The Ninth Wave (30 page)

For five years he tried to revive interest in the avocado cold cream
business. He poured a million dollars into it. He bought new avocado
groves and raised the largest, greenest and richest avocados in
California. But women would not use his cold cream and Kelly hated them
for their reluctance. Finally avocados became a popular food and Kelly,
mollified by this, gave up the cold cream idea.
"Some talk the Democrats might run you for governor, John," Smithies said.
He moved in his chair; his body sighed against its braces; the flesh
heaved and shifted. The other Board people looked sharply at Cromwell.
Cromwell let the clean chill of the gin and vermouth pour around his
teeth. Five minutes before he had been old and defenseless; aware of
aching bones and a shortness of breath. And now they were waiting to
see what he would say, their faces expectant. He felt confident, alert.
"With Warren going to the Supreme Court, the situation is a little
peculiar," Cromwell said.
"This is a hard year to figure out," Smithies said, his eyes half
closed. "Maybe a Democrat will have a chance. Not much of a chance,
but a chance."
"What about Daigh?" Cromwell asked. ''The Republicans will run him,
won't they?"
The Board members paused, looked at Smithies.
"They'll run him and he'll get the Republican nomination," Smithies
said flatly. It was not a conjecture or a guess or an opinion. It was
a fact. They all accepted it.
"How could a Democrat win?" Cromwell said.
The waitress brought their food. Smithies looked down at the breaded
veal cutlet, the bread and butter, the string beans. He took one bite
and then talked through the food.
"Depends on the Democrat, John," Smithies said. "Now you've got two
things in your favor. First, you've got a good name. Everybody knows the
Cromwells, even if they don't know you. Second thing is you can speak.
You're an orator. That helps."
It helps? Cromwell thought. Is that all it does? I don't believe it. It's
everything.
With part of his mind Cromwell listened to Smithies talk, but a part of
his mind reached back and uncovered an old memory . . . he had learned to
speak at a speech class at Stanford. He was tall and awkward and he hated
Stanford. He hated the girls, the fraternities, the dances, the football
games, the classes. He was depressed by everything about the university.
In the speech class everyone had to give a short talk. Cromwell watched
with dread as his turn approached. When he stood up in front of the
class and looked at all the strange hostile faces his mind seemed to
fall into fragments, to go to pieces. They were ready to laugh, ready
to hoot him out of the room.
His first words came out cracked and strained. They fell senselessly
from his lips. The smiles in the class grew broader. Then he felt a
wave of anger; an intense and personal hatred for every person in the
class. The anger chilled him; ordered his thoughts, calmed him.
He forgot his prepared speech and began to talk very slowly and
deliberately. He did not know where the words came from, but they were
orderly and sharp. He did not hesitate once.
He talked about the idleness and stupidity and irresponsibility of
college students. He reminded them of the beer parties and the careless
way in which they squandered the money given to them by their families.
He scolded them. He was sure he was ruining himself, but it didn't
matter. The anger was like a white spiky growth that kept prodding
him. He felt righteous and sustained; even if he were ruined.
Gradually the faces in the class came into focus and then, with a slight
shock, he saw that they had stopped smiling. The boys were watching him
attentively and one girl had tears in her eyes. The other girls were
looking down at their hands or out of the window. Slowly he realized that
they were angry, but not with him. They were angry with themselves or the
system or something, but not with him. He did not know how he knew this,
but he did. His words made them angry and disturbed, but not with him.
Then, recklessly, Cromwell tried something else. He told the class
how they could restore good moral standards on the campus. Without
anticipating the words or forming a definite argument his words became
reassuring, calm, placating. The angry look left their faces and a
sort of relief flowed back into the room. Intuitively, beyond words, he
sensed that he had destroyed something that held them together; a common
pride or bond or knowledge. And surely, as if he had always known how,
he wove them back together; stitched up the common injury. Just a word
here, an inflection there and the sureness came back to their faces,
the confidence returned. And they were grateful to him.
When he stopped there was a moment of silence in the room. Then they
did something they had never done before. They began to clap . . .
