The Dinner Party Read Online Free Page A

be damn important or he wouldn’t drag his assistant for Central America with him. On the other hand, it’s my house that makes the connection, our dinner table, and whatever it has to do with your father, it’s equally important to me.”
    â€œFor heaven’s sake, Richard, they’re not our party. If one wanted to be overdramatic, one could call them the enemy. They are guests who want to harangue Daddy. They will be greeted with hospitality. They will be given as good a dinner as this house can provide. But there my responsibility ends. And I still don’t know why you bought that damned ham.”
    â€œWill you listen? Will you listen one moment. I am coming up for reelection, and that will put me in the position to have at least one dim shot at the Oval Office. I’ve dreamed about that long enough, but there’s one issue that’s very important to me. If I bring it up in the House, it will mark me too left. I need the center for the election.”
    â€œWhy on earth should you even think that the election is in question? You’re finishing a second term in this state. It’s our state.” Ours . In what way, she wondered, even as she spoke? What does ours mean anymore? Sitting in the sunken, brick-floored terrace, the clipped hedges enclosing things so neatly and precisely, the terrace, beyond the hedges the herb garden, with its careful patches of basil and dill and chives and mint and thyme and parsley, the big Colonial house, one small corner of which was two hundred years old, she realized that the world was not this—no longer this, no longer even aware of this.
    â€œOh, no,” Richard said. “Not so quick. You’ve heard of targeting. These bastards have all the money in the world, and they use it. They pick a senator they want to destroy, and they target him. They drown him in television commercials, they dig up his past and if he doesn’t have a past, they create one. Well, I don’t want it to be Richard Cromwell.”
    â€œAnd you’re going to tame the beast tonight?” she asked, smiling.
    â€œMaybe. Maybe neutralize him a little bit …”
    â€œHow? Good heavens, how?”
    â€œAppeal to compassion. Anyway, I didn’t invite them here—I mean it wasn’t my gesture. Bill Justin—”
    That pissant, Dolly thought. She found it difficult to voice crude language, as much as it was the manner today, and even the name of the assistant secretary rubbed her nerves as a coin scraped on glass.
    â€œâ€”well, Bill Justin called Joan and mentioned that Webster Heller was staying at his home for a week or so, and that—”
    â€œI know how he happens to come here.”
    â€œBut you see, Dolly, it makes a connection. I might even say a basis for quid pro quo now exists. They want something damned important from your daddy. I want a small but important favor from them. It’s an opportunity for me, and I need it.”
    â€œWell, be that as it may, I have a dinner party to prepare for, and I want to know why on earth you ordered the ham?”
    â€œIt’s Webster Heller. He’s crazy about fresh roasted pork, and I remembered that a couple of months ago I overheard one of his assistants telling someone how much Heller liked fresh roast ham, and how it was these days that you never see a fresh roast ham, only the smoked and the boiled; you know, you’re standing around on the Hill, and you overhear something. You’re not listening, you just overhear it, and I thought to myself what a neat ploy to just happen to serve Heller with his favorite meat. You know, nothing earthshaking but one of those small touches that goes right to a man’s heart.”
    â€œThe small touch is fourteen pounds—”
    â€œI know I should have spoken to you, but you weren’t around, and—”
    â€œAnd the brilliance of your notion overwhelmed you, and you acted.”
    â€œHey,