Gay Place (8 page)

“You’re a terrible dancer,” Cathryn said.

“I’ve got a natural rhythm,” Willie said. He kissed her lightly on the mouth and then wondered if he were infected with George Giffen’s illness.

“Harris is still ignoring me,” Cathryn said. She watched Harris and Ellen Streeter dancing but did not seem really to mind.

“He senses how I feel about you,” Willie said. “He’s leaving us alone.”

“Is he successful with women?”

“Success comes to Harris with depressing regularity.”

They danced in silence for a time. The absence of talk made Willie nervous. He said: “Ask me some stupid questions.”

“All right,” the girl said. “What do you want out of
life
?”

Willie thought a moment. “Nothing,” he finally said. “I got everything.”

“
Every
thing?”

“Almost. Except for a few accessories. Like reasonable clothing and clean shirts every day. And a couple of mutton chops waiting for me in the evenings. Grilled without condiments — you like that? And pie with a piece of Stilton, and pulled bread and a pint of Club Médoc. A good fire in the grate. A comfortable woman to keep me warm in bed and to brush my bowler and fold my umbrella in the mornings.”

The girl looked ill. She had drunk several glasses of beer and then switched to someone else’s gin and tonic. She stared at Willie desperately.

“And a London tailor,” Willie said. “And a charge account at the Colony.”

“I don’t feel well,” the girl said. “Can we sit down?”

They returned to the table. Roy and Ouida had already given up the dancing, and now they sat at the table looking bored with everyone. Willie wished they would leave before Earle Fielding arrived — if he did arrive — though he was unable to explain why he should feel this way: Roy could take care of himself; all of them could. Willie decided he was growing impatient with the rich and near-rich and deadbeat and dependent — all of them — his hipster pols.

Steaks were served, crackling in iron plates, and conversations nagged as people got serious over dinner. Alfred Rinemiller approached from the other end and sat across from Roy and Ouida. Roy nodded, picking at his food. “Hello, Alfred,” Ouida said. He was a large, handsome man with an oversized, vaguely leonine head. He pushed hair back from his eyes and gave Ouida his rogue’s look. He had necked with her for a quarter of an hour once, two years before, on a hotel bed during a political convention with friends wandering in and out and her husband Earle sick on the floor of the bathroom. Rinemiller was certain that Ouida still remembered this with pleasure.

Giffen sat close by, looking strained, spreading himself too thin. It was difficult trying to keep track of the conversations all around him, but Giffen was there, giving his best, shifting ceaselessly from one group to another. He looked at Ouida and clapped Rinemiller’s shoulder.

“You-all hear about Alfred runnin’ for the Speakership?”

Ouida nodded. She started to answer, but Giffen’s attention was already shifted to conversations elsewhere, and they were left to deal alone with the beached and flopping wet fish of Rinemiller’s ambition. “Nice to know about,” she managed to say.

Rinemiller shrugged and said something about ventures and gains. He turned to Roy and said: “Appreciate your support, Good Buddy.”

“You’ll probably get it,” Roy said without enthusiasm.

“How about right now, though?” Rinemiller said. “I need as many pledges as possible to get this thing off the ground. How about it, Roy?”

Willie interrupted, and Roy gave his pledge in silence — to do something extraordinarily nice for Willie one of these days.

“I heard you had an audience,” Willie said.

“What’s that?” Rinemiller said.

“I heard you and Fenstemaker had a little visit.”

“That’s right,” Rinemiller said. “How’d you hear about it. You hear too much. Don’t understand how you birds …”

“Best tradition of a free and independent and fearless press,” Willie said. “I walked into his reception room and looked at his engagement book … I tell you, it took guts.”

Giffen’s face came near again. He redraped an arm round Rinemiller’s shoulder. “How ’bout that, hah?” he said. “Ole Alfred’s gonna be our next Speaker … ’Bout time the Liberals in the Lower Body had a man on whom they can depend … on …” Giffen’s remarks were ignored by the others now. His voice faded as he lost track of his own thoughts.

“What passed between you two old pros?” Willie was saying to Rinemiller.

“We just visited,” Rinemiller said.

Giffen looked at Roy and whispered: “Who’re they talkin’ about? Who’s Alfred been visitin’?”

