Irwin Shaw - Nightwork

The newspaper columnist and the congressman were the eternal pigeons Hale had promised me. They played out of hope and optimism, and were around at the end of almost every pot. Inevitably, it made me doubt their wisdom in other fields. I knew I would read the columnist from then on with great reservations, and I trusted the congressman wasn’t in on any important legislative decisions.

It was a friendly game and even the losers were good-natured about their bad luck. I enjoyed playing poker again after the three-year hiatus. I would have enjoyed it more if Evelyn Coates hadn’t been there. I kept looking for a wink, a secret, conspiratorial smile, but it never came. I couldn’t help beginning to feel resentful. I didn’t let it affect my game, but I felt a little extra satisfaction when I took a pot away from her.

She and I were the only winners at two o’clock, when we finished. While the congressman, as banker, bent over the accounts, I fingered the silver dollar in my pocket. The go-ahead sign from Central Park West.

A waiter had brought in some sandwiches, and we started on them while the congressman worked at the table. I couldn’t help but think how pleasant it all was, a game that continued, in the same room, with the same friends, week after week, everybody knowing everybody’s telephone number, everybody’s address, everybody’s mannerisms and jokes. Whom would I be seeing next week, what numbers would I dare call, what game would I be playing? For a moment I was on the verge of saying that I would be available next week to give them all the chance to get back their money. Put down my roots in a deck of cards, in the mulch of government. How fast did I have to run? If Evelyn Coates had as much as smiled at me, I believe I would have spoken. But she didn’t even glance in my direction.

To give her a chance to say a few words to me away from the others, I went over to a window at the far corner of the room and opened it, pretending I was warm and the cigarette smoke was bothering me, but she still did not make a gesture toward me, didn’t even seem to notice that I had moved.

The bitch, I thought, I won’t give her the satisfaction of calling when I get back to my hotel. I imagined her in her place with the young lawyer, smooth and tallow-faced, and the phone ringing and Evelyn Coates saying, “Hell, let it ring,” and knowing who it was on the other end and smiling secretly to herself. I wasn’t used to hard women. To any kind of women, if I wanted to be honest with myself. One thing, I decided, as I closed the window with a sharp little click, insisting on my presence, one thing I’m going to do from now on is learn how to handle women.

The columnist and the lawyer began a long discussion about what was happening in Washington. The columnist accused the President of trying to destroy the American press, raising postal rates to drive newspapers and magazines into bankruptcy, jailing reporters for not disclosing their sources, threatening to lift the franchises of television stations that broadcast material which displeased the Administration, all stun that I had read in his columns whenever I had happened to come across them. Even I, who barely read any newspaper but the Racing Form, was overexposed to all possible opinions. I wondered how anyone in that room, battered by arguments from all sides, ever managed to vote yes or no on anything. The congressman, working on a scratch pad, his forehead sweating from the effort, never even looked up. He had showed himself an amiable man throughout the game, and I supposed he voted as he was told, his attention always on party instructions and on the next election. He had said nothing to indicate whether he was a Republican, a Democrat, or a follower of Mao.

When Evelyn Coates brought up the subject of the Watergate break-in and said it meant grave trouble ahead for the President, the columnist said, “Nonsense. He’s too smart for that. It’ll all just be kicked under the rug. Mark my words. By May, if you ask anybody about it, they’ll say, «Watergate? What’s that?» I’ll tell you,” said the columnist, his deep voice and meticulous speech resonant with the assurance of a man who was accustomed to being listened to attentively at all times, “I tell you we’re witnessing the opening moves toward Fascism.”

As he spoke, he munched on a corned beef sandwich, washed down with Scotch. “The skinheads are preparing the ground. I won’t be surprised if they’re not called in to run the whole show. One morning we’ll wake up and the tanks will be rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue and the machine guns will be on every roof. That hadn’t been in any of his columns that I had read. Come to Washington and get the real, authentic, scary dope”.

The lawyer didn’t seem to be at all ruffled by the charges. He had the calm, good-natured imperturbability of the pliant Company Man. “Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea,” he said. “The press is irresponsible. It lost the war in Asia for us. It chums up the public against the President, the Vice President, it holds up all authority to scorn, it’s making it more and more impossible to govern the country. Maybe putting the skinheads, as you call them, in control for a few years might be the best thing that happened to this country since Alf Landon.”

“Oh, Jack,” Mrs Coates said, “the true believer. The voice of the Pentagon. What crap! ”

“If you saw what passed over my desk day after day,” the lawyer said, “you wouldn’t call it crap.”

“Mr. Grimes…” She turned toward me, a little cool smile on her lips. “You’re not in the mess here in Washington. You represent the pure, undefiled American public here tonight. Let’s hear the simple wisdom of the masses…”

“Evelyn,” Hale said warningly. I half-expected to hear him say, “Remember, he’s our guest.” But he let it go with the “Evelyn”.

I looked at her, annoyed with her for taunting me, feeling that she was testing me somehow, for some not quite innocent purpose of her own. “The pure, undefiled representative of the American public here tonight,” I said, “thinks it’s all bullshit.” I remembered the speech she had made to me, naked, a glass of whiskey in her hand, sitting on the side of the big soft bed in the darkened room, about everybody in Washington being an actor. “You people aren’t serious,” I said. “It’s all a game for you. It’s not a game for me, the pure, undefiled etcetera, it’s life and death and taxes, and other little things like that for me, but it’s just a pennant race for you. You depend upon each other to have different opinions, just the way baseball teams depend upon other teams to have different color uniforms. Otherwise, nobody would know who was leading the league. In the end, though, you’re all playing the same game.” I was surprised at myself even as I spoke. I didn’t even know that I had ever thought like this before. “If you get traded to another team, you’ll just take off the old suit and put on another one and you’ll go out there and try to boost your batting average so you can ask for a raise the next year.”

“Let me ask you something. Grimes.” the lawyer said affably. “Did you vote in the last election?”

“I did,” I said. “I got fooled. The papers printed the sports news on the editorial pages. I don’t intend to vote again. It’s an undignified occupation for a grown man.” I didn’t tell them that, where I expected I’d be by the time of the next elections, there wouldn’t be a chance I’d be able to vote.

“Forgive me, folks,” Evelyn Coates said, “I didn’t realize I had introduced a homespun political philosopher into our midst.”

“I’m not absolutely against what he said,” the lawyer said. “I don’t see where it’s so wrong to be loyal to the team. If the team’s winning, of course.” He chuckled softly at his own joke.