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In the pink-washed and colonnaded villa La Serena in Las Brisas, the social summit of Acapulco, Nancy and Henry Kissinger found a honeymoon refuge last week. Lazing by the shell-shaped pool or strolling in the tropical gardens of the estate lent to them by Mexican Pharmaceuticals Importer Eustaquio Escandon, the Kissingers' only argument was with their host's mean, green parrot that set up a racket every time Henry opened his mouth. Kissinger was resigned to the bird's preference for his bride. "That parrot can't be all bad," he said. Henry was not so tolerant of the 40-odd newsmen who were encamped at La Serena's gate. Flushed from adjoining gardens by the twelve Secret Service agents and 20 Mexican police assigned to guard the U.S. Secretary of State, the reporters and photographers followed the Kissingers' every move. Carloads pursued the couple when they went into town. A motor-boatload of newsmen rocked their sloop during an afternoon sail. Kissinger finally negotiated a truce halfway through the ten-day honeymoon. In exchange for a press conference, the newsmen agreed to leave the couple alone. Summoning the press to the house of Mexican Foreign Minister Emilio Rabasa, Kissinger, dressed in a white guayabera (a casual Mexican shirt), was his usual genial self. Nancy, peering from behind oversized sunglasses, was tense, and she did not find the barrage of personal questions reassuring. "How many children will you have?" demanded a reporter. Nancy, who is, according to friends, "crazy about children," replied warily, "I don't know. However many come."
Washington has many more personal questions for the newly weds, specifically about their domestic arrangements. Said a Congressman's wife: "Everyone has conjecturitis." Nancy will definitely not leave her job as adviser to former New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller before his next presidential effort. As staff director of foreign policy studies for Rocky's Commission on Critical Choices for Americans, she researches speeches, assigns position papers to academics, and prepares aides-memoire. As one friend says, "She has power, and she would not like to give it up." He suggests that Nancy will commute to Manhattan for a day or so a week: "A lot of her work is thinking and can be done as well in Washington."
The odds are that the shuttle diplomats will start married life in Henry's town house in Rock Creek Park, near Embassy Row and within a few minutes' drive of the State Department. The interior has been described by one visitor as "early Holiday Inn." Washington Social Veteran Barbara Howar already has advice for Nancy: "Put Henry on a diet and redecorate."