eyebrow. Hold it in, sonofabitch, I thought. The Lone Ranger never blows his Kool-Aid. You just give the sheriff a silver bullet and let Tonto pour you a drink. But Verisa had really been off her style this time. She had collected a valise of surgical tools during the day for an entry into all my vital organs. In fact, I didn’t know whether to mark this to her debit or credit. As I said, in the past she could always load all of her outrage into a quiet hypodermic needle, thrust subtly into the right place (her best probe, the one she used after I had done something especially painful to that private part of her soul, was to go limp and indifferent under me, her arms spread back on the pillows, during my disabling moment of climax).
I had one more drink, just enough to go over the back of the tongue, then brushed my teeth, took three aspirins and two vitamin pills, and rinsed out my whiskey breath with Listerine. I dressed in an Italian silk shirt, a dark tie, and a pressed white suit, and rubbed the polish smooth on my boots with a damp towel. I lit a cigar and breathed out the smoke in the mirror. You’re all right, Masked Man, I thought.
I heard Verisa open the front door, then the voices of Bailey and Senator Dowling.
“Hack,” Verisa said, tapping her fingernails lightly on my door. I knew she had already gone into her transformation as the pleasant wife of a congressional candidate. It was amazing how fast it could take place.
I stepped out of the bedroom and shook hands with the Senator.
“How are you, Hack?” he said, his face healthy and cheerful. He was fifty-five years old, but his handshake was still hard and his wrist strong. He was six inches shorter than I, solidly built, his shoulders pulled straight back, and his white hair trimmed close to the scalp. His acetylene-blue eyes were bright and quick, impossible to penetrate, and you knew after he glanced confidently into your face that his lack of height was no disadvantage to him. He had the small, hard chest of a professional soldier, and his tailored suit didn’t have a fold or a bulge in it. He wore dentures, and they caused him to lisp slightly with his Texas accent, but otherwise he was solid. Also, Senator Dowling had managed to remain a strong southern figure through five administrations. He had been on many sides over the years, and he always walked out of the ballpark with the winning team (and therein lay his gift, the ability to sense change before anyone else got a whiff of it). He was put into Congress by a one-million-acre southwest Texas corporation ranch in 1940, and in the next two years he paid off his obligations by sponsoring large subsidies for growing nothing on arid land. Then he represented the oil interests, the franchised utility companies, and the Houston and Dallas industries up on antitrust suits. He assured his constituents that he was a segregationist until the Kennedy administration, then he backed one of the first civil rights bills. In the meantime he acquired a three- thousand-acre ranch in the Hill Country north of Austin, and stock in almost every major corporation in Texas with a defense contract.
“Fine, Senator. How have you been?” I said.
“Good. Relaxing at the ranch. Fishing and playing tennis a little bit before the campaign.”
“Hack, fix the Senator a drink,” Verisa said.
“Thank you. A half jigger and some soda will be fine,” he said.
“You should try the bass in Hack’s ponds,” Bailey said. He sat in one of the tall bar chairs with his arm over the back. Good old Bailey, I thought. He could always come through with an inane remark at the right time. He looked like my twin, except five years older and fifteen pounds heavier, with wrinkles in his forehead and neck. Bailey was a practical man who worried about all the wrong things.
“I’d hoped to talk with you earlier today,” the Senator said, and looked straight into my face with those acetylene-blue eyes.
“I had to stop over in Austin with a client. Maybe we can talk after my speech,” I said.
“Verisa says you’re having people up for drinks later. I’d rather we have some time between ourselves.”
“Hack, we’re invited for breakfast at the River Oaks Country Club in the morning,” Bailey said. “Maybe the Senator can join us. You all can talk, and then we’ll play some doubles.”
“That sounds fine,” the Senator said. “I could use a couple of sets against an ex — Baylor pitcher.”
The sonofabitch, I thought.
“My opponent hasn’t somehow organized his ragtail legions, has he?”
“Oh no, no. I don’t think we need to spend too much time on this gentleman.” He laughed with his healthy smile. “I wanted to talk with you about several things that will come later in Washington. Your father helped me a great deal when I was first elected to Congress, and I learned then that it’s invaluable to have an experienced friend.”
I handed him his highball glass with the half jigger and soda. He had learned to be a cautious person with liquor, and I knew he wouldn’t finish the glass I had given him.
“Well, I appreciate it, Senator. But I don’t know how good my Baylor arm will be on the court,” I said, biting down inside myself.
“Hack is defensive tonight,” Verisa said.
“He should be,” the Senator said. His eyes took on a deeper blue with his smile.
“I have a weak serve, but I’m hell on defending the net,” I said. “One flash of the wrist and I drive tennis balls into concrete.”
“We had better go downstairs pretty soon,” Bailey said. His face was flat, but his discomfort showed in the nervous tic of his fingers on his trouser leg.
“I don’t expect that our audience will disappear,” the Senator said. “They usually have their way of waiting, as a U.S. Senator sometimes does.”
Sorry, you bastard. I’m all out of sackcloth and ashes tonight, I thought. I set my cigar in the ashtray and poured an inch of Jack Daniel’s into a glass. Bailey’s face began to tighten in the silence. Verisa’s eyes waited on me, her lips pinched slightly, but I held out. I sipped the whiskey and drew in on the cigar as though the conversation were far removed from me.
“Would you like to drive with us out to the country club in the morning?” Bailey said.
“Thanks. I’ll find my way there. From what I understand, Hack drives like he’s trying to put A. J. Foyt back in the grease pit,” the Senator said.
“I wouldn’t try to beat a Texas boy at his own game, Senator.”
“It depends on what type of game.” His eyes crinkled at me.
“I have a pretty good shutout record in my field.”
“I remember, Hack. I watched you pitch twice. But as I recall you used to have a little trouble with a left- handed batter.”
“Sometimes you have to bear down a little more.”
He took a thin swallow of his highball and placed the glass on the bar, his expression assured and pleasant, then looked casually at his watch.
“Bailey’s probably right. We should go downstairs. I’ll drop up later for a few minutes and say hello to your guests,” he said, and put his hand on the small of my back. “Then tomorrow we’ll see what type of tennis game we can work out.”
I saw the ease come back into Verisa’s face, and Bailey stood up stiffly as though he had just been unstrapped from an electric chair. I took my typewritten speech in its leather folder from my suitcase, and we walked down the carpeted corridor toward the elevator like an amiable family of four.
The dining tables in the Shamrock Room were filled. The silver, the crystalware, the white tablecloths, the spangled evening gowns, and the decanters of wine reflected softly under the lights. The Senator introduced me from the rostrum, and the rows of faces became hushed and polite. Even the fat boys from the oil interests, in their string ties and cowboy boots, looked quietly deferential. I read them my twenty-minute speech of non-language and they applauded thirteen times. Whenever I approached some vague conclusion, pointed at nothing, I could see their eyes grow more intent, their heads nodding slightly, as some private anger with the nation, the universe, or themselves found a consensus in my empty statements, then the hands would begin clapping. They had found a burning spokesman to represent all the outraged good guys. I was tight enough to be unconscious of my speech’s stupidity, and after a while I even felt that I might be saying something meaningful. They rose to their feet when I finished. I shook dozens of hands, smiled with country boy humility at the compliments, and invited half the dining room to Verisa’s cocktail party.
The party was a success in every way. Verisa was able to become the radiant wife of a congressional candidate, moving with detached pleasantness between groups of people (the society editors from
