Read Online Daring by Gail Sheehy - Free Book Online Page A

becoming frequent.
    I wore beatnik sandals and occasionally love beads, and I treasured the album Rolling Stones: Now. But with a four-year-old child, I was too responsible to spend any time being stoned.
    Could it really be Clay Felker crossing the great social divide? His was the glamorous world of the Upper East Side—cocktails and canapés and charity balls for socially prominent diseases for which chic women spent the afternoon at Kenneth’s getting bouffant hairdos that were perfect facsimiles of the style worn by former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy.
    â€œI tell him come up?”
    â€œGive me a minute. I’m just putting Maura down.”
    â€œOkay, he’s comin’ gup—a fancy man!”
    It was mid-April 1968. Clay had just launched New York as an independent weekly. The first issue wasn’t off the newsstands yet and already the man was on the prowl for his next stories. I could hear him climbing the four flights of stairs, saddle-curved from a hundred years of cheap shoes, past the door of the playwright/pot dealer on two and the retired cop on three with the trigger-happy son who watched TV with the old man’s service revolver on his knee. The rattle clink as I opened my three locks must have made him nervous. He burst into my apartment, pulling off his formal black tie as he peered down the long dark hall.
    â€œAre you searching for hippies?” I teased. “There are probably some in the kitchen baking pot into brownies.”
    â€œHow do you live here all alone, Gail? It’s not safe.”
    â€œI bite.”
    He laughed.
    â€œCan I take your coat?”
    As he wriggled out of a black Chesterfield, I noticed again how unusual he was: a king-size man propped on incongruously small, princely, high-arched feet. His body seemed locked in perpetual forward motion. His hungry eyes darted about the surroundings like a house detective taking mental notes on every detail. The apartment was probably not as slummy as he had imagined: a floor-through with a real dining room, a baby’s room filled with books and mobiles, and even a sitting room overlooking the street where I banged out freelance articles on my secondhand electric typewriter and often pulled all-nighters (with a little help from speed).
    â€œSorry to barge in—but I didn’t see you at the launch party,” he said as I led him into what passed for a living room and we sat down on the sofa. “I won’t keep you up.”
    â€œI really wanted to go, but no babysitter,” I said. “You must be so proud, Clay. To have your own magazine.”
    â€œIt’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
    He looked around at the homely evidence of domesticity, the scatter of toys, the odd socks, a curdle of spilled milk on the coffee table.
    â€œYou’ve probably never met a man like me.”
    â€œAnd you may not have met a girl like me.”
    He seemed intrigued.
    â€œI know one thing—you can be a kick-ass writer.”
    â€œShhhh,” I said. “My little girl is sleeping.”
    Abruptly, he changed the subject. “Do you understand politics?”
    â€œMy father’s a country club Republican, an Anglophiliac, if you know what I mean. My Irish mother is a natural-born rebel. So I guess I understand politics—it’s about fighting at the dinner table.”
    â€œThen you’ll understand Bobby,” Clay said, moving closer. The sagging sofa threw him off-kilter; he moved back.
    â€œBobby who?”
    â€œKennedy.”
    â€œBobby Kennedy!”
    â€œI want you to follow his campaign.”
    A clutch of fear tightened inside. “Me? I’m not a political analyst.”
    Clay suddenly became passionate. I remember his advice as something like this: “Gail, the way to make your name as a journalist is not to do lots of little stories. No matter how good they are, they won’t start a new conversation. Tackle a big story, something