The Victorious Opposition by Harry Turtledove Page B

far before another man fell into step with her. “You made a good speech,” he said. “You told them what they needed to hear. Then, when you were done, you shut up. Too many people never know when to shut up.”
    “Ernie!” Sylvia exclaimed. She gave the writer a hug. If Joe Kennedy happened to be watching, too damn bad. “What are you doing back in Boston? Why didn’t you let me know you were coming?”
    He shrugged. He had broad shoulders, almost a prizefighter’s shoulders, and dark, ruggedly handsome features. He looked more like a bouncer, a mean bouncer, than the man who’d put Sylvia’s words on paper in
I Sank Roger Kimball
. Considering the wound he’d taken driving an ambulance up in Quebec during the war, he had more right than most men to seem, to be, mean.
    When he saw she wouldn’t be content with that shrug, he raised one eyebrow in a world-weary way that made him look older than she was for a moment, though he had to be ten years younger. He said, “I am looking for work. Why does anyone go anywhere these days? Maybe I will find something to write about. Maybe I will find something someone will pay me to write about. The first is easy. The second is hard these days.”
    “Are you hungry?” Sylvia asked. Ernie didn’t answer. He had more pride than two or three ordinary men. Pride was a luxury Sylvia had long since decided she couldn’t afford. She said, “Come on. I’ll buy you supper.” Before he could speak, she held up a hand. “I’ve got the money. Don’t worry about that. And I owe you.” She found herself talking as he did, in short, choppy sentences. “Not just for the book. You warned me my bank would fail. I got my money out in time.”
    “Good I could do something,” he said, and scowled. He’d wanted her. She’d wanted him, too, the first time she’d really wanted a man since her husband was killed at—after—the end of the Great War. Considering his wound, that surge of desire had been nothing but one more cruel irony.
    “Come on,” she said again.
    Ernie didn’t tell her no, a likely measure of how hard up he was. She took him to an oyster house. He ate with a singleminded voracity she hadn’t seen since her son was growing into a man.
    She put money on the table for both of them. He frowned. “I still hate to have a woman pick up the tab for me.”
    “It’s all right,” Sylvia said. “Don’t worry about it. It’s the least I can do. I told you that already. And I bet I can afford it a lot better than you can.”
    His pain-filled bark of laughter made people all over the place stare at him. “You are right about that. You must be right about that. I do need to land a writing job. I need to do it right away. If I do not, I will wind up in a Blackfordburgh.”
    “You could do something else,” she said.
    “Oh, yes.” Ernie nodded. “I could step into the ring and get my block knocked off. I have done that a couple of times. It pays even worse than writing, and it is not so much fun. Or I could carry a hod. I have done that, too. The same objections apply. I am glad to see you doing so well for yourself.”
    “I’ve been lucky,” Sylvia said. “I feel lucky, seeing you again.”
    “Me?” Another sour laugh. “Not likely. I have tried to write books that show how things were in the war. People do not want to read them. No one wants to publish them any more. Everyone wants to forget we ever had a war.”
    “They haven’t forgotten down in the Confederate States,” Sylvia said.
    “Sweet Jesus Christ. I
am
lucky. I have found someone who can see past the end of her nose. Do you know how hard that is to do these days?”
    The praise warmed Sylvia. It wasn’t smarmy, the way Joe Kennedy’s always seemed. Ernie wasn’t one to waste his time with false praise. He said what he meant. Sylvia tried to match him: “Jake Featherston hasn’t exactly been hiding what he thinks about us.”
    “No. He is a real son of a bitch, that one, a rattler