Gay Place (22 page)

They were silent for a moment. Roy said: “He had more imagination than Giffen. And not as much discipline. He had a larger conception of himself — he wants to go farther, faster, than the rest of us … If you accept the premise that a politician’s first obligation is to get elected, or re-elected — and I’m inclined to; perhaps because I’ve never really had to work at getting anything — if you accept this, then you could probably see Alfred justifying what he’s done. Every step of the way. He believes in himself. He thinks he can do some good. But he knows it’s impossible — it’s entirely hopeless — if he loses. He took a good look at himself and decided he had everything but money. He’s as able as Earle Fielding, but Earle’s got plenty of money and sources for even more. So Alfred sets out to solve his most immediate problem …”

“You’re too damned easy on him,” Willie said.

“Sure I am. But I was just trying to see it from his point of view. The everyman politician with a cause. Most politicians accommodate themselves this way. One damn self-administered absolution after another — ends and means. But there’s a limit to how far you can go. The good ones know this. They realize — certainly Alfred must have been at least
aware
of it — that you can only go so far. If you carry your justifications any farther, it’s a risk and it’s wrong. I mean if you’re Rinemiller, you know it’s a risk. If you’re Giffen, you just know it’s wrong. If you’re Fenstemaker … well. The good ones know there are limits. The really great ones don’t even have to think about it — it’s instinctive. There’s really no decision involved, because there’s none required, nothing to decide …”

“Now you’re being too hard on Fenstemaker,” Willie said. “I can’t believe any of his problems are easy to solve. You can’t just write it off to instinct …” He smiled and added: “If you accept the premise, of course, that he’s one of the great ones.”

“Mahatma Gandhi and Rasputin,” Roy said. “The Prince of Darkness and the goddam Mystic Angel. If I ever back off from Fenstemaker, it won’t be because I lost faith. Just the reverse. Because I might put so much faith in him I’d stop believing in myself. Can’t have that. Matter of self-preservation.”

“Well,” Willie concluded, looking back at Rinemiller, “there’s something to be said for politicians. I can’t think of what it is right offhand, but …”

They gave it up at that point. The hillbilly band had begun to make a music to which it was nearly possible to dance, and people moved into the middle of the room, taking hold of one another in a stuporous clutch. Roy and Willie walked out of the way and stood next to the wall. Cathryn found them there. She appeared suddenly out of the crowd and took Willie’s arm.

“I’m hungry,” Cathryn said, putting her head against Willie’s shoulder. “I’m drunk and I’m hungry.” She closed her eyes.

“We’ll go to the kitchen,” Willie said. “Some Southern fried chicken for my Southern fried lady love.”

They moved off through the crowd. In the kitchen they helped Cathryn onto a high stool and brought the food to her. She chewed on a wing and said:

“I may be fried; I suppose I’m Southern, but this chicken is neither. It’s barbecued.”

“They have a Mexican who does it,” Willie said. “He knows how to barbecue a Southern fried chicken.”

“This barbecued chicken,” Cathryn said, “is fraught with ambiguity.”

“Yes,” Roy said. “I have the feeling that if you could somehow break through that deceptive crust of skin you would find peace. Perhaps even God …”

“I dreamed I found God … at the Mixed Doubles Tennis,” Cathryn said.

“I knew I loved her the instant I set eyes on it,” Willie said.

“What?”

“The chicken … That symbolist chicken.”

“I feel better,” Cathryn said, wiping her mouth with a napkin. She held Willie’s hand. “Let’s take a walk along the river.”

“Shall we bring a six pack?”

“A two pack will do,” Cathryn said. “I feel better, but not sober. And some cigarettes. I’m out of cigarettes.”

Willie looked at Roy. “Two pack,” he said. “I suppose that pretty well excludes you …”

“I suppose,” Roy said. He raised his hand. “Bless you, children. I hope I’ve helped show you the Way.”

Willie and Cathryn left through the side door without looking back. Roy sat on the stool and took a bite of chicken. Presently Willie reappeared at the kitchen door. He looked through the screen and then stepped inside. “It’s wet out there,” he said. “You suppose there’s a blanket available?”

Roy put his piece of chicken down and thought. “We can take a look around,” he said. They walked toward the stairs; Roy hesitated and then said he’d heard someone mention a bedroom on the ground floor. They went back in the direction of the hall.