. . . "The family and the oratory will take you part of the way, John,"
Smithies was saying. "But not all of the way."
"You'll need money and an organization," Kelly said. "Lots of money."
"How much money?" Cromwell asked.
"About a half million bucks," Kelly said. "And you have to raise it all
in a few months between the primary in May and the general election in
November. That's a lot of money and not much time."
"What he means is that you have to have most of it lined up before the
primary," Costello said.
"I think I could get it from the voters," Cromwell said.
In his mind he had a brief, vivid image of all the little groups he
had addressed in the last fifteen years. Their faces rolled past some
inner eye; thousands and thousands of them; all alive with enthusiasm;
all loyal.
The four Board men laughed.
"Don't kid yourself, John," Smithies said. "You won't get enough from
the voters to pay five per cent of your expenses. You have to get the
money in big chunks. Five or ten thousand at a crack."
"Not me," Cromwell said. Their laughter irritated him. "I'm not going
to sell out to the Montgomery Street and Spring Street boys just to get
their money. I'll go right to the people. I don't need the bribes of
the big-money boys."
Instantly, in one smooth, simultaneous action the faces of the four Board
men went blank. They bent over their plates and began to eat. Cromwell
watched Costello push some frijoles into a tortilla, put the tortilla in
his mouth and bite. The brown, smooth substance of the frijoles gushed
out at one corner of his mouth. It was a stranger's face. Costello's
black eyes went over Cromwell as if he were not there.
"We're just friends," Smithies said softly, as if Cromwell were the only
person at the table. His mouth opened to receive a spoonful of apple
pie and ice cream. Suddenly his eyes had become hard.
Without speaking to Cromwell the other three Board members finished their
lunch and left the table. Smithies stayed in his seat and lit a cigar.
"John, you weren't fair to the boys," Smithies said. "They're tender
on talk about big money and bribes. Since all this crap about Artie
Samish and graft came out, everybody thinks that if you're on the Board
you must be taking money under the table from the big-money boys. Hell,
John, I don't even know who the big-money boys are." He paused, put a
thumb under a suspender and pulled it out. It came away from his moist
flesh reluctantly and left a groove in his shirt. "I don't know them,
but they're around."
"I didn't mean to insult anyone," Cromwell said. "But I'm damned if
I'll change my ideas just to get the big contributions."
"John, you're a strange sort of politician," Smithies said. "You've
been around a lot, but not in real politics. You've got to learn that
you have two platforms. One is the official platform. That public and
your party will talk about it and it will go out to the newspapers and
they'll make up a pamphlet on it. The voters don't pay any attention to
it, but you have to do it anyway." He paused, pursed his lips and cigar
smoke trailed out of his lips, thinned out and exhausted as if most of
it had been absorbed by the huge spongelike body. "The second platform
is the private one. That's the important one. That's what you'll really
do. They're watching, John, to see what your private platform is."
"Who is 'they'?" Cromwell asked.
"Not the voters. 'They' are the people who are interested in offshore oil,
highways, gasoline tax."
"Or liquor taxes," Cromwell said bitterly.
"Or liquor taxes," Smithies said blandly. "They won't come and ask you,
John. You have to let them know. Just a line in a speech or talking to
one of their people over a drink. Take liquor. It's big business. Know
how much beer we drink in this state in a year? About twelve million
gallons. In a year that'd make a hell of a big pile of beer cans. And
that's only beer. There's whisky, gin, brandy, applejack, wine, scotch,
sour-mash, corn, rye, crčme de menthe and a lot more. And the whole damn
mess is sold a shot or a bottle at a time. Maybe a hundred thousand
people in this state making money off of booze." He inhaled the cigar,
crisped an inch of the tobacco in a breath. He smiled at Cromwell. "They
know you have to attack the liquor interests and booze barons . . . just
to get elected. They don't care about that. But they'll be watching, John.
Watching to see what you're really going to do about liquor. Beer-truck
drivers, brewery workers, bartenders, wholesalers . . . all watching
to see. Maybe a hundred thousand altogether. Maybe more."
