Random Hearts (3 page)

Sometime in mid-afternoon the falling snow finally made an
impression on Edward Davis. He was sitting at his desk, his back to the window,
gobbling a chopped egg sandwich and sloshing it down half-chewed with gulps of
skim milk, when he swiveled a full 180 degrees in his chair.

"Damn!" he exclaimed, observing the thick white
blanket covering the streets and the rooftops. Even the Capitol dome was
covered. His reaction was motivated neither by esthetic appreciation nor by the
marvels of nature. His principal concern was that the staff would have to be
dismissed early, leaving him to bear the brunt of the opening session work
load. Such was the bleak fate of a congressional A.A.

He turned, shrugged, and finished his sandwich. With Lily
out of town it really didn't matter. Remembering her playful accusations about
his being a workaholic, he smiled, then sucked some egg salad from his fingers.
It was an accusation that had mellowed with time and circumstances. As a buyer
for Woodies, her career took almost as much time away from their marriage as
his job and the issue had long ceased to be a bone of contention between them.
Besides, he was damned proud of her success.

The telephone rang. It was the Congressman, who was still
in Iowa. They went over legislative details and discussed committee,
assignments, staff matters, a speech that was in the works, the thrust of a
press release, and other business.

"Still snowing out there?" the Congressman asked.

"A bitch."

"Will the speech be ready tomorrow?"

"Of course."

After Edward hung up, he felt a flash of irritation, not at
the Congressman but at the snow. Jan Peters, a staff assistant, came into his
office. She wore a body-hugging turtleneck sweater which set off her full
bosom. A tight skirt emphasizing a well-turned bottom added to her blatant
sensuality, which she frequently flaunted in his direction. At times she would
huddle close enough for him to taste her minty breath, close enough for him to
feel a firm breast against his upper arm.

"Why me?" he asked her once. They had been
working late, and she seemed to be more tempting than usual. He had expected a
denial, if only for propriety's sake.

"You really want to know?" she responded coolly,
crossing her shapely legs, the hem of her skirt settling at mid-thigh.

"Not really."

"Then why did you ask?" she inquired, smiling.

"I'm not sure," he said with some embarrassment.
Above all he had no desire to stray from Lily.

"You have the look of vulnerability, Edward," Jan
explained. "An appeal to the mother instinct. Mine at least. And you're
cute and so high-minded about your marriage."

"Is that so rare?"

"From my perch, it is. I welcome a challenge."
She got up from the couch and came closer, putting her arms around his neck.
"Yes, it definitely is the mother instinct. It turns me on."

Grasping her shoulders, he moved her gently to arm's
length.

"I'm committed," he said, holding up his hand to
show her his marriage ring.

"You're giving me the finger?"

"You might call it that."

"I'm talking recreation, not a marital earthquake."

"Your kind of recreation creates earthquakes."

"Maybe a bit of noise, but nothing ever breaks,"
she said, playfully backing away.

"Someday, Jan, I'll explain to you all about honor and
loyalty."

"In this place? You're kidding." Jan looked at
him and sighed. "Remember, it's a perishable item," she said gaily.
"Like a hotel room. If you don't use it, the time is lost forever."

It seemed a clever way to put it. Although secretly
flattered, he was glad he had cleared the air.

"Fabulous," Jan said, looking over his shoulder
through the window. "I love it."

"Good for kids and ski resorts," he cracked.
"That's all everyone is thinking about." She looked at him, offered a
mild glance of rebuke, shrugged, and left the office with exaggerated
bounciness. Pressing the intercom button, he waited for a voice at the other
end.

"How's the speech?"

"Coming," Harvey Miles grunted.

"He needs it tomorrow."

"I'm not a computer." There was a brief pause.
"The sky is falling in."

"That's all everyone is thinking about," he repeated,
remembering snows back in the Midwest. In a child's world they were welcomed
with great joy. Somewhere deep in the back of his mind he heard sleigh bells. A
lost world. He sighed, wondering if that meant he had finally become a realist.

