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time.”
    â€œYou pay me by the week.”
    â€œAt least he can’t come back at us later and push his old ferret eyes wide with innocence and say, ‘Why didn’t y’all jist come rat out an’ aisk me?’” A smile touched the Senator’smouth. “Sometimes I take pleasure in knowing Breckenyear would like to see me right where I’d like to see him. No satisfaction in hating a man if he won’t hate you back.”
    Les Suffield stirred in his chair. “Breckenyear’s in a position to hate pretty hard.”
    â€œGood. I’m tired of knocking down straw horses.”
    Suffield said slowly, “You want this fight, don’t you?”
    â€œWhy not? I feel like busting a few heads.”
    â€œYou’ll only bust your own. You know that.”
    Spode looked from one to the other. They were staring at each other like pugilists before the bell. Through the door Spode heard the dim sounds of junior staffers returning from lunch to their desks in the bullpen office across the way, to handle the Senator’s routine paperwork, talk to the Senator’s constituents, answer the Senator’s phones, stuff the Senator’s newsletters into franked envelopes, and in general keep trivia off the Senator’s back.
    Spode sat back in the chair. He crossed his legs at right angles and laced his hands together behind his head and told himself, I am going to keep all the way out of this.
    The Senator said, “You’ve had it in your craw for a while, Les. You may as well cough it up now.”
    Suffield’s shoulders dropped, as if with relief. “All right,” he said. “I will.” He was beginning to perspire. “You’ve been right in there waving all the right flags. Right in there reforming welfare, civil rights, getting a fair shake for the chicanos, whipping the tails of the nasty bad guys behind environmental pollution. It’s all fine by the voters—our voters, we haven’t got any thick-smoke industries down home and they don’t build cars in Arizona. You went out on a limb pushing tax penalties for big families but you probably picked up enough support from the anti-population-explosion crowd to offset the damage you did with the diehard Catholics. You get high marks right down the line as the perfect image of the crusading young progressive Republican. The right amount of stir in the press about standing you for President in a few years’ time. In short, an impeccable record, a toothpaste smile, broad-based popularity, and no skeletons in your closet. Nomortal enemies either. You’ve never made the mistake of pushing anybody into a corner he couldn’t get out of gracefully. The extremists won’t vote for you, but they won’t spend their every last dime fighting your reelection. Nobody’s got a chance in hell of unseating you this November. With the right stand-off at the next convention, you could walk right into the presidential nomination, and who have the Democrats got who could beat you for the White House?
    â€œThose are the stakes,” Suffield continued, “and you want to forfeit. You want to tie the rope around your own neck and hand the end of it to Woody Guest and Webb Breckenyear.”
    The Senator smiled. “In other words, don’t rock the boat.”
    â€œRock it my ass. You’re hell-bent to sink it. Don’t I make any sense to you at all? Don’t you see what happens when you go after Breckenyear’s hide? For openers you’ll get Senator Guest on your ass, and when you get Woody Guest on your ass you get Woody Guest’s friends on your ass. You have any idea how many friends he’s got?”
    The Senator murmured, “It happens to be a simple question of right and wrong.”
    â€œThis is no simple question of right and wrong. This is a question of the precedence of one right over another. Go after the old guard now and I guarantee