The Florentine Entanglement

Chapter One

Saturday, April 30, 1960
Washington, DC

When Eleanor turned forty, Talbot staged an awkward little surprise party meant to lend credence to the idea that he was a loving husband and theirs a happy union, an ordinary marriage like those of their neighbors and work friends and so on. He meant well, Eleanor could give him that, so she resolved to respond with conspicuous enthusiasm. After all, she had a little actress in her.

Entering the airless back room at a little Italian place off Dupont Circle, Eleanor extended her arms in manufactured delight to greet the gathered guests. And here we are, she thought, clasping her hands and drawing them to her chest, nodding and offering a little bow of gratitude, the air of formality a vestige of her upbringing. Her eyes swept over the group in their cocktail dresses and pearls, sport coats and club ties. Members of the ensemble cast, tonight appearing in the role of Friend of the Principal. People from the neighborhood and the club, colleagues from the library who answered the bell when Talbot had called—probably at the eleventh hour. But they turned up on cue, each of them, reliable and dependable in that uniquely American way, souls who kept their church clothes clean and in good repair so they could, at a moment’s notice, attend the funerals of even the less popular members of St. John’s Episcopal Church, filling the pews for the ceremony of consecration less because the deceased was a person they would miss, more out of a sturdy sense of obligation. Or possibly because in a town like Washington DC, there was always a chance of running into somebody important at the reception afterwards. These dutiful guests would be pleased, in upcoming weeks, to pepper conversations with mentions of how they’d been in the room that night for Eleanor Bentley’s fortieth birthday party. Many would note, eyebrows raised, that Talbot himself had invited them. Yes, that Talbot Bentley.

Talbot left her side and circulated through the room, radiating a mission-accomplished satisfaction. He’d been out of the house the better part of the day, presumably seeing to final details of this little party. Flower arrangements on both the center table and the bar (dahlias—Caroline’s favorite, she observed) seemed evidence of that. Swirling his bourbon in his glass—Jim Beam always—he moved about in that direct way of his, standing a hair too close in the habit of many Southern-born men, communicating earnest attention and challenging the person he was speaking to, to step back to create a hair’s breath of space. His fit physique, his handsome face, his solid confidence, earned him wide permission to do this. In a man less attractive, this closeness would irritate. He clapped the men on the back, saying a few words as he reached for their women. Eleanor watched as he leaned in to kiss their cheeks, seeing how often he took just the slightest extra second to exhale, his breath warm in their scented necks, leaving the women to wonder if they’d imagined the intimacy—had he paused when lips brushed skin? Talbot Bentley worked for the government, after all. He couldn’t be making a pass. Could he? The recipients of his breathy kisses would rationalize that one bourbon too many explained it. He was approaching the line, perhaps, but hadn’t crossed it.

He stopped to visit with each couple—there were no singletons—letting them know how grateful he was that they came, choosing a question for each that demonstrated his interest in their lives and welfare, collecting bits of information from them, sorting it, filing it away. How are the kids? You getting all the appreciation you deserve at that new firm? Y’all moved out to Fairfax? How’s the new house? It did not cross the mind of a single guest that Talbot’s interest in the comings and goings in their lives, the progress of their careers, the maturing intellects and skills of their children stemmed from a calculated or inauthentic place. The tilt of his head, the elegant, coordinated movement of dozens of tiny muscles in his face masked that this was less about getting to know his guests and more about his ceaseless drive to gather intelligence, whatever the setting. He laughed loudly with Leslie Grant, the rector at St. John’s, who smiled as he sipped his Glenfiddich, the choice of Scotch practically a sacrament among Episcopal clergymen.

Talbot’s quite pleased with himself, Eleanor observed, thinking he pulled off this little operation and surprised me.

As her guests began casting about for a second or third cocktail, servers began their ceremonial march from the kitchen, bearing plates of the restaurant’s signature chicken parmesan. Talbot settled in beside Eleanor at the table, accepting the guests’ praise of the deliciously flavored food as if he himself were the sous chef. Conversation traversed the moment’s hot topics—the ghastly state of politics—Ike’s dour VP whom nobody seemed to like and a Massachusetts senator who seemed far too young likely to face off in the presidential election; the disquieting noises out of Cuba, once a favorite playground among the Bentleys’ circle. The summit between President Eisenhower and Soviet Leader Khrushchev was just weeks away, those around the table wondering if that meeting might lead to a clearing away of the persistent nuclear shadow they now lived beneath. Anxiety was high that the Soviets had more missiles and were building bombers so fast the United States would never catch up. The women whispered about the juicier subjects too: marriages teetering, teenage girls who’d suddenly departed town for a six-month visit with relatives, college boys drummed out of their dream schools for drinking or grades, one for having been discovered liking another college boy more than university rules permitted.

