The young women Winsor had previously collected had without any exceptions actually been late, had never apologized, had never hurried, and had never shown any interest in whether he minded waiting out in the frosty darkness. They were so far away on the upper side of the class barrier that limo drivers were invisible to them. They showed no more interest in who was driving the car than they would for the spare tire in the trunk. The first few times he’d done this chore, he had ventured a friendly welcome, or one of those “nice evening” remarks. The responses, if any, had been cool and terse, letting him know that it was pushy and intrusive of him to dare to speak to a debutante from whichever expensive and exclusive finishing school had finished them.
Chrissy had been different. She had hurried out of the apartment house entry and reached the car in such a rush that she’d had her hand on the door handle before he could get there to open it for her.
“Golly,” she said. “I’m sorry I’ve kept you waiting. My dad taught us that being late is really rude. It tells the other person you think you’re more important than they are.”
“Actually, I was a little early,” Budge had said. And when they were en route he ventured a “nice evening” remark. This time it had touched off a conversation. Chrissy actually introduced herself to him. And so it had gone. During the dozens of times he’d been her driver since that day, they’d become friends in a strange sort of way, answering one another’s biographical questions, exchanging opinions of current Washingtonian uproars and controversies, agreeing that this city was interesting but had more than its share of people way, way too driven by greed and ambition. And gradually it became more and more personal.
“I guess I’m one of those greedy ones, too,” Chrissy had said one day. “I came here to try to get into law school at George Washington University, and I did, so now I’m in it, and making good grades, and I’m surrounded by lawyers. And by law students. And all they seem to think about is either getting money or getting power. And I’m not sure anymore I want to be one.”
“Yeah,” Budge had said. “I used to be a political activist. ‘Power to the People,’ you know. Or, as we used to shout over in Catalonia when I was a kid,
“But no more?” she asked. “Did you give up on all that?” Her voice sounded sad, but maybe that was just to play along with his joke.
“It was just a dream,” he said. “My family was always on the wrong side, from the fight against Franco and the fascists to running to South America and getting with the losing side down there.”
“Well, now you’re a success. You’re making a lot of money,” she said. “I know you’re not just getting paid to drive the limo. You’re sort of an aide to Mr. Winsor. I’ve heard him talking about you.”
“And what did he say?”
“Well, once I heard him tell Mr. Haret, the man who works with Congress for him, he told him that you were the only one he had he could absolutely count on. And on the telephone once, he was telling someone that when things get out of control he turns it over to Budge, and he knows Budge will fix it.”
“Did he mention why he can depend on me?”
“No,” she said, then hesitated. “Unless he said you owed him a great big favor. Maybe that was it.”
“It was.”
“So what was the favor?”
“Let’s see,” Budge said. “How can I explain it. It gets very complicated. But I guess the bottom line is he keeps me from being deported, and that keeps me out of jail.”
“I don’t understand,” she said. “How does he do that?”
He sighed. “Here’s where the complexity comes in. In Guatemala, and other places like that, the Central Intelligence Agency uses people like me, sort of off the record, and when things go wrong they get some of them out, somewhere safe, or maybe even into the United States. Arrange papers for them so they can get lost in the crowd. All quietly, no papers signed, nobody admitting anything. So if I started telling my story—not that it’s very interesting—to the newspapers, or if someone else did and some committee called me to testify about what happened down there, the CIA would swear they never heard of me, and nobody could prove otherwise.”
“Oh,” Chrissy said, sounding thoughtful. “But how does Mr. Winsor keep you from being deported?”
“By keeping his mouth shut,” Budge said.
Chrissy produced one of those “what do you mean by that” looks.
Budge considered how to explain. “Let’s say I was no longer a true and faithful servant and became more trouble than I was worth. Mr. Winsor is now keeping me from being deported very simply. Just not tipping off the Immigration folks, or by refraining from telling one of his lawyer friends in the State Department that the people now running my former country have a warrant out for me under my former name. If he wanted me deported, he’d simply make a telephone call to the right person.”
Silence. Then she said: “Oh, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be so nosey.”
“No offense taken,” Budge said.
“I can’t believe you did anything very wrong.”
“Well, I guess you could say I haven’t been a great benefactor for society,” Budge said, and laughed.
“Don’t laugh at yourself. Anyway, you’re fine now. Good job, good prospects. I get the impression that Mr. Winsor will be putting you in charge of things. There’d be a lot more money with that.”
“The Beatles taught us about money. Remember? It won’t buy you love.”
Her response to that sounded slightly angry.
“You like to make fun of money,” she said. “I have to tell you I don’t. I bet you’ve never been poor or you wouldn’t talk like that. I bet you’ve never had to watch your mother trying to borrow money, or been embarrassed in school because of the way you dressed. Or your shoes. Or hearing the other girls telling about what they did during the summer, and all you could do was listen. Things like that.”
“No,” Budge said. “Never anything like that.”
“Well, I have,” she said. “You dream of having money. Like dreaming of paradise. Having money like those people I see when I’m with Rawley.”
All the anger was out of her voice now. It sounded dreamy.
“Listening to them talking about the party in Tokyo. Or being on somebody’s yacht going up the Thames. Being introduced to the Queen. The view from somebody’s villa on the cliff in Sicily. The candlesticks. The silver.” She stopped, sighed. “Oh, well. Maybe someday.”
Winsor’s other young women had never talked like that. One sunny Saturday afternoon when he picked up Chrissy he’d been tempted to tell her about the very blond, very chic, very shapely girl he had delivered to the Winsor address two days earlier. Just make a casual remark about it. See how Chrissy would respond. To learn if she understood how she fit into Winsor’s scheme of things and knew what was happening to her. But he didn’t tell her. He told himself he didn’t tell her because it would have been cruel to tip her off if she didn’t know and insulting if she did. But the real reason he was silent was that he was afraid it would destroy this friendship. And he had come to treasure that.
Then the day came, about a month ago, just as he started the limo engine and was pulling away from the curb, when Chrissy clicked on the intercom and said:
“Budge. I think I’m pregnant.”
That surprised him. It shouldn’t have, perhaps. But it did. And he said nothing at all for a bit, and then he said, “Oh?”
“We’re going to get married. Rawley’s given me an engagement ring. It’s spectacular. I’d show it to you, but I can’t wear it yet. This is going to be secret until he can get his divorce finalized and the wedding arrangements made.”
And he’d said: “Well, Chrissy, I wish you a lot of happiness.” And he’d wondered why he hadn’t heard about this impending divorce. From what he’d been hearing, Winsor was still solidly married to a very socially prominent woman named Margo Lodge Winsor. He’d driven her out to Reagan Airport about two months ago on a flight to their vacation home in the Antilles. He’d never been sent out to pick her up, and Winsor had talked a time or two about his plans for joining her there.
He had no idea what, if anything, to say to Chrissy about that, and a damper fell on their friendly chats for a couple of their trips. But then came that terrible day that forced him to make some decisions.
Budge was remembering that day now, just as Winsor arrived and stood looking down at him.
“Up and at ’em,” Winsor said. “Get moving. You’ve got the plane ready, I trust. Everything all set?”
