Nothing Lost

by John Gregory Dunne

  Teresa looked for a moment, then turned and gave a little smile before striding into the throng. A few steps away, I saw her stop and rummage in her bag. A moment later she had a cigarette in her mouth. She lit it and inhaled deeply. I found it gratifying that she was a secret smoker. Then she was swallowed up by the crowd.

  Stanley on the private line. “Well?”

  “Well, what?”

  “Are you going to do it?”

  “I told you this morning I was.”

  “You said, ‘Depending.’ ”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Are you shrugging?”

  Again no response.

  “How much are you getting paid.”

  “None of your business.”

  “All right then. Did you pop out your bridge?”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “She wondered if I was the product of a stagnant genetic pool.”

  “I like that.” Stanley had an exaggerated way of talking in private that he knew I found intensely irritating. “I really like that.”

  I wish I hadn’t told him.

  “Listen. About tonight.” He was lecturing at the university law school. “Erotic Psychopathology in the Criminal Mind” was the title he had attached to his talk. The criminal was Stanley’s subject, and the way in which prisons were what he called cathedrals of crime. Prison aristocracies intrigued him, the world of men without women where the weak belonged to the strong and any member, any orifice, might offer sexual release. “Bum bandit” was the phase he used to describe the cellblock sexual imperialist, and he studied the bum bandits and the punks and all the subcategories in between with the eye of an anthropologist. “The dean suggested dinner afterward. Why not come along?” And dish about Teresa Kean was what I suspected he had in mind. “The university lawyer’s joining us.”

  “Leo Cassady?”

  “He said he knew you.”

  “He fired me, Stanley.”

  “Not fired, Max. Laid off. Downsized. Budgetary cuts.”

  “Fired, Stanley.”

  “Be boring, Max,” Stanley said as he hung up.

  It was the way so many of our conversations seemed to end.

  I think a respite from Stanley was another reason I was so willing to involve myself with Teresa Kean and the Lajoie defense.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  In fact, Teresa had met Clifton Snow.

  She had moderated a seminar on the Second Amendment at Georgetown Law School where he had been a participant one cold winter night two years earlier, maybe three, maybe more, she had lost track of time, another endless evening of spirited specious debate, Snow versus a representative from People for the American Way, also an actor whose name she had forgotten as well as the series he had starred in, then Q&A, biscotti, cheap chardonnay, false smiles, and we must get together sometime, no addresses or telephone numbers exchanged. The right to bear arms, burning the flag, Roe v. Wade, stem-cell research, and that hardy perennial, the Vietnam War, remembered most passionately by those who did not choose to fight in it—whatever the issue, Teresa Kean could be counted on to end the evening on time and not let the proceedings get out of hand, at least until the event in Baltimore after Jack Broderick died in her bedroom.

  Teresa shouldered her way to the curb so she could cross to the hotel, but her way was blocked by an enormous young man waving a placard that said, I’LL GIVE UP MY GUN WHEN THEY PRY MY COLD DEAD FINGERS FROM IT. In spite of the cold he was only wearing a T-shirt and jeans. His breath was frosted and he was stomping a booted foot, shouting, “Clif-ee, Clif-ee, Clif-ee,” trying to get Snow’s attention. From the Chrysler, Clifton Snow acknowledged the sign by forming his left hand into a gun, pulling the trigger twice, then blowing away imaginary smoke. Beside him, Poppy McClure waved and clapped.

  Teresa wondered if Poppy had recognized her. Wondered what the social amenities were when she was defending an alleged murderer Poppy’s husband was trying to electrocute. She would let the amenities work themselves out.

  The huge young man suddenly turned and brought his placard down as if it were a tollgate. Thick clumps of chest and back hair curled over the neck of his ripped and dirty white T-shirt, on which was printed the slogan GUNS, GUTS, AND GLORY ARE WHAT MADE AMERICA GREAT. A true believer. “Back on the sidewalk, lady.”

  She tried to be reasonable. What she wanted was a long soak in a hot bath, not a street fight with a steroid cretin. “I just want to get across to my hotel.”

