Gay Place

by Billy Lee Brammer

  “Thursday night?”

  “That’s it — Thursday night.”

  “Couldn’t have been Thursday night,” Roy said. “I know where Alfred was Thursday night, and he wasn’t with you.”

  “What the hell!” Earle said. “Some other night, then. He told me. I know that much.”

  “You sure Saturday wasn’t the first time he told you? You’d have to do better than that on a witness stand.”

  A nurse came in with a little tray of pills. She looked at the decorations and smiled at Earle. Earle tossed off the brandy and then swallowed the pills with a glass of water. He made a face; his stomach rumbled.

  “Thursday goddam night,” he said. “Thursday night was when we talked.” The nurse looked mystified. She turned and went out the door.

  “Believe me,” Roy said, “it wasn’t Thursday night. Or any other night last week.”

  “It was one of those nights …”

  “Come on, Earle! Don’t take any oaths for Rinemiller unless you’re damn sure.”

  “I’m sure, I’m sure …”

  “Listen — if you’d heard that recording you’d understand. It was the real business, Earle. No kidding around about it. Alfred accepted fifteen hundred dollars from that guy. It was counted out right there, one-two-three, on the tape. And Alfred’s still carrying it around with him, I suppose. You know what happened Thursday? Thursday’s the day the same lobbyist offered Giffen a bribe. And old George turned it down …”

  “Old George …?”

  “George turned it down. Didn’t hesitate. Then he told Rinemiller about it — that was George’s mistake — he asked Alfred what he ought to do about it. And Alfred didn’t say anything to George about trapping a lobbyist. All he did was tell George to forget it, stay out of trouble, and then he called into town — from your own ranch, Earle, and tried to shake down the lobbyist for more money to keep Giffen quiet. He was playing every angle. And doing fine until Willie told him what he was going to print. So then he runs over here to remind you what he says he told you earlier in the week. To get an alibi established. From his best friend …”

  “Best friend,” Earle said dully. “Jesus, I can’t let my best friend down …”

  “He wasn’t anybody’s friend last week,” Roy said. “He was just real hungry. Real ambitious.”

  The nurse returned with a tray of food. She set the tray down on Earle’s lap and fled immediately. Earle looked down and lifted the cover on one of the hot plates. A puff of steam rose up in his face. He poked at the meat and the baked potato.

  “I’ve got to go,” Roy said.

  “Where’s Alfred?” Earle said, still staring at his food.

  “Probably sitting around wondering what he ought to do. I scared hell out of him this morning, but all I really succeeded in doing was to leave him immobilized. He’d better get off his bum and start building a better defense than he’s got.”

  He turned and started to leave. Earle called out to him: “Roy … Wait … second.”

  “Yes?” He came back to the bedside.

  Earle chewed dismally on the roast beef. He put his fork down and said: “You wanna … tell me anything about … you and Ouida?”

  Roy sat down. “Well,” he said. “I guess your memory’s not so bad after all. I’m sorry about the other night.”

  “I don’t know anything about the other night. What happened the other night?”

  Roy started to explain, but Earle was grinning and seemed nearly about to laugh. Roy said: “Well … I’m sorry about the other night. It really wasn’t as bad as it might have seemed. Hope you believe that … What do you want to know about Ouida and me?”

  “I’ve heard some talk,” Earle said. “First hour I hit town last week I heard about you being censured. Alfred told me that. And then I’d heard some other things while I was out of town. And then there was the other night, of course …” He smiled again and went on: “What I mean is, it doesn’t look so good for either of you. It’s grim — it’s depressing. It’s no way to court a woman.”

  “Well I’ll put a stop to it, then,” Roy said. “I promise you it won’t —”

  “I didn’t mean that,” Earle said. “I didn’t mean that at all … Unless you’re lookin’ for an excuse to shake loose?”

