The Ex-President

by Jeff Soloway

  I checked my phone. The early dinner was starting.

  Chapter 16

  From the outside, the brightest stars at the Redneck Oscars were all security. Every arriving diner, whether a plutocrat or a biker, was frisked, scanned, and bag-checked by a beefy young Chomp guard who looked like he could lift the trailer he grew up in. The scene as a whole did faintly resemble an awards shindig. Cruisers lacking dinner reservations crowded the foyer to snap pictures and catch a glimpse beyond the security checkpoint. Those who had reservations were dressed in their finest, which for the males could range from bespoke tuxedos to leisure suits to T-shirts printed with tuxedo fronts. As for the women, their dresses varied in fit, length, and texture, but tended to twilight hues, black and deep purple, the classiest of colors. Those who failed to meet the dress code (long pants) were turned away by the maître d’. Most accepted their abasement with humble good humor, but a few principled slobs argued their case. “The bikers didn’t have to change!”

  The maître d’ smiled sadly but not sympathetically. His European accent, bald head, and tuxedo gave him the look of a barely rehabilitated soccer hooligan. “They wore jeans.”

  I had left my blazer in my room, but at least I’d put on khakis. I gave the maître d’ my name and room number.

  “Of course, sir.” He snapped his fingers to summon an assistant, while security gave me the tenderest of VIP pat-downs.

  “Is Eleanor Smalls already here?” I asked, but the assistant had already disappeared through the purple curtains. I followed.

  The ship’s restaurant was twinkly with crystal and snow-bright with linen. It was also gigantic and maniacally busy. Busboys dashed between tables and prep stations. Waiters hustled late arrivals into their seats. I tried to ask the assistant again about my mother, but nothing could be heard over the roar and clatter of several hundred people preparing to dine and almost as many preparing to serve them.

  As we approached the room’s center, where a curving white staircase ascended to a terrace, the diners’ clothes became fancier and their drinks less sudsy, but their manner was just as loose. The swanky people were having as much fun as the ordinary joes in the room’s hinterlands. A woman’s giddy face turned to me as I passed. I recognized her as Shell’s mother. She waved. I thought I also recognized one of their tablemates, a former CEO who had served as undersecretary of the Navy, until, like so many Chomp appointees, he was forced to resign under investigation. Chomp had never ceased to praise his loyalty. The table was smack in the middle of the room. Shell’s parents must be formidable donors.

  They were not quite the cream of the crop, however (even fancy Chompians refused to say crème de la crème). The terrace above was obviously reserved for even swankier people, who would dine at an altitude befitting their importance. To my surprise, the assistant paused at the base of the staircase. A bodyguard X-rayed me with his eyes and nodded his approval.

  The background noise was quieter up at the summit, the activity calmer. My Sherpa led me to a gigantic round table, a space-hogging absurdity anywhere, but doubly so at sea. Around it sat a dozen people. Rubies shone, diamonds winked, iWatches glowed. I recognized several Chompian celebrities: Oscar Thule, the genome copyright magnate and libertarian philosopher; Cameron Chachkey, once a widely tolerated sitcom star, most recently Chomp’s appointee for chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts; two owners of NFL teams who had landed publically financed stadiums through Chomp’s infrastructure stimulus program; another man whose name escaped me but who looked like a famous comedian; and Harvey Salamone, the chief of security, who pretended not to remember me. Everyone was white except for the much younger Asian companion of one of the NFL owners. No one asked who I was. Standing discreetly back from the table were a half dozen bodyguards, including Jimbo, who kept having to turn aside to remove his gut from the path of a server.

  Of the three empty seats, two were together, presumably for me and my mother, who was nowhere to be seen. The lone empty seat had to be for Chomp. I glanced out over the railing at the diners below. Scattered throughout, like daisies rising up from the grass, were faces staring up at me. These people thought they were the audience to our show, but we up on the heights knew we were the audience too, just in fancier seats. The star had yet to appear.

  As I made for the pair of empty chairs, the assistant waiter’s voice rose up for the first time: “Sir!” He pointed to the lone seat, between Thule and Chachkey’s companion, presumably his wife. I took it.

  I gazed at the unoccupied pair. Two seats together, and neither Chomp nor my mother had yet arrived. Good God. How well had their drinks date gone? I whispered to Chachkey’s wife, “Where’s Chomp?”

  “Late.” I could hardly hear her. I wasn’t sure whether she was being standoffish or clandestine. She had a youthful face and hair so starkly gray as to intimidate with honesty. I could imagine my mother: “Of all the feminist battles to fight, dear, you pick this one?” Not what one expected from a Hollywood wife, but then, Chachkey had been done with Hollywood for many years.