When Roy did not respond, Ouida explained to Giffen.

“Was there a laying on of hands?” Willie said.

“No comment to the press,” Rinemiller said.

Willie thought a moment. He could not push Rinemiller too far. Rinemiller was one of the original board members of the corporation organized for establishment of the weekly newspaper; was, indeed, the one member most responsible for securing the editorship for Willie England.

“Not even to your own press?” Willie said. “You ought to take advantage of your sympathetic correspondents before our little non-profit organization folds.”

“Anything comes of it, you’ll be the first to know,” Rinemiller said. “I believe in that business about rewarding friends and giving those who aren’t as bad a time as possible.”

Roy wondered what Rinemiller and Fenstemaker had really talked about and whether the Governor had spent the day rousing young people in support of his programs. If there was a threat implicit in Rinemiller’s remarks, it did not disturb Roy: he was more immediately concerned with the possibility of having to work with Rinemiller on the Governor’s public school legislation. He remembered Rinemiller’s imitation of the Governor earlier in the evening and now he hoped it hadn’t been just a performance for the others.

The new girl named Cathryn pulled on Willie’s arm. “Mencken,” she said, “talked about gay fellows who tossed dead cats into sanctuaries … See? I memorize … What’re they talking about?”

Willie started to answer, but Kermit’s strident voice came from directly behind them: “Trouble is, there’s no more sanctuaries. They been overrun by all them moneychangers.”

Crazy Kermit still had his young friend named Jobie in tow. They stood behind Willie and Cathryn, the two of them in identical black shag sweaters and soiled back-buckle khakis. They swayed slightly, together.

“Here he is, Jobie,” Kermit said. “You met him while ago, but you didn’t really know who he was. Willie — Jobie’s got something for you. Give it to my Good Doctor Willie, Jobie.”

The young man named Jobie began removing sheets of yellow typescript from a manila folder.

“What is it?” Willie said. He stuffed bits of meat and potato into his mouth, hoping the spectacle of his eating might hold the visitors to as brief a transaction as possible. He knew all about the boys from the college with their yellow typescripts.

“It’s called
No Way Out
—
The Dilemma of the Modern Radical,
” Jobie said.

Willie continued to eat. Harris, sitting nearby, looked up startled.

“No Way Out,” the young man repeated. “Our culture is ossifying. We are become a nation of conformists — automatons if you will — with backyard barbecue pits and corporate security …”

“Wish I had some corporate security,” Willie said.

“… smug and complacent, terrified, in reality, by the awful reality of …”

Someone else interrupted to order fresh ice and setups. Jobie went on.

“… of … today’s window dressing world. There’s
no way out,
” he emphasized. “There’s only hope for the young — the radical young — those few not yet corrupted and housebroken by the pressures of conformity in modern society. They have got — these young — to make an affirmation in the dead and empty air.”

Harris looked up, drowsy with food and beer. “Make a what?” he said amazed. He held a large piece of beefsteak in front of him on the end of a fork.

“An
affirmation,
man,” Kermit said. “Dig those people, yes!”

“Goddam right,” Harris said moodily. “We’re all dyin’ of the fallout.” He regarded his piece of beefsteak for a moment and then poked it into his mouth.

“That’s fine,” Willie said. “That’s real good.” He reached out for the typescript. “I’ll take a look at it at the office tomorrow.”

The young man held on to the papers. “I’d prefer,” he said, “to bring it by myself and be present when you read it. There are some allusions, references, that might need to be explained.”

“Fine,” Willie said. “Bring it by.” Jobie started to speak, but Willie anticipated the next question. “Bring it by tomorrow after lunch. I’ve got an hour then,” he said.

Kermit and Jobie wandered off to another table. It was nearly closing time now, and the waitresses were moving about, picking up empties, urging customers to finish their beer before curfew. Huggins came down to the end of the table with a gaunt, moist-eyed girl alongside him. The girl carried a guitar.

“Where’ll we go?” he said. It was always a terrible decision to face at the midnight closing.

“We could all go home,” Roy said. “There’s a new place.”

“Whose home?” Huggins said, grinning.

They discussed people’s homes — other people’s homes, mostly. No one volunteered shelter for the party.

“How about Harris’s apartment?” Huggins said.