  “There’s no ‘just,’ lady, you wait like everyone else.” Teresa had never seen anyone quite so big. A cohort of equally muscular companions, all wearing guts-and-glory T-shirts, now surrounded him. To their loud and ribald applause, he jabbed the placard at Teresa as if it were a lance. “You think you’re from New York or someplace like that?” Another poke. “Back on the fucking sidewalk.”

  Teresa stumbled back, scraping the heel of one Ferragamo pump on the curb. The cohort jeered, a display of surplus testosterone that ratcheted her adrenaline up a notch. In a fury, she sprang forward, grabbed the head of the lance, and shoved it aside. “You pea-brained Gargantua,” she hissed, “get out of my way.” The brutish young man hesitated, the tollgate lance wavered. The thought occurred to Teresa that this might be the first time his authority had ever been questioned, his size the only credential he had ever needed to certify his lummox power. In the split second before he could respond, she swept past him and darted across the street, behind the Chrysler, behind Poppy and Clifton Snow, and into the hotel. She felt exhilarated. Gargantua. Where had that come from. Of course. Her father. When he was a boy, he had once told her, he ditched St. Cyril’s one day and went into the city to see the Barnum & Bailey Circus at the old Madison Square Garden on Eighth Avenue. Specifically to see Gargantua, the great ape, who guzzled Coca-Cola by the case, then peed in his hands, and threw his urine through the bars of his cage at the audience who had gathered there just for that experience. A brain the size of a chestnut, Teresa. Mrs. Gargantua was the very fetching M’Toto, he said. Twice a day, afternoon and evening performances, they would pledge their troth, M’Toto’s hairy face framed by a virginal white veil. Which was entirely appropriate. Because Gargantua, Teresa, did not seem to have much interest in his lady ape. Or any lady apes. King of the primates, perhaps, but queen of the May. More interested in Tarzan, Brendan Kean had said, than in his saucy little M.

  She had never anticipated that Gargantua might be useful in Capital City, South Midland. Another debt owed to Brendan Kean.

  It’s like Washington here, Teresa thought with a chill as her eyes wandered over the jammed lobby of the Rhino Carlton-Plaza. Washington transported to Midlandia. Washington on one of its more unpleasant command-performance evenings. The Annual Dinner of the White House Correspondents Association at the Hilton, say. The din was like the noise of an open spillway. Midwestern Republicans clutched and greeted each other as if they had not been in hourly cell-phone communication or seen each other in Washington, Des Moines, or Manchester the previous week. There were huge posters of Dixon McCall everywhere. The president lecturing his colleagues at the G-8 meeting in Salt Lake City. Salt Lake was the real America, Dixon McCall had told them. The Real America was the Republican campaign theme, and the posters reflected it. Dixon McCall at Grand Coulee. Dedicating the World War II Memorial on the Mall. Escorting the pope to the Grand Canyon. Clear-cutting timber in the Cascade Range. Hanging from an oil derrick at Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Branding cattle at his Oklahoma ranch. Speaking at Edgar Parlance’s funeral. Everyplace Teresa looked she saw a familiar face. Faces she thought she had left behind. Faces that came with familiar stories that were the currency of Georgetown dinner parties she was no longer compelled to attend. The wind-bag pundits elaborately pretending they did not notice the attention they attracted from the county chairmen and national committeemen. Over there Mark Berquist bear-hugging Gerry Wormwold, laying down a possible marker for the future White House run the p
undits, the county chairmen, and the national committeemen all were predicting he would make. In the anteroom off the lobby Lorna Dun with a camera crew from Fixed Bayonets, setting up an interview with Clifton Snow. Lorna Dun and Mark Berquist. Familiar faces with a familiar story too often told. Sex and politics. Politics without sex was a non-story in dinnertime Georgetown. Lorna Dun and Mark Berquist had once been involved. Until Mark Berquist dumped Lorna Dun when he was appointed to complete the term of the ninety-three-year-old junior senator from South Carolina after he collapsed while chairing a hearing of the Foreign Relations Committee on Saudi Arabia. Dumped for the twenty-one-year-old daughter of the governor who had appointed him to fill out the term of the deceased former senator. He needed a wife who was a constituent, Mark Berquist told Lorna Dun. What Mark Berquist meant was that he did not want a wife who at that juncture of his political career was better known than he. What Mark Berquist also meant was that he might be able to find occasional quality time for Lorna Dun. What Lorna Dun did to Mark Berquist was to aim a garden hose through a dog door at his house in Cleveland Park, flooding his first-floor library and ruining his signed first edition of the speeches of John C. Calhoun. What Lorna Dun then did to Mark Berquist was call the governor of South Carolina and tell him that his daughter’s intended had suggested that she and he continue the relationship that antedated his engagement to the governor’s daughter. What the governor of South Carolina did was call Mark Berquist and tell him to get that woman out of his life.

