The governor stared at her. Slowly he nodded. “Maybe,” he said. His broad gesture took in the office and the entire building. “I’m here,” he said, “out of vanity, and that you always pay for. I love the hurrah. I always have. I might have been an actor.” He smiled suddenly. “At any rate, there I am.” The smile spread. “Exposed,” he said.
“I like what I see.”
The governor was silent for a few moments. “Maybe,” he said at last, “with someone like you, the White House might not have been out of reach.” He paused again. “What might have been.” He straightened. “I’d far rather stay right here, but as I said, you pay for your vanity.
“I belong outside, moving around—” He shook his head in faint apology.
“May I come with you?” She was smiling still as she stood up.
Together they walked into the Tower Room, and there on the threshold paused to look around. The room was as before: groups forming, flowing; waiters and waitresses passing trays of drinks and hors d’oeuvres; conversation, even occasional sudden laughter, perhaps a trifle over-loud. But now there was a difference.
It is, Beth thought, like one of those party scenes on stage, in an opera, perhaps, or a ballet, an animated but patently false gathering designed to hold the audience’s attention until the principals come out of the wings.
She wondered if the governor had the same impression, and she saw from his smile that he did.
“Here we go on stage,” he said.
The network president stopped them first. “It’s getting hot in here, Bent.”
The governor smiled. “Think of last summer when they closed down all power to three hundred thousand people at a time who had to do without their air-conditioners.”
“Other people’s miseries have never made mine feel much better.”
“Nor mine really,” the governor said. “On the other hand, when there is nothing you can do about it—”
“I’ve made it a practice always to find something to do about it. So have you.”
The governor nodded. He was smiling his public smile, but his voice held no hint of amusement. “But not this time, John. Not now.”
“We just wait it out?”
“For the moment,” the governor said, “that’s all there is to do.” He and Beth moved on.
Mayor Ramsay came up, his wife with him. “Anything new?”
“They’re trying an elevator. We’ll know about that soon.”
“And the firemen coming up the stairs?”
“Two of them,” the governor said, “will get here. I sent the other two back.”
The mayor’s jaw muscles rippled. “Do you mind telling me why?”
“Because, Bob, the two who will get here can’t go back. There is fire in the stairwell beneath them.”
The mayor let his breath out in a sigh. “And that means the other stairwell isn’t safe either, is that it?”
“I’m afraid that’s it.”
Paula Ramsay said, “We telephoned Jill.” She was smiling at Beth. “She said to give you her best.” She paused. “You were always her favorite.” She paused. “Sometimes I thought you knew her better than I did and I resented it. I don’t any more.”
More words never spoken until this moment, Beth thought. Why? “I didn’t know that.”
“It doesn’t matter now. The resentment is all gone. Jill—” Paula shook her head.
“She is young, Paula, so very young.”
“And she’ll be on her own now.” She looked at the governor. “I’m not a noble woman, Bent. I’m an angry woman. Why are we here like this? Who is responsible? I asked Grover Frazee and—”
“Grover,” the mayor said, “is both scared and drunk.” There was scorn in his voice. “In a gentlemanly way, of course. Very Fly Club. What he said was, ‘Now, now, my dear Paula, everything is going to be all right—I hope.’ Or words to that effect.”
“I want someone punished for this,” Paula Ramsay said. “I am sick and tired of irresponsible, malicious people doing whatever they choose, calling it some kind of activism, and getting away with it. Whether those responsible for this are black or white, male or female, prominent pediatricians or university chaplains or priests or anything else, I want to see them punished.” She stopped. “No, I won’t see them punished, will I? But I want to know that they will be. Call me vindictive, if you will. Call me—”
“I call you honest, Paula,” the governor said. “I’ll admit that this particular situation is changing my views on crime and punishment too.”
“But it isn’t over yet,” the mayor said. “You said so yourself. The elevator—”
“No,” the governor said, “it isn’t over yet.” He thought about the breeches buoy and decided against mentioning it and raising hopes prematurely. “I don’t like using football analogies,” he said. “They make me sound like—someone else. I don’t talk about game plans. But it isn’t over until the final gun goes off. In the meantime—”
“A ladylike stiff upper lip,” Paula Ramsay said. Her eyes were angry. “I am tempted to use privy-wall words, Bent. I mean that.” And then, “Go carry on with your tour of reassurance.” She paused and looked at her husband. “And we’ll do the’ same. Can’t let the side down, can we?” There was scorn in her voice.
The governor watched them walk away. The secretary general was approaching. “Between us,” the governor said quickly to Beth, “I feel exactly the same way Paula does. And if that were known, wouldn’t it just raise hell with my public image?” He smiled then at the secretary general, who carried a champagne glass in an easy practiced manner. “Walther, I don’t think I’ve apologized before for this—melodrama. I do now.”
“But are you responsible?”
“Only indirectly.” The governor left it there, without explanation.
The secretary general said, “Have you noticed how quickly, how easily one’s perspective changes? Until only a little time ago I was concerned largely with such matters as budget, unrest in the Middle East, problems of Southeast Asia, the ruffled feathers of a score of delegates on a dozen different issues, world environment—” He paused, smiling apologetically. “It reminds me of another time when only the here and now were important.”
“When was that?” Beth said.
“During the war?” the governor said. “Is that when you mean, Walther?”
“For some months we lived in a haystack outside Munich,” the secretary general said. “Our house had been—confiscated. I had been released from concentration camp—my wife managed to arrange it. We were six. Two children, my wife’s mother, an aunt of mine, ourselves.” His voice was quiet. “Once there was a chicken, a whole chicken.” He shook his head gently. “I learned then what the here and now can mean. That chicken—” Again the gentle headshake. There was in his face, in his voice, compassion and understanding without censure. “It was for the children, but they had none of it.”-He paused. “When my wife and I were looking elsewhere, the two old ladies ate it. All of it, the bones were clean. So it is when—survival is the problem.”
“Maybe,” the governor said slowly, “if we could bring the squabbling sides of all your problems right here, now, put them in this situation, they would settle their differences in a hurry. What do you think of that as a solution?”
“Yankee ingenuity.” The secretary general smiled. “I take it there is nothing new in our situation?” He nodded at what he saw in the governor’s face. “I thought not. A suggestion. Mr. J. Paul Norris is, shall we say, on the point of explosion. He is outraged”—again the smile—“well beyond my poor diplomatic powers to soothe.”
“I’ll talk to him,” the governor said.
J. Paul Norris, the tall gray-haired executive type, glowered at them. “If somebody doesn’t do something soon,” he said, “I am going to take matters into my own hands.”