One by one, the diners relinquished their knives and forks and leaned back in their chairs, sated, but for a few more sips of this or that. A post-entrée lull overspread the room, infiltrating the thick cigarette smoke and the heavy perfume some of the women wore. On cue, the waitstaff swept in to clear the plates, replenish cocktails, then present an oversized platter with a birthday cake ablaze with candles.

“Hummingbird Cake!” Talbot proclaimed as a waiter placed it in front of Eleanor.

Ah, Eleanor thought, Helen’s doing. She forced her eyes wide with apparent delight.

Plucky Helen, Eleanor called her, because of her irritatingly can-do attitude. Whenever Eleanor went to see Tal at work, she first had to get past Helen, his secretary, who stood guard at the reception desk outside his private office. The woman was so cheerful, so positive, so in charge, that Eleanor wanted to poke an eye out. Either Helen’s or her own. Helen had been with Talbot since last summer and like many in a long line of his secretaries, she always seemed so eager to go above and beyond for the boss. Some of these girls, Eleanor learned, did it because they wanted to ascend the ladder at CIA—break the mold and move into an intelligence officer job usually reserved for men. Others did for the opposite reason: they wanted to find a man and being helpful and compliant, they believed, was the best way to secure one. If the pattern held, Eleanor figured Helen would be either promoted or engaged before too much longer.

Despite her contribution to the evening, Helen was not among the invited guests who would soon be pushing morsels of Hummingbird Cake around their plates. In fact, few women in the room would actually taste the cake, most of them waving off the little dessert plates, passing them on with a surge of virtuousness even as they murmured to their husbands they were ready for more alcohol. The plates orbited the table as the Auclairs arrived, Caroline rushing to Eleanor to apologize—the kids! the sitter!—while Rémy worked his way over to Talbot, offering a handshake and a sheepish shrug.

“Birthday girl! How’s your night been?” asked Caroline, pulling up a chair and waving down the waiter for a drink. She looked at Eleanor, expectantly, eyes intense, a crease between her brows. Eleanor concluded something dramatic was at the root of their late arrival.

Eleanor lifted her wineglass, holding it in front of her lips as she spoke. “Tal probably invited them all this morning,” she said under her breath, then more loudly, “So, where have you two been?”

“Oh, you know, everything.”

On this, her fortieth birthday, a day presumably centered on her, Eleanor felt entitled to specifics. She waited placidly until the dead air compelled Caroline to speak.

“Rémy put a few hours in at the office this morning, then he golfed, then he waltzes in about the time I expect to leave but he has to shower and dress and Rémy being Rémy, he does not rush. So here we are. I drank three cocktails waiting for him, which was probably not the best idea since I haven’t eaten anything since lunch. And we exchanged a few words over that. So. I’m sorry. Blame him. Have you enjoyed your night?”

“Feels a bit improvised,” Eleanor confided, an over-bright smile on her face. “Talbot practically had to tell me what was happening to get me out of the house. Sorta spoils the surprise. Said he needed me to run an errand with him, then made me change into this dress—said we were going to grab a bite. Not even a milestone birthday that marks his wife as very, very old was enough to cause him to come up with a good cover story and work out the sticky details. He knows better than most that covert operations require planning.” She took a long pull of her Chablis, scanning the room to make sure only Caroline was within earshot of her whispered rant. “Seems to me he always thinks through things for work, or planning his fishing trips, the golf weekends. Even makes his staff help. For the important stuff.” She paused again, this time for a pointed drag on her cigarette. “Some things must not be important enough for him to tap all his resources.”

Caroline patted her hand. “Well, this is a bit unlike you. You’re usually pretty sanguine about the mess that comes with marriage. But listen, that’s men, right? They don’t listen. They don’t plan. We juggle work and home. They juggle themselves and that’s about all they can handle.”

“Well, I won’t be juggling him tonight, I can tell you that,” Eleanor confided. Caroline lifted her gin and tonic in affirmation and salute, her eyes scanning for Talbot, who waved when he spotted her.

***

After he settled the bill on a table laden with full ashtrays and empty highball glasses, lipstick-stained napkins in crumpled heaps, Talbot stood and reached his arm around Eleanor, tucking her to his side—a gesture she usually appreciated but that tonight felt too possessive. She cast a last look at the cake—over half remained—and felt a ping of satisfaction at leaving it behind.

Eleanor inhaled the balmy air as they made their way to the car, waiting for the question she knew he’d wanted to ask all night.