Smithies let go of his suspender and it snapped back, shrunk its way
into the grooved and waiting flesh, almost disappeared. He stood up.
"I haven't made up my mind yet about liquor taxes," Cromwell said.
"Sure, John. You think it over and let me know. I'm not threatening
you. You know that. But a lot of people around the state ask us about
politics and we have to tell them something. So when you know where
you stand you just let me know. We'll get the word around. You can say
whatever you want publicly, but we'll get the real word around."
Smithies paid for the lunch and they left the club. They shook hands at
the door.
Cromwell started back toward the office. He kept walking until he came
to Pershing Square. He listened briefly to a dark lithe man speak on
the advantages of Syndicalism and the general strike and noted that he
was not holding his audience. He walked past a group of slim boys with
penciled eyebrows and shrill voices who were talking to a girl in a
bright flowered dress.
"You're a bitch to wear that dress down here," one of the boys said in
anger to the girl. The girl smiled and lifted a hand to her hair and
Cromwell saw that it was a rough, calloused man's hand and that the hair
was a wig.
"You're jealous, Danny, that's your trouble," the girl said. "You hope
the cops pick me up for impersonation. You do, you really do. You're
just mean, I hate you."
Cromwell went over to a bench and sat down. He stretched his legs out
in front of him and closed his eyes. The sun beat down on his face,
and from his stomach the thin vapors of gin floated to his nose and the
back of his mouth.
They're worried, he thought. When the Board of Equalization starts
to worry, it must be good. If Mike can just do what he says he can,
it'll be all right, I'll make it. Mike's all right; don't worry about
him. He's got some things I haven't got, some talents and skills.
Something about Mike disturbed him and his mind moved away from the
subject. With a glycerin ease his thought poured around other thoughts.
The edge of his mind dulled and things slipped liquidly through his
head. With a sigh of satisfaction he lifted a set of recollections to
the top of his consciousness; let them slide easily through his mind.
They were the memories of the six girls he had seduced before he was
married. Over the years he had sharpened the recollections; the acid
of time worked at the episodes until they stood out with a cameo-like
perfection: each pinkening breast, each exhalation of breath, the twist
of a thigh, the feel of hair and flesh and moisture. Each of them became
more perfect and distinct the farther they retreated in time. He had
forgotten all the other conversations of his youth, but these he could
recall exactly; with a weird precision. Disembodied, separate in time
and space, perfect by themselves, each episode came back to him.
As the sun beat down on Pershing Square and the pigeons cooed on the
statues and shuffled through the peanut shells, Cromwell lay back,
mouth open, and recalled the old, polished, well-remembered episodes.
The first had been the cook at their summer place at Tahoe. He had been
fourteen. The cook was a strong pleasant woman in her forties. Cromwell
walked into the laundry room when she was bent over scrubbing. He saw the
long bare flesh of her legs and the swell of her buttocks and a fuzz of
hair. She turned around with her hands full of wet clothes and stared
at him. She knew what he had seen and for a moment she said nothing,
then she squeezed the water out of the clothes, and as the mass of
soft cloth shrank in her hands Cromwell shuddered. With that her face
suddenly worked and she put the clothes down. She backed slowly into
her room beside the laundry and Cromwell followed her. Without speaking
she wiped her hands on her skirt and took her clothes off and revealed
a strong firm body with soft breasts. She walked toward him and felt him
through his pants and he felt a great stab of pleasure. She helped him
out of his clothes and he smelt the White King soap on her hands and
the flesh of her fingers was white and puckered and very soft.
On the bed her legs wrapped around him and her hands rubbed his back.
"Oh my god, you're good, boy, really good," she whispered after fifteen
minutes and her eyes were misted. "You god damned boss's son you, you're
really good. You . . . are . . . really . . . good" and the last words
were hissed through her teeth.
Cromwell almost fainted with pleasure.
The second and third and fourth and fifth had been college girls. He had
forgotten their names, but he remembered very precisely their legs and
breasts. He remembered the hillsides and car seats where the seductions
had occurred.