Inevitably, Arthur Bowman was one of the dinner guests. The moment I saw him I decided to put Rupert Cohen’s insinuations out of my mind. This was not the evening to play FBI agent.

As it happened, I was seated next to Bowman’s wife, an attractive, predatory brunette named Mara, who was full of mischievous gossip about people at the paper. She had all the tricks: an easy way of draping her hand across yours; a voice that was an invitation to conspiracy; an expensive low-cut dress that squeezed her bosom so that her breasts were barely touching, like two soft, ivory billiard balls. She was, as George Dirk liked to say, “a piece of work.” I thought to myself that Bowman must have to spend a lot on upkeep—financially and emotionally.

“Don’t you think that Bob Marcus is awful?” she asked me at one point.

How was I supposed to answer that? He was my boss. I mumbled something about how I hadn’t been back long enough to form an opinion.

“I’ve heard they want to bring you to New York as foreign editor,” she whispered at another point. “Would you do it? I hope not. Arthur says they need you here in Washington.”

The woman was a menace, really. I had no idea whether what she said was true or not, and no idea what to say. So I changed the subject. I told her about myself. How I had grown up in northern California, and how I had hoped to play the tennis circuit when I was in college, how I had regarded joining the news business as a sort of consolation prize. She sucked it all in, with that slender hand resting on mine, gazing up at me as if I were the most interesting man she had ever laid eyes on. Superficially, it was the same technique as Mrs. Parsons’s, but there was a world of difference.

Annie was seated next to Arthur Bowman. They talked animatedly through much of the dinner. The parts I overheard were about the political campaign—the Republicans who had self-destructed, the president’s prospects of beating the ones who remained in the race. They were a match, those two—two thoroughbreds pacing each other down the course, teasing and charming bits of information from each other. Annie looked particularly beautiful that night, I thought. When she turned to talk to the man on her other side, someone high up at the State Department, I could see Bowman was disappointed. She had that effect on people; as much as you had of Annie, you wanted more.

When the dessert plates were cleared, Bowman offered a toast to the publisher. It was exquisite: funny, self-deprecating, sincere in its emotion. He concluded with a brief quotation from a Yeats poem about friendship.

“To Philip.” All the glasses clinked around that charmed circle.