Timothy Culver - Power Play

“Thank you, Mr. President.” Spoken in English.

Bradford smiled at the man who had said that. “Thank you, ” he said, and Evelyn saw that he was still smiling when he turned away to take her arm and walk with her to the waiting car.

At first, when he walked into the room, Evelyn thought it was Howard, and she thought, Has he really come traipsing across the Atlantic with his endless manuscripts? But then she saw that it wasn’t Howard after all, but his older brother Edward, Sterling’s other son, a man of about forty, attached to the permanent U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Paris. Edward was a bit heavier than Howard, a bit softer, with a bit less hair, but they could almost have passed for twins.

“Hello, Evelyn.” He came across the hotel room, hand outstretched, a broad smile on his face. He was as sunny as Howard was sour, as optimistic as Howard was cynical, and as unflappable as Howard was panicky. And yet, he never gave an impression of shallowness or silliness. He was a man both cheerful and thoughtful, a rare combination.

“Hello, Uncle Edward.” She was always pleased to be in Edward’s presence, and had been looking forward to seeing him during their stay in Paris. “I haven’t seen you for almost two years.”

“During which,” Edward said, holding her hand, “I have grown ten years older and you have grown three years younger. What is it that keeps the Lockridge women so beautiful?”

“The flattery of the Lockridge men,” she said, laughing. She had been born a Holt, and she had married a Canby, but within the family she was a Lockridge woman, through her mother. The sense of family held by the Lockridges, their unconscious division of all the world into Lockridges and Outsiders, Evelyn occasionally found depressing, but even this was a cheerful manifestation in Edward. She said, “Bradford isn’t here. He’s gone to the first meeting.”

“Yes, I know.” Edward winked and laid a finger beside his nose, being one of the few men alive who could actually make that gesture without looking stupid. “There’s intrigue afoot,” he announced, his voice hushed. “Brad called Janet and said you were moping around the hotel, and we were slyly to do something about it. So I’ve been sent to come take you away to Carrie Gillespie’s. Janet will meet us there.”

“I’m not moping,” Evelyn said, though she knew she had been. She’d been sitting at the window, looking out at the rooftops and the bits of traffic she could see, worrying about Brad in one way and Dinah in another, and if that wasn’t moping, what was it? But moping isn’t something one can admit to, so she said, “Honestly I’m not. I was even thinking of doing some shopping this afternoon. We only got in last night.”

“Shopping, in Paris, on a Saturday? You must be joking.” Edward waggled a finger at her, another gesture at which he was uniquely adept. “On Monday,” he said, “you and Janet will do the Galeries Lafayette from top to bottom. It’s a shopping spree Janet has been looking forward to since we first heard you were coming.”

Evelyn laughed and shook her head, saying, “Galeries Lafayette is closed on Monday, I remember that from last time.”

“Then on Tuesday. On Monday you’ll have your hair done. But today—” he pointed a finger at her “—today you come with me to Carrie Gillespie’s.”

The thought was cheering — Edward himself was cheering — but a moping mood is hard to break. Evelyn spread her hands helplessly, looking down at herself. “I’m not dressed. I’d have to change.”

There was a newspaper in Edward’s suitcoat pocket, jutting up against his elbow, and he now plucked it out and waggled it in the air. “The exact reason,” he said, “I brought along Le Monde. Take all the time you want, I read French as slowly as ever.”

The mope abruptly dissolved, like salt in water. Evelyn smiled and said, “I’ll be ten minutes.”

Carrie Smith Gillespie was what is known as a character. She had all the money she would ever need, so when her husband George had died four years before she’d moved permanently to Paris, to this spacious airy apartment on Boulevard Anatole France, overlooking the Bois de Boulogne, where she’d determined to set herself up as a hostess in the grand manner, with a salon that would be second to none. The desire was a bit old-fashioned, but the strength of Carrie’s personality kept it from being foolish. And if her guests ran heavily to American diplomats and lightly to European artists and intelligentsia, it was still a reasonable facsimile of what she’d had in mind. Better, in a way, since this way her guests tended to speak in a language she understood, her French being next to nonexistent.

Howard had once said of Carrie that she looked as though she dressed herself out of the costume room at Madame Tussaud’s, and it was true that veils and ribbons and trailing swatches of material made up a great proportion of her usual apparel. He had also once said that when she walked she sounded like a tin can factory falling down a hill, and it was equally true that she tended to drape herself in a superfluity of necklaces and bracelets and earrings that jangled. But somehow she was all of a piece, the apartment, the clothing, the tinkling jewelry, the round cheerful face, the hoarse but loud voice, the endlessly inquisitive acquisitive manner as though a magpie had been crossed with a kitten and the result blown up all out of proportion, but none of it false or affected, all fitting nicely together and amazingly producing a person who was eccentric without being ludicrous.

Possibly because she was so totally without pretension. She might have craved a living room full of Sartres, but she never pretended to be a de Beauvoir. She was a Boston-born girl, from a family who owned a downtown department store, and she’d married a Boston-born corporation attorney and given him two sons and a daughter. Another young attorney in the same law firm, Bradford Lockridge, had eventually gone on to become President, but Carrie was not one to bask in reflected glory. She preferred to be the star in her own life story, and she handled the part to perfection.

She came forward now into the small front parlor to greet Evelyn and Edward, jangling as usual, trailing wisps of nylon and lace, her round face beaming, her arms outstretched. “Evelyn! You lovely lovely child, let me look at you!”

People usually found themselves overpowered by Carrie, and Evelyn was no exception. She stood there like a slave on the block, an awkward smile on her face, while Carrie grasped her by the elbows and looked her up and down. Meanwhile Edward was saying, “I don’t suppose Janet’s here yet.”

“Of course not, silly boy.” Carrie gave Evelyn a look of mock-frustration and said, “Husbands will never understand that wives must dress. But how charming you look! You’ve been shopping already. You bought that dress here.”

“No, actually, I got it in New York. In March.”

“Incredible. You make me want to go back, but I’ll resist. But why didn’t you bring Dinah?”

“I thought it was too long for her to be away, ten days.”

“So selfish. You know she’s the one I really wanted to see. She’s four years old now, I haven’t seen her since she was two.”

“That’s right,” Evelyn said. She was always surprised at Carrie’s memory for details. Who would expect her to keep track of the age of an unrelated child a continent away?

“Well, never mind, you’ll remember to send me photographs, and next time you’ll bring her. Now come along, we have some very interesting people here.”

But they weren’t. Carrie’s parlor was large, bright and full of comfortable places to sit. Floor-to-ceiling windows faced northeast, three stories up, with a beautiful view of the Bois de Boulogne, lush and green with summer. There was no direct sunlight, but the room was bright enough without it, the park across the way reflected in the plants scattered everywhere throughout the room.