Free Advise and Consent by Allen Drury

screaming “Darling!” at one another, together with the amused tolerance of their amiable and almost always thirsty husbands, could quickly be parlayed into an endless round of party-going and party-giving that very soon took you to a social pinnacle limited only by your wealth and stamina. Before long you would find that Time and Newsweek were beginning to mention you in coy little asides in their news columns, and then would come the day when you picked up a magazine from the rack and found that all those carefully staged photographs at your last affair had finally resulted in a LIFE GOES TO A PARTY AT DOLLY HARRISON’S, and you could relax, at last, for you were finally, indubitably, beyond all peradventure of doubt and beyond all fear of challenge by mortal man—or, more importantly, woman—In.
    After that, it was just a matter of continuing to lay out the food and the drinks and you could keep going indefinitely; especially if, like Dolly, you wanted to make it something a little deeper and more important, and so in time began to refine your guest lists to the point where they included not only the most important but also the most interesting people in Washington. Sometimes these were the same, but quite frequently they were not, and an astute realization of which was which and how often to mix them did much to give your hard-bought social standing a foundation as permanent as anything in the capital with its shifting official population could be permanent.
    So it had been with Dolly, who along with her sister millionairesses was now one of the fixtures of the Washington scene. And, she told herself with considerable justification, quite possibly the best of them. Certainly her parties had a purpose—or at least they had since she had met Bob Munson. It was an event that had occurred last summer at Gossett Cook’s place in Leesburg, and it had been an event that had changed her life a good deal already. She was determined that it should change it a great deal more before she was through.
    Later in the morning she would have to call Bob and talk about the party and find out what she could do to help with the nomination. Because she was quite sure that once again, as on several occasions before, she and Vagaries were going to be a big help to Bob. This thought with all its ramifications and frustrations annoyed her as it always did, and with a sudden, “Oh, poof!” she hopped out of bed, rang for the maid, and prepared to go downstairs and begin checking over the preparations for the party.
    At the White House the press secretary went through the first batch of wires for the day and found them running about two to one against Bob Leffingwell. An impatient expression crossed his face. The Old Man wouldn’t like it, and it would just make him more stubborn than ever. The press secretary sighed.
    The trouble with the president of General Motors, in the opinion of Roy B. Mulholland, was that he thought he owned the Senators from Michigan, or at least the junior Senator from Michigan, namely Roy B. Mulholland. He didn’t try to pressure Bob Munson very often, except indirectly through Roy, but he was always after Roy about something.
    “Now, God damn it,” he was saying vigorously over the line from Detroit, “we don’t want a radical like that for Secretary of State. Now do we? Do we?”
    “Bill,” Senator Mulholland said with a trace of asperity, “I tell you I haven’t made up my mind yet.”
    “Well, make it up, man,” the president of General Motors said impatiently. “Make it up. Time waits for no man, you know. And you can tell Bob from me that we’re going to be watching his actions on this very closely. Very closely indeed.”
    “Don’t you always watch Bob’s actions very closely, Bill?” Roy Mulholland asked. “I can’t see as it makes much difference to him.”
    “Someday it will, by God,” said the president of General Motors. “Someday it will. The day will come, even for Bob, you