“You do look good,” I said.
“So do you,” she said. “You clean up very nicely.”
“I don’t think Sherron likes me too much.”
“She’s really nice, Nick. But you can lay on that Peck’s Bad Boy act a little thick. And she’s probably a little jealous. Wouldn’t you be?”
“Yep.”
The elevator arrived and we got into it. I closed the accordion gate and through it watched the marble staircase as it appeared to rise while we descended through its center.
“I used to love these things when I was a kid. The old Dupont Building, where Connecticut and Nineteenth meet at the Circle, had a gated elevator and a uniformed operator to go with it.”
“Me too,” she said. “I think this elevator was what closed the deal for me on this place.”
“So who am I supposed to be tonight?”
“Anyone you want. Let ’em guess. These company Christmas parties get pretty rowdy, and I figured I could use an escort.”
“Rowdy accountants?”
“Yeah. Once a year they’re expected to cut loose.”
“Sounds like my meat,” I said.
“Do me a favor, Nick. Don’t be an asshole.”
The party was in the penthouse of a new office building on the east edge of Alexandria and on the river, past National and just past Dangerfield Island. We parked Jackie’s Subaru in the garage and, with a couple of foxy receptionists who had arrived at the same time, took the elevator up as far as it would go.
A mustachioed young man tediously took our coats when we stepped off the elevator. I retrieved my cigarettes and switched them to my jacket pocket, and we entered the party room. It was situated on the northeast corner of the building, and two of the walls were thick glass. The north view stretched past the lights of National to the Mall and the major monuments. The east view shot over Goose Island in the Potomac to Bolling Air Force Base and then into Anacostia and P.G. County.
The floor was shiny and veined to approximate black marble. There were several freestanding Corinthian columns scattered about the room that looked to be made of papier-mache, their shafts painted a poinsettia red. Thick green ribbons were tied and bowed around the columns that I assumed had been rented for the affair. A swing combo situated on a narrow balcony was playing jazzy Christmas standards. The violinist had Stephane Grappelli’s style and tone down perfectly.
The room was already crowded and predominantly suited in black. Many of the men sported red bow ties with their tuxes, and most of the women were also in black, though there were a few seasonal reds and, at a glance, one blonde squeezed into gold lame. I took Jackie’s order and made a beeline for the bar.
The bar was set up in the left rear corner. As I approached it I saw the offerings grouped on the white- clothed table. The bottle with the familiar orange label, the gold lettering THE HEAD OF THE BOURBON FAMILY, and the gold oval-framed granite bust in the center that had a fitting resemblance to both LBJ and Buddy Ebsen was right out front, in all its eighty-six-proof Kentucky glory. I stood behind the other kids in line and waited my turn.
“Yes, sir?” asked a built brunesti built t as I stepped up to the table. She had on a tuxedo shirt and a turquoise tie that was close to the color of the lenses in her wicked eyes.
“A vodka tonic, please. And an Old Grand-Dad, rocks.”
She marked me with one long motherly look and poured our drinks. There was a pitcher set next to the bottles that was half filled with one dollar bills, probably her own. Good bartenders always place a tip receptacle on the bar and start it off with their own money. Wish fulfillment. I put two of mine in the pitcher, she thanked me with a wink, and I rejoined Jackie.
Jackie was with a tall man, and they were laughing about something as I handed over her drink. He was close to my age and his face was boyish, but his hair was steel gray. Two pieces of it, like the tines of a grilling fork, had fallen over his forehead, giving him the reckless look of, say, a young millionaire who raced cars.
“Nicky, this is John Wattersly. John, my friend Nick Stefanos.”
We sized each other up and shook hands. “Good to meet you, Nick,” he said in a smooth baritone.
“Same here.”
“John’s a senior,” Jackie offered.
“Really,” I said. “When do you graduate?”
Wattersly laughed and then showed me a warm smile that had probably opened plenty of doors for him during his climb. He seemed intelligent but not arrogant, and I sort of liked him, but he was certainly turning that smile in Jackie’s direction an awful lot.
Jackie said, “I meant he’s a senior manager. He’s on his way to partner.”
“I knew that, sweetheart,” I said, and kissed her on the cheek as I squeezed her arm. Mine was now around her shoulder.
The next time Wattersly turned his head, Jackie ground the stiletto heel of her pump into the toe area of my shoe. The pain ricocheted off my Achilles tendon, sped up my calf, and watered my eyes. By the time Wattersly faced me again I had released Jackie and was wiping my face with a handkerchief.
“What do you do, Nick?” he said.
“International finance,” I said.
“Interesting work. Who are you with?”
“Fitzgerald and O’Malley,” I said, digging my grave as I pulled two names out of the air and stared at my shoes. “Gold bars, bullion, currency exchange.” I winked. “That sort of thing.”
I gulped half my drink as Wattersly winked back.
The evening continued to degenerate along those lines, but happily I was not alone. These accountants and their dates were certainly not averse to having a good time. Someone pulled the plug on the Christmas combo early on, and a boom box was set up, and everything from Motown to Springsteen to Depeche Mode began to turn the place on. There were also several art director types flitting abuee flittiout who, I was later informed, were members of the firm’s in-house advertising department. Their leader was a popinjay who had grown his hair in front of his face precisely so that he could shake it out of that smug face with a casual toss of his head; he was running about the room taking clever Polaroids of the accountants whom he obviously thought he was so far above. After my fourth trip to the bar, I decided that it was a wonderful party and these were all very nice people and I was perhaps the wittiest individual in the room.
My responses to that ice-breaking question “What do you do?” began to range from the unlikely to the absurd. To Jackie’s boss I was a university professor who was teaching a course this semester entitled Existentialism and Top 40. I explained that the course placed a special emphasis on the works of Neil Diamond (just “Neil!” to his legion of fans) and to his perplexed expression contended that “I Am… I Said” was one of the most deceptively simple yet brilliant songs of the last twenty years. To another executive I made the ridiculous claim to being the sole heir to the WHAM-O fortune. And to shut down a guy who would not stop talking to me about his son’s high school football program, I proudly proclaimed, with a subtle flutter of my eyes, that I was studying to be a male nurse, explaining that I had chosen the profession “for the uniforms.”
Late in the evening I followed the stunning blonde in the gold lame dress to an area near the glass wall. One of my new accountant buddies had explained, with a remorseful shrug, that she was “with” one of the senior partners, a fact that may have frightened off most of the martinets in attendance but at this point did not affect me. When she was alone I touched her on the arm and she turned.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hello,” she said evenly, with the weary resistance born in beauties like her. Her push-up bra had set her lightly freckled, perfectly rounded breasts to a point where they touched and hung like trophies on the edge of her low-cut gown. She had a mane of wheat hair and a black mole above her arched lip. In the midsixties I had experienced one of my first erections while admiring such a mole on Anne Francis’s lip during an episode of “Honey West,” though at the time I did not even possess the beneficial knowledge of self-relief.
“I’m not an accountant,” I said, and hit my bourbon. By now I had forgone the ice, which was taking up far too much room in the glass.
“Really,” she declared aridly. “What are you, then?”
