Gay Place

by Billy Lee Brammer

  “Anybody here?” he yelled suddenly. He walked back into the main room. “Anybody in this house?” He lay back down on the sofa and fell asleep.

  He did not stir again until George Giffen arrived. George came bounding up the steps after the Governor’s limousine had dropped him on the front drive. Giffen did not immediately notice Huggins on the couch; he wandered round the big room, examining rubble, staring at the paneled walls, listening for anyone moving about upstairs. Then he came near the sofa, stopped, and poked at Huggins.

  “Hey, Pancho. Let’s play some tennis, hah?” he said. “Come on — I just got back … I missed out on everything yesterday.”

  Huggins did not move; breath barely fluttered across his parted lips. Giffen sat down and removed one shoe and began meticulously to scratch his foot. Presently he could hear people shuffling around on the second floor, and soon the plumbing began to groan as showers were put to use.

  Twenty miles upriver from the Fielding ranch an old army command car banged along one of the backroads, lurching across culverts and coming to a stop next to a small low-water bridge. Arthur Fenstemaker got out of the car and sniffed the air. He was dressed in fresh khakis, a starched dress shirt with frazzled collar, and lace-up boots. He had the checkered golf cap pulled down tight so that it covered the tips of his big ears.

  Fenstemaker stared at the water pushing over the small dam, hands on hips, his head working up and down as if in solemn agreement that, yes, it certainly was water, lots of water. He watched for a few moments and then returned to the cab of the open command car. Jay McGown sat in front alongside him. There was a thermos cooler at Jay’s feet, and between his legs the guns were stacked: a three-inch magnum, a jungle carbine, a pump action.

  “Open me a beer, Jay,” the Governor said. “Goddam I like a cold beer in the mornings.”

  Jay opened cans of beer for the two of them. Fenstemaker started the engine and the old car jumped ahead, moved over a hill and then slowed again. Birds flapped overhead. Fenstemaker pointed. “Ain’ that lovely?” he said softly. He took hold of the pump action, poked it out over the windshield, and fired two shots quick and successive. The dove fell nearly straight down. Fenstemaker laid the gun across Jay’s lap, stepped outside and went to get the bird, crippling along like an old man whose joints were stiff and sensitive. Then he was back inside the car, holding on to the bird, and they moved off again, in the direction of the ranch house.

  They left the car in front and walked inside. Jay stored the guns while Fenstemaker cleaned his hands. One of the secretaries came down the stairs.

  “Any calls?” the Governor said.

  The girl nodded and named several people. “And Willie England … just now … just as you drove up. He’s holding for you on the downstairs phone.”

  “Tell him I’m still out inspectin’ my lands,” the Governor said, smiling. “Tell him you don’t know when I’ll be comin’ in.”

  The girl went off into another room, and Fenstemaker began sifting through a stack of correspondence. Jay McGown said: “How come you’re avoiding Willie? After all you told him this week?”

  The Governor unlaced his boots. The golf cap was now pulled down to where it nearly covered his thick eyebrows, giving him the partly sinister, faintly comic look of a worried horse player. Then his face brightened and he said: “I been sucklin’ my babes … Time the chicks got out the henhouse and foraged for themselves …”

  He pulled off his trousers, hoisted plaid bathing trunks, and walked outside toward the pool.

  Twenty-One

  EARLE HAD A PRIVATE room with a television. And a view, a really lovely view, as Ouida pointed out, standing next to the picture window, the expanse of glass and the cheerfully colored plastic blinds that revealed the stretch of turf and oak and redbud falling away from the building in uneven terraces. The room was large and brightly lit and now rather resembled a florist’s showroom. The sweet pungent smell of flowers filled the room; they were all about; they’d been brought in all during the afternoon: luxuriant and wildly colored. Everyone at the ranch had left off tennis for a while to contribute to Earle Fielding’s flower fund. Roy thought there must have been a hundred dollars’ worth of flowers in the room. Even Arthur Fenstemaker had found out about Earle and had sent an enormous mixed spray: iris and glads and some kind of lily that should have been past its season.

