Gay Place (3 page)

“Who’s that? Who wrote it, then?”

“A lobbyist for the schoolteachers. A lawyer from the education agency.”

“Who else?”

“Me.”

“Well let’s take a run with it,” Fenstemaker said.

“Who’ll we get to floor-manage?”

“Who’s on the committee?” the Governor said.

“You know that committee better than I do,” Jay said.

“Name some,” Fenstemaker said. “I forget.”

“Who you want me to name?”

“Name some.”

Jay named some of the members.

“They don’t sound so good to me,” the Governor said.

“They aren’t,” Jay said. “We’d probably end up with half a bill. Old Hoffman’s not much, but he won’t lose us any votes. He knows how to manage a bill.”

“How ’bout Roy Sherwood?” Fenstemaker said.

“Roy’s a good friend of mine,” Jay said.

“So?”

“But he’s not exactly one of our boys.”

“Maybe he just never got invited in,” the Governor said.

“He’s pretty damned independent,” Jay said. “And lazy. That’s a bad combination.”

Chimes from the college signaled the half hour. The highway patrolman polished the limousine on the side drive. The butler came into the room with an enormous slice of watermelon. Fenstemaker broke off a piece with his hand and began to eat. There was a silence on the phone while the Governor ate watermelon. Then he said: “He help write that bill? He do anything at all?”

There was another silence before Jay began to answer: “That’s right. He helped a lot. Fact is, he was the only one on that lousy committee who gave a damn. With Hoffman gone.”

“Well old Hoff got it reported out for us before he went to the hospital,” Fenstemaker said.

“How’d you know about Roy?”

“It just sort of came to me in the night,” the Governor said.

“Well I thought you might disapprove. My getting him to help us. He’s a friend of mine, like I said, and we needed some help from someone on the committee. Desperately.”

“All right,” the Governor said. “That’s just fine. I’m delighted. You think he could carry it?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t. He’s never worked a bill in three terms here. I’m not even sure he’d accept the job.”

“Well I’ll just ask him and see.”

“You think he could hold the votes we’ve got? He might scare some off.”

“See about that, too,” the Governor said. He paused, and then added: “He ain’t worn himself out on Earle Fielding’s wife, has he?”

There was a pause before Jay answered: “That piece of information just come to you in the night, too?”

“Everything does,” the Governor said, his voice warm with pleasure. “Borne on the wind. Like a cherub. It do fly … Listen … We’ll just see how old Roy reacts. Okay? Take a little run. Pull out all the stops and try to get this thing through. Maybe tomorrow. We can’t afford to wait much longer. They’ll be building up opposition soon’s it appears Hoffman’s well. We put off any time, we lose votes and we lose hard cash in that bill … You want some cash for Hopkinsville, don’t you? We’ll just have to get that goddam thing through in a hurry. Can’t afford to have any great debates …”

Jay was silent on the other end of the line while Fenstemaker talked. Then the Governor rang off without formality. He dialed another number on the phone and waited during the six or seven rings. He pressed the disconnect and dialed again. After another interval, Roy Sherwood answered.

“What’re you doin’?” Fenstemaker boomed.

“Sleeping,” Roy Sherwood said. “Real good, too.”

“Hell of a note,” Fenstemaker said. “World’s cavin’ in all round us; rocket ships blastin’ off to the moon; poisonous gas in our environment … Sinful goddam nation … laden with iniquity, offspring of evildoers. My princes are rebels and companions of thieves …”

“What?”

“… A horror and a hissing …”

“Who the hell is this?”

“Isaiah,” Fenstemaker said. “The Prophet Isaiah.”

“I’m going to hang up in just about three seconds,” Roy said, “but first I’d really like to know who the hell this is?”

“Arthur Goddam Fenstemaker. Hah yew?”

“I think it really is,” Roy said after a moment. “Governor? That you?”

“Come over the Mansion and see,” Fenstemaker said. “You like watermelon? I got some damn good watermelon. You come over here and we’ll break watermelon together.”

Roy’s response was plaintive but respectful: “It’s awful early in the morning for breakfast.”

“Nearly eight.”

“I know,” Roy said. “That gives me nearly three hours sleep.”

“Well, you’re a young man. I needed five.”

Roy was silent.

