always talking about skiing vacations. And Mrs. Parrish says that Alta, in Utah, where Allan goes, is very nice, and not expensive.”

Justin pushed his cereal bowl away. “Are
you
going to take a vacation?”

“I hadn't planned to.”

“Do colleges have vacations? I mean, for college employees? I mean, do you get paid if you take a vacation?”

“There are rules and accommodations. The library doesn't close down, in the way—well, in the way the dining halls more or less close down. The library stays open.”

“So you
can't
take a vacation.”

“I can. Tais-toi. I'm talking about
you
having a vacation. Without your mother.”

“Gee. That could be fun!”

She feigned annoyance, batting him on the head with a paper napkin, and reminding herself, for the twentieth time since Tuesday, that Justin was only two years younger than Reuben Castle had been when that dreamy young freshman entered her life.

Washington, D.C., March 1987

Priscilla Avery Castle put down the phone. She sat still for a moment. Then she moved her chair two inches to the left, so that she could look squarely into the mirror.

She didn't like to look at herself at an angle, even at the very slight angle that permitted her to cradle the telephone in her dressing room. Angles create distortions, more distortions than the ones she had no alternative but to submit to: fourteen years of aging, not entirely hidden by cosmetics and surgery. That was distortion enough—she moved her head back a bit, and looked into the mirror. But then, quickly, she lowered her chin. If the head is back too far, the nostrils are exposed to unflattering attention. She remembered her coach, back in Denver. “
Never
permit the camera to look into your nose!” Amos made his point: “Icky things happen in your nostrils. Ava Gardner's nostrils flare down, so there isn't anything there anybody can look at, except a nose. You don't have a nose built that way, Prissy. So don't expose it.

“Oh, yes,” Amos had gone on. “And work with your boobs. I don't mean shove them in everybody's face. Just watch how you dress. Then they'll claim the right attention without any more help. And remember,
everything
has to be there for the
camera to look at. It's the composite picture. That's the word, composite.”

Amos. He was a character, but he knew about fashion and fashion photography—and about beauty contests. They were a sideline, but his name had been associated with the winners of statewide contests in eight of the ten years before Priscilla Avery met him. Always he had hoped for the big prize, the great prize, the only prize. Miss America. Well, she had given him that. Priscilla didn't spend much time saying thanks, but she did have a pleasant thought about Amos.

Bert Whitman, full-time publicist for the state of Colorado, spent half his life in Los Angeles, and that's where he ran into Hank Blokofski, who told him about Amos. Bert was at the Beverly Hills Health Club, up from a swim, lying face down for a massage. Hank Blokofski was doing the same, off to one side. He had concluded a distribution deal after a long, sweaty afternoon session, and had gone over to his health club to relax.

Blokofski had nominally retired from the movie business, but he was a library of knowledge about everything that touched on commercial glamour. In 1970 he had served as a judge in the Miss America contest in Atlantic City. He liked to remember the expression on the face of Nancy Gutierrez when she was transubstantiated from Miss Texas to Miss America. “She seemed such a tender, innocent Texas lady,” he reported to friends and associates, and he said it now to Bert, in from Denver. “In fact, Nancy was tougher than a hand iron. But when I spotted her I said to myself,
Go, go, Bloky—go, go, go
, and pretty soon I had the majority of the judges with me.”

“What kind of thing do the winners have to do? I mean, other than be beautiful and all that stuff. And maybe screw the judges.”

Blokofski ignored the gibe. “There are lots of things. But the A-number-one thing is
never
to have a bad photo, never. And that takes a personal coach. A real expert who coaches professional models and knows the ropes.”

“You know some of these…specialists?”

“Oh, sure. For instance, I know Amos Cohen, from your neck of the woods. He narrowly missed in 1968, with a gal from New Mexico. But he's a real pro.”

Whitman, with his eye out for the commerce he was professionally engaged in stimulating, moved quickly. As soon as he returned to Denver he requisitioned photos of the contestants for Miss Colorado. He picked out Priscilla Avery. He telephoned her, and liked what he heard. He even found pleasing her hint of a southern accent, left over, she told him, from her childhood in Alabama. Then he called Amos Cohen and invited him to his Chamber of Commerce office, in the great Republic Plaza skyscraper on Seventeenth Street.

“Are you available to handle a Miss America lady?”

“If I think she has a chance.”

Bert showed him two photographs.

Amos looked hard at them. And then, “I'd have to meet her.”

“Of course. What does it take?”

“You mean for an exclusive?”

“Yes.”

“I said I'd have to see her.”

“I know you said that. Obviously if you think she hasn't a pig's chance, you'd say no. At least, I hope you would.”

“I'd want thirty-five plus expenses. Plus ten if she makes it to Miss Colorado. Plus fifty if she makes it to Miss America. And expenses. That includes a couple of hot dogs for cooperative photographers and other nice people.”

“Well, the next step is you interview Priscilla Avery.”

“And your next step, Mr. Whitman, is to make a commitment.”

“If you say it's a go at your end, I think—I said I
think
—I can manage your fee with the Chamber of Commerce. I'll tell them that to get a Miss America will be worth a billion dollars to Colorado.”

“That's a good safe figure.”

“You won't have any trouble getting through to Priscilla.” He passed over the photographs. “Give me a call when you've talked to her.”

“When I've
seen
her.”

“Yep. Maybe by the end of the week?”

“Maybe. I'll call you.”

Washington, D.C./Aiken, South Carolina, March 1987

“Does Castle like golf?”

“Sure.”

“Why don't we make it then for next month, look in at the Masters? Everybody goes there, nobody is really conspicuous.”

“I'll check it out with him,” said Susan, chief aide to Senator Castle. “His calendar is clear for that weekend. He would probably need—I mean, it would make sense—to have an invitation. Senator Castle doesn't like to do things that can be thought pure self-indulgence. He should be, in some way, part of the show.”