  “Ouida’s something special …”

  “She’s an exciting woman,” Earle said. “She’s got some qualities that …”

  Roy sat nodding his head in agreement. He got to his feet suddenly and said: “I’ve got to go. I really do. I’ll talk to you later …”

  He was talking and moving sideways toward the door and he finally waved and turned out into the corridor. He rode the elevator down three floors and walked through the hospital, past waiting rooms and the receptionist’s desk and the coffee bar. He headed out a side entrance and went to his car. He sat there a few minutes until he began to perspire again and then removed his coat. He switched on the radio, searching for a station, listening for a time, very attentively, to a commercial announcement. The voice, deep and tremulous, discussed body odor. Some music came on; Roy sang it aloud: “Ah-wah, ooh-ah, oom-ah.” He paused and repeated to himself: “These are my active years — years when I perspire, like millions of tiny fountains.”

  He attempted to recite a little lesson he had learned. Thin puffs of wind rattled the trees and the hedgerows. The cool air was like a gift … A man, he said to himself, a man whose thoughts dwell only on sense objects soon learns attachments. From attachment is born love; from love springs wrath, and from wrath is confusion born. From confusion comes wandering of memory and wreck of understanding, and with wreck of understanding man was lost …

  This dissatisfied him. He tried another: An Agent of Goodness who is free from attachments, speaks not of himself, his constancy or vigor, and is unmoved by success or failure … Relinquish … renounce … sweet sounds and sense objects, casting aside passion and hatred, turning everlastingly to passionlessness, away from force, pride, desire, wrath, possession …

  Well, it wouldn’t do. It just wouldn’t. If that sort of thing really caught on, they’d all capsize. Who the hell qualified as an Agent of Goodness? Who was it passed the judgment? How’d anyone ever accomplish good while casting off attachments, passion? Gimme a sweet sound any old day — a sweet sound and a snifter of Zen. At room temperature.

  He got the car started and steered it down the drive and out into the street. He felt unaccountably pleased with himself and a little sick in the stomach. Back among the living. And (what was the phrase?) the low farce of left-wing politics. He made a short speech to himself: “This is a holy war, my friends, against spies, murderers, pimps, burglars, Chinese bandits, foreign isms, alien-minded mongrels, Utopian praters, saboteurs, subversives — a battle between God-fearing principles and pagan ideals … Is there an honest man here who’ll — I say, is there an honest man here? Nobody here. Well, my friends, we’ll just have to make do with what we’ve got, what we had last time I looked, which is pimps, thieves, spies, rapscallions and robber barons, fops, charlatans, mountebanks …”

  He resisted a queasy sensation. The late afternoon was warm and the damp air clung to his face, soaking his shirt collar. He fashioned a new koan for himself. It would bring enlightenment, make his course clear. Nice cream koan:

  We know, my friends, the sound of a meal going down. But what is the sound of a meal coming up?

  He sped along the pastel streets.

  Twenty-Five

  ROY SAT OUT UNDER the rain-softened trees, smiling at his buff-bronze pitcher of beer, dark and light, trying to get cockeyed. He owed it to himself — he hadn’t been really drunk in weeks. It was the least he could do. He sat there smiling, tapping his foot. Popular songs pounded his eardrums. The beer pitcher perspired on the bare table. He refilled his glass and signaled to the waitress. What was it that fellow had said? Man ain’t got no fuckin’ chance. Noble sentiment, but he was an uninspired thief to the very end, lifting his phrases fro
m good-bad books. Man ain’t got no …

  “You want another?” the waitress said.

  “Yes, Georgia love,” Roy said.

  Her sweet, gap-toothed face hovered a mile above him. He looked up and smiled, blinking his eyes in the moist air.

  “Where’s your friend?” she said.

  “You mean Ike or Mike?”

  “No … The one just here.”

  “Gone,” Roy said. “Left this vale of tears.”

  The girl swooped low in front of him, resting soft-freckled arms on the table. “How come you’re so nice to me tonight? It’s not like you.”

  “I found peace, honey.” He tried to keep his worshipful eyes in focus.

  “Stop pullin’ my leg,” the girl said. She went to get his beer. He sat unthinking, dull in the head, until she returned. She refilled his glass and set the pitcher down. Roy fumbled with damp dollar bills.

  “A man’s cupidity, Georgia, is …”

  “Man’s what …?”

  “Avarice … inordinate desire … It’s a good-bad thing … thang. Ambivalent. You got to have it — it’s necessary — but it’s subject to abuse. Get you into trouble. Like sex. You know like sex? You got to discipline yourself, focus all that radiance on noble objectives. Propagate the species … Build a city.”

