BY KURT WENZEL AND KYLE SMITH

(Original publication: April 15, 2004)

That afternoon, Diana Hall told the cab to leave her off on Fifth Avenue near the park. She hadn't been to the city in almost a year and wanted to start off right in the thick of things. The cab zipped in and out of traffic, going too fast, and the city smells came wafting through the open window. Why was it, she wondered, that you only noticed how fragrant the city was when you'd been away for a while? She smelled car exhaust, vendors' food, burning subway steel, asphalt mixers, and the dull stink of two excremental rivers. It was a mélange that excited her.

Getting out of the cab, Diana decided to head down Fifth; though it was spring, the idea of walking through the park had been trumped by the itch for a glass of wine. Near Rockefeller Center she wandered into Morell's Wine Bar. The lunch crowd was winding down and Diana was able to find a stool and relax with a Spanish white that was all the rage. Checking the clock above the bar, she noticed that back in Larchmont her daughter Karen would be coming home from pre-K right about now. It was strange for Diana to think she wouldn't be there to greet her daughter, but then God knew she needed a break. In fact, when her husband Bill had returned from a business trip just last week, he'd found her weeping openly in the kitchen, complaining that she had lost herself, that she didn't feel like a person anymore.

"That's it, you're going to New York," Bill had announced, springing into action. "I'll take some time off and watch Karen. You go see some friends, get your head together."

"You miss the city so desperately," he'd added. "I can see it in your eyes."

"Delicious wine," Diana told the bartender now. "How much do I owe you?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Guy over there took care of it."

She looked across the bar to see a well-dressed, older gentleman raising his glass to her. Slightly embarrassed, Diana half raised her own glass and turned away, blushing.

"Fantine?" he said, his eyebrows dancing.

My God, she thought. Victor?

"Afraid not," she said, turning to the window to look at the heavy flirting action on the sidewalk tables.

Was he going to ask her permission to come and join her? And would that be unwelcome or welcome? Unwelcome, she decided. Inappropriate. They barely knew each other, and she was a married woman.

Not just a little married. Larchmont married.

She swiveled back to her left to put on her rejection face. He was sitting next to her.

"I dreamed a dream in time gone by," he was saying. No, singing. Her cheeks went hot.

The bartender was loving it. "Another one, Senator?" he said.

•

Senator? Diana ran through her mental catalogue of senior statesmen from New York, New Jersey, Connecticut. No way. Couldn't be. She would have heard about it. On the other hand, she hadn't exactly been spending hours perusing the New York Times. She no longer had the luxury, and maybe not the brain either. Yesterday she had spent 45 minutes investigating the disappearance of Karen's Elmo cup.

Victor made a gesture and the bartender slipped away. He'd always had this talent, she remembered. People lined up to receive orders from him, and leapt to carry them out. Often to their regret.

"I dreamed that love would never die," he was singing, louder now. Giggles all around the bar. Diana's cheeks were flaming.

"Victor, please don't," she said, and without thinking, she placed a hand over his. "Nice to see you. Are you still an angel?"

And how the hell did you get to be a senator, she restrained herself from adding.

"Ex-angel. Ex-lots-of-things, but it's the broken wings and soiled robes that weigh on me most heavily. What's new with you?" he said, then, annoyingly, answered his own question. "Married, I see. Well-dressed, designer everything. You're drinking at three on a weekday, thus no job, so the husband's doing well. Two kids and three bedrooms in Scarsdale by now, I expect."

"One kid," she said. "And I don't live in Scarsdale."

"Oh," he said. "So how is Larchmont?"

Another glass of wine appeared. Diana looked at it, looked at Victor. And then she smiled.

He continued: "I guess I got your life pretty accurately, so no doubt you'll want to hear about mine. Well, after I failed as a Broadway impresario—"

"Don't," she said. "It was a nice effort." Diana had been understudying doomed Fantine in "Les Misérables" — she had never gone on, spending two entire years in chorus hell, thanks to the titanium vocal chords of the honey-haired Dallas-bred princess ahead of her — when, dangerously bored, she had met Arthur at a party at the Rainbow Room. Sixty-five stories above this very spot.

Arthur was old money Manhattan, venerable as a brownstone, dying to produce his first show. Angels, that's what they called these producers, not financiers, because producers knew the money they sank into a show was likely to stay sunk. Arthur had instantly offered her a big part as the doomed Alice Roosevelt in "Rough Rider," the musical based on the life of Teddy Roosevelt, correctly guessing that she had a weakness for death scenes and the standing ovations that usually came with them. Sex had, of course, ensued. Their affair had lasted three weeks, or two weeks longer than the show. She had ended it. She had definitely been the one to end it — Victor had thrilled her in bed in a way that she was not comfortable exploring for long, but had somehow never forgotten.

Bringing the wine to her lips, she realized that her new glass was already half empty. Nerves, she decided.

Victor called out to the bartender. "Gina, please, more wine for the mother from Larchmont."

"No…"

Gina was already topping off her glass.

"You're wicked, Victor, you know that?"

"Nah, I'm an angel, sweetie. Remember?"

Out of the corner of her eye she could see him looking to the back of her stool to see what the baby had done to her behind.

•

She woke three hours later with a sulfite headache, watching dusk ebb in a room too dark to recognize. As her eyes adjusted to the fading light, she saw the Laura Ashley wallpaper, the opulent mirrors, the mini-bar...

"Damn you, Victor," she said aloud.

He grunted lamely, positively comatose.

She jumped up and began hastily throwing on her clothes. "Well, that hadn't taken long, had it?" she thought. Here she was in the city a little over four hours and already she was reverting to old ways. Thinking of her family, she suddenly felt a wave of self-hatred. "I am loathsome," Diana thought. A terrible wife, unfit mother. "Karen, I'm so sorry!"

