IT WAS NOT A very good sleep. Or rather it was more the sleep of the standing-up, the ostensibly awake, a kind of mesmerized suspension between life and death, perilous and oddly stimulating.
He was aware all the time of the children’s voices downstairs and Emma clearing the table and the old man herding the girls upstairs to bath and bed. But he was asleep all the same, and he could not really comprehend what was going on around him. He wanted desperately for just a moment to pull himself from the bed and go and give himself over completely, unequivocally, to the children. What had he ever given them? When had he ever really made the effort? He could not recall a time. The giving required a taking, and during those rare moments when he attempted to offer up some little piece of himself, he had never managed to get the girls to understand what it was they were supposed to be accepting. He wanted more than anything to make some gesture, shape some memorable event, invest, just once, enough of himself and his resources so that the moment might come back to the children twenty years from now, magically vivid and graceful and full of meaning.
But he remained on the bed, perspiring a little through the clothes he had worn all day, asleep and wanting always to rise and say something, make a speech, or paint a picture, knowing without asking that his tongue was thick and cobwebby and that the blunt ends of his fingers were dipped in brine.
Soon the house grew quiet with the last giggles of the children and the old man’s wheezing sleep-sounds. He looked at his watch and finally got himself from bed and began to wash. It was only nine-thirty when he left the house, and he reached the place of the party — now wildly and unpredictably underway — a little before ten.
It was a huge, spanishy house, nearly authentic, a restored farm outbuilding around which the city had grown many years before. It resembled one of the original missions a hundred miles farther south, but this quality must have been bogus — a success only for the renovators — for its history was just barely pre-Civil War and the earliest recorded occupants were German agrarian types. Enough of the farmland had been retained to give the place enormous grounds, front and back, freckled with small well-kept shrubs and shaded by huge pecan and flowering magnolia trees. There were cars parked up and down the street, on either side, and half a dozen of them, new and shining, clogged the main drive. Midway across the lawn he paused and looked back, sinking deep into the carpet grass. The cars were like people, or rather they reflected the tastes of the people inside: extremes of one kind or another. There were Alfas and Porsches and a single Carman-Ghia parked next to convertibles and Jeepsters and a couple of twelve-year-old Cadillacs. Even those bent on unpretentiousness seemed to have gone a little too far. The newer, conventional models were as spare and frugal and chromeless as might be found in a Government motor pool, and there were many machines that would be normally out-of-use, beat up and fading, windows splintered, fenders sagging, all of them in a stage of advanced and altogether chic decay, most of them driven by those young people who could put their incomes, earned or inherited, at five or six figures.
There was an awful din coming from inside, and through the windows he could see the crazy circus-shapes of people drunk and dancing, singly and in pairs, talking, gesturing, moving from room to room, peering at bookshelves and record albums and into each other’s faces, poking at themselves and dancing partners, pouring whiskey. There seemed to be a great pouring of whiskey, in fact; nearly everywhere he looked through the window glass there was someone with a bottle and a paper cup, even a stunning girl, drinks in each hand, deep in exotic, hip-grinding meditation within a hula hoop. He stood staring at the girl for a moment, from the shadows, until footsteps sounded on the graveled drive and a younger man moved past and paused, struggling with a huge bag of ice.
“Hey! Hey, Neil! Good to see you … Come on in.”
He grinned and stood aside while Neil opened the door for him. Then they were inside and it was oddly terrifying at first, like walking too close to a locomotive when he was young.
All the noise of which he had been conscious from the outside now seemed only a faint signal from a shrouded wood. Now it came to him in full force, in all its clattering, strident, bass-drum and leper’s bell fidelity. But unlike the experience with the locomotive when he was young, there was no sudden impulse to run or stand away. He paused at the door only a moment and then plunged, unaccountably happy, into the chasm of writhing figures.
They were his friends, another kind of crème de la crème, the best of another order, and he had spent nearly all of his last ten years in their company, or the nucleus of their company: young people from his first years in the Legislature and the inevitable artist-types Andrea and John Tom had attracted, an irreducible blending of the two worlds, the best of the worlds — a hundred dime store Czars and Michelangelos.
The hosts veered toward him from several directions. There were four of them, all of a type and long-time friends. He had been with them since college, and they had entered the Legislature at nearly the same time. Three of them were wealthy or comfortably well off, the offspring of villainous oil families in the South and West. The fourth had poor-boyed his way to relative security as a full professor at the college. They had been living in the old house for years, scarcely changing in the passage of time, the moneyed three continuing to contribute their share of the rent even when they were campaigning in their districts or making periodic, not to say routine, voyages to other lands. Together, the four of them (with Neil now missing from their numbers) had once represented roughly one quarter of the hard-core Liberal strength in a legislative Lower House that operated with a membership of close to three hundred.
