Man About Town: A Novel (13 page)
Sam must have thought the same thing. He even talked about it. He was the one who would sometimes, just out of the blue, remark wonderingly that they were still a couple. When Peter and Hugh had broken up, Glen and Phillip had lasted—what?—not six months, poor James had never found anybody at all. Joel didn’t bring this up; it almost seemed like bad luck. Sam did, counting aloud their years together, as if the very number—thirteen, fourteen, at last fifteen—had some weight. But numbers didn’t weigh anything.
“You know,” Francis said.
“What?”
“You have kind of … let yourself go.”
This from some eunuch who was so fat he couldn’t even pull his stool up to the bar. But Joel had asked for it: no one had made him tell his story to the eunuch. Who was undoubtedly compiling a mental list of all those to whom he could repeat it.
“Married life,” Joel said.
“Uh-huh.”
“We both let ourselves go.” Just saying it made Joel realize that it wasn’t true. He and Sam might have grown matching paunches over the years, but Joel’s was definitely bigger. And Sam was, perhaps, a little more assiduous about little details like getting his hair cut or making sure both his socks were the same color.
Was this obvious to everyone? If even Francis thought so, maybe everybody thought, had been thinking for God knows how long: why is Sam sticking with this frump?
“Do you think that was it?” Joel said. “He could at least have warned me.”
“You mean like: ‘Honey, gain five more pounds and I’m out of here’?”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe he didn’t know the magic number till you went over it.”
“Maybe not.”
Francis shrugged. “What do I know? The only long-term relationship I ever had was with a teddy bear.”
“I wasn’t going to say that.” Or point out that Francis probably hadn’t even been laid since …
“At least I still have the teddy bear.”
Well, yes, you do, you asshole. And at least I
had
—
Charles ambled over. The curator: today he was wearing a linen suit—he was meticulous about not bringing out the linen suit until after Memorial Day—and a suspiciously perfect bow tie. “What are we talking about?”
“Stuffed animals,” Francis chortled.
“We were talking about why Sam left,” Joel said.
“Oh.” Charles rolled his eyes. “I thought it was something interesting.”
“Sorry. I sort of find it interesting.”
“Why? What are you going to do about it now?” A sound question. “Anyway, I thought he left for this little cutie.”
“But Sam said it wasn’t the kid, he would have left anyway.”
“Hmm.”
“Francis says I … let myself go.” Joel smiled, as if this theory were absurd, though he was afraid Charles would second it. Let himself go: an odd phrase, if you thought about it. As if you held your self a prisoner but could commute the sentence any time. Freeing your self to become a frump.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” Charles said. It wasn’t clear if he meant that Joel hadn’t let himself go or only that this wasn’t Sam’s reason. He scratched his head. “Maybe it was the drinking.”
Charles was clutching what had to be his third cosmopolitan. They might as well have strapped a nipple on the vodka bottle and handed it to him. “Sam drinks,” Joel said.
“Well, that’s true.” Charles was expressionless. “Beats me,
then. Excuse me.” He went over to talk with Walter. If he was going to try to wake up old, pickled Walter, he must have found the topic of Joel-and-Sam immeasurably tedious.
It was, wasn’t it? Who but Joel could possibly have wished to unravel the mystery of Sam’s departure? Even Joel was, he found, suddenly tired of the subject. He didn’t want to know, didn’t ever.
He thought, just then, that maybe he didn’t ever want to talk to Sam again. Not just because Sam had been such a prick on the phone; Sam had always been kind of a prick. But because, if they didn’t talk again, he would never have to hear—he didn’t know how he could possibly bear to hear—that Sam knew everything about him, everything he knew about himself.
A day or two later, Joel had a six o’clock meeting at Senator Harris’s office. Rob the varsity receptionist ushered Joel into a conference room, explaining that Melanie would be a little late—as if six o’clock weren’t late enough. The room was decorated in the usual way: on the shelves a never-consulted set of the United States Code, on the wall a map of Montana and a blown-up photograph of the senator, on two-thirds of the conference table stacks of newsletters headed
Capitol Update
and bearing the same photograph. At the cleared space at one end of the table sat a man about Joel’s age or a little younger, his jacket off. Blue suspenders marked the boundaries between his powerful shoulders and arms and his perfectly proportioned chest. Above this intimidating vista floated a gentle, spectacled face; chestnut hair.
The hunk stood up and said, “Andrew Crawford, leg counsel’s office.” Leg—pronounced “ledge”—counsel were the people who drafted bills, translating members’ ideas into language so majestic and impenetrable that only a few initiates could detect just how bad the ideas really were.
“Joel Lingeman, OLA.” As they shook hands, Joel’s radar
registered the tiniest blip. A man who called himself Andrew instead of Andy, the obvious hours at the gym. A definite maybe. They sat opposite each other, saving the head of the table for Melanie. “So we’re here to draft something?”
Andrew gave Joel a one-sided smile and said, “Oh, we’ve already drafted something. We’re here to perfect it.”
The pages he slid across the table were a dummy bill; leg counsel could print bills out now so they looked just like the real thing.
104
TH
CONGRESS
1
ST
S
ESSION
S.
To amend the Social Security Act to provide incentives for
personal responsibility.
-------------------------------------------
IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES
, 19
Mr. H
ARRIS
introduced the following bill; which was read twice and referred to the Committee on Finance.
-------------------------------------------
A BILL
To amend the Social Security Act to restrict Medicare
payments for certain services, and for other purposes.
