Gay Place

by Billy Lee Brammer

  “It’s shameful,” one of the women said. “The least they could do is wait until Earle …” Her voice trailed off. She seemed to have forgot what exactly it was the least of which Roy and Earle Fielding’s wife could do.

  “I don’t know what he sees in her, anyhow,” Ellen said.

  “It’s a growing disgrace,” Willie said, looking at his beer.

  One of the girls at the other end of the table changed subjects and began talking about making ceramic jewelry in a ten-dollar kiln. “It’s an art, honey,” she was saying, “it really is. Like chicken sexing …”

  Three

  ROY KNEW GEORGE GIFFEN was paying his evening calls because the lights in the front room were dimmed and only the flickering of the television shone through the window blinds. He did not bother to knock but eased open the door, looked around, and walked inside. George Giffen sat on the carpeted floor, his back against the sofa, staring at the television. He looked up quickly, said, “Hey, hello, Roy,” and returned his gaze to the action on the screen. Roy nodded, walked past Giffen and began to pour himself a glass of whiskey. He sang quietly under his breath:

  Buckle on your overshoes …

  Whenna wind blows free …

  Take …

  Good …

  Care mahsej …

  Ah belong to me …

  Giffen stirred but did not look up again. Roy wandered into one of the bedrooms. The girl, Earle Fielding’s wife, sat on the edge of a youth bed, reading a story to a boy of about five or six. The boy lay there bored, scratching himself.

  “You hadn’t ought to read him that Milne stuff,” Roy said. “It’s mainly for grownups nostalgic about their lost youth.”

  The girl’s name was Ouida. She turned round and stared. The child screamed: “Hey, Roy! — let’s play the game.”

  “No,” Roy said.

  “Let’s play,” the child insisted.

  “Not on your life,” Roy said. “I’ve lost interest in that game.”

  “What’s the game?” Ouida said.

  “Charades,” Roy said. “He gets down on the floor and crawls around making an awful noise. I’m supposed to guess what he is. He’s always a roothog. Always. No imagination.”

  “I know that game,” Ouida said.

  “I know it, too!” the boy said, kicking at the covers bunched up at the end of his bed. “Let’s play it now.”

  “You ought to go to bed, Merton,” Roy said.

  “What?”

  “Sandman’s comin’,” Roy said.

  “Name’s not Merton.”

  “Well don’t hold me responsible … I just thought — well, I’ve never really been very good at —”

  “It’s Earle Cummins Fielding,” the boy hooted. “The Third.”

  “Yes … Well … It comes back to me now.”

  The boy pulled the covers over his head. “Leave me alone, please,” he said. “I’m trying to get some sleep.” He jerked the covers back again and howled. His mother bent down and kissed him and then redraped a sheet over his head.

  “How long Giffen been here tonight?” Roy said.

  “Not long,” Ouida said. “He’ll be leaving soon. This is one of the poor television evenings. We’ve already had our boy-girl talk.”

  “Be quiet,” the child called out from inside the covers.

  They switched off lights and moved toward the front of the apartment. Roy paused, refilling his drink and making one for Ouida. Giffen was coming out of his semi-hypnotic state. He had got to his feet, and though he still glanced nervously from time to time at the television screen, he was able to communicate with Roy and Ouida. A television announcer was talking about a “real smoke” and drawing on the end of a cigarette as if it were an after-dinner delicacy. Giffen glanced at Roy and said:

  “Where’d you go today? I saw your secretary doin’ your votin’ for you.”

  “Once a week I withdraw,” Roy said. “I disengage. Tension and all. I went out on my boat.”

  Giffen had no opportunity to reply because the commercial was ended and the closing scenes were coming on. He sat down immediately. Roy and Ouida went into the kitchen and began to pick at bits of food left over from the child’s plate. Ouida washed dishes. She was thin and pale, yet handsome and full-mouthed with sunburned hair pulled up and pinned in back. She held plates under the water and dabbed at them with a paper napkin.

