Gossip (18 page)

“Uh, no.” Had that been the purpose of this visit?

“The salt of the earth, my folks. Private and unworldly. Innocent. It would hurt them to think that their neighbors knew the truth about their son.”

“And they know you’re gay, even your father?”

“They know. Oh yeah.” He snorted over that. “Don’t let my old man’s bluffing fool you. He’s a sentimental fool. And emotional. Too emotional for his own good. Which makes him a lousy businessman. Just a big kid at heart. But I love him.”

He couldn’t hide his condescension. The distance between father and son was mutual, even if Bill didn’t want to admit it. “Do you know what time’s the next train?” I asked.

“Ralph? Do you really have to go back tonight? Wouldn’t you rather come home with me and catch a train in the morning?”

“Sorry. I have to be at the bookstore at nine.”

“Can’t you call in sick? Please. I don’t feel like spending tonight alone. Especially after seeing my folks.”

He now used his parents for pity, but I resisted. “I can’t do that to the people I work with. I’d leave them shorthanded.”

He sighed through his nose. “I won’t beg. Just an idea.”

We drove downtown in silence. I worried about what to say if he asked when we’d see each other again. He didn’t. Maybe he was waiting for me to ask him.

He did not pull into the illuminated portico of the station entrance but stopped the car in the shadows fifty yards away.

“I’ll let you off here,” he said, the engine still running. “Was a great weekend. Wasn’t it?”

“I won’t forget it. Thanks.”

“Thanks for coming. Many times,” he said with a smirk.

I was still undoing my seat belt when he leaned over and took my head in both hands. Despite everything I knew, his kiss was electric, naked, as if his heart were in my mouth. I could resist the sexual pull only by keeping my eyes open and watching his lids twitch in the panes of eyeglass between us.

“No?” he said when he let me breathe again, grinning confidently.

“Sorry.” I jerked open the door and dragged my bag from the backseat. “We’ll talk. You’ll hear from me, don’t worry.”

“I never thought that,” he laughed. “I was only worried about tonight. Your loss,” he said cheerfully. “Good night.”

“Good-bye.” I swung the solid, clockwork door shut. I palmed a farewell to the hunched silhouette in a tinted window before I hurried into the station.

Solitude felt like wisdom. The northbound train pulled in ten minutes later, crowded with other relieved travelers returning from weekends with lovers or family. I found a seat beside a napping girl with a marketing textbook on her tray. I relaxed, closed my eyes and thought about nothing. The warm tube of light swayed through the darkness. I had no regrets about not going home with Bill, until we passed Wilmington.

I couldn’t help it. One last time, one more orgasm. Sex had become a bad habit. It would not have been the mindless lark of before, yet bad sex tonight might make my kiss-off letter easier to write. There was no affection in my need, only hormones and resentment. By what right had he enjoyed me so much? I was angry with him for turning out to be so unlovable. Pictured nude, Bill now seemed to have been nothing but a smiley face with a hard-on.

I got up and took the bound galleys from my bag in the rack, needing to remind myself why I could never sleep with him again.

But his book was not as awful as I remembered. Dull, yes, tediously smug, but it no longer shocked me. Its antifeminist line seemed lazy, passionless and secondhand. Now and then, an argument was almost persuasive. The charge that feminism had ruined public education, once full of brilliant women barred from other careers, actually forced me to stop and think before I saw what was wrong with the assumption that women but not men should sacrifice their lives for the next generation.

I seemed to have an infinite capacity for being shocked, then digesting those shocks so I could see Bill again. Is that what my cool reading meant? I wasn’t going to break off with him?

The chapter about the Clintons’ marriage did not surprise me after the exchange on the boat. It focused on his infidelities, but blamed her for failing to provide “the intimate attentions any successful man requires.” The last sentence read: “One cannot help but wonder why the First Lady seems incapable of showing more love for a man as handsome and virile, albeit overweight, as her husband.”

