Gay Place (16 page)

Rinemiller said: “My amendment calls for three hundred thousand more than is in the bill.”

“You have my good wishes,” Roy said. Earle Fielding did not look at him again.

“You mean that?” Rinemiller said.

“Mean what?”

“You’ll accept the amendment?”

“Hell, no.”

“Why not?” Rinemiller said. “Godalmighty, Roy, you think the money in that bill’s adequate?”

“Half a million dollars wouldn’t make it adequate,” Roy said.

“All right, then. So we’re agreed. Let’s stand up and make a real fight on this thing … For an adequate bill … Let’s see who’ll be counted for the folks. Fenstemaker goes too far with these accommodations of his. I’d rather lose than —”

“I’d rather win,” Roy said. “In this instance, anyhow. This bill would pass. I don’t think it could make it if we start tampering with those appropriations figures.”

Rinemiller backed off a step or two, looking resigned. “You sound like Fenstemaker,” he said. “Already got you spouting the clubby line.”

“Go ahead and introduce your amendment from the floor,” Roy said. “It might get accepted. I know some people who’d vote for it just to weaken chances of the bill itself on final passage.”

Rinemiller and Fielding wandered off. Roy stared at them. He wondered if he should go talk to Earle. If not now, then later. And if he couldn’t think of what exactly to say, he’d get Jay McGown to prepare a few words and see they were distributed to the press-radio-television gallery.

“That was all very interesting,” Willie said.

“You hear it?” Roy said.

Willie nodded. His attention faltered for a moment as one of the secretaries moved past, smelling good.

“What’d you think?” Roy said.

Willie raised his hands in innocence. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m going to stop making judgments. After hearing that tape yesterday, I don’t know anything for real sure. But Alfred made a point about Fenstemaker. Sometimes he goes too far. Sometimes you’ve got to stand up and holler.”

“Yes,” Roy said. He rubbed his eyes and thought briefly of Ouida. There seemed no use in arguing anything. Willie moved off again and Roy attempted to concentrate on his notes. He thought, instead, of Ouida, building a hurried fantasy of how it might be with Ouida at the ranch, or better still at the lake cabin, with the sounds of fishermen beaching their boats and the sour-water smell mixed with pine and the yeasty ferment of silage, coming awake like that, early in the morning in Ouida’s perfumed arms. Ouida had been partly right. Another evening wouldn’t be the same as the one that was most immediate. None of the evenings was. He was nothing like his person of two or three nights before, nor even of that morning.

Jay McGown walked past, hesitated, and came back to whisper into his ear.

Red and green lights splashed across the voting boards and a faint riffling sound was heard as the automatic computers went to work on the tally. Roy leaned over and pressed his switch. A young man strode past, watching the board, holding one finger above his head; another member followed a few steps behind, signaling with two fingers. The young men glared at each other and separated. The midday sun gleamed chalk-white through the windows, and two flags flapped dismally in the torpid heat outside. Roy wondered how the carp were biting.

“You’re all set, then?” Jay said to him.

Roy nodded. “You got any new converts?” he asked.

“Few foot-draggers giving us trouble,” Jay said. “Some of the fascists.” They both smiled at the word; it seemed almost archaic. Jay said: “They’re shaken — a few of them — about you managing the bill. They think something’s wrong.”

“There probably is,” Roy said. “Wish I knew what it was.”

Jay moved on. Roy repeated to himself: I wish I knew. What it was. What in hell did Fenstemaker expect of him? He could nearly hear it now … Behold, my friend, I have gone and set the land before yew. Go in there yourself now and possess it, as I have already sware it unto yew and your children and their seed after them … He began to tremble slightly, the way it had been at one time with girls, or the time with his father, leveling gunsights on the Kodiak bear. It must’ve been the size of an upright Model-T, the bear, and he’d had one of the old Fords once, trembling even then, the first time he had propped himself mile-high at the steering wheel. The bear was bloodied and poorly killed, and the T-Model nearly impossible to stretch out with a girl in.