They greeted him, all hands extended; they stood around, remarking with a good deal of enthusiasm about the events of the afternoon, slapping him on the back and shaking his hand for an interminable period of time. They exchanged equally coarse views on Owen Edwards. The story had been spread in the evening papers and by radio and word of mouth, some of it garbled and distorted, and Neil now proceeded as quickly as possible to put straight his part in the whole business of the luncheon. Fairly soon a crowd had gathered round and he began to feel stuffy and a little bored with himself.
“No, hell no … I didn’t flatten him or his nose. Our suits weren’t even rumpled. I just grabbed him on the behind — and I shouldn’t have — and shoved him out of the ballroom and into an elevator … Hey, where’s Andrea?”
“Not here yet. What’d he do? What’d he say?”
“Nothing … Meek as a … Where is she?”
“Who?”
“Andrea.”
“Not here yet. Bunch of them got started late for dinner. Say —”
“Where can I get a drink? I don’t want to talk about this stuff. I want a drink. And move around and look at people. There was a girl with a hula …”
He got through the crowd and poured a drink for himself in the pine-walled kitchen. It was real pine; you could smell it. Two students, a boy and a girl who looked to him like high schoolers, stared and smiled and then moved into another room, singing a song from an old New Faces album someone had played for them that evening for the first time. They seemed very young; no one ought to be that young, he thought. And no one ought to grow any older — none of them. The parties in this ancient, creaking house would go on endlessly, as they had for ten years now, the young faces appearing from weekend to weekend, passing in the dim light and vanishing into somebody else’s old age. Not theirs. God knows not his. They had all reached mankind’s natural condition: long in the tooth and innocent in the head, poised on the brink, falling but never quite fallen into wisdom and decay.
He swallowed half his drink and added more water and whiskey. A girl of about twenty-five came toward him with a guitar slung round her neck. “I want one of these,” she said. She was very tall with a nice figure and a tall girl’s slump. Or perhaps it was the guitar pulling her shoulders down. She gave him a depraved look.
He searched for a glass or a paper cup in the shelves above the double sink. The floor was wet from the ice sack, and after he had served the girl he stepped outside and found an old washtub. He got the thing in both hands, and when he turned he saw that the girl had followed him. She stood on the back steps, staring moodily round the yard. Then, without warning, she strummed some flattish chords on the guitar and began to sing.
“Sandpiper, housewren, cock of the walk, where do you fly when the Lady Bird calls? Feathers and foodstuffs, mountains of chalk, through bosky dells and evergreen malls … Ca-ree … ca-raaw, ca-ree … ca-raaah, out in the glen, jiggers of gin …”
She groaned on insensibly, moving the guitar from side to side in a sawing motion. None of it was comprehensible to him. He thought about the words “jiggers of gin” and “out in the glen.” Was that what she had sung? He would never be sure. He stood a few feet away from her with the washtub in his arms, wondering what in the world to say.
When it was ended, finally, the girl seemed to unhinge herself; her eyes came back into focus and she looked at him as if examining a questionable piece of merchandise.
“Very nice … Very pretty,” he said. “Where is it from? The song.”
“I wrote it,” she said. “I’ve composed many folk songs.”
“Oh … you write folk music … Compose, I mean. Well. That … must … be …”
“They’re poems in the beginning … I write them as poems and then a suitable melody …”
“Very nice. Lovely …” he managed to say. “Shall we go back inside?” He held the door for her. She shrugged and moved past him, swinging perilously close to his vitals with the guitar, striding on into the pine kitchen and out of it. He stepped inside and hoisted the sack of ice into the tub. Then he took his glass and went into the front rooms.
“I try to get through the day saying as little as possible. So far I’ve managed with two expressions — ‘Scotch and soda, please’ and ‘How gross’ …”
“There are some other expressions he uses,” Neil said, “but they’re almost always inappropriate for mixed company.”
Stanley and the girl from the bookstore looked up at him. They were sitting alone together on a couch. A phonograph across the room was at nearly full volume, and the three of them had to bend down toward each other to talk.
“What did you say?” Stanley asked.
“We saw you come in,” Elsie said, “but there was such a crowd around we couldn’t get through.”
They moved over for him. He sat next to the girl, with Stanley on the other side. Conversation was virtually impossible for a few moments against the record music, but someone pressed the rejector button and soft voices of Mariachi singers filled the room. They sat quietly and watched the couples dancing.
“These parties haven’t changed any,” Stanley said.
“Not a bit.”
“I mean really. Not just these parties — but all of them. I used to sit and watch the ones my parents gave back … well … way the hell back. No difference. Everyone’s still exceedingly clever …”
“As opposed to being profound?” the girl said.
“I don’t think I’ve ever known any profound people,” Stanley said.
“To be opposed to, he means,” Neil said.
“You think everything is imitative?”
