LITMIR.BIZ

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thought rich women were,” I answer, having finished more than half of my drink. There is a perfect thirst-quenching shuffling of interior props about midway down a good G & T. You need middling gin with a good bite to it, and Schweppes, nothing else, for tonic. And a full half a lime that impedes the drinking even as it shuts the ice away from your lips and speeds the liquidification of your brain.

      Waldo orders two more. “Somebody out there just like you, only with chess talent. Do you have any?”

      “Why don’t you ask me next year at this time?”

      “So it’s not such a bad long-term arrangement, then?”

      “I’ll stay through the Interzonals.”

      “The Interzonals, they sound wonderfully exotic,” Waldo remarks contemplating the second drink set before us. “Wonderfully official. The Interzonals. . . . The Interzonals of the mind.”

      “In Manila.”

      “The Interzonals in Manila. Very expensive, Very, very expensive.”

      “Very far away,” I add.

      “Very lonely,” Waldo says softly. “Very lonely.”

      That’s all there is to the negotiation. We adjourn to the dining room for Crenshaw

      Mellon, escargot, filet mignon, hearts of palm salad again, and chocolate crepes for dessert, with Waldo’s private bottle of Drambuie.

      On the second round of that sweet, sad liquid, Hillary joins us. She is a tall, leggy woman, imperially thin with a shock of thick blonde hair that has just the trace of curve as it hits the back of her neck. Very tan, very fit, very shrewd all at once.

      “Hilly!” Waldo shouts, standing up so quickly that his legs dump a bit of the table toward my lap. “I didn’t think you were coming tonight.”

      “And so you waited,” Hillary says smiling, nodding toward me, as I fight my way to a standing position against the lip of the table. “Please, please. You’re having such trouble. Simply give it up on my account,” she says half-laughing.

      “Hilly, what happened? What are you doing here now?”

      “Waiting for dinner, love. I’m starved. Won’t you get me some?” Abruptly she puts herself beside Waldo and I slump back into my position/ “How’s Pamela?” she says as I readjust my napkin.

      “Coming along well, I think.”

      “Yes. Coffee seems to feel she’s making great strides. And for that we thank you, don’t we Waldo.”

      “Of course. Of course,” Waldo says. He has swiveled about and is gesturing energetically to the waitress at the far end of the room. “But what happened?”

      “Claire bowed out, so Frances called it off. Probably the best thing. I couldn’t imagine what we were going to say to each other. Knowing glances, vague references to Jack. The whole depressing, boring affair. I’m glad I’m out of it. And Frances’s notion of Thai food is more than a bit pathetic.”

      “Eh, heh,” Waldo agrees.

      A tall bourbon and soda arrives, then a plate of potato skins, then four stuffed mushrooms.

      “Aren’t you boys off to save the Republic tonight?” she says working a fork through one of the skins.

      “You shouldn’t be so hard on Van Shuten, if that’s what you mean,” Waldo answers.

      Is there a trace of irritation in his voice? I can’t quite decide.

      “Well, don’t let me keep you. After all, the bombs can fall almost anytime now that Waldo’s finished his Drambuie. Haven’t you darling?”

      “Well, I think I’ll have one more, to keep you company through the entrée, at least,” Waldo says, head cocked to one side.

      “Splendid. Well said. I hate to eat alone. And now young Snell why don’t you tell me some good chess stories, since your little column is the talk of the town.” She smiles, pops one mushroom into her mouth.

      Waldo and I watch her precise mastication for the next half hour. Waldo talks about some of the quirkier aspects of some of the champions. He is a fund of anecdotes—a slick litany of personal disintegrations, aberrant behaviors. Hillary seems to be enjoying the recitation, but just before dessert she interrupts Waldo’s prized story with a curt, “You’re certainly more cogent the second time through, but less interesting.”

      “Ah, I forgot I mentioned all of this before,” Waldo apologizes, smiles weakly.

      “Since he has nothing to say,” Hillary gestures toward me. “It’s just as well and your telling has improved enormously. But you’ve spent more than enough time with this boring companion. Why don’t you hurry to Van Shuten’s and tell him doom is not around the corner, but merely across the bay?”

      Chapter 6

      The group at Van Shuten’s consists of a surgeon, a pediatrician, a supermarket owner, three bank vice-presidents, two ministers, one systems analyst from Saturn Inc., in the northwest corner of Hane County, two high school teachers of American history (part-time basketball and soccer coaches respectively) and three older gentlemen whom Van Shuten introduces as friends from a long time ago in the old country. They have Russian sounding names, but in truth I am not clearly focused—as I imagine Waldo is not, too. The gin and wine and Drambuie gives the assemblage, nearly arranged in rows of folding chairs in Van Shuten’s large living room, the aura or radiance or fellow feeling that I sometimes get at bars during closing hours, or what I hope it’s like in locker rooms after a big victory. We all know instinctively why we’re here at this crucial decline of the great republic.

      Waldo is introduced as the owner-publisher of the Hane Tribune to the three Russian gentlemen. These fellows are apparently the center of this month’s meeting. Waldo adopts a certain distance and a sturdy, nodding patrician air. Can he be grappling for the ability to stand straight, I wonder. This is the third time I have attended one of these meetings and Waldo sees no reason to introduce me once again. I take a seat, naturally enough in the back, let my legs go straight forward under the seat before me, almost touching the neatly polished loafers of the pediatrician.

      Van Shuten, short, gnome-like, stands before the group and mentions something about the treasurer’s report. One of the ministers stands and reads off cash figures. He remarks that the number of calls to the recorded message is steadily declining, as if people are tiring of the litany of despair. Van Shuten emphasizes that the recording needs more than a weekly change. The group sponsors a telephone message evaluating the current political situation in terms of freedoms lost. There is another report on the continuing attempt to reestablish ROTC at Hane High School, and then another on the campaign to unseat Hane County’s long-term and rather suspiciously liberal Congressman who floated to power “During,” Van Shuten notes sarcastically, “during the cataclysm of the New Deal and has been sleeping at the socialist switch ever since.”

      Someone commends Waldo for adding the Buckley, Safire and Buchanan columns to the Tribune but wonders why the Tribune doesn’t take a firmer stand against deficit spending. Waldo nods, but doesn’t respond—an interesting tactic that clearly nonplusses Van Shuten. After an appropriate or inappropriate silence Van Shuten goes ahead and introduces the three gentlemen who speak briefly about their lives in America as outcasts from their beloved Russia. The three must be beyond seventy-five years of age, but there is clarity and immediacy in their reports of remembered Russia—details of servants, and freedoms and expansivenesses, and blessed safety. Then each finishes with a small hymn to American constitutional guarantees and the continuing threat from the temporary displacers and rapists of Russia, the Soviet Communists. Was life truly over for them in 1917, I wonder? A long time for leftover existence. Being leftover.

      I imagine Hillary and the shards of lamb or whatever it was she was chewing as we watched just a while ago. What was she eating? I try to recollect it, but the booze has worked a wonderful

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