Our Lady Of Greenwich Village (9 page)

“I have a shrinking market,” said Hodding.

“Find a new market,” said O'Rourke.

“Not so easy,” said Hodding and Pepoon almost together.

Then the light bulb went on. “Queer Beer,” O'Rourke said.

“What?”

“The faggots,” said O'Rourke.

“What are you talking about?”

“Who has more money to piss away on themselves than anyone? Fags, of course. I see them in those bars on Christopher Street drinking Bud from the can until they're absolutely polluted. Who's vainer than fags? Nobody! They'd love to have their own brew.”

Hodding was that desperate. Within six weeks, the first Queer Beers rolled out of the Dannemora Brewing Company. O'Rourke pulled Juanita, the Puerto Rican transsexual from Pepoon's mailroom, to be the first Queer Beer sales-whatever in New York. Within weeks, every homosexual on Christopher was standing outside their favorite joint with a Queer Beer in his fist. O'Rourke packed Juanita off to San Francisco where the response was also overwhelming. Hodding couldn't brew Queer Beer fast enough. Within a year Hodding had beaten off Budweiser. To rub salt in Anheuser-Busch's wounds O'Rourke was now referring to Queer Beer as “The Queen of Beers” in his ads. Hodding had even acquired one of the Canadian breweries that had been trying to acquire him. He couldn't thank Pepoon and O'Rourke enough.

“Where can I go from here?” he asked.

“Dyke Lite,” replied Wolfe Tone O'Rourke.

T
one O'Rourke, being the creature of habit he was, always arrived at Northern Dispensary Associates at precisely 6:30 a.m. For the next hour he read the four New York newspapers, the
Washington Post
, the previous day's
Irish Times
, and immersed himself in the politics of the day.

“How'd it go this weekend?” asked Winthrop Pepoon, another early riser, as he stuck his head into O'Rourke's pocket office.

“Lovely. Hardly remember it at all. How'd you like that stuff with the Virgin Mary and Congressman Swift?”

“Virgin Mary?” said Pepoon. “What are you talking about?”

“Don't you get the papers?”

“Nothing about it in the
Times
.”

“Figures. Big news in the tabloids. Cyclops Reilly broke the story.”

“I didn't think Cyclops was ever sober long enough to break a story,” said Pepoon haughtily.

“Don't give me any of your Chablis morality,” said O'Rourke and Pepoon backed off.

It was time for Pepoon to change the subject. “When are you going to hire your new chief of staff? We have a busy primary season ahead of us.”

“You know, Winnie, I don't like anybody sticking their nose in my business.”

“Jesus, Tone, who the hell is sticking their nose in your business? I just wish you'd hire someone. What is it now, for God's sake, three months?”

It was more. O'Rourke was procrastinating. He hated hiring people. “Well,” said O'Rourke, “I'll think about it.”

“Fine. I'll have Human Resources call you later this morning.”

“Okay.”

At 10:00 a.m. the phone rang and it was Human Resources. Human Resources, thought O'Rourke, another euphemism for the solipsistic times. What ever happened to Personnel?

“I hear you're
still
looking for a C of S, Tone,” said Mrs. Dooge, the HR Director. “Have you decided exactly what you're looking for?” Mrs. Dooge was trying to pin O'Rourke down.

Resisting the cheap, smart answer, O'Rourke said he was looking for someone who was bright and had a passing notion of how the American political system works. O'Rourke was lousy with people who worked for him. He couldn't motivate them and if they were duds, he almost had to beg them to do their jobs.

“In that case, Tone,” said Mrs. Dooge, “you may be in luck. I have someone here who just graduated from Columbia with an M.A. in political science. Also worked for Senator Schumer. When would it be convenient for me to send Sam McGuire up?”

“How about now?” said O'Rourke.

“Fine. We'll be right there.”

Minutes later, when Mrs. Dooge and Sam McGuire approached O'Rourke's third floor corner office that looked out onto Christopher Street, they were stopped in their tracks by a flying cell phone. “And keep your fuckin' beepin' cell phone out of my fuckin' office. You couldn't sell whiskey to drunken fuckin' Injuns,” O'Rourke said as the hapless account executive scampered to safety.

