Gay Place

by Billy Lee Brammer

  Huggins and Giffen backed off, heads dipping, gesturing toward a bank of unoccupied tables. Fenstemaker waved at them and then turned to Roy. He smoked a borrowed cigarette and took a deep, happy breath.

  “You’ve been a busy man,” the Governor said.

  “Not so busy,” Roy said. He stuck another dime in the phonograph. The music clacked in their ears.

  “The blind man smells a feelin’,” Fenstemaker said. “Besides, I had my agents out lookin’ at thangs.”

  “Samson was blind,” Roy said.

  Fenstemaker’s voice rose an octave; his eyes began to go out of focus. “How come the heathen rage and the people imagine a vain King?” he said.

  “How come?” Roy said. “Tell me how come.”

  “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity,” Fenstemaker rumbled. “You tryin’ to play Superman or somethin’? What the goddam hell you say to Rinemiller to make him run for cover like that?”

  Roy sat down at an empty table near the record machine. His dry tongue felt enormous, swelling inside his mouth. Fenstemaker signaled to a waitress and sat down next to Roy, waiting for the beer.

  “What the hell you do?” he repeated.

  “Nothin’. Just talked.”

  “You scared him. You made him run, goddammit.”

  “I saw him catch that cab,” Roy said in wonder.

  “You called the goddam cab. Hoot Gibson saw you do it.”

  “You told me once,” Roy said, “that all your princes were rebels … and companions of thieves … How is Hoot Gibson, anyway? I noticed him sitting at the table here this evening.”

  “Smarter than he looks,” Fenstemaker said. “Lot smarter. At least he does what I tell him. And he don’t go round tryin’ to play God.”

  “All you ever told me was get off my ass. I may not have that just right, but —”

  “Destruction upon destruction …” Fenstemaker mumbled under his breath. “… the whole land is spoiled … Everyone loves a bribe — yea — and runs after gifts. Goddam and hell, Roy. I was surprised you just didn’t go out there with him and put him on the blasted plane. You make the reservation?”

  Roy spread his palms, making a gesture of innocence, of helplessness. “It was one I had,” he said, “an old one …”

  “He leave everything behind?”

  “I packed a little bag for him. I made him promise to write.”

  “God dammit, Roy …”

  “It was his doctors,” Roy said, “recommended a long trip. A sea voyage, preferably. But you know how it is booking passage this time of year.”

  “All right, now, okay. You made him run when I thought he was gonna get off free. Practically an admission of guilt. Where’s he gone? When’s he comin’ back? What’d you say to him?”

  Roy was silent. Cymbals clashed, male choruses moaned, all the glamorous people in the beer garden clomped their feet. Roy shut his eyes and tried to concentrate on the music. Fenstemaker’s presence in the garden seemed to give the place an illusion of permanence. Roy said: “He’ll be back. He’s not such a bad guy. Not much of a thief at heart, you know. I tried to tell him that. How he’d have to come back ’cause he’s got no place else to go.”

  “I was workin’ all afternoon on this,” the Governor said. “I badgered that goddam lobbyist for three hours, tryin’ to get him to talk about Giffen. All he’d say was he never heard of him. There was George right in front of him, and Hoot Gibson swearin’ he’d seen the two of them together and Giffen himself more than happy to say the fellow had offered him a little proposition. And the lobbyist just looked at George as if he was a total stranger.”

  Roy opened his eyes. Cathryn walked past, heading toward the ladies’ room. She smiled, and Roy smiled, and Fenstemaker never ceased to smile, showing his marvelous teeth like a sideshow saint, some leering Buddha, and across the old beer garden Huggins and Harris and Ellen and the others could be seen crowding round Willie and George Giffen, just now arrived, all of them smiling insanely.

  “How you know he’s comin’ back?” Fenstemaker said.

  “He’ll just be back,” Roy said.

  Earlier in the evening (Was it an hour? Hours? He couldn’t recall), there had been the last words with Alfred, the two of them haranguing one another on the long distance. Alfred had placed the call to him collect at the beer garden to advise that he had changed his mind, that he was coming home to begin the fight all over again.