“No … But the form’s the same. Not the manner or the spirit exactly. There was the kind of queasy sentimentality that characterized so many things in the thirties and wartime forties — all the enlightened and supposedly significant work in art, politics, the theater — a kind of patriotic, prayer-meeting fervor combined with a men’s room snigger. That stuff was pretty bad — look back and it seems awful, as garish and obvious as women’s shoulder pads, double-breasted suits and collars that didn’t button down. But who’s to say whether it’s really any different — or any worse — than this ersatz sophistication and existentialist gloom it’s been supplanted by?”
“Very nice, Stanley. We’ll put it in a speech.”
“I don’t understand any of it,” Elsie said.
Stanley looked at the girl. “It’s because you don’t know the passwords, the catch-phrases. That’s what I mean. Those wisecracks are different, but I don’t know about the substance. We’re still wandering around ready to laugh or cry before a sentence is half out of somebody’s mouth …”
He turned his attention to Neil. “What about the campaign? What’s the plan?”
“We’ll just use the wisecracks, the old jokes,” Neil said. “The same ones — only on the television. We could do it in our sleep. No sweat … No sweat at all. Don’t even tax your brain. Big Daddy’s goin’ to handle everything. He’s already rung for the butler.”
Stanley was silent for a moment and then said: “I heard something this afternoon I meant to tell you …”
Neil was on his feet. “In a minute. I’ve run out of whiskey. Can I treat the two of you?”
They shook their heads. The girl was uncommonly beautiful. Her hair hung down along her shoulders, dark and undistinguished except for an altogether exciting quarter-piece of earlobe which shone through on one side, milk-white and sculptured looking. She gazed directly at him, and for a moment he was certain of a promise, for whatever advantage he might wish to take of it, but then he could see that Stanley himself was entirely wrapped up in the girl. It would explain his long, compulsive discourse a few minutes earlier, all of it gone for nothing against the girl’s uncomprehending gaze. Nobody was getting through; it was that business all over again: thick-tongued and ill-equipped; what they needed was an English-English dictionary. How, then, had he himself got through to the girl on at least one level? Elementary. Elemental. The basic gland persevered. He turned away and went for another drink.
One of the four householders, the professor at the college, was talking on the telephone. He had just set the receiver down as Neil walked by. He turned and said: “That was Andrea.”
“What did she say?”
“Well not anything, really. I mean it was Andrea’s party. They’re just finishing dinner — should be here shortly, half hour at the outside.”
He walked into the pine-walled kitchen and made a fresh drink. He was conscious of strange sounds from the backyard, and he bent over the sink and peered through a small window out into the darkness. In a few seconds the moon was clear of the small clouds that had been covering it and the grounds were suddenly bathed in purples of many shadings. The sound persisted — a low, sustained moan, of no particular distinction or emotion, followed by clipped, elegant, high-pitched chants suggesting an absurd and deeply suffering Noel Coward. Then there were those familiar guitar chords and he could see the girl standing beneath a half caved-in grape arbor. There was someone beside her, or rather moving about in the shadows in back of her, and after the two of them had taken several staggering steps in one direction and then another, finally emerging from the cover of the arbor, he could see she was standing with her back to a young man, who was reaching round her from behind, pushing his face up against the nape of her neck and fumbling with the impedimenta of beads and guitar in front. There was a long silence, interrupted by several dull, unintended thonks on the guitar strings, and then a longer silence as the two nuzzled each other in that oddly torturous back-to-stomach embrace.
“Hey Neil — the party’s in here, man.”
“Hey, Kermit …”
“What the hell’s out that window?”
“The moon,” Neil said. “The grounds are all mauvy-looking. Pastels …”
“Lemmie take a look …”
Kermit moved up behind him and peered out into the gloom.
“It’s all black, man. You’re way out with that mauvy stuff. I know colors — I’ve taken up painting this year — and that stuff’s just a buggy black. Black as a Republican’s heart. A gypsy’s armpit. You like that? Black, man.”
“Ah, Kermit …”
“Ah, yourself … For God’s sake don’t disapprove, Senator. How the hell you been?”
“Fine, Kermit. How about you? You’ve taken up painting?”
“That’s it — that’s it. Yeah. I’m even goin’ into the business. Opening me a little place next week in back of my mother’s florist shop. The Renaissance Gallery … The goddam Renaissance Gallery!”
“You don’t mean it? What got you onto it?”
“The gallery or the painting?”
“Both. What happened to your books?”
“Gone. Kaput. Fini … Hell and gone. It was all out of me — all I had to say in that particular sullen art. Burned ’em. Every one.”
“You don’t say? Hell … You shouldn’t of —”
“Every damned one of ’em. Had to find me a new medium … Spread it around a little … That’s the way it is with us Good Doctors. You still my Good Doctor, Neil?”
“I suppose that’s for you to decide, Kermit. You’re the only judge of Good Doctors. It takes an honest-to-God genuine P-H-D to go around conferring honorary doctors of philosophy on people.”
