Our Lady Of Greenwich Village (19 page)

Their relationship was turning into a fucking disaster. “Marry me,” she said, clutching at O'Rourke's sweater. “Please, marry me.” But O'Rourke could not. He loved her more than anything in this world, but he could not marry her. She was a really good, gentle, but confused person. And all he could see was some shitty house in the suburbs and coming home to an empty bottle of gin on the dining room table night after night, for the rest of his life.

That was more than twenty years ago, and he still felt the hurt. He had loved both Rebekah and Grace, but the energy and impetuousness of youth had destroyed both relationships. He pledged to himself that it would not happen with Sam McGuire.

“What are you thinking about?” asked McGuire, yawning as she came out of her nap.

“That fucking
dybbuk
,” O'Rourke responded.

“The what?”

“The
dybbuk
—my own personal demon.” McGuire didn't say a word. “I've got to change my life, Sam. Will you help me?”

“I'll do anything so long as it makes you happy,” said McGuire. “Just name it.”

“You ever run a congressional campaign?”

“No,” said McGuire with concern. “What are you thinking?”

“I'm thinking that for once, Sam, I have to do something good in my life, something truthful.”

“I love you,” said McGuire as she kissed him. O'Rourke wanted to say the same thing, but he thought of Rebekah and Grace and the words just wouldn't come.

What was wrong with him?

Love
was the most misused word in the language. Everybody used it, but few knew what it meant. Its twin was
truth
. Everybody demanded truth, but truth, like love, was always in the eye of the beholder. Love and truth. Truth and love. No two words were fraught with more potential and no two words could destroy so quickly. Sam moved to the edge of the bed and lit her cigarette, taking heavy drags and pushing the smoke out through her nose, and O'Rourke began to doze.

Then he thought he saw
her
again, out there in the shadows of his subconscious, telling him to do something. Her head was still covered, but it looked like she was speaking to him. She motioned him towards her and he tried and tried, but he could not reach her. He thought he could hear her voice, but then he wasn't sure. And in a flash she was upon him and he wanted to back away, but he couldn't. She had the eyes of his Grandmother Rosanna. Those eyes from the old sepia photograph. They were the same eyes as his mother, Mary Kavanagh. And they were his eyes also. That was the nicest thing Rebekah—or anyone else, for that matter—had ever said to him: “Tone, you have kind eyes.” The same eyes as his mother, his grandmother, and the specter. He thought he could now hear her. He tried hard. “In the cause of truth and mercy,” the specter said, “and for the sake of justice: may your right hand show your wondrous deeds.” A coldness and fear ran through O'Rourke.

As she stood and snuffed out her cigarette in a tea cup, McGuire caught the terrified look on O'Rourke's face as he began to awake. “What's wrong?” she asked.

“Oh, Sam,” said O'Rourke as he took McGuire's hand and pulled her into the bed and his arms, holding her tight in case she might try to escape. McGuire kissed his cheek, but O'Rourke's gaze shot right past her.

Then he remembered what he had recited to Sam before, during their love-making:“
Whence did all that fury come? / From empty tomb or Virgin womb?
” And only then did he realize who the specter was. He was pretty sure it was her, Our Lady of Greenwich Village.

“I
am not a sodomite!” shouted Chester Cockburn on New York

One, the local New York City cable news channel.

Thom Lamè smiled, almost feeling empathy. Lamè was anxious. In the past twenty-four hours, New York One had run the clip over and over of Cockburn melting down like the Wicked Witch of the West. And every time Lamè had seen it he had grown more anguished. He knew this was the time to make his move. He thought, one-on-one, he could beat Jackie Swift. He knew he could corral the nomination for the Liberal Party—they owed him one from the last time he had run against Swift. That time he had split the vote between himself and the Democratic incumbent, Fat Max Weissberg, which allowed Jackie Swift to go to Congress with only 37 percent of the vote. Fat Max loathed Lamè, and he had let the world know that the only reason Swift had been elected was because of Lamè's naked ambition. Lamè had indeed sucked up to the powers in the Liberal Party, who were helping out their patronage pals in the GOP. That debt had been paid off. This time Lamè wouldn't have to worry about Fat Max Weissberg—he had died shortly after the election. Still, Lamè agonized about getting the Democratic nomination. People had long memories. Even inside the gay community, he was not well liked for what he had done to his city council primary opponent, Lizzie Townsend. If he could only get Tone O'Rourke to work for him.

