and receptionists and students.
Leaning forward and leering beneath the arched bat wings of his eyebrows, he explained: “The game, gentlemen, is one-card stud, no draw, two-hundred-dollar ante.”
I had dim suspicions of the nature of the game, but I thought he must be kidding. We all fell silent. Trey looked smug. He had our attention.
“I met Tamara in New York, where she began her modeling career. Not only is Tamara a model; she's also—surprise, surprise—an actress. An aspiring actress. But it isn't easy to break into that business. Lots of competition, lots of pretty faces. Ditto for modeling. Tamara has to pay her rent. And she likes a good time. So she mixes business with pleasure. What the hell, you like a guy, you let him buy you dinner. Or a gram of coke. Why not let him pay your rent? Quid pro quo. Semipro.”
“I'm a happily married man,” Gene Samuels said nervously, misreading the intro.
“Ignorance is bliss, Gene. As usual, you're way behind the curve here. Now, let's say you're a young aspiring actress like Tamara. Wouldn't you kill to get invited to the house of a major studio head? Or even better, what if you had a chance to meet a handsome young senator?”
“If you're saying what I think you're saying …,” said Dave Crushak, who didn't finish his sentence.
Trey explained that Castleton would be attending a fund-raiser at a studio executive's home in L.A. the following week. A college buddy who owed him a favor had been invited. He proposed to send Tamara along as his friend's date and let nature take its course. Under skeptical questioning from the rest of us, he explained that Tamara would actively solicit and encourage the senator's attentions. Toward that end, we would pay her a thousand dollars. Another college buddy, a reporter at the Los Angeles Times, would be happy to watch Tamara's apartment in Santa Monica later that night, in case anything newsworthy took place. We all raised a dozen practical objections, though somehow we were unwilling to voice the moral ones. Like Castleton, Trey was a magnetic individual, whom the rest of us envied and feared. If anyone had raised his voice in indignation, the others would surely have followed, but nobody wanted to seem priggish. And we all felt betrayed. I think in the end I told myself the scheme was unlikely to succeed, thus absolving myself as I put my two hundred dollars on the table.
And that, basically, was how it happened. This was years ago, but I've never been able to forget it. Tamara was famous for a minute and a half, landing a role in a TV pilot that never aired. Trey married one of his debutantes, the daughter of a liberal philanthropist. Amanda Greer, whose screen career as a femme fatale had been fading for some time, did a well-publicized stint at the Betty Ford Clinic and was subsequently cast as the star of a TV series that's still running. I saw her two years ago in the Jockey Club at the Ritz-Carlton, where I was dining with a client and she was being feted by a large party. I'd read in the Post that she was in town to film an episode. She spotted me as she came in, and I guessed from her puzzled expression that she half-remembered me. Several times during dinner I saw her squinting over, trying to place me. When she excused herself from the table, I followed to where she was standing in front of the phone booth, waiting for me.
“Do I know you?” she demanded.
“I worked for Senator Castleton,” I said, looking down, unable to hold her gaze. She was still beautiful, and, if anything, looked younger.
“Ah yes,” she finally said. “Benjamin Braddock.”
I nodded.
“You know the crazy thing?” she said. “He hardly touched me. Mainly, he just wanted to hold and be held. That was all. He'd fall asleep with his arms around me and hang on for dear life.”
She looked very sad, although I'd grown old enough to wonder if it was genuine sadness or the mask of an actress.
“I felt so bad for him.” She searched my face for a moment, her expression almost imploring, and I wanted to say something but suddenly didn't trust my voice. She sighed and nodded, then turned away and disappeared into the ladies' room. When she finally returned to her table, I was unable to catch her eye.
The former senator has an active consulting business, and as the scandal