“You’ve got that down, damn sure have. But he’s got to be the right kind, even if he is genuine. Like the P-H-D doesn’t really mean a hell of a lot if a cat doesn’t believe in it. He’s got to have that vision. Dig? There’s a lot of ’em out there at the college — Doctor This and Doctor That — but I don’t know but one or two that’s really got the vision. Taking it serious. There aren’t really many Good Doctors … You dig?”
“I think so,” Neil said.
“Hey — here’s a Good one right here …” Kermit grabbed the arm of one of the four householders.
“Kermit … Kermit. You conferrin’ Good Doctor degrees tonight?”
Kermit’s eyes blazed. His hair was clipped short, unevenly. The truth was, he cut his own, and the top of his head suggested a poorly tended lawn, weedy and spotted with crab grass. Although he maintained that the actor Kirk Douglas had ruined Van Gogh for him, he had, all the same, recently grown a scraggly red beard that somehow gave him the look of the movie counterpart, or a trifle more down-at-the heels version. Kermit had recorded the highest grades in the history of the college — had taught school for two or three years before entering into his decline, when he had finally got his vision.
“This Doctor, this Good Doctor,” Kermit said, “let me tell you what he did the other day up there in that House of Repscallions.”
“What was that?” Neil said.
“Yeah — what the hell was it?” the object of Kermit’s attention wanted to know.
“The cats — I mean the fat ones not the swingin’ kind — those cats up there were tryin’ to pass a bill doubling the tuition at the state-supported schools. Dig? Rather than pass a legitimate tax bill on all the robber-barons so there would be more than enough money to go around — money enough to help those deaf and dumb kids and build hospitals instead of football stadiums and take the niggers out of the shit house and maybe even end the Cold War for all I know — rather than do that they were just doublin’ tuition at the college. Dig? Well they had the votes. Like always. But you know what this Good Doctor did? He stands up on the floor of our House of Reps, grabs that snortin’ pole and offers an amendment. At the top of his voice! Ah he was hot, this Good Doctor of mine. He says as long as this lousy bill is going to pass anyhow and since those bums had the votes to double the stinkin’ tuition on something, why not leave it like it is for most kids but double it for the fratty types. He stands up there and talks about how it was when he was president of his own goddam fraternity at school — years ago … when he was president for Chrissake — and how they’d partied all night long, every night, and boozed it up and generally crapped around in a waste of shame. I mean he was tremendous, Neil. It was a stroke, a regular coop, a genuine-by-God Good Doctor masterpiece!”
“The amendment didn’t carry,” the young man said, grinning at Neil.
“But you tried, man. You stood up there and gave yourself hell …”
“What was the vote?” Neil said.
“I dunno. I think we got about twenty.”
“How about the bill itself?”
“Same.”
“Well, if I’d been around you’d’ve had twenty-one …”
“More than that,” the young man said. “Hell! A lot more than that. We had some spark when you were there, Neil, workin’ that floor, rockin’ those bastards back on their ass-behinds. You were always getting us votes — from just out of nowhere. We had some leadership then. Now … we’re just floppin’ around, aimless.”
“Tell him about the used car deal,” Kermit said. “You weren’t aimless then. Hell no.”
“It was actually Kermit’s idea,” the young man said.
“No it wasn’t. No it wasn’t.”
“Yes it was.”
“Well you gates did all the work.”
“Anyhow, there was this bill pending that was backed up like a sledgehammer by the new car dealers. Practically all the gold in Fort Knox behind it. The new car boys were unhappy about the used car boys. A couple of special interests, but the junkies were way outclassed, and it was a really awful bill. It would’ve stopped car sales on Sunday. You know. Religion and all that. And it was going to pass for God’s sake. Can you imagine? So Kermit gets this idea. He calls me over and says how about amending the thing to exempt Buddhists. Kermit’s been practicing Zen and he says he might want to start selling used cars on Sundays and why the hell should he have to observe somebody else’s religious holiday? So I put it up and argued and my God it passed! So then some of the others pitched in with amendments exempting Seventh-Day Adventists and Jews and Mohammedans and some oddball sects, and fairly soon the sponsors got the idea. They could just visualize all those sharpie used car dealers — all those Rasputins — claiming they were big on Zen or Shinto converts and getting away with it. So they withdrew the bill …”
“It all sounds enchanting,” Neil said. “I think I’ll come back.”
“I wish you would. Don’t you see? We can block a few things — stop a murder in the streets sometime; blow the whistle on a crime about to be perpetrated in broad daylight, but we’re not really doing anything. Just throwing spitballs.”
“I’ll see you Good Doctors.” Kermit had freshened his drink and was turning to leave, tugging at his baggy corduroys.
“Where you going?”
