On the Other Hand, Death - Stevenson Richard - Страница 6

McWhirter, I'd read in the gay papers, envisioned gay air traffic controllers, executives, busboys, priests, construction workers, doctors, data analysts, White House staffers, Congressmen, newsboys, waitresses, housewives, firemen, FBI agents—the whole lot of us suddenly declaring ourselves and walking off our jobs and letting the straight majority try to keep the country running on their own for a week. It was a bold, wacky, irresistible idea.

But a lot of people were resisting the GNS anyway. The big national gay organizations estimated—correctly, I guessed—that too few people would participate and the

thing would end up an embarrassment to the movement. This was also a self-fulfilling prophecy: McWhirter was receiving no financial support from the big outfits. His waspish personality was said to be putting off a number of would-be supporters too. Another good idea done in by its originator's poor social skills.

The gay press was covering McWhirter's campaign sporadically and offering wistful and qualifiedly encouraging editorials. Notice by the straight press had been even more fitful, and the tone of the few stories printed or broadcast had ranged from the tittering to the maliciously bug-eyed.

Albany would not, I thought, be the place where the GNS campaign took off. Of the sixteen people likely to show up at the Gay Community Center that night to hear McWhirter's plea for support, three would tiptoe upstairs midway in the presentation and play Monopoly. Of the six who would sign on at the end of McWhirter's description of how we would shut the country down for a week, three would be full-time recipients of public assistance. The outlook in Albany was not promising.

"Well," Greco said, putting the best face on it, "even if we don't do terribly well at the center tonight, we'll be leafleting the bars afterwards. I remember when I lived here that on Friday nights the bars are full of state workers. Imagine what it would be like if all the gay people in the South Mall walked out for a week. What a glorious mess that would be!"

"Right. The state bureaucracy would become sluggish and disorganized."

He stopped by the back door of the house and looked at me uncertainly, examined my face, then suddenly shook with bright laughter. "Well," he said, "you know what I mean." He laughed again, and his hand came up and gently brushed my cheek, a gesture as natural and

uncomplicated for Greco as a happy child's reaching out spontaneously to touch a sibling. Greco, waiflike and vulnerable, was not a type I usually went for. But on the other hand . . . Maybe it was the heat.

Inside the big pine-paneled kitchen of the farmhouse, Dot Fisher was slumped against a doorjamb and speaking wearily into a wall phone. One hand pressed the receiver hard against her ear under a short, damp thicket of frizzy gray-black hair, and the other arm rested on the little crockpot of a belly that protruded from her otherwise wiry frame. Wet half-moons stained the sides of the white cotton sleeveless shift she wore, and her long, sun-reddened face, deeply etched with age and the things she knew, was screwed up now in a grimace of barely controlled frustration, and gleamed with sweat. She forced a distracted smile in our direction and waggled a finger urgently at the refrigerator.

Greco and I helped ourselves to the iced mint tea and sat at a cherrywood table by the window overlooking the farm pond while Dot finished up her conversation. "Well, not at all. Thank you for your time," she told whoever was at the other end of the line—a reporter, it sounded like— and then collapsed in a chair across from us, where she began to fan her face with a Burpee seed catalog.

"Oh, what a day this has been!" she croaked. "And this heat! Good heavens, the least these awful people could have done was wait until October to ... to do whatever they're trying to do to us. Speaking of which— I suppose you're Donald Strachey, aren't you? Mr. Johnny-on-the-spot from Millpond." Her look was not friendly.

"Yes, ma'am. We met last year around this time. Under similarly depressing circumstances."

"Mm-hmm." She examined me coolly. "Depressing is certainly the word for it. And confusing," she added pointedly.

"I really think Don is going to be helpful," Greco put in, grinning a little zanily. "He cares a lot about you, Dot, and he can work twenty-four hours a day to find out what's going on and put a stop to it. I mean, you know, the police will go through the motions and all, but to have an experienced private investigator on your side, even if he's employed by— Well, it can't hurt, can it? If you're going to stay here and not give in—"

"What do you mean, if I'm going to stay and not give in?"

Greco shrugged, grinned tentatively. "Naturally I meant since you're not going to give in."

"You'd better mean it."

I said, "I'm glad to see how determined you are, Mrs. Fisher. Most people in your position would have locked up the house and booked passage on a three-month cruise through the Norwegian fjords. Or sold out to Millpond and headed for Fort Lauderdale. And I know you know how formidable an outfit Millpond can be. Treacherous even. You've got lot of guts."

"You really needn't explain the obvious to me, young man," she said evenly. "And don't waste your breath trying to flatter me either." Her brown eyes had softened, though, and she looked as if something had suddenly struck her funny and she was trying hard not to smile. "And I might add, you'd better not let Edith hear you say that word, Mr. Strachey—"

"Don."

"Well, Don," she said, "however brief your visit on Moon Road might turn out to be, you're going to have to remember that Edith cannot stand that word."

"Which word? Fjords? Fort Lauderdale?"

"Oh, no!" She found a way to laugh now, shakily, despite herself. "No, no. Peter, you say it."

"Guts," Greco whispered. "Edith hates the word 'guts.' She also, unfortunately, can't stand the word 'rot.'"

"One time a whole lot of years ago," Dot said, looking relieved to be distracted for the moment, "Edie and I were at a teachers' convention in Buffalo, and I mentioned during dinner that I thought the wine tasted like rotgut. Well, Edie just stood right up and marched out of the room! Oh what a brouhaha that was between us. I haven't said either word in front of her since that evening, and that's been twenty years ago if it's a day."

Greco and I laughed, but Dot's mood had shifted abruptly back, and she was watching me levelly again, somberly. "Now then," she said. "Let's do get to the point of all this, Mr. Strachey—Don. You're not exactly in my home on a social call, are you? Crane Trefusis phoned earlier and told Peter that he was sending you over to help us out. That struck me as extremely peculiar. Is that correct? That you are working for Millpond?"

"It is. On this case, yes."

"Mm-hmm. Well. You know, I'll bet, just what my opinion of Crane Trefusis is, don't you? That he's a ... a crock of rotgut." She shot a quick look down the hallway again.

"He mentioned it. Or words to that effect."

"However," she went on, watching me even more closely now, "I called up a mutual friend of yours and mine this afternoon, Lew Morton, and Lew told me emphatically that I could trust you. He said even if you were being paid by Millpond you'd be a good man to have helping us out, and that you would know what you were doing. I didn't like the sound of that, but I trust Lew's judgment about people. So, Mister-Private-Eye-with-the Morals-of-Rhett-Butler—and the mustache—tell me then. Do you know what you're doing?"