"If the President wants to meet me there," said
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Gold, "it seems to me I'm important enough to be invited."
"If you aren't important enough to be invited," countered Ralph, "he won't want to meet you there."
"What's so special about that Embassy Ball?" Gold argued. "Ain't I as good as some of the other people who'll be going?"
"Better," said Ralph. "But this is the social world, Bruce, where competence doesn't count. You aren't wealthy and you don't yet hold the right position. Try to remember who you are. Let's face it, Bruce—Jews don't really make it in America. They never did. I hope you're not offended by my frankness."
"True honesty never necessitates an apology," said Gold, recovering by feeble degrees from the downturn in spirit he had suffered. "Is what you say true, Ralph?"
"I think so, Bruce. Not unless you're very, very rich and remain a European. Jews can't really go far in this country socially, and none have. Christians find it difficult enough, but for Jews it's just about impossible. I can think of no exception."
Gold was drawn into a deeper exploration of the subject with a kind of unaccountable fascination. "Kissinger?"
"Oh, no," snickered Ralph. "He goes to sporting events and accepts too many invitations to parties with entertainers. He's just another writer now scrounging about for royalties and publicity. I hope that doesn't sound snobbish, Bruce."
"Not at all, Ralph," said Gold. "Walter Annenberg and Lillian Farkas? They were ambassadors."
"Under Nixon?" Ralph's sniggering headshake made additional refutation superfluous. "Annenberg was succeeded as ambassador to England by Elliot Richardson. And there's a man of low character I can't stand and would not trust for a moment. He was willing to ride with Nixon but unwilling to do the dirty work. What did he think they needed him for—his special
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abilities and his fine New England background?" Ralph was still smiling with his jeering expression as he hitched up his trousers at the knee before carefully crossing his legs. "He wanted credit for virtue for refusing to fire the Watergate prosecutor. Can you imagine how much longer he would have lasted in public life if he had fired him? Elliot Richardson will be at the Embassy Ball, Bruce, but you won't. It's unjust, but it would be hypocrisy for me to say I really care."
"Will you be at the Embassy Ball?"
"I'm always invited to the Embassy Ball."
"What about the Guggenheims?" Gold pursued. Ralph was indicating the negative. "The Warburgs, the Schiffs, the Belmonts, the Kahns?"
"No, Bruce. I can't think of a single one who was ever accepted into good society," said Ralph, "except for some daughters, perhaps, who married upward into a better class and were absorbed without telltale clues. And certainly not the ones with genius or talent. Those are anathema regardless of birth, although we don't produce many. American democracy is the most rigid aristocracy on earth, Bruce, and every social climber needs at least one unscrupulous marriage to succeed."
"What about Eisenhower and Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, and Gerald Ford?"
"Presidents?" Ralph sniffed. "Presidents never make it into good society. They're helpful but gauche. And when they're no longer helpful they're merely gauche. Just look who their closest companions are while in office and after."
"Kennedy?" asked Gold.
"Oh, no," said Ralph in gentle admonition. "The Kennedys were always d6class6. That was part of their charm and much of their pleasure. No Irish Catholic male can ever do it on his own, Bruce. Not here. The Irish can't make it and neither can native-born Italians, although wealthy Arabs may if they mind their manners, so you see, it's not just Jews who are ostracized and excluded. As I believe I've told you, Bruce, there is
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no anti-Semitism any more. I'm glad I can speak so freely, because I believe you know exactly how I feel."
"I'm not sure I know exactly how you feel, Ralph," Gold replied with a bit of tension, deciding to relieve himself at last of a somber distrust that had been preying recurrently upon his mind. "I notice you never have me to your house."
The response to this was mild. "You never have me to yours, Bruce."
"You don't come to New York, Ralph. But I'm in Washington often."
"I come to New York a lot, Bruce."
"You didn't tell me that."