“I just saw an absolutely angelic knocked-up woman in there. You know how I am about them, man. I dig. I dig all of ’em. The more knocked-up the better. Love ’em every one. Their figures get lovely and they just glow, goddammit … See you later …”
Kermit turned and headed into the other room. They watched him move into the crowd, his dirty cotton sweatshirt, the red beard, blending garishly with his conventional betters.
“I ought to get back, myself,” Neil said.
“Hey — do you know Porter?”
“Who?”
“Porter Hardy. The laboring man.”
“I’ve met him once or twice. Isn’t he a new one?”
“Yes. He doesn’t have any official title. I don’t think he was ever even a business agent. Jumped right out of college into labor politics. He’s a kind of pamphleteer — without portfolio — a sort of junior grade Mahatma for the pipefitters …”
“Ummn.”
“He’s here. He wants to talk to you.”
“What about?”
“I don’t know. The usual, I guess. Come on …”
They moved through the other rooms of the house. He caught a glimpse of Stanley and Elsie, still firmly planted on the couch, but he could not get their attention as he passed. They wandered through the crowd, past dancing couples and three young men, eyes floating into their foreheads, bending over bongo drums; past the girl with the hula hoop and a man grinning apishly and making Polaroid pictures and Kermit pushing up next to a very pretty and slightly disturbed-looking girl who was enormously pregnant. They found Porter Hardy in one of the bedrooms where the crowd had begun to thin. He was sitting on the edge of a studio couch talking with a nice-looking woman of about the age of all of them. Hardy, aware of their presence, succeeded nonetheless in completing what he was saying to the woman …
“Would you do that? Would you do that for me? They are, after all, public records, and I just want to take a look at them overnight.”
“I might,” the woman said. “I’ll think about it.”
She looked up at them and began to rise. “Excuse me,” she said. She walked across the room, knocked lightly on the door to the bath, and moved on inside.
“Well!” said Hardy, getting to his feet. “Hello, Senator …”
They shook hands. Their host departed almost immediately.
“I won’t take much of your time …”
“Not at all.”
“… I just wanted to talk with you a moment. I wanted to congratulate you on this afternoon first of all.”
“It was pretty bad,” Neil said. “I suppose it would’ve been a shambles if the Governor hadn’t been there to paste things together.”
“Well … I’m not enamored with Arthur Fenstemaker, exactly, but I imagine you’re right. What I meant, though, was the speech. I thought it was a fine speech.”
“You think so? You liked it? You were there?”
“I sneaked in after the last course. Swiped a chair at the back. It was a good speech. I liked what you said — what you were getting at.”
“Maybe you can tell me then what I was getting at. I don’t remember much of anything I said … Somehow got off the text.”
“Well it was all right. All right.” Hardy did not smile. He seemed to mean everything he said. He was slim and slightly stooped, well dressed and somehow over-earnest in the manner of a bank vice-president. Neil decided he would look more at home in a Merrill, Lynch office rather than a union hall.
“You’re very kind,” Neil said.
“How do you plan to conduct your campaign?” Hardy said. He had suddenly shifted gears.
“The campaign? There probably won’t be much of a campaign. I’m going back to Washington. I’ll be down here a few times before the election, make some speeches. I can do most of it practically long distance, though. Films and transcriptions.”
“I mean issues. What are you going to talk about?”
“Well … You know. Christ. A little of what I said today. God, Mother and Moderation. But I imagine it’ll get pretty bland before it’s over.” Neil smiled at his little joke, but Hardy seemed more intense and humorless than ever.
“Don’t you think you’ll need more than that to whip Edwards? A real issue. Something clear-cut?”
“No.” Neil decided to see who could out-soberface the other.
“No?” For the first time Hardy’s radio announcer’s voice showed strain. “You don’t think so?”
“No.”
“Have you thought of pegging it on straight liberal-conservative lines?”
“Yes.”
“Well?”
“I think I would lose.”
“I don’t think you would.”
“Well … You file in the primary, then.”
“No, no, I didn’t mean it that way. I want you in there. It’s just that I think you’re going to lose if you go the route you’re planning. I’ve been all over the state. Traveled it all year, from one end to the other. Things are changing. We’ve never been stronger. And we’re gaining strength every day.”
“That’s good to hear. Best news I’ve heard all day.”
“But I want it to be good for you. Have you given any thought to the possibility of campaigning on a labor issue? Against the open shop, for example.”
“No … No I haven’t.”
“That kind of campaign would make us very happy, of course.”
“I can imagine.”
“I think you could win on it.”
“I don’t think so. I think it would beat me and beat your union shop even worse. You know how long this state’s had right-to-work laws?”
“Too long. And there’s certainly nothing sacred about them and —”
“Why hell!” Neil said, “Even some of the votes you’d ordinarily count on as liberal would defect on that one. I think I might even vote against it if —”
“You mean that?”
“No. But you boys are getting stronger the way things are … Why rock the —”
“We’re getting stronger for precisely that reason. People don’t like things the way they are. You have any money?”
“What?”