“Is this a good time, Mr. O'Rourke?” asked Mrs. Dooge.

“As good as ever,” replied O'Rourke calmly.

“This is Sam McGuire.”

O'Rourke had a look of surprise on his face. For Sam McGuire was female, black, and beautiful. “Won't you come in?” asked O'Rourke smoothly as he closed the door on Mrs. Dooge.

She certainly was different from the female Teutons—all Protestant Amazons, six-foot-two with flowing blonde hair and brilliant white teeth as big as tombstones—whom he had been forced to interview before. To say Sam McGuire was different was an understatement. She was immaculately dressed in a dark blue pinstriped skirt and a burgundy sweater that showed off her collarbone. Black boots rose to just below her knees. She looked a little like Leslie Uggams, her skin a radiant caramel. O'Rourke guessed she was in her mid-thirties. He examined her hands, which were bereft of jewelry, and her bosom, which looked ample. She squirmed her bottom in the chair, getting comfortable, before she crossed her legs, revealing shapely thighs.

“What the hell was that all about?” she asked with the most stunning smile O'Rourke had ever seen. He also liked her bluntness.

“Oh, he's one of those Gen-X types I can't stand. He's not much of an account executive, but he has all the toys in the world. I hate fucking cell phones, and he's always playing with his fucking laptop. Toys for the dopey generation,” said O'Rourke gesturing toward his corner window, which gave him a panoramic view of Christopher Park and the entrance to Hogan's Moat. “I see him coming out of fucking Starbucks on Sheridan Square with a cup of shit corporate coffee. Then I see the dunce coming up Grove Street on a fucking scooter. Twenty-nine-fucking-years-old and he's riding a fucking scooter to work! He also has braces. What's with adults wearing fucking braces on their teeth? He's even studying for an MBA, for Christsakes. The most useless fucking degree ever invented. Bunch of lazy fucks with fucking spreadsheets who think they know something about nothing. Christ, what a dopey, money-grubbing, dunce-ridden generation.”

“Are you through venting?” asked Sam.

“You're a cheeky one,” said O'Rourke, laughing. “I guess I'm full of piss-'n-vinegar this morning.”

McGuire looked around O'Rourke's office and noticed what was probably the last rotary telephone in the city of New York. She also spied O'Rourke's trusty electric typewriter, circa 1974. There wasn't a computer in sight. “Early Luddite,” she said to O'Rourke.

“You know what a Luddite is?” asked O'Rourke.

“I sure do,” she said. “There are a lot of positive things to be said about Luddites.”

“Can't argue with that.”

“No computer? How do you send emails?”

“I don't,” said O'Rourke, “that's
your
job.”

“I'll change that.”

“You think?”

“Sure,” said McGuire, cocksure. “I hear you're one of the great copywriters, right?”

“I guess.”

“Well, every writer loves computers. They make it easier to write.” O'Rourke looked dubious. “And you'll
love
email.”

“Another distraction,” O'Rourke scoffed.

“Boy,” said McGuire, laughing, “you're a
confirmed
Luddite.”

“Not completely,” protested O'Rourke, holding up his caller ID box. “I like this one. Allows me to speak to as few assholes as possible.”

McGuire looked at O'Rourke's wall, which showed the story of his life. On it were photos of O'Rourke with many of the politicians he had dealt with over the years. There he was with Bobby Kennedy, taken just two months before the senator was assassinated. Another showed him wedged between Teddy Kennedy and Tip O'Neill. “Not bad company,” said McGuire, “I see you get around,” as she looked at O'Rourke with President Bill Clinton. “You were pretty cute in that picture with Bobby Kennedy,” she added.

“
Were
?” O'Rourke deadpanned.

“Oops,” said McGuire covering her mouth. Then she began to laugh.

“What's so funny?”

“That picture of Rockefeller,” said McGuire.

Stuck in the middle of his wall was the famous picture of Nelson Rockefeller, vice president of the United States of America, giving the finger to some student demonstrators in 1976. “That's the picture that best describes politics in America in the last quarter of the twentieth century,” said O'Rourke. “Fuckyouism.”

“You knew Rockefeller?”