  Teresa knew all the stories.

  Like Lorna Dun, she knew she had become one. Bared to the essentials, a dead man jumping her bones. Still on top of her when EMS came. Scout’s honor. A reliable source on the Metro desk. A story chewed over along with the rack of lamb and the gratinéed potatoes. Washed down with the Sterling Vineyards 1997 cabernet sauvignon.

  She paused by a booth that was selling campaign paraphernalia. Poppy McClure was the big-ticket item. Poppy Power buttons and Poppy Power straw boaters with a red, white, and blue band. A Poppy Power video with vintage Poppy sound bites. The EPA was the American gestapo. The wage-earning American male was an endangered species. Ayatollahs of unity. Stealth agents of the global national force.

  There was once a story about Poppy. Out there in the ozone. It never made it all the way to the gratinéed potatoes. Poppy and . . .

  Oh, yes.

  She never believed it.

  “What are you going to buy, Teresa?” Willie Erskine placed a Poppy Power boater on her head. “The Real America becomes you.”

  Teresa removed the boater and put it back on the counter. She had known Willie Erskine since he was a Republican staff AA with Mark Berquist on the Senate Intelligence Committee. Sharing an apartment on Dupont Circle with other true-believer AAs, including Lorna Dun. Foot soldiers preparing for the transition in Havana, mischief in the Middle East, and anything that would shift the tectonic plates in Pyongyang. Taking out whomever, whenever. What’s up? What’s going down? The word is. Yesterday’s news. Today’s bulletin. When Mark Berquist was appointed to the Senate, Willie Erskine had expected to be named to his staff, but Mark Berquist had informed him that politics was too important for friendship. It was then that Willie Erksine had attached himself to Poppy McClure. “Hello, Willie.”

  “Shame on you doing what you’re doing here, Teresa. We always thought you were one of us.”

  Teresa smiled. Her Gioconda imitation.

  “Did you ever expect to see Lorna and Mark in the same room together, greeting each other so benignly?”

  “I never gave it much thought.”

  “His child bride is with issue again. Three times in four years. Bare-foot and pregnant. An old South Carolina tradition. It leaves so many evenings free for our future president and leader of the free world.”

  He was milking the moment, like a bad actor in a touring company, treating her elaborate disinterest as if it were applause.

  “One hears the senator might be flossing his teeth with Lorna’s pubic hair again.”

  “You’re a toxic waste site, Willie.”

  “How sweet of you to say so.” He paused, flicking an imaginary piece of lint from his lapel. “I was so sorry to hear about Mr. . . . Broderick, was it?”

  Teresa moved toward the elevator.

  “Oh, there’s someone you must meet, Teresa.”

  “Another time, Willie.”

  He put his hand on her shoulder. “Teresa Kean, J.J. McClure.”

  Size them up immediately, her father always said. First impressions are best. Make them prove you’re wrong. You can always amend later. Big fish, small pond was her immediate reaction. “Mr. McClure, I was going to call you.”

  “I’ve been expecting your call, counselor.”

  “Perhaps tomorrow.”

  “I’m rather backed up tomorrow.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Max Cline should help you over the jumps.”

  Then he knew about Max already. Word traveled fast. Word always did. And not just in zip code 20007. “If needed.”

  “You feel you’re up to the job, then?”

  So that was the way it was going to be. “We almost met once.”

  A slight hesitation. He was not expecting the unexpected. “We did?”

  “In Washington. Your wife was on C-Span. With Brian Lamb. You were in the green room. I was scheduled to tape Brian’s next show. I was late getting there. Or maybe it was the next day. Anyway we didn’t meet. In the green room.”

  Not a flicker. “It’s nice to meet you finally, Ms. Kean.”

  “And nice to meet you, Mr. McClure.”

