All of it reminded Margaret of when she and Charlie had first arrived in Washington, DC, in 1954. She’d seen then how stunningly, pathetically human the boldface names actually were—Senator Jack Kennedy hobbling around with his wretched back, Vice President Nixon as insecure as Othello. Margaret would read about a seemingly omnipotent committee chairman, witness him banging his gavel and throwing his weight around, only to meet him later at a cocktail party and see he was nothing more than a sack of neuroses with clever writers and a good poker face. Stalwart moralists were in truth libidinous bed-hoppers; Christian wives were beehived roundheels; iron-jawed anti-Communist crusaders were terrified of even a lightly critical editorial. Public images were as fragile as they were phony, Margaret had concluded, so it wasn’t surprising to find that the silver screen’s wholesome girls next door and pillars of manhood were, in reality, lascivious, desperate, drunk, sad.

They walked past a billiards room, where none other than Paul Newman was lining up a shot. Another, darker room was packed with couches and love seats. Finally, they took a right into yet another room, this one even smokier than the others. Congregated around a card table, perched on high leather stools, were Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and his young blond wife, May Britt, Shirley MacLaine, and two men wearing sunglasses and nondescript suits whom neither Charlie nor Margaret recognized. One was tan and good-looking with thick black eyebrows and a movie-star smirk; the other was pale and squat.

“Brother-in-Lawford!” Dean Martin called out, looking up from shuffling the cards. “Who are your friends?”

Lawford had been distracted by a curvy cigarette girl, but he turned back to the pack. “They’re working on Frank’s picture,” he said. “Consultants. Congressman Charlie Marder and his wife, Margaret.”

Sinatra looked up from the table as the new arrivals sat down. “Congressman.” He nodded pleasantly. Then to Margaret: “Madame.” She suppressed a grin. Then, to no one in particular and less pleasantly, he barked: “Can we change the music to something that swings? Enough jazz! I’d even listen to Dago sing ‘Volare’ instead of this.”

“Call the papers! Frank’s willing to listen to someone else sing!” Martin quipped.

Sinatra smiled as Martin dealt the cards clockwise around the table: Sinatra, Davis, Britt, MacLaine, Lawford, and the two silent men. He skipped Charlie and Margaret.

Charlie noticed, of course. He couldn’t put his finger on why, but he got an unwelcoming feeling from Martin.

“You’re not dealing in the congressman and his missus?” Lawford asked him.

Martin paused. “We’ve never had three broads in one game before,” he observed.

“As long as they know the rules,” Sinatra said. He turned to Margaret. “You know the rules, right, dollface?”

Margaret loathed Marilyn Monroe’s breathless dumb-blonde persona, but she did a devastatingly accurate impression of it, as she demonstrated now: “The eights are crazy, right, daddy?”