Sherman Alexie - Ten Little Indians

Last February, I received an invitation to a bipartisan lobbyist dinner at Campagne, a wonderful French restaurant down near Pike Place Market in Seattle. I was excited about the food I would be eating and the company I would be keeping. Most outsiders think of lobbyists as politicians in better suits, but that’s not the case at all. Lobbyists don’t work in public, so they don’t have to worry about public opinion. Lobbyists aren’t elected; they’re self-selected. They aren’t crusaders; they’re mercenaries. By and large, lobbyists are as wicked, revenge-minded, poetic, intelligent, candid, and hilarious as any stand-up comedian. Former politicians who become lobbyists might miss the power of public office, but they learn to love the power of anonymity.

I was seated at a table with five lawyers who might be described as two married white couples and a single white woman, and who most accurately could be described as two Republicans and three Democrats.

“Hello,” I said. “I’m Richard. I work in Governor Locke’s office.”

“Oh, come on, Richard,” said the first Republican husband. “Does anybody actually work in Governor Locke’s office?”

“Hey, now,” I said. “I thought this was a bipartisan dinner.”

“It is bipartisan,” said the second Republican husband. “I used to be with Senator Gorton. Nobody ever worked in his office.”

Slade Gorton is a famous Indian fighter who wants to abolish all Indian tribes. I helped register ten thousand Indian first-time voters motivated by their hatred and fear of Gorton. Since he lost his reelection bid by a few thousand votes to a nebulous Democrat, I wonder if he lies in bed at night and does the math.

“Ignore my husband,” said the Democrat wife. “He’s a right-wing maniac.”

“And you, my lovely wife, are a knee-jerk liberal.”

“You keep talking like that, and it’s going to be a long time before you stick your right wing in my knee jerk.”

We laughed.

“I guess this dinner is officially off the record,” I said.

“Here’s to brutal honesty,” the single white woman said and raised her glass of red. As she drank, she looked at me. She regarded me. In three seconds, she examined me, asked herself questions about me, answered them, and defined me. She smiled. She thought good things.

“And who are you brutally honest for?” I asked her.

“Pro-choice, all day, all the way,” she said.

Yet another pretty liberal from Seattle! Her black business suit probably converted into a rainproof tent. She wore eyeliner, lipstick, and three-inch pumps at dinner, but she likely wore stupid T-shirts ( George can’t spell W! ), blue jeans, and huge scuffed boots at the office. She’d probably run twenty-three marathons and climbed Mount Rainier sixteen times, and had great calves and extraordinary upper-body strength, and most certainly had scored 1545 on her SATs and earned some highly challenging and profoundly useless degree from an Ivy League chop shop. She probably still had a cassette of the Smiths stuck in her car stereo: “Meat is murder! Meat is murder! Meat is murder!” I wanted her to fall in love with me.

“I fight for the Second Amendment on weekdays,” said the Republican wife, “and the First Amendment on weekends.”

“Boeing and Microsoft,” said her Republican husband.

“Boise Cascade,” said the other Republican husband.

“Sierra Club,” said his Democrat wife.

“Wait, wait,” I said. “So one of you fights for trees and the other fights against trees?”

“No, no,” he said. “We make the paper she writes on to file lawsuits against the paper we make.”

A well-rehearsed joke, but funny nonetheless.

“You know,” the single white woman said, “I’ve never understood politically mixed marriages.”

“Oh, Lord,” the Republican husband said. “Here we go again.”

“No, I’ve never understood. Tell me about your marriage.”

“It’s a good marriage,” the Democrat wife said. “We fight forty-nine percent of the time and hump-and-bump the other fifty-one.”

Funny and crass! How much had she drunk before she came to dinner? How many alcoholic Democratic women can you fit into a lightbulb? I don’t know, go ask Teddy Kennedy.

“No, really,” said the single white woman. “I mean, don’t you ever wonder how a hard-core Republican like Mary Matalin can be successfully married to a hard-core Democrat like James Carville?”

“Oh, don’t bring those cannibals up,” said the husband. “We always have to talk about those headhunters.”

“Aren’t you two cute?” said the wife. She mimicked the idiots she’d heard so often before: “‘You’re, like, the Mary Matalin and James Carville of Seattle! Come on, argue for us, argue for us!’”

“Sometimes it feels more like theater than marriage,” said the husband.

“Well, you guys made that choice when you married each other, right?” said the single white woman. “You were Democrat and Republican when you met, right?”

“I didn’t mean our marriage was theater.”

“All right, but what is your marriage? What does it mean?”

She wasn’t going to let it go. She was a storm maker! I wanted her to rain down on me!

“You know what I love about this restaurant,” said the other Republican husband, trying to change the subject. “I love that you can smoke. What good is French food without a cigarette?”

“Oui, oui,” said his wife. “I’ve got an unfiltered Camel in one hand and a fork in the other.”

“But is it the correct fork?” asked the Democrat wife.

“Let’s see, I have my salad fork, first-course fork, second-course fork, dessert fork, and yes, here it is, I have my cancer fork.”

They laughed, entertained by their collective wit.

“Hey,” I said to the single white woman. “What’s your name?”

“Teresa.”

“I’m Richard,” I said and offered my hand.

“I know,” she said and took my hand. “You already said that.”

We held hands a moment longer than necessary. It was no longer a polite greeting; it had become a tactile series of questions. Are we gonna? Do you wanna? Will it be juicy and joyous? I wanted to impress her: I wanted to be a member of her tribe.

“You know, I agree with Teresa,” I said to the others. “I’ve always suspected that in mixed marriages, one of the partners is lying about his or her politics.”

“Are you calling me a liar?” asked the Republican husband. He’d switched on his lobbyist voice, loud, clear, and resonant. I’d bet a million dollars he soaked in his bathtub at night and pretended he was a guest on Crossfire or Hannity & Colmes or Meet the Press. Hey, little Tucker, what do you want to be when you grow up? I want to be a bow-tied talking head.

“I’m not calling anybody a liar, I’m just talking theory here,” I said. “Hypothesis. I’m not talking about your marriage in particular. I don’t know you folks at all. I’m talking about politically mixed marriages in general.”

Jesus, what the hell was I doing? How impolitic could I be? But Teresa seemed to be enjoying it. I wondered how soon I would see her naked.

“The thing is,” I said, “maybe both partners in those marriages are lying. When it counts most — at its most intimate, when two lovers are beneath the sheets — I figure Matalin and Carville are moderates who believe in truth, justice, and multiple orgasms.”

“Well, hell, yes!” shouted the Democrat wife. “Now, that’s a subject we can all agree on!”

Okay, I was clumsy and obvious in introducing sex as a topic of conversation. But Teresa already knew sex was on my mind, and I wanted her to wonder about the quality and quantity of the sex. I looked at her. I regarded her. She smiled, and only the poets know what bright shapes a bright container can contain.