He heard the Speaker’s voice droning from the rostrum, and then he was on his feet and plodding along in crazy slow movements, feeling monstrous and obtrusive, even in the stadium-sized chamber, toward the front microphone. He stared round the big room, took a deep breath, blinked in the stark light. He laid out his notes and the reference books and the speech Jay had written for him, gaped foggily once again at all his thieves and princes and rapscallions, and began, finally, to talk about the bill. He talked for a quarter of an hour, shifting from his notes to the prepared text and back again to the notes. Then he stood there revealed, waiting for the others to start in. He answered most of the questions right off, and when he couldn’t pull it out of his head, he turned through the thick pages of the reference books to find answers before questions were half out of mouths. A succession of amendments were proposed, defeated, proposed again in different form and beaten again. He accepted some minor changes, after pausing to reflect and in one instance straining to see Jay McGown nodding approval at the back of the hall. Alfred Rinemiller got to the back microphone and talked for ten minutes on his liberalizing amendment. Roy did not comment, but moved immediately for a vote; and Rinemiller was beaten badly. Roy motioned Huggins to the front microphone to relieve him while he went to haggle with someone at the back about obscure points of law in administering funds. When he was finished there, he turned to see Huggins in furious, full-wind debate with an old man, a member of twenty years standing, who had risen to decry the whole concept of such legislation. The old man hooted at the top of his voice, shaking his gnarled fist, charging that an unholy alliance had been formed between Fenstemaker and “minorities.” Fenstemaker and people such as Huggins, the old man claimed, were leading them all down the road to government control and socialism. Huggins stood there at the front microphone for a moment, amazed. “I ain’t even talked to the Governor about this bill,” he said finally. “I just thought it looked all right to me.”

“You think it’s all right, that’s enough to convince me it’s all wrong,” the old man said, waving his hands and looking about him for agreement from the others. Roy came down the center aisle and stood next to Huggins.

“Don’t argue with the old bastard,” he said. “Ignore him.”

“What?” Huggins said. “We can’t do that, can we? He’s misstated the whole thing — he’s even
invented
stuff about it. Godalmighty, you can’t let it go unanswered.”

“He’s just an artless old man,” Roy said. “Let it go … Forget it. It ought to be obvious to everyone. He’s got a reputation for it. But you get into an argument with him — hell that’s what he
wants
— he’ll have you defending every point in the bill for the next two hours. He can go all day on something like this. I’ve seen him. So’ve you. Ignore him. Otherwise, all our support might take a walk to the washroom. Don’t answer him. Just nod and sit down.”

“You’re the straw boss,” Huggins said. He walked off and sat at his desk, looking unhappy.

The debate resumed. Roy stood silent at the front microphone and let the opposition talk. Finally, with critics repeating themselves, their forensic gone dreary and uninspired, there were complaints from all around them for a vote. Roy made the motion then, and the Speaker banged the gavel and Fenstemaker’s bill was up for passage. Roy walked back to his desk and the lights began blinking on the big boards. He pushed the switch at his desk and heard one of his opponents say with satisfaction, “It looks like a red board.” Someone else said: “Mebby not. It’s too close to tell.” Roy looked at the boards and then across the chamber. Arthur Fenstemaker had appeared at the back, and Roy saw him there, slumped against a marble column, hands in pockets, staring up at the board. Then the Governor’s eyes focused on him and Roy got to his feet. He moved toward Fenstemaker; he could hear the noise of the electric computers and then the click and a sudden shout from all around. Fenstemaker’s face beamed. Roy turned to look. The red and green lights had vanished and the totals had been flashed. Fenstemaker had his arm and was roaring in his ear: “Ten votes! How ’bout that, my friend. You got home with money in the bank! Ten goddam votes!”

He clapped Roy on the back and pulled him toward the marble column. Huggins was on his feet down toward the rostrum, requesting confirmation. There were some late votes being cast, but not enough to change the outcome. “You did good job, Roy,” the Governor said.

“I just followed instructions.”

“You did real good job … Pretty goddam remarkable demonstration for just a few days’ homework. Hah? How you like those skids bein’ greased?”

“I like it fine,” Roy said. They walked outside together. Jay McGown joined them, and then Willie. Fenstemaker suggested they all go to his office and have a drink.