“Money. Finances. It costs money to run a campaign.”
“I’ve got some.”
“How much?”
“Enough.”
“How much? A hundred thousand?”
“No. Nothing like it.”
“It’ll cost you that much to run the kind of campaign you’re planning. You know that?”
“Yes. I’ve got assurances of more.”
“What if they bug out on you in the middle? What if they shift over to Edwards? It’s happened, you know. Those bastards — boy I can imagine where that money’s coming from — those birds go with a winner. If you start slipping just a little, why —”
“I don’t plan to slip,” Neil said. “Not even a little.”
“We’ve got money. We could help you. But more than that, we’ve got people, votes, discipline. We’re organized. You’d be amazed. Like shock troops this year.”
“As I said, that’s great. I want those votes — and I’d welcome the money if you have it. You ought to talk to the Governor. He’s handling the —”
“Oh boy, I can imagine how he’s handling it. How he’d handle us. The first thing, he’d take our money but he’d want it in cash and under the table. He wouldn’t want the union label on any of the financial reports. Then he’d tell us to get out and organize our people but for Chrissake be quiet about it …”
“You needn’t. I’m not ashamed of your support. I just meant the Governor was in charge of —”
“I know how he’s in charge, mister. Listen — I’ll tell you the Facts of Life, revised edition. We’re not going that route any more. We’re good and tired of being back-door lovers. No more extramarital affairs. No more meetings in the dead of night. We’re through with being screwed in the rumble seat. Either you — or any candidate — is good and strong for us in public or we sit on our hands …”
“Well …”
“We mean it …”
“You’ve put your case beautifully and I sympathize. I’m for you. I’ll tell anybody I’m for you. Anybody who asks. But I’m not going to stand up on Mount Baldy in a white vestment and sing about it for the next two months. That’s the way it’s got to be …”
“You’ll —”
“I’ve got to get back to some friends …”
“You may regret it, Senator.”
“And you may get Owen Edwards. I frankly don’t give a damn. And you could get somebody a whole hell of a lot worse than Arthur Fenstemaker if he ever moves out …”
“I wish to God he would.”
“I enjoyed it.”
“Yes.”
Neil turned and walked out of the bedroom, leaving Hardy still on his perch on the studio couch. Jay McGown approached him from behind.
“Hey, Neil …”
“Jay. Did you get the man tucked in?”
“Think so. I wanted to tell you I appreciate the plug in there. I heard part of it — what you were saying there at the end, at the top of your voice.” He stood next to him, smiling, weaving slightly.
“Thanks,” Neil said. “But I probably just lost the labor vote in there.”
“Nah,” Jay said. “Where’s your drink?”
“Need a new one, I guess. Must have left it behind.”
“Come on,” Jay said. “I’ll make you one.”
They started back into the kitchen. Kermit was standing alone in the middle of the dining room. He grabbed Neil’s arm.
“Hey, Good Doctor.”
“Kermit. Where’s that pretty pregnant woman?”
“Scared her off, man. She quailed on me. Can’t seem to get through, make myself clear. How I feel, I mean.”
“Shave that beard for a starter,” Jay said. “It’s that beard that gets in the way.”
“Lose my identity, man? Hey, Neil —”
“Yaz.”
“You know old John Tom?”
“Yes.”
“There was a Doctor. I meant to tell you that. He was an awfully Good Doctor. I meant to tell you … How come he split?”
“What?”
“How come he went away?”
“I don’t know,” Neil said. “I wish I did.”
“Good Doctor,” Kermit mumbled to himself, walking off alone. Neil and Jay moved into the kitchen. The ice tub was half full of water, and the young man who had taken Neil to see Porter Hardy was breaking open a box of whiskey.
“Look at that host,” Jay said. “That’s a host for you.”
The young man looked up, smiling. “It’s the liquor lobby that’s host. We take their booze and vote against ’em. They’re awfully tolerant …”
They poured fresh drinks. Neil took several quick swallows. His throat was dry and then he was suddenly, miraculously, tight. The party raged on around them.
“Grongk,” Neil said aloud.
“What?” Jay asked him. The host was still pulling bottles and bottles out of the pasteboard case.
“Dronk,” Neil said. He cleared his throat. “If I keep this up I’ll be drunk.”
“Only way to be round friends,” said his friend who was bending over the empty case. “We’ll look after you. Won’t take any pictures.”
“Is Andrea here yet?”
“No … Not yet. They were somewhere crosstown. Another party, they said. I’m goin’ to lose patience with those people. ’Nother party’s no excuse …”
“They called again?”
“Yah, yeah, didn’t I tell you?”
“I dun know,” Neil said. “What she say?”
“Who?”
“Andrea.”
“Nothin’. Didn’t talk to Andrea. They’ll be along. They promised.”
