The party.

THE end of autumn is the season of obligation--of Christmas parties, office parties, book parties for the holiday list, all perks of our specialness as city dwellers. Open bars greet us as we arrive, bags of trinkets accompany us as we leave. Yet we go to these festivities dutifully, like spoiled children complaining of our piano lessons, or our Ivy League course loads. Life is hard. It takes special effort to infuse these invitations with what even jaded New Yorkers will recognize as glamour.

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The worthy institution, which recently celebrated a birthday here, did an excellent job. Worthy Institution had three things going for them as celebrants: They are from out of town, so no one is used to them; they don't celebrate every year, so no one is tired of them; and (thanks to reason number one), they did not do what every New York institution does, which is to book the grand ballroom of a midtown hotel, opting instead to reserve an evening at the best restaurant in town.

What restaurant is that? Is it the laboratory of the brilliant chef, pushing small portions and raw ingredients to the point where you will prepare your own meal of nothing? Is it the celebrity boite, not yet open to the public, but which does take reservations by e-mail? Is it your neighborhood diner? A case could be made for all of them, but Worthy Institution's choice was the Best Restaurant of 1959. It is a temple of modernism, which means it is as remote as the Gay Nineties. The bar is dark wood, and glass-needle chandeliers, like icicles; the passageway displays a huge Picasso (Picasso as period decor--just the way to hang him); the dining room is a vast clean cube, all cool mute colors and right angles, tended by waiters in grey suits. The menu recalls the moment when classical French cuisine was just passe, and culinary pioneers were discovering America; the freshness of the landfall still lingers.

Worthy Institution planned to fill Best Restaurant by offering Big Deal. Big Deal is not the most powerful man in America--that, ex officio, is the president. Formally, thousands of men and women have more power than Big Deal, since he no longer holds office. But in fact Big Deal is the second most powerful American. Half the country believes he is the king over the water, the other half believes he is Satan's rent boy; either way, we cannot help but look at him. How powerful is he? Bono returns his phone calls.

The convergence of all three factors, finally, would bring the fourth factor: Us. How can a party succeed if We do not attend it?

We did a fine job. Over hors d'oeuvres and champagne I saw Lefty, whom I met in green rooms ten years ago. Lefty brags, which irritates people, yet since he brags only about things he has actually done, what fair-minded person can complain? I asked what he was doing, and he said, "I'm writing two books." There was also Biographer. I have written biographies in my time, but mine read liked Wanted posters next to his total recalls, half Schliemann, half Saint-Simon. I remembered an anecdote from his last: Two congressmen were working together on a bill, when one, in wrath and excitement, kicked the other. My recall delighted him. "Nobody picked that up!" Memo to Speaker Pelosi: Whack away, no one will notice. There was even Madame Journalist, whom I read every week for fifteen years. Who next? Tony Millionaire?

Best Restaurant did an even finer job. Liquor is everywhere the same, and so these days are hors d'oeuvres--Limoges boxes of this and that. But the sit-down meal was a welcome relief from the chicken/beef/fish of such functions. The appetizer made me laugh: mushroom risotto, served in green, yellow-striped pumpkins: nature's Limoges boxes, so much brighter than ours. I was sitting in Siberia, in a side room up a staircase from the main cube, but I had a perfect sight line. A man in a hairpiece complained about his seating, in the guise of commiserating over a friend who was even farther away from the main action than we were. Why bother? Only if I were Mrs. Big Deal would I expect to sit close to him.

Worthy Institution did itself proud. Though they had important warm-up speakers, leading to Big Deal, they held them to five minutes each, which is almost unheard of. There was a personal angle as well, since the Institution is named, not for its founder, but for his daughter, who died age 38. This added an unusual note of humanity and reality to the proceedings. It was a handsome tribute, but who would not exchange an ocean of good works for a child? We hope for heaven, but we love the earth we know.

The only one to let down the side was Big Deal. He is good looking, if you remember that politics is the Hollywood of the ugly, and he speaks fluently. He displayed, however, a tic that was new to me--a bullying wag of the forefinger. It undercut his words, which were full of data points and moderate middles. The data points were as copious and untraceable as a swarm of flies, and the moderate middles were all rhetorical tricks: "Some of us eat only bread and water, while others of us eat the children of the poor. But the American people want a better way." Yet, though the words were unpersuasive, they evinced an effort to persuade, which is almost as important. The finger flicked it all away: "You'll listen, and you'll like it," it said. So the evening batted 3 for 4--better than Ted Williams.

Big Deal's bodyguards kept us bottled up at the entrance of the passageway while he shook a few last hands. He was at it again by the coat check. I think Lefty caught him on the way out.