The invited guests flowed through the door and into two automated express elevators for the less-than-two-minute trip to the highest room in the tallest building in the world where the bar tables were already set up, candles lighted, canapés set out, champagne was chilled and ready, and waiters and waitresses stood by.
Part II
“The important thing to remember is that with high enough temperatures, anything will burn, anything!”
10
In the Tower Room, drink in hand, “I have absolutely nothing against holy men per se,” the governor was saying to Grover Frazee, “but some of them do take the bit in their teeth and go on and on and on.”
“Would you care to have that quoted to the state electorate?” Frazee said. He felt better, easier, more relaxed than he had all day. Will Giddings had depressed him; there was no denying it. But with congratulations coming in now from all sides, the sense of depression had faded and then disappeared altogether. Looking contentedly around the room, “Might cost you some votes,” he said.
“You know,” the governor said, “I’m not sure I’d give a damn. I have a ranch out in the mountains in northern New Mexico. The ranch house sits at eight thousand feet on a green meadow. There’s a trout stream, and from the ranch house porch a view of thirteen-thousand-foot mountains that never lose their snow.” He too looked around the crowded room. “The ranch looks better and better all the time.” He caught the eye of a passing waiter. “Bring me another bourbon and water, son, if you please.” And then again to Grover Frazee. “I’ve even switched from Scotch.” He smiled as the mayor walked up. “Ah, Bob,” he said.
“I thought it went quite well,” the mayor said. “Congratulations, Grover.”
“Your remarks on the brotherhood of man laid them in the aisles, Bob,” the governor said. “As I pointed out earlier, it is those carefully prepared impromptu comments that do the trick.” There were times when the governor felt almost ashamed baiting Bob Ramsay; it was, as they said in his adopted West, as easy as shooting fish in a rain barrel, too easy. “Where’s your good lady?”
“Over by the windows.” The mayor’s voice was fond. “Admiring the view. Do you know that on a clear day—”
“Do we have clear days any more?” the governor said. And then, “Strike that. I’m thinking of something else.” Of limitless blue skies and mountains clearly visible a hundred miles away, turning purple in the dusk; of vast quiet and a sense of peace. The governor felt suddenly sentimental. “You’ve been married how long, Bob?”
“Thirty-five years.”
The mayor examined the statement for barbs. There appeared to be none. “I am.” He glanced in his wife’s direction.
“And who is that with her?” the governor said.
“One of your boosters, a cousin of mine. Her name is Beth Shirley.” The mayor was smiling now. “Interested?”
“Lead me to her,” the governor said.
She was tall, this Beth Shirley, with calm blue eyes and auburn hair. She nodded acknowledgment of the introduction and then waited for the governor to set the conversational pace.
“All I know about you,” the governor said, “is that you are Bob Ramsay’s cousin and you vote the right ticket. What else should I know?”
Her smile was slow, matching the calm of her eyes. “That depends, Governor, on what you have in mind.”
“At my age—” the governor began. He shook his head. “I don’t think your life has stopped yet,” Beth said. The smile spread. “At least that is not the picture I’ve always had of you. Don’t disappoint me, please.”
The governor thought about it. He said at last, his smile matching her own, “You know, I think the last thing I want in this world is to disappoint you.” Strangely enough it was true. It was, he decided, the old goat in him coming out. “And,” he added, “if that sounds ridiculous, why, let it. I’ve been ridiculous before. Many times.”
Talk swirled around them, but for the moment they were alone. “Your ability to laugh at yourself,” Beth said, “is one of the things I’ve always admired in you.”
Man’s capacity to absorb flattery, the governor had always thought, is without limit. “Tell me more.”
“Bob Ramsay cannot laugh at himself.”
“Then he ought not to be in politics. The President of the United States can’t laugh at himself either, and we’re all the losers for it.”
“You might have been President. You came close.”
“We used to say,” the governor said, “that close only counts in horseshoes, and then you have to be damn close. The presidency is a spin of the wheel. Few men ever get a first chance and almost none a second. I had my shot at it. There won’t be another, and that’s that.” Why was he thinking so often today of that trout stream winding through the foot of the meadow, and the scent of evergreens in the high clear air? “Do you know the West?”
“I went to the University of Colorado.”
“Did you, by God!” Whoever arranged these chance meetings, the governor thought, probably knocked themselves out laughing at man’s conceit that he controlled his own destiny. “Do you know northern New Mexico?”
“I’ve skied and ridden in the mountains.”
The governor took a deep breath. “Do you fish?”
“Only trout fishing. In streams.”
It was then that Senator Peters walked up, champagne glass in hand. “Always you’ve been against monopolies, Bent,” the senator said, “but here you are monopolizing.”
“Go away, Jake.” The intimate spell was broken. The governor sighed. “You won’t, of course. You never go away. You’re a bad conscience in the middle of the night. Miss Shirley, Senator Peters. Now tell me what you want, and then go away.”
“You’ve been picking on Bob Ramsay.” There was a twinkle in the senator’s eye.
“Only to the extent,” the governor said, “of putting him in the presence of a new idea. It had to do with dinosaurs.”
“Bob is uncomfortable in the presence of new ideas.”
“Miss Shirley is his cousin,” the governor said.
The senator smiled and nodded acknowledgment. “I apologize.” He paused, and then, in partial explanation, “Bent and I,” he said, “have known each other for a long time. We speak the same language, except that we don’t always agree, and his accent is better than mine. We worked our way through the same college and law school, Bent a little later than I. I waited on tables and drove a crew launch. Bent was more imaginative: he set up a laundry business and lived like a prince.”
“And,” Beth said, “Bob’s way through prep school and Yale was paid by his family.” She nodded her understanding of the implications.
“Bob loves this city,” the senator said. “I honor him for that. He’s as proud of this building as if he’d put it up himself.”
“And you are not, Senator?”
“My dear,” the senator said, “I’m an old-fashioned practical idealist. And if that sounds contradictory—”
“It isn’t,” the governor said. “In the trade union movement they call what Jake wants for his constituency pork chops—higher wages, benefits.” He paused. “Not fancy buildings, am I right, Jake?”
The senator nodded. “Bob said you mentioned dinosaur stables.”
The governor nodded in his turn, wary now. “Does that offend you, Jake? It’s your city too.”