Gay Place (23 page)

Willie glanced at Cathryn and then, through the bathroom door, at Ellen Streeter. Ellen sat on the edge of a low tub, pressing a washcloth against the side of her face. Willie and Cathryn stepped inside, and Cathryn said: “Feel any better?”

Ellen smiled faintly and nodded her head. She got to her feet and stood in front of a mirror, holding the cloth away from her cheek to examine the bruise. She sat down again on the edge of the tub. Willie asked what happened; Cathryn stared at Ellen and said: “Harris socked her back. Right outside the door here. I saw it all … The son of a bitch.”

“Men is men,” Ellen said, looking up and smiling again.

“Jesus …” Willie said.

“You’d have to collapse on the floor and scream and swallow your tongue to get any attention around here,” Cathryn said. “Think I was the only one who noticed.”

“Where’s Harris?” Willie said.

“Wandered off somewhere,” Cathryn said.

“Sure you’re all right?” Willie said.

“Yes,” Ellen said. She got back to her feet and looked in the mirror. “Harris and I have now exchanged black eyes … We ought to buy us some boy-girl look-alike sweaters.”

Willie left Cathryn with Ellen Streeter and returned to the kitchen. Earle still lay sprawled, half under the small table. Rinemiller and Huggins were maneuvering over him, as if about to lower grappling hooks.

“I couldn’t find Roy,” Willie said to them. He stared at Earle, and added: “We ought to get him into town.”

Rinemiller nodded and got hold of Earle Fielding’s two feet. Willie and Huggins struggled to get a firm grip under each arm. The three of them began a slow, shuffling move toward the kitchen door. Cathryn appeared and Willie told her to go out front and bring the car around. Cathryn made a languid gesture, as if resigned to the inevitability of witnessing one delirious incident after another.

A few people stopped and stared and smiled as they carried Earle to the car. One young man, locked in an excess of pleasure with his date in the backseat of a car, let loose of the girl and looked out the window as they moved past carrying Earle.

“Hey-hey!” he called to them. “You all gonna be back now? Anybody drops out the tournament, screws up the pairin’s for everyone else …”

They got Earle stretched out in the back of Rinemiller’s car. Huggins sat alongside the unconscious figure, and Alfred moved up front to drive. Willie and Cathryn followed in another car. The rain had started up again, and they drove along the soft roads toward the main highway, alternately accelerating and slowing with the downpours as the stormclouds sailed overhead.

T
HEY HAD DRIVEN IN
silence most of the way into town and along the gleaming streets; fled across soggy lawns, rainsheets flashing against the stone walls of the cabin. They walked through Roy’s three rooms, turning on lights, silent and self-conscious, touching hands. Roy got some music started on the phonograph; Ouida sat on the side of the bed, combing the dampness from her hair. Rain drummed on the expanse of lake water. They sat listening to the weather, talking a little, waiting for her hair to dry. They kissed until the whacking of their pulsebeats made it nearly unendurable, and then they switched off lights and lay in darkness, listening to the lake sounds; presently they were communicating in gasps and half-sentences and muffled laughter, and Roy could very nearly convince himself that they had something, the two of them there, something amounting to more than mere mathematics and consecutive, counted-on-the-calendar fornications; a prize that outshone thrust and parry, challenged parts, and the mingled secretions of comparison shoppers.

And then, the two of them passing into sleep in simultaneous exhaustion, he could not be sure. For an instant he could hear the singsong chants of children, the sounds outdistancing ancient discords; ephemeral fragrances came to him in sleep: pine and cinnamon and fish-water, and he remembered an old friend from college telling him of making love to his wife of ten years in the backyard mint bed, next to the water hydrant, thrashing in sweet leaves, in the dark of night, laughing and talking and whispering Solomon’s Song:
Thou art fair, my beloved, yea, pleasant, and our bed is green.
And he could not be certain. Memory, reason, poetry, failed him in sleep. He was unable to recall even the wife of his youth, his sweet dumb blonde mirage of a wife, swilling Nugrape Soda in the Norfolk U.S.O. — where was she now? And where was Ellen Streeter, his lover of a leap-year month? Or the child who’d been so accommodating in the backseat of the prewar Buick? Or even Ouida, sitting cross-legged on the bed, romping about in her cotton underpants, small breasts swelling and going flat with the shift of her weight? There was only the idea of them — he’d nearly forgotten all the details in the short space of their absence. Now they were no more than an idealized montage, symbols of desire put together from all his women. He hoped they were somehow, each of them, with him in the bed, beneath the covers. He was certain he could feel one or all of them up against him as he passed into the deepest hour of sleep.