“Did you enjoy your surprise party?” he asked, his hand massaging just above her hip. She resisted the urge to pull away. He had gone to all this trouble, after all.

“I did,” she lied. “How were you able to pull all that together without me knowing?”

“I had a little help.” They reached the car, Talbot leaning back on the passenger door, reaching for her and pulling her to him. “Happy birthday, my love.” He ducked his head into the warm space at her neck, breath sharp with bourbon, his hands finding the hem of her skirt, working their way up her thigh. He kissed her, long and slow. A precursor, she knew.

“Ok, Tiger. Get in the car. I’ll drive. It would not do for you to smash up your Corvette on my birthday.”

His hands continued their work. “I’m fine, Ellie. It’s just that you feel mighty good tonight. And this is good for us. We need to do more of this to keep us…you know…” he trailed off, then repeated himself as drunken people do, proving a point with recycled assertions.

Eleanor took his face between her palms. “Of course, you’re fine. We always have sex standing up on the street at two in the morning. Not the least bit unusual. Get in the car if you’d like to finish what you seem to want to start.”

Talbot smiled and obliged, crawling into the low-slung sports car, thudding into the bucket seat.

Eleanor did not enjoy driving Tal’s car, not just the mechanics of it, but its conspicuousness—the screaming red color, the roaring engine. Corvettes begged for attention, especially in DC’s sea of black sedans. Eleanor turned the key and shifted into gear, steering the car eastward. Despite the hour, there was traffic on the streets, mostly government employees, she imagined, heading to and from offices and conference rooms to manage countless crises the country would never even know about.

Talbot’s eyes closed within minutes, his chest rising and falling as his breathing slowed. Eleanor moved through the adopted city she had never expected to know so well; she had practically memorized the street grid as L’Enfant designed it, including the traffic circles that confounded visitors, the neat way the National Mall tied the federal district together. Her route took her onto Massachusetts Avenue and Wisconsin, along Embassy Row where the Soviet Embassy perched so near the center of things. In DC, she had learned, information—not celebrity or wealth—was the currency that opened doors to power. Talbot was a creature of all of it but Eleanor still felt like an interloper. She knew her way around, certainly, and had her favorite cafes and boutiques—most of them in Georgetown. She’d gotten to know a group at St. John's Church and felt fairly comfortable when she and Tal attended, despite her lack of church background. But this Washington way of life differed so dramatically from how she’d been raised, when she’d owned few material things but had been rich in family—family she missed so deeply that she simply walled off her memories of them as disconnected from her, like characters in a movie she watched long ago.

She took Key Bridge over the Potomac, leaving DC for Virginia, where multitudes of government employees lived, including the Bentleys. Their Arlington townhouse was situated just a few blocks from the library where Eleanor worked, giving Talbot an easy commute to his office downtown. He and other intelligence officers were dispersed among buildings throughout the area; next year, the new CIA headquarters was scheduled to open at Langley. By all accounts, this would be a state of the art spy station, with sophisticated technology that would ensure no contraband could be smuggled in nor secrets smuggled out. It was a standard hard to meet with the current set up, the hodgepodge of office buildings currently in use, adjacent to businesses and enterprises one assumed were legitimate—but might provide security holes the country’s enemies could exploit. The Bentleys had once planned to relocate closer to the new headquarters, perhaps in McLean or Vienna, to a home with more bedrooms and a yard. But when no children arrived, there was no reason to find more space.

Eleanor pulled into the garage then came around to help Talbot heave himself out of the car. He stood, rocked unsteadily and offered a small, apologetic smile. Leaning heavily on the car, he reached for her hand and drew it to his lips. “My beautiful wife. You are, you know. Beautiful. But man, I’m kinda tired all the sudden.”

His little nap had sobered him up a bit, dampened his ardor.

“I know, Talbot. You’ve had a long day. Okay, let’s get inside and get you into bed,” said Eleanor, relieved she would not have to demonstrate her gratitude for the surprise party on this particular night.

“What time is it?” he asked suddenly, working to focus bleary eyes on his watch.

“A little after two-thirty. What—you have an appointment?”

“Can you do me a favor, Ellie? I’m gonna sleep just a little more but I gotta make a call in an hour or so. Just a check-in. Can you make sure I’m up and moving?”

“I can do that, Talbot. I’ll set my alarm and have some coffee ready.”

He slipped his arm around her as they made their way to their bedroom. “I’m a lucky man, Ellie,” he proclaimed. “You know what I need, and you give it to me, you support me, and I hope you saw that tonight with the party…”

“We’re both lucky, Talbot,” she interrupted. “Lucky we found each other.” She helped him wrestle out of his shoes, his pants. “Amid all that chaos, the Fates brought us together.”