The sky looked wet and heavy. The Capitol Building was larger than photographs ever suggested. The portals, the steps and the breadth of the structure gave it the scale of a mountain and an almost religious grandeur. Some of the marble was chalky yellow, other facets, silvery and white. It dwarfed the pedestrians poking about its base like ants. As a breeze blew, a patch of sunlight opened and vanished on the high dome. The sun's fingers moved on down the hill over tops of trees, covering block after city block, then struck the far off Washington Monument and vanished, leaving only watery shadows in its wake.

Between the Capitol and the Jefferson Library, was a lawn shaded by lindens, white oaks and beeches. There was a wide stone gate that looked Oriental. On the walkways, were squat cylinders filled with black dirt and coral pink flowers.

"It's chilly, Mark, can we go?" said one of Mark's friends.

"It ain't chilly!" laughed Mark. "It's a beautiful day." There was thunder in the distance. "Okay-okay-okay!" laughed Mark.

Under the gaze of ravens in the oaks, the three men hurried down the slope of Independence, passing limos and police cars.

They passed two buildings with Roman motifs - the Cameron House Office Building and the Longworth House Office Building. They walked on a funny sidewalk made of imbedded yellow pebbles.

As a wet breeze lashed at them, Mark said, "Is that one of our coalition friends up there? How come he's walking in the street?"

"That's Bob. He's got KS lesions on his feet. The yellow pebbles on the sidewalk hurt him, yesterday."

"Oh," said Mark, becoming pensive.

Bob was a thirty-year-old man, now walking with a cane, because of AIDS.

Mark and his friends passed a shady park along the downward slope, where willows and scarlet oaks moved in the breeze. There were sugar maple, dogwood and witch hazel. Above the trees were the ever-present clouds, and behind the trees, the ever-present dome.

Their downward path toward the Sam Rayburn Building made them feel as though the hill were pushing them out into the steep green and gray horizon. They even felt some vertigo.

A cab rumbled by.

"Listen," said one of his friends. "There's a rally going on way down there."

They paused. A voice was barking something indistinct over a P.A. system.

"Let's go see!" Mark cried.

"No!" one friend chided.

The other friend suddenly said, "I know whose down there. A hundred thousand Christian activists are supposed to be in town, today. Oral Roberts is giving a speech. It's in the papers."

"Are they here because of us?" Mark asked.

"No!" laughed his friends and one said, "The world does not revolve around us, Mark. Haven't you noticed that, yet?"

They arrived at the Sam Rayburn House Office Building. It was a massive structure with Greek motifs. Six rotund columns were pitched upward. Two massive sculptures sat over the entryway to the front courtyard.

One figure was a Jove-like man, named Majesty of the Law. The other, a seated heroine named Spirit of Justice.

Mark and his friends moved between the two allegories, and, after passing a bike rack and strolling by two side gardens decked with magnolia trees, they entered the big structure at the ground level.

Inside the building, they had to go through a security checkpoint. The white stone floors and walls of the interior were shiny and smooth and had veins of silver and pale green in their milky flesh. The ceilings of the luminous corridors had Greek border designs. The squeak of men's shoes and the clicks of high heels echoed officiously as workers went about, with clipboards under their arms.

"Where do we go?" Mark asked his buddies. "I forgot."

They found the bank of elevators they used the day before and rose from G-1 to Level One. The corridors upstairs looked just like the ones on the first floor.

It was 9:30.

Mark and his buddies could hear Ted Weiss' scratchy voice calling the meeting to order over the microphone. They darted in and took their seats.

Ted Weiss had a stoop and wore glasses. He looked like an absent-minded professor - a quality that his fans found endearing. In reality, the man was sharp as a tack, of course, and his fans loved him for that, too.

"Today we continue our hearings on therapeutic drugs for AIDS, their development, testing, and availability," Weiss said. Mark and his friends took off their jackets. Mark caught his breath and looked around at the press people.

Weiss explained that the current session would be interrupted by votes the subcommittee members had to give. A defense bill was being debated, apparently. After opening comments by another committee member, Weiss introduced retired Admiral James Watkins.

Watkins was a major figure in the AIDS network: Chairman of Reagan's Commission on AIDS. He was sworn in.

Mark listened to Watkins. He had some begrudging respect for the man. Mark had learned over the years that people from the armed forces could be more objective in their assessment of things than professional politicians often were. "… seven years into this medical crisis," Watkins was saying, "our bureaucracy is still trying to struggle out of its lethargy…" He expressed respect for Dr. Fauci of NIAID and of the FDA leaders on AIDS, but pointed out that NIAID's annual budget had increased over the past six years from 3.4 million to 444 million, whereas the FDA's end of the research spectrum had been hampered by little or no budgetary increase. "There simply is no linkage and there should be," Watkins said. Later, he said, in order to approve AZT rapidly, the FDA had to do the same as "robbing Peter to pay Paul." In other words, they had to take money needed for research in other life-saving areas, to process requests related to AIDS research. Watkins said, "to play this game with a deadly disease in my opinion is unethical." Later, Watkins insisted, "We should discontinue the current practice of allowing the Office of Management and Budget to intimidate the FDA budgetarily, without any apparent sensitivity to the adverse health consequences of their actions."

Mark liked the fact that a major figure on Reagan's commission was criticizing the White House. He liked many of the points Watkins was making. Watkins praised the community-based research groups (to Mark's delight!). Then Watkins said, "… We need to eliminate, wherever possible, even in private sector trials, the use of placebo controls, especially in patients with AIDS."

Mark wanted to cheer, but he was feeling queasy. He got to the bathroom just in time, and had some diarrhea. Then he had a spasm that felt like vomit was going to swell upward or shit was going to race downward in a brown rush. The pressure confused his frail body. It made him feel faint. He let loose with some more diarrhea. He closed his eyes, caught his breath, and concentrated on keeping his body as calm as possible. After wiping and zipping up, he left the stall and splashed cool water on his face at the sink.

He washed his hands with the funny brown soap oozing from the dispenser. "Take it one step at a time, one step at a time," he kept saying, trembling. He felt panic rising within him. "One step at a time." Back in the corridor, he passed a U.S. Mail chute, then a drinking fountain.

"I can't go back in the Hearing Room right now," he mumbled to himself. This poor, balding man, whose wispy, gold and brown hair grew thinner by the month, was riddled with anxiety about his own body and what it was doing to him. He saw a New York Times sticking out of a garbage bag. "May I?" he asked a custodian, who nodded.

After a minute, Mark saw on the Table of Contents page, a reference to a name. He turned to the designated page. There was the photograph, too, and the obituary. His longtime nemesis, Lukas, the man who criticized him so much in the League over a year ago, had died of AIDS-related complications. Mark read the article. Lukas had become quite a liaison between government people and the gay community. Mark actually wanted to cry over his death. Lukas looked handsome and clean-cut in the photo. It was one of those studio portraits. And Lukas looked young, too. A promising politician. A handsome activist. He was younger than Mark by almost ten years.

Mark struggled against his tears, and looked for the exit, feeling dizzy with every step. He needed a breath of air.

He hopped on a series of escalators that took him down, down, down, in a soothing, dragging motion.

He was in the underbelly of the building. His hopelessness was nearing a level of total defeat. On no front whatsoever was he feeling a victory, despite the many fronts on which he was fighting. And worse still was this vast government, whose power was as awesome as it was dormant. Suddenly, a buzzer buzzed throughout the hall.

"Where the fuck am I?" he wondered.

Doors flew open. Representatives were making their way for the shuttle.

It was a quorum call, perhaps, Mark thought.

He slowly found his way back to Level One.