flocking back to this town.”
The reporters and photographers, who always liked covering a Shirley Hartman assignment, were enjoying themselves. The camera still trained on her, Shirley added, “You see, even the reporters are laughing because they find the idea of women running things ridiculous.”
The TV people wanted one close-up shot of the medal. Then the presentation was over.
Shirley overheard the A.P. man saying to one of the other reporters, “She’s always good copy.” Then the mayor, his hand at her elbow, guided her away from them so that he could ask, “Hey, you really upstaged me. Who’s your speechwriter?”
“Yours wrote it for me in his spare time,” said Shirley. “He’s establishing contacts for the future.”
Interrupting them was the man from the Post . “Miss Hartman, for the record, are you a Republican or a Democrat?”
“For the record, I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that either answer would incriminate me.”
The Post man wrote it down and Shirley hoped it didn’t get garbled in print.
The mayor blew her a kiss before ducking through the door, followed by his entourage and the reporters, while the TV people curled their wires up. In three minutes they were all gone.
*
In Westchester, in a stone house with a cathedral living room large enough to hold Shirley’s office several times over, a thirtyish, very tall man with the strange name of Al Chunin watched the Channel 5 news. He was about to turn it off, when the mayor came on, presenting the medal to Shirley Hartman. Arrangements had been made for Chunin to meet Shirley very soon.
At first he watched with amusement. Her vitality was attractive. She had charisma. But he found something irritating about the power drives of elected or self-elected public figures. Privacy was meant to be guarded.
Against his reasoned judgment, Shirley Hartman’s brashness lured him.
Al Chunin clicked the set off, the picture of Shirley and the mayor turning into a rapidly retreating dot of white light. In front of the blank screen, he thought, we will see.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SHIRLEY THOUGHT HER FATHER might like to have the medal, a conversation piece for parental pride. She’d give it to him the next time she took the long trip up to the Bronx for a visit. In the meantime, she slipped the medal next to the paper clips in the center drawer of her desk. Within days, a junkie lifted it along with Shirley’s gold-filled pen and her dictating machine. “It is only fitting,” she told the newspapers, “that the city’s highest civilian medal should be ripped off. When we have a woman in City Hall…”
*
Shirley’s office was thirty-three feet long. The wall-width drapes, when pulled open each morning, revealed St. Patrick’s Gothic stone across the street. A six-foot palm, watered weekly by Shirley’s secretary, arched its green fronds in all directions. The thick gold carpet always had one vacuum trace, the cleaner’s mark to prove that he had been there.
Shirley’s desk was a large half oval so that four or five people could pull their chairs close to it. She didn’t like scattered visitors about the room, it made her feel as if she were speaking in a small auditorium. “The rest of the room,” Shirley would say, “is for pacing, and for effect.”
Behind her desk, Shirley was quick, friendly and naive—expecting everyone to be ambitious and competent.
The eye of a visitor would inevitably light on the terra-cotta vase on her desk, in which, whatever the bouquet, there was centered a bird of paradise, orange-black, beautiful, expensive, replaced always the moment it began to wilt, part of her new contract. “Arthur,” she had said to Crouch, “now that we’ve got the money straightened out, I want the furniture and fixtures allowance to provide for a fresh bouquet each week, whatever flowers the season has to offer that mix well, but in the center it’s got to have a bird of paradise.”
“You don’t
The reporters and photographers, who always liked covering a Shirley Hartman assignment, were enjoying themselves. The camera still trained on her, Shirley added, “You see, even the reporters are laughing because they find the idea of women running things ridiculous.”
The TV people wanted one close-up shot of the medal. Then the presentation was over.
Shirley overheard the A.P. man saying to one of the other reporters, “She’s always good copy.” Then the mayor, his hand at her elbow, guided her away from them so that he could ask, “Hey, you really upstaged me. Who’s your speechwriter?”
“Yours wrote it for me in his spare time,” said Shirley. “He’s establishing contacts for the future.”
Interrupting them was the man from the Post . “Miss Hartman, for the record, are you a Republican or a Democrat?”
“For the record, I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that either answer would incriminate me.”
The Post man wrote it down and Shirley hoped it didn’t get garbled in print.
The mayor blew her a kiss before ducking through the door, followed by his entourage and the reporters, while the TV people curled their wires up. In three minutes they were all gone.
*
In Westchester, in a stone house with a cathedral living room large enough to hold Shirley’s office several times over, a thirtyish, very tall man with the strange name of Al Chunin watched the Channel 5 news. He was about to turn it off, when the mayor came on, presenting the medal to Shirley Hartman. Arrangements had been made for Chunin to meet Shirley very soon.
At first he watched with amusement. Her vitality was attractive. She had charisma. But he found something irritating about the power drives of elected or self-elected public figures. Privacy was meant to be guarded.
Against his reasoned judgment, Shirley Hartman’s brashness lured him.
Al Chunin clicked the set off, the picture of Shirley and the mayor turning into a rapidly retreating dot of white light. In front of the blank screen, he thought, we will see.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SHIRLEY THOUGHT HER FATHER might like to have the medal, a conversation piece for parental pride. She’d give it to him the next time she took the long trip up to the Bronx for a visit. In the meantime, she slipped the medal next to the paper clips in the center drawer of her desk. Within days, a junkie lifted it along with Shirley’s gold-filled pen and her dictating machine. “It is only fitting,” she told the newspapers, “that the city’s highest civilian medal should be ripped off. When we have a woman in City Hall…”
*
Shirley’s office was thirty-three feet long. The wall-width drapes, when pulled open each morning, revealed St. Patrick’s Gothic stone across the street. A six-foot palm, watered weekly by Shirley’s secretary, arched its green fronds in all directions. The thick gold carpet always had one vacuum trace, the cleaner’s mark to prove that he had been there.
Shirley’s desk was a large half oval so that four or five people could pull their chairs close to it. She didn’t like scattered visitors about the room, it made her feel as if she were speaking in a small auditorium. “The rest of the room,” Shirley would say, “is for pacing, and for effect.”
Behind her desk, Shirley was quick, friendly and naive—expecting everyone to be ambitious and competent.
The eye of a visitor would inevitably light on the terra-cotta vase on her desk, in which, whatever the bouquet, there was centered a bird of paradise, orange-black, beautiful, expensive, replaced always the moment it began to wilt, part of her new contract. “Arthur,” she had said to Crouch, “now that we’ve got the money straightened out, I want the furniture and fixtures allowance to provide for a fresh bouquet each week, whatever flowers the season has to offer that mix well, but in the center it’s got to have a bird of paradise.”
“You don’t
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