In the morning there were flecks of lipstick round his mouth. He blinked at himself in the bathroom mirror, wondering how long it would be before Ouida came awake and how soon he would need to construct a face, an attitude, with which to ease a wife at dawn. He went out on the rock porch and stood in the gray light to wait for the milkman. When he got back inside, Ouida was awake and ravenously hungry, boiling eggs and munching vanilla wafers. She was barefoot, with a pair of his bleached khakis tied round her waist, good hips filling the seat, trouser legs rolled to the first flare of calf muscle. They sat across from each other at breakfast, and Roy struggled with the right noises, the alien faces, until the phone’s ringing rattled the dime store silver service.

“I hope they haven’t tracked us here already,” Ouida said. She sat pinning her hair and watched Roy hesitating, his hand on the hooked receiver. He picked it up, finally, and said hello.

“You give up on the party?” Willie said to him.

Roy said yes he had; he’d withdrawn from public life; he’d divested himself of all worldly attachments.

“Yes … well listen,” Willie said. “I’ve got to get in touch with Ouida. I can’t find her anywhere.”

“What you need her for?” Roy said.

“You know where she is?”

“She’s around,” Roy said. “I’ve got a pretty good idea.”

“Yes … Well … Listen …” Willie said. “Earle’s in the hospital — nothing really serious — I mean he’s not going to die or anything — but I thought Ouida ought to know.”

“What the hell happened?”

“He’s got a concussion, it turns out. That parachute jump. Got clonked on the head after his helmet was knocked off. Something like that.”

“I’ll tell Ouida,” Roy said. He got the information about which hospital and what room and how many special nurses. And the doctor — he’d forgotten to ask about the doctor: after telling Ouida, he had to call Willie back and ask about the doctor. Ouida cleared the breakfast table and began dressing, and Willie gave him the doctor’s name and more reassurances.

“He was unconscious most of the night,” Willie said, “but he began coming out of it about an hour ago. He’s not quite sure what’s going on, but he’ll be all right.” Willie’s voice was smoke-strained and full of exhaustion. “Rinemiller and I took turns sitting up with him.”

“Alfred? He was with you?”

“Yes.”

“How’s he acting?”

“He grumbled about Giffen a few times — wondering where George was — but otherwise he —”

“You say anything to him?”

“No … What in hell would I say? Weird feeling just being there with him. Now I’m going home to bed and think about whether I ought to expose him. Know where I can get a good job?”

Roy said no, but that Willie might think about running for a seat in the Legislature. They hung up. Roy put on a clean shirt and tie and then walked outside with Ouida for the drive to the hospital.

The big country house was silent. Cars were parked all along the drive, creaking in the morning heat. Inside the house a Mexican maid moved through the main room, emptying ashtrays, collecting bottles and sandwich crusts and half-filled glasses of whiskey. Huggins lay asleep in his underwear; he lay on one of the sofas, wrapped in the serape Willie had left behind the night before. He had got back from the hospital at two or three in the morning, waved a liquored goodbye to the cowboy musicians, and collapsed on the couch. He made horrible sounds early that morning, but the maid did not seem to notice. She went into the kitchen, switched on the dishwasher, and then walked out back and down the hill to look in on her husband and children. Huggins stirred on the couch, murmuring to himself, as the dishwasher shuddered on the kitchen floor. Huggins opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. He struggled to an upright position, sitting on the edge of the couch, and fumbled with cigarettes. Then, he got to his feet and wandered into the kitchen, stared at the dishwasher and rinsed his whiskered face at the water tap. He chewed on a turkey wing and took a swallow of vermouth from an open bottle. He rubbed his damp face again and squinted in the morning light.

“Anybody here?”
he yelled suddenly. He walked back into the main room. “Anybody in this
house
?” He lay back down on the sofa and fell asleep.

