Two Moons (38 page)

Five minutes ago, she had read an advertisement in the
Star:
“Wanted—By a Gentleman, two unfurnished rooms, communicating, on second floor, with or without Board, for a lady, where seclusion can be assured.” One saw notices like that in the paper every day. The city was full of rooms stuffed with such ladies, who ate terrapin during the congressional session and dry toast once it was over. She would be luckier than they, as she would have to do what was required of her only a single time—if, that is, Roscoe Conkling would still accept her
aging favors. She had abandoned the idea of submitting to him once Hugh went into the hospital, but now her determination flared back to what it had been two weeks ago, when she lay awake in the Astor House.

For days after the nomination fight, the papers had remained full of the War God’s victory dancing: the champagne he had let himself drink at a dinner with Jay Gould; the duel he’d nearly fought with a Georgia senator who dared, during this period of triumph, to murmur disagreement over a parliamentary point. Lord Roscoe was at the opposite of his overdue climacteric; he was like some voracious rubber plant ready to reach out and strangle anything that crossed his path in the Senate chamber or at Wormley’s. Her own ravishing, she decided, would happen so fast and completely as to escape her own notice.

She looked at the mingy sprig of holly attached to her window by Mrs. O’Toole, and a sudden anxiety overtook her. With Christmas eight days away, was the great man even still available? What if, after working herself back up toward surrender, she discovered that he’d just decamped for the chilly hearth in Utica?

She went quickly downstairs to scan the paper. “I’m looking for a bargain in gloves,” she told the immediately curious boarders. Her eyes raced down the political columns for some assurance that Conkling remained in Washington. Yes, there it was, notice of a meeting, tomorrow morning, by his committee inquiring into the Mexican raids against Texas.

She put the
Star
back down on the table. “Have you found something you can afford?” asked Mrs. O’Toole.

“I’ll
have
to afford it,” said Cynthia, heading back upstairs toward her night’s sleep.

She had never liked dreams—they made the mind a fun house, setting all the world’s diameters loose from their circles, scattering them like tangents. Had she been aware of her own dreamlessness tonight, she would have been grateful. As it was, she didn’t awaken until a half hour past her usual time, and even then she stayed in bed, with her
eyes open, telling herself what she absolutely must do today. Looking through the sprig of holly and the windowpane, she regarded the Sun, whose light even forty years ago the author of
Celestial Scenery
had guessed to travel at 192,000 miles per second. Two decades before meeting Hugh Allison and Mr. Michelson, she had underlined the sentence that came just after the numerical estimate: “It follows that, if the sun was annihilated, we should see him for eight minutes afterward …”

She contined to lie beneath the counterpane, watching the Sun and wondering if somehow, so far from here, the planet Mercury had just gone dark; and then Venus; and soon, any minute, unaware it was about to be scuppered, Earth. She lay still, one eye on the Sun and the other on her clock, until eight minutes had passed, at which time she sighed and got up to dress.

The vendor was dozing when she asked for a bag of lemon drops. Along the Capitol’s main corridor, both representatives and spectators had become thin on the ground. Tomorrow, the man told her once he’d awakened and apologized, he would close his stand until after the New Year. Cynthia noticed a similar lack of business for the photograph seller. Even the War God’s picture went begging in the face of reduced holiday traffic. She looked at the forelock and wondered whether, since his recent triumph, Mary Costello had begun displaying this image of Conkling even more prominently in her parlor.

Admitted by one of the passes that had arrived inside each envelope from Wormley’s, Cynthia took a seat in the ladies’ gallery, only a minute or two ahead of Conkling himself, who strode past Captain Bassett, the doorkeeper, to take his seat on the floor. Senators with desks in the neighborhood of the War God’s dared not light their cigars so close to his presence. The visual result, as seen from the galleries above, was a kind of smoke ring that swirled at a safe distance
from Conkling’s own clear, central atmosphere. So well known were his aversions that even nearby colleagues who chewed their tobacco made sure to expectorate a bit more carefully into the pink china spittoons by their desks.

She watched Gordon, the Georgia Democrat whose new enmity really stemmed from Conkling’s attempt to impose a radical revenue collector on his territory. He glared at his foe from across the aisle. Conkling did not return the look, but Cynthia noticed old Hannibal Hamlin, Lincoln’s Vice President, keeping an eye on both men; less than a week had passed since he and Senator Thurman had had to separate the potential duelists.

Conkling did not look up at her, but she knew he was aware of her presence. There was no possibility he had failed to receive her note by now—and sure enough, a page boy was soon kneeling beside her to whisper: “Mrs. May?”

He escorted her from the gallery to the basement floor beneath the chamber. A dull roar of running drains came from the baths on the House side and, even with its custom depleted, the restaurant’s tabletops made a considerable noise beneath plates of oysters and tumblers of whiskey. The boy nodded greetings to a Capitol policeman and led her past a row of gas lamps to the small office Conkling maintained down here.

“He says he’ll be with you as soon as he can, ma’am. Will you be all right here alone?”

“Yes,” she said, perplexing the little fellow with her nervous laughter. “Much safer than I’ll be otherwise.”

As soon as he had closed the door and left, she busied herself with surveying the cartoons framed on the wall; even the ones from Nast paid tribute to Conkling’s slim waist and broad shoulders. Then she went over to the letters on his desk. Up from the blotter came an exuberant rush of words from Chester Arthur in New York. “I appreciate how great the strain must have been upon you and hope you will now be able to get a little rest. For myself, personally, I thank you cordially
for your vindication of my official character. We hope to see you here soon and to hear the details of the battle.”

