I went into my room for a minute. When I came back into the living room she had disappeared. “Where are you?” Her voice came from the bathroom: “In here.” She was on her hands and knees scrubbing the floor. “It wasn’t very clean,” she said.
Next to the goddess in their prayers, many of the worshipers place a compulsive kind of cleanliness. Sinatra, Jerry Lewis, Doris Day—they’ll shower three times a day like pilgrims in the Ganges trying to wash away their sins. But only Joan and Garbo will personally scrub the bathroom or kitchen floor to make sure there are no germs lingering there.
The mayor returned to make us his guests at a small dinner party. We both wore simple dresses because Omaha doesn’t run much to evening clothes. We were back in the hotel by eleven-thirty and had Mr. Mayor and two or three others up for a drink.
As soon as they had said their good nights, Joan, who doesn’t smoke, flung every window wide open and carried the ash trays out into the hall, where her night guard had dutifully stationed himself outside the door. She gathered up the glasses and washed them in the kitchenette off the living room. She then unlocked another item of her luggage that the bellboy had staggered under when we moved in.
It was a massive chest perhaps a yard long, packed with ice. It contained four bottles of hundred-proof vodka, bottles of her favorite brand of champagne, and a silver chalice, which she took out for her bedtime ceremony. Into the chalice she poured a split of champagne and raised it in a simple toast, “To Al,” before she put it to her lips.
“What do you want for breakfast?” she asked when the chalice was empty.
“Can’t we order in the morning?”
“No, I like breakfast when I get up. I’ll put our order in tonight.” I settled for juice, coffee, and a boiled egg. That taken care of, we agreed that eight-thirty in the morning would suit us both as time to arise. Come the morrow, I’d bathed when at eight-thirty sharp there was a rapping at my bedroom door. In the living room stood a waiter ready to serve us. Outside the front door stood a new guard, keeping the daytime watch.
Then we spent a full, fascinating, reassuring, awe-inspiring day at SAC; saw the H-bombers take off in a practice scramble; again met General Power, who gave us dinner. I started sleeping more easily from that night on as a result of what I’d witnessed. It seemed to me to be an up-to-date necessity in a fearful world where the best rule for America’s conduct was advocated by Teddy Roosevelt: Speak softly and carry a big stick. The next morning, every inch a star and clean as a hound’s tooth, Joan flew on to Chicago, with her twenty-two dresses, fourteen hats, jewel case, ice chest, and silver chalice, to scrub another bathroom if she had to.
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