They found it at the very end of the hall, after looking into doors along the way that revealed nothing more than storage space for linens, china, silver, and a few bath and beach towels. The last door swung open and Roy reached round the corner and switched on the light. Ouida rolled over on the bed, propped herself on one elbow, shielding her eyes.

“Pardon,” Roy said. “Thousand pardons.”

It was really a very old bed. A chenille spread was bunched at the foot; intricately carved posts, painted yellow, rose from each corner; Ouida’s clothes were hung on one of the posts. She sat up on the bed in her cotton underwear, rubbing her eyes. She made no attempt to cover herself, so they stood there looking.

“What
time
is it?” she said.

“Little after nine,” Roy said.

She could not seem to hold her eyes open in the light. Finally, she slipped off the side of the bed and walked past them into a small bathroom and began washing her face. While she bent over the lavatory bowl, Willie said: “We were looking for a blanket. Should I take one off the bed here?”

Ouida returned to the bed and sat on the edge of it for a moment, blinking. “How long have you been here?” she said to Roy.

“Couple hours.”

“Where in the world did you
go
?” She was not cross, especially; it was more as if she were disappointed and a little impatient in dealing with a small child.

“I had to take George Giffen over to Fenstemaker’s ranch.”

She sighed and made a gesture of resignation: Roy’s answer did not explain anything, but it was too hopelessly confused to go into any further. She looked away from them, thinking.

“Blanket …” she said aloud.

She got to her feet again and went to the closet and pulled down a heavy Mexican serape. Willie took it from her.

“I suppose,” she said, “you wanted this for the out-of-doors?”

Willie said yes. He thanked her and headed down the hall. Roy remained where he was, liking the looks of her good legs and her hips and her small behind and the soft roll of her abdomen encased in cotton underwear. Her wisp of a brassiere was like something from a subteen shop. She returned to the bed and sat with her legs hanging off the side. She got a cigarette lighted.

“I was sick after you left,” she said. “God, I was sick.”

“Are you feeling better?”

“I think.”

She propped herself against the back of the bed and sat smoking, holding an ashtray in her lap.

“Shut the door and come sit with me awhile,” she said.

He sat at the opposite end so he could see her better. It occurred to him that he had spent nearly, all one night in bed with her but had only the vaguest impression of how she looked. She was like a little girl just going into woman.

He was breathless for a moment, thinking back, struck by the little girl image. Once, on the promise of three gasoline ration stamps, he had driven across town to a neighborhood of broken-down flatbed trucks and decaying church buildings, where a small girl of twelve or thirteen sat waiting on an ancient front porch swing. The yards were smeared with chicken dung, and she had come toward him, holding the gas stamps out for him to see as if to demonstrate the absolute, manifest goodness of her promise. He was home from military school and had met her the night before in a cheap movie house. Next to the water fountain. Munching on popcorn. The two of them bored with the movie. They had sat together on one of the back rows, kissing interminably. She promised gasoline stamps if only he would come take her someplace the next evening, and there he was with the family’s prewar Buick parked out front on the ruined street. “Someplace” was a wooded gravel pit she knew about, and after kissing and holding on to her small breasts during the final quarter hour of twilight, he suggested they move into the back seat. She slipped over the top, and before he could get a station fixed on the radio and extract two cigarettes from the pack above the visor, she had pulled off nearly all her clothes. She sat in a corner, small and lovely in her cotton knit underwear and thin brassiere, waiting for him, explaining, once he had joined her in back, that her older sister had instructed her in how it was done. She sat watching him, smiling faintly, waiting for something. Instead, they sat together in back, holding on to each other, until it was time to go. Outside her house he tried to return the gasoline stamps, but she wouldn’t accept them. Her father had come out on the porch, drunk and abusive, and there had not been time even to promise he would call.

He never seemed able to call, nor did he see her again, and now he sat at the end of the four-poster bed, watching Ouida in her rich girl’s cheap underwear, wishing he had. The memory of the child in the back seat of the old Buick filled him with regret. Where was she now? Whoring in New Orleans or disguising her innocence as an aging car hop along the border — he would have called her now under any circumstance. He could not remember her name. The street where she lived no longer even existed; a four-lane highway had long since supplanted those diseased neighborhoods. But the small girl, in his memory, seemed to embrace all of virtue in a world of barbarisms.

Ouida was talking. He had not been paying attention.