The Collector’s gratitude lay beside a whole stack of letters from the Custom House. She supposed the pile of congratulations contained even the precious signature of Mr. Joseph Selden, which, if she accomplished what she was here to do, might yet appear on the Mangin projector’s certificate of admission through the Port of New York.

She sat quietly on a horsehair sofa for the better part of an hour, her eyes closed, until, without any knock, the door opened, allowing in a gust of soap-scented air. The realization that Conkling had just emerged from a bath and changed his clothes repelled her more than filth would have.

“I’ve lately achieved one reconciliation,” he declared. “Are you going to make it two, Mrs. May?” He extended both his hands toward her, smiling as gently as he could manage.

“Who was the first?” she asked, keeping her own hands in her lap. “Senator Gordon?”

“No,” Conkling said, laughing as he sat down in a chair across from the sofa. “He still cowers every night at Willard’s wondering if my aide will come by with a set of pistols. I was speaking of Blaine, actually. I still don’t know what his game is, but I’ve thanked him for assisting in our victory. The other day I offered him the chairmanship of this Mexican committee—he
was,
after all, the one who first raised the alarm about those raids.” He didn’t tell her how disgusted he’d been when the newspapers’ praise of Blaine’s Fourth of July oration reached him in Paris. “But he’s had to go out to Hot Springs for whatever’s ailing him. That leaves me with the committee and a late start upon the holidays.”

“What a shame,” said Cynthia. “You could have gone to Utica already, perhaps via New York, in time to spend an evening with the Hayeses.”

Conkling roared his delight. “And all the other Union Leaguers, licking their wounds at their big reformist dinner. By the way,” he added, in a more subdued voice, while examining his fresh pink fingernails, “I hear that Roosevelt is dying.”

“You’d like that, I suppose,” said Cynthia. “It would mean you’d won a fight to the death.”

“No,” said Conkling, looking hurt that she should think such a thing. “I prefer a gentle submission.” He paused and tried to read her expression. “I’ve missed you these last tumultuous weeks. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, you know.”

“It does,” said Cynthia. “When
do
you return to Utica?”

“Only when nothing is here to detain me.”

“You mean the committee.”

“No, my dear Cynthia. I mean you.”

“Well, I should hate to keep you … embargoed.”

He risked a quiet laugh. “Surely you’ve forgiven me by now. What happened in New York was only my way of keeping you tethered until the fight had reached its successful conclusion. My lovely reward, to be opened when the stars finally allowed.”

“
Such
a lovely package. As shopworn as the jewels in the District Commissioner’s pawnshop.”

“You mustn’t say such things.”

“I’ll say whatever I like!” Her shout surprised them both, but when she saw that her anger only further provoked his excitement, she retreated toward playfulness. “You’re being rude, Senator. Offer me whiskey.”

“I keep that for my colleagues,” Conkling explained, his eyes traveling to the tray of decanters.

“Yes,” said Cynthia. “Those unabstemious men, so much weaker than yourself.”

He poured her a glass and sat down beside her on the couch. “Let us be friends again,” he said, softly. “Just the two of us. No more Irishwoman in between, trafficking in our secrets.”

“And no more Mr. Allison,” said Cynthia.

“He’s gone, too. Yes.”

“You made it your business to find that out.”

“Of course,” said Conkling, without apology. He had inquired of the admiral himself.

“Mr. Allison may be gone,” said Cynthia, “but I still want his machine.”

“You do?” asked Conkling, much surprised.

“Yes,” she replied. “For my own small glory. I know well enough what he wanted to do with it. I think I can do it on my own.”

Conkling stroked her hand. “My
femme savante.
” He rose from the sofa and went to his desk, extracting from its top drawer the same document Mr. Selden had consigned to his lower one eleven days ago in New York. “Come here and see,” he instructed. She joined him behind the blotter while he dipped his pen into a bottle of violet ink and wrote across the top of the paper: “Let this through. R. C.”

“Shall I have to claim it in New York myself?” asked Cynthia, knowing she would never have an advantage equal to the one she held right now.

“Where would you like it shipped?”

“Have them send it to the B&P station, to be held for as long as need be.”

Cheerful and aroused, the War God asked if there were any further demands she had to make.

“I shall no doubt make some more when I’m ready to use the projector.” Her feeling of success shrank to disappointment as soon as she spoke this small piece of bravado. Even if the machine’s release from New York acted as a miracle potion and revived Hugh, the odds against his ever being well enough to use it seemed higher than even she could count.

Conkling took her in his arms. His eyes flared as he looked into hers. She dared not avert her own gaze.

“It is I who gild the dome,” he said. “I who print the money and raise up the buildings, all from here. It is I who rein in the wayward men I’ve put on their little thrones.” He kissed her neck.

“Your world moves too slowly for me,” she declared, closing her eyes as she submitted to his touch. “And it disappears too fast.”

“Riddles,” he said, breathing hard and undoing the small bow at her collar. “How fast does
your
world move, Cynthia?”

“At one hundred and eighty-five thousand miles per second.”

Flushed with ardor at the idea of her brain moving through territory where his could not follow, he ordered her: “Square the number.”

Fewer than ten seconds passed before she said, “Thirty-four billion, two hundred and twenty-five million. Miles per second.”

He flung her down on the couch, then removed his waistcoat and shirt, revealing his well-tended torso. In the dim light of the basement office, for all the fire in his eyes he looked to Cynthia like the painting of a lion, without a drop of sweat on him. She remembered Hugh, so different in the same sort of light, all damp and gleaming. At this moment, however, her mind filled up not with longing for him, or with fear of the War God, but a strange certainty of her own temporary power in the world, the force of her unlikely gravity this year upon these two moons who had revolved around Cynthia May as surely as Asaph Hall’s discoveries made their race around Mars.

She undid her own hair. “I have one
immediate
demand.”