The Choiring of the Trees - Donald Harington [119]
Tom Fletcher shook his head and said, “Don’t be surprised if you hear from the governor.” So she was not surprised when she did, except by her treatment: she was not called to the capitol to wait for hours in His Excellency’s marble-walled, marble-floored, marble-ceilinged anteroom and then to stand on the carpet in front of his huge desk and listen to his rantings. No, he invited her to dinner at the governor’s mansion, which, although the governor belittled it as “just an old-fashioned big old pile of dark-red bricks,” was one of the city’s finer homes. The governor himself met her at the door and shook her hand with both of his, and introduced her to his wife Ida and his sons Grady and Bill, eighteen and ten years respectively. The five of them sat down evenly spaced around a dining-table that could seat thirty, lit by candles, and attended by eight black waiters. Later Viridis could not even remember what the food had been; it had not been outstanding, nor had the wine, a sweet red that would have been all right with the dessert. The governor and his family ate very rapidly, scarcely pausing between bites to make conversation about insignificant things: as near as she could recall, they had talked about the latest improved passenger cars on railroads and the opening of the new movie theater at Eighth and Main, the Crystal, where they were showing a gripping oriental mystery story, Bombay Buddha; everyone had seen it except poor Billy, whose mother wouldn’t let him. They argued about whether or not the movie was dangerous for a ten-year-old boy. When they finally asked Viridis her opinion, she replied that she couldn’t say, since she hadn’t seen it herself.
Trying to be nice, she noted that young Grady was not much older than Ernest Bodenhammer and would perhaps be interested in meeting the boy and seeing his artwork. “Artwork?” Grady asked, with a belligerent frown, and then: “Who’s Ernest Bodenhammer?”
“A convict,” the governor told his son. “Miss Monday, you see, makes a hobby of convicts.”
“Oh,” said Grady. “Why does he do artwork?”
“A hobby,” Viridis said.
As soon as the dinner was finished, the governor dismissed his family and moved from his chair at the head of the table to sit next to Viridis at the side. “Now,” he said, when they were alone, and only one waiter remained, to bring them some peach brandy. “Now, I want us to be friends. I have been thinking a lot about the last time we got together, and I think I owe you more than just an apology for my rudeness. I want you to understand that I was preoccupied with the Hot Springs business. Have you been keeping up with this matter of legalized gambling?”
She shook her head. “I’ve been preoccupied myself.”
The governor laughed. “You certainly have! Trying to save that moonshiner must have been a full-time occupation for you! But anyway, some of my best friends want to legalize pari-mutuel betting at the racetrack over at Hot Springs. Would you want me to let them do a thing like that?”
“They’ve been doing that at Longchamp for centuries,” she said.
“Where is Lone John?”
“Longchamp,” she pronounced it more carefully. “In Paris. A racetrack in the Bois de Boulogne.”
“You’ve been to Paris?”
“I lived there for four years.”
“My, my,” the governor said. “Well now, I’ll be.” He didn’t say what he would be. “And your father gave you his blessing?”
“He didn’t stop me.”
“Well, that’s amazing. But you know, I’m all in favor of taking the reins and bridle off of womenfolk and letting