“How about yours,” Harris said.

“It’s a mess there,” Huggins said. “And my phonograph’s broke.”

“I’m tired of Thelonious Monk, anyhow,” Willie said. “I think he’s basically a reactionary.”

Some of the others joined them from the other end to discuss housing prospects. The girl with Huggins hung the guitar round her neck and struck a few chords. The jukebox was turned off inside and customers moved out of the garden. The girl began to sing as the others discussed places to go. The girl sang in a flat, unhappy voice about slaves following the Big Dipper north to freedom. Waitresses gathered up glasses and pitchers and bottles and stood just inside the building, next to the bar, looking out at the young people grouped round the main table and the girl playing guitar.

“Let me take Cathryn home,” Willie said to Harris.

“If you want,” Harris said.

“Let me take her,” Giffen said. “In the Alfa.”

“Don’t I have any voice in this?” Cathryn said.

“I’ll take her,” Harris concluded. “I brought her — I’ll take her. I got a sense of responsibility in these delicate matters.”

Earle Fielding came walking across the grounds from the parking lot. Ellen Streeter was the first to see him — she ran out to greet him, taking his arm. The others hooted a greeting from a distance and then fell silent as Earle approached.

“Where you been all day?” someone yelled.

Earle, coming closer, said: “Hotel room. Making plans for our little party over the weekend — all of you heard about it? The Egghead Invitational Mixed Doubles Tennis Tournament and Civil Rights Conference …” He broke off suddenly, noticing Ouida for the first time.

“Hello, Earle,” Ouida said. Roy, sitting next to her, shifted in his chair and struggled against the temptation to rise and move off a few feet. He noted with relief that Giffen was on the other side of Ouida and had his arm draped round the back of her chair. Earle Fielding came directly over to his wife.

“Hope you don’t mind, baby,” he said. “We’re planning this thing at the ranch — you think your parents would object?” It was as if he had been away from the city a few hours instead of several months. It was not until Ouida mentioned the advisability of bringing their son out to the ranch for the weekend that Fielding showed any emotion over his own return home.

“Yeah …
Yeah …
You’ve got to bring the boy out,” he said. “I haven’t seen him in … Jesus … We’ve got to spend some time together, maybe go huntin’. I bought him the goddamdest deer rifle you ever saw …”

“He’s too little,” Ouida said. “He couldn’t lift a gun.”

“Yeah … That’s right,” Fielding said. Someone got his attention and he turned to talk to the others about the party. The folk singer started on the same song again.

Earle Fielding stood with the others and talked about politics. He was a tall, big-shouldered man, slightly jug-eared but with a handsome college boy’s face. Once, people had talked about how he would be Governor in fifteen or twenty years, but that was when his marriage was sound and he was still unscarred in politics. A year ago he had resigned his seat in the legislature and was drunk for several months, leaving his wife now and then, moving into nearby bachelor apartments whenever there was trouble between them. Everyone agreed that he had “got hold” of himself recently. He was not tight in the middle of the day as often as before, and he had begun to travel a great deal, ostensibly on family business but nearly always checking in with local politicians over the country and making occasional speeches for one enlightened candidate or another. He had made many friends and secured these liaisons with large cash contributions. It was generally assumed that Earle would seek office again, something on a statewide level, or possibly land an appointive position in the party. He had been educated in the East, as had his mother and sisters, but his position was not undermined by the defection: the Fieldings were as sound historically as they were in business; their wealth could be traced back to the frontier.

Earle’s father and uncles had been responsible during the 1930s for forcing through the legislature a series of anti-labor bills, and no one was more aware of the brutal social forces at work behind the legislation than Earle. Several years before, in college, he had sat through a series of lectures dealing at length on the labor laws of his home state and the manner by which they had been enacted, afraid to speak out in discussion period for fear he might be revealed as a member of the same robber-baron gang of Fieldings that had perpetrated such crimes against the people.

Now it was Earle’s hope that he would have a personal hand in overturning these statutes. He liked, in addition, to make frequent attacks on the depletion allowance for oil, from which a sizable amount of his own wealth was derived. Earle’s conservative critics had not yet got around to denouncing him as a traitor to his class — they merely regarded him as a damn fool.