  — Where are you? (Roy had said) Didn’t you catch that plane?

  — Monterey. I got off. I don’t know anybody in Mexico City. Why should I want to go to Mexico City?

  — Your idea. Not mine.

  — Man ain’t got no fuckin’ chance in Mexico City. What could I do there? I’m comin’ home — I’m up for Speaker next year.

  — You’ll be up for more than that if you aren’t careful.

  — I can beat this thing. They’ve got no case. You sold me on this defeatist stuff when I was agitated. When I was disturbed. I know better now. I’m comin’ back … I got witnesses … I’m supposed to be there for that meeting … to get my favorite newspaper editor sacked.

  — Come on, then, and quit breakin’ so much goddam wind about it. If you’re so sure of yourself. But I’ll tell you one thing. It’s even worse now than when you left. Both your famous witnesses have copped out on you now. I had a little talk with Earle. And your lobbyist friend is already under arrest. And you’re not going to sack Willie — even if I have to haul a tape recorder into that meeting and enlighten those blind-bastard stockholders. And take a deposition from Earle. And maybe bring Ouida with me if necessary and make her tell all her story …

  — For chrissake tell me what I ought to do, Roy …

  — I told you once … I told you all morning. Make a plea. Madness … Insanity — not far wrong there, you know. Temporary aberration … Extenuating circumstances. Admit everything. Your lobbyist friend continues to deny it all — you heard about Giffen’s proposition, didn’t you? So you’re ahead of your co-conspirator. You can testify against the villain.

  — I’d be ruined. You know that.

  — Then stay there. Catch the clap in Mexico. I don’t care. Come back and try to bribe yourself a jury with that cheap seven hundred you got off the lobbyist.

  — I could’ve been Speaker next year … I was gonna run on a statewide ticket with Earle … I could’ve —

  — Wait fifty years. Maybe your constituents will forget … But it would take one of those monkey gland operations for you ever to become a real politician, or even an inspired thief …

  Fenstemaker leaned across the table and poked Roy’s arm. “I want to know how come,” he said. “How’d you get all this done behind my back?”

  “I didn’t do anything,” Roy said. “Just had a talk with Alfred. We had some beers there earlier. Then he decided he ought to get away for a while.”

  “You give him the airline ticket — you call him the cab? You get in trouble doin’ that Roy … Aidin’ and abettin’ somethin’ or other.”

  Roy shook his head. “He’s not even indicted yet, and he won’t stay long — he hasn’t the guts to vanish off the face of the earth. I just needed to get him out of the city for a while. To give me some time. To work on his witnesses and get Willie out of this jam. He’ll show up again. After he’s had himself a woman in Mexico — if he can manage an erection, the condition he’s in — after he’s all whipped down, he’ll be back.”

  Fenstemaker seemed to have been taken by a tremor, by a massive agitation. He trembled as if he were about to launch himself, propelled by his own rhetoric. He began to talk, endlessly, aimlessly, grinning and frowning, waving his empty beer glass. Cathryn had come back from the ladies’ room, and now she paused for a moment directly behind the Governor, staring in fascination. Roy tried to get his attention, to signal him, flag him down, but Fenstemaker was aloft and soaring, somehow fabulous, quivering past God and Mother and States’ rights and the Freedom-Loving Peoples, the
Copts, the Spies, Starving South Asians, the Infantile Paralysis, Will Rogers, Cancer Cures, the Scout Law, Mental Health, Thrift, Virtue, Mischiefs of Whoredom, Kings and Pawns and Court Jesters and assorted Agents of Goodness …

  Roy rose to his feet as Fenstemaker paused for breath. “Governor,” he said, “I want you to meet a friend of mine — Willie’s great and good friend, actually — Cathryn Lemens. Cathryn, this here’s the good Governor Fenstemaker …”

  The Governor pulled himself back and around, eyes distended, took Cathryn’s hand and kissed it. “Hah yew, Miz Lady,” he said. “Yew got yoursef tew good friends in Roy and Willie heah …” The accent seemed to be dulling his lucidity. He paused, took another step back, stared at Cathryn and winked at Roy. “Her face is most sweet,” he finally said, “yea, altogether pleasant …”