The next chapter, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” began: “It’s a truth universally acknowledged that smart, independent women are attracted to other smart, independent women. The venerable tradition of the Washington lesbian …”

He was calling Hillary a dyke? I was shocked again. I wondered what his proof would be, what the libel lawyers said. But there was no mention of Hillary in what followed, only a discussion of Eleanor Roosevelt with footnotes citing a biography by a lesbian scholar, followed by tales of other “New Deal sisters,” a woman in the Carter administration and a lengthy account of the recent confirmation hearings of the assistant secretary of HUD. His accusation of Hillary was pure innuendo, planted in the reader’s mind yet never addressed.

As before, the denials of his footnotes were more honest than the text:

“12. This is not to suggest anything inherently wrong about lesbians in public office, whether elected or appointed, especially when they are in a loving, monogamous couple, as Achtenberg clearly is. Difficulties arise only in relationships that spill from private into public life, creating alliances and influences whose true nature is hidden from voters. One recently elected senator, a married mother with children, is known to have increased her support for such feminist measures as child care and federally funded abortion since she became the lover of her openly lesbian speechwriter. What the senator does on the side is a matter for her and her husband, of course, but any undue influence expressed between perfumed sheets should concern her peers and constituency.”

I reread the footnote. I read it a third time. I stared out the window. There was nothing to see except darkness and my blurred, tilted reflection.

My first clear thought was: Nancy fibbed. She and Senator Freemen
were
lovers. But then I remembered who wrote this and realized it was a lie. A tremendous lie. About my best friend. Made public by a man I’d been humping. He didn’t name names, only how many lesbian speechwriters were there who worked for women senators? I had to warn Nancy. A rumor like this could do terrible damage. Couldn’t it?

And the next thought struck: Bill had gotten this from me. Had I mentioned Nancy’s crush during our first meeting before I knew who he was? What had I told him that night? I couldn’t recall. I knew I’d mentioned a friend who worked for Senator Freeman, so Bill knew that I knew her yet had said nothing.

The little shit. Poor Nancy. Criminally stupid me. When I remembered that these were “uncorrected proofs,” and Bill hadn’t corrected his galleys when we first met, it seemed too good to be true. He’d gotten this dirt somewhere else. Yet the feeling that
I’d
done something wrong remained stuck like a bone in my throat. That knot of culpability seemed to be the one thing that blocked my desire to kill the arrogant little bastard.

“N
ANCY. IT’S RALPH. SORRY
to be calling so late but this is important. Are you there? I’ve come across something you should know. I don’t know how major it is, but we need to talk. Give me a call. Tonight when you get in, no matter how late. Or tomorrow, except this might not be something you can discuss at work.”

I phoned as soon as I got home. It was after midnight and I hoped Nancy would pick up, but was relieved when she didn’t. I needed time to think this through, only thinking about it alone made the danger more elastic and imaginary, like a ghost story spun by a bad conscience. I did not fall asleep until three. The telephone never rang. A cold wind rattled the loose panes of my window all night long.

I took the galleys with me to the store the next day. Nobody even knew Bill existed except Peter. He arrived fifteen minutes after I did, stiffly bundled like a mummy when he trudged down the stairs. I followed him into the locker room. He’d hung up his coat and was unreeling his scarf.

“Cyberslut is back!” he laughed. “How was Anita Bryant country?”

“Can you look at something? Look and tell me what you think.” I held up the generic gray galleys; I’d trashed the glossy brown jacket at home.

“And good morning to you,” he snorted. “What is it?”

“A book that Thersites wrote. I want to know if I’m crazy or if something is as awful as it looks.”

“Jesus, Ralph. It’s only a book. You take the printed word much too seriously. So what’s his big sin against literature?”

I opened at the dog-ear. “Just read the footnote. Tell me what you think.”

“You have fun in sunny Florida?”

“No. Read.”

His long face relaxed into a weary pout as his eyes twitched through the words.

“So monogamous dykes are A-okay,” he muttered. “How nice.”

“Keep going.”

When he finished, he wrinkled his nose in mild disgust. “Smarmy. I’ve seen worse. But a gay man wrote this?”

“It’s Nancy.”

“Your
Nancy? Oh my God.” He dipped his face back into the pages. “And she’s sleeping with her boss?”

“She isn’t. But when this comes out next month, people will figure it’s her and Senator Freeman and think they’re lovers.”

“Lesbo
Back Street.
Poor Queen Wenceslas. How embarrassing.”

