Forty signs of rain - Kim Stanley Robinson [126]
After a second: “Roy Anastophoulus.”
“Roy, it’s Charlie. I’m coming on in.”
“I’m not there.”
“Ah come on!”
“I know. When was the last time I actually saw you?”
“I don’t know.”
“You have two kids, right?”
“Oh, didn’t you hear?”
“Ha ha ha. I’d like to see that.”
“Jesus no.”
“What are you going in for?”
“I need to talk to Phil. I had a dream this morning that I could convince anybody of anything, even Joe. I convinced Phil to reintroduce the Chinese aerosols bill, and then I got you to approve it.”
“That poison ivy has driven you barking mad.”
“Very true. It must be the steroids. I mean, the clouds today are like pulsing. They don’t know which way to go.”
“That’s probably right, there’s two low-pressure systems colliding here today, didn’t you hear?”
“How could I not.”
“They say it’s going to rain really hard.”
“Looks like I’ll beat it to the office, though.”
“Good. Hey listen, when Phil gets in, don’t be too hard on him. He already feels bad enough.”
“He does?”
“Well, no. Not really. I mean, when have you ever seen Phil feel bad about anything?”
“Never.”
“Right. But, you know. He would feel bad about this if he were to go in for that kind of thing. And you have to remember, he’s pretty canny at getting the most he can get from these bills. He sees the limits and then does what he can. It’s not a zero-sum game to him. He really doesn’t think of it as us-and-them.”
“But sometimes it is us-and-them.”
“True. But he takes the long view. Later some of them will be part of us. And meanwhile, he finds some pretty good tricks. Breaking the superbill into parts might have been the right way to go. We’ll get back to a lot of this stuff later.”
“Maybe. We never tried the Chinese aerosols again.”
“Not yet.”
Charlie stopped listening to check the street he was crossing. When he started listening again Roy was saying, “So you dreamed you were Xenophon, eh?”
“How’s that?”
“Xenophon. He wrote the Anabasis, which tells the story of how he and a bunch of Greek mercenaries got stuck and had to fight all the way across Turkey to get home to Greece. They argue the whole time about what to do, and Xenophon wins every argument, and all his plans always work perfectly. I think of it as the first great political fantasy novel. So who else did you convince?”
“Well, I got Joe to potty train himself, and then I convinced Anna to leave the kids at home and go with me on a vacation to Jamaica.”
Roy laughed heartily. “Dreams are so funny.”
“Yeah, but bold. So bold. Sometimes I wake up and wonder why I’m not as bold as that all the time. I mean, what have we got to lose?”
“Jamaica, baby. Hey, did you know that some of those hotels on the north shore there are catering to couples who like to have a lot of semipublic sex, out around the pools and the beaches?”
“Talk about fantasy novels.”
“Yeah, but don’t you think it’d be interesting?”
“You are sounding kind of, I don’t want to say desperate here, but deprived maybe?”
“It’s true, I am. It’s been weeks.”
“Oh poor guy. It’s been weeks since I left my house.”
Actually, for Roy a few weeks was quite a long time between amorous encounters. One of the not-so-hidden secrets of Washington, D.C., was that among the ambitious young single people gathered there to run the world, there was a whole lot of collegial sex going on. Now Roy said dolefully, “I guess I’ll have to go dancing tonight.”
“Oh poor you! I’ll be at home not scratching myself.”
“You’ll be fine. You’ve already got yours. Hey listen, my food has come.”
“So where are you anyway?”
“Bombay Club.”
“Ah geez.” This was a restaurant run by a pair of Indian-Americans, its decor Raj, its food excellent. A favorite of staffers, lobbyists and other political types. Charlie loved it.
“Tandoori salmon?” he said.
“That’s right. It looks and smells fantastic.”
“Yesterday my lunch was Gerber’s baby spinach.”
“No. You don’t really eat that stuff.”
“Yeah sure. It’s not so bad. It could use a little salt.”
“Yuck!”
“Yeah, see what I do is I mix a little spinach and a little banana together?