  “How’re you feeling?” Roy said.

  “Fine.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “You look good — better all the time.”

  “Thank you.”

  Roy looked inside the refrigerator and removed a piece of chicken. A section of skin had been peeled back and there were small teeth marks where some of the white meat had been torn away. Roy pulled the skin over the eroded section and took a bite. He stared at Ouida. She was wearing tight-fitting denim slacks, a plain blouse, loafers and thick white socks. He got his attention focused on a part of her leg, tanned and polished-looking, between the thick sock and the tapered cuff of the slacks. She sat at the breakfast table with legs crossed, and Roy could not keep his eyes off the bare part of her leg revealed between sock and cuff.

  “I gave blood today,” he said. “Told ’em to credit your account.”

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” Ouida said. “I’ve got the money even if the insurance doesn’t cover it.”

  “It’s all right,” Roy said. “It’s only my life’s blood.” He made a hopeless gesture. The girl came over and kissed him. He brought his arms up around her and pulled her in closer. “I think,” he said, “that we ought to call another committee meeting. Pass a new unanimous-consent agreement.”

  “Why’s that?” she said.

  “I’m no longer satisfied limiting the fun and games to just kissin’,” he said.

  “How come?”

  “I don’t know. Weak in the head, maybe. Losing all that blood today.”

  “Make up your mind,” she said. “It was your idea to begin with.”

  “That was when you were weak and defenseless,” he said. He kissed her again.

  He had known her for several years, since his first term in the legislature, but they had been seeing each other for less than eight weeks. Ouida and her husband, Earle Fielding, were either separated or estranged or divorcing or just having trouble — it wasn’t quite clear to their friends, even after Earle had gone off three months before to organize Democratic Clubs in the Middle West. Ouida was still in town and showing up at most of the parties, and at one of these on the lake one evening Roy and Ouida had got a little tight and disappeared in one of the boats. Afterwards, even though he had not seen her for ten days, people talked about them. They had not seen each other until the evening she called to ask for help. She wanted, she said, someone to take her to the hospital. He told her she didn’t sound at all sick, and at first he couldn’t understand, her voice rising and fading, laced with drunken laughter. All he heard clearly was the last of it. “I think,” she said gaily, “I’m bleeding to death.”

  He had come right over and found her passed out on the living room floor. He roused a neighbor to look after the boy and drove her to the hospital. On the way she began to come out of it. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m pie-eyed, and I’m really very sorry I got you into this. I thought you’d be a rock to lean on. There wasn’t anyone else. I think I’m having a miscarriage.”

  At the emergency room entrance they’d both been a mess, blood-smeared and haggard, Ouida in her nightgown and Roy in patched khakis. He held her in his arms, Ouida alternately laughing and crying, and rang the bell. She was still giggling and crossing herself when the nurse came to let them in. “Trick or treat,” Ouida announced. She’d damn near died that night.

  He had given blood and sent flowers and rented a television and arranged for special nurses, and he had been seeing her constantly since her release from the hospital. Recently, they had “caucused” and passed the unanimous-co
nsent agreement.

  Now he sat staring at the patch of bare skin on her leg, between thick sock and cuff, a few inches above her ankle.

  “I missed you all day,” she said. “You think that’s a bad sign?”

  “I don’t know anything about signs,” he said. “Talk to your analyst. Talk to your son. Have a serious discussion.”

  “I don’t know any psychiatrists,” Ouida said, “and I don’t think little Earle would understand.”

  “Understand what?”

  “That I’ve got to stay on good behavior, and I began missing you today.”

  “Well,” Roy said, “it probably doesn’t make any difference.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “People are already talking,” Roy said. “I’m the only company you’ve had since Earle left. Except for George Giffen, Melancholy Lover. You ever miss George?”

  Ouida rolled her eyes. “I never have occasion to miss George,” she said. “He’s always here, wanting to watch television or talk about girls and why it is he’s afraid of them. Tonight he was disturbed about Huggins.”

  “Why Huggins?”

