And could not keep her hands off of me. It was truly extraordinary.
The first night I met her we both came in our pants, rubbing up against each other. I knew then we were going to get married. We had to we had no choice.'
'Mutual hormone storm,' Evans said.
'Uh uh,' Hilliard said. 'I'd had those before and I've had them since.
It was a lot more'n that. This was beyond horny, this was mating.'
'Well then,' Evans said, 'if that was the way that you felt about her, how could you do what you did? Did the feeling you had for her change?'
'No, it didn't,' Hilliard said. 'I still feel about her the same way today that I did back when we got engaged, and finally we could do what a man and woman're supposed to do when they're by themselves with their clothes off. When it was finally okay. Well, not okay, really, but close enough; the Church didn't allow it, but she did. If she called me up tonight and asked me to come over and put it to her, no promises to drop this case, nothing, I would do it. I'd be over there like a shot. She wont, of course, because 'What would Diane say,' and of course I'm now kind of pissed-off at her so I'd probably try to make her beg for it. But if she did call and ask me, I know I would do it.
I always liked screwing my own wife. In fact thinking about it, I will go further: she may be the best lay I've ever had.'
'Then why all the others?' Evans said. 'The other eighteen: I don't see the logic to it.'
'That's because there isn't any logic to it,' Hilliard said. 'Or else it's because it's the same. I didn't go into politics because I wanted to be a politician any more than I went to law school because I wanted to be a lawyer. All I knew when I ran for alderman the first time and lost and then the second time and won was that even though I was a pretty good high-school teacher and I kind of liked it, and saw that if I stayed with it I'd do all right, it was not going to be enough, ever.
There'd never be enough excitement for me. Never enough thrills and chills. I certainly didn't want the life my father had; fingers in other peoples' mouths all the time, smelling their terrible breath, looking over what's still left of what they had for dinner the past couple weeks. That's why I'd gone into teaching. I guess you could say I was restless. The only thing I could see being still left open to me was politics, running for office.
'It turned out to be the right answer. I really liked politics. I liked running for office a lot. I didn't like getting my brains beaten out, but I liked what I'd seen the first time out well enough to risk having it happen again. And then I got help, from the Carneses and Amby, and the second time I didn't get beat.'
'It wasn't because you had some idea that if you put yourself into that milieu you might be able to pattern your life on what you saw the Kennedys doing,' Evans said.
Hilliard snorted. 'Back then almost nobody knew how much ass those guys were getting. No, I didn't run for office because I thought if I won, I'd get laid a lot. I ran for office because I Wl thought I could be better as a politician, make better use of my intelligence and my skills doing that than I'd ever be able to if I stayed a teacher. I looked at the people I saw ten or twenty years older than I was who were running for office and having a high old time for themselves, showing off and making lots of noise and so forth, and then I looked at the future that I'd probably have if I kept on doing the same thing that I'd been doing. By the time I was forty-five or so I'd have a pretty good chance of being a superintendent, or else fairly high up either in the Mass. Teachers' Association or the NEA. Not a bad life at all.
'But if I was going to do what amounted to getting out of teaching in order to boss teachers, or get them to elect me to help run their union for them, then why not make a run in honest politics? See if I was any good at that, and then if it turned out I was, then get out of teaching and go at that full-bore. So that was what I did.
'I didn't find out about the pussy until later.'
To preserve what meagre strength Evans saw in Hilliard's case, he had 'strongly recommended' that his client suspend his efforts to add to the number of women he'd bedded and 'avoid being seen in public unofficially with any attractive woman, pendente lite.' 'Meaning,' as Hilliard ruefully translated it to Merrion, 'that I'm not to get laid, except very discreetly, until the divorce case is over. This's all Diane Fox's fault, I have to go through this at my age, beating my meat by myself. Once I get this divorce shit out of the way I may have a law passed against her. Have her declared a toxic-waste dump and appropriate funds to dispose of her.
