Gossip Read Free Page A

Dupont Circle in the long cannon of an escalator toward an oval light like a gibbous moon. The moon opened into a city of traffic and raiding leaves and half-deserted sidewalks.
    Nancy lived a few blocks away in a tall turn-of-the-century monstrosity called the Cairo. She wasn’t home yet but had left a key with the doorman. I let myself into the apartment that looked much as it had when I’d helped her move in, what Nancy called Bachelor Wonkette. She sublet it fully furnished from a weapon-systems salesman who’d gone home until the next election. Her chief contributions to the decor were stacked newspapers, government reports and, on an exposed brick wall, the framed print of an Emily Dickinson daguerreotype that I gave her for her thirtieth birthday. The iron-spined, Bambi-eyed poet looked startled and amused to find herself in Washington. We were up high enough for the illuminated dome of the Capitol to be visible in the window over the sofa.
    I was in the kitchen making tea when I heard the front door.
    “Eck!”
    “Nance!”
    I swung around the corner and we embraced. Her loaded briefcase clobbered my shoulder.
    “You’re here! You found your way okay? Sorry the place is a mess but I worked until midnight last night and had to run out first thing and—welcome!”
    She flung off her coat, bounced on her toes and punched me in the arm. The blond tomboy from college was hidden in a tweed suit, her frizzy hair tamed in two short wings. Not quite boyish and definitely not butch, she was entirely Nancy. The circles under her eyes, permanent crinkles of lizard skin, brought a touch of melancholy to her face.
    “Let me catch my breath.” She dropped into a chair to untie her plump running shoes. “You hungry? I’m famished. I’m taking us out to dinner.”
    “You don’t have to do that.”
    “But I want to. I made reservations at Trumpets around the corner. So you can see queer Washington first thing.”
    “Do I have to dress up?”
    “Oh no. You look fine. Nice to see a guy who isn’t starched and pressed. They’ll think I’m conspiring with radicals.”
    The kettle in the kitchen whistled. I went to turn it off.
    “We can have tea when we get back,” she called out. “I’m all yours tonight. All day Saturday too, but Thursday and Friday are going to be hectic.”
    “No problem.”
    When I returned, she was sitting quite still. “I feel better already,” she said in a softer voice. “Just seeing you and knowing I’ll be able to talk. Do I seem crazy to you?”
    “No more than usual.”
    She grinned. “Oh good.”
    “But why Trollope?” she said out on the cold windy street. She knew my habits and had promptly asked about my train reading.
    “I don’t know. Because there’s so much of him. Because I’ve already read George Eliot and Dickens.”
    “And he’s good?”
    “Very. In a sane, leisurely way. And nothing too terrible ever happens.”
    “Maybe that’s what I need these days. Sane and leisurely.”
    We went down to a black glass door below street level and entered a restaurant. It was like stepping into homosexuality, first the lighting, then the microwave hum of men alert to the presence of other men, although I quickly learned that their attention was not necessarily sexual.
    We were checking our coats when Nancy grabbed my arm. “Ding!” she said. “Want to meet Bob Hattoy?”
    “You know him?” Even I recognized the name.
    “You’d be amazed at who I know.”
    I followed her toward the bar, where a tall, lean fellow in glasses held court with three or four other men in tailored suits, one with a red ribbon.
    “Bob!” said Nancy, thrusting her hand at him.
    “Nancy! Hello. I’ve never seen you here.”
    “Came tonight for dinner with a friend from New York. Bob, this is Ralph Eckhart. Ralph, Bob Hattoy.”
    “An honor,” I told him, which he accepted as a perfectly natural thing to say. I resisted the urge to praise his speech at the Democratic convention and