There was a knock at the door. She was rendered mute in her panic, but Victor was finally roused.

"Senator?" said a voice from behind the door.

"Yes?" he called back, throat like gravel.

"You have a dinner engagement, sir."

Diana relaxed, recognizing the voice of Victor's bodyguard. She remembered, somewhat humiliatingly, that he had followed them back here to the hotel.

"Five minutes," Victor called back.

Diana picked his pants off the floor and fired them at his chest as he sat up.

"Relax, Fantine. Nothing happened."

"You go to hell," she said. "Is this what you do, Senator, get married women drunk and—"

"You called it off," Victor said emphatically. He was not pleased, but seemed resigned to it now. "You called it off. After that, I don't know. We must have passed out."

"Yes!" she thought. She hadn't done anything.

She would get away with this.

Victor dressed quickly as she fixed her hair. Like many rogues, he had an old-fashioned sense of courtship. So when he suggested they could at least ride the elevator together, then separate in the lobby, she agreed.

As they headed to the door, she asked, "You married, Victor? I realize I never bothered to ask."

He grimaced guiltily — sort of a smirk, really. Diana rolled her eyes.

Victor opened the door, and then, after taking just a step each into the hall, they both gasped in unison.

"Smile, Senator," came a voice from below.

On his knees like a sniper, a photographer fired off five rounds with his camera. Then he turned and was gone.

•

"Um, Victor?" she said. "Who was that?"

"Oh dear," he said, whipping out his Motorola. "Another one of Rodriguez's boys. Or possibly Rodriquez. Bruce?" he said to the phone. "Time to put on your track shoes."

Hustling through the lobby and out under the canopy they watched as a black Town Car with official government plates squealed up to the taxi stand, cutting off two cabbies. The photographer and his motorcycle were already dissolving into the traffic snarl heading toward Central Park South.

"Fancy a chase scene?" Victor asked, yanking Diana into the car.

Bruce was going 30 miles per hour by the time Victor pulled the door shut.

"Don't worry," Victor said, as Bruce the driver reached under his seat and found an amber police light that he stuck on the roof of the car with a magnetic thunk. "Happens all the time. Rules of the sport. This was close, though."

The motorcycle was momentarily sandwiched in between a bus and an illegally-parked FedEx truck. Sometimes the city's lawlessness could be turned to advantage. Especially when you had a whirling light and untouchable license plates.

"What sport?" Diana said, breaking a nail as she gripped her armrest with both hands. What kind of senator got into car chases with women he picked up in bars? Diana was beginning to suspect Victor was some kind of gangster, or maybe a Kennedy.

"Politics, you know. It's a contact sport. Ouch. That's okay, Bruce. We can get another rear view mirror."

"Are you really a senator?" she asked. "From what state?"

"This one!" he said.

"Um, excuse me," said Diana, "You don't look like Hillary Clinton or Chuck Schumer. Or does New York have three senators?"

"Actually, New York has 62 senators," Victor replied. "I'm a state senator. Six months or so in session, about $80,000 a year plus fees for staff, company car, unimpeachable state official license plates. It's really not a bad job. Which is why the Rodriguez boys are miffed. Or possibly Rodriquez."

"And who is Rodriguez?" said Diana, clutching the hand strap over the window and riding the Town Car like a buckaroo as it bounced and jostled through the urban rodeo, over potholes, curbs, perhaps small children. Going up Central Park West now, the motorcylist was in the clear, but the Town Car was thundering after him like Zeus chasing a faun through the forest.

"Well, my state senate district in Queens is about 40 percent Irish, 60 percent Hispanic. My opponent was Angel Rodriguez. Unfair advantage, really.

"That's why I asked Alejandro Rodriguez to join the great American political process and make his maiden run for political office, which as I pointed out to him, could involve a significant increase in salary over his job as busboy. It wasn't my idea that the ballots should be in alphabetical order. And when Bruce found a guy named Angel Rodriquez working at a car wash, we thought he might be persuaded to make a run for it too. Long story short, I won, with Angel Rodriquez a surprisingly strong second."

"And the guy who held the seat before you?" Diana said, who was discovering that things looked nicer with her hands over her eyes.

"A disappointing fourth," Victor said with a shrug. "Voters can be so fickle. Anyway, now former state senator Angel Rodriguez wants to smear me in time for the election this fall — ignore that red light Bruce, it'll be fine, those kids will hop out of the way by the time we get there — and former car wash attendant Angel Rodriquez, who in my opinion is less than grateful for all we've done to advance his political career, has gained a taste for statesmanship since I only beat him by 350 votes. But this election is all about jobs. Bruce needs a job, and I need one too. Ah," he said, nodding with admiration as the car made a savage left onto 79th.

Despite his skills, though, Bruce did not stop the photographer; it was the pretzel cart that did that. Being pushed across 79th Street by a weary-looking vendor, the cart provided the paparazzo with a spectacularly doughy end to the day's work. The pretzel guy ran around madly, his mustache flapping in time with his shouts. Three teenage white boys in gangsta regalia helped themselves to pretzels from the cart's storage bin and stood munching over the fallen shutterbug, asking without interest if he was all right. The photographer, his leg pinned by the toppled cart, moaned obscenities to the effect that he was very far from all right, calling for medical attention and a pretzel. Bruce got out of the Town Car and walked up to his foe. He took away his camera but gave him a pretzel.

"So," said Victor, patting Diana on the hand. "What time is your train to Scarsdale?"

"Larchmont," said Diana with a growl. How she missed it. And didn't.