Russian Spring (54 page)

“Bien sûr,” Bobby drawled.

There was a sparkle of intensity in her green eyes that was almost frightening. She had a cute little snub nose like a cartoon rendering of the all-American college girl, but the line of her mouth seemed
about ten years older and harder. For the life of him, Bobby couldn’t figure why, but it was turn-on at first sight.

“The world-famous froggy make-out artiste?” she snapped, her face suddenly becoming a mask of anger. “You think you’re gonna talk yourself inside
my
pants with your suave European sophistication?”

“What . . . ?” Bobby stammered.

“Nosey-josey, don’t go getting the wrong idea,” she said, as she handed him a crumpled piece of paper. “I want very badly to work in this campaign, but not badly enough to become another notch for you to cut into your dork.”

“If I’m such a notorious lady-killer, where do you come off believing I’d be interested in the likes of
you?
” Bobby snapped back.

She suddenly underwent another instant transformation. “Hey, come on, where’s your Gallic sophistication?” she said with a sly little smile. “Don’t you know when someone’s putting you on?”

“Huh?”

“Not that you don’t have quite a reputation. You think you can go around screwing half the women in Berkeley without the rest of us knowing your line and the length of your prick down to the millimeter?”

Bobby felt himself blushing scarlet. His head was reeling. Yet somehow he found himself becoming more and more entranced.

“What’s your name, anyway?” he demanded.

“Sara Conner.”

“Well, look, Sara Conner,” Bobby snapped, “if you’re really serious about working in this campaign, then you’d better learn some manners, I mean, all we need is someone who thinks it’s cute to insult people she’s never even met.”

Sara Conner’s demeanor changed yet again. “Hey, I’m sorry,” she said, with what seemed like genuine sincerity. “Really. I just wanted to see how you’d react. Maybe I got carried away a little, people do tell me I come on a little strong—”

“That I can believe—”

“—but I really
do
want very much to work for the Wolfowitz campaign, so please, please, have a sense of humor, and don’t hold it against me.”

And she stood there looking all nervous and eager with a pleading expression on her face.

“Maybe we should start this conversation over?” Bobby suggested. “Come on upstairs with me, and—”

“To your bedroom?”

Bobby rolled his eyes upward. “To
Nat’s
room!” he groaned. “I’ve got to empty this hat so I can come back for more!”

Sara laughed, and this time Bobby, beginning to catch on, managed to laugh with her.

Sara’s eyes widened when she saw the pile of money on Wolfowitz’s bed. “Wow,” she said, “this is really serious funding!”

Bobby dumped his hatful of money on the pile. “Not really as much as it looks, just a big pile of small bills,” he said, staring at the money, at the concrete evidence of all those vain hopes downstairs. At the moment, it reminded him of nothing so much as another poker pot that Nat was raking in with a hand that no one had been willing to pay to see.

“What’s the matter?” Sara said, apparently sensing his mood.

Bobby sighed. He sat down on the edge of the bed. “Nat’s a good friend of mine, and I’m certainly not saying that all this is a con, but . . .” He shrugged. “You
really
don’t think he has a chance of winning?”

“No. So?”

“
So?
” Bobby exclaimed, waving a hand over the untidy heap of money. “So
this!
”

“You think he’s going to
keep
the money?”

“Of course not. He’ll spend every dollar of it, and probably all his poker winnings besides, but—”

“But what?”

“But he can’t win! He knows he can’t win! It’s just not right!”

“
I
know he can’t win and some of that money is mine,” Sara said. “
You
know he can’t win and yet you’ve spent all night collecting it.”

“And not feeling too terrific about it,” Bobby admitted. “I mean, look at it, a huge pile of loose change we’ve bullshitted out of hundreds of people. It’s not so much the money, it’s . . . it’s . . . it’s the emotional con job, the damn futility of it all. . . .”

“You have a conscience!” Sara exclaimed.

“Is that supposed to be another insult?” Bobby muttered sourly.

“No, no,” Sara said quite earnestly, sitting down on the bed beside him as if to prove it. “I understand how you feel, and it’s really quite . . . commendable. But you’ve got it all wrong.”

“I do?”