  He had them on either arm now and was moving toward the big tables. “They’re both good boys,” he was saying. “Except Mr. Sherwood’s been goin’ round obstructin’ justice … Let’s go over here and see Willie and Mr. Giffen and Mr. Pancho Huggins. I want to ask ’em all to lunch in my office this week. So we can get together. And talk about the goddam revolution …”

  When they were seated, Roy asked Cathryn to dance. He put some more coins in the jukebox. Drums and horns and choir voices clanged about them in the great beer hall. They walked through the crowd and scuffed their feet back and forth on the concrete slab. A little breeze rustled the branches above their heads, and through the complex of limbs and damp leaves they could see the steep sky and fantastic starscapes.

  “It’s lovely out,” Cathryn said.

  “It is! It really is!” Roy said. There seemed no denying it. I’m going to be all right, he told himself. I thought I was going to lose myself for a while, but through the miracles of science and modern medicine —

  “The Governor was very pleased with you about something,” Cathryn said.

  “He was. I think he was,” Roy said.

  — No reason why a person my age … watch what he eats … sensible hours … little duck pin bowling —

  “Here comes Willie after us,” Cathryn said.

  Some of the others were following him. Fenstemaker was heading up the stairs, waving goodbye, leaving as he had come, shakin’ hands, pressin’ flesh, and Willie came toward them on the dancing slab.

  “I was thinking,” Willie said, “that we could all go to my apartment. I’ve got some brandy.”

  The others were ringed behind him, ready to move on. Everyone nodded in agreement. They walked up the steps and through the barroom and out front, waiting along the curb, watching cars roll past. The tops of tall buildings were visible against the evening sky. A claque of newsboys appeared, whooping about the attempted bribe of a legislator. Giffen bought a copy and looked at himself on the front page. They began climbing into cars; some of the young people were already moving past, waving their arms. Roy held a door for Ellen Streeter. She came next to him, fair and sweet-smelling in the glow of mercury vapor lamps, all hermetically sealed. He embraced her lightly, and in the one motion seemed to embrace the whole pack of them, the pretenders to all the unlikely thrones, unable to sort one from another, unable to determine if they were real or last week’s illusions. He waved goodbye, and Ellen protested loudly, and he waved again, walking back behind the car, and stepped inside the barroom.

  He went directly to the phone booth and fumbled with change. He dialed Ouida’s number, but then pressed the disconnect before the first ring. His coin came back to him, bread on the waters, and he held on to it for a moment, thinking, wanting to do the right thing. Then he put it in the slot again and dialed. He had some difficulty, in the beginning, trying to get through to Earle in his hospital room, until he told the switchboard operator who he was — Arthur Fenstemaker — and how he had important business to discuss with Mr. Fielding. He was put through immediately then, and he thanked old Arthur under his breath before Earle came on.

  “Earle?” he said. “I wake you, Earle?”

  “Hell, yes,” Earle Fielding said. “I was sittin’ straight up in bed, fast asleep, readin’ the early editions. That’s an amazing story about Alfred and Giffen and that lobbyist. You seen it?”

  Roy said yes, he’d seen it.

  “I guess you were right all along,” Earle said. “About Alfred, I mean. Still … it’s a goddam shame.”

  Roy said it was; it was awful. Then he began: “What I called about was …” His voice was fading slightly, and Earle was saying, “What? What’s that?”

  “What I called about,” Roy said, “was to ask permission to take your boy for a boat ride tomorrow. Or maybe a picnic in the country, by the river, under the Utley-Webberville High Bridge …”

  Afterwards, there was no need to use another coin. He left the barroom and got into his car and drove directly across town to the apartment. The door was open and the lights were dim and George Giffen was sprawled on the floor, his head against a sofa cushion, watching television. He could hear Ouida singing to the little boy in the next room, and he paused for a moment, standing next to George, listening to the sounds. Giffen flapped a blind arm at him, still staring at the screen. Roy moved toward the hall and stuck his head round the corner of the partition. Ouida sat facing the door, singing; the boy was bundled under bedsheets, giggling deliriously. Ouida did not see him right off, but when she did look up and begin to smile, Roy waved and ducked back and sat down next to Giffen on the floor and closed his eyes.

