Part 5 (1/2)

”Will you remember doing this,” Jack Lovett said.

”I suppose,” Inez Christian said.

Her refusal to engage in even this most unspecific and pro forma speculation had interested him, even nettled him, and he had found himself persisting: ”You'll go off to college and marry some squash player and forget we ever did any of it.”

She had said nothing.

”You'll go your way and I'll go mine. That about it?”

”I suppose we'll run into each other,” Inez Christian said. ”Here or there.”

By September of 1953, when Inez Christian left Honolulu for the first of the four years she had agreed to spend studying art history at Sarah Lawrence, Jack Lovett was in Thailand, setting up what later became the Air Asia operation. By May of 1955, when Inez Christian walked out of a dance cla.s.s at Sarah Lawrence on a Tuesday afternoon and got in Harry Victor's car and drove down to New York to marry him at City Hall, with a jersey practice skirt tied over her leotard and a bunch of daisies for a bouquet, Jack Lovett was already in Saigon, setting up lines of access to what in 1955 he was not yet calling the a.s.sistance effort. In 1955 he was still calling it the insurgency problem, but even then he saw its possibilities. He saw it as useful. I believe many people did, while it lasted. ”NOT A SQUASH PLAYER,” Inez Christian wrote across the wedding announcement she eventually mailed to his address in Honolulu, but it was six months before he got it.

It occurs to me that for Harry Victor to have driven up to Sarah Lawrence on a Tuesday afternoon in May and picked up Inez Christian in her leotard and married her at City Hall could be understood as impulsive, perhaps the only thing Harry Victor ever did that might be interpreted as a spring fancy, but this interpretation would be misleading. There were practical factors involved. Harry Victor was due to start work in Was.h.i.+ngton the following Monday, and Inez Christian was two months pregnant.

The afternoon of the wedding was warm and bright.

Billy Dillon was the witness.

After the ceremony Inez and Harry Victor and Billy Dillon and a girl Billy Dillon knew that year rode the ferry to Staten Island and back, had dinner at Luchow's, and went uptown to hear Mabel Mercer at the RSVP.

In the spring of the year, Mabel Mercer sang, and this will be my s.h.i.+ning hour.

Two months to the day after the wedding Inez miscarried, but by then Harry was learning the ropes at Justice and Inez had decorated the apartment in Georgetown (white walls, Harvard chairs, lithographs) and they were giving dinner parties, administrative a.s.sistants and supremes de volaille a l'estragon at the Danish teak table in the living room. When Jack Lovett finally got Inez's announcement he sent her a wedding present he had won in a poker game in Saigon, a silver cigarette box engraved Residence du Gouverneur General de l'Indo-Chine.

2.

IN fact they did run into each other.

Here or there.

Often enough, during those twenty-some years during which Inez Victor and Jack Lovett refrained from touching each other, refrained from exhibiting undue pleasure in each other's presence or untoward interest in each other's activities, refrained most specifically from even being alone together, to keep the idea of it quick.

Quick, alive.

Something to think about late at night.

Something private.

She always looked for him.

She did not really expect to see him but she never got off a plane in certain parts of the world without wondering where he was, how he was, what he might be doing.

And once in a while he was there.

For example in Jakarta in 1969.

I learned this from her.

Official CODEL Mission, Dependents and Guests Accompanying, Inquiry into Status Human Rights in Developing (USAID Recipient) Nations.

One of many occasions on which Harry Victor descended on one tropic capital or another and set about obtaining official a.s.surance that human rights remained inviolate in the developing (USAID Recipient) nation at hand.

One of several occasions, during those years after Harry Victor first got himself elected to Congress, on which Inez Victor got off the plane in one tropic capital or another and was met by Jack Lovett.

Temporarily attached to the emba.s.sy.

On special a.s.signment to the military.

Performing an advisory function to the private sector.

”Just what we need here, a congressman,” Inez remembered Jack Lovett saying that night in the customs shed at the Jakarta airport. The customs shed had been crowded and steamy and it had occurred to Inez that there were too many Americans in it. There was Inez, there was Harry, there were Jessie and Adlai. There was Billy Dillon. There was Frances Landau, in the same meticulously pressed fatigues and French aviator gla.s.ses she had worn the year before in Havana. There was Janet, dressed entirely in pink, pink sandals, a pink straw hat, a pink linen dress with rickrack. ”I thought pink was the navy blue of the Indies,” Janet had said in the Cathay Pacific lounge at Hong Kong.

”India,” Inez had said. ”Not the Indies. India.”

”India, the Indies, whatever. Same look, n'est-ce pas?”

”Possibly to you,” Frances Landau said.

”What is that supposed to mean?”

”It means I don't quite see why you decided to get yourself up like an English royal touring the colonies.”

Janet had a.s.sessed Frances Landau's fatigues, washed and pressed to a silvery patina, loose and seductive against Frances Landau's translucent skin.

”Because I didn't bring my combat gear,” Janet had said then.

Inez did not remember exactly why Janet had been along (some domestic crisis, a ragged season with d.i.c.k Ziegler or a pique with Dwight Christian, a barrage of urgent telephone calls and a pro forma invitation), nor did she remember exactly under what pretext Frances Landau had been along (legislative a.s.sistant, official photographer, drafter of one preliminary report or another, the use of Bahasa Indonesian in elementary education on Sumatra, the effects of civil disturbance on the infrastructure left on Java by the Dutch), but there they had been, in the customs shed of the Jakarta airport, along with nineteen pieces of luggage and two book bags and two tennis rackets and the boogie boards that Janet had insisted on bringing from Honolulu as presents for Jessie and Adlai. Jack Lovett had picked up the tennis rackets and handed them to the emba.s.sy driver. ”A tennis paradise here, you don't mind the ballboys carry submachine guns.”

”Let's get it clear at the outset, I don't want this visit tainted,” Harry Victor had said.

”No emba.s.sy orchestration,” Billy Dillon said.

”No debriefing,” Harry Victor said.

”No reporting,” Billy Dillon said.

”I want it understood,” Harry Victor said, ”I'm promising unconditional confidentiality.”

”Harry wants it understood,” Billy Dillon said, ”he's not representing the emba.s.sy.”

Jack Lovett opened the door of one of the emba.s.sy cars double-parked outside the customs shed. ”You're parading through town some night in one of these Detroit boats with the CD 12 plates and a van blocks you off, you just explain all that to the guys who jump out. You just tell them. They can stop waving their Uzis. You're one American who doesn't represent the emba.s.sy. That'll impress them. They'll back right off.”

”There's a point that should be made here,” Frances Landau said.

”Trust you to make it,” Janet said.