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flattery of Dick that not even Kissinger could have matched: “When I think of all that the president—one of California’s own—has done for the movie industry, I burst with pride as well as the sincerest gratitude. The investment tax credit, the accelerated depreciation allowances—magnificent! But I shouldn’t bore you with such technical things.”
    “Praise of Dick never bores me,” said the first lady.
    In fact, her curiosity was piqued. With a raised eyebrow she beckoned Connie Stuart, her top aide, to come stand next to her, as Schreiber threw a last bouquet: “Attorney General Mitchell
—former
AttorneyGeneral, I should say—has been particularly splendid. But enough. No more politics. Let me relinquish you to all the people who’ve come to see you.”
    She and Connie, now by her side, stepped back from the receiving line for a confidential moment.
    “I thought it was just Israel,” said Pat, “that made Taft Schreiber such a big supporter. What’s John Mitchell done for him? John doesn’t run tax policy
or
the Middle East.”
    “Justice filed an antitrust suit against the TV networks,” Connie explained, “to stop them from making their own movies for television. Which means they’ll have to keep buying movies from the men here.”
    Pat, a quick study, nodded and got back to the receiving line. She glanced over at Mitchell, who didn’t look happy for a man with such grateful and generous friends. Well, how could he, with Martha berating him in that loud, slicing voice? She sounded like a parrot in a cage. Pat could hear her all the way from over there, scolding the poor man for
being
unhappy.
    “John Mitchell!” cawed Martha. “I do not understand why each and every man from the Committee to Re-Elect Mr. President is looking lower than a snake’s belly tonight!”
    John mumbled and placated and continued to caress the back of his wife’s dress. The two of them, even now, Pat had to concede, were a love match. But Martha would be the death of him. And Dick only made things worse by encouraging her with all those give-’em-hell notes and across-the-room thumbs-ups. Instead of clamping down on Martha, the most anyone ever did was try for a little distraction, as John was doing now, pointing out Zsa Zsa Gabor to her.
    Even as she watched, Pat could hear herself telling—yet again, automatically—the
Becky Sharp
story she’d already told three times tonight; about how she’d gotten work as an extra on the film during her days at USC, and then been given a single line to read. “But they cut it!” she concluded, once more, with a laugh. “Maybe Chuck,” she added, gently touching Charlton Heston’s arm, “can ask Governor Reagan where my Screen Actors Guild card is. I’m still waiting for it!”
    She’d made the same joke ten minutes ago to John Wayne and his Peruvian wife.
    Like most of her memories, the ones involving
Becky Sharp
were something she’d prefer to keep to herself—not that there was anything so private about the story, only that it seemed to lose vividness, be less real to
her
, with every occasion she had to tell it. Each time she described driving over from campus in Ginny Shugart’s red Ford, the car grew a little less red, the sunshine above it a little less warm and a little more like CinemaScope. Of course, she never mentioned how she’d hated all the time wasted standing around on the set; how one of the assistant directors had come over to the house one night, drunk, and been tossed out by her brothers. But because she never added any of these details to the recitation, they remained fresher, oddly more satisfying, than the story’s rote, pleasant parts.
    She saw John Mitchell leaving Martha in the care of that man from Mississippi, the one with the soft, soothing voice whose name she could never remember. He’d been Mitchell’s man in the White House, and by now she supposed he’d gone over to the Committee to Re-Elect. She was struck by how patient