  Room Enough to Caper

  “I’ve had eighteen straight whiskies … I think that’s the record … I love you but I’m alone …”

  — DYLAN THOMAS

  There’s room enough to caper on this lengthy stage …

  — The Gallows Ball

  One

  THERE WERE TWO OTHER passengers aboard the old attack bomber that carried the very junior Senator home for Easter. There was the young man named Stanley, a long-time friend, and the very pretty little schoolgirl whom they had met only that morning. The Senator’s name was Neil Christiansen, and he wanted desperately to sleep. But the two younger people wouldn’t hear of it. They wanted so many other things. They wanted first of all to talk and have a United States Senator — even a very junior — for an audience. The seatbelts were annoying and they would have liked to unfasten them; they would have preferred another brand of cigarettes and certainly something else, anything else to read besides Business Week and World Oil and the dreary Journal of Commerce. They wanted a fourth for cards too, but Neil had already made it clear to them that he wasn’t to be regarded even as a third.

  The two young people fell mercifully silent for a moment, thinking. There was the colored steward who sat up front, strapped into one of the reclining seats, but the girl said she didn’t feel especially democratic on this particular morning. There was another silence, and then she said: “We could get one of the pilots to play cards. It’s been done before. We don’t really need both pilots.”

  “We do today, honey,” Stanley said. “They’re both busy plotting the weather.” He stared out the window, looking glum, and added: “I think we’re in a typhoon.”

  “You don’t plot weather,” the girl said. “You plot courses … you chart weather … I think. They’re just sitting up front worrying about the weather.”

  The girl was eighteen years old and a freshman at Sweet Briar. Such a pretty little girl, Neil thought. She’d changed from her saddle oxfords to I. Miller pumps for the flight home from school on the Easter weekend. Her father was a vice-president, and at eleven o’clock that morning, with the weather raging outside and the old attack bomber nearly caving in, she wanted a martini.

  “Very dry,” she called out, moving her head dreamily from side to side.

  The colored steward, strapped in the reclining seat, failed to respond, but at such a distance and with the kitchen supplies rattling round in the galley the girl could not be certain if he had heard. She turned back to Stanley.

  “Give
him his walking papers,” Stanley said.

  “Can’t do it,” the girl said. “My father’s only a vice-president. We can complain, but we haven’t yet got authority to discharge the help.”

  The old bomber rocked along; the sky was the color of grubby linen. The turbulence was periodic, almost rhythmic, and occasionally there would come a reverberating thud followed by the clatter of pots and pans and canned goods spilling out of the galley. The first time it happened they thought the old plane was breaking apart. It was an A-20 from the war, converted into a passenger ship of conventional oil country opulence for use by the company’s junior grade executives. Earlier that week one of the Washington representatives had mentioned to Neil that the company plane would soon be flying south, and the possibilities had seemed endlessly appealing in the beginning. The idea of special treatment and semi-privacy had been partly responsible for his decision. But there were some convincing and less snobbish arguments to be advanced. The private flight would be faster, for one thing: a more or less direct course from one capital city to the other. There would be none of the schedule conflicts, delayed departures, cancellations, tiresome layovers or missed connections that seemed always to plague him at crucial moments on commercial flights. He needed all the time he could get at home on this Easter weekend — and it was, Neil thought, grinning foolishly to himself, a goddam lot cheaper.

  But he was paying for it now, he decided. One way or another — a year off his life or a pound off his own middling young flesh — he would pay. There seemed to be even less privacy with just the three of them and the steward on board. And there was the weather; the weather was at the heart of his problems at the moment. One of the larger commercial airliners could have at least got out of the turbulence by climbing to the higher altitudes. But he had been informed shortly after take-off that the pressurizing system on the old attack bomber had somehow, suddenly ceased to function, and now they had been forced to flap along for two hours through the middle of a spring storm that seemed to have embraced the whole eastern seaboard.