It had been a disastrous courtship. Lamè had tried to woo O'Rourke several times in the past, without success. The last time was when he had made his successful run for city councilman. Lamè had found O'Rourke standoffish. He had not returned his phone calls, and when Lamè had finally gotten him on the line, O'Rourke had been dismissive.

“You can't afford me, Mr.
Lame
,” O'Rourke said, testing the size of Lamè's political ego, eschewing the accent and intoning the synonym for “crippled.”

“It's
La-may
,” Lamè replied, clearly annoyed, “Lamè. Accent grave over the E.”

O'Rourke smiled. “You still can't afford me.”

“Yes, I can,” said Lamè stridently.

“Not this year,” O'Rourke had said and hung up the phone.

Let him wait, thought O'Rourke. He had been keeping an eye on Lamè. In the political consulting world the creed read that “Politics was show business for ugly people,” and that description fit Lamè perfectly. O'Rourke knew that every politician he had ever met was an opportunist, but Lamè seemed to go out of his way to highlight his opportunism. The campaign against Max Weissberg and the Democratic Party had been bad enough, but after watching the way Lamè had run his campaign for city council, O'Rourke realized that no gutter was too dirty for Lamè.

If it had anything to do with gays, he was out there, as though he had been given the tablets by the Gay Moses at the Stonewall that June day in 1969. Lamè was for mom, apple pie, and the repeal of the sodomy laws. He demanded that the cops crack down on gay bashers. He sought free “condoms on demand” for school children, even at the elementary school level. His work would be done, he told cheering throngs on Gay Pride Day, when same sex marriage was made legal. “I may not see the Promised Land,” he said, mimicking Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “but I know
you'll
eventually get there.” Thom Lamè had absolutely no shame.

O'Rourke had been amused by gay politicians for years. He had told his friend Congressman Barney Frank, “Thirty years from now you'll be a Republican.” Frank had laughed, but he knew what O'Rourke meant. The thing that O'Rourke admired so much about gays was that they had political power, and they knew how to use it. They wielded a devastating disproportionate political clout that the city's other minorities had never achieved. And because they voted en masse, it gave them political power that the blacks and Latinos could only dream about. Not for one second did O'Rourke think that any politician, be it Bill Clinton or Rudy Giuliani, gave a fuck about the gay agenda. What they did understand was that gays voted in a solid block and used that power like a political blunderbuss. The gays, like the Irish before them, knew how to work the vote. And like the Irish they were slowly beginning to evolve. O'Rourke was amused to note that gays, once proud of being outcasts and pariahs, now wanted to be part of the homogenized mainstream. In an age where Americans had basically repudiated the sanctity of marriage by their spiraling divorce rate, gays had embraced the institution that the masses now found less than sacred.

What particularly disturbed O'Rourke was Lamè's campaign that had gotten him elected to the city council in the first place. It was a tough battle between him and Lizzie Townsend. In the beginning, the campaign had been fought completely on the issues, but as primary day approached the gay cajoling had become acute. First Lamè had adopted a gay lisp. O'Rourke noticed that at no time when he talked with Lamè on the phone had he lisped. Subtlety, O'Rourke presumed, was not one of Lamè's strong points. O'Rourke, being the student of American politics he was, thought it great theatre.

The lisp was a harbinger of things to come. Although a champion of gay rights, Lamè had never officially revealed his sexual orientation. The time, as they say in politics, was ripe. “I'm gay, I'm queer, I'm out of the closet!” Lamè had told a candlelight rally in Christopher Park, right across the street from Hogan's Moat. There had been tears and hugs and everyone had told him how brave he was. Even better, he had made all the newscasts that night. The ball was now in poor Lizzie Townsend's court.

