'"And furthermore," I now see I should've said when what you were after was advice about extra-curricular fucking, but I was too stupid to see it I should've reminded you of something that I would've thought you already knew, without me reminding you; I should've said: "I am not married. This is a very important distinction when what we're talking about's getting laid. I know there're people, still lots of people, who don't approve of getting laid unless the person who's in bed with you's your wife. Or if you're a woman, your husband. But nobody seems to think you should be punished for it if she isn't unless she's someone else's wife, or you've also got a wife. Then they think you should be at very least admonished heavily, like we sometimes say in the court. Some would even go so far as to say you should be booted out on your lying ass and see how you like that." And as of course we -and the rest of the population of the entire Commonwealth of Massachusetts now know, Mercy belongs to that group.
"But that stands to reason. She's a wife. Wives're especially prone to this kind of thinking, or so I've been told. I do not have a wife.
Once I thought I probably would, some day, if Sunny ever decided she oughta maybe come home and slow down a little, but as you know she died first still goin' strong. Too bad. But the result is I not only don't have a wife; I never did have a wife and I never ran for office, so what I do is nobody's business. It's always been okay for me to get laid. Not always easy, but if I got lucky, okay.
"Since you do have a wife," as you did, back then, when I wasn't giving you the advice you wanted; pretty soon I now think you're not gonna, "getting laid isn't okay, no matter how big the young lady's tits are, or how hot she is for your rod. So my advice to you is "Cut it out."
"But you wouldn't've," Merrion said. "If I'd advised you to stop fucking around, you wouldn't've done it you would not've stopped fucking around."
"Probably not," Hilliard said, looking gloomy.
Merrion laughed. "Absolutely not," you mean," he said. "Never in one million years. Because when you started letting me know you had all these gorgeous women coming onto you down there, you weren't being careless you were doing it on purpose. And you weren't doing it so I would then clear my throat and give you lots of good advice you wouldn't take. You were doing it to let me know I wasn't the only guy who could get a piece of ass; even you, a married guy, were getting more, and better. What you were doing was bragging, old chum, just plain old locker-room bragging."
Hilliard looked miserable. He rubbed the knuckles of the ringers on his left hand with his right thumb, and pursed his lips. He mumbled something to himself.
"I know, Danny, and I'm really sorry," Merrion said, 'but I think you oughta hear this. You fuckin' earned it. When you were hurting Mercy, you were also putting me in a box, you started letting me know what you'd been doing. You hadda know it, too; that you were putting me in an awful position with Mercy.
"You and I both know she's never been that keen on me," Merrion said, 'not from the very beginning, I first started working for you. What I was then, and what I'll always be, at least to a certain degree, is someone who Mercy put up with. But since then as the years'd gone by, when you first started letting me know you'd been out getting strange, things'd gotten so they'd started improve a little. She still wouldn't've picked me as her sponsor for Confirmation, but now and then, I said something, she laughed. It wasn't much, but it was progress. In this world you take what you can get.
"So this is where we are, Mercy and me, you decide things're too quiet.
It's starting to get a little better with us, between me and her. I no longer have to wear a coat indoors if she's around, so I don't get a stiff neck from the chill. She still didn't like me; I'm not saying that. But I think she got to the point where she decided that you hadda have someone who can do my kind of work, cutting the balls off a guys; and who also knows what certain kinds of people aren't refined like you two are, think about what's going on. As I do, being one. And she sees that the reason that you have to have someone like me's because there's more people like men there are of you two, you want me to put it bluntly. So if you wanna run for something, what we roughnecks think is important, and you'd better have someone who can tell you. And once Mercy'd realized that, that was when things between us got better. She still thinks I'm a bad influence on you; and I know she'll never change that; but I think she's decided there has to be one, and I'm about the best one you could find.
