Beauty Queen

beauty-contest runway. From volunteer fundraising work in New York State for Nixon's campaign, she had risen swiftly to two successful terms in the state senate. She was one of that new race of politicians who were bred in the media, and one of the youngest women state senators in the country. Even now, at thirty-nine, she looked more like twenty-nine or thirty. Even now she was the darling of the New York News, who had loved her ever since the Miss Subways days, for the wholesomeness and innocence of her arch-conservatism. In fact, Sidney, a refugee from the Life staff when the magazine folded, had gotten his first job at the News largely because he was her husband.
    Looking at her now, Bill Laird had the uneasy feeling that he had created a beautiful and beguiling monster. And monsters always took a few swipes at their creators before the last reel of the movie.
    Of course, he had nothing to reproach himself for. He had lived mostly according to his lights. He had been an attentive and loving father, and he had been—as far as he knew—a devoted husband to Cora. Even in the business world, he had tried to conduct himself according to the family's Baptist faith, although he was a liberal Baptist and had never really felt born again. He had acquired his modest fortune (modest if you compared him to J. Paul Getty) by shrewd but legal business dealings, and he always paid his taxes.
    It was strange to look back over the years and see it all beginning—he with his dad's little real-estate office in Brooklyn Heights, and Jeannie skipping rope in front of the Baptist mission. He could actually sit here on his rooftop, and look down the East River on a clear day, and fancy that he could make out the rooftop that had sheltered their third-floor apartment in that old brownstone shadowed by the Gothic towers of the Brooklyn Bridge.
    No, he had not built grandly in that city. He had not raised any World Trade Center on that horizon. But he had saved many modest and beautiful rooftops, for he had pioneered the trend of recycling old commercial and factory buildings and turning them into living space. He had built well and God knew that. Surely he had nothing to fear from God.
    But he had much to fear from Jeannie, and this sudden new idea of hers.
    At the end of the movie, just in the nick of time, the creator always managed to destroy his monster. But he didn't want to do Jeannie in. After all, how could he?
    He got up from the table, zipping his briefcase shut, and forced a smile.
    "If I linger any longer with my darling daughter," he said, "I'll be late, and Mrs. Voeller will be mad at me." Mrs. Voeller was his secretary.
    Jeannie got up and kissed him softly on his cheek. He kissed her back. "Can I drop anything at the cleaners for you on my way home?" she said.
    "No," he said. "Will I see you this afternoon?"
    She appeared lost in thought.
    "I miss the children terribly," she said. "And God knows what unholy mischief they're getting into. I might drive upstate and see them for a few hours. Sid and I could come over after dinner, though."
    She always talked as if Sidney never had any plans of his own, Bill thought.
    "All right," he said. "Drive carefully, sweetheart."
    As he strode toward the glass sliding doors of the living room, he thought about the home he was going to make for himself on the South Street property. Soon he could finally move out of this soulless glass apartment tower. All his life he had moved around the city like a nomad, and finally he was going to have a house that was truly his own.
    He looked across to New Jersey, and noticed the immense cloud of black smoke for the first time. Fire, he thought, and flinched all over. Right away, the only thing he could think about was Marion pinned in the wreck of the Lotus at Le Mans.
    Marion was the "client" he was having dinner with tonight. He wished he was having lunch with Marion instead. Maybe he would call from the office, and try to change their meeting to noon. He was anxious to talk about the new development with Marion, who had colder nerves than he did. Maybe Marion would tell him that everything would be all right.
    Far downtown, on Bedford Street, in the west side of Greenwich Village, Mary Ellen Frampton and Liv Lavransson were sitting in their more modest rooftop garden, enjoying a grittier glimpse of the same view.
    The old brick tenement was only six stories, but it did give you a peek at the tops of the towers on the Manhattan and Brooklyn