When the woman turned around to greet us, I saw that it was Evelyn Coates. Somehow, I wasn’t surprised. 'Yes,' she said, without smiling, as Hale started to introduce us. 'I know Mr. Grimes. I believe I met him at a party the other night at your house, Jerry.'
'Of course,' Hale said. 'I must be losing my mind.' He did seem distracted. I noticed that he kept rubbing the side of his jaw with the palm of his hand, as though he had an intermittent itch there. I made a small bet with myself that he would wind up losing that night.
Evelyn Coates was dressed in dark blue slacks, not too close-fitting, and a loose beige sweater. Working clothes. I thought. Dyke? I dismissed the idea. Probably when she was younger she was one of those girls who played touch football with the boys on the block. I wondered if her room-mate had told her about me.
She was the only one in the room who had a drink in her hand as we sat down at the table and started counting our chips. She piled her chips expertly, her long hands deft, pale fingers, pale polished nails.
'Evelyn,' Benson said as the congressman began to throw cards for the first ace to deal, 'tonight you must be merciful.' 'Without fear or favor,' she said.
The lawyer, I noticed, seemed to have a special, teasing relationship with her. I put it out of my mind. I didn't like his voice either, round and self-satisfied. I put that out of my mind, too. I was there to play cards.
Everybody took the game very seriously, and there wag almost no conversation except for the usual postmortems between hands. Hale had told me the game was a moderate one. Nobody had ever lost more than a thousand dollars on any one night, he said. If he hadn't been married to a rich wife, I doubt that he would have called it moderate.
Evelyn Coates was a tricky player, unpredictable and hard-nosed. She won the second biggest pot of the night on a pair of eights. In other days you would have said she played like a man. Her expression was the same whether she won or lost, cool and businesslike. It was hard for me to remember, as I faced her across the table, that I had ever been in her bed.
I won the biggest pot of the night on a low straight. I had never had as much money to back me up in any of the games I had been in before, but, as far as I could tell, I played as I always did. My new-found fortune wasn't reflected in my betting. I folded early a good deal of the time.
The newspaper columnist and the congressman were the eternal pigeons Hale had promised me. They played out of hope and optimism, and were around at the end of almost every pot. Inevitably, it made me doubt their wisdom in other fields. I knew I would read the columnist from then on with great reservations, and I trusted the congressman wasn't in on any important legislative decisions.
It was a friendly game and even the losers were good-natured about their bad luck. I enjoyed playing poker again after the three-year hiatus. I would have enjoyed it more if Evelyn Coates hadn't been there. I kept looking for a wink, a secret, conspiratorial smile, but it never came. I couldn't help beginning to feel resentful. I didn't let it affect my game, but I felt a little extra satisfaction when I took a pot away from her.
She and I were the only winners at two o'clock, when we finished. While the congressman, as banker, bent over the accounts, I fingered the silver dollar in my pocket. The go-ahead sign from Central Park West.
A waiter had brought in some sandwiches, and we started on them while the congressman worked at the table. I couldn't help but think how pleasant it all was, a game that continued, in the same room, with the same friends, week after week, everybody knowing everybody's telephone number, everybody's address, everybody's mannerisms and jokes. Whom would I be seeing next week, what numbers would I dare call, what game would I be playing? For a moment I was on the verge of saying that I would be available next week to give them all the chance to get back their money. Put down my roots in a deck of cards, in the mulch of government. How fast did I have to run? If Evelyn Coates had as much as smiled at me, I believe I would have spoken. But she didn't even glance in my direction.
To give her a chance to say a few words to me away from the others, I went over to a window at the far corner of the room and opened it, pretending I was warm and the cigarette smoke was bothering me, but she still did not make a gesture toward me, didn't even seem to notice that I had moved.
The bitch, I thought, I won't give her the satisfaction of calling when I get back to my hotel. I imagined her in her place with the young lawyer, smooth and tallow-faced, and the phone ringing and Evelyn Coates saying, 'Hell, let it ring,' and knowing who it was on the other end and smiling secretly to herself. I wasn't used to hard women. To any kind of women, if I wanted to be honest with myself. One thing, I decided, as I closed the window with a sharp little click, insisting on my presence, one thing I'm going to do from now on is learn how to handle women.
The columnist and the lawyer began a long discussion about what was happening in Washington. The columnist accused the President of trying to destroy the American press, raising postal rates to drive newspapers and magazines into bankruptcy, jailing reporters for not disclosing their sources, threatening to lift the franchises of television stations that broadcast material which displeased the Administration, all stun" that I had read in his columns whenever I had happened to come across them. Even I, who barely read any newspaper but the Racing Form, was overexposed to all possible opinions. I wondered how anyone in that room, battered by arguments from all sides, ever managed to vote yes or no on anything. The congressman, working on a scratch pad, his forehead sweating from the effort, never even looked up. He had showed himself an amiable man throughout the game, and I supposed he voted as he was told, his attention always on party instructions and on the next election. He had said nothing to indicate whether he was a Republican, a Democrat, or a follower of Mao.
When Evelyn Coates brought up the subject of the Water-gate break-in and said it meant grave trouble ahead for the President, the columnist said, 'Nonsense. He's too smart for that. It'll all just be kicked under the rug. Mark my words. By May, if you ask anybody about it, they'll say, "Watergate? What's that?" I'll tell you,' said the columnist, his deep voice and meticulous speech resonant with the assurance of a man who was accustomed to being listened to attentively at all times, 'I tell you we're witnessing the opening move» toward Fascism.'
As he spoke, he munched on a corned beef sandwich, washed down with Scotch. 'The skinheads are preparing the ground. I won't be surprised if they're not called in to run the whole show. One morning we'll wake up and the tanks will be rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue and the machine guns will be on every roof. That hadn't been in any of his columns that I had read. Come to Washington and get the real, authentic, scary dope.
The lawyer didn't seem to be at all ruffled by the charges. He had the calm, good-natured imperturbability of the pliant Company Man. 'Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea,' he said. 'The press is irresponsible. It lost the war in Asia for us. It chums up the public against the President, the Vice President, it holds up all authority to scorn, it's making it more and more impossible to govern the country. Maybe putting the skinheads, as you call them, in control for a few years might be the best thing that .happened to this country since Alf Landon.'