“No strings. Of course, you have to take care of it if you want to keep it. There’s always that string. But talk to Needles when you get back. He never loses a dime.”

“Am I coming home?”

“When you do,” Larry said, maneuvering. “You don’t want to stay away too long.”

“What’s wrong with London?” Nick said lightly. “I’m having a great time. Girls try to pick me up in the street. People take me to lunch and give me money. I’d be crazy to leave.”

“Just don’t let Wiseman talk you into another year. You’re not getting any younger either.”

“And now I have-responsibilities,” Nick said, toying with it. “All those money strings reeling me back in. Was that the idea?” He smiled. “You’re an operator, Larry, I have to hand it to you.”

“You haven’t got it yet,” Larry said, playing along. “It has the opposite effect on most people. Maybe you’ll go wild instead.”

“No. You know me. I was Eagle Scout, remember? Look,” he said, leaning forward. “I know what you’re worrying about. I haven’t gone AWOL. This is‘-he waved his hand-’I don’t know. R and R, I guess. I’ll finish the degree. Then after, I’ll go home and put on a suit and everything’ll work out just the way you want it to. You don’t have to buy my way back.”

Larry looked at him and smiled. “Then there’s nothing more I could ask,” he said, and for an instant Nick thought he would actually reach over and shake hands.

“You’ll think of something,” Nick said, teasing.

“Well, don’t tell the ambassador where you were this morning. Ah, here’s your mother.” He glanced toward the entrance. Two maitre d’s were leading her across the room, a liner guided by tugboats, and Nick watched, amused, as heads bobbed up in the wake.

“They’ll take you at two-thirty,” she said, touching the back of Nick’s neck as she took her seat. “Downstairs. Evangeline’s thrilled you’re coming.”

“I’ll bet.”

“Well, she is. You know how she loves a party. Sad, really, their having to leave. She’ll miss all this,” she said, waving her hand, as if the room were an extension of the ambassador’s residence. “Have you ordered? They’ve got five hundred coming for drinks, if you can believe it. Sort of a last hurrah, I suppose. I wonder who they’ll send.”

“They’re talking about Annenberg,” Larry said.

“Who?” Nick’s mother said, reaching for the menu.

“ TV Guide,” Larry said, smiling. “Campaign contributor. Generous.”

“It’s too bad,” his mother said. “They love David here. Which Annenberg? Philadelphia?”

Larry nodded. “Remember Moses? Nailed before your time,” he said to Nick, “for income tax evasion. Eight million penalty-in 1940 dollars. Makes you wonder what he really did. Now the son’s on his way to the Court of St James’s.” He shook his head. “It’s a wonderful country. Nobody remembers anything.”

And for a moment, in the pink Watteau room, it seemed nobody did. Water over the dam, the merciful absolution of time. Larry, grinning and casual, was on his way to Paris, and Nick’s mother, studying the menu, hadn’t heard a thing.

“Maybe he’ll be better than you think,” Nick said.

“I’ll tell you one thing,” his mother said. “The parties will never be the same. Never.”

Chapter 4

The cars were backed up to the gate at Winfield House, so Nick paid off the taxi and walked the length of the driveway. Behind the hundred lighted windows Regent’s Park stretched for miles, as dark as the night sky, so that the party seemed at first like a country-house ball, with Marine guards instead of livery men and Daimlers and Bentleys rolling up like coaches. Nick had come late to avoid the crush, but there was still a line on the steps, another for the coats, then a final clot at the entrance to the big room where the Bruces were receiving the guests. Nick worked his way around the edge, sure that the Bruces wouldn’t recognize him anyway, and grabbed a glass from a passing tray. The room was pretty, but so crowded that the walls and furniture receded into a flat backdrop, blocked out by all the people onstage. There was a room beyond, and presumably another beyond that, bright and noisy, and waiters moved between them, their plates of canapes emptying and reappearing with the magic of the loaves and the fishes. Nick passed one of the makeshift bars covered with flutes of champagne and kept moving. There was nothing as anonymous as a big party, so long as you pretended you were on your way to something and didn’t stand against the wall.