It was, Gregor thought, a symptom of something, of the same something that had resulted in the destruction of Holy Trinity Armenian Apostolic Christian Church, of something that was neither liberal nor conservative except superficially. No wonder so many people were turned off to politics these days. It wasn’t politics anymore. It wasn’t about how best to fill the potholes or how best to make sure that everybody could see a doctor if he needed to or how best to build a system of defense that would neither leave the country vulnerable to attack nor bankrupt it This was politics as total lifestyle choice, a kind of armor people put on to proclaim their superiority to every other person, and Tom DeLay did it just as surely as Barbara Boxer did. This wasn’t even politics about candidates. He had no idea who the people of Windsor, Massachusetts, had voted for in the last election, and he didn’t think it mattered. This was the politicization of everything. It was no longer possible to decide you liked beer instead of wine without that choice becoming a declaration of just which side you were on.
Personally Gregor thought he was on the side of sanity, but he could see how at least some people might argue that point. He dragged the phone as close to him as he could without putting it on his lap and stared at it. If he called and got the answering machine, he would not be able to leave a message. He knew that already. The sound of Bennis’s voice on the answering machine tape would make him mute. If he called and she was still cold to him, he didn’t know if he’d be able to talk then either. What he really wanted was for her to show up in Windsor on her own, the way she had in Hollman, Pennsylvania, when he had been involved in the mess that had first introduced him to Liz Toliver, Jimmy Card, and Mark. The chances of her doing that now were slim to nonexistent. If he was honest about it, he knew they were only nonexistent. He knew he was going to have to call.
He took a deep breath. He dialed for a long-distance line. He dialed his own number on Cavanaugh Street. He had Bennis’s cell phone number, just as she had his, but for some reason he didn’t want to talk to her on her cell phone. He had no idea why that was. Maybe he just wanted to be sure she was sitting down somewhere and able to pay attention to whatever it was he might have to say. He didn’t want to try to talk to her while she was driving or with a lot of people or in the lobby of an art movie house getting ready to go in to see one of those films he always begged off because they were so damned bizarre. Here was something about Bennis he didn’t understand. She liked movies, preferably in foreign languages, where really odd things happened. There was a Fellini movie with a fashion show of religious garments that included, toward the end, skeletons in veils and lace. There was a German film where people faded in and out of reality for no good reason he could see. First they were standing there, solid, and then they were dissolving like ghosts, but there didn’t seem to be any actual ghosts in the film. Fortunately, she would also go to “real” movies with Tibor, but Gregor had to admit he didn’t like most of Tibor’s movies either. Tibor’s movies ran heavily to space aliens, wizards in beards longer than most bridal veils, and desperate races to save the world. Whatever happened to movie movies, where ordinary people had love affairs or tried to save the family business or learned the real meaning of Christmas? On that last one, Tibor had had an entry, and Gregor had gone along for the afternoon. It was called The Grinch, and everybody in it was made up to look like—Gregor didn’t know what.
Bennis would understand what he meant about politics that wasn’t really politics, Gregor thought. At least, she would have understood as of a few weeks ago because she was both very active politically and mostly driven to distraction by what she had to put up with in order to be that way. She would know what he meant by the unreality of places like this, too. Bennis had been in a lot of unreal places in her life, and she’d been to a school like this one. Or had it been like this one? Maybe it had been a conservative enclave instead of a liberal one. His palms were sweating. So was his neck. His stomach was one enormous knot, as hard as a bowling ball and as comfortable as if he had swallowed one. He hadn’t been this afraid of Bennis when they’d first started seeing each other.
The phone rang and rang. After a while Gregor was sure she was out, and that he ought to hang up and try again another time. Instead he just sat there, listening to the ring. There were three phones in his apartment. One was in the bedroom, on the night table on the left side of the bed. One was in the living room, on the wicker side table to the right of the couch that faced the big window looking onto Cavanaugh Street. The last was on the wall in the kitchen, next to the refrigerator. There was no place in the apartment, anywhere, where it took more than a few seconds to get to a phone.