“I was so sick …”

She was still going on about that. He turned round on the bed and stretched out beside her. She continued to sit up with her shoulders resting against the back of the bed. She put her hand out and touched his face. He felt he should say something; he’d been silent for several minutes.

“You look like a little girl,” he said. He could not see her; his head was turned the other way and one arm was flung across her bare legs.

“Let’s get out of here,” Ouida said. “Let’s go someplace where everyone looks different.”

C
ATHRYN HAD WAITED IN
the front room while Willie looked for the blanket. She stood next to the side door, watching the progression of events at the party, trying, but not in the least succeeding, to share in the general rapture. The cowboy musicians were clearly drunk now, and they were playing overtime in exchange for whiskey and an opportunity to dance, every so often, with the women. The noise in the house had risen to such a pitch that it was nearly impossible to determine its individual components. It was just noise: bad music and loud talk, interspersed with whoops of maddened laughter, held together by the continuous thumping of bass chords. She watched Harris and Ellen Streeter grappling with one another behind a potted palm. Ellen was pale and stoic looking. Harris had kissed her and now had backed off, glaring at her. Ellen said something — it was impossible to hear any of it — and then Harris pulled her roughly against the wall. She shook loose and stepped away, as if gauging the distance, and then swung her small fist, cracking Harris smartly across the bridge of the nose and a corner of one eye.

Harris blinked in astonishment; he reached up and touched the nose and eye. Ellen watched him for a moment, then turned and walked off into the crowd. Harris’s face had gone red all over, and a single large teardrop advanced from the corner of the sore eye, spilling down his puffed cheek.

Willie appeared with the serape. “You ready?” he said to Cathryn.

“Just a minute,” Cathryn said. She told Willie about the blow Ellen Streeter had struck Harris behind the potted palm. They stood there for a few moments, watching Harris, who looked their way for an instant but did not seem really to notice anyone. He had a pocket handkerchief out and was blotting at both eyes. His face was still very red. Finally, he walked off in the direction of the bathroom.

Willie and Cathryn turned to leave, but Rinemiller reached them as they moved toward the side door.

“You there this afternoon when Earle made the jump?” he said.

Willie said yes, and Rinemiller said, “I mean were you there when he hit the ground? Did you see him when he hit?”

“No,” Willie said. “Giffen and Roy got there first. I’m not certain whether they actually saw him land — but they were there first. What’s matter?”

“It’s Earle,” Rinemiller said. “He pitched over in the kitchen a few minutes ago. Still passed out. Maybe it’s the booze, but I got to thinking maybe he cracked his head harder than he wanted to admit to himself this afternoon …”

“Well let’s go have a look,” Willie said.

“He’s out
cold,
” Rinemiller was saying as they pushed through the crowd. “His goddam eyes are all up in his head. His skin’s clammy and he looks awful …” He paused for a moment, thinking, and then added: “But no more awful than most drunks, I suppose.”

The party was still going good; people moved past and in front of them, looking reckless and extravagant and gloriously muddled. One of the women had been persuaded to sing, and she was going at it vigorously, in an occasionally off-key light opera voice, describing how it was when the Deep Purple fell.

In the kitchen, Earle Fielding was sprawled on the linoleum, his long legs half under the table. A sofa cushion had been slipped under his head, and there was a crowd gathered, pushing in close to see. Willie bent down to get a better look; he peeled back one eyelid but was uncertain about what exactly he was looking for; he attempted to take a pulse count; he kept losing it. Finally, he straightened up and said to Cathryn: “Wait here a minute. I’m going to go find Roy.”

He headed out of the kitchen and down the back hallway toward the little bedroom where he’d last seen Roy and Ouida. The bedroom door was closed, but light shone at the bottom, against the polished tile. He put his head against the door panel to listen. He rapped lightly and then once again, with more authority. He turned the knob and stepped inside. They’d left only their impressions on the unmade bed; other than the bed, there was little else. Willie wandered into the small bathroom, switched on the light, examined the tile floor, shook the dry shower curtain. He stared at himself in the mirror above the lavatory. His face seemed as bleached and pallid as Earle Fielding’s. He splashed cold water across tender eyelids. Then he switched off lights and left the room and moved back up the hall. Cathryn was at the other end, next to the door to the front bath. She took his arm and said: “Everyone’s gone crazy — really.”