  Another assistant waiter rushed to fill my water glass. Across the table, the comedian made a Speedy Gonzales joke that all of us, including the waiter, chose to ignore.

  I tried again with the woman: “Is that Jeff Foxworthy?”

  She escaped me by diving into her handbag. I noted both its Prada logo and its un-Prada stitching. My mother wouldn’t have paid fifteen bucks for it on Canal Street.

  Yet another server introduced himself as Headwaiter Peter (his name tag read PEDRO PUYAT and PHILIPPINES). “Cheers! You ready?” He had probably five minutes to get our order in to the kitchen before that enormous machine moved on to the next course.

  “We’re still awaiting the guest of honor,” Thule pointed out, with the coldness of someone forced all too often to suffer morons.

  “Oh, just order,” said Harvey. “He already had his burger.”

  Several at the table, including Chachkey, tittered at this glimpse into Chomp’s daily life; Thule rolled his eyes. Great men are impressed by great things, not hamburgers.

  Meanwhile the nervous headwaiter had been replaced by his superior, the restaurant manager, a huge Serb with a manner and skin tone better suited to the occasion. He asked if we had any questions. No one did, but several had off-menu demands.

  My neighbor finally emerged from her handbag. She dropped the ship’s entertainment program in my lap and tapped at a paragraph near the bottom. It was the bio of the onboard comedian. He was not Jeff Foxworthy, but his impersonation of Jeff Foxworthy was so good that he had been chosen as the lead in an upcoming Jeff Foxworthy biopic. Chomp was always better at attracting celebrity businessmen than celebrity entertainers.

  I thanked her quietly and noticed that Chachkey was staring at this faux Foxworthy, eagerly awaiting his next witticism. She noticed me noticing. I caught her eye and shook my head in sympathy. She dropped her hand below the table, so only I could see it, and gave her husband the finger.

  When the headwaiter came, she ordered the Caesar salad and the duck and bent her head. A tear fell from her eye and was swallowed by her napkin.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, when the waiter was gone.

  “I was expecting this to be so much nicer,” she whispered.

  She was going to bawl when she got her Caesar salad.

  Her husband had finally noticed. “Dear?”

  She waved him off. He turned his attention cross-table, where one of the football owners was explaining, ostensibly to Chachkey but with an eye on Thule, how an NFL-style salary cap might be applied nationwide to hourly wage earners.

  “You call this fine dining?” Mrs. Chachkey whispered. “All the waiters know how to do is smile.” Pedro and his assistants were already plopping down the salads and shrimp cocktails. “See?”

  I saw my chance to make a friend. “It’s an essential efficie
ncy tool. It cheers up the passengers. Makes them more manageable.”

  “So every smile is a lie! I guess it’s not their fault. They come from countries where people are used to taking orders and eating slop. Nobody cares anyway. Look at all these Neanderthals. You think they appreciate luxury?”

  I looked out again at the passengers below—all of them, whether in cheap seats or pricey, tuxedo fronts or polo shirts, now happily gorging. Why not? My neighbor’s open scorn surprised me. I had expected elite Chompians at least to try to disguise their disdain for the masses. But then, the whole point of Chompism was never having to hide your prejudices.

  Once again, she read my glance. “I don’t mean them. I mean him.” She glared across the table at Harvey, who had been presented two Caesar salads, one in front of the other, if as they’d arrived on a conveyer belt. He crammed into his mouth a globby slab of lettuce. It took two napkin swipes to remove the glistening sauce from his cheek.

  “He’d be outclassed in an Outback,” she said. “We’re not rich like everybody else. We’re in the arts. You too?”

  She thought I looked as poor as her. She had no idea. I tried a shrimp and almost broke a tooth. “I travel a lot.”

  “I hate travel.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “For him, of course. The thing is, I thought we’d get a little pampering on the way. This is our last chance. Everyone’s last chance.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What do you think? All those fancy restaurants and spas they promised—that’s bullshit. It’s impossible. Imagine a sommelier on the island! He’d have to be like—well, like…”

  “Like what?”

  “Like them!”

  She swept her hand over the railing toward the masses below. Her husband glanced at her and then quickly away, before she caught him checking up.

  “Is this thing ever going to work?” she said. “I just emailed my friend back home. She’s says no one’s covering this stupid cruise. Just the protest. We look ridiculous.”

  “I never heard about the spas.” I considered my next question. She seemed to like me, if only because she hated everyone else. Maybe spite would make her trust me too.

