Free The Dinner Party by Howard Fast Page A

underground railroad. The government got very upset about this, and they took a man from El Salvador whom they had the goods on and who they could send back if they wished to, and they paid him and wired him with a tape recorder and sent him into a little church in Arizona as a spy and witness.”
    â€œYou’re kidding,” Leonard said.
    â€œOh, no. This is fact, the New York Times and all that. Now, the church people are on trial, in a Federal court in Tucson, and they can be sent to prison for five years. Well, you know the way it is at school, and the kids get to talking about it, and this really bowled us over—you know, this kind of thing can’t happen here. And then here’s Liz, with her daddy a United States senator.”
    â€œOh, no. You didn’t promise anything, did you?”
    â€œI’ll tell you what I did. We would get batches of material, because we were all chipping in with money to send to Tucson, and I would pick off the best of it and send it on to Daddy.”
    â€œAnd?”
    â€œWell, I just don’t know,” Elizabeth said. “I haven’t mentioned it to him, but then why is he willing to have those deplorable two from the administration at our house? They want to see Gramps. Well, why didn’t Daddy say, you want to see him, invite him to your place? But instead, Daddy went out of his way to set up this dinner party.”
    â€œLiz, the ins and the outs don’t hate each other. They play footsie under the table. It would calm the senator’s nerves to be buddy-buddy with the other side.”
    â€œNo way. No good reason. He’s no saint, but he’d never play the double agent. Never!”
    â€œMother loves a dinner party. She’s wonderful at it.”
    â€œNot enough. No. Daddy has enough failings, but down there in that squirrel cage, he knows his way around. He really does. I’ve watched him. Now Congress isn’t in session. But even if it were, it would take weeks to push a bill through that would help those church people. The whole thing is a cheap frame by the administration, and my guess is that Daddy feels that if he can get the terrible two to the dinner table in our home, and feed them nice and talk to them nice, he might just get them to call off the prosecution.”
    â€œCould they?”
    â€œIn a minute.” She reached over and took Leonard’s right hand from the wheel and pressed it up against her lips for a long moment, and then she said, gently, “He’s a good person, the way things are measured in this stinking world, and you have to tell him, and he will die in his own way a thousand times, so please, Lenny darling, try to love him a little.”
    â€œJesus, I love him so much already,” Leonard cried. “Why can’t he just once be a father to me?”

TEN
    D o you know, there is something wrong in this house today,” Ellen MacKenzie said to her husband, who was polishing dry and shining a set of champagne glasses. “There is something dark and sad.”
    â€œI am dark,” Mac said, “and you are making me sad and sorrowful.”
    Ellen bristled. “How?”
    â€œYou are a pessimist. You always been a pessimist. I am an optimist.”
    â€œThat’ll be the day.”
    â€œO.K.—O.K., woman. Spell it out. What is dark and sad?”
    â€œVibrations.”
    â€œI wish,” Mac said deliberately, “that I was one of them niggers could put his wife on the bed, ass up, and give her a dozen of the best.”
    â€œYou ever use that filthy word in here again, I’ll give you a dozen of the best.”
    â€œVibrations. Vibrations. God help us. Furthermore, you used that same word right here this morning.”
    â€œThat was different. God won’t help you, because you don’t have a sensitive bone in your body. You are Boobus Americanus.”
    â€œWhat? What on earth is Boobus