Sara bobbed her head up and down. “All wrong,” she said. “Nobody’s bullshitting anyone. I know Wolfowitz is not going to win, most of the people who’ve tossed their money on this pile know he’s not going to win, hell,
he
knows he’s not going to win, and he admits it openly. It’s not winning the election, it’s—”

“Oh no, please don’t say it’s how you play the game!”

Sara did not laugh. “It’s
changing
the game!” she declared passionately. “Back in the days of Thomas Jefferson, there was one party called the Democratic Republicans, and now it’s all come full circle,
there hasn’t been a meaningful election in this country since before we were born. The Democrats say ‘so’s your mother,’ and the Republicans say ‘you’re another,’ and they both agree not to bother anyone with the real issues, because they’re both really the same, and every two years one team or the other wins the pennant and nothing changes and the country keeps sliding down, and even people who can see what’s happening don’t do anything, because the way the game’s set up, they don’t see anything they can possibly do . . .”

Bobby stared into the depths of her fiery green eyes in amazement. She was hunched over, positively vibrating, her hands balled into fists. He was taken aback, entranced.

“Don’t you see, Nathan Wolfowitz is out to change all that! He’s saying the unsayable. They’re gonna call him a Commie and a Peen-lover and a traitor, and he’s going to lose. But while they’re calling him names, they’re gonna be forced to talk about what
he’s
talking about to do it. He’s going to be
news
, at least in the Bay Area. He’s going to lose big, but he’s going to lose
loud!
And all the louder because he’s shouting into a vacuum.”

“So what?” Bobby said. “Berkeley Red Runs for Congress! Man Bites Dog! Pig Farmer Kidnapped by Flying Saucer!”

Sara shook her head. “You know what the significant thing is about a talking dog, Bobby?” she said.

Bobby cocked an inquisitive eyebrow.

“Not how
well
it talks, but that it’s
talking
at all!”

Bobby laughed. He found himself leaning closer. Sara didn’t even seem to notice.

“Now
is
the time for a futile gesture!” she said. “My great-grandfather was an IRA terrorist. My grandmother was one of the people who managed
not
to get hit when the National Guard started shooting at students at Kent State. My grandfather was a goddamn Weatherman! And even if my father
is
an insurance salesman and my mother a kindergarten teacher, I’ve got a long heritage of futile gestures to uphold.”

“You’re talking about
revolution?
” Bobby exclaimed. “Bombs and assassinations and riots in the street?”

“I’m talking about
doing something!
Anything, win or lose! Acting on what I believe in, instead of just sitting on my ass talking about it!
That’s
why I want to work for Wolfowitz. That’s why there’s all this money lying on this bed. People here want to
do something!
Don’t you understand that, Bobby Reed? Don’t you feel it? Haven’t you ever wanted to do something like that yourself?”

Bobby found himself forced to really think about it, as much by the passion of Sara Conner’s convictions as by the logic of her words. He thought about his boyhood dreams of America. About his long
campaign to get here. And about how ruthlessly he had fought to stay. He remembered sitting in the living room here the night of the Flag Riot, watching it all on TV. And he remembered remembering in that moment another riot, in Paris, and an American Embassy smeared with blood and shit.

And finally he remembered the words he had said when all eyes were upon him that night, even as Sara Conner’s eyes were measuring him now.

I only wish I had been out there with them marching behind that flag. The goddamn jingos may have smeared blood and shit all over
our
flag, but when those people hung it upside down and marched up Telegraph behind it, they washed it clean, they made it something to be proud of again. They showed the world that there are still some
real
Americans
.

And he had stayed. He had stayed in the States to do he knew not what. And he hadn’t left since for fear they would never let him back in. He had been a real American himself that night, but what had he done since? What had anyone done but bitch and moan and complain?

Those had indeed been real Americans out there behind that upside-down flag, making their futile but necessary gesture, and he understood that better now than he ever had before. Those were real Americans, and they had made him proud, given him a moment of courage.

And the girl sitting beside him on the bed heaped with money was surely another. And so, somehow, had she.

“Yeah,” he said quietly, “I have wanted to. Thanks for reminding me.”

Sara Conner smiled at him for the first time, a little soft smile, but in Bobby’s eyes it was radiant. “It’s Wolfowitz we should both be thanking for giving us the chance to try,” she said.