"You haven't asked me, Bruce," Ralph laughed amicably. Gold was at a loss to reply. "We shouldn't quibble over this, should we? Bruce, would you really want me to visit you in your apartment on Manhattan's West Side? It's not as though you own a suite at the Pierre or the Ritz Towers, is it?"
Gold could not gainsay even to himself that he would not want Ralph to visit him at his apartment on Manhattan's West Side. "I suppose you're right, Ralph. The important thing is not our social worlds but our friendship. There's a definition of a friend I once heard expressed by my Swedish publisher. He's Jewish, Ralph, and he lived in Germany under Hitler as a child until his family escaped. He has only one test of a friend now, he told me. 'Would he hide me?' is the question he asks. It's pretty much my test of a friend too, when I come down to it. Ralph, if Hitler returns, would you hide me?"
The question threw Ralph into a flurry and he clambered to his feet, his fair skin turning pink. "Oh, gosh, Bruce," he exclaimed hastily, "we're not friends. I thought you knew that."
Gold was equally confused. "We're not?"
"Oh, no, Bruce," stressed Ralph in embarrassed apology. "And I'd feel just awful if I thought I've ever said or done anything to give you the impression we are."
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Gold felt this more than he wished to show. "You used my work at school, Ralph. We were pretty close then."
"That was college, Bruce," said Ralph, "and it was important that I get my degree. But this is only government. People in government don't have friends, Bruce, just interests and ambitions. Don't look so dismayed. Would you hide me and take any risk?" Gold's impassive silence denoted he would not. "If you did, Lieberman would inform on both of us and call himself a patriot."
"Ralph," said Gold, "I think by now Lieberman really believes all that repressive, elitist, racist, neocon-servative bullshit and is not just sucking around you people for money and invitations."
"That's just the thing I dislike about him most," said Ralph. "He has no right to our beliefs. He hasn't even made much money. Let him at least go out and make a fortune before he begins pretending he's one of us."
"Ralph, there's one thing I simply must know," said Gold. "In college I worked harder than you and was a better student and more intelligent. Yet, you got higher grades and even had my paper on Tristram Shandy published. How were you able to do that?"
"I was smarter, Bruce."
"You were smarter?"
"You were doing my work for me, weren't you?"
Ralph delivered these answers with unassuming candor, and Gold, after shifting them around awhile, found himself haunted again by the mysteries of Ralph's head and Ralph's pants. Ralph still never needed a haircut or showed signs of ever having one. His trousers always were sharply creased and meticulously bare of wrinkles, and Gold wondered if he wore each suit only once.
"Less than once," Ralph obliged him with a frank reply. He flung open the bifold doors of a closet containing dozens of suits fastidiously hung. "I change for every appointment. I've been getting by on pressed
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pants when my college degrees and inherited riches weren't enough."
"How can you wear a suit less than once?" asked Gold.
"What a concise and profound intelligence you have!" cried Ralph. "And they thought Kissinger was brilliant! Little do they know. Oh, Bruce, if only you'd come up with a cure for inflation and unemployment. Nobody else even tries."
"You'd steal it," said Gold.
"I wouldn't have to any more," said Ralph. "It's enough you're my prot6g6. Or devise a plan for decreasing this eternal conflict with Russia. You ought to be able to do that. You were probably a Com
munist once, weren't you?"
"I was never a Communist," Gold averred forceful-
iy-
"But can't you think of something anyway?"
Gold was not inclined to try. "The curious thing about Russia," he joked lightly, putting, in imitation of Ralph, both shoes up on the polished, unscarred coffee table between the facing leather chairs, "is that it's a good place for people who are poor and a terrible one for those who are well off, while this country is just the reverse. Why don't we simply exchange?"
The effect of this upon Ralph was stupendous. First the coffee cup fell from his hand and he gaped at Gold as though thunderstruck. Next a lamp went over with another shattering crash as he bolted to his long legs with a look of amazement as stark as any that had ever alighted on human face before.