'It's surprising how hard it is to do that, get laid without anyone seeing. I never would've guessed. I'm not really sure I can do it.
You say to a grown-up woman, would she like to have some dinner, maybe relax, have a few drinks, listen to some music. She's in the mood, agreeable, she's liable to say Yes, and come along with you, good time to be had by all. Of course anyone who sees you and knows you, knows that you're not married to each other, so they also now know what it is you're leading up to. The two of you're planning to get laid. So for me, for now, that's out. I've always been discreet, which's why Mercy hasn't really got any concrete evidence she can use to bean me, but now I've got to be discreetly discreet.
'I don't know how to do that. What do I do, I see a lady I might like to jump? Slip her a note that says that I'm in room two-ten, and would she like to join me there and have some food sent up, maybe have a glass of wine and watch the ballgame on TV? Oh, very smooth. She's not gonna go for that. She's gonna laugh in my face. The best you can hope for, you pull that stunt, you don't get a kick in the balls.
'Sam says the way to look at it is that I'm being punished. The punishment for getting laid with too many women is not getting laid with any women at all for a while. He's got that part right. This getting' separated and divorced is no day at the beach. Makes it lots harder to get laid'n it is when you're still all safely married, got the wife at home and all, like all the other guys I know are who're always getting' laid all around me, left and right. I don't recommend it at all.'
Merrion suspected that Hilliard had eased his loneliness by making it his business to become somewhat better acquainted with Mary Pat Sweeney, but never made any effort to find out if he was right. He did make it a point to hang around for what Hilliard had come to call the apres-golf dinners at Grey Hills on Sunday evenings; as far as Merrion could tell, they were about the only interludes of peace and relaxation 'fun,' Danny called it that his best friend had all week.
But Merrion would not have chosen that word. Hilliard gave the meals an air of almost frantic desperation, trying to wring more happiness out of the hours than Merrion believed they actually contained, extending the evening with booze and then talking too loudly, too much.
'Those new buildings going up in Canterbury there? I'm the guy that built those, got the money for them. Almost seven million dollars. And what thanks I get for that? 'That was two, three years ago. Whatchou doin' now?' I tell you, you get no thanks in this business.'
The chief of police in Canterbury in those days was Salvatore Paradisio, the formidable uncle of self-effacing Samuel Paradisio, the federal probation officer who had come to mistrust Lowell Chappelle's intentions toward Janet LeClerc. For Salvatore Paradisio life was a serious business, always to be soberly conducted.
To his ex-officio service as a member of the police station building committee named by the selectmen, he brought strong views tenaciously held on the subject of the proper design of police stations in general and what specific modifications would be appropriate for the one to be built in Canterbury by the F.D. Barrows Construction Co.' the contract having been awarded as expected as soon as the tedious business of inviting, receiving, opening and considering competitive sealed bids had been gotten out of the way.
Merrion was a member of the five-person Building Committee. By then Deputy Clerk of Court, he had been appointed without his prior knowledge or permission and when he was informed, against his wishes at the suggestion of Richard Hammond, Clerk of Courts. Hammond knew Chief Paradisio just as well as anyone else outside his family did, and therefore while he agreed with the selectmen that someone from the courthouse ought to serve on the committee, he did not agree that he should be the one.
'After all,' Hammond told them, 'I've got a growing family. Demands on my time. Responsibilities. I've been planning to see as much as I can of my children in the next eight or ten years the two youngest've got left before they get all grown up. If I let you talk me into serving on a committee with Sal Paradise, I wont be able to do that. They'll be planning their weddings by the time I get home from the first meeting. I'll be tied up every night until I'm sixty-five.
'No, Amby Merrion's your choice. Bachelor like he is, he's got lots of time. Besides, he's pals with Hilliard. These're Hilliard's buildings, right? Way he tells it, anyway, he's the guy that got the money. So put his sidekick on the panel. Pretty soon the chief 11 start to drive him 'round the bend, like he does everybody else who has to listen
