“The Family Fun Show is almost over,” his wife said, “and you didn’t bring me a beer. What kind of a gentleman are you?”
“Oh Christ,” Harry said, and got himself out of his chair.
In the kitchen he took one beer from the refrigerator, changed his mind, and took out a second, opened, them both. He finished the half-empty can in three long swallows, and walked back to his chair.
“There’s still a lot of smoke,” his wife said. “If your building is so great, why is that?” She took the beer can absently, drank deep. “Maybe we ought to have two TVs. Then you could watch what you want and I could watch what I want. How about that?”
“Jesus,” Harry said, “do you know what this color set you wanted so bad cost? And that trip to Florida you kept nagging about all winter? You think I’m made of money?”
“All I said,” his wife said, “was that if we had two TVs, then you could watch your ball games and your Monday night football games and like that, and I—”
“You could watch Clara What’s-her-name. Well, goddammit,” Harry said, “you got the whole week, every day, Monday through Friday—”
The picture on the screen suddenly wavered, shook. There was silence. Then, distantly, the sound of a hollow boom!
“Jesus,” Harry said, “what was that?”
The announcer’s voice, a little shaky, said, “We don’t know exactly what has happened.” He paused. “But I can tell you that the ground shook, and if I were still back in Vietnam, I’d say for sure that a mortar attack had just begun. Chief! Oh, Chief! Can you tell us what’s going on?”
The microphone picked up crowd sounds now, an excited murmuring as at opening kickoff, the feeling of spectator enjoyment high.
“What was it, Harry?”
“How the hell do I know? Maybe somebody planted a bomb. You heard the man.”
There was confusion covered by commercials. At last the announcer said, “This is Assistant Fire Commissioner Brown, ladies and gentlemen, and maybe he can tell us what has happened. Commissioner?”
“I’m afraid I can’t—yet,” Brown said. “We know there has been something like an explosion down in the main transformer room in one of the subbasements. All electrical power in the building is out. There are two men dead down there and sabotage is being considered. Beyond that—” The assistant commissioner shrugged.
“Standby generators,” Harry said. “What’s the matter with the goddam standby generators?”
The announcer said, “What does the loss of electrical power mean, Commissioner? Lights? Elevators? Air-conditioning? Are all of those kaput?”
“That’s what it means at least for the present. Now if you’ll excuse me—”
As the assistant commissioner turned away, the long-range microphone caught Will Giddings and Nat Wilson standing together:
“If it was a short,” Giddings said, “it ought to have gone to ground. Goddammit, that’s how it’s designed.”
“Agreed.” Nat’s voice was weary. He had heard the point made several times. “Unless somebody altered it.” The voices were cut off. The screen showed a soup commercial.
“Harry!” The wife’s voice was almost a scream. “Harry, for God’s sake, what’s wrong? You look like you seen a ghost!’
Harry tried to set the beer can down on the chairside table. He missed. It dropped to the floor and beer foamed out on the wall-to-wall carpeting. Neither of them noticed. “What is it, Harry? For God’s sake, talk!”
Harry licked his lips. His throat felt dry and filled with sour vomit at the same time. How could that be? He took a deep breath. He said at last in a low vicious voice, “All right. So all right. You got your goddam big color TV, didn’t you? And your trip to Florida?” He paused. “Just remember that.”
14
In the office the governor said wearily, “All right. There isn’t anything for us to do right now except wait.” So be it.
“‘When rape is inevitable—’” Jake Peters began. He shook his head. Then, “Where’re you going, Bent?”
“I promised a report.”
Frazee said, “Oh for God’s sake! We don’t know it’s as bad as they say it is. Let’s keep it right here in this room until we do know.”
“Grover”—the governor’s voice was sharp and the wolfish grin showed his teeth in a near-snarl—“I made a promise. I intend to keep it.” He paused. “There is another point, and it is that those people out there have just as much right to all the facts as you have.” He paused again. “Even more right because none of them could have had anything to do with what has happened.”
“And I have?” Frazee said. “Now, look, Bent—”
“That,” the governor said, “is something we will find out later. He looked down at Beth Shirley. “You don’t have to come,” he said.
“I wouldn’t miss it.”
There was still ample light coming through the tinted windows, but somewhere the waiters had found more candles and lighted them around the big room for cheer. It was, the governor thought, a setting for a pleasant, if pointless, cocktail gathering. But now with a difference. As he and Beth walked in conversation slowed and then stopped.
They walked to the center of the room, and there the governor signaled to a waiter to bring a chair. The governor stepped up on it and raised his voice. “In my younger day,” he said, “I was used to soapboxes. This will have to do.” Always start it on a light note—who had taught him that so long ago? No matter. He waited until the murmur of amusement subsided.
“I promised a report,” he said. “This is the situation …”
Beth watched and listened, and thought, I have no right to be here. But would I change it if I could? The answer was no.
She looked around at the nearby faces while the governor was speaking. Most wore set smiles like masks; a few wore frowns of puzzlement, one or two of annoyance.
There was the young congressman, Cary Wycoff, whom she had met. Was that the expression with which he waited for a political opponent to finish his say on the floor of the House? He seemed tense, almost coiled, holding down angry words with effort. His eyes never left the governor’s face.
There was Paula, Bob Ramsay’s wife, tall, serene, smiling as she had smiled through a thousand social events and campaign visits. She caught Beth’s eye and drooped one eyelid momentarily in a girlish gesture of intimacy. Obviously to Paula the situation was far from serious.
Directly in front of the governor’s chair were the UN’s Secretary General and its Ambassador from the Soviet Union. Their faces were expressionless.
Senator Peters, Beth noticed, had come out of the office and was leaning against a wall, watching the scene. A strange, earthy, involuted man, she thought. Over the years she had often come across newspaper and magazine pieces devoted to his accomplishments and idiosyncrasies. Now, meeting him for the first time, she found the reports all the more remarkable.
He was a bird-watcher of almost professional caliber, and his catalogue of birds to be found in the Washington tidal basin area was the standard. He had been a guiding spirit in the establishment of the Appalachian Trail, and he had walked its two-thousand-mile length. He read Greek and Latin with ease and spoke French and German—with an American big-city working-class accent. It was said that his mental collection of bawdy limericks was the largest in the entire US Congress. He was here now, as Beth was, not entirely, but at least partly, by chance.