“Good. If you have any trouble getting a personal invitation, I know one or two of the pros. ‘Dear Senator Castle: I know that you like our sport—
the
sport! I would be honored if you came to the Masters and were there when, I hope, I finally get that green jacket. If you find you can work it into your schedule, I would love to have you as my guest.' Signed, ‘Your fan, Hank Wright.'”

“Sounds good.” Susan was taking notes, in her fabled shorthand. Nobody, she had boasted at age twenty-two, could speak more rapidly than she could take it down. She winced when reminded, as occasionally happened, that she had once made this
claim. Vainglory. Not because it had ceased to be true—her fluency on her notepad was dazzling—but because to say what she had said smacked of, well, exhibitionism.

In her twenties she had developed into a secretary and confidante utterly free of self-concern. She was the secretary about whose private life nothing was known and, after a while, nothing was asked. When, on the death of Congressman Adam Benjamin Jr., she was approached by the personnel hand Howell Anderson and asked to sign up with the newly elected senator from North Dakota, she deliberated the proposal. She was fifty years old, and liked the prospect of a prolonged attachment. It didn't surprise Anderson when she said she would look into Senator Castle's background and only then decide.

While it didn't surprise Anderson that Susan Oakeshott would want to think it over, he
was
surprised that she didn't ask him for the substantial packet of information about Reuben Castle that had been accumulated for the campaign. “Thanks very much, but I can put my hands on everything I'll need to consider.”

“Reuben,” Anderson had said to him, “it just doesn't matter what the strain on you may be of waiting to organize your office. If she says yes, then you'll have the best office manager in Washington, D.C.”

She did say yes. And now, six years later, it was Susan Oakeshott, not the senator, who was approached about an utterly secret meeting between Castle and the quiet kingmaker, Harold Kaltenbach.

What Kaltenbach wanted to deliberate was whether Castle
would make a good presidential candidate five years down the line. “The Republicans are going to take the White House in 1988,” he told Susan. “I'm deciding who to back for 1992.”

Whom Harold Kaltenbach would back in 1992 was a matter of critical importance to the contending parties. Kaltenbach was from Nebraska. He loved politics, and politics loved him. He loved his money and his network of friends, and he was doggedly attached to the Democratic Party. Susan, of course, knew all this, knew all about Kaltenbach, and she knew that her senator would appreciate the importance of meeting with him as a petitioner, and would agree to have such a meeting on Kaltenbach's terms.

By noon the next day Susan had cleared the Augusta weekend. Working at his end, Kaltenbach had managed an invitation from Hank Wright. The senator would be, unofficially, Wright's guest at Augusta, and would attend as much of the tournament as he could. Kaltenbach would decide—there was plenty of time; the tournament was four weeks off—whether it would be useful to have the senator say a word or two at any of the official functions.

Their actual meeting would be at a golf course—but not the Augusta National. Instead, they would go to nearby Aiken. Kaltenbach and the senator would both be dressed as golfers. Susan had made a reservation at the club dining room in the name of Hank Wright.

The table was at a well-removed corner of the dining room, and they met at eleven-thirty, a half hour before many other patrons would gather.

Harold Kaltenbach was very quiet, embarked on his super-charged mission. Reuben was acutely aware that he was being examined through the special microscope of a true political professional. The questioning was deceptively orthodox: name, rank, and serial number, like a form for a bank loan.

Reuben found his doughty self-confidence strangely useless. He knew that anything that smacked of rodomontade would be…silly. Maybe even fatal. A demonstration of confidence in his political future was of course useful, but it mustn't be superficial. If Reuben Castle was going to talk persuasively about his strengths, he could do so plausibly only by communicating strengths that were not obviously visible to Harold Kaltenbach. But what
wasn't
visible to Harold Kaltenbach? And would the impression be damaging if Reuben miscalculated?

Probably the thing to do was to act absolutely natural. He had this difficulty, which many first-rate politicians caught up in the theater of politics have, namely that he wasn't sure what was in fact natural. Reuben knew that he was attractive to men, even charming; and he could not remember a time when he had failed at ingratiation with women, communally and individually. He had those advantages at the outset.

He braced himself for two questions. How was it that, in fifteen months in Vietnam, he had avoided combat entirely? (He had a pretty satisfactory answer to that one, he thought—he didn't control the combat assignments, after all.) And the second: Why was it that he hadn't finished law school? Complying with the Buckley Amendment of 1974, college administrators were required to make available to students or ex-students any official reports written about them or their work. And ex-students could requisition these, in later years, removing them
from the university's files. Why had Reuben done exactly that with his professors' reports from the University of Illinois?

He had an answer, but he knew it wasn't always effective. Garry Givern, a fellow contestant for the Democratic senatorial nomination in 1980, had touched on the delicate point at a party caucus in Bismarck, North Dakota's capital. “Reuben,” Givern said, “I pulled out my academic records too. The difference between us is that I am delighted to show mine to anyone who is interested.”

Susan had told Reuben that Harold Kaltenbach probably knew about these early exchanges. “He's that kind of man, and he loves it. He could probably sit down tomorrow and do a mini-biography of you.”

Reuben had asked, “How many political biographies does he master?”

“Not many. And Lord knows, he doesn't always end up with a winner. But he won't back anybody he thinks has no prospects.”

Well, Reuben would soon find out if his answer to the grades-in-law-school question—that the records had been mislaid—was serviceable.

“So, Senator, you decided to go to law school—”

“Please call me Reuben, Mr. Kaltenbach.”

“Perhaps in the future. For the time being, if you don't mind, I'll call you ‘Senator.'”

Reuben did not surprise himself when he replied, “Whatever you say, Mr. Kaltenbach.”