  “George thinks something’s got to be done about Huggins, because Huggins is interested only in fallen women. He says Huggins doesn’t have adult relationships.”

  “Like George does?”

  “Like George does.”

  “Huggins likes the brothel circuit because it gives him a sense of security,” Roy said. “He told me that once. He says he feels easier with women he’s paid for.”

  “Well George doesn’t approve. He says he likes our relationship — his and mine. He says it’s adult and I make him feel clean.”

  Roy smiled and chewed on a piece of chicken and stared at Ouida’s leg. Ouida said: “Are people really talking about us?”

  Roy nodded and mumbled: “… bunch of sewers.”

  “But why?”

  “I guess they think we’re havin’ an adult relationship.”

  “What are you looking at?” Ouida said.

  Roy pointed at her leg and started to explain, wondering how he could possibly get the idea across, but then Giffen appeared. He stood in the kitchen doorway and said: “Where’ve you been, Roy?”

  “Drinkin’ beer,” Roy said.

  “Really? What was doin’ at the Friendly?” Giffen could never get the name straight. He was a first-term member of the House, and since coming to town he had persisted in identifying the Dearly Beloved Beer and Garden Party as the Friendly Tavern. Or most of the time just the Friendly — possibly as a result of the others calling it “the Dearly.”

  “You mean the Garden?” Roy said.

  “Yes,” Giffen said. “What was doin’ at the Friendly Garden?”

  “The usual.”

  “Huggins there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who else?”

  Roy named some of the others. Giffen’s eyes bulged for no apparent reason. He began to fidget, jingling the change in his pockets and clacking his heels together. There were fascinating events taking place all over town. With the evening’s television out of the way, Giffen seemed restless to look in on whatever was “doing.” He leaned over suddenly and kissed Ouida on the cheek. The movement gave her a start. None of the girls had really got used to Giffen coming upon them and reaching out; it was a relatively new experience for George himself, in fact. He had recently come to realize that he could touch women in public — that it was both permissible in the company of good friends and that he was capable of doing such a thing. It had been like a revelation, opening limitless possibilities. In private he was terrified of women, but in a social situation it was becoming increasingly difficult to keep him off. Ouida referred to him as “my very tactile person.”

  “Earle looks bad,” Giffen said matter-of-factly.

  “Who?” Ouida said.

  “Earle … He doesn’t look so good.”

  “You mean little Earle? What’s wrong with —”

  “No, no … Big Earle … He looks terrible.”

  “You’ve seen him?” Ouida said. “Where’ve you seen him?”

  “This mornin’,” Giffen said. “Downtown. He was drinkin’ before noon. I’m worried about him.”

  “I am, too,” Ouida said. “Especially when he comes to town and doesn’t call or even come by to visit his son. He say anything?”

  “You didn’t know he was here?”

  “Of course not. He say anything at all?”

  “I only saw him a minute,” Giffen said. “I told him I’d been lookin’ in on you and little Earle — just to head off any malicious stories that might be goin’ round. About you and me, I mean.”

  “That was probably very wise,” Ouida said.

  “I think I’ll take a run-by the Friendly,” Giffen said.

  Ouida and Roy were silent, looking at one another.

  “You seen my new car, Roy?” Giffen said.

  “Yes.”

  “You said Huggins was at the Friendly?”

  “Yes.”

  “Had he been out to that place again?”

  “What place?”

  “That cat house.”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “I’ve been worried about him,” Giffen said. “He goes out there all the time. It’s getting so it’s a crutch for him.”

  Again they were silent. Giffen took a deep breath; his brow furrowed; his eyes bulged. The phone rang, and Giffen said: “That’s probably Earle now. He’s probably been tied up all day.”

  Ouida answered, listened for a moment, turned and said: “It’s for Roy. I think there’s a madman on the other end.”

  “Really?” Roy seemed delighted with the prospect. “What’d he say?”

  “He said something about you’re being down in the shortrows — what in hell does that mean? — and for me to send you home to sleep as soon as you’re finished talking. To whoever it is.”

