“I doubt it. But it’s all I know. A gesture.”
“You his new housekeeper?”
“Nothing so ambitious as that,” Cathryn said. “Maybe an overnight guest. Apprentice mistress.”
“I shouldn’t think there’s any danger of your wearing out your welcome,” Roy said.
“Maybe it’s a sort of training program,” she went on. “I really haven’t decided quite what I am just yet …”
“Whatever you decide, I approve.”
“You ought to,” Cathryn said. “You got me into this … You gave me that lecture.”
“What?”
“You hoped I wouldn’t treat him badly. Remember? Well now I’m just trying to show the tenderest possible solicitude. I kiss him. I brag on him. I make the tamale pie. The works …”
“You needn’t have taken me so seriously,” Roy said.
“Well maybe I’m here with my good works at a good time,” the girl said. “He seems to have a problem.”
“That’s what I heard,” Roy said. “That’s what I’m calling about. He there?”
“Try him at the office,” Cathryn said. “I think he’s still working. Do something. Make a miracle. Solve his problem and then send him home.”
“I’ll call him there,” Roy said. They rang off, and Roy tried the newspaper office. Another strange voice came on, careless and a bit incredible.
“He’s not presently available,” the voice said.
“Who’s this?”
“This is Jobie …”
“Who?”
“Jobie Burns … I’m the art editor … May I help you please?”
“This is Roy Sherwood. Where’s Willie?”
“Ah, Mr. Sherwood. You will remember me from the other day here at the office and the evening before at the Dearly Beloved. I would like sometime to discuss with you the problems a liberal public official encounters in trying to apply his idealism against practical political considerations. Coming to grips with the more unsavory aspects of democratic —”
“Where did you say he was?”
“Pardon?”
“Willie for chrissake. Where the hell is he?”
“To the printers,” Jobie said. “He has driven to the printers. To examine page proofs, as we call them. We have a rather special edition out this evening. It could become quite a point of controversy among our friends. I have my own doubts about the advisability of carrying this particular story, as a matter of fact, but I, of course, am not the editor. I have been sitting here, however, wondering whether it will be possible for me to continue my formal association with the newspaper. I do not want my views to be compromised by what may … by what shouldn’t be … As the art critic, I mean, I am not concerned with politics per se, though I sometimes contribute essays of a philosophical nature that will quite naturally touch on the Zeitgeist, the underlying political and intellectual questions of all our —”
Roy hung up.
Twenty-Two
THE RAIN RESUMED, THUNDERHEADS piling up in the distance and moving on the city in the same progression as the evening before. Roy lay in his bed, fixed against the mattress, wondering if he should rise up and go make his miracle. He’d have to learn how first; he’d need to call Fenstemaker and find out. He wondered if his old magician had got his pills and portents hopelessly muddled.
He could hear the rain coming, rattling the cedar breaks on the far side of the lake and then the big drops on the water, like frogs. The cotton curtain shifted and began to flap softly against his face; cooler air filled the room suddenly, the smell of damp cedar, and Roy waited until the first drops split against the window screen, covering him with fine spray, before rolling out of bed.
He stood in the dark in his underwear for a moment, listening to the rain. Then he switched on the light and saw the cat’s wet fur against the door screen. The cat looked at him uncomplaining. The porch glistened in the red and white neon of a beer sign a hundred yards beyond. Raindrops whanged against porch furniture and water began to rush along the gutters, boiling round the stopped-up drains. Roy let the cat in and began to dress.
When he had his trousers pulled on, he sat on the side of the bed and wondered where he should go, whom he should see first, how he should spend what remained of his weekend. The real question was whether he wanted to spend it with Ouida. And if not with Ouida, what was there left of the weekend? And the days and weeks to follow? There was Fenstemaker, of course. He could possibly learn something from old Arthur. There seemed so much to learn — from all his abandoned studies. He would need to get wrapped up in something: juvenile crime, public housing, pensions for the aged? Or the grave, the really weighty issues of our time. Like the excise tax on telephones. If he refused once again to go home and practice the law, he would have to find something … anything … to seize his interest. Two years before he had simply gone traveling over the state, looking up old friends. Not friends, actually — and not really seeing them. Just names, terribly familiar names from the card index of childhood. He just looked up names, all day long, all over the state. He’d go into a public library and exhaust an afternoon examining city directories. The directories gave him nearly everything he needed to know about the names. Were they married? Had the married ones made babies? And the occupations: pole climbers, plumbers, oil men, brokers, shoe salesmen — productive citizens every man-jack one of them. It had been an exhilarating experience, running down the names; discovering, as if it were revelation, whether they were renters or homeowners. Occasionally he would venture out into some roseate suburb, looking for a face, driving past a numbered house to catch a glimpse of a face grown old, possibly a little compromised, clipping hedges, washing new cars, playing catch with children.
Those names, those occasional faces, were wonderfully reassuring. Life rolled on. There seemed always to be enough names and faces to fill in the gaps where some of the others had left off and deserted. This was reality, the genuine article — it was like stepping down off the stage and moving past the footlights to find an audience of flesh and blood people after all. Silent … vaguely preoccupied … ground under, some of them, by the weight of days — but people live and pumping all the same.