1
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives2
of the United States of America in Congress assembled,3
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE4 This Act may be cited as the “Personal Responsibility
5 Act of 19__.”
6
7
SEC. 2. RESTRICTION OF MEDICARE8
PAYMENT FOR SERVICES RELATED TO A9
DIAGNOSIS OF INFECTION WITH THE10
HUMAN IMMUNODEFICIENCY VIRUS11
RESULTING FROM HIGH-RISK BEHAVIOR12 (a)
IN GENERAL.
—Section 1862(a) of the Social13 Security Act (42 USC 1395y), relating to exclusions from
14 coverage, is amended—
15 (1) In subclause (15)(B), by striking the word “or”,
16 (2) At the end of subsection (16) by striking the period
17 and inserting “; or”, and
18 (3) By inserting after subsection (16) the following
19 new subsection:
20 “(17)(A) where such expenses are for the treatment of
21 illnesses or conditions related to a diagnosis of acquired
22 immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) or infection with the
23 human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and
24 “(B) the individual is determined, on or after January
25 1, ___, to have engaged in one or more of the high-risk
26
behaviors described in section 1861(oo).”27 (b) D
EFINITION OP
H
IGH
-R
ISK
B
EHAVIOKS.
—Section28 1861 of the Social Security Act (42 USC 1395x) is amended
29 by inserting after subsection (nn) the following new sub-
30 section:
31 “High-Risk Behaviors
32 “(oo) The term “high-risk behaviors” means any act or
33 pattern of acts performed voluntarily by an individual and
34 determined by the Secretary to increase the likelihood that
35 such individual will become infected with the human immuno-
36 deficiency virus (HIV).”
37 (e) L
IST OF
H
IGH
-R
ISK
B
EHAVIORS
.—N
O
later than 9038 days after the effective date of this Act, the Secretary
39 shall cause to be published in the Federal Register a list
40 of the behaviors determined by the Secretary to be high-
41 risk behaviors for the purposes of this Act.
42
SEC. 3. EFFECTIVE DATE43 The amendments made by this Act shall be effective
44 for services furnished to an individual on or after
45 January 1, ___.
“Jeez,” Joel said, when he’d finished scanning it. “They want to cut off Medicare to people who …” He almost used a graphic expression, but he wasn’t sure enough about Andrew. “People who have unsafe sex.”
“You got it. Or, you know, needles, whatever.”
The gleaming viciousness of this idea didn’t even surprise Joel, really. It was a wonder no one had thought of it before, Helms or Inhofe or Lott. But he had had the silly misapprehension that Harris was educable.
He hazarded: “I don’t guess this will have much effect in Montana.”
“Nope.” Andrew grinned. “I don’t think you can get AIDS from fucking sheep.”
They laughed. Joel was pretty sure about him now, and he must have reached his conclusions about Joel as well. Joel laughed a little too long; Andrew was looking at him.
“Anyway,” Joel said. “I think I see a couple little drafting questions right away.”
Andrew got serious, took up a pen.
“First, in section seventeen B …”
“Uh-huh.”
“You can’t really tell if it’s the determining that happens on or after January 1 or if it’s the engaging in high-risk behaviors.”
“Oh. Oh, I see.”
“So if it’s the determining you’d move ‘on or after’ to the start. Or else you’d put ‘on or after’ right after ‘engaged.’”
“Right,” Andrew said, a little shortly. It was, after all, his handicraft Joel was picking at. “Well, I don’t know which it is. We’ll have to ask Melanie.”
“Okay. And then there’s this bigger thing. You’re making it apply to services furnished on or after the effective date, but the Secretary doesn’t even come up with his list of behaviors until 90 days after that. So, you know, a doctor wouldn’t know if he was going to get paid until after he furnished the service.”
This was an obvious blunder on Andrew’s part, so he got even more defensive. “I think a doctor could pretty well guess what’s going to be on the list.”
“Sure. But you probably shouldn’t make it effective until the list comes out.”
He shrugged. “That’s Melanie’s call. Anything else?”
“Not that I see right away, no.” To appease him Joel said, “Other than those couple of things, it’s done just right.”
Just right. Once he and Andrew had fixed those little things, the incendiary being hurled straight at them would be perfectly crafted. Here: let us help you with that fuse. Except the bomb wasn’t really being thrown at Joel. After all, it didn’t seem likely that he would engage in high-risk behaviors on or after any date they filled into the blank in the bill. Any solidarity he might have felt with the targets was abstract, a dull sense of insult rather than threat.
Joel said, “You’re new at leg counsel?”
“Uh-huh.”
Leg counsel on the Senate side were usually fresh out of school; it was just a line in their resumes before they went off to the big law firm. So Joel wondered why a guy—well, almost Joel’s age—would take the job.
He supplied the answer without Joel’s asking. “I was with McCutcheon and Halsey.” One of the biggest firms, named for a couple of New Deal brains trusters who had gone on pulling strings straight into the nineties—theirs and the century’s. “But I never made partner because … you can guess why.”
“Oh.”
“And I— I don’t know, my … uh … friend died a couple years ago.” Joel wondered if he should say he was sorry, but Andrew went right on. “And I just, I don’t know, I just got tired. I don’t want to work so hard.”
“You came to the right place, I guess. You’ll pull a few all-nighters in the fall, when they’re scrambling to get stuff passed.”
“Right.”
“But, you know, the House guys draft most of the stuff. You can just copy their work.”
That was a joke, but Andrew bristled. “I’m sure I can do my own, once I get the hang of it.”
“Oh, sure, I was just kidding.”
Joel thought about Andrew’s being tired; did that mean he was sick? Like, presumably, his late … uh … friend. Making it, perhaps, a little more remarkable that he could, like Joel, just do his job on a bill like the one that lay festering on the table between them.
“Anyway,” Joel said. “Except for the fall, all you mostly do is wait around for meetings that never get started.”
“Like this one. I guess it makes her feel important.”