  Soundless figures jerked back and forth on the television screen. A dark haired singer moved her lips and gestured insanely. She had enormous breasts that seemed to rise up and nearly out of her gown with every deep breath, defying physical laws, like a half-finished bridge. Roy sat staring dully at the silent screen.

  “I don’t know why the hell they all had to send flowers,” Earle said, thrashing in the white sheets. “They could’ve sent whiskey or books or cigarettes. I feel like a goddam fairy undertaker in this room.”

  “I think the flowers are lovely,” Ouida said. “And so is your room — look out there. Aren’t the grounds pretty in the rain?”

  “I wonder if it washed out the tennis tournament,” Earle said.

  “Alfred thought not,” Ouida said. “He was on the phone, talking to them out there. He says they’re still playing.”

  They sat looking out the big window at the rain and the terraced grounds. It was a very modern hospital. There were picture windows in nearly every room, with the colored blinds. The hallways were wide and soundproof, and the white-jacketed people padded up and down outside the door all the afternoon, grinning at each other. Such a happy place. Perfumed air. There was scarcely a hint of ether or antiseptics, even in the hallways. Ouida tilted the blinds slightly; she lit a cigarette and handed it across to Earle.

  “I’ll take some of the flowers home with me,” she said. “Cheer up the apartment.”

  “Take me home,” Earle said. “I’ll cheer it up.”

  “You’re sick.”

  “I’m fine. I feel fine.”

  “I saw you a few minutes ago. You nearly fell off the john stool. You’re weak — you’re a convalescent.”

  “I want to go home,” Earle said.

  “Which home?” Ouida said. “My house? The hotel? You can’t even remember which hotel. I ought to go check you out and get your clothes. Waste of money you’re not being there.”

  “I’ve got half a case of whiskey there,” Earle said. “Don’t forget the whiskey.”

  “Which hotel?” Roy said.

  Earle looked at them, agonized. He tried to remember.

  “See? You’re a sick man,” Ouida said.

  “It’ll come back,” Earle said impatiently. “I’ll remember. If I just don’t try so hard — let it sneak up on me. Some things I remember. Some things I don’t. I remembered about the whiskey, didn’t I?”

  They were silent for a few minutes. Ouida looked through a paperback book. Roy turned up the sound on the television. The two men sat watching a variety show. Roy wondered how much Earle Fielding remembered; how much was lost to him and how much was coming back. Some things and some things. Would he know (or did he now know?) about his being with Ouida these past months? Would it all come to him in a flash of rage and perception? Or only part of it, like the whiskey? Remembering only that there was a phantom lover pursuing his legal wedded. How soon would he remember it was Roy? When would he recall swinging on him outside Ouida’s window in the Cuckold’s dawn? While wornout toms and pariah dogs sniffed back-alley garbage.

  He got to his feet and went down the hall, returning in a few minutes with the afternoon papers. He dumped them in Earle’s lap and said: “You got a little headline. All about the parachute jump and your accident. Next year you can campaign for office on the free publicity.”

  “Let’s see,” Earle said, spreading out the front pages. Ouida put down her book and came over to read the stories.

  “And you’re registered at the Carlton,” Roy said. “I just called the hotels and asked for Earle Fielding. It wasn’t too difficult.”

&
nbsp; “But I wasn’t in, was I?” Earle said, grinning. “They know where I was?”

  “You ought to thank Roy,” Ouida said.

  “I would’ve remembered,” Earle said abruptly.

  Roy wondered if it was coming back to Earle Fielding already. Or perhaps, memory failing, he was plodding along on instinct and sorting out the sons of bitches, unable to remember precisely why but only that they were.