Three days later Lizzie came out. “I'm a lesbian. Have always been a lesbian. Will always be a lesbian.”

“After seven innings of play,”O'Rourke had told his staff,“Cocksucker 1, Muff Diver 1.” He could hardly wait to see what knuckleball of a pitch Lamè had hidden in his arsenal to close out the game.

The Sunday before the primary, Lamè made his move. “Not only am I gay,” he said to a packed house at the Stonewall, “but I'm also HIV-positive!”

“Game, set, match. Lamè,” O'Rourke declared.

“I'd love to see Lizzie beat this guy,” said Pepoon.

“Don't hold your breath,” cautioned O'Rourke. “She can't beat him. The logical conclusion to this little pissing match would be for Townsend to declare that she had AIDS and would soon be fucking dead!”

Lamè had polarized the gay vote, much in the same manner that Vito Fopiano liked to play one ethnic group against the other. Gay men—numerically superior in the district—had embraced Lamè, while lesbians had backed Lizzie Townsend. O'Rourke was impressed with Lamè. He didn't approve, but he admired his superb manipulative techniques. Lamè, O'Rourke knew, was thoroughly ruthless.

At the top of the hour Chester Cockburn was again shouting on New York One that he wasn't a sodomite. “I'm going to run,” said Thom Lamè to himself, “and I'm going to get Wolfe Tone O'Rourke to manage my campaign.”

Congressman Thom Lamè.

He liked the sound of that. But Thom Lamè had secrets, dirty little secrets, and Wolfe Tone O'Rourke had a pretty good idea what they were.

S
am McGuire proved a tough taskmaster. There was never any talk of her moving in with O'Rourke—she never left after that first day. She would get up with O'Rourke every morning at five o'clock, and make a simple breakfast of fresh-squeezed orange juice and an English muffin while he showered. He stubbornly refused to join a gym, so she would send him off before the dawn broke. But not to the office; O'Rourke would take the number 1 train to Columbus Circle and begin the long walk down Seventh Avenue to the Village and his office on Christopher Street. As she pushed him out his own door, McGuire would kiss him gently on the lips and sweetly say, “I'm going back to bed for awhile. I'll see you at the office later.”

And O'Rourke, finally wise after all these years, would nod and say the smartest thing a man could be trained to utter, “Yes, dear.”

O'Rourke was already beginning to look better. She had brought him to his barber and said, “Cut it off. Give him a Steve McQueen haircut.” His long locks hit the floor and pretty soon you could see the O'Rourke of his youth emerging. His beard was now trimmed tight, and new, smaller glasses gave him a cut, smart look. At lunch time they would walk south for an hour, down into SoHo.

At night, he did all the cooking simply because he was better at it and McGuire had absolutely no interest in it herself. While O'Rourke was puttering around with the spaghetti and sausage or chicken in a mushroom sauce or the steak au poivre she would sit in her underwear and paint her toenails. O'Rourke thought it was great. He didn't miss the drink at all because he was happy. He soon realized that the booze was an empty friend. It never spoke to you or hugged you or kissed you, did nothing for you but dulled you and begrudgingly got you through another day. Within weeks the McGuire Regimen had begun to turn O'Rourke into a new man. With just sensible diet, exercise, and no booze, O'Rourke was losing pounds by the day.

But not all was sunshine. O'Rourke still awoke in the small hours of the morning, his demons pursuing him. Sam would be lying in his arms, but there would often still be terror in his heart. O'Rourke had become obsessed with Fat Max Weissberg's old congressional seat. Should he run or not? O'Rourke would decide to go for it, then change his mind the next day. He would lie awake in the middle of the night with nothing but the sound of traffic going down Seventh Avenue and the small bursts of air coming out of Sam's nose as she slept with her head on his shoulder and chest.

Then O'Rourke would begin to drift off, and the dream would come again. Our Lady of Greenwich Village. O'Rourke wondered if they were now sharing the Virgin, he and Jackie. O'Rourke didn't know what the Virgin wanted of him, but he knew she was
of
him.