He did not stir again until George Giffen arrived. George came bounding up the steps after the Governor’s limousine had dropped him on the front drive. Giffen did not immediately notice Huggins on the couch; he wandered round the big room, examining rubble, staring at the paneled walls, listening for anyone moving about upstairs. Then he came near the sofa, stopped, and poked at Huggins.

“Hey, Pancho. Let’s play some tennis, hah?” he said. “Come on — I just got back … I missed out on everything yesterday.”

Huggins did not move; breath barely fluttered across his parted lips. Giffen sat down and removed one shoe and began meticulously to scratch his foot. Presently he could hear people shuffling around on the second floor, and soon the plumbing began to groan as showers were put to use.

Twenty miles upriver from the Fielding ranch an old army command car banged along one of the backroads, lurching across culverts and coming to a stop next to a small low-water bridge. Arthur Fenstemaker got out of the car and sniffed the air. He was dressed in fresh khakis, a starched dress shirt with frazzled collar, and lace-up boots. He had the checkered golf cap pulled down tight so that it covered the tips of his big ears.

Fenstemaker stared at the water pushing over the small dam, hands on hips, his head working up and down as if in solemn agreement that, yes, it certainly was water, lots of water. He watched for a few moments and then returned to the cab of the open command car. Jay McGown sat in front alongside him. There was a thermos cooler at Jay’s feet, and between his legs the guns were stacked: a three-inch magnum, a jungle carbine, a pump action.

“Open me a beer, Jay,” the Governor said. “Goddam I like a cold beer in the mornings.”

Jay opened cans of beer for the two of them. Fenstemaker started the engine and the old car jumped ahead, moved over a hill and then slowed again. Birds flapped overhead. Fenstemaker pointed. “Ain’ that lovely?” he said softly. He took hold of the pump action, poked it out over the windshield, and fired two shots quick and successive. The dove fell nearly straight down. Fenstemaker laid the gun across Jay’s lap, stepped outside and went to get the bird, crippling along like an old man whose joints were stiff and sensitive. Then he was back inside the car, holding on to the bird, and they moved off again, in the direction of the ranch house.

They left the car in front and walked inside. Jay stored the guns while Fenstemaker cleaned his hands. One of the secretaries came down the stairs.

“Any calls?” the Governor said.

The girl nodded and named several people. “And Willie England … just now … just as you drove up. He’s holding for you on the downstairs phone.”

“Tell him I’m still out inspectin’ my lands,” the Governor said, smiling. “Tell him you don’t know when I’ll be comin’ in.”

The girl went off into another room, and Fenstemaker began sifting through a stack of correspondence. Jay McGown said: “How come you’re avoiding Willie? After all you told him this week?”

The Governor unlaced his boots. The golf cap was now pulled down to where it nearly covered his thick eyebrows, giving him the partly sinister, faintly comic look of a worried horse player. Then his face brightened and he said: “I been sucklin’ my babes … Time the chicks got out the henhouse and foraged for themselves …”

He pulled off his trousers, hoisted plaid bathing trunks, and walked outside toward the pool.

E
ARLE HAD A PRIVATE
room with a television. And a view, a really lovely view, as Ouida pointed out, standing next to the picture window, the expanse of glass and the cheerfully colored plastic blinds that revealed the stretch of turf and oak and redbud falling away from the building in uneven terraces. The room was large and brightly lit and now rather resembled a florist’s showroom. The sweet pungent smell of flowers filled the room; they were all about; they’d been brought in all during the afternoon: luxuriant and wildly colored. Everyone at the ranch had left off tennis for a while to contribute to Earle Fielding’s flower fund. Roy thought there must have been a hundred dollars’ worth of flowers in the room. Even Arthur Fenstemaker had found out about Earle and had sent an enormous mixed spray: iris and glads and some kind of lily that should have been past its season.

Soundless figures jerked back and forth on the television screen. A dark haired singer moved her lips and gestured insanely. She had enormous breasts that seemed to rise up and nearly out of her gown with every deep breath, defying physical laws, like a half-finished bridge. Roy sat staring dully at the silent screen.

“I don’t know why the hell they all had to send flowers,” Earle said, thrashing in the white sheets. “They could’ve sent whiskey or books or cigarettes. I feel like a goddam fairy undertaker in this room.”