mistake. And then when you got that part down pat, no dyin' or getting' real sick, then you make sure to live well.
Live gracefully, know what I mean? So you get old, but you're still lookin' good. Like it was no trouble at all. That's how I want to go out. Lookin' good, like life was a cinch.'
'Yeah,' Hilliard said. 'Well, you sound like you got it planned out pretty good. But there may be one or two other things we oughta think about here, geography and stuff. Which one of these little dukedoms 've you got in mind? Where you come from can be important. You should really come from a town in the district you want to go into, if that wouldn't be too much trouble. Don't have to, of course, it's not in the statute, but it really helps if you do. Especially if you're a young guy, gonna tie up the slot a long time if you live, as you will who ever heard a clerk dyin' in office? What the hell's gonna kill him? Overwork? Clerks don't die; they retire. Hometown boys have an easier time of it, when they gotta go through the hoops, getting' their names approved. But you're from that backwater there.' ''Backwater,' nothin',' Merrion said. 'Canterbury's perfectly all right by me. I never hid it, I come from Canterbury. I grew up in Canterbury. My mother and brother're still there. He's got plans to leave, but she hasn't. I moved but I didn't go far, next town over.
I'll take the district court of the Canterbury Division any day of the week. They've got a slot open there, too. That's another thing I checked; they're a three-assistant court but for some reason only two 've been appointed. Third-assistant clerk is vacant, ripe for plucking.
'Canterbury District Court, yes indeed. Pretty town, always liked it.
Nice'n quiet; sort of country. Not too many girls there, but I drive;
I got a car, not what you'd call a really nice new car, like some guys I know of, but still, I got a car, and it runs.' Merrion drove a maroon 1962 Oldsmobile Cutlass convertible with a white leather interior, white top and white sidewall tires, a cream-puff he'd grabbed the day it came in as a Valley Ford trade-in on a '64 Thunderbird.
'And you're sure you'll be happy there?' Hilliard said. 'You wont be coming to me in a year or so, saying to me: 'You got to get me out of this? I know I asked you, do this for me, but I'm losing my mind in that fucking place'?
'I think the world of you, Ambrose my friend, but I know you, and you like action. And you know me and how I hate going back to the well.
Doing things over I've already done, 'cause the guy didn't know what he wanted.'
'Remember what you told me years ago, Danny boy?' Merrion said. 'I first started working for you and wed won, you were an alderman. And the papers said right off that wasn't what you wanted, even though you just won it. Saying you were aiming to be mayor. And you said:
'Everyone assumes the job you go after can't be the job that you want.
Doesn't matter whether it's the one you go after first or the one that you go after next, when you've started moving up. They never think you've gotten where you want to go; some bigger job must be the one you want.
'The trick's to always keep 'em guessing, say nothing and sit tight.
Don't rule anything out. While you decide, for your self, which job you want, and why you want it. Then go into high gear, do anything you have to, to get that fucking job. And after you've got it, fake 'em right out of their shorts. Stay as smart as you always were. Keep that lovely job you wanted, and finally quit doing all the shitty stuff you had to do to get it, now you got away with it.'
'Well, that's what I'm doing here now. I thought about it, and this's the job that I want. I can do something with it. I'm not lookin' for one I'll have to wait and wait to open up, and then when it does fifty other guys want it. I want to get in line now. I get this job I'll move up and retire as the chief clerk. This job's got my name on it.
'And if you can get it,' Hilliard said, because he liked to tease Merrion, 'then will you have any immediate plans to make an honest woman out of Keller?'
'I'd have to get her calmed down some first,' Merrion said. 'That could be a tall assignment.'
'You'd have fun trying though,' Hilliard said. 'All right, I'm in.
I'll go to work. But you've got some work to do yourself, on Larry Lane. Get to know him and get permission. Kiss his ass if you have to; hold your nose, close your eyes tight and do it. Too bad Roy and Arthur made the new district and built the new courthouse before my time. Be nice if I could just phone Chassy Spring up now, and call the debt. Technically it's his appointment, presiding judge and all, but Lane's the guy you'll work for. Chassy'll probably do it if I ask him, but not without Lane signing off on it. I hope you can work with the guy. I hear he can be a real bastard.'
NINE
Hilliard's seven-year-old dark-green Mercedes Benz 300D sedan was not in the lot east of the clubhouse when Merrion parked his Eldorado coupe metallic maroon; white leather-grained-vinyl tiara roof, gold nameplates and badges, and narrow-striped whitewall tires. He was nowhere to be seen around the locker room or the putting-practice green. Running true to form: late.
For him it was like having an irregular pulse: He recognized it as abnormal but lived comfortably with it, so it was all right. Aware that his attitude angered people who had business with other people as well as with him, he considered their reactions excessive and did not become upset. 'When I'm late I know sometimes people get pissed off,' he said to Rev Peter Healy, a friendly priest and Grey Hills member, irritated by his tardy arrival at a communion breakfast. 'I cram a lot into my life, much as I possibly can. Things sometimes take longer than I expect. Therefore I become late getting to the next thing.
Welcome to reality. I can't do much about it, unless I'm ready to start saying No a lot. In this case that would've meant I couldn't come to this affair. You would've been mad at me. Thus proving that in politics saying No to people more'n you have to isn't a wise practice; therefore I'm not ready. So what you have to do, dealing with me, is master delayed gratification. You may find that also solves that problem you've been having with premature ejaculation.'
'You could call, though, once in a while,' Mercy would tell him. 'I don't like it, but I knew you had this problem and married you anyway.
I have to live with it. Other people don't think they do. They think the least you could do is call up. Let someone know you're going to be late. You're inconsiderate. All that matters is when you're ready to get around to doing something; never when somebody else is.
'I know,' she'd say, 'I know I know I know. I met Danny when he came to a freshman mixer my first year at Emmanuel. The next week we went out. A month later we were going steady. I haven't seen the beginning of a movie since I was eighteen years old. The only times I've seen the priest come out onto the altar've been the times I went to Mass by myself. When I go with Danny I'm lucky to hear the epistle; he thinks if you hear the gospel, you've been. I pretended I liked baseball when he was courting me. I didn't, but it's easy when the ballgames you see start in the fourth inning. You'd like me to break him of this habit?
Where do you live Fantasy Island?'
Legislative colleagues criticized him as difficult to work with, saying his habitual tardiness had a domino effect on their schedules, making others angry at them. Friendly TV reporters allocating regional and statewide air- time became unfriendly as he failed repeatedly to show up for interviews on time. Commentators who differed with him ideologically found sinister implications, delivering commentaries suggesting that his chronic lateness betrayed deep-seated disdain for ordinary people, scorn he expressed more subtly and harm fully in the liberal and elitist legislation he proposed and sponsored. One Globe columnist who was black printed his deduction that Hilliard's failure to show up for an interview was proof of racism, prompting a colleague who was white to respond the next day: 'On the contrary, it proves his deep commitment to equal rights. Dan Hilliard runs his life like a no- appointments barber-shop; rich or poor, or black or white, everybody waits.'
In the fall of 1972 Hilliard arrived an hour and twenty minutes late for a George McGovern fund-raising dinner at the Park Plaza. 'No one in Boston last night probably would've minded much that the Democratic majority leader in the Massachusetts House decided to dine fashionably late,' Tom Brokaw said on NBC, smiling broadly, 'if Mister Hilliard hadn't been the person scheduled on the program to introduce the presidential candidate.' Brokaw's mischievous glee designating 'Hilliard's gaffe' as 'one of many low-lights' in the chaotic state of McGovern's