  She awoke with a start. The digital clock on the bedside table said 9:37. Good God, she had slept all night. No. She was still dressed and sprawled diagonally across the bed. She must have fallen asleep. Her eyes focused on the Poppy Power button and the Poppy Power boater on the chaise opposite the bed. Jesus, I couldn’t have bought them. Steady. Wake up. No. They were in her room when she came upstairs. Keep-sakes to all the Midwestern Republicans from the Poppy McClure Reelection Campaign. Or was it Poppy McClure for Governor? She did not know and did not care. She wondered why Poppy needed Mr. McClure. Nothing more than a good-looking walker. She kicked off the Ferragamo pump that that had fallen from her foot, unbuttoned her blouse, arched her bottom, shimmied out of her skirt, and kicked it to the floor. In the corridor outside, Midwestern Republicans seemed to be partying loudly. The dinner must have ended. She knew what Clifton Snow had said in his keynote address. The same thing he had said at Georgetown Law. The same thing he had said in meeting rooms and convention halls and hotel dining rooms across the country. The Speech. With local references. We have more in common with the valiant red men after whom the great city of Kiowa is named than we have with the cultural shock troops of today’s liberal establishment. The Real America. Those wise old dead white guys who invented this county. Clif Snow can say “wise old dead white guys” because Clif Snow marched with Jimmy Baldwin and Dr. King. Freedom is our fortune and honor is our saving grace.

  He could have sent a tape.

  Outside her door a down-home country guitar was now playing “Bye Bye Love.” Badly. Country music and Republicans. The anthem of the red states. More the curse of Lee Atwater in her opinion. She considered masturbating. When in doubt, masturbate, Marty Buick used to say at Smith. Click off, clear the mind. She wished the guitar player in the corridor would segue into “Let It Be Me,” however badly he played it. The perfect background music for what she had in mind. Never leave me lonely. Tell me you love me only. Her hand slipped beneath the elastic band of her panty hose. No. That was self-indulgent. I’m forty-something years old. How many somethings is my business. And it’s a mortal sin. That never stopped her when she was a little girl. Only now. At forty-something. God, I’ll be going to mass next. And confession. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned, I had impure actions one hundred and forty-two times. Impure actions. I still know all the confessional euphemisms. The
y were like swimming or bicycle riding, something you never forget. The only one she could never bring herself to say was self-abuse. Where was the abuse? You tell me, Father. And you can also tell me, Father, how often you spank the monkey. A term she picked up from Budd Doheny. She supposed the reason he was on her mind was the fat girl in the pictures Max Cline had shown her. Merle Orvis. Doing herself with the banana and the dildo.

  She had never done herself with foreign objects.

  She did not care about the fat girl.

  She did not care about the baby who had shit on the sheet.

  The baby who was not the issue of Duane Lajoie.

  Her client.

  Soon to be on trial for the murder of Edgar Parlance.

  When the facts are against you, argue the law.

  When the law is against you, argue the facts.

  When both are against you, attack the other side.

  Easy for her father to say.

  But where to begin?

  She peeled off the rest of her clothes and opened the minibar. Absolut and nacho Doritos. Or Stolichnaya and Lay’s barbecue chips. Bad dinner ideas. She considered calling room service, then changed her mind. It would take forever getting the tray through the drunk Republicans clogging every corridor. Maybe, however, she should order a Kiowa stripper medium rare, Rhino onion rings, a side of broccoli rabe, and a slice of pecan pie with a scoop of hazelnut just to see how much got past the ravenous revelers of the Real America. No. Not worth it. She caught her image in the mirror over the writing table. The mirror with a plaster-of-paris rhinoceros guarding the top of its gilt frame. A touch of cellulite on the back of her legs. A slight slippage visible in the buns. There must be a StairMaster in the hotel fitness center. A treadmill. But she hated public exercise. The kind of delta Carlyle thought was unfashionable. Xan, don’t you know pubes are gross, get them waxed, a Mohawk’s so much cooler. Yes, they were her own boobs, she had told Carlyle. Now in her hawkish gaze beginning to sag. Not hang. Sag. Be clear about that. At least it took to forty-something. She propped them in her hands and examined them for the stretch marks she supposed were just beyond the horizon in the pale of estrogen deficiency. Before long she’d wake up in the morning and have to chase them around her back.