The public life? It was a joke. There seemed no life less public than the politician’s. What they had was a fantasy world, populated with kings and priests and brigands and court jesters and camp followers. There was no getting round or out of it. The thing to do was accept, embrace, believe. Who could be certain whether Miss Alice abandoned reality when she went off down the rabbit hole? Like the wire fence round mental institutions. On which side were the zanies?
Rain pounded the cabin. Smells of pine and fish and cedar filled the room, registering in his unconscious, evoking a nameless, faceless nostalgia, another dusty unpaid account, old sounds and smells setting off the emotion inside him. He could not recall a particle of the event, if it was so much as that; there was only the sensation. He thought of the small girl, peeled down to her cheap lingerie in the backseat of the old Buick. What directories would reveal the fate of his gum-cracking thirteen-year-old lover? A crisscross listing for the year 1943, he thought insanely. Once he had got the neighborhood, the street, the family’s name established, there would be other sources available to an important public official. Once he had got the name. He could make it his life’s work, a massive research project, and then he would go to wherever she was and pluck her from her brothel world.
He thought, suddenly, of Ouida, and wondered if he were being fair. Here he was filled with regret for all his lost loves, his child-whore in the backseat of the Buick, and here was Ouida now, at this moment, ruined and waiting. Half a life from now would the groaning in his head complain of Ouida?
He thought about this as he continued to dress, and then he made a run through the rain for the car.
She sat close to him on the couch, reaching out periodically to touch his hands. Once she leaned over, took one of the hands and kissed it. The streets had
been full of reflected headlight patterns; there were flooded gutters in the low places, and the car and the glare and the pounding rain constricted the spirit. It was fantastic how, in so short a time, in the space of a crosstown drive, one’s temperament could be changed. He wondered what it was he’d planned to do for her. He’d nearly forgotten all of it; though not really forgotten. Not the what of it but why? Now he could not begin all over to reconstruct the justification. Not when the edifice of thought itself was flabby and insubstantial. He tried to get his mind to working. New conviction eluded his blunt grasp, like orange seed. He sat next to her in the front room, watching her hoist the dress to unsnap her hose.
She fluffed out her hair and patted his hand and reached up to touch the dampness of his head and shoulders. She crossed one dark leg and then the other, pulling off the hose. He kissed her once, very slightly, and then she got to her feet.
“It’s early,” she said. “We can drink some whiskey before dinner.”
She walked behind him toward the kitchen. He could hear the tray of ice popping under the hot water tap. He sat there unable to move. He stared across the room at a pile of enormous plastic toys; fire trucks, rocket ships, an army of Martians, armored tanks and foreign cars. He looked at a fashion magazine; a tall, bored, open-mouthed model stared back at him, her chin slightly uptilted, a fur wrap slung round her neck; her black-rimmed eyes were awful and the pink tip of her tongue seemed capable of spearing insects. The tall woman stared at him from a darkly lit barroom of polished oak and brass. Did the woman love? Was she loved in return? He marveled over the possibility. Ouida returned with the drinks.
“It really is early,” he said, as if confirming a miracle. “You want to go by the garden for a beer?”
“No.”
“Want to go out for dinner?”
She shook her head, smiling.
“We can watch Saturday night television,” he said.
She sat sideways on the couch, facing him, waiting for his whiskey mouth. When he kissed her again, she shuddered a little and seemed to cave in.
“You want to rough it on the cotton pile …?”
He had to hold on to her to prevent her from falling. Her face was against his and he could barely hear her voice.
“Maybe,” he said. He held on to her and reached for his glass. “Maybe it might be better. If we sort of back off from the bedroom. You know? Go off in the other direction — make camp on the couch, or the floor, like you suggest. Or maybe outside in some consecrated mint bed — I wish it weren’t raining, though the rain of course might lend an agreeably violent stimulation to the business — or the front lawn or the backseat of the car. Or standing up even, like kissing goodnight. I tried that once at college, front of a boardinghouse — it’s a real sweat. And then when we’re far enough from the bedroom, maybe we can make another run for it, having learned a thing or two …”
“What …?” She was still in his arms, and he wondered if she understood any of it as he slogged along, trying to explain …
“I mean a bed’s for lovers, isn’t it? While some of those others are just places for letting off steam. The bed ought to be something special — like reaching the summit. You know? And we just jumped right in. I keep thinking we should’ve waited. Until we were sure another place wouldn’t have been more suitable. You know? Like a telephone booth … It’s a theory I have, anyhow … Just formulated … Just now … Did Alfred really tell you about the bribe?”
“What?” she said again, faintly, her face against his, staring past his shoulder.
“Did Rinemiller really tell you he was offered a bribe? From the lobbyist. The one he’s supposed to be getting the goods on.”
“Why do you ask that?” she said. “How did you know about all that?” She no longer clung to him but rested her shoulder against the back of the sofa, one bare arm draped over the top. She began to smoke a cigarette; her tongue flicked out and she touched it with a fingernail, plucking off a particle of tobacco. She seemed, for the first time, a little bored.
“I’ve known about it all week,” he said. “I heard a recording.”
