Hilary didn’t bother to answer such nonsense. There was a pen in her hand and she was drawing high-heeled shoes all over Tash’s engagement pad.
“If you’re going to stay, you’d better move in here pretty soon. Now Jerry has announced his candidacy, we’ll be in the campaign before we know it, and you won’t have time to commute between Leafy Way and your apartment. You’ll be working twenty-four hours a day.”
“All right.” Tash rose. “I’m dining out this evening, but after dinner I’ll go home and pack a bag and come back here. It’ll be a nice change from a newspaper office, where you work thirty-four hours a day.”
Hilary was halfway to the door when Tash stopped her.
“There’s one thing we’ve forgotten.”
“What?”
“The canary. Alcoholism wouldn’t explain that.”
“No,” said Hilary. “Nothing we know explains that.”
Bill Brewer had chosen a restaurant in the hills with a view of city lights tumbling down sloping ground to the harbor, where they were reflected in water. He was waiting at a table by a window when Tash arrived.
“Don’t blame me for being late. Blame Barlovento. I got bogged down in their imports and exports again and forgot the time.”
“Campari soda?”
“Something stronger tonight, please. Rum, I think.” Bill ordered a daiquiri. “You look worried.”
“I am.”
“Want to talk about it?”
Tash took a sip of the cold, bitter-sweet drink and smiled over the rim of her glass at Bill. “I like talking to you. I can say anything that comes into my head without worrying for fear you’ll misunderstand. I really need that tonight, but there mustn’t be any leaks.”
Bill laughed. “Have you forgotten that our paper is owned by a man who is supporting Playfair for re-election? No matter what you tell me tonight, I can’t publish it.”
“Censorship?”
“Of course. In a Freudian society, freedom of the press means freedom to print four-letter words, but you can’t print the truth about international oil. Sex is the new opiate of the people.”
“Don’t you believe in anything? Not even sex?”
“Oh, I believe in dry martinis and you. What’s this all about?”
Tash told him.
“I wonder if any love story ever has a happy ending,” he said. “I remember so well when Jeremy married Vivian. He was really in love with her then.”
“There must be some happy endings.”
“I’ve never known one in real life. I loved my wife and what happened? She died of cancer before she was thirty . . .
“This is Jeremy Playfair’s unlucky year, saddled with a wife whose behavior could wreck him, and stuck with a strike he can’t settle without antagonizing some block of voters. Is it really bad luck? Or could it be the work of someone out to get him?”
“Oh, Bill, what a horrid idea! Do you think Hilary’s right about Vivian Playfair?”
“It’s possible, but not probable.”
“Why not?”
“Alcoholism is escape. What has Mrs. Playfair to escape from?”
“An exhibitionist would love being a governor’s I. wife,” said T°sh. “But a reticent person might find it torture after a year or so.”
“Or she might fall in love with another man,” said Bill. “How about Carlos de Miranda?”
“That’s lunacy!” retorted Tash. “Do you think any woman married to Jeremy Playfair would look at any other man?”
Bill didn’t try to return that ball. Apparently, he decided that it was not in his court.
They had reached coffee and liqueurs when he was called to the telephone.
Tash saw a change in him when he came back.
“I’m going to put you in a taxi now,” he said. “I have to get back to the office.”
“What’s happened?”
“A clash between dockworkers and Barloventan exiles on the waterfront a few minutes ago. Two men killed, more than a dozen wounded.”
When Tash reached Leafy Way with her suitcases she was waylaid by Hilary at the front door.
“We need you.”
“But it’s nearly midnight!”
“Did you think I was joking when I said we work twenty-four hours a day?”
In the Florida Room, the air was thick with tobacco smoke. Job Jackman stood where Carlos had stood the night before, his back to the fireplace, smoking the inevitable cigar. Jeremy sat negligently perched on the edge of a window seat. Carlos, arms folded, stood leaning his back against a table.
In a crisis Job was a different man from the one Tash had met two days ago. Even his voice had more authority now.
“ . . . and now you must get the strike settled.”
“Agreed,” said Jeremy.
“Well, what are you waiting for? Give the strikers whatever they want.”
“Disagreed.”
Job took the cigar out of his mouth and flicked away the ash.
“Jeremy, being called neo-fascist and pro-Communist at the same time is quite a feat, but that’s what’s happening to you now in the evening papers. If you call out the National Guard, it’ll be even worse. You’re not running for re-election in Barlovento. Why do you care if people there starve a little?”
“I’ve already called out the National Guard.”
“Without consulting me?”
“There is no law or precedent that says I have to consult you.”
“Do you know why you’ve never lost an election? Because I’ve managed all your campaigns.”
“This isn’t campaign strategy. This is state policy.”
“Are you going to be like the President who said to his campaign manager: ‘Mr. Tweed, God elected me!’ ”
“Job, I am not going to turn myself into a robot who jumps through hoops every time you push a button marked Votes. It’s not the end of the world if I lose this election. Right now, I’m pretty sick of the whole thing. Carlos, doesn’t your family still have a place on one of the islands where I could retire?”
“Cayo Siesta in the Sotavento group. Casa Miranda is yours, Jerry, whenever you care to go there.”
“But the election!” It was almost a wail from Job. “Think of all the people who’ve worked for you without pay ever since you entered politics! Can you let them down by walking out in a moment of pique?”
“Pique?”
“Sorry, maybe that’s the wrong word, but—”
“That is