“You come over and talk to me about this bill?” Fenstemaker said.

“What bill’s that?”

“That school thing you did for Jay. Damn good job.”

“Thanks. I appreciate it. But what do you want to talk about?”

“About when you’re gonna get off your ass and pass it for me.”

“
Pass
it. Hell, I’m just the ghost writer. Passin’ it is your —”

“I mean take charge in that madhouse.”

“Hah?”

“I mean floor-manage for me.”

“You sure you got the right man, Governor? I never in my life —”

“I got you, all right,” the Governor said. “Roy Emerson Sherwood. Non-practicin’ lawyer. Family’s got cattle, little cotton. Never struck no oil, though. Elected sixty-third Legislature. Re-elected without opposition to sixty-fourth, sixty-fifth. Never did goddam thing here till you wrote that bill the other day …”

“You got the right man, I guess,” Roy said.

“You help me with that bill on the floor?”

“When you plan to bring it up?”

“Tomorrow.”

“
Tomorrow!
Godalmighty —”

“Day after, maybe. Come on over here.”

“Governor, I couldn’t learn the
number
that bill, condition I’m in right now. Let me sleep a little. Just a little. Let me think about it.”

“
Sinful
goddam nation … Laden with iniquity … My princes are —”

“All right,” Roy said wearily.

“How you like your goddam eggs?” the Governor said.

T
HE TWO YOUNG MEN
sat out under the trees in straw-bottomed chairs, barking their shins against the wooden tables. They sat waiting, looking glum. Record music came from a speaker overhead, somewhere in the trees. The music was turned loud so it could be heard above the noise from a next-door bowling alley. There were periods of relative quiet when the bowling slacked off and the records changed, during which they could hear halfhearted cheers from a lighted intramural field a block away, near the college, but the record music predominated. The sounds from the bowling alley ruined only the ballads.

Roy Sherwood looked around and groaned.

“You don’t like music?” Willie said. “And a gay party atmosphere?”

“I like music fine,” Roy said. “I just don’t like these gap-toothed teddy boys raping some old favorite with a chorus of ex-truckdrivers behind them going ‘ooh-ah, oom-ah, ooh-ah.’ ” He looked around the beer garden impatiently. “Can’t they turn it down?”

“That would be a violence to the whole idea of the Dearly Beloved,” Willie said.

“Exactly,” Roy said.

Willie said: “It’s not so bad. What was it Rinemiller was saying the other day?”

“Rinemiller’s a sewer,” Roy said.

“He said it was
genuine.
Simple and alive and —”

“A sod and a sewer,” Roy said conclusively. He looked around for the waitress.

They sat talking. There were twenty or thirty others, mostly young people, out under the trees, sitting at the unwashed tables, and through the windows of the building the boiled faces of some of the old-time customers were visible. It was still very early in the evening: the lights had just now come on, and the Dearly Beloved Beer and Garden Party was only partly filled.

A waitress finally appeared. She was a pretty girl, wearing a white uniform with a faded checkered apron. She smiled and said: “Ike and Mike — my favorite customers.”

“Stop calling us that,” Roy said. “Think of something else.” He did not look at the waitress, but gave his attention instead to a group of undergraduates and their dates just now arriving.

“You don’t like Ike and Mike?” the girl said.

“It’s just that neither of us wants to be Ike,” Willie said.

The girl nodded. “You want menus?”

“Some of the light,” Willie said.

“How about a pitcher?” the waitress said.

The two young men hesitated, looking at each other, numbed momentarily by the weight of decision. The bowling eased off some next door. A singer’s voice came to them through the trees:

Tew …

Spen’ …

One …

Naaaht …

Wishyew …

“Let’s get a pitcher,” Willie said.

“We wait for Huggins, he’ll buy pitchers for everyone,” Roy said. The waitress swayed slightly to the music, looking away, her eyes foggy.

“You strapped again?” Willie said.

“No. Trying to avoid it, though. I’m budgeting myself. Watch the pennies, the dollars take care of themselves.”

The waitress leaned down and rested her elbows on the table. She looked at the young men closely. “It’s only
seventy-five cents,
” she said.

“It mounts up,” Roy said. “And I’m out of work.”

“You make thirty dollars a day, for God’s sake,” the waitress said. “I read it in the paper.”