Bobby wanted to gather her up in his arms and have her right there atop Nat’s campaign funds. But he knew better than to try. “I guess I’d better get back to passing the hat, then,” he said instead.

He picked up his empty hat, stood up, extended a hand. She took it and let him help her to her feet. At least that was something.

“Uh . . . can I . . . ah . . . call you sometime?” he said awkwardly.

Sara Conner eyed him warily. “As soon as you’ve got some work here for me to do,” she said, artfully begging the real question.

“You really
are
a hard case, aren’t you?” Bobby said, softening it with a smile.

“Maybe,” she said. “But then, these are hard times, aren’t they?”

Bobby quite impulsively raised her hand to his lips and gave it a quick kiss. Sara Conner yanked it back as if it had been scalded.

“What the hell was that?” she demanded angrily.

Bobby stared her down. He shrugged. “What else?” he said with a little laugh. “It just seemed to be the time for a futile gesture.”

She stared at him stonily for a long moment, but he could see the crinkles forming at the corners of her mouth, and then she couldn’t contain it anymore and favored him with a short reluctant chortle.

And so it began.

Donna Darlington: “Aren’t you afraid that all you’re going to accomplish with this so-called futile gesture is to insure the reelection of Dwayne Michaelson by pulling votes away from Carmelo?”

Nathan Wolfowitz: “You really think I’m gonna get enough votes to do that?”

Donna Darlington: “Don’t you?”

Nathan Wolfowitz: “I don’t know and I don’t care.”

Donna Darlington: “Then why
are
you running for Congress? Just to see yourself on television?”

Nathan Wolfowitz: “You got it, Donna! I’m here, ain’t I?”

Donna Darlington: “Just a dumb ego trip!”

Nathan Wolfowitz: “Not a
dumb
ego trip.
Dumb
is what my airhead opponents are saying.”

Donna Darlington: “And what
you’re
saying isn’t? That the solution to all our economic problems is to join Common Europe?”

Nathan Wolfowitz: “Anybody got a better idea? Certainly not the pinheads running against me!”

Donna Darlington: “But the Europeans hate us! And we owe them trillions of dollars!”

Nathan Wolfowitz: “So we pay them back.”

Donna Darlington: “With what?”

Nathan Wolfowitz: “You expect me to have
all
the answers?”

Donna Darlington: “That’s the most irresponsible thing I’ve ever heard.”

Nathan Wolfowitz: “So what? I’m not going to be elected, am I?”

Donna Darlington: “This is all a stupid stunt so you can babble your left-wing Peen-loving garbage on television!”

Nathan Wolfowitz: “Doing pretty well, ain’t I?”

—
Bay Area Newsmakers
,
with Donna Darlington

Little Moscow became the headquarters for Nathan Wolfowitz’s campaign. There were fund-raising parties every Friday and Saturday
night, the living room was filled with desks and telephones, people kept coming and going at all hours, there were ugly jingo demonstrations outside from time to time, the poker games were canceled for the duration, the communally cooked meals were replaced by hastily gobbled junk-food take-out, there was noise at all hours that made sleep problematic, and all in all, life in the house was swiftly transformed into permanent exhausting chaos.

But Bobby didn’t mind. The first person he had called when the extra phones were put in was Sara Conner. As he had expected, she proved to be a demon of a telephone campaigner, pulling in the contributions, persuading people to register, hassling hostile voters unmercifully without letting them get a word in edgewise, who knows, even persuading a few fence sitters, if such there were, to vote for Nat, and going at it every single day after classes, from five till midnight.

Which was to say he got to share a quick meal with her during her break every night, got to listen to her talking on the phone, got to bask in her aura, and got not much else, for a solid ten days. He had never met a woman like this. When it came to politics, she was the traditional Berkeley Red and then some, but when it came to the free-and-easy sex which was just as traditional to Berkeley, she acted like some kind of anachronism out of the AIDS era before the Second Sexual Revolution.

When he gallantly offered to let her share his bed so she wouldn’t have to drag herself home to the dorms late at night, she gave him looks that would melt glass. But she continued to share her quick meals with him. On day five, when he gave her a good-bye kiss on the cheek on her way out the door, she favored him with a smile. But when he tried to kiss her on the lips the next night, she pulled away.