Beauty Queen

South Street. I've got an awful lot on my mind right now. You can't expect me to drop everything and just... go on the campaign trail with you. You're a big girl now. You go on and run for governor, and I'll give you my blessing and whatever financial help I can afford, but I can't be involved in what you're doing."
    "You mean you might donate some more money?"
    "We'll see," he said evasively.
    "Uncle Al gave me a personal check yesterday," she said proudly. "Five thousand dollars."
    "That's very good of Al," said her father, already picking up the phone again.
    Jeannie sipped her coffee with growing irritation, listening to him talking to a boat manufacturer downtown, inquiring as to prices and extras and so forth on a twenty-foot fiberglass cabin cruiser.
    The families of political figures were supposed to be supportive and helpful of their candidates. In the filing cabinet of every American's memory were heartwarming photos of the wives, children, et cetera, of the Kennedys and the Carters and the Rockefellers. But her family seemed to be different. Only Uncle Al and Steve seemed to care. Her other children were engrossed in their heathenish pursuits, and her father was childishly engrossed with his building blocks, and her husband was engrossed in his book and China. And her mother was in the grave.
    When her father hung up, she said, "You're buying a boat?"
    A small smile came to Bill's Ups.
    "Did you know that, among other things, I own a pier down there? Two piers, in fact. Old ones. One of them is in bad shape, but the other is pretty sound. I want my own little boat to get around the area in, inspect things from the water. Part of the project is going to include a little marina for pleasure boats. Hopefully these boats will be owned by the people who are hopefully going to rent my apartments."
    Jeannie shook her head.
    "I think you are having your second childhood," she said.
    A spark of anger raced through her father's eyes.
    "Is there anything wrong with that?" he asked.
    As the days passed, however, Jeannie forgot her aloneness. She was caught up in a swirl of events of her own making.
    Her immediate objective was to bring about the defeat of Intro Two in the city council. She plunged into lobbying, calling up city council members, inviting them to lunch, talking, haranguing gently. A couple of them owed her political favors, and she now made it plain that she was calling in the IOUs, in the form of their vote against the bill.
    In this she was not alone. The local dignitaries of the Catholic Church, the benevolent associations of policemen and firemen, the teachers' union, various other unions, were all putting the heat on the city council.
    Jeannie was shocked, however, to find how powerful the homosexual lobbyists were. They were battle-hardened from all their experience in Washington and other major cities around the country. They were politically sophisticated. They sang a siren song of human rights, and kept harping on the fact that many states and major cities in the United States had passed similar homosexual rights bills. They painted a picture of New York City languishing in a Middle Ages of repression and bigotry, while the rest of the country sailed on into the bright sunlight of liberty.
    The city council, caught in the middle, squirmed uncomfortably.
    One day Harrison Hotchkiss of the New York Times asked her: "Jeannie, why are you coming out against the gays only now? Intro Two has been brought up before."
    "Because," she said tartly, "on the two previous times when Intro Two was voted on by the council, I was very busy fighting pornography and massage parlors. And, if you'll check the record, you'll find that I did speak out against Intro Two. Since then, the homosexuals have made tremendous inroads. I now regard them as a major threat, and I am now mounting a major campaign against them."
    "You vowed that you would run porn and sex parlors out of the city," said the reporter. "Have you vowed the same about the gay people?"
    "Let's put it this way," she said crisply. "If there were no homosexuals in New York, the quality of life in this city would be that much higher."
    For the first time now, she felt the weight of homosexual opinion in New York.
    Her office had already taken hundreds of phone calls from outraged homosexuals. Most of them gave their names, a few of them didn't. The mail carriers started delivering whole bundles of letters written by these people. Some of these, too, were