  The girl looked back toward the bar, pulled out a chair and sat down.

  “You’re drunk, you know that?” she said. “I’ve never seen you drunk. That why you’re so friendly tonight?” She looked at him in wonder.

  “This theory I have, Georgia, is brand, spankin’ new. Never been explicated before, not more than a million times. You may quote me. Go now and tell the others.”

  The girl leaned toward him, on the edge of her seat.

  “Listen,” she said. “It’s early yet. Take it easy. You’ve got hours.”

  “Are you honest, Georgia?”

  She leaned back in the chair, smiling.

  “You mean like Ophelia?”

  Roy was vastly pleased. He said: “You amaze me sometimes, love. No … I mean honest like good and bad, right from wrong. Are you virtuous that way?”

  The girl kept looking in back of her, toward the bar. Finally, she stood and collected empty glasses. She stacked them. One on top of another. She tilted her head, thinking.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “As much as anyone else, maybe.”

  “Well you work at it,” he said. “You work at it. It’s a damn precious commodity.”

  The girl smiled at him and said she would. “Take it easy,” she said, pointing to a clock hung from the trees. She turned to go.

  Roy sat alone, drinking his beer, moving his lips, oom-ah ooh-am, to the sounds of the music. The garden began to fill with people. Occasionally, someone would come over and speak to him, Roy nodding and smiling, struggling to his feet to pump hands. A familiar face floated toward him. He attempted to identify the young man, but failed. A hand was extended. Roy took it, clutched it.

  “I wanted to apologize, Mr. Sherwood,” the boy named Jobie said. “I hope you don’t think I hung up on you yesterday. We must’ve been cut off. I tried to find your number so I could call back and explain, but it wasn’t listed.”

  “That’s all right, that’s all right,” Roy said. He flashed a winning smile. “It’s nothing.”

  Jobie nodded his head eagerly, jerking it up and down. He began to talk rapidly about how he knew Roy would understand — he was obviously a cut above these other political types; he was a man with whom a lasting rapprochement could be established. Roy shook the boy’s hand, nodding back, saying yes … yes … yes.

  Ellen Streeter, Harris Huggins, and some of the others appeared. They came across the garden in convoy, fending off torpedo stares by their sheer number. They noticed Roy, yelled a greeting, flapping their arms. They encircled him, dragging chairs round the table, banging their shins on the bare wood. Ellen sat next to him and clutched his arm.

  “You came!” she said. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again. Not even for the Jelly Roll Morton.”

  “I came,” Roy said, nodding his head, acknowledging the fact. He belched softly, putting his hand to his mouth. Ellen smiled her love at him, herself a part of the love object. The others talked a stream of incoherence, words raging back and forth across the table. Roy got to his feet and asked Ellen to dance. They walked arm in arm to the concrete space and moved around easily, close together, until they both began to perspire a little in the heat. They stood apart, looking at one another, listening for the sounds of the next song. A wisp of blond hair was stuck to her forehead; her lips were slightly parted, and she seemed, in that instant, all that anyone could desire. Roy noticed Willie and Cathryn coming through the doors, taking a table some distance away from the others. Amazing conduct. They had not even looked around to see who was there. Roy took Ellen by the hand and went to Willie’s table.

  “Hah yew?”

  “Ah’m fahn. Hah yew?”

  They sat across from them. Willie was grinning. He had his arm looped round the back of Cathryn’s chair. He picked at her bare shoulders unconsciously.

  “You write your story?” Roy said.

  Willie nodded. He reached in his pocket and brought out a folded copy of the newspaper. The stories about Rinemiller, Giffen, the lobbyist and Fenstemaker were spread across the front page. Roy looked them over carefully. Ellen glanced at the paper, looked away and then stared back again. “Rinemiller?” she said. “Is this Alfred he’s talking about? Taking a bribe?” She stared at the smudged printing. Roy said yes and looked up at Willie.

  “Any repercussions?”

  “There were supposed to be,” Willie said. “But they never seemed to repercuss.”

  “Really? What happened?”

