The Golden Age by Gore Vidal Page B

comes.”
    “Can we write this?”
    “No.” Caroline was blunt. “My opinion is not a fact.”
    “Dr. Ericson …”
    “Won’t talk. No. This is just for us to know. You and I. Background. Anyway, I’m intrigued by Mrs. Sims.”
    “He just died, by the way, Mr. Sims. Only sixty. Interesting man.”
    “He was in charge of the code room at the Canadian Embassy. I suspect his wife, the bewitching Mitzi, will now go back to Canada.”
    “Are you some sort of secret agent?” Blaise was amused.
    “I? Who have never been able to keep a secret of any kind? No. But I’m doing what I can for my country—my
other
country, that is. Friends in the French government thought I might be helpful, which shows how desperate they are. They want me to use my influence on the Roosevelts, as if I had any.”
    “While keeping track of Arthur Vandenberg’s harem.”
    “If the Republican convention were held now he’d be their candidate for president.”
    “So the ladies are supposed …”
    “To convert him. But Franklin thinks he’s not convertible. I’m not so sure.”

    “Arthur is a professional isolationist. The worst kind. They get elected by saying they are going to punch King George in the snoot, as the Mayor of Chicago so elegantly put it.” The President was at his desk in the oval study, absently pouring a bottle of rum into a pitcher of some sort of magenta-colored fruit juice. He never remembered to measure. On the sofa by the empty fireplace, Harry Hopkins was going rapidly through a stack of newspapers. A crumpled dark suit did nothing to disguise the fact that he had become skeletal; only bright sharp eyes suggested that he was not only still alive but alert. Officially, he was the secretary of commerce and sat in the Cabinet. Actually he was, after Eleanor, the President’s other self, somewhat the worse for having had most of his cancerous stomach removed the previous summer. A principal architect of the New Deal, as the President’s largely unsuccessful plan to end the Depression was called, Hopkins was the man in the shadows, forever whispering into the President’s ear, as they experimented with programs and secretly manipulated friends and enemies. Caroline found him charming if only because he did not find her so; since she was of no immediate use to him, he was simply polite to her. In time, she would charm him. Unlike so many of the virtuous social workers that had come into the Rooseveltian orbit, Hopkins loved the rich perhaps too well, as the President sometimes teased him. He liked to visit friends in great houses on Long Island. A widower with sons and a young daughter to look after, he was thought to be on the lookout for a rich wife, but between his never-ending work as well as flesh-consuming cancer, what time that he had left on earth was devoted to the President, who was now pouring out his extraordinary cocktail for Caroline’s presumed delight.
    “That should do the trick.” Roosevelt turned to Hopkins expectantly.
    “You know I haven’t the stomach for it, Mr. President.” Hopkins went on reading.
    “We who have so often heard the chimes at midnight together.” Roosevelt gave a theatrical sigh. “By the way, when are you planning to visit that little cheese shop on Forty-second Street?”
    “Soon. I can see you are starving to death.” Hopkins put down thenewspapers. “Well, it looks like the Republicans will now nominate Thomas E. Dewey, the boy prosecutor from New York.”
    “He worries too much about the way he looks, or so I’m told.” Roosevelt chuckled. “He is only three feet tall, of course. With a moustache, something no successful politician has worn since Grover Cleveland.”
    They spoke of other possible Republican candidates. Senators Vandenberg and Taft were duly named and dissected by the two professionals. Then other dinner guests began to fill the room, and Roosevelt, as bartender, was kept busy.
    Caroline sat on the sofa beside Hopkins. He smelled of