“Well? Isn’t that it?”
“You’re off base by a mile.”
He despised his evasiveness but that was the way the game was played. What could he say to Bill Ryan now—that he thought Alan Forrester would make a good President, that with the radical polarization of strident extremists the only hope was for a calm, decisive, rational, patient middle-of-the-roader to come out of the woodwork before the country splintered altogether into factions and brought a führer to power?
His good-humored denial hung suspended and Bill Ryan’s face settled slowly like coffee dregs. Without further comment Ryan said, “Come on inside, getting chilly out here,” and slid the glass door open. Sand scraped in the aluminum track.
When Forrester crossed the weatherstrip he heard a phone begin to ring with shrill demand. “That’s for me,” Ryan said and hurried by, leaving him to close the door.
Alice was sitting up straight with careful attention to her balance; when she reached for her glass she took a long time to get her fingers around it, and when she lifted it, it did not follow a straight course toward her lips.
Forrester stopped beside Ronnie’s chair. She gave him an upturned questioning smile and he nodded in reply: it was time to go and he did not sit down. Ryan had turned his back to the room and had been speaking inaudibly into the telephone. Now he hung up and came about, and made a face. “I don’t know what was so important he had to call at this time of night. Pete Chandler.” He was scowling at Alice.
Alice’s smile changed slightly but she did not speak and after a little while Ryan shifted to Forrester. “My chief of security. It seems you’ve got friends in the young generation. Some university kids had a meeting and there was some talk about showing support for your anti-Phaeton plank by having a little sit-in on the runway.”
“On the runway?”
“Yeah. Sometimes these kids don’t think ahead too good. I don’t suppose you’ve ever seen what a human body looks like after it’s been exposed to a few seconds’ worth of jet exhaust. Nothing much left but cinders.”
“I gather they didn’t get that far.”
“No. Six or eight of them showed up at the gate and Pete told the guards not to let them in. They sat down on the road outside the gate and he wanted to know whether to call the cops and have them removed. I told him to let them sit there. It’s a wide pavement, the cars can steer around them. They’ll get tired and hungry after a while and go home. Why make an incident out of it?”
“Smart,” Forrester said. “Not everybody shows that kind of restraint.”
“Pete wanted to call out the cops and beat some heads,” Ryan said. “He’s a bit of a flag-waver. I suppose it’s a good thing he did call me first.”
Alice said, “The little bastards deserve a few lumps. Who do they think it is that protects them so they can have the freedom to sit down in the middle of the road?”
There was no point in trying to explain to her the contradiction in her statement; she was drunk and belligerent, her eyes had lost focus. Forrester cleared his throat and said it was time to be going. Ryan went with them to the door; Alice didn’t get up from her chair. She waved and said something vague and Ryan came outside and said to Ronnie, “I’m sorry about that.”
“We all get under the weather sometimes,” she said politely.
Ryan frowned into space briefly before he remembered his joviality; he put a grin on his face and pumped Forrester’s hand. “Bring this little lady back with you next time you come, buddy. She does light up the place.”
“They’re nice people, really, but they seem to have made an awful mess of it, don’t they?”
He said, “I get the feeling that marriage is all burned out. It’s a shame.”
They drove toward the gate and when they turned into the approach road Forrester could see the kids cross-legged on the pavement beyond the guard post. Two helmeted AP’s were keeping an eye on them. A white city patrol car with the gold Tucson Police stripe down its sides was parked on the far side but the officers were only sitting inside watching. When Forrester braked at the guard post, he saw the big KARZ-TV mobile news van approaching from Twenty-second Street; he extinguished the speedometer panel lights to reduce the illumination within the car.
Ronnie said, “Aren’t you going to talk to them?”
“Who? The television truck or the kids?”
“The kids, of course. They’re out here on your account.”
“I can’t do that now.” He drove past the kids with his face averted; the KARZ-TV truck was drawing up and the two city cops were getting out of their car, wise enough to know that if the kids intended to make a scene they would most likely do it when they had television coverage.
A block away Forrester began to accelerate. “You think I copped out.”
“Shouldn’t you have talked to them?”
“With the TV people hanging on every word?”
“I thought you wanted publicity.”
“Not that kind. What kind of grass-roots support do you think I’d get if I gave the impression I was encouraging the lunatic fringe?”
“Lunatic fringe? They’re only good-hearted kids and they’re honestly concerned about the issues.”
“In politics realities don’t count—you have to work with appearances. You have to disavow the support of the extremist groups whether you happen to agree with them or not. Guilt by association, don’t you see? I can’t afford to be identified with a bunch of picketing kids unless I know more about them. They’re supporting my side of the Phaeton question but for all I know those six or eight kids back there are card-carrying Weathermen or Maoist pamphleteers. Not knowing who they are, I can’t afford to associate myself with them. Now if they’re still there tomorrow we can run a check on them and if they turn out to be harmless and well-intentioned I can set something up and go out there and have myself photographed shaking hands with them. But you can’t go into that kind of thing blind.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
He drove west and north, dog-legging along the boulevards. “If I take you home you’ll be stuck without your car. It’s not gallant but I think I’ll drop myself off at the hotel and let you drive yourself home.”
“Of course. You’ve had a long day.”
She was sitting back, tired and relaxed; she appeared less tense than she had earlier. He felt a quiet sense of easy intimacy and risked a question: “What about that dinner for two we promised ourselves?”
“When?”
“Tomorrow?”
“I was planning to drive up to the Catalinas tomorrow. Painting. I usually don’t get back from my expeditions in time for dinner—I pack sandwiches and a thermos.”
“During the week, then?”
She hesitated. “All right.”
“You’re nervous, aren’t you? Why?”
They passed a jammed parking lot beside a big low stucco night spot. The neon sign had a few dead letters: ATOM C BAR & GRIL E—DINE & D NCE—LIVE MUSIC FRI & SAT NITES. The lettering was outlined by the neon shape of a Titan missile.
Ronnie said, “It sounds childish, I suppose, but I just don’t want to let it get to be intense. I don’t want to get to a point where I can even suspect I’m leading you on. Right now I don’t need any complications in my life.”
“Maybe you’re making too much of it. I like your company, Ronnie, but I haven’t suggested building a fence around you.”
She laughed. “That’s bold enough.”
“Monday night, then. How about it?”
She gave in. “All right, Alan.”
It pleased him absurdly—that she called him by name.
He drove into the city along East Broadway’s sputtering fizz of neon. Low-down-payment car lots, franchise eateries. An Air Force Phantom jet went over at low altitude with a racket like the sound of ripping canvas, and pickup trucks driven by men in cowboy hats waited at the red traffic lights gunning their souped-up mills. University kids crowded into the beer joints eight to a car, hoping their forged age cards would be acceptable to tolerant bartenders.