On the third Monday in January, which was a few days before John F. Kennedy’s inauguration, Bruce said as he removed his sack lunch from his book bag, “My cousin told me that the mafia got Kennedy elected.”
From my desk, facing Bruce, I asked, “Did you read the note I gave you before Christmas?”
Bruce didn’t seem nervous as he said, “Janet Umpke is the girl I like.”
A tidal wave of disappointment crashed inside me, while calmly (this was my first experience of needing to act like I wasn’t devastated when I was) I said, “Okay.”
Bruce pulled an apple from the brown bag and set it on his desk, then pulled out his baloney sandwich. He didn’t say anything else. Many seconds passed.
“Have you ever talked to Janet?” I asked.
“Once,” he said.
“Do you have any classes with her?”
“Social studies.” The room was quiet again, then he added, “She has pierced ears.” I knew this about Janet; I had mentioned it to my own parents at dinner one night, and my father had said, “Pierced ears are for Gypsies.”
Bruce’s revelation about Janet would have made more sense if she were unusually pretty, but weren’t we about the same? I considered myself medium-pretty: not beautiful like Emily Geisinger, who had the blond ringlets of a fairy-tale princess, but certainly in the same general category as Janet.
Bruce took a bite of his sandwich. He said, “You’re more like a boy than a girl.”
This was another tidal wave, which is to say another opportunity to practice composure. I said, “How?”
He was silent, seeming to consider the question. When he spoke at last, he spoke decisively. He said, “The way you act and the way you talk.”
* * *
—
Around dusk, Bill and I ended up back outside, in the courtyard. As the door to the museum shut behind us, he said, “Where do you live?”
“On Orange Street. I have a roommate named Katherine who’s getting a doctorate in history.”
“Is she the lousy kind of roommate or the good kind?”
“She’s the cousin of someone I went to Wellesley with, and we’re not close friends, but we get along well enough. I’m really only home at night, and she has a fiancé in New York so she’s there at least half the week.”
“Do you know Keith Darrow or Jimmy Malinowski or Kirby Hadey?” Bill asked. “I live with those guys out on Long Island Sound, in Milford. It’s an authentic beach house, which is more romantic in theory than in practice. Or at least warmer in the winter in theory than in practice. But I’d love to have you down for a sandy picnic.”
“Is Kirby the nephew of Senator Hadey or is that just a rumor?” Already, I regretted not responding flirtatiously to the mention of a picnic—regretted responding to the concrete question he’d asked rather than to the open-ended statement—but it seemed too late to fix my mistake.
“No, it’s true,” Bill was saying. “Kirby never brings it up, but it is true. The funny thing is that his family is so rich, it seems like being related to a senator is the least of it. I went home with him over Thanksgiving, to his parents’ penthouse on Park Avenue in New York. It was about the size of the Taj Mahal, with their own private elevator from the lobby. We arrived on Wednesday night, and his parents invited us to join them for drinks in the living room with some guests, but Kirby wanted to go meet his prep school friends at a bar. Before we leave, we stop by the living room to say goodbye, and it turns out one of his parents’ guests is William Styron, another is an editor from The New York Times, and yet another is undersecretary of the treasury. Their wives were there, too, all of them just chatting like mere mortals. I was practically salivating.”
I laughed. “Was the prep school bar fun?”
“It was all right.” Bill grinned. “But I hope you don’t think I missed the opportunity to get Styron’s phone number for next time I’m in New York.”
“Did you really?”
“I told him what a fan I am of Nat Turner and Lie Down in Darkness. I got the editor’s number, too.”
“How long were you in the living room? Two minutes?”
“More like ten. I have a notebook where I write down the name and, if I get it, the number or address of everyone I meet. I started in high school. If it’s someone influential like Styron, I send a follow-up note saying I enjoyed meeting them and when I’m next in their neck of the woods, how about if I say hello? The worst they can say is no.”
“This is all in preparation for when you run for office?”
“Yes, but if I got to have lunch with William Styron in New York City, that in itself would be an experience.”
“And you think someone like him will take an interest in a congressional race in Arkansas?”
Bill looked impish. “Maybe I have bigger goals.”
“Like what? Senator?”
He held up a thumb and jabbed it skyward.
A little incredulously, I said, “President?”
“Apparently I’m not supposed to say that I’m prepared to serve in just about any capacity because that would sound phony. But you know how you can tell if someone is truly thinking of running for president? He’ll never admit it until he publicly announces. Anyone who goes around noodling over the idea is a lot less likely to do it than the fellow who holds his cards close to the vest.”
“Does that mean you will or won’t?”
In a faux-ingenuous tone, Bill said, “Running for president—what an interesting thought, Hillary! That’s never occurred to me.” More seriously, he added, “There’s something about you that makes me want to tell you everything. Do you think that’s a good or bad idea?” He was looking at me again with an expression that no one had ever looked at me with; it was intensely attentive, and it also was as if his words were simultaneously a joke and not a joke at all.
“I think it’s worth trying to find out,” I said. And really, in spite of the many crushes I’d had, there was a feeling Bill Clinton gave me that I’d never previously experienced: There was so much—an infinite amount—for us to discuss, there were so many topics I’d like to talk about with him, so many questions I had and things I wanted to tell him about myself. Telling personal anecdotes sometimes seemed tedious to me, or pointless, but I felt a powerful desire for us to know each other extremely well.
He said, “I’m planning to run for president as soon as 1984 and I hope no later than 1992. I really have been laying the groundwork since I was in high school. You ever heard of Boys Nation? I was big into that, and I went to Washington the summer I was sixteen and met Kennedy. I know this probably sounds crazy, but I realized then, it has to be someone, so why not me? I love people, I’m passionate about improving the world, and I’m willing to work like hell.”