"It's yours!" he cried suddenly in an outburst of devotion that caused Gold to shrink back instinctively with alarm. "The credit! It will all go to you! I swear it!" Dashing to the glistening red phone on his desk and hammering on a buzzer there furiously, Ralph continued ranting disconnectedly in a delirious expulsion of emotion Gold had never seen spout from him. "You'll be rich, rich! The Nobel Prize—it's tax free! The President, the President!" he bellowed into the phone.
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"It cannot wait! Oh, why, oh, why couldn't I think of that—or anyone else? Oh, shit! He's locked himself in his study again. I'll run this over to him myself. This is too hot for the hot line." Ralph bounded back across the office to his closet for a fresh change of trousers. "I promise you—I will not trust this to anyone else. My God, what a plan, what a brilliant idea! They can ship us all their professionals, profiteers, and high-level bureaucrats and we can send them all our poor and homeless and wretched and miserable. Let them be the land of the free for a while. We'll be Monaco, St. Moritz, and Palm Beach. It's a perfect solution for both countries and there can never be strife between us again." Ralph donned a matching jacket and studied himself in a full-length mirror. "You're in, Bruce, I guarantee it. You won't even need Conover or anyone else from now on. I'll be so proud to have you as a friend someday."
Gold was roused by these final words to a kind of frenzy of his own. "Are you saying that I don't have to marry Andrea?"
"Not even for a month," said Ralph. "If you don't want to marry Andrea, don't. You want to stay married to Belle? Stay married to her."
"I didn't say that."
"Although Conover," cautioned Ralph, "would be an implacable foe if you disappointed him. There'd be stormy confirmation hearings, ugly rumors, waves of anti-Semitism. But you'll ride it through. This will be bigger than Kissinger's d6tente and Monroe's Doctrine. Keep near a telephone. Now you'll certainly be invited to the Embassy Ball. I'll stake my life on that."
By the time Ralph telephoned to inform him sadly that it was impossible to obtain an invitation for him to the Embassy Ball, Gold already had secured one through a lucky, and forbidding, encounter in the lobby of his hotel with the former governor of Texas with whom he had served on the Presidential Commission not long before. There are men who place their hand on the
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shoulder of another in friendly greeting. There are others who do so to assert possession over whoever or whatever comes within their grasp. On instant of contact Gold recognized the unmistakable intent of one of the latter, and he turned with a tremor to discover who was claiming him captive. The Governor, handsome, large, and dominating as earlier with silver hair, piercing blue eyes, and clefted, strong jaw, gazed down at Gold possessively with a smile of cold command.
"What you planning for lunch, Gold?"
"I was thinking of having something light later with my fiancee.''
"You're eating with us now at the Hay-Adams. You'll have steak and eggs with home-fried potatoes. The steak will be cooked to a crisp. Pass that damned chili sauce, Homer. Give some to him too. I liked your report, Gold. I recommended it highly."
"I never wrote it."
"It's what I liked most about it. Doing anything new?"
"I'm thinking of writing a book about Henry Kissinger."
"Why waste time? Nobody's interested any more. Do one on me. Gold, I like you. You remind me a lot of this famous country singer from Texas I'm crazy about, a fellow calls himself Kinky Friedman, the Original Texas Jewboy. Kinky's smarter, but I like you more. I feared for you a while back there that you might be inclined to say something personal in your determination to fart around with the inevitable."
"I've resisted the determination ever since, sir," said Gold in dutiful homage. "I followed your advice, Governor, and I never force anything mechanical or kick anything inanimate."
The Governor pressed his napkin to his lips and sat back. "What are you doing in Washington, Goldy? Anybody who comes here more than once is after something."
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Gold was asking for help when he replied. "I've been promised a Cabinet appointment, Governor. But Fve not been able to meet the President."
"Shoot," said the Governor, "you can meet him tonight at the Embassy Ball."
"I can't get an invitation."
