“You scrape a layer of skin off your average American,” Doris persisted, “and he’ll still tell you all technology is the instrument of the devil.”
“Oh, Doris.”
“And you’re up there like a big fool saying technology replaces religion?”
“I said nothing of the sort.”
“Technology replaces democracy?”
As he turned from the mirror, he was buttoning the cuffs of his shirt. The muscles in his jaw were working hard.
“You’ve just quit, Caxton. You’ve just retired from politics! You retired me!” she shouted. “You self- destructed in one day!”
“It’s all our fault,” Walsh said. He bit his lower lip. “We were overimpressed by Victor Robbins’s death this morning. With the primary in a couple of days, we were trying to make the nightly news.”
“I don’t need excuses made for me, son,” the governor said with annoyance. “I said what I felt like saying, and saying it felt right.”
“Well, it certainly cost enough for you to feel good.” Her eyes were as hard as a rooster’s.
“What real harm has it done?” the governor asked. He called on Fletch: “What’s the reaction on the press bus?”
“I don’t think they’ve digested it yet. Not really. I think most of them are just glad to hear something new.”
“Sure,” scoffed Doris Wheeler. “They’d be delighted to publish Caxton’s suicide note.”
“Actually—” Fletch hesitated. “Andrew Esty did head for the airport. Said he was leaving the campaign. Called you a godless person.”
“Caxton!” exclaimed Doris. “Do you know the circulation of the
“Oh, Esty!” the governor snorted. “Jesus Christ wouldn’t have pleased him. Jesus washed the feet of a whore.”
Doris Wheeler’s face was rising up the crimson scale. “How come you do these stupid things without even consulting me? How come you stood up on your hind legs in Winslow, and again in Spiersville, and spouted a pseudo-profound, pseudo-philosophical, pseudo-statesmanlike speech on the state of the whole world, without consulting me?”
“People are waiting,” the governor said.
“Believe me,” Doris Wheeler said, brushing Barry Hines aside and opening the door to the living room, “nothing more that is stupid and self-destructive is going to happen today. Not with me at his side. If you all can’t stop him from making a fool of himself, I can.”
Leaving the room, she left the door open.
The governor swung the door almost closed again. “Gentlemen,” he said to Barry, Walsh, Fletch, “while greeting people in the living room, please drop casually into your conversations that we were just playing the television rather loudly in here. What’s on television at this hour, Barry?”
Barry thought. “Most places, reruns of ‘M*A*S*H,’ Archie Bunker, and ‘The Muppets.’”
“Right,” said the governor. “We were watching a rerun of Archie Bunker while I dressed, with the volume on loud.”
In the living room, meeting and greeting went on. Fletch found himself talking to the publisher and chief editorial writer of
The look of mild alarm and polite curiosity on everyone’s face when the governor entered the living room dissipated slowly as more drinks were poured and Archie Bunker was mentioned.
Doris Wheeler was never still. She kept moving around the room, her eyes apparently in everyone’s face simultaneously, appearing to hear, to agree with everything.
The governor stood with his hands in his pockets, chatting with a slowly changing group of people around him, making pleasantries, laughing easily.
Walsh was in earnest conversation near the bar table with five or six people in their twenties.
After a few moments, the governor came over to Fletch, gripped him by the elbow and, nodding at them kindly, faced him away from the publisher and the editorial writer. “Fletch. Find Dr. Thom for me. Have him come up here. No black bag. He’ll know what I need.”
The hand holding Fletch’s elbow shook ever so slightly.
Fletch said, “Yes, sir.”
18
“Hello, Ms. Arbuthnot?” Fletch said into his bedroom telephone.
“Yes?”
“Glad I caught you in.”
“In what?”
“The shower?”
“Just got out of it.”
“And did you sing your ‘Hoo boy, now I wash my left knee. Hoo boy, now I wash my right knee’ song?”
“Oh, you know about that.”
“Used to hear you through the wall in Virginia. Key of C in the morning, F at night.”
“I take a cold shower in the morning.”
“I was just about to order up a sandwich and a bottle of milk to my room. I could order up two sandwiches.”
“Yes, you could, Fletch. If you want two sandwiches.”
“I only want one sandwich.”
“Then order only one.”
“You’re not getting the point.”
“I’m trying not to be as presumptuous as some people I know.”
“You see, I could order up one sandwich for me. And one for a friend. Who might come along and eat with me.”
“Entirely reasonable. Do you have a friend?”
“I was thinking you might be that friend, seeing you’ve taken a shower and all.”
“Nope. I wouldn’t be.”
“What makes you so certain?”
“I’m certain.”
“We could eat and slurp milk and maybe even we could sit around and sing ‘Great Green Globs of Greasy Grimy Gopher’s Guts.’”
“Nope. We couldn’t.”
“Aw, Freddie—”
“Look, Fletch, would you mind if I hung up now? I’m expecting a phone call from Chicago. Then I have to call Washington.”
“Okay,” Fletch said. “I’ll call you back after you change your mind.”
He called room service and ordered up two club sandwiches and a quart of milk.
His shoes were already off. He took off his shirt and fell on his back on the bed.
His bedroom was virtually identical to the room he’d had the night before, to the same centimeter of space, to the autumnal, nondirtying color scheme, to the wall mirror tilted to reflect the bed, to the heating system that wouldn’t cool off, to the number of too-small towels in the bathroom, to the television he had discovered produced only pink pictures. The painting on the wall was of mountaintops instead of a sailboat. For a moment Fletch thought of American standardization and the interchangeability of motel rooms, motels, airports, whole cities, national news