  He watched the clock. In a few minutes the visiting hours would be ended for the afternoon and he would be able to leave gracefully, all the time protesting against the hospital rules. He wished Ouida could leave with him. Though he had no special plans for the evening, he wanted very much to take her along. It was difficult to separate his feelings, to tell himself exactly why he wanted Ouida. He hoped it wasn’t entirely the throb of old desire; he hoped that wasn’t all of it. What the hell? Maybe spend the evening watching television. He half wished he could go home and put young Earle to bed. Just a quiet evening in another man’s home. He was ready, he told himself, to embrace it all, wherever and whatever it was: wife, children, victory gardens, neighbors, evening television. Was it some protective shroud of conformity he sought? It seemed only a matter of exchanging one for another.

  But Ouida did not go with him. Earle asked her to stay, and Roy left alone, saying goodbye and promising to call early in the evening to inquire if any errands needed to be run. Like taking Earle’s own wife home to bed, Roy thought. He left the hospital and drove directly to the cabin, to feed the cat and try to understand what it was he wanted, what could be asked for and what, at the minimum, could be attained.

  The rain let up at midafternoon. The sun’s heat came through the cloud cover, steaming the streets, quivering upward through the damp air. The city was quiet; people stayed inside, sitting under fans, sipping iced drinks, barely stirring. A single diesel train prowled the rail yards, stacking freight cars one behind the other. The beer garden was vacant, damp leaves plastered against the tops of the rough tables, loudspeakers dangling from the trees, vibrating with songs that went ooh-ah oom-ah ooh-ah. Roy lay in a lounge chair on his stone porch, gasping for the cool air that came off the lake. Arthur Fenstemaker moved slowly, down the front steps of the Capitol building, reaching for a pocket handkerchief and rubbing it across his forehead and along the back of his neck.

  “Goddam,” the Governor said under his breath. “Hell and goddam.”

  He waited out front while Jay McGown brought the limousine round to meet him. He was perspiring through his silk shirt, and the air-conditioning in the car did not seem to solve anything.

  “Drive around some,” he said to Jay.

  Weekend afternoons he liked to call on people, roaming the city and the countryside until something or someone caught his imagination, though on this particular afternoon there did not seem an indulgence left in the world for him. The limousine moved off through the quiet streets. They rode for half an hour, circling past the Capitol grounds, slowing for children and a few gawking pedestrians, heading up into the hills, parallel to the river, back into the city again and close by the college, coming near the ball park and the beer garden and the hospital and slum neighborhoods and a Mexican cemetery that was speckled with picked flowers and brightly colored pieces of glass and stone. Presently, they headed toward Roy Sherwood’s cabin.

  Roy got uneasily to his feet when the limousine pulled in the drive. Jay McGown stayed behind in the car while the Governor climbed the rock steps, staggering in the heat. Roy got him a bottle of cold beer; Fenstemaker gripped the vessel in both hands and turned it to his mouth. He wiped his face and said: “The douche-bag’s bust, Roy.”

  Roy nodded and waited for Fenstemaker to get past his introductory parables.

  “Rinemiller — smart bastard — he’s been placin’ some side bets. Coverin’ his flanks …” He looked up suddenly. “You hear about Willie?”

  Roy said no; he hadn’t heard. What was it about Willie?

  “He’s gone and wrote himself a story. About Rinemiller and the lobbyist and old George Giffen. He stopped his weekend press run this mornin’ and put the new story in.”

  Roy said he supposed that was good. Willie had been worried about what to do. Now he seemed to have decided on the right thing.

  “Nothin’ good about it at all,” Fenstemaker said. “Willie made the mistake of leavin’ a copy of the story at Rinemiller’s apartment — wanted to do right by Alfred, somethin’ like that, give him plenty warning — and that was all the son of a bitch needed.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like I said — side bets. It give him time to cover his flanks. He was runnin’ all over the Capitol this afternoon, callin’ press conferences and claimin’ he’s been libeled by his own newspaper.”

  “Before Willie’s story is even out?”

