The Dinner Party by Howard Fast Page B

She’s bright and a bit nasty but she’s good-looking. Gus is impressed with a smart, good-looking lady, so he could sit next to her, and then you put Liz on the other side of him, and he ought to be happy as a clam.”
    â€œWe’re eleven. That means five on one side of the table and four on the other. Who sits between Liz and me? Or is it the five side?” She slid the place cards around to match the senator’s suggestion.
    â€œNo, I think the four side.”
    â€œThat will put Gus in a pet. When he comes here and the kids are home, he’ll want a spot between Liz and me.”
    â€œDolly, I know that your father has met practically everyone in this country and almost everyone in most other countries, and he knows Web Heller, but this will be the first time he’s had dinner with Bill Justin, a nasty and powerful man. He’s sitting down with two of the most powerful men in the country—in fact with two of the men who run this country behind that charade they call the presidency, so it seems to me that what Gus would appreciate most is to sit facing these two major linemen. That way he can say his piece without twisting his head and talking across someone else.”
    â€œPossible,” Dolly agreed, moving the cards. “If I put Heller next to me—and then who sits next to him?”
    â€œJenny. Your mother.”
    â€œO.K. Mom can hold her own with that cadaverous old bastard. Then on the other side of mother—Franny Heller?”
    â€œWhy not. I can take her. A little flattery and she melts all over her dinner plate. And then to my left, Clarence Jones.”
    â€œGood—good thinking. You’ll have him under your wing.” She slid the cards around. “We’re left with Father, Liz and Leonard. But we make progress.” She stared at the cards. “You want Liz next to Jones—or Winnie Justin?”
    â€œIf we put Liz next to Jones, then Leonard gets Winnie Justin.”
    â€œOh, no. That won’t do. Absolutely not.”
    â€œThen she’s mine—right here, between Jones and Gus.”
    â€œCan Jones handle her? Leonard says he’s enormously bright, but she is South and she has a sharp tongue and a reputation for bitchiness.”
    â€œStill, she’s at a dinner table under her husband’s eye. She’ll behave. And Jones may surprise us.”
    â€œWell, here it is,” Dolly agreed, moving the cards to form a miniature pattern on the polished surface of the table. On my right, Leonard, Liz, Daddy, Winnie and Jones. On my left, Heller, Mother, Bill Justin and Frannie Heller.”
    â€œIt should work.”
    â€œYou know how many perfectly rotten dinner parties we’ve been to? It’s because few hostesses pause to consider that they’re not simply serving food, but creating a work of art—I mean a theatrical piece.” She looked at her husband questioningly.
    â€œYes. I suppose I’d agree with that. Certainly about the lousy dinner parties,” thinking how strange it was that he, a United States senator, with all the weight of a suicidal world on his mind and conscience, should be occupied with the seating arrangement at a dinner table. But thus the whole world was occupied, he realized, eating, drinking, screwing, weeping, laughing, robbing, killing, and why should he be any different?
    Dolly shrugged. “I apologize,” she said bitterly. “I’m pleading my case that there’s some reason for me to exist on this earth, that I’m some use to somebody.”

ELEVEN
    A bit earlier, MacKenzie had mentioned to his wife that he hadn’t seen Jones at breakfast. Ellen was in the process of rehearsing Nellie Clough. Nellie knew, but each time she had to be rehearsed, and if she was not rehearsed, some disaster inevitably followed. “Mr. MacKenzie,” Ellen said—to Nellie he was always Mr. MacKenzie—“will carve in the kitchen and