They walked down the halls together and through the reception room and into the Governor’s office. Fenstemaker got out the whiskey and Jay made drinks. Hoot Gibson came in and stood around grinning for a time until Jay gave him a glass of whiskey; then he told Willie a long, incoherent story about bringing Henry Busse and his orchestra to the college for a dance fifteen or twenty years before. Willie said he thought he remembered Henry Busse. Roy sat in one of the big chairs and closed his eyes, thinking distractedly of Alfred Rinemiller and what would happen to him. Nothing, possibly. It all seemed to depend on so many people. Fenstemaker was flushed and grinning. He waved his glass as in a toast.

“Then, my friends, then we did beat them as small as the dust of the earth …”

Roy got up and excused himself for a moment. He found a phone in one of the back offices and dialed the number. The baby sitter answered, announced that Ouida had gone off to the ranch for the weekend and asked if there would be a message. Roy said no — no message he could think of.

“You wawn talk to
Mister
Fielding? He’s right here.”

Before he could answer, Earle Fielding’s voice came on.

“Roy? That you Roy …?”

He broke the connection and wandered out the door, down a stairway and into the afternoon heat. On the way home he stopped at a liquor store and bought a bottle of whiskey. He would either drink from it straight on his way to the ranch or mix a few sours with which to brace the late afternoon on the front porch of the cabin. It seemed like another awful decision to make.

I
T WAS ONLY A
half-hour’s drive out into the country. He knew the way nearly by instinct. Four or five years before, toward the end of what they now called the
crypto-fascist
era in politics, when the young people were just beginning to stir about, there had been parties at the ranch almost every week, all during one session of the Legislature. They were only a small group of them, the first organized liberal activity since the years of the plague. They’d driven out to Earle’s place once or twice a week to talk and plan and play and get drunk. He knew the route by heart; he’d driven it all that year, in one direction or another, and half the time he’d been drunk. He was drunk now, like old times. He had brought along a pint of whiskey for the express purpose of retaining the glow of well-being achieved earlier in the evening.

He swung the car easily through the front gate and headed up the hillside toward the big house. Lights shone through the bastard Gothic windows. She would be waiting up for him. His heart pounded exquisitely, painfully, as he sat hunched over the steering wheel, staring at the house. He took a deep breath and wiped his face and had one last swallow from the pint bottle. Then he got out and banged confidently on the front door.

“My God!” Ouida said, standing away for a moment and regarding him.

“You see?” he said, smiling. “I did come …”

“Yes,” Ouida said. “Well … Come on in. Where are the others? Anyone else coming out early?”

“They were talking about it,” Rinemiller said. “Don’t know if they ever reached a decision. I had to get out of there — we were having dinner at Mack the Knife’s — I had to get out or Earle would’ve had me flying him up so he could make a jump for your rooftop …”

He walked inside, set his small bag down on the gaudy tile of the entranceway, and looked around, examining the imitation hand-hewn beams that supported the walls, the bare timbers stretching across the ceiling; staring up at the balcony that led off to the bedrooms on either side. There was a
bidet
in one of the baths; he remembered that much — and wagon wheels for chandeliers: all in the worst possible taste of first-generation wealth. It was a perfect barn of a place for weekend parties.

“Looks just the same,” Rinemiller said with satisfaction. He could not quite meet her eyes just yet. He stared round the room, commenting on one object and another.

“Is Earle back on one of his parachute obsessions?” she said. “I thought — hoped — all that had maybe passed.”

“He was on it tonight,” Rinemiller said. “And neither of us was in any condition to fly.” Finally he managed to let his eyes come to rest on her. She looked splendid: dark cotton tennis shorts, blue oxford cloth shirt with sleeves rolled up to the elbows, white sneakers — it all seemed to strike just the right note of reverse elegance, high-grade licentiousness.

He moved over next to her. Ouida touched his arm and then let it go and then backed off and came close again. It was as if each was testing the other’s reactions. Ouida stood in the center of the room, next to Alfred, looking round in an effort to find something — anything — to comment on. The place seemed notably absent of stage props and conversation pieces.

“We’ll have a drink,” she said.

“I have a case of whiskey in the car.”