"I collared him this afternoon and asked him how he stands now on the lieutenant governor thing: is he still with Bryan? If you'd been standing here beside me you'd've sworn he's answering it -I know I thought he was. He wasn't.
"He may be the best I've ever seen, it comes to slinging it. He will not lie to you at least so you could prove it. He does not refuse to answer, and he doesn't whine and plead. "Oh gee, you can't ask me to do that." Stuffs beneath him. You stop him and you say: "Hey Dan." He says: "Hey Charlie," and that's how it begins. He stands there and talks to you, and twenty minutes go by in the twinkling of an eye he doesn't seem to stop for breath.
"You just can't help but be impressed, even thankful, all this time he's giving you. And he's so earnest about it. When he gets through doing it, he's just as fresh as springtime, and you're totally worn out. And furthermore, what's more important, you don't know a single thing you didn't know before. You may know even less. At least until this afternoon, I knew he was still with Bryan.
"Now I'm not sure of that. I've had the Hilliard Treatment, and boy, do I feel good, like a million bucks, Dan Hilliard's been so good to me. When you feel like you've just had sex you've had the Hilliard Treatment. Yes, my child, you have been fucked, but it's really not so bad you've been fucked so very well. That's why all us whores like Danny; he's what makes the job worthwhile. We let him have his way with us, anytime he likes, 'cause we have a good time too."
Then Charlie Doyle had smiled. "That's how he does the magic tricks.
He gets you to help him. You don't even realize it. You went in as his adversary: this time you're gonna smoke him out, once and for fuckin' all. But before you even know it, you've become a volunteer from the audience, right beside him in the footlights, grinning like a fool.
"You know what I bet?" Charlie'd said. "I bet he's always like this now, he's so good at it. He's with the wife and kids, and one of them says to him "Daddy, can I have an ice cream cone?" He does the same song-and-dance he does for you and me, everyone he deals with, face-to-face and day-to-day. By the time he's through, the little kid has either gone to sleep, or lost all interest in the fuckin' ice cream cone. Grown up, gone off to school."
"Julian's one of those people," Hilliard said on the patio, 'that you go to when you really don't have enough on your mind. You give him money to relax you. Julian's very relaxing. He's in charge of fixing things that don't need fixing, and really don't have to work right anyway. Like golf. You do not have to play golf, much less play golf well. Golf is an option, nothing more. The problems it creates for those who get problems from it are volitional. The only reason they exist is because we wish them to. Julian solves those problems."
Julian's third client hit his drive straight down the fairway with a nice loft on it, but it traveled no more than 150 yards, down to the first little hollow. He appeared to have sacrificed distance for accuracy. Julian cleared his throat and said: "Nice and true, Paul, nice and true. Need some more oomph on it, though. Little more meat in it."
"Gotta get the old ass into it, Paul," Julian's first client said, still gloating over his drive as he got into the cart with Steve.
Merrion hoped idly the gods of golf would punish Pete severely for the rest of the day.
"Julian's optional, too," Hilliard said.
"Yeah, yeah, where the hell've you been?" Merrion said, looking at his watch. "It's twenty after and the message that you left on my machine yesterday said our tee-time was eleven-thirty. Fuck've you been all this time?"
"I was over at the house in Bell Woods," Hilliard said.
"You were over the house in Bell Woods," Merrion said. "What the hell're you doing Bell Woods? Fourteen years, you haven't lived inna place? You forget all a sudden who owns it?"
"Mercy called up from the Vineyard this morning," Hilliard said. Under the terms of the property settlement agreement Daniel and Marcia (Hackett) Hilliard had in his words 'fairly rationally reached, meaning not too much blood was let' negotiating their divorce, they retained joint ownership of the house at West Chop, the survivor of them to enjoy a tenancy for life, at his or her death the remainder of the estate to be sold and the proceeds evenly divided between Timothy and Emily Hilliard. Mercy got occupancy during August, which both of them preferred; he had the run of it from Memorial Day through the last Saturday in July.
"She gets the part she calls "the hurricane season, when it's so crowded you can't move, horribly crowded, and so hot you can't do anything." Says it proves she got screwed on the deal. I say what she got's "the best part of the summer, when it's nice and warm and everyone you want to see is there," he said. "Of course it isn't crowded when I'm there; no one who's got any sense goes there in June.
