His cell phone rings.
Davide answers it, dulled out, eyes empty.
He speaks quickly in Italian. Then he listens. Then he speaks quickly again before clicking off.
"Someone's coming," Davide says. "To see us."
I'm humming listen to the wind blow, watch the sun rise.
7
A knock on the door.
Davide opens it.
A beautiful young girl enters the room. Davide and the girl embrace and chat amiably in Italian while I stare, dazed, from the bed. The girl is holding an envelope and in the envelope is a videocassette. Without being introduced, she hands it to me.
I stare at it dumbly, then Davide impatiently yanks it out of my hand and slips it into the VCR beneath the television set.
Davide and the girl move over to another room in the suite as the tape starts playing.
8
It's an episode of "60 Minutes" but without the sound.
Dan Rather introduces a segment. Behind him a mock-up of a magazine story. My father's face. And below that, half in shadow, is my face.
Azaleas. At the home of Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman. A dinner party for Samuel Johnson. A fund-raiser for his presidential bid. The guests: Ruth Hotte and Ed Huling and Deborah Gore Dean and Barbara Raskin and Deborah Tannen and Donna Shalala and Hillary Clinton and Muffy Jeepson Stout. There's Ben Bradlee and Bill Seidman and Malcolm Endicott Peabody. There's Clayton Fritcheys and Brice Clagett and Ed Burling and Sam Nunn. There's Marisa Tomei and Kara Kennedy and Warren Christopher and Katharine Graham and Esther Coopersmith.
And Dad's standing with a woman in her mid-forties wearing a Bill Blass cocktail dress. I glimpse her only briefly.
Now Dan Rather's interviewing my father in his office.
Dad has obviously had a face-lift and his upper-lip-to-nose area has been shortened, droopy lids have been lifted and his teeth are bleached. He's laughing, relaxed.
Then a series of photos flash by. Dad with Mort Zuckerman. Dad with Shelby Bryan. Dad with Strom Thurmond. Dad with Andrea Mitchell.
Suddenly: file footage. An interview with my mother from the mid- 1980s. A clip of my father and mother at the White House, standing with Ronald and Nancy Reagan.
Dan Rather interviewing my father again.
A montage: Brooks Brothers, Ann Taylor, Tommy Hilfiger.
And then I'm walking along Dupont Circle being interviewed by Dan Rather.
This is suddenly intercut with footage that the "Entertainment Tonight" crew shot last fall of me working out with Reed at his gym.