George Higgins - A change of gravity

"I've thought about it, all of that stuff," Merrion said. "I can handle that duty. The first thing you know, you're in your courthouse there, forty years've gone by like a shot. And you have not changed a bit. You don't look a day over forty yourself. No wrinkles, no lines 'cept from Florida, maybe, goin' down inna winter so much, or playin' a game of golf up around here any time you can fit in a few holes. But no more'n, say, oh, three or four rounds a week. Wouldn't want to overdo it. How would you get wrinkles, livin' like that? What'd give them to you? Never a worry about anything; had a care on your mind."

"Well, your waist might get a little bigger," Hilliard said. "Might find pants a size or two larger fit better. But that's only natural; get older, you slow down a little. Lose a few teeth and so forth. But still chewin' your food all right. Making your way through the prime rib at Henry's Grist Mill. Another night a couple monster baked-stuffed lobsters with the butter and the crumbs the Lobster Trap does up so good? Little light table wine, wash it down? Well, that's what you gotta expect then. You eat right: you put on some weight."

"But that doesn't mean you ain't well," Merrion said, 'or getting' old.

Just getting' up there, is all. Need glasses all the time now? That's not age; it's all the readin' you have to do, papers and letters and stuff. You oughta get combat pay in that job, workmen's comp; all the eyestrain they put you under.

"No wonder you miss all those putts, can't see a bar-tab when you're out with a lawyer, another hard day on the job a drunk-driving charge against one of his clients got mislaid, again; nobody could find it all day. So they hadda continue the case, and this's the third time it's happened. Chances are if a couple of fifties show up tomorrow that complaint'll never turn up."

"Ahh," Hilliard said, 'you're not thinking, I trust, of that kind of career. Guys who do that kind of thing have been known to go to jail.

Guys who backed them for their jobs get most embarrassed. Reporters and voters are uncharitable; sometimes they think when a pol's friend gets caught dirty, that means the pol's a crook too. Can be a real handicap, next election. I sure wouldn't like to confront it."

"Nah, I haven't got the balls to be crooked," Merrion said. "And I wouldn't do it to you if I did. I owe you more'n you owe me. But lots of guys did have the balls, Dan, a lot of guys who never went away.

"Ain't it strange," they would say, "how things just disappear around here. Must be I'm becomin' forgetful."

"But you don't even have to do that. You're perfectly honest, do fine.

I know if I get it, people will say that to me, don't seem to have as much respect as they used to. "Pilin' up the pension; got it made in the shade; without workin' a day in your life. At least since you left Hilliard's office, I mean. "Till then you worked your ass off, doin' the guy's job for him."

"That's the whole secret of this thing, I think. The keys is that first you make sure that's what you do: you grow old. Don't do any of this dyin' shit they got there, no matter what anyone says. That, as they say, is a grave mistake. And then when you got that part down pat, no dyin' or getting' real sick, then you make sure to live well.

Live gracefully, know what I mean? So you get old, but you're still lookin' good. Like it was no trouble at all. That's how I want to go out. Lookin' good, like life was a cinch."

"Yeah," Hilliard said. "Well, you sound like you got it planned out pretty good. But there may be one or two other things we oughta think about here, geography and stuff. Which one of these little dukedoms 've you got in mind? Where you come from can be important. You should really come from a town in the district you want to go into, if that wouldn't be too much trouble. Don't have to, of course, it's not in the statute, but it really helps if you do. Especially if you're a young guy, gonna tie up the slot a long time if you live, as you will who ever heard a clerk dyin' in office? What the hell's gonna kill him? Overwork? Clerks don't die; they retire. Hometown boys have an easier time of it, when they gotta go through the hoops, getting' their names approved. But you're from that backwater there." '"Backwater," nothin'," Merrion said. "Canterbury's perfectly all right by me. I never hid it, I come from Canterbury. I grew up in Canterbury. My mother and brother're still there. He's got plans to leave, but she hasn't. I moved but I didn't go far, next town over.

I'll take the district court of the Canterbury Division any day of the week. They've got a slot open there, too. That's another thing I checked; they're a three-assistant court but for some reason only two 've been appointed. Third-assistant clerk is vacant, ripe for plucking.

"Canterbury District Court, yes indeed. Pretty town, always liked it.

Nice'n quiet; sort of country. Not too many girls there, but I drive;

I got a car, not what you'd call a really nice new car, like some guys I know of, but still, I got a car, and it runs." Merrion drove a maroon 1962 Oldsmobile Cutlass convertible with a white leather interior, white top and white sidewall tires, a cream-puff he'd grabbed the day it came in as a Valley Ford trade-in on a '64 Thunderbird.

"And you're sure you'll be happy there?" Hilliard said. "You wont be coming to me in a year or so, saying to me: "You got to get me out of this? I know I asked you, do this for me, but I'm losing my mind in that fucking place"?

"I think the world of you, Ambrose my friend, but I know you, and you like action. And you know me and how I hate going back to the well.

Doing things over I've already done, 'cause the guy didn't know what he wanted."

"Remember what you told me years ago, Danny boy?" Merrion said. "I first started working for you and wed won, you were an alderman. And the papers said right off that wasn't what you wanted, even though you just won it. Saying you were aiming to be mayor. And you said:

"Everyone assumes the job you go after can't be the job that you want.

Doesn't matter whether it's the one you go after first or the one that you go after next, when you've started moving up. They never think you've gotten where you want to go; some bigger job must be the one you want.

"The trick's to always keep 'em guessing, say nothing and sit tight.

Don't rule anything out. While you decide, for your self, which job you want, and why you want it. Then go into high gear, do anything you have to, to get that fucking job. And after you've got it, fake 'em right out of their shorts. Stay as smart as you always were. Keep that lovely job you wanted, and finally quit doing all the shitty stuff you had to do to get it, now you got away with it."

"Well, that's what I'm doing here now. I thought about it, and this's the job that I want. I can do something with it. I'm not lookin' for one I'll have to wait and wait to open up, and then when it does fifty other guys want it. I want to get in line now. I get this job I'll move up and retire as the chief clerk. This job's got my name on it.

"And if you can get it," Hilliard said, because he liked to tease Merrion, 'then will you have any immediate plans to make an honest woman out of Keller?"

"I'd have to get her calmed down some first," Merrion said. "That could be a tall assignment."

"You'd have fun trying though," Hilliard said. "All right, I'm in.

I'll go to work. But you've got some work to do yourself, on Larry Lane. Get to know him and get permission. Kiss his ass if you have to; hold your nose, close your eyes tight and do it. Too bad Roy and Arthur made the new district and built the new courthouse before my time. Be nice if I could just phone Chassy Spring up now, and call the debt. Technically it's his appointment, presiding judge and all, but Lane's the guy you'll work for. Chassy'll probably do it if I ask him, but not without Lane signing off on it. I hope you can work with the guy. I hear he can be a real bastard."