“So there really is one, then,” she said. “Alfred thought it was a bluff.”
“No … It was the real thing. When did he tell you about it?”
“Do you think I would have to testify?” she said. “Earle said I wouldn’t if they didn’t indict Alfred. And they probably won’t. Will they? Now that it’s obvious he wasn’t doing anything really wrong. Isn’t that right?”
“When did he tell Earle about it?”
“Oh, Earle doesn’t remember anything. He just wants to. I told him when it happened and he wanted to think he could remember so he just remembered … Wish fulfillment.”
“You had to tell Earle?”
“Yes.”
“What the hell is all this, Ouida? Rinemiller’s supposed to have two firm witnesses ready to testify. If that son of a bitch —”
“Do you think he really did do what they said?” Ouida broke in.
“I thought he was guilty … I was certain of it until today when I heard that he had witnesses to testify otherwise. You and Earle.”
“Why are you so disturbed about it?” she said. “You act as if you had some stake in it.”
“Goddamit Ouida …” He had been up, moving about the room, and now he returned to the couch and took her face in his hands. The rain pounded the house; a television throbbed against the wall of the next apartment. He held on to her face; her thin arms came up, encircling his neck, and her eyes, flecked with green and revealing the barest mirrored image of the overhead lights, began to fill with tears. “When did he tell you about all this?” he said.
“Today,” she said. “At noon.”
“For the first time?”
She nodded her head, not looking at him. Her voice came from deep inside her swelling throat. “I couldn’t see how it was all so important, and —”
“Willie’s losing his job … You’re about to perjure yourself … And there’s a goddam burglar running round loose …”
“… and Earle wanted to believe it — Alfred’s his friend,” she said. “And then Alfred … I mean if I hadn’t helped, he would’ve messed everything up.”
“What do you mean?”
“He told me he was desperate — that he hadn’t any choice.”
“Choice between what?”
“Between … He said if I didn’t help, he’d have to force me to help. He was going to Earle and tell him all about you and me — and then even about him and me, the other night at the ranch, about how I was nothing but a slut and Earle ought to leave me and get custody of the boy. And I think he would have, Roy. He was crazy. He could have messed up everything … So … I … just decided to help.”
They were silent for perhaps a minute. As time expanded, each of them seemed to have shrunk perceptibly, away from the moment and each other. “Godalmighty,” Roy finally said.
Ouida began to get hold of herself. She stood up and started on another cigarette. Then she fastened her red eyes on him and said: “Don’t you get into this. Keep out of it. Please. You could only make things worse. Alfred might say anything, the state he’s in. Keep out of it. Don’t rock the boat. You could mess it all up, too …” She put out her cigarette and swallowed the last of her drink and turned to him again. “I’m going to bed.”
After she had vanished into the back rooms, he continued to sit on the sofa, wondering how everything had come unstuck. He stared at the little filmy pile of her hosiery at his feet, and, finally, he was able to move, to stand and find his jacket and direct himself toward the door.
Twenty-Three
THE NOISE AT THE front of the cabin triggered a dream: bits and pieces caroused through his head during the moments he wrestled with sleep. Someone was pounding on the door, and he came awake sore-eyed and feverish. The cat stirred at his feet, stretched and began to complain. The room was filled with morning light, and the noise up front persiste
d. Roy rolled out of bed and searched for his trousers. He thought about the dream, concentrating on it, hoping the stray pieces would not vanish in the morning air, unnamed and irretrievable. He moved toward the front of the cabin. The pounding continued until he began to shift the bolt.
Rinemiller stood under the slight shelter of the eaves, lashed by the rain. He did not speak but stalked past Roy and then turned, waiting, in the middle of the room, water spilling off his slicker, his forehead glistening.
Roy closed the door and hoisted his trousers. His mind seemed blank: gone slack in another moment of truth. Rinemiller was there, finally, come to call, and Roy was suddenly furious with everyone, all the politicians, for going off and shooting birds, battling tennis balls, playing with parachutes. It wasn’t right they should be gone or still in bed when Alfred came round. Roy wondered why it should be his responsibility.
“You’re Willie’s soulmate,” Rinemiller said. “You got to stop him.”
“Stop him from what?” Roy said.
“I give you credit for not being totally ignorant of what’s been going on,” Rinemiller said. “Don’t act so goddam innocent … That paper — that’s what. That story he’s written. You’ve got to stop him from publishing it today.”
“Isn’t it already out?” Roy said. “He was at the printer’s when I called him yesterday evening.”
“It’s not out yet … It’s printed but not yet out … I’ve got to stop him before he starts distribution.”
“He’s your employee — not mine,” Roy said. “I can’t stop him from doing anything he’s set on.”
“You could reason with him,” Rinemiller said. “You might try to talk some sense into that crazy bastard. Maybe he’d listen to you. I’ve tried everything else. I’m havin’ him fired this afternoon … Called a meeting of the board. But by then it could be too late. He’s got to be stopped this morning. I’d get a goddam restraining order if it weren’t a weekend.”
Rinemiller’s greased face seemed about to crack; he dripped water, hands stuck in the pockets of his coat; he did not move off the damp spot in the center of the room.
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