Hanging up, he swiveled again to look through the window.
Great clumps of snow fell silently. Cars crawled slowly through the streets.
People bent their heads as they struggled forward against the blizzard's
onslaught. It was lucky that Lily had a head start on it, he thought.

"It's snowing," Lily had said, opening the
draperies earlier that morning. She had fiddled with the dial of the radio
until she found a weather report.

"Six to ten inches," he had heard the announcer
say, and then he ceased to think about it. His mind groaned under the weight of
what he had to do that day, and he was still tired from having worked into the
early morning. Her suitcase was already packed and waiting in the bedroom, he
noted as he slid in beside her, making sure to keep his cold flesh from making
contact with her curled sleeping body—not that they ever slept entwined.
Carefully, he had leaned over to plant a kiss in her hair, a ritual with him.
Striving time, he had sighed. It was the way both justified their frenetic
pace. The object was to cut themselves from the pack, make their mark. It was
the way he was taught to tackle life, and, he assumed, it was the same with
Lily. Nothing came without sacrifice. She understood completely how hard he had
to work on the Hill and how much it meant to him, although she deprecated the
political life in her lightly mocking way. Political science had never been her
most pressing interest. Nor was the world of fashion his.

"It's not a science," she had said often,
especially when he got lofty and overinflated in assessing his work. She also
mocked the Congressman as well: "He suffers from galloping egomania."

"You're right there," he told her. "But some
stepping stones have got to be utilized." What he wanted was to run
himself one day, which was why he continued to keep his official residence in Iowa. He had set that goal for the late eighties. Barring that, his alternate ambition was
to move to the Senate or the White House in some decision-making capacity.

His father had been mayor of their little town in Iowa, and although he died when Edward was fourteen, the man had implanted in him the idea
of politics as a career. "It's a good life, son," he remembered his
father saying, "as long as you keep your real feelings to yourself."

He had not quite understood what that meant at the time. It
had taken a couple of years in Washington to drive the message home.

"It's like the retail business," he had often
told Lily, who worked for Woodies, the town's largest department store.
"You dispense a product to fill a perceived need. If it sells, you profit.
If the customer doesn't like what he's bought, he brings it back."

"Problem is, when you elect a politician, you never
really know what you're buying. At least with selling clothes, you can try it
on first."

"Like getting married."

She blushed lightly. Before their marriage they had lived
together for a year, much to the embarrassment of Lily's traditional Italian
family in Baltimore. In the end they had yielded to convention, although he, a
Protestant and non-Italian, was hardly acceptable to the clannish Corsinis. But
at least they were not living in sin.

Her promotion to buyer had altered their tentative plans
for children, and the idea simply vanished as an issue between them. The fact
was that there was no real issue between them, no contentious nagging theme.
They were busy, ambitious people, tolerant of each other's outside job
pressures. If there were vague yearnings or dissatisfactions, they never came
up. Maybe this is what happiness is, he decided. No big highs. No deep lows.
Mutual consideration was the watchword. The emotional thing, he supposed, had
mellowed, matured into another phase.

"Be sure you eat right," she had warned. Dressed
and shaved, he had come into the kitchen of their apartment on "Q" Street
in Georgetown. He had a tendency toward eating quick snacks and junk food,
which had thickened his gut. "There are some steaks in the freezer."
She had been making a list for him, which she placed on the refrigerator with a
magnet. He really enjoyed her concern. He was a bit absentminded and
self-absorbed at times.

"I'm perfectly capable—" he began.

"Of not taking care of yourself," she admonished.

"I'll manage," he said, brooding into his coffee.
Actually, he hated her trips. Part of the game, he supposed. Life with a wife
was a lot different now than in his father's time. He remembered his mother,
always bustling about the three of them, his father, his sister, and himself.
After Dad died and Sis left the house to get married and he went off to college,
that was it for his mother. The Lord took her because of uselessness, people
had said. Perhaps it was that memory that had made him so intensely supportive
of Lily's career.

