Thomas Mallon: Finale: A Novel of the Reagan Years

“You still haven’t told me,” Nick said, as agreeably as he could.

The uncertainty involved whether they would see in the New Year together by going out to a bar that Nick had suggested.

“What time should I pick you up?” asked Anders.

Nick brightened hugely. “That’s so great! Say eleven?”

Anders looked at him skeptically.

“It’s going to be a long night. Take a disco nap!”

Anders didn’t know what the term meant, but once Nick was out of the car he realized he was feeling anticipation about the evening ahead, instead of the postcoital remorse he usually felt when Nick left his presence.

After parking in his own building’s garage, he found Hitchens waiting for him in the lobby.

“Happy New Year,” said the writer, putting out a cigarette.

“I thought you’d be in England, bothering me from across the ocean.”

“No, not until Friday. And then just for a week. May I send you collect faxes whilst I’m there? Assuming your new boss, Mr. Carlucci, will accept the charges.”

“I’m not sure he’ll be my boss come Friday.”

“He’s cleaning house that fast?”

“How do you know I won’t clear out on my own — and accept your proposition?”

Hitchens looked at Anders’s wristwatch. “Why don’t we go upstairs and toast the just-arrived Australian New Year? Unless”—he hesitated for a moment—“someone’s sleeping up there?”

“No, he’s at his place,” said Anders, amazed at how easily he imparted the information, instead of using whatever evasion he would have only weeks ago. “You’re not done grilling him?”

Hitchens had called Nick on the twentieth, two days after running into him at the hospital. The writer had already figured out a good deal from that encounter— He told me I was supposed to grow up, go see Spitz about the mo— and a little more face-to-face conversation with the unwary young man had allowed him to puzzle out much of the rest. He’d closed in on details like the safe-deposit boxes, something Little hadn’t known about himself until he visited Nick after the White House party. Throughout November Anders had deliberately not pressed Nick for particulars. If he was going to know too much, he had wanted the knowledge to come from somebody besides this boy whose ongoing existence he had so much trouble admitting.

“So does he get to keep a sort of commission?” Hitchens asked as the elevator rose to Anders’s apartment. “On the Khomeini contributions?”

“There’s no commission and there’s no money.”

“Where’s it gone?”

“It’s out performing good works,” said Anders.

“South of the border?”

“No, just across the river.”

Hitchens smiled. Eager to fence and deduce, he took out his pad.

“You’re an optimist,” said Anders, pointing to the notebook and telling himself to be careful. Once inside, he let Hitchens fix his own drink, the usual Johnnie Walker and Perrier.

“I’ll think about using ice if I ever become a citizen,” Hitchens informed his host. He noticed that the apartment was less orderly than when he’d been here last. He pushed aside some Christmas boxes, presents from Anders’s nieces and nephews in Mooresville, before sitting down.

“So what would you like me to confess?” Anders asked, pointing again to the pad.

“What a nice boy like you is doing in a place like this.” He gestured vaguely toward the capital across the river.

“You mean nice girl ?” Anders asked.

“No,” Hitchens said, evenly, meeting Anders’s gaze, indicating that man-to-man respect, even affection, would obtain during any interviews they had.

“Sorry,” said Anders, who looked down at his bottle of light beer with an expression that seemed to say: Give me time. I’m adjusting to all this.

“Where’s Dolan’s funeral going to be?” asked Hitchens.

“St. Matthew’s, I think.”

“Ah, where they said farewell to Joe McCarthy.”

“And Jack Kennedy,” Anders pointed out.

“Why don’t we put in a joint appearance?”

“You think being there is going to help you understand this — what was the word you used?”

“Homintern.”

Anders laughed scornfully.

“I’m quite willing to be persuaded that there’s nothing to it,” said Hitchens. “Convince me of homosexuality’s irrelevance here.”

“In my case it is irrelevant.”

“Then talk to me about other phases of your apostasy. Moderate young Democrat comes under the spell of La Kirkpatrick, then embraces anti-Communism by any means necessary.”

“I didn’t leave the Democratic Party; the Democratic Party left me.”

“Has a familiar ring.”

“I’m quoting Ronald Reagan.”

“I know that, dear boy. I’ll even concede to you that he had a point — one that was all to the credit, however minimally, of the Democratic Party.”

“Why do you want my views if you’re just going to pummel them? You only want me to come to you like some straw man you can set on fire.”

“Not in the least. I’m fascinated by your possible authenticity, by the fact that you may truly believe what you espouse.”

“You know what?” said Anders. “I do believe it. I think Reagan may yet end the Cold War, on our terms.”

“No more bipolar world.”

“That’s right.”

“Wait until you see the sectarian one that’ll replace it.”

Anders waved his hand to dismiss the possibility.

“Anyway,” said Hitchens, “we were talking about you.”

Anders looked back down at his beer. “There’s half a world to be freed before I can have my freedom. And I don’t think I—”

“You mean your sort?”

“Yeah, my sort . They, we, might at least think of going to the back of the line, behind the half of the world that’s actually enslaved. Poland means more to me than, what is it, Stonewall. God, have you ever heard a homosexual talk about the glories of Castro and Cuba? I have. All the left-wing ones, and that’s ninety percent of them, will go on and on about that. Universal health care, literacy programs, blah blah blah. Well, boys, go down there and give José a big kiss on the dance floor; the two of you can then share a cell in a detention camp. The left-wingers, not me, are the ones with the contradiction. Who’s kidding who?”

“Whom.”

“Fuck off.”

“This is going to be a wonderful piece. You sound almost alive , Little.”

As Hitchens refilled his own drink, the bell rang. “Always a surprise here, isn’t there?”

Anders got up and opened the door. “You were going to let me pick you up at the airport!” he exclaimed.

Hitchens watched him embrace Anne Macmurray, whom the doorman now knew well enough to let up without announcement.

“I had a couple errands that were better done on my own. Oh, hello,” she said to Hitchens, wondering if Nick Carrollton was here, too, replicating the full cast from the Saturday night Mrs. Thatcher had been in town.

Peter had been cremated yesterday, and this morning Anne had boarded the first flight from DFW to National, carrying the money she’d retrieved from the safe-deposit box. When she first counted it, she’d been astonished at how much was there, a bit under fifty thousand dollars, but on reflection she’d felt surprised it wasn’t more, given the source and the things it was involved with. Straight from the plane, she’d gone to the WAND office to clean out her desk; she’d fax a letter of resignation tomorrow. Roaming over Capitol Hill, she had entered St. Peter’s Catholic Church and, on a whim, put ten thousand dollars into the poor box. She was stopped from inserting even more by a strange feeling of extravagance, which she now supposed also came over people performing acts of charity — if that’s what this really was. She still feared that one day she’d have to account for the money, no matter that Anders’s clear intention was to keep anyone from ever knowing where it had come from and where it had gone.