  “I felt I ought to tell Alfred. I left him a copy yesterday, and he came around later, furious, threatening me with everything but the rack. He said he was calling a board of directors meeting and was having me discharged. He said he had an alibi, and it sounded like a good one. It had something to do with Earle Fielding — I’ll tell you about that later. Anyhow, I couldn’t get in touch with Earle so I went ahead and printed the paper. This evening the board met to consider Rinemiller’s charges. No Rinemiller. He just never showed. We waited two hours. Nothing. I called Earle Fielding and talked to Ouida and she said that Rinemiller didn’t have an alibi after all. So … we just sat around and waited another hour and then we left. Those board members were bewildered. They’d driven in from all over at Rinemiller’s request, and he never showed.”

  Roy sat there grinning, trying to keep his balance in the chair. “That right …?” he was saying. “That so …?”

  “Couple of them raised hell about writing the story even if Alfred was guilty. Said we had no business getting our own people into trouble — that they weren’t paying good money to defeat themselves. One of the others suggested we at least wait and see if there’s a grand jury indictment …”

  “And you prevailed,” Roy said.

  “Mostly,” Willie said. “They decided to hold off, ride it out. Or try to. They don’t like it, but I think I convinced them it was better the story came from us instead of someone else.”

  “Clean up our own house,” Roy said.

  The waitress came over, carrying Roy’s half-finished pitcher of beer. “You want this?” she said. “You don’t take it, those others at your table will.” Roy said yes he would take it. The girl set the pitcher down and said hello to Willie.

  Roy got up abruptly and said he was going to the men’s room. Willie ordered dinner and followed Roy inside. “He’s been here for hours,” the waitress said to Cathryn.

  “Alone all that time?” Cathryn said. “That’s a bad sign.”

  “There was another fellow with him at first,” the waitress said. “They came in together, but the other one left.”

  “Who was it?”

  “One of that bunch,” the waitress said. “One of the politicians.”
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  Roy and Willie returned. Roy put dimes in the jukebox and danced with Ellen until Harris came across to the slab and cut in. Roy lurked round the edges of the crowd, watching the others. He put some more coins in the machine, concentrating, studying the music, making a conscious effort to pick the songs he liked least of all. Huggins came over and stood next to him. They gazed inside the record machine, watching the colors change, reds and greens and citrine yellows. Huggins told him all about Willie and Rinemiller and the lobbyist. Roy stood open-mouthed, gasping his amazement. “You mean you hadn’t heard?” Huggins said. “It’s all over town this evening.” They discussed what these revelations would mean for their own futures.

  Huggins leaned against the jukebox, talking, while Roy pushed coins inside. Suddenly, Huggins straightened up, his eyes widening, staring toward the front.

  “Jesus!” he said. “Guess who’s comin’ in with Giffen.”

  Roy squinted through the colored glass, studying the record mechanism. He did not look up. “Fenstemaker,” he said.

  “Old Arthur Fenstemaker,” Huggins said. “Jesus. He goin’ to sit here and drink on a Sunday evening? He’ll lose the drys next election.”

  Fenstemaker and Giffen came across the big room. Some of the men at the bar turned and gazed in astonishment. One of them yelled hello to the Governor. Fenstemaker stopped, swung round, and gripped the fellow’s hand. He moved round the bar, a victim of his habit, shaking hands, clutching arms, bending his head sideways and a little forward, talking into ears, blowing into faces. He worked his way across the room, coming near the jukebox. When he saw Roy, he brightened visibly and walked directly over to them.

  “Hello Roy … Mr. Huggins …”

  They said hello to the Governor.

  “I want to thank you, Frank, I want to …” The Governor spun his magic. Huggins showed his gold teeth, stretching his lips, his mouth an uncapped jar of amber jelly. “You and Roy here did a wonderful job last Thursday. Not just for me. For the people, for the folks …”

  Huggins started to say something, but Fenstemaker had him by the arm and hand, manipulating the appendage like a pump handle, propelling him along the side of the wall toward George Giffen. “George,” he said, stroking the two of them, “you and Frank here — I understand they call you Pancho, Mr. Huggins — George, you and Pancho get us a table out there under the trees. We’ll be with you in just a minute.”