Democracy by Joan Didion

normal turbulence of a nascent democracy.
    Inez remembered Billy Dillon negotiating with the wire reporters to move Harry’s press conference out in time for Friday deadlines at the New York Times and the Washington Post “I made him available, now do me a favor,” Billy Dillon said. “I don’t want him on the wire so late he makes the papers Sunday afternoon, you see my point.”
    Inez remembered Jack Lovett asking Billy Dillon if he wanted the rioting rescheduled for the Los Angeles Times .
    Inez remembered:
    The reception for Harry at the university the night before the grenade exploded in the embassy commissary. She remembered Harry saying over and over again that Americans were learning major lessons in Southeast Asia. She remembered Jack Lovett saying finally that he could think of only one lesson Americans were learning in Southeast Asia. What was that, someone said. Harry did not say it, Harry was too careful to have said it. Billy Dillon was too careful to have said it. Frances Landau or Janet must have said it. What was that, Frances Landau or Janet said, and Jack Lovett clipped a cigar before he answered.
    “A tripped Claymore mine explodes straight up,” Jack Lovett said.
    There had been bare light bulbs blazing over a table set with trays of sweetened pomegranate juice, little gold chairs set in rows, some kind of trouble outside: troops appearing at the doors and the occasional crack of a rifle shot, the congressman says, the congressman believes, major lessons for Americans in Southeast Asia.
    “Let’s move it out,” Jack Lovett said.
    “Goddamnit I’m not through,” Harry Victor said.
    “I believe some human rights are being violated on the verandah,” Jack Lovett said.
    Harry had turned back to the director of the Islamic Union.
    Janet’s hand had hovered over the sweetened pomegranate juice as if she expected it to metamorphose into a vodka martini.
    Inez had watched Jack Lovett. She had never before seen Jack Lovett show dislike or irritation. Dislike and irritation were two of many emotions that Jack Lovett made a point of not showing, but he was showing them now.
    “You people really interest me,” Jack Lovett said. He said it to Billy Dillon but he was looking at Harry. “You don’t actually see what’s happening in front of you. You don’t see it unless you read it. You have to read it in the New York Times , then you start talking about it. Give a speech. Call for an investigation. Maybe you can come down here in a year or two, investigate what’s happening tonight.”
    “You don’t understand,” Inez had said.
    “I understand he trots around the course wearing blinders, Inez.”
    Inez remembered:
    Jack Lovett coming to get them in the coffee shop of the Borobudur the next morning, after the grenade was lobbed into the embassy commissary. The ambassador, he said, had a bungalow at Puncak. In the mountains. Inez and Janet and the children were to wait up there. Until the situation crystallized. A few hours, not far, above Bogor, a kind of resort, he would take them up.
    “A hill station,” Janet said. “Divine.”
    “Don’t call it a hill station,” Frances Landau said. “ ‘Hill station’ is an imperialist term.”
    “Let’s save the politics until we get up there,” Jack Lovett said.
    “I don’t want to go,” Frances Landau said.
    “Nobody gives a rat’s ass if you go or don’t go,” Jack Lovett said. “You’re not a priority dependent.”
    “Isn’t this a little alarmist,” Harry Victor said. Harry was cracking a boiled egg. Jack Lovett watched him spoon out the egg before he answered.
    “This was a swell choice for a family vacation,” Jack Lovett said then. “A regular Waikiki. I wonder why the charters aren’t onto it. I also wonder if you know what it would cost us to get a congressman’s kid back.”
    Jack Lovett’s voice was pleasant, and so was Harry’s.
    “Ah,” Harry said. “No. Not unless it’s been in the New York Times.