The mayor listened to the proposal for a one hundred-plus story building in downtown Nashville with detachment. He had heard such proposals before, at least half a dozen of them, and they had never amounted to much. They had always been too expensive to finance, and there was a legitimate question as to whether the city really needed such a building. The two developers seated before him, however, were large contributors to his past campaigns, and excellent at fundraising in general besides. He needed them if he was going to run for governor or senator or congressman in the next few years. They were the last people he needed to anger.
“Well, gentlemen,” the mayor said quietly. “I ask you to think about this. We’ve just been through a fight ten or fifteen years ago to get major sports teams into the city. A lot of people argued that we needed professional sports teams to be a first-class city. Now we have the sports teams, and I’ve really wondered how much that has contributed to the city’s reputation, in any direction. It’s probably heresy to even wonder that; I’d appreciate your strict confidentiality.”
“Don’t worry about that, Mr. Mayor,” one of the men said. He was a short man, somewhat rotund, with tightly cropped, kinky grey hair. He had developed many condominium highrises in the city, and before that, upscale apartment complexes. Now he was moving into office buildings, and wanted to make a mark downtown, and quickly. “We don’t really care what you say about the sports teams. That’s not our bag, either. I’ve been to my share of the games, for both the hockey and the football teams, but if they weren’t here, it wouldn’t really bother me.”
The other man, larger in build but younger, with a beefy face and a jaw that jutted out forcefully, nodded his approval as the comments were being made. The mayor sat back in his chair and looked at each man thoughtfully, evenly, maintaining the perfect composure of a good politician.
“Then I guess we have something on each other,” the mayor said. “We’ve both spoken out of turn, and now we need each other, or the whole city will turn against us.”
The two men laughed, a little nervously, a little subdued, but there was that uneasy acceptance that usually followed something that had privately been said that was publicly unpopular.
The mayor hit the intercom button on his desk and asked someone to step in the room; soon, Bob Corinth appeared. The mayor’s aide had quickly earned the mayor’s trust, and that trust had only deepened over time. The mayor felt he could trust Corinth with anything, and he also felt that Corinth would speak frankly with him if he felt like he was moving in the wrong direction. It was hard to put a price on an aide like that; he could be worth literally anything at a critical moment.
“Gentlemen, I think you’ve met Bob before,” the mayor said casually. “Sit down, BobThese fellows have been talking business with me, and I wanted you in on this.”
Both men stood up and shook hands with Corinth, and then all three sat down. The smaller, heavier-set man exchanged some small talk with Corinth while the mayor and the larger man sat quietly. The afternoon sun had begun to filter into the room, and when it crossed the mayor’s face, he stood up and shut the blinds on one section of the large windows in his office.
“Mayor, you haven’t forgotten who recommended this fellow to you, have you?” the rotund man asked. “Not that I would ever demand anything for it. It’s just that I’d like him working for me, quite frankly.”
The mayor smiled easily and sat back in his chair, his hands clasped behind his head. “Yes, I half expect him to leave me at any moment. I try not to let him know that too much, but I think he knows it, anyway. He’s just waiting for the right offer to come along.”
The man patted Corinth on the shoulder and winked at him. “We can settle that today, Bob.”
“I’m afraid you’d have a bidding war for him,” the mayor said. Inwardly, he seethed a little bit. This particular supporter always had a way of letting him know who was in charge. He generally supported the mayor on everything, but he always had to get in a verbal wedge to let the mayor know that he was in a position where the mayor had to listen to him, had to be concerned about him.
“About this building, Mr. Mayor,” the heavyset man said. “We’re all set to go forward on this thing as soon as we can get financing. If you think there’s something we should take into account, let us have it now. But we’re ready to move.”
The mayor shifted uncomfortably in his chair, and laid his head back against the headrest. He suddenly felt tired, and he knew that he looked tired. It was one of those days where everything began to catch up with him, late in the afternoon. “Well, there’s the real estate association. And the building owners and managers. They’re all against it. They say occupancy is too low already, and that a building like that would just suck everybody dryAnd then there’s the financing that you mentioned. Hell, are you aware of how many times I’ve heard that story—that the financing has been lined up, or that that’s all we’re waiting on? Yeah, you may be waiting on the financing, but you’re probably going to be waiting a long time. I think the time for this building, assuming there ever was a right time, passed about five years ago. And I don’t think we’re anywhere near back to that point yet.”
The two contributors looked at the mayor silently for a moment, then both broke out laughing. They were supporters of the mayor, and knew they had quite a bit of leverage with him, but at the same time they knew he held some strong cards as well. He had always been good to them, and yet not afraid to give them sound advice, even at the risk of incurring their wrath. They appreciated straight talk, as long as it was privately given, and the mayor had always followed that rule. And there was the question of: Who would be any better?
“We’ll think about all that,” the larger man said. “But I really think the financing’s going to come through this time. Things have gotten a little better, people are more ambitious, bankers are wanting to be part of big things. I think it’s going to happen. I understand your point that, once financing is lined up, it still has to all come together in the implementation of it. We’ll just have to cross that bridge once the financing is set up.”
The mayor nodded, and the rotund man said, “Well, Mayor, we haven’t talked to you about stuff in general for a while. What else is on your plate? You getting a lot of pressure from the gays?”
The mayor sighed and shifted a little bit in his chair. It was almost a relief to get onto a different subject, no matter what it was. “Yes, we’re hearing from them practically every day now on this marriage thing. You know, gentlemen, being a practicing lawyer for a number of years, I always hated the courts—the judges, especially. They were domineering bastards, and I hated them, even though I knew there was no way we could do without them. But I just never really liked the judicial system all that much. But now, as a politician, I actually like it. At least in this case. Because this is all going to be handled by the courts. Politicians will go along, taking whatever stand the people in their district expect them to take, and then one day it’ll all be over. The courts will rule that we’re going to have gay marriage here, and once that’s over, you can get out the strongest flashlight you ever found and go looking in the dark, and you won’t find one person who ever opposed this, after five years has passed. And everyone knows it, and they know it today, and that’s just the way it is.”
All four of the men laughed at that remark, and the slight tension that had been in the room only a few minutes earlier seemed to vanish in a flash. The late afternoon sun cast long shadows across the floor through the windows where the blinds had not been drawn. The mayor soon asked Bob Corinth to bring in a fifth of Jack Daniels for the group; the official meeting had ended.