The grin disappeared from Tarkington’s face. He surveyed Yocke with a raised eyebrow for two or three seconds, then said, “You look constipated.”
Before he could reply, Jack Yocke found himself looking at Tarkington’s back.
A half hour later he found Tish in a group on the balcony. The view was excellent this time of evening, with the lights of the city twinkling in the crisp air. Washington had enjoyed an unseasonably long fall, and although there had been several cold snaps, the temperature was still in the fifties this evening. And all these people were outside enjoying it, even if they did have to rub their arms occasionally or snuggle against their significant other. To the left one could catch a swatch of the Potomac and straight ahead the Washington Monument rose above the Reston skyline.
“Everybody, this is Jack Yocke,” Tish told the five people gathered there.
They nodded politely, then one of Yocke’s fellow Spanish students resumed a monologue Yocke’s appearance had apparently interrupted. He was middle-aged and called himself Brother Harold. “Anyway, I decided, why all the fasting, chanting, special clothes, and mantras to memorize? If I could reduce meditation to the essentials, make it a sort of subliminal programming, then the balance, the transcendence, could be made available to a wider audience.”
“You ready to leave?” Yocke whispered to his date.
“A minute,” she whispered back, intent on Brother Harold’s spiel.
Yocke tried to look interested. He had already heard this tale three times this fall. Unlike Jake Grafton or Wilson Conroy, Brother Harold thought it would be a very good thing for Yocke to do a story about him for the newspaper.
“… So I introduced music. Not just any music of course, but carefully chosen music of the soul.” He expounded a moment on the chants of ancient monks and echo chambers and the spheres of the brain, then concluded, “The goal was ecstasy through reverberation. And it works! I am so pleased. My followers have finally found quiescence and tranquility. The method is startlingly transformative.”
Yocke concluded he had had enough. He slipped back through the sliding glass door and waited just inside. Toad Tarkington was standing alone against a wall with a beer bottle in his hand. He didn’t even bother to look at Yocke. The reporter returned the compliment.
In a moment Tish joined him. “What is quiescence?” she asked as she slid the door closed behind her.
“Damned if I know. I bet Brother Harold doesn’t know either. Let’s say good-bye to the hostess and split.”
“He’s so sincere.”
“Crackpots always are,” Yocke muttered, remembering with distaste his scene with Conroy.
Callie Grafton was at the door saying good-bye to another couple, her daughter Amy beside her shifting from foot to foot. Callie was slightly above medium height with an erect, regal carriage. Tonight her hair was swept back and held with a clasp. Her eyes look tired, Jack Yocke thought as he thanked her for the party and the Spanish class.
“I hope Professor Conroy is all right, Mrs. Grafton. I didn’t mean to upset him.”
“He’s lying down. This is a very trying time for him.”
Yocke nodded, Tish squeezed her hand, and then they were out in the corridor walking for the elevator.
“I really like her,” Tish said once the elevator doors had closed behind them. “We had a delightful talk.”
“She has strange friends,” Yocke remarked, meaning Wilson Conroy.
“Since the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union,” Tish explained, “people have been laughing at Conroy. He never minded being hated, reviled—”
“Never minded? The poisonous little wart loved it!”
“—but the laughter is destroying him.”
“So Mrs. Grafton feels sorry for him, eh?”
“No,” Tish Samuels said patiently. “Pity would kill him. She’s Conroy’s friend because he has no others.”
“Umph.”
In the parking lot she asked, “Did you meet Toad Tarkington?”
“Uh-huh.”
“He and I had a nice chat. His wife is out of town, so he came by himself. He’s very nice.”
“Navy, right?”
“Golly, I’m not sure. I didn’t ask.”
“The military is what’s wrong with this town. Every other guy you meet is in the service.”
“So?”
Yocke unlocked the car and helped her into the passenger seat.
“I don’t like the military,” he said when he was in the driver’s seat. He stuck the key into the ignition and engaged the starter. “I don’t like the simplistic way they look at the world, I don’t like the rituals, the deference to seniority, the glorification of war and suffering and death. I don’t like the demands they make on the public purse. The whole gig irritates me.”
“Well,” said Tish Samuels tentatively, “I’m sure that basically the people in the service are pretty much like the rest of us.”
Yocke continued his train of thought, unwilling to let it lie. “The military is a fossil. Warriors are anachronisms in a world trying to feed five billion people. They cause more problems than they solve.”
“Perhaps,” said his date, looking out the window and apparently not interested in the reporter’s profound opinions.
“Did you meet Mrs. Grafton’s husband?”
“Oh, I said a few words to him. He seems very nice, in a serious sort of way.”
“Want to go get a drink someplace?”
“Not tonight, thank you. I’d better be getting home. Maybe the next time.”
“Sure.” Jack Yocke flicked the car into gear and threaded his way out onto the street.
After he dropped Tish Samuels at her apartment building, Jack Yocke drove downtown to the office. As he had expected, Ottmar Mergenthaler was working late. The columnist was in his small glassed-in cubicle in the middle of the newsroom tapping away on the word processor. Yocke stuck his head in.
“Hey, Ott. How’s it going?”
Mergenthaler sat back in his chair. “Pull up a chair, Jack.” When the reporter was seated, the older man asked, “How did it go this evening?”
“Okay, I guess.”
“Well, what do you think of him?” Mergenthaler had been the one who suggested he try to meet the husband of Callie Grafton, the Spanish instructor.
“I don’t know. I asked him for a simple opinion and he grinned at me and walked away.”
“Rome wasn’t written in a day. It takes years to develop a good source.”
Yocke worried a fingernail. “Grafton doesn’t give a hoot in hell what anybody thinks, about him or about anything.”
Mergenthaler laced his fingers behind his head. “Four people whom I highly respect have mentioned his name to me. One of them, a vice admiral who just retired, had the strongest opinion. He said, and I quote, ‘Jake Grafton is the most talented, most promising officer in the armed forces today.’ ” Mergenthaler cocked an eyebrow and pursed his lips. “Another senior official put it a little differently. He said, ‘Jake Grafton is a man of war.’ ”
Jack Yocke snorted. “We really need guys like that with peace breaking out all over.”
“Are you a natural-born cynic, or are you trying to grow into one?”
“These military people — a damned clique of macho knotheads worshiping the phallic gun. Grafton is just like all of them — oh, he was pleasant enough — but I could feel it.”
Mergenthaler looked amused. “My very young and inexperienced friend, if you have to like the people you write about, you are in the wrong line of work.”
Yocke grinned. “What’re you writing tonight?”
“Drugs again.” Mergenthaler turned back to the screen and scrolled the document up. He tapped the cursor position keys aimlessly while he read. Yocke stood and read over his shoulder.