“The doctor was a fool, of course,” his mother said. “I went to the Leahy Clinic and to the Mayos for two separate checkups. I am as sound as a Swiss franc.”

Raymond’s resentment of her made him feel as though steel burrs were forming everywhere under his skin. I am going to lose this, he thought, just as I lose them all with her. I am being blindfolded as I sit here and she will win if I cannot anticipate where she is leading me. Oh, what a woman! What a beauty she is and what a dirty fighter. She is where the world should spit when they seek to spit upon Johnny Iselin. How can I forget that? How can I look into those serenely lovely eyes, how can I be so deeply thrilled by the carriage of her exquisitely wholesome body and grow so faint at the set, the royal set of that beautiful head and not remember, not always and always and always remember that it encases a cesspool of betrayal, a poisoned well of love, and a city of deadly snakes? Why am I here? Why did I come here?

“I am glad to hear it,” he said. “But I distinctly remember you telling me you had not, actually, been entirely well. Just a few seconds ago. In fact, that was exactly the way you phrased it.”

She smiled at him with forbearance, showing rows of perfect white teeth. “I said—oh, Raymond! For heaven’s sake, what does it matter what I said?”

“I’d like a drink.”

“At lunch?”

“Yes.”

“You generally sulk if people drink at lunch.”

She tilted her head back and made a repulsive kissing sound with her pursed lips. A waiter sprinted toward her so rapidly that Raymond thought the man had decided to kill her, but that was not the case. He came to a point beside her and stared at her abjectly as though pleading for the knout. Raymond’s mother had that effect upon many people.

“Speak up, Raymond.”

“I would like to have some beer. Served in the can.”

“Served in the can, sir?” the waiter asked softly. Raymond’s mother snarled and the man shrilled “Yes, sir!” and was off.

“And who is the more vulgar now?” she asked in a kindly tone. “How about a can of beans, opened with a hatchet, with the can of beer?”

“Mother, for crissake, will you please tell me how come we are having lunch today?”

“Oh. Well, this fool of a doctor whom I shall expose as an alarmist, I assure you, told me that I should go to Europe for a change and whether it was from the wrong reason or not, it did plant the idea. So, since I can’t go alone and since it would present too many security difficulties for Johnny to go with me, I wondered…and I most certainly expect you to accept for professional reasons as I will be traveling as a full, accredited representative of the Appropriations, Foreign Relations, and Finance Committees—I will be representing the Senate, you might say—and I will be there to remind the forgetful rulers of Europe and England that the United States was established not as a democracy but as a Federal Union and Republic that is controlled by the United States Senate, at this moment in our history, through a state-equality composition designed to maintain this establishment and that it exists, in the present moment of our history, to protect minorities from the precipitate and emotional tyranny of majorities. That means, of course, that I will be able to get you into places and cause you to be adjacent to people which neither your newspaper nor your column could reach in a decade of Sundays. I assure you, before you answer as to whether or not you will consent to accompany me, your own mother, on a tour of Europe at no cost whatever to you, that there is no one in the British Isles or on that entire subcontinent of Europe whom you might decide that you would like to meet—and for reasons of publication should you so choose—that I cannot deliver to you. Should you also decide that you would enjoy extending the already influential syndication of your daily writings to other languages and to foreign newspapers and opinion-molding periodicals, I should think that could be arranged. Furthermore—” Raymond’s mother was wooing him as she had wooed Johnny Iselin. Raymond’s own father must have been a dreamer, indeed, to have lost her point so far back in the thickening fullness of her youth.

“I would love to go to Europe with you this summer, Mother.”

“Good. We will sail from West Forty-sixth Street on June 15, at noon, on the United States. My office will mail you the itinerary and hotels and indicate the shape of appointments and meetings, business and social. Would you like to see the Pope?”

“No.”

“I’ll do that alone then.”

“What else?”

“Isn’t this carpetbag steak absolutely delicious? Eating it is an absolute sexual experience! What a marvelous conception—steak and oysters, I mean. Johnny eats it all the time, you know.”

“It figures.”

“Is there anything I can get done for you in Washington, dear heart?”

“No. Thank you. Yes. Yes, there is something. I have a friend—”

“A friend? You have a friend?” She stopped chewing for a moment and put her fork down.

“Sarcasm is the cheapest kind of a crutch to humor, Mother.”

“Please forgive me, Raymond. I was not attempting sarcasm. You must believe that. I was startled. I had never heard you mention a friend in your entire life before. I am very, very happy that you do have a friend and you may be sure, darling, that if I may help your friend I most certainly will be overjoyed to do so. Who is he?”

“He’s a major in Army Intelligence in Washington.” Raymond’s mother had whipped out an efficient-looking looseleaf notebook.

“His name?”

He told her.

“Academy?” He said yes.

“Would full colonel be what you had in mind?”

“That would be fine, I guess. I hope there is some way it can be done without PI being stamped all over his personnel file.”

“What is PI?”

“Political influence.”

“Of course they’ll stamp PI all over his personnel file! Are you out of your mind? What’s wrong with letting the Board know that he happens to have a little muscle in the right places? Sweet Jesus, Raymond, if it weren’t for PI some of the brass we call our leaders would be the oldest crop of second lieutenants in military history. I swear to God, Raymond,” his mother said in extreme exasperation, chopping savagely at a large gooseberry tart that glistened with custard filling, “sometimes I think you are the most naïve of young men, and when I read your column, I am sure.”

“What’s wrong with my column?”

She held up her hand. “Not now. We will reorganize your column aboard ship in June. Right now let’s make your friend a chicken colonel.” She looked at her notes. “Now, is there anything—well, anything negative I should know about this one?”

“No. He’s a great officer. His father and grandfather and great-grandfather were great officers.”

“You know him from Korea?”

“Yes. He—he led the patrol.” Raymond hesitated because mentioning the patrol made him think of that filthy medal again and of how much his mother had made that medal mean to Johnny Iselin and what a fool she had made of herself at the White House and later what a fool Johnny had made of himself in front of the TV cameras and press cameras at that goddam, cheap, rotten, contemptuous luncheon where he had been humiliated, and all of a sudden he saw that it would be possible, too, for him to take a little bit of her skin off painfully and to kick Johnny right between the eyes with the medal nailed to the toe of his boot so that he, Raymond, would finally have a little pleasure out of that goddam medal himself, finally and at last. He was patiently quiet until she sensed the meaning of his hesitation and took it up.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“Well, there is one thing which the Army might figure as negative. In the past. I think it’s all right now.”

“He’s a fairy?”

“Hah!”

“This little negative thing. You say you think it’s all right now?”