There was a silence between the three of them. Jay McGown had got himself seated on the drainboard, his feet dangling, banging against the lower cupboards. The host suddenly sat down inside the empty whiskey case and began slapping his kneecaps in time with the music. Periodically, he took a drink; then propped the glass in his lap and resumed slapping his kneecaps. Neil had got a silly grin on his face. He was aware of how altogether foolish an expression it was, but he couldn’t make it go way. With the three of them thus assembled, the effect from a distance was one of great, private merriment — the sort of illusion, chic and exclusive and vastly appealing to passersby, that caused others to wonder whether they were having such a good time after all. Fairly soon, a large group of people, whooping and shouting and hoping to share in the fun, had crowded into the kitchen.
Now there were several people perched alongside Jay on the drainboard, and others were pushing in close, ducking under can openers and cuptowel racks to see. Some of them sat on the damp floor, encircling the host who was still inside the whiskey case; another of the roommates was lowering himself in the tub of melted ice. “Coo …” he said, squeezing his eyes shut. “Oooweeool.” Somebody had a bongo drum and was beating on it in a way that irritated Neil but seemed to make the others deliriously happy. They could hardly hear the music from the other room.
Neil finally managed to get through into the main part of the house again. Not everyone had been attracted to the wild, seemingly private goings-on in the kitchen. There were still a good many people about, but the place now gave off an appearance of a little more restraint and formality. Not much, but more than had been apparent up to that time. Stanley was dancing with Elsie; there were only three or four couples shuffling about on the living room floor, and the evening had reached a stage at which the soft-music devotees had finally won out over the jazz-ruckus people. Stanley and the girl were a little tight, but they weren’t letting each other know about it. Nor were they working at it to any perceptible degree. They were both just a little high; Neil could see that they were.
When one song had ended and before another was begun, he moved in between then, smiled at Stanley, and asked Elsie to dance.
She came tightly against him, and they moved round slowly with the music. He wondered if she had been giving Stanley the same business all evening, and then he wondered whether she was conscious of having any business to give. She was not a particularly distinguished dancer, but then neither was he. They just managed to move with the music, demanding no more than they and the music were capable of delivering. On the third song, just before one of the jazz buffs got hold of the phonograph and announced Brubeck as next up, they were holding close to each other, scarcely moving their feet, silent and suddenly conscious of their own possibilities.
When the Brubeck came on, he returned her to Stanley and the three of them sat together on the couch.
The evening wore on, past midnight, toward some kind of inescapable conclusion or anticlimax. How did it end? How had these parties always expired? Neil could not remember; or he had never taken the trouble to notice. It seemed to him that he should, for a change, but there was no indication at that moment of the party’s letting up. People had begun moving back into the main rooms from the kitchen. They moved more slowly now, but there was no lessening of their ardor and their eyes still gleamed with the anticipation of something far more desirable and possibly new to their experience coming at any moment or in the next hour or so.
Stanley went to get fresh drinks. There were a few complaints about the absence of ice, but most of those who had gone at the liquor with any seriousness were now numb in the mouth, and they drank their whiskey straight or with tap water. Stanley made exactly that point when he returned with the three glasses; he said it was like having had a local anesthetic in the hard palate. They sat quietly, watching the dancers. Stanley leaned over and started to say something, changed his mind for an instant, and then reversed himself again.
“I was thinking,” he said, “does Fenstemaker know much about John Tom?”
“What do you mean?”
“Does he know much about John Tom? Did he have anything to do with him before he left the college? Was he even aware of him?”
“He sure was,” Neil said. “He knew a good deal about John Tom. He was the one who tipped me about what might happen if John Tom stayed on at the college …”
“How abut Elsie? Did he know about your trying to help Elsie?”
Neil made a face from the whiskey and set his glass down.
“What you getting at?”
“Maybe nothing. But did he know about Elsie?”
Neil thought a moment. He got hold of his glass and turned it round in his hand and took a drink and tried, ploddingly, methodically, to think. It was like the grinding of poorly meshed or wornout gears.
“Is matterall fack,” Neil began, nodding his head. “… As … uh … matter … ruff … fact … I think we wrote to him couple months ago about Elsie …” He turned to Elsie, smiling. “… We had to get something — what in hell was it anyway? — we had to get the Governor’s — Guffner the State — his official … What ’n hell was it? Had to get him to confirm Elsie as something or other, good risk, responrable, respons-zable, holdin’ job and all that, so the State Department people could go ahead. So we could push on that visa business.”
“He knew, then? He knew about that, too?”
“Whattaya —”
“He knew about me. I told him once. About my father. He asked me once to do some writing for him, some kind of special research report on public safety, something like that, and I told him he ought to know about my father before he signed me up. He said it was okay but we needn’t advertise the fact I was doing the work for him. And he knew about Andrea’s vacations in Mexico, of course.”
“Whaat? Stanley, I’m not —”
“He knew. Don’t you see. He knew about all of it. Edwards might have known — he could conceivably have stumbled across the information — even the stuff about Elsie. But Fenstemaker knew.”