The Blessed Virgin was deliberately tempting O'Rourke, like a chaste seductress. She was cute, elusive—as if she wanted O'Rourke to pursue her. He didn't know if he should chase or not, because sometimes, frankly, she frightened him. He had spoken with Sam that night and told her he was going to run for Fat Max's old seat. He wanted her to be his campaign manager. “What do you think?” he asked Sam.

“I think you should run,” she replied.

“What if I fail?”

“We'll pack up and move to Ireland,” was her perfect reply. O'Rourke knew he had nothing to lose.

They had made love, but O'Rourke could not fall asleep afterward. His mind was too active with plans that he would announce to his staff in the morning. Slowly he had drifted off with only the sound of Sam's little snores that he had grown used to. That is when Our Lady of Greenwich Village had come back to him. She was again swimming in nothingness, darting to and fro, like a celestial stripper. What did she want?

“Tone,” she said in a whisper. “Tone.”

O'Rourke, in sleep, could see himself trying to pull his head away, but his body was too heavy and he was trapped, a captive audience to this apparition. She would not show her face. The veil hung loosely over her eyes and he tried different angles to see who it was. It was no use. But he knew he knew her.

Out of frustration he said, “Should I run?”

There was no response.

“Should I?” he repeated.

The Virgin said, loud and distinct: “Grace is poured out upon your lips: thus God has blessed you forever.” O'Rourke shook his head, totally befuddled. “I think I will leave you now, Tone,” said Our Lady of Greenwich Village and she began to back away, sliding as if on tracks.

Strangely, O'Rourke felt betrayed.

“No,” he snapped, his fear of her dissipating. “Don't leave me now. I need you to guide me.” He wanted to reach out to her, to jump into the dream, but he couldn't.

For some reason he thought of his mother. And the day she died. He was with her that morning, but had to meet an important client. “Now don't work too hard,” was the last thing she said to him. She was the only person who had ever said that to him. A strange thing to say, but also a sweet thing. She had always worked hard in the kitchens of the Anglo-Irish in Dublin, and of the Jews and Protestants in New York. “Now don't work too hard,” was maybe her way of saying, “because look where it's gotten me.”

She had said she wasn't feeling well, but O'Rourke was not concerned. His mother would never die on him. He must go to this important meeting. When he returned later that day she was dead and stiff and cold, and O'Rourke had never forgiven himself. They say death is one of the three things that every person must do alone. “Be born. Die. Testify,” Mayor Jimmy Walker had once joked. But it was not true. You are not born alone, and you should not have to die alone. When he was born in Hollis Street Hospital in Dublin his mother had been there, and when she died he had cruelly left her alone. Perhaps Our Lady knew of his mother. Perhaps Our Lady could take a message to Mary Kavanagh. “I need you,” he heard himself say. “Please help me.”

With that plea he could see Our Lady returning to him. He knew she was smiling behind her veil. Why? He only wished he could see her full face. “Sing to the Lord a new song,” she said, “for He has done wondrous deeds.”

All he could see was that one damn eye. An eye that he knew. And then the most extraordinary thing happened. Our Lady of Greenwich Village winked at him. And his dream ended.

“Is everyone here?” asked Tone O'Rourke of the throng that had overrun his office and was hanging out the door and into the hall. Pepoon and McGuire were standing behind him at his desk. Fergus T. Caife and Moe Luigi were huddled in a corner. Tommy Boyle was standing next to Clarence Black. Cyclops Reilly was alone by himself sitting in the windowsill, ogling the young female assistants. Nuncio Baroody was on the other side of the office, ogling the young male assistants.

“Tone has an announcement to make,” said Winthrop Pepoon, and the hum dissipated.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” O'Rourke began, “I have decided to run in the Democratic Primary in June as a candidate for the 7th Congressional District.” He was met with a round of applause and whistles. He put up his hand for quiet. “It's April now. We don't have much time to file our petitions and get on the ballot. Sam McGuire will be my campaign manager and everyone will report to her. We have much work to do, starting immediately. We will need buttons, posters, T-shirts. I will need a personalized 800-number. Clarence Black,” O'Rourke said as he pointed him out, “will be in charge of security. Nuncio Baroody—give a wave Nuncio—will be our liaison with the gay community. And the indispensable Tommy Boyle will be the keeper of the petitions. I will make the official announcement within days. Any questions?”