  “That’s right. He says the business with the lobbyist actually boiled down to his tryin’ to trap that no-account in the act of offerin’ a bribe. That he was gonna turn him in. That he took the money as evidence.”

  “Well how does he prove all this?” Roy said. “People just supposed to take his word for it? You’ve still got that recording. It all sounds pretty desperate to me.”

  Fenstemaker shook his big head. He squinted in the sunlight and stared fascinated at a water skier circling round a sailboat. Occasionally the sounds of music and laughter came to them from across the lake.

  “No … Hell no … He’s quicker’n that. He says he told Earle Fielding about his plan three days ago. Before Willie ever wrote his story.”

  “That still sounds flimsy,” Roy said. “Earle fell on his head yesterday — out of an airplane — he’s been in the hospital since last night and he’s got a memory problem covering all the last three-four days. He couldn’t even remember his hotel.”

  “I know,” the Governor said. “But he remembers Rinemiller tellin’ him about this. He backs him up … I talked to him.”

  “Oh, Jesus … He does?”

  “Worse than that, even,” Fenstemaker said. “So does his wife.”

  “Whose wife?” Roy said.

  “Earle’s wife … Mrs. Fielding …” Fenstemaker paused and smiled vaguely. “Believe you are personally acquainted with that lady.”

  “Ouida says it’s true?”

  Fenstemaker nodded. They were silent for a moment. The harsh outline of the hills grew faint in the afternoon’s iridescence.

  “Well …” Roy said, “Willie can always salvage something. It’s not too late to pull that story and let the paper go as it was originally.”

  “But he’s not gonna do it,” Fenstemaker said. “He’s keepin’ it in.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m always sure,” the Governor said, smiling. “I got a more reliable intelligence staff than the goddam C. I. and A.”

  “Why’s he doing it?” Roy said.

  “He says he knows Rinemiller’s guilty. I called and told him I know it, too, and that we can stick him one way or another later on. But he don’t want to wait … He can’t wait … Rinemiller’s havin’ him removed. Tomorrow. Already called a meetin’ of Willie’s board of directors.”

  “They’re taking him off the newspaper?”

  “That’s the way it looks.”

  “Godalmighty, he’s the best thing ever happened to those people. Look at what he’s done! Last couple years. They can’t just flush him like that.”

  “I’d go plead his case to them personally if I wasn’t certain that would make it worse,” Fenstemaker said. “That’s part of the problem. Rinemiller says Willie’s sold out to me — that I fed him all this distorted information. And those people got no real love for me, I can tell you.”

  “Nor me, I imagine,” Roy said. “Not if Alfred’s been talking to them.”

  Fenstemaker stood next to the porch rail, looking out over the lake, scratching the seat of his pants. “I got Willie mixed up in this thing,” he said, “and I can probably take care of him afterwards. B
ut I don’t think he’d be happy with any job I could offer him. And besides — I like that goddam little paper. And it wouldn’t be quite the same without Willie runnin’ it. Reminds me of old Linc Steffens when I was growin’ up … Though old Steffens fell in with the Reds. Suppose it’s in the cards for all of us to get carted off to the mourner’s bench once or twice in a lifetime …” He straightened up suddenly and wiped his face. “I got to go,” he said.

  “What’re you gonna do?” Roy said.

  “I don’t know what-all,” Fenstemaker said. “I just don’t know. You call me, you get an idea … I got to go … I think we’ll arrest that lobbyist tonight or tomorrow — if he hasn’t already left town.”

  Roy stood on the porch and watched Fenstemaker descend to the limousine parked below. He waved at Jay McGown and then went inside to the telephone and dialed Willie’s number.

  A girl’s voice came on. At first he thought he should hang up and redial, but then he realized who it was.

  “Cathryn?”

  “Yes.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Is this Roy?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m cooking,” Cathryn Lemens said. “Tamale pie. It’s all I know how to cook.”

  “Willie got a special craving for tamale pie?”