Unlike her books, she is compact. Like her books, she is complex.
She sips on ice water and speaks softly. In the clatter and confusion of the restaurant, it is sometimes hard to hear her. She often responds to a question with a question. Asked about this habit, she says, "Do I?"
She pauses between responses.
She can be self-deprecating, but she bristles at the suggestion that she traffics in salacious details. She is, she says, a writer. And a biographer. Not a gossipmonger.
Writing biographies, she says, has not gotten easier over the years. After each one, she says to herself that she's not going to write another. But she always does.
"They take a long time," she says. "They take a really long time."
She began working on this book in 2000, after Bush defeated Al Gore.
For a biographer, she says, the Bush family has it all: money, power, influence, tragedy, joy.
But she discovered early on that the family was not interested. "George senior," she says, "said he wasn't going to cooperate. Doors closed."
She is used to her subjects being recalcitrant. And she says it doesn't bother her that she has to talk to other people, to triangulate information, to get at the truth about a person. "You can't thoroughly and completely represent somebody," she says. The book is more than 700 pages long. She amassed more than 3,000 file folders and 10,000 pages of interview transcripts. She spoke with nearly 1,000 people.
Asked about her plans for the future, she says she will keep doing what she does. "It would frighten me not to write," she says. Mostly she afflicts the comfortable.
On this day, Kelley appears pretty comfortable herself.
"I write books about subjects who don't want to be written about," she told a gathering of investigative reporters and editors last year. She said she begins each project by reading everything that is written about her subject. She lets everyone know what she is writing about and she listens to everyone's stories. She calls and writes and asks friends to intercede. She said she has a sign in her office that reads: "Speak the truth but ride a fast horse." She has a stone from the beach at Normandy that she holds for courage when calling someone on the phone.
The most unnerving way to get an interview, she said, is to show up at someone's doorstep unannounced.
"Nothing in the world," she told the reporters, "will take the place of persistence."
So now she is persistently flacking her new book. She is scheduled to be on "Today" again Tuesday. And Wednesday. And on other shows along the way.
She tilts her head coquettishly when told by a Doubleday publicist that she has to rush off to her next engagement. She excuses herself and heads for the door.
She doesn't even stick around for her veal.
