McMurtry, Larry - Novel 05 Read Free Page A

was seated between two well-dressed ladies,
neither of whom gave the slightest indication that they knew I was there. They
were not young, but both were too modishly done up to be described as old.
Evidently they were somewhat testy about their placement at the table, and it
was hard to blame them, since each had an ugly congressman on the side not
occupied by me.
                   It was not lost on my dinner partners that the
younger and prettier women had been distributed among such senators and minor
press lords who happened to be there.
                   "Pencil will never learn," one
whispered to the other, across my coq au vin.
                   Pencil Penrose was our hostess, an ostensibly
giddy blonde whose real name was Penserilla.
                   "It doesn't matter," the other lady
said. "There's no one here anyway except Jake and Dunny, and I don't want
to talk to them. Dunny's deaf as a brass pig, and Jake wouldn't even talk to me
when I was married to him."
                   Dunny was obviously old Cotswinkle, whereas
Jake was the eminent columnist John C. V. Ponsonby, who was seated directly
across from me, so deeply bored by the deficiencies of the company that he had
lapsed into what appeared to be a coma. He ate no food, but retained enough
motor reflex to empty his wine glass into his mouth
from time to time.
                   Ponsonby, by no means unimportant, had his
hostess on his left and Lilah Landry on his right. Lilah was the beautiful if
somewhat gangly widow of a former Secretary of State. Her tumbling red hair,
dizzy smile, and trend-setting wardrobe could be seen daily on the local talk
show she hostessed.
                   Luckily, I had seen it that very morning,
while breakfasting at Boog's. The show was called Win a Country and matched a panel
of columnists, ex-Cabinet members, and socially prominent diplomats against a
computer called Big Hank. In order to win the country in question the panelists
had to make instant choices between bribery, trade benefits, military aid,
covert infiltration, saturation bombing and the like, though all Lilah had to
do was exhibit her hair, wardrobe, and cleavage, and occasionally employ her
abundant deep Georgia gift of gab to get some taciturn diplomat to talk.
                   If either of the ladies beside me had turned
and suddenly required speech of some kind, I guess I would have dropped Boog's
name, for despite his vulgar talk and silver ties Boog's was a name to conjure
with, in Washington . His big Victorian house in Cleveland Park was constantly filled to the gills with
politicians, lobbyists, aides of all species, committee persons, agency
persons, journalists, and lawyers. Some of them were there because Boog had a
special faucet in his kitchen that ran Jack Daniel's, while others came because
they lusted after Boss, Boog's famous wife; but whatever their individual
compulsions, they all liked and respected Boog, the professional's professional
when it came to Hill politics.
                   Of course, the minute I had stepped into the
Penrose mansion that night I began to canvas the objets, a habit I can't
control. A scout scouts, even when purchase seems hopeless. It was hard to
concentrate on Pencil Penrose when she happened to be standing next to the
magnificent Belgian hall clock in her front foyer.
                   It's not that I dislike people, or that I'm
incurious about them, either. I want to look at the people, but their objects
keep jumping in front of them, demanding my attention. Sometimes I tell myself
that the best way to get to know people is to first study the objects among
which they place themselves, but for all I know that may be pure bullshit. It
may simply be that I've been subsumed by my vocation. Until I've sized up a
place and separated the good pieces from the fillers I just can't seem to concentrate
on the