Neil put his drink down and rubbed his eyes. He looked around, but there was only vague movement, shapes and figures — painful to watch and no real faces to see. It occurred to him he had never remembered a denouement to these parties because he’d never been in any condition to witness one. He thought about all the times he and Andrea were unable to recall even driving home.
“You … think he told Edwards? Why’d he wanta tell Edwards?”
“I don’t know. Who’d ever know? He’s a pretty devious guy. Christ, he might have planned the whole thing this afternoon.”
“To what advantage? It didn’t do Edwards any good.”
“I don’t mean he told Edwards. But he could’ve got the word to him some way. Given him enough ammunition and planted the idea of making that scene at the luncheon.”
“Ammunition for what? To what end? All this deviousness.”
“I don’t know. Maybe to push you in — to make you finally jump and get your feet wet. To make you mad enough. He wasn’t getting anywhere the other way. And he was the only one today who kept his wits about him. You and Edwards were acting like a couple of nuts.”
They were silent for a period of time. Elsie lay back with her head resting against a striped bolster. The shape of her full breasts suddenly appeared under the loose-fitting blouse, like great circus tents being lofted. Neil stared for a moment, dizzy, his eyes burning from the smoke in the room. Stanley mumbled to himself.
“What?”
“I said I think I’ll go talk to Jay.”
“Godalmighty, don’t go in there and tell him what you suspect. It might not be true.”
“I’m not going to tell him anything,” Stanley said, moving slowly to his feet, attempting to get his head planted straight on his neck. “He’s going to tell me something. Maybe. If he’s drunk enough. I’ll be circumspect. He’ll never suspect I suspect. We’ll circumspect …”
“So what if you find out?”
“We’ll know, won’t we.”
“Yes. We’ll know. But it won’t do us much good. He’s my goddam Siamese twin. Joined at the butt. I haven’t a prayer without old Fenstemaker.”
“So we’ll know,” Stanley said. “To know better next time.” He excused himself and went off looking for Jay McGown.
Neil lit cigarettes for himself and Elsie. She lay back with her head on the bolsters, looking at him, her face half in shadow. For a few minutes they made mechanical conversation, short colloquies and uncertain silences; they continued to stare at one another. Finally he bent down to kiss her, remotely conscious of being tight and a little uncertain in the stomach, but vastly excited. He leaned into the shadow; she turned her face away from him as he came close and his lips brushed her cheek and hairline and the slip of ear showing through. There was an instant during which he had to struggle to keep his balance before he pulled back. She was sitting up on the edge of the couch, looking away. She turned to him and said: “I don’t want to do that here.”
“Suggest some other place then,” he said. “Would you prefer some other place?”
They were sitting up straight on the couch. She was turned toward him and doing something with her hair at the back of her neck. He wanted to get his face in there again.
“I don’t know,” she said. “What place?”
“I don’t know, either. Anyplace. I just know I want to go someplace with you.”
“Would you want to go to the bookstore?”
“Yes …”
“I’ve got a bottle of sherry there.”
“Yes … Come on.”
“Stanley?”
“I’ll … Wait a moment. I’ll tell him.”
“Tell him what?”
“I’ll think of something. Leave him a note.”
He left her near the door and went to search for Stanley. He was back almost immediately.
“We’re in luck,” he said. “Stanley’s asleep. Passed out. With Jay McGown.”
They started for the door, but at that moment it came open and several faces, misted in drink, appeared. He wondered if this would be Andrea now arriving, right on schedule: the Wrong Time. But it was not Andrea, none of her group. It was, instead, several young men and girls, with Kermit in the lead and three Negroes — two women and a man — in the middle.
The white people were very gay, full of loud and nervous laughter, but the Negroes stood quietly in the middle of the group, not at all sure of the situation.
“Hassah!” Kermit said. “We uz integrated! Ass raht!”
He saw Neil and Elsie as they passed and yelled after them. “Hey Neil. Hey you Good Doctor. Come back, gate. Meet my friends …”
Neil turned and waved and hurried on with the girl at his side. Inside the car, he fumbled in his pockets, frantic at the thought that he might have misplaced the keys. Then he found them and got the motor started, although he did not set the machine into motion immediately. Elsie had moved next to him and reached up to touch his face. Before he had half turned in the seat her lips were moving along the edge of his collar and then they kissed. She was directly against him and he had begun to wonder if they would ever succeed in getting to the bookshop when the sound of voices came to them from across the lawn. He peered out the car window and could see that Andrea and her friends had, indeed, finally arrived. They moved into the house, a great shout of approval greeting them. Almost immediately, the phonograph music rose in volume and the scene through the windows of the house was very like the one that had registered in his mind earlier that evening when he had come across the lawn and paused at the front steps. He put the car in gear and headed down the street with the girl next to him.