"I'll be gone only four days," she said. He felt
her eyes watching him as he buttered his toast and read George Will, who
occasionally infuriated him.

"Priggish supercilious bastard," he said. As he
looked up, she turned her eyes away; her gaze drifted toward the window. The
Style section of the
Post
lay on the table next to her coffee. She had
not opened it.

"At least it doesn't snow in L.A.," he said.

"What?" Her concentration was elsewhere.

Shrugging, he looked at the weather report in the paper.
"Low sixties in L.A. But rain."

"Won't matter," she said, lifting her coffee mug
and watching him with her dark eyes peering over the rim. "I'll be inside
most of the time."

"What time does the plane leave?"

"Noon."

"Lucky lady."

"I'm not sure where I'll be," she said.

"Will you call?"

"I'll try."

"It will be all right. I'll be so damned busy anyhow.
Just come home safe and sound."

He got up from the table and put on his jacket, which was
rumpled from having lain in a heap on the floor near the bedroom chair. His
collar was open, and the tail of his tie hung unevenly below his belt. He felt her
inspection and quickly buttoned his shirt.

"A mess, right?"

"You haven't exactly walked out of
Gentleman's
Quarterly
."

She had tried to remake him into a sleek fashionable image.
That, after all, was her business. She could get discounts in Woodies on men's
clothes, but getting him to shop had been an impossible task.

"A hopeless case," he said cheerfully, bending
down to peck her cheek. Not that he was bad-looking. A shock of tight black
curly hair which, fearing her disapproval, he kept neatly trimmed. Square jaw
with a deep cleft, the blessing of good even teeth, showing whiter against a
dark complexion. Actually, he could pass for being athletic, which he wasn't,
but it was an image that had given him good marketability.

Only his eyes gave away his innocence and his
vulnerability. People said that, but he was never sure why.

"A hangdog look," Lily told him one day after
they had met. "Like a spaniel." He had looked in the mirror. "I
don't see it," he concluded. "Nobody ever sees themselves," she
had laughed.

"But I am lovable." He patted his belly.
"And when I get chubbier, I'll be even more endearing." It surprised
him that she did not smile at his banter. Preoccupied, he supposed. Pressure of
work. Anxiety about the trip. He dismissed the slight ruffle. He did not want
her to go, but to tell her that would sound selfish. He was very careful not to
provoke guilt about her career. Above all, he wanted her to be happy.

"Anyway, you knock 'em dead. And don't worry about
calling. I'll survive."

"You take care," she said wistfully. He stopped
on the way out to give her one last appraisal.

"You're one beautiful lady," he said. He was
never gratuitous about that. To him, she was beautiful. "Whoever made you
knew how to put things together."

"Button up," she called after him. "It's
twenty-four degrees."

Leaving, he felt the emptiness of parting. Only four days,
he thought. Not a lifetime.

The icy air had jolted him. By the time the car warmed, his
mind was on the impending day, which he knew would be difficult. The snow was
already thick on the ground as he sloshed through it from the parking lot to
his office. As the day wore on it became more and more apparent that his
prediction was correct. It's the weather, he decided. It upset the balance.
Harvey Mills came in and put a speech draft on his desk.

Looking up he observed the young man, a tangled hirsute
mess with tight curly hair grown over his ears and a shaggy mustache that
hadn't seen a clipper for months, if ever. With his round-rimmed glasses, he
looked a lot like he himself had looked before Lily had done him over. Maybe
that was why he had hired the younger man.

Harvey Mills slumped in a chair, his myopic eyes squinting
into the whiteness behind Edward, who had begun to read the speech until Harvey's gaze distracted him.

"It's mesmerizing," Harvey said, unable to tear
his eyes away.

"It's loused up my day. It's as if you people never
saw snow before," Edward muttered.

"It reminds us of what's in short supply around here.
Purity."

His telephone rang. He picked it up, scowling at the young
man. It was Jan.

"In its wisdom, the U.S. Government is calling off the
day."