“Only over the phone,” said O'Rourke. “He called me up once when he was trying to get Roy Goodman elected mayor. Goodman was the Ex-Lax heir,” said O'Rourke, laughing at the thought, “one of those ersatz Republican liberals. ‘Hiya fella,' Rocky said to me. ‘Wouldya like to help Goodman?' I told the governor in no uncertain terms that I wouldn't piss on Goodman if he was on fire.”

“Oh,” said McGuire, laughing, “you didn't!”

“I did,” continued O'Rourke, “and Rocky said to me, ‘Okay, fella, I can't stand the little shit either!' Nelson was a mixed bag. Great state university system; terrible, stupid drug laws. ‘Every law not based on wisdom—'”

“—is a menace to the State,” finished McGuire.

“Who said that?”

“I don't know,” replied McGuire. “I found it on the New York State Appellate Courthouse on East 25th and Madison.”

“Me too,” said O'Rourke. He was piqued that they both, apparently, thought alike.

She looked at a photo of O'Rourke and a woman standing by a bus in the Connemara countryside. “How's President Robinson?”

“You know the former president of Ireland?” he said, truly astonished.

“Sure,” said McGuire, “I do have an M.A. in political science from Columbia, you know.”

“Sam,” said O'Rourke, “I've had people in here with Ph.D.s who didn't know who the fucking president of the United States was.”

McGuire laughed. “So how did you meet President Robinson?”

“We're old friends going back to the early 1970s. When she decided to run for president on the Labour Party ticket in 1990, I asked if I could help.”

“Well,” asked McGuire, “did you?”

“See that sound truck?” O'Rourke asked, pointing to the van in the photo. “It played nothing but ‘Mrs. Robinson' by Simon and Garfunkel. When she started, out nobody knew who she was. By the time that truck waded its way from Connemara to the Ring of Kerry and up to Dublin, everyone knew who Mary Robinson was. A great candidate, and a great woman.”

“Why were you in Dublin in the '70s?” asked McGuire.

“Had to flee this country,” said O'Rourke.

“Flee?”

“Yeah,” said O'Rourke, “went AWOL for six months and the U.S. Navy was not amused.”

McGuire looked at O'Rourke's wall again and saw a photograph of O'Rourke's Marine platoon. Underneath it were three framed medals. “Deserters don't usually win Purple Hearts.”

“Yeah,” said O'Rourke, “I'm the hero deserter. Purple Heart, Navy Cross, and Bronze Star with Combat Ribbon. All that got me was a one way ticket to Dublin in 1971 and that's how I met Mary Robinson.”

“Why Dublin?”

“They were about to pack my ass back to Vietnam for another tour, and I had had enough. I was supposed to be finished. Then they pulled the ‘stop-loss' shit on me.”

“Stop-loss?”

“Yeah,” said O'Rourke, “stop-loss. That's what the military calls it today. It allows them to keep you in. They were almost out of corpsmen, so they extended me by six months. I was steaming. I was at Kennedy Airport, waiting to head back to 'Nam and I said ‘fuck this.' I'm an Irish citizen, born there. So I went from American Airlines to Aer Lingus and found my ass in Dublin for six months. Happiest six months of my life.”

“Wow,” was all Sam McGuire could say.

O'Rourke didn't go into it, but there was more to his sojourn. He had arrived back in Dublin just as internment without trial was introduced in Northern Ireland and with his radical, Irish Republican contacts it wasn't long before he was running fugitives from the North into New York using phony American passports that friends from the States had conveniently “lost” while they were on holiday in Ireland. It was a time of healing for O'Rourke as his soul slowly recovered from his Vietnam ordeal. He had met the likes of Mary Robinson and Fergus T. Caife and had gotten his life together. One day he was on the top of double-decker bus when it went by the American Embassy in Ballsbridge and he saw his old buddy from Vietnam, Kevin Griffin, one tough Bronx Marine, doing embassy duty. He got off the bus and walked up to Griff. “Hey, Kevin,” he said to the stunned Griffin, “how does an old corpsman get home?” The Navy and the Marines knew their men. O'Rourke returned to New York under his own authority, was arrested, and thrown into the brig at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. They could have court-martialed him and sent him to Leavenworth, but they were not vindictive. Three months later he was released with an honorable discharge.