“Local news!” screamed Dirk. He turned to his pals standing by the Coke machine. “Hey, everybody, Rosengarten is going to become a local TV anchorman. You’ll be great, Noel.” He puffed his chest out and put on an anchorman’s voice: “Two people were seriously injured tonight when a bridge collapsed in suburban St. Paul. We’ll have a live report later in the broadcast. And how’s that Twin Cities weather shaping up, Doreen?’”

“You are a fat, stupid hack,” said Rosengarten, retreating back toward his desk. “And soon you’ll be unemployed, too.”

Dirk ignored this feeble riposte. He was beaming. “God, it makes me so happy to think of that guy doing lead-ins for the weather. I’ll bet he changes his name to ‘Skip.’”

I was invited that week to a dinner party given by Elsbeth Parsons, one of Washington’s grandest hostesses, in honor of my publisher, Philip Sellinger, who was visiting from New York. I was very flattered to be asked; I seemed to be the only one of my generation at the paper who had been invited. It was a sign of something I had begun to sense in other ways, too: great expectations had begun to attach themselves to my career. In a mysterious process I didn’t understand, I had been selected out from the other animals in the herd and given a special pen.

Mrs. Parsons’s social secretary asked if I would be bringing someone. I thought a moment and said yes, I would like to bring my friend Anne Baron from Newsweek. The social secretary sounded impressed; my date was a star. When I told Annie, she was pleased, too, that I wanted her to join me, albeit a little surprised. This was big-league socializing, and we weren’t a couple. But I said it was too late to say no; I had already given her name to the social secretary. Annie went out and bought a new dress by Emanuel Ungaro, a tight black sheath that unzipped across the chest to reveal a lining of cobalt blue.

Mrs. Parsons lived in Georgetown, in a beautiful old house on P Street. Annie and I rang her bell just after 8:00; we seemed to be the first guests to arrive. Mrs. Parsons greeted us at the door. She gave Annie the once-over, and then me, and seemed content with both of us. Though now in her seventies and a widow for more than a decade, she remained an extraordinarily beautiful woman—delicate, fine-boned, lovely to look at—but with a courtesan’s curiosity and passion in her eyes.

“How nice that you’re so punctual,” she said sweetly. “We’ll have a few minutes to talk before the latecomers show up.”

She gave me her arm. Annie followed a few steps behind. “I’ll give you a tour. Would you like that?”