“That is nonsense.” Paula’s smile was gentle. “And you will only make me cross if you persist in thinking it. You are the finest man I have ever known.”
Ramsay was silent for a little time, staring almost as ‘ if hypnotized at the river. “Bent threw something out this, afternoon. He called this building just another dinosaur stable.” He smiled at his wife. “There is the germ of truth there. Maybe I’ve been too busy running here, running there, patching this or that to see it.”
“I don’t understand, Bob.”
“Where is the merit,” the mayor asked, “in building the biggest anything? The biggest pyramid, the biggest ship, the biggest dam, or the biggest building? The biggest city for that matter. The dinosaurs were the biggest and it was their size that finished them. That is Bent’s point.” He shook his head. “No,” he said, “quality and need ought to be the criteria, and need ought to come first. Do we need it? Is it possible? Those two questions ought to be asked at the beginning, and the answers written down in indelible ink in large letters so they won’t be forgotten.”
“Where have you strayed from that?” Paula said.
“I let the city stray from it. Is a building like this necessary? The answer is no. We have all the office space we can use. More. And I could have stopped it. Instead, I gave it every bit of help City Hall could give it. One more piece of—vanity, a building all the world would admire.”
“And will, Bob.”
The mayor opened his mouth, thought better of it, and closed it again in silence. In the end all he said was, “Maybe.” There was no point yet in crying doom.
Paula said, “Thirty-five years is a long time, Bob. People get to know one another well.” She paused. “I’ve been thinking while I stood here with you, knowing what was in your mind.” She smiled. “There are telephones. I think we might use one, don’t you?”
The mayor frowned.
“I think we might call Jill,” Paula said. “She was going to watch on television. She will be worried.”
“Good idea.” All at once the mayor was smiling again, the boyish smile the voters knew so well. “We’ll reassure ‘ her.”
“That,” Paula said, “wasn’t quite what I had in mind.”
“Now wait a minute.” The boyish smile faded, disappeared. “There’s no need to panic.”
“Not panic, Bob, but isn’t it time that we stopped pretending there is nothing out of joint? Those helicopters out there—what good can they do? The firemen Bent says are coming up the stairs—” Paula shook her head. Her smile was gentle, unreproachful, even understanding, but it asserted denial. “The last mad dash to the top of Everest—why? What are they even hoping to accomplish?”
“Damn it,” the mayor said, “you don’t just—give up.”
“I am not giving up, Bob.”
“Maybe I misunderstood you,” the mayor said slowly. “Just what were you thinking to tell Jill?”
“Mostly little things.”
“Adding up to what?”
Paula smiled, mocking herself. The smile was quickly gone. She said slowly, “Adding up to ‘au revoir.’ I want to hear her voice again. I want her to hear ours. I want to tell her where in that big house she will find our own silver—Grandmother Jones’s. I want her to know that there is some jewelry of mine, some you gave me, some that has been in the family for generations—that it is in the safe deposit box at the Irving Trust branch at Forty-second and Park and that the key is in my desk. I want to tidy up as many loose ends as I can.
“But aside from things, I want her to know that we don’t think she has failed, even with her divorce! I want her to know that we understand that we heaped too much on her because there were always cameras and reporters and microphones, and that it has been
hard enough for us, you and me, adults, to retain some kind of perspective, and that from the beginning it was probably impossible for her, a child, to see the world as anything but sugarplum candy—and all hers before she had earned any part of it.’ And you have to earn it or it is never really yours.
“I want her to be happy, to find her own happiness, and in that sense it will be a good thing if we are—no longer around because then she will have no shelter in which to hide and shiver and feel sorry for herself.
“But most of all, Bob, I want her to know what is true and has always been true—that she is very precious to us, wanted; and that now that we’re up here in this ridiculous predicament, it is she we are thinking of, no one else. Maybe that will give her a little support, a little more—strength than she has so far managed to develop.” I Paula paused. “Those are some of the things I want to say, Bob. Are they—wrong?”
The mayor took her arm. His voice was gentle. “Let’s find a phone,” he said.
Cary Wycoff found Senator Peters leaning against a wall, watching the room. “You’re asking it calmly enough,” the congressman said. There was accusation in his voice.
“What do you suggest?” the senator said. “A speech?
A committee hearing? Should we draft a bill or a minority report?” He paused. His voice altered subtly. “Or should we call the White House and lay the blame i squarely on this administration, and then call Jack Anderson and give him the inside story?”
Wycoff said, “You and Bent Armitage—you both treat me as if I were still a kid, wet behind the ears.”
“Maybe, son,” the senator said, “that’s because sometimes you behave that way. Not always, but sometimes. Like now.” He looked around the big room. “There are a lot of silly people here who haven’t the faintest idea what is going on. Have you ever seen panic? Real panic?
A crowd gone wild with fear?”
Wycoff said, “Have you?” He ought to have known better, he told himself: Jake Peters never waved an empty gun in discussion or argument.
“I was in Anchorage in sixty-four,” the senator said, “when the earthquake hit.” He paused. “Have you ever been in even a small earthquake? No? The fright, I think, is like nothing else. You think of the earth as solid, unchanging, secure. And when even it begins to move under you, then there is no security left anywhere.” He made a small impatient gesture. “Never mind. I have seen panic, yes. And I don’t want to see it again. Particularly here.”
“All right,” Wycoff said, “neither do I. What do you suggest?”
“That I move away from this wall,” the senator said, and did so.
Wycoff opened his mouth in anger. He shut it with a snap.
“Don’t jump to conclusions,” the senator said. “I’m not having you on. Feel the wall. Hot, isn’t it? I’ve been leaning there feeling it heat up. It’s come along pretty fast. That probably means that heated air, maybe even open fire, is climbing up some of the shafts in the core.” He glanced at his watch and smiled without amusement. “Faster than I thought.”
“You ought to have been a scientist.” There was disgust in Wycoff’s voice.
“Aren’t we, you and I? Practicing social scientists, that is?” The senator smiled, this time with amusement. “Not very damned scientific, I’ll grant you, but we do try to measure the pulse and the blood pressure of the people we represent—and then act accordingly.”
“And sometimes, maybe most times,” Wycoff said, “not act at all.”
“That in itself is activity. Which,” the senator said, “is something it apparently takes a long time to learn, and some people never learn it. ‘Don’t just stand there, do something!’ That’s the usual reaction. Instead, sometimes, ‘Don’t do something, just stand there!’ would be a far more sensible dictum. Do you remember when Mowgli falls in to the nest of cobras and they don’t want to hurt him, but they tell Kaa, the rock python, in effect, ‘For Christ’s sake, tell him to stand still and stop prancing around and stepping on us!’ Hell’s fire, boy, I don’t like this situation a damn bit better than you do, but I can’t think of anything to do about it, and unless or until I can think of something helpful, there is nothing to do without making things worse. So relax and watch the people. Where do you suppose Bob and Paula Ramsay are headed so purposefully? For the johns?”