Distraction - Bruce Sterling [206]
So Clare had a glass of hotel Chablis, and Oscar, who didn’t drink, had a club soda. They sat at a small wooden table while music played, and they were forced to talk privately.
“So, Clare. Tell me all about Holland. That must have been fascinating.”
“It was, at first.” She was so good-looking. He’d forgotten how beautiful she was. He’d even forgotten that he’d once made it a habit to court beautiful women. As a member of the Bambakias krewe and a press player in Washington, Clare was far better put-together than she had ever been as a newbie Boston political journo. Clare was still young. He’d forgotten what it meant to date young, beautiful, brilliantly dressed women. He’d never gotten over her. He hadn’t given himself enough time. He’d just shelved the issue and sought out a distraction.
Her lips were still moving. He forced himself to pay attention to her words. She was saying something about finding her cultural roots as an Anglo. Europe was full of Yankee defectors and émigrés, bitter, aging white men who clustered in beer cellars and moaned that their country was being run by a crazy redskin. Europe hadn’t been all romance for Clare. The part of Europe that was drowning fastest didn’t have much romance for anyone.
“Oh, but a war correspondent, though. That seems like such a career opportunity.”
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” she said. “You enjoy torturing me.”
“What?” He was shocked.
“Didn’t Lorena tell you all about my little Dutch misadventures?”
“Lorena doesn’t tell me about her krewe activities. I’m not in the Bambakias circle anymore. I scarcely have a krewe of my own, these days.”
She sipped at her wine. “Krewes are pitiful. They’re disgusting. People will do anything for a little security nowadays. Even sell themselves into servitude. Any rich person can scare up their own loyal gang, just for the asking. It’s feudalism. But we’re so wrecked as a country that we can’t even make feudalism work.”
“I thought you liked Lorena. You always gave her such good spin.”
“Oh, I loved her as copy. But as my boss … well, what am I saying? Lorena’s great to me. She took me on when I was down, she made me a little player. She never outed me on the Dutch thing. I have a classy job in Washington, I have nice clothes and a car.”
“All right. I’ll bite. Tell me what happened in Holland.”
“I have bad habits,” Clare said, staring at the tablecloth. “I got this impression that I could sleep my way into good stories. Well, it worked great in Boston! But Den Haag is not Boston. The Dutch aren’t like Americans. They can still concentrate. And their backs are against the wall.” She twisted a lock of hair.
“I’m sorry to hear that you met with a setback. I hope you don’t think I’m angry with you because our affair ended badly.”
“You are angry with me, Oscar. You’re furious. You resent me and you hate me, but you’re just such a player that you would never, ever show that to me. You’d dump me if you had to, and you did dump me, but at least you couldn’t be bothered to crucify me. I made a real mistake, thinking that all politicians were like you.”
Oscar said nothing. She was going to spill it all very soon. More words wouldn’t make it come any faster.
“I got a hot lead on a scandal. I mean a major Cold War scandal, huge, big. All I had to do was wheedle it out of this Dutch subminister of something-or-other. And he was gonna come across for me. Because he was a Cold War spook, and he knew that I knew that he was a spook, and I was a journalist, which is halfway to spookiness, really. And he was hot for me. But that was okay, because, you know, if you put your mind to it, you can get these things out of men. It’s a mentor thing. They’re like your uncle, or maybe your professor, and you don’t know the ropes,