“What will the buttons say?”

“NO MORE BULLSHIT,” said O'Rourke with glee. “I'm stealing this directly from the Mailer-Breslin campaign of 1969. They were right then, and I'm right now.”

“How about the 800 number?”

“I'm still working on that,” said O'Rourke, “but it will have to be catchy, because this is how we're going to raise funds. Same with the T-shirt. Right now VOTE FOR TONE will suffice, but there'll be more. Let's see how the opening weeks of the campaign go.”

“What exactly,” asked Nuncio Baroody, “am I supposed to do with my fellow cocksuckers?”

There was embarrassed laughter, then silence. “Get used to it folks,” said O'Rourke. “This is not going to be the kind of boring campaign that has forced the voters of this country into a coma. We are going to be audacious, and we are going to be tough. We are not taking shit from anyone. To answer your question, Nuncio, you're going to be my floor manager at the caucus of the VQD, the Village Queer Democrats. I want their endorsement. Got it?”

“Got it,” said Nuncio. “When do I get paid?”

“Don't worry, Nuncio,” said O'Rourke amid the laughter, “you'll get yours. Anything else now? Okay, if you have any questions, direct them to Sam. Let's get moving!”

The room cleared, and O'Rourke was left with his friends.

“You are out of your fucking mind,” said Pepoon.

“No hope,” said the poet Caife.

Black, Baroody, and Luigi nodded their heads in agreement. McGuire slid her arm inside of O'Rourke's for support, and pulled on his wrist to bring him closer to her. The statements had stung O'Rourke. Even with Sam's armlock, he felt alone. Strangely, he again thought of Mary Kavanagh on the morning of her death. Sam could feel the chemistry of his body language change. He was in doubt again. Maybe he had made the wrong decision.

“I don't think so,” said Cyclops Reilly. “I think Tone can win.” Reilly stood in the middle of the room alone, all eyes on him. He looked like a tired soldier-of-fortune with his eye patch and his hands dug into the pockets of his tweed jacket. “I remember being very frightened one time in Vietnam when I got hit by shrapnel,” he softly said. “I couldn't see. I was in shock. And I thought I was going to die.” Still facing the small group he started to walk backwards, then stopped. “There was this little prick of a navy corpsman who stopped me from bleeding to death and got me into a helicopter. As they were putting me on board, I noticed he was bleeding on me from a huge hole in his arm. But he stayed with me. And then he shouted over the din of the copter blades: ‘
Cad a dhéanfaidh mach an chait ac luch do mharú?
' I didn't know what the fuck he was saying to me. Then he gave me the translation: ‘What will the cat's son do but kill a mouse?' He told me it was an old Westie saying—from the Gaelic, no less—which I found out later it wasn't. But I held onto that saying like it was a sacred talisman. Like it alone could save me. It stuck in my head as I got out of that rice paddy, out of the hospital, and out of fucking Vietnam forever.

“Now,” continued Reilly, “that same corpsman is in this room and he's going to run for Congress. I know this man better than I know any other human being on this earth. He's scared right now because he's always scared. He's tormented now because he's one of the few men I know who really cares. He's looking for some kind of redemption. From what? I don't know. Redemption for Vietnam? For what he did to Bobby Kennedy?” O'Rourke looked at the floor when Reilly mentioned Kennedy, and McGuire's jaw fell open in shock. “Well, Tone,” Reilly went on, “there is no salvation, no redemption for any of us in this fucking life. When Tone goes out there he will be vulnerable. They will call him a terrorist because of what he did for those IRA guys back in Dublin in the'70s. They will call him a traitor for going AWOL. He will be an easy target—like I once was—so there's only one thing I can say to him: ‘
Cad a dhéanfaidh mach an chait ac luch do mharú?
'”