Distraction - Bruce Sterling [170]
“Well, we just hire new ones, that’s all.” She looked up. “Maybe someday you can come back to us.”
“That would be good. The reelection campaign, maybe.”
“That should be a real challenge.… You’re so good with him. You were always so good with him. That silly business with his old architecture plans. It really touched him, he was very lucid for a minute there. He was just like his old self with you.”
“I’m not just humoring him, Lorena. I really want those disaster relief plans. I want you to make sure that they’re sent to me here. I think I can use them.”
“Oscar, what are you really doing over there? It seems like a very strange thing. I don’t think it’s in the interests of the Federal Democrats. It’s not a sensible reform, it’s not like what we had in mind.”
“That’s true—it’s certainly not what we had in mind.”
“It’s that Penninger woman, isn’t it? She’s just not right for you. She’s not your type. You know that Moira knows all about you and Greta Penninger, don’t you? Huey knows too.”
“I know that. I’m looking after that. Although it’s challenging work.”
“You look so pale. You should have stayed with Clare Emerson. She’s an Anglo girl, but she was sweet-tempered and good for you. You always looked happy when you were with her.”
“Clare is in Holland.”
“Clare is coming back. What with the war, and all.”
“Lorena …” He sighed. “You play ball with a lot of journalists. So do I, all right? I used to sleep with Clare, but Clare is a journalist, first and last and always. Just because she gives you softball coverage doesn’t mean that she’s good for me. Don’t send Clare over here. I mean it. Send me the old architecture plans that Alcott did, when he was a wild design student who had never made any money. I can really use those. Do not send Clare.”
“I don’t want to see you destroyed by ambition, Oscar. I’ve seen what that means now and it’s bad, it’s worse than you imagine. It’s terrible. I just want to see you happy.”
“I can’t afford to be that kind of happy right now.”
Suddenly she laughed. “All right. You’re all right. I’m all right too. We’re going to survive all this. Someday, we’re going to be okay. I still believe that, don’t you? Don’t fret too much. Be good to yourself. All right?”
“All right.”
She hung up. Oscar stood up and stretched. She had just been kidding about Clare. She was just teasing him a little. He’d broken her out of her unhappiness for a little moment; Lorena was still a player, she liked to imagine he was her krewe and she was looking out for him. He’d managed to give her a little moment of diversion. It had been a good idea to make the phone call. He had done a kindly thing for old friends.
Oscar began the liquidation of his fortune. Without Pelicanos to manage his accounts and investments, the time demands were impossible. And, on some deep level, he knew the money was a liability now. He was encouraging thousands of people to abandon conventional economics and adopt a profoundly alien way of life, while he himself remained safely armored. Huey had already made a few barbed comments along that line; the fact that Huey was a multimillionaire himself never hampered his sarcastic public outbursts.
Besides, Oscar wasn’t throwing the money away. He was going to devote it all to the cause of science—until there was no money left.
The resignation and departure of Pelicanos had a profound effect on his krewe. As majordomo, Pelicanos had been a linchpin of the krewe, always the voice of reason when Oscar himself became a little too intense.
Oscar assembled his krewe at the hotel to clear the air and lay matters on the line. Point along the way: he was doubling everyone’s salary. The krewe should consider it hazard pay. They were plunging into unknown territory, at steep odds. But if they won, it would be the grandest political success they had ever seen. He finished his pep talk with a flourish.
Resignations followed immediately. They took departure pay and left his service. Audrey Avizienis left; she was his opposition researcher, she was far too skeptical and mean-spirited