He took his foot out of the tub and stood contemplating her in her nakedness, glad explaining and pretending he was trying to convince her was giving him the excuse. "Grey Hills is the indulgence we've permitted ourselves to get from doing that work. It's the only thing we've ever gotten that we said from the beginning we wanted purely for us. Knowing of course that wed never really get it; as Danny said last night: "No question about it it was totally presumptuous of us to even think it, think some day we might get in."
This's one of the finest golf clubs in the world. For us to imagine wed ever become members was silly. It was like some high-school second baseman making his league all-star team and thinking now he's got it wired, he is definitely on his way to the major leagues and a Hall of Fame career ending up in Cooperstown: a kid's golden dream and nothing more.
"And then son of a gun, we got in.
"In a way we still can't believe that we did it. When we were young men it looked way out of reach. We couldn't afford it, and not only that, if wed had the money and tried to get in, they wouldn't've let us we weren't well-bred enough for that bunch. So it was always something beyond our wildest dreams. And then all of a sudden, the planets align and we're in. There's only one possible explanation for this: it's what we got for being good men."
He was tumescent and stepped back from the shower, starting toward her.
She backed away holding the towel out in her left hand at arm's length and grabbing the other end with her right as though intending to snap him with it. She said smiling: "No, no, Simba, not playtime now; time to wash. Coffee first. Back off and get yourself into that shower.
Tell yourself what a grand public servant you are while you're getting yourself clean. I've had enough of your pious guff."
"The thing men always have to remember about women," he said as though talking to himself, stepping into the shower, 'is the ones who're sexy lack soul."
On a gray Saturday in Holyoke in the early spring of 1966, Dan Hilhard in his High Street office had invited Merrion to tell him what he wanted, nodding approvingly as he listened. "Uh-huh," Hilliard'd said, 'that would make a lot of sense, wouldn't it. Grab that clerkship for you now, while nobody's really mad at us. Oughta go through like grease through a goose. And it would too, if it weren't for just one thing, just one minor problem, standing between you and that job. Larry Lane. He has to clear it through Chassy, but he's the guy who appoints."
"I don't even know him," Merrion'd said. "I don't even know who he is."
"I know that," Hilliard'd said, "I realize that. That's a big part of this minor problem."
Early in the spring of 1966, the second year of his third term in the House, State Rep. Daniel Hilliard, D." Holyoke, perceived that Merrion was getting restless serving as his chief assistant. Merrion was twenty-five. Hilliard, having turned thirty the year before, realized that Merrion's itchiness was appropriate.
He had logged more than six years in Hilliard's service. During the first two, unpaid, he had tailored his selection of courses and arranged his class schedules at UMass. to fit the demands of Hilliard's successful campaign in 1960 for a seat on the Holyoke Board of Aldermen. In '62, he had given up his part-time job at Valley Ford and the assurance of a full-time position after he graduated; the idea didn't thrill him in order to manage Hilliard's legislative candidacies and help him to deal with the responsibilities his victories imposed.
"The fact is," Hilliard said to his wife, Mercy during childhood her younger sister's approximation of "Marcy' had become her family's name of choice 'he's put his own life on Hold. He's subordinated his interests to mine for a very long time."
"And it's worked like a charm," Mercy said. She tried always to see clearly and be just. Where Merrion was concerned, that took effort.
Some of his ideas and a good deal of his behaviour troubled her. For all his ferocious loyalty to Danny and hard work in his behalf, he was not the kind of decent, sober, principled man she would have chosen to be her husband's highly-influential right-hand man if she'd been consulted about it.
"The reason it has is precisely because we are so close and work so well together," Hilliard said.
"You're telling me," Mercy said. "If it weren't for me and the kids, most people'd assume the two of you're a pair of queers. As it is only some of them do."
"They must not know about Sunny," he said.
"Or if they do," Mercy said, 'they don't know enough. With her clothes on she looks like a respectable woman."
"Meow," Hilliard said.
Mercy smiled demurely. "Just stating the facts," she said.