"Homer, give Gold an invitation to the Embassy Ball," said the Governor. "And call the committee and tell them he's coming." Homer had bunches of invitations to the Embassy Ball stuffed in most of his pockets. Gold felt the massive hand of the Governor taking hold of his shoulder again. "Gold, every Jew should have a big gentile for a friend, and every successful American should own a Jew. I'm big, Gold, and I'm willing to be your friend."
"I will support you, Governor," said Gold, "in any cause to which you choose to commit yourself."
"That's fine," said the Governor. "You people learn fast. I had a run-in some time ago with that other member of your faith."
"I have no faith," said Gold.
"That Henry Kissinger," the Governor went on, unmindful of Gold's defensive protestation. "Funny-looking fellow with that nose of his and bumblebee mouth. Had hair like Kinky's, but Kinky is smarter. Had a reputation for backbiting and slanderous remarks about others." The Governor interrupted himself for a deep, ruminating chuckle before drawling on, "He's the one who got down on his knees with Nixon to pray to God on that rug. Laughed my head off when I heard about that and gave a barbecue on my ranch for seventeen thousand people to celebrate. Make war, said Nixon, and he made war. Pray to God, said Nixon, and he prayed to God. Seems to me his God was Nixon. Gold, do Jews always—?"
"No, sir. They do not."
"Didn't think so," said the Governor. "Only Jew I ever saw kneeling was a girl giving blow jobs in our fraternity house because that's the only way we'd let
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her in. Then he complained about those two nice young men who wrote about it. Homer, what was it he said?"
"Said they were lacking in decency and compassion, Governor," said Homer.
"Complained those nice young men Woodward and Bernstein were lacking in decency and compassion, after he was the likely one to spread the story. Had my showdown with him when he made the mistake of telling the press he sometimes thought of himself as a lonely cowboy riding into town to set things in order. Well, as you can imagine, the cowboys in my state did not take kindly to that. Half my constituents wanted to go up after him with a lariat. I called him on that at a National Security Council meeting. I was Secretary of something or other then, and I said to him, 'Gold—'"
"I'm Gold, sir," pointed out Gold.
"It don't make that much difference—you fellows all look pretty much alike to me. I told him he didn't know sparrow's shit about cowboys if he ever imagined he felt like one. Cowboys ain't short, ain't chubby, and don't talk with no Jewish accent, I told him. And he said, 'It isn't Chewish, sir. It's Cherman.'"
Gold tried desperately to control his excitement. "He said that, Governor? He said it wasn't Jewish?"
"And I told him that if he ever came riding into my state as a cowboy he'd be very lonely indeed, because there'd be plenty of real ones who'd be happy to teach him the diffe
rence. And he said, 'I'm terribly sorry, Governor, and I promise never, never to do it again.'" The Governor laughed once more, savoring the recollection. "I told him if, however, he ever wanted to present himself in Texas as a real horse's ass, none of us would dispute him. We were eyeball to eyeball, and he blinked. And from that time on I knew I had his pecker in my pocket."
Gold was silent only for the instant needed to draw breath. "Was it circumcised?" he asked with a beating heart.
"I don't know," said the Governor. "All peckers
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look the same once they're in my pocket. Come to the Ball tonight, Gold. When the President arrives, right after they finish 'Hail to the Chief and that damn 'Ruffles and Flourishes,' you push right on up to him and state your request. Anyone tries to interfere, you just tell him you're mine and I said it's okay."
"The President won't object?"
"He's in my pocket." The Governor's lake-blue eyes were glinting. "You rent your clothes tonight from this place. Homer, give him our business card. We get kickbacks."
Gold looked pretty good in his white tie, top hat and tails: lean, penetrating, dynamic, and sensual. Gold felt he looked pretty good until he arrived at the Ball in the only taxicab amid a gathering swarm of chauffeured maroon, black, and silver limousines. Ralph was nervously on the lookout for him inside the entrance, wearing an expression that was vividly disturbed. There was a long-distance call for Gold he could take in a private waiting room.