  Roy went over to take the phone. Giffen kissed Ouida again and laughed.

  “Hello,” Roy said.

  “Who is it?” Giffen called out from behind him.

  The voice came to Roy, rasping and hilarious: “Goddamit, Roy, you got to cut out all this hoo-hawin’ and get serious. You ought be home studyin’ that legislation. You ought have it set by God to memory. You goin’ be home early tonight?”

  “Are we down in the shortrows?” Roy said.

  “Goddam right,” Fenstemaker said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Cotton pickin’ expression. You ever picked cotton? Bet your daddy ginned a lot of it, exploitin’ them masses. How many tenants you got on your family land?”

  “I don’t know,” Roy said. “I never looked real good. I was probably too busy joining the N Double A C P.”

  “You better not have,” Fenstemaker said. “Not recently, anyhow. I got to keep you clean till this bill’s passed. You study it this afternoon?”

  “Yes, sir,” Roy said.

  Giffen called out again: “Who the hell is it, Roy?”

  “You got it down real good?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Giffen looked at Ouida. “Who’s Roy sir-in’ like that?” he said. Ouida shook her head.

  “You gonna be ready tomorrow?” Fenstemaker said,

  “No,” Roy said. “Not about to be. I could memorize everything, and I’d still need to talk to you about how to handle the damn thing. I don’t know how to work a bill. Never did it in my life.”

  “You know, goddamit,” Fenstemaker said. “But that’s a good answer. You’ll never know as much as I know, unless I teach you, and I’m gonna teach you tomorrow. Day after all right?”

  “For what?”

  “The bill, dammit and hell. You think you be in condition to work that bill then?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Okay. Now go home and get some rest. You ain’t learnin’ nothin’ over there with old Earle’s wife. Least I hope not. You know he’s in town?”

  “I just found out,
” Roy said.

  “Well … You gonna get the hell out of there?”

  “I wasn’t plannin’ on it,” Roy said.

  “You nutboy liberals …” Fenstemaker began.

  “I’m a conservative States’ rights Democrat,” Roy said.

  “Well that’s worse,” Fenstemaker said. “Don’t go round talkin’ like that or you’ll be a total loss to me. ’Stead of just a calculated risk.”

  “Your risk,” Roy said. “Not mine. I didn’t initiate this crazy business.”

  “You goin’ along, though, ’cause you’re okay,” Fenstemaker said. “Go home and go to bed. You hard-peckered boys need more rest than I do. Goodnight.”

  The connection was broken immediately, and Roy stood there with the receiver in his hand, staring at the wall.

  “Who was it?” Giffen said.

  Roy turned round and poured himself a fresh drink. “Just a political enemy,” he said, “giving me a bad time.”

  “Really?” Giffen said, genuinely excited now. “How come you sir-in’ him like that?”

  “I don’t know why,” Roy said. “I guess he had me rattled.”

  “Well …” Giffen began. He did not know quite what to say. He was reluctant to question anyone about political enemies — he’d never had a political enemy in his life. Everybody loved George Giffen in his home district. “Well …” He kissed Ouida again and said: “I guess I better move on to the Friendly before they close it on me … You seen my new car? I got a new Alfa. Come out and take a look.”

  Roy said he’d seen the new Alfa, and Ouida said she’d seen it several times. Giffen nodded and waited a moment for Roy to go on talking about his telephone conversation. When it was apparent that there would be no discussion, he waved goodbye and headed out the front door. In a minute they could hear the car sputtering in the drive. Ouida said: “What was all that about?”

  “Arthur Fenstemaker,” Roy said. “I’m suddenly one of Fenstemaker’s prince consorts or something. He’s got me handling a bill for him.”

  “How’d he know you were here?”

  Roy shrugged. “How’s he know anything? He knows, all right, though. He even told me Earle was in town and suggested the better part of valor.”

  “Apparently everybody knows Earle’s in town but me,” Ouida said.