“Only when we’re in session,” Roy said. “And that money’s got to last me the year round. Otherwise, I’d have to practice the law. Or live off lobbyists. You tryin’ to corrupt me?”

“Two glasses of the light,” Willie said. “And when you see Huggins come in, ask if he wants to order some pitchers.”

The waitress nodded.

“I’ll get your lousy fifteen-cent beers,” the girl said.

She turned, walked across the garden and up the stone steps into the building.

The beer garden was shielded on three sides by the low yellow frame structure, a U-shaped Gothicism, scalloped and jigsawed and wonderfully grotesque. The bar, the kitchen and dining spaces were at the front; the one side and the back were clubrooms for the Germans who came to town once or twice a week to bowl and play cards. The Germans had bought half the block years before and built the bar and clubrooms. During the hard times of the 1930s they had begun leasing out the front part as a public bar, an arrangement that had proved so profitable that it was continued through the war years and was now apparently destined for the ever-after.

Just prior to the war there had been rumors of German-American Bund meetings in the back rooms. People in town talked about seeing goosestepping farmers through the windows, their arms raised in fascist salute. But nothing was ever proved; no one ever came forward to substantiate the claims, and after Pearl Harbor it was nearly forgotten. There was even a little plaque got up to honor certain of the clientele gone off to war; there were waitresses who boasted of being Gold Star Sweethearts. Business — and the beer — had always been good, before, during, after the war, and even in recent years when some of Roy’s and Willie’s friends had petitioned for a change in names: when they wanted to call it the
Weltschmertz.

The waitress brought the two glasses of beer. She came toward them, both hands occupied, weaving between the bare tables and the crowds of people. The place was gradually filling. “Thirty cents,” the girl said.

Roy insisted on paying. He pushed out a half dollar. The waitress hesitated with the change. “You want some pennies?” she said. “Let’s see — ten per cent of thirty is …” Roy waved her off.

“I’m going to be short the end of the month,” he said. “I got to get in good with my friends.”

“You don’t have any friends left,” Willie said. “They’re all furious.”

“As it should be,” Roy said. “They’re all sewers.”

“They disapprove.”

“Stuffiest bunch of bohemians ever existed,” Roy said.

Willie shrugged. “It’s just they don’t think you ought to be hoo-hawin’ around with a fellow legislator’s wife,” he said. “Even a fellow
ex
-legislator’s wife.”

“Or even a fellow
ex
-legislator’s
ex
-wife,” Roy said.

“She’s not Mrs. Ex yet,” Willie said.

“I got censured today,” Roy said. “My district caucus.”

“Oh, Jesus … What does that mean?”

“Don’t know,” Roy said. “They’ve never had occasion before. No precedents.” He laughed horribly. “They even went into executive session … I started to make a point of order about whether this sort of thing was germane. I suppose it was. Since they called the meeting on account of me.”

They went on drinking. They had two more glasses apiece. The beer was close to freezing cold, with slivers of ice floating on top; if you took too much right off, it made shooting pains in the back of the eyes. They had two more glasses.

“You see?” Willie said. “We should’ve ordered a pitcher.”

“I thought Huggins’d be here by now.”

“Not on Tuesday nights,” Willie said. “He remembers about the bowling on Tuesday nights and comes late to avoid the noise.”

“Awful place,” Roy said.

“He probably paid an early call at the whorehouse,” Willie said.

“I wish I had his money.”

“You got his money,” Willie said. “I wish I had anybody’s money. I wish I had yours.”

“It’s a myth about my money,” Roy said. “It’s all tied up in a trust fund until I’m seventy-five years old.”

They were silent for a time, watching the college students come and go. The noise from the bowling alley subsided, and the German farmers appeared, filing out, carrying their equipment in little bags. It was much better with the bowling ended, though the record machine continued to play at full volume.

“They think we’re deaf?” Roy said, looking up at the trees, scowling, as if the liveoaks were personally responsible. “I’m going inside and raise hell …” But he did not move from the straw-bottomed chair.

After a moment, Willie said: “That’s why you’re being so insufferable tonight.”

“What’s that?” Roy said.

“Because you know everyone’s disappointed with you.”

“The hell with everyone,” Roy said. “They’re all a bunch of sewers.”