“Worse than embarrassing. It could hurt her with Freeman and the people they work with.”

“But they’re not lovers? You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“No stolen kisses at the water fountain? No late-night muff-diving in the cloakroom?”

“No!”

“Then nobody will get hurt. She and her senator might even get a good laugh.”

“You think?” I hadn’t considered that.

“They’re grown-ups. They must get this high school confidential stuff all the time.”

He said it idly, carelessly, yet his nonchalance was enough to reduce my panic.

He flipped through pages. “This is the guy you’re seeing? What did you say to him?”

“I haven’t said anything yet.”

“He didn’t give you this?”

“I swiped it. He doesn’t know I have a copy.”

Peter began to chuckle.

“What’s so funny?”

“You, dear. This.” He shut the book and returned it. “The whole thing’s a hoot. Don’t you think?”

“No. I don’t.”

He gave me a lopsided, pitying smile. “Just trashy gossip, in another book about politics. Why do you want to make it into
Tosca?
You need to believe that you’re part of some big drama?”

“I don’t want
any
drama in my life. I can’t believe I’ve been going to bed with the kind of asshole who could write this kind of sleaze. Not just about Nancy but other people too.”

“Love, oh careless love.”

“I was never in love with him.”

“You must have loved something if you could ignore his calling until now.”

“I was horny and stupid. You’re the one who told me not to let politics get in the way of a good lay, remember.”

“Gee. Too bad I didn’t get
my
nuts licked since it was my fault.” He was losing patience with my belated virtue.

“That’s not what I meant. Okay. I knew I was playing in shit. I just had no idea it was so deep.”

“So you’re not seeing him again?”

I glared at Peter in disbelief. “You think I’m that flakey? I’ve damned him here”—I pointed at my head. “All that remains is to tell him, which I intend to do tonight.”

“Good. If he makes you unhappy.” Peter closed his eyes and sighed. “Sorry if I’m not taking your crisis in the proper spirit, Ralph. But love affairs just don’t seem all that tragic to me anymore. Only fun, then messy and absurd.”

“Which is why you’re such a good ear,” I claimed, wondering how our conversation had become a quarrel, and if I should trust his judgment after all.

To: thersites @ br.caton.md. From: sgtrock @ gw.ny.ny. Bill,

When I returned to the store after our weekend in Miami, an advance copy of your book fell into my hands. I just finished reading it and I have to say: I am appalled. It’s not the politics that disturb me, although that’s the wrong word for this stew of gossip, innuendo and sexism. There are no ideas here, only prejudice and insult. I was shocked by your mindless slinging of mud. What I found absolutely unforgivable, however, was the footnote on page 175, where you accuse a U.S. senator of having an affair with her speechwriter.

You and I both know that this is Senator Freeman and my friend Nancy. I happen to know that they are not lovers and never were. You have opened yourself to a libel suit. Worse, your lie hurts a close friend of mine, someone who’s never harmed you or anyone else. And you do it in a footnote, slamming her as carelessly as a man slapping a mosquito. I wonder how many others you anonymously harm that I didn’t notice because I don’t know them. You knew that I knew Nancy, yet said nothing to warn me or explain or apologize for what you were doing.

You would have to be blind not to realize that I’ve had second, third and fourth thoughts about us ever since we met. It was over our political differences yet I now see that your politics are symptoms of deeper faults: opportunism, thoughtlessness and self-absorption. I should be grateful to you for showing in cold print how morally blind you are, and what an ass I’ve been. I have been sleeping with the enemy—“sleeping” is the operative word. Thank you for waking me up.

I don’t know what you have to say for yourself or if I want to hear it. Right now, I never want to speak to you again. I have never been so angry with anyone in my life. I cannot picture you tonight without wanting to punch your face in. That sounds like cheap cliché but it’s exactly what I feel.

Ralph Eckhart

I’d intended to remain cool and objective so that my charges wouldn’t seem merely personal. When I began to write, however, I found my anger flooding up in blunt sentences and raw words. If it had been a letter instead of E-mail, I might have reread and revised it. Instead I hit Send. The screen blinked while a black hole copied me. I held my breath, as if I expected the telephone to ring or the world to blow up.