  But then the table fell silent, because the whole room had fallen silent. Our fellow diners had turned to gaze out over the crowd. I turned with them. I saw nothing. But I heard.

  The chant began softly: “Chomp, Chomp, Chomp, Chomp.” A single word repeated again and again, the sound at first heavy, then thunderous, then deafening. And the word kept getting louder and louder, until the water in the glasses began to quiver, and the silverware to jiggle, and finally it felt like our table would be knocked off its platform and all of us kept aloft just from the intermittent force of its mighty beat. None of our tablemates deigned to take part, but Harvey, the impresario, grinned at how well the moment was coming off.

  Then the chant exploded into a cacophony of adoration: cheers, applause, screams, shrieks, whoops, and whistles. Chomp had entered. My view was obscured by diners near him leaping up on chairs and tables, but I could see well enough. His hair was unmistakable. The narrow carpet he strode upon was a deep maroon with black swirls, colored and patterned to disguise spills, but Chomp bore himself as if it were the red carpet at Cannes. Two waiters led the way, smiling and stopping frequently to glance backward, but always down at his feet, never his face. As he came closer, I could also see the woman hooked to his arm. Her shoulders were bare, her dress shimmered like moonlight on water, her fair hair was tied up in a swirling style that, like the dress, I’d never seen before.

  But I’d know her face anywhere.

  As she came closer, I could see that my mother’s smile was not her usual, that slight hint of obscure amusement, but instead a blaze of delight, dazzling enough to hide her amazement at the situation. I leaned over the rail. She glanced up—she knew her destination—and saw me. She couldn’t wink, not with hundreds of ecstatic diners staring her way, but her eyebrow gave a little kick, a kind of secret thumbs-up. It was all a joke, she seemed to say, but wasn’t it fun? But I knew this was no joke. She was the actress who, after so many years, had finally landed the part she was born for.

  I realized I was smiling too, enjoying her success as much as Harvey was enjoying Chomp’s. As they passed a table half full of grade-school kids, my mother slowed, loosening but never losing her armlock on Chomp, and said something that froze one kid in the act of cocking his arm to toss a roll at his sister. The kid dropped his arm, abashed, as his dad ruffled his hair. I could see rather than hear the explosion of laughter my mother had set off. Her face was all the more beautiful for the obvious pleasure she was taking in her success. Even Chomp looked proud of her.

  The couple arrived at the foot of the marble staircase. I could see Chomp pause to prepare himself for the ascent. My mother let him go first and only after a moment tripped up quickly to keep pace, as if surprised at his vigor. I glanced at Harvey to see if he appreciated her finesse. But he was again attacking his salad. This was, I realized, his last chance to stuff himself before the long ritual suck-up.

  At the top step, Chomp turned to the room and lifted his hands. The chant rose again, filling the room to the tips of his fingers. He dropped his hands, and everyone was silent.

  “Eat!” he roared.

  After one final eruption, his people hefted their steel and smote their flatiron steaks, beef burgundy, and pot pies.

  My mother went straight to the empty seats. Chomp waved away a server and yanked out the chair for her. A few of the men, including Harvey, remembered to stand; the rest of us, including me, scrambled to follow. Harvey, at a grunt from Chomp, performed the introductions. At every name, Chomp nodded and inspected my mother’s face for her reaction. She managed to look charmed and impressed every time. After they sat, my mother reached back and briefly caressed the small of his back with a window-washing motion that left him grinning at nothing.

  “Who is that bitch?” Mrs. Chachkey whispered to me.

  “Hi, Mom!” I called across the table.

  “Hello, dear! I was hoping to see you here. How daring of you to wear that shirt. Take a picture, please.”

  I snapped a cellphone picture of her between Harvey and Chomp, neither of whom noticed. Jimbo glared until I put the phone away.

  Chomp took his own phone out, held it close to his belly like a bridge hand, and started tapping away.

  “Better not.” Harvey reached for it.

  Chomp knocked his hand away. “This tweet is going to be the best tweet.”

  “No.”

  “Trust me, the highest quality, extremely nasty.”

  “Run it by the girl for spelling.”

  Chomp stuffed the phone in his pocket and lifted his head to the table. “Okay,” he said, by which he obviously meant “Shut up.” We dropped our silverware and tried to finish our current mouthfuls with our quietest chewing.

  He gestured to the diners below. “Look at those faces. Listen to all that chitchat and laughter. Let them inspire us as we discuss weighty matters. This is why we struggle and suffer. For them.”

  The councilors around the table nodded gravely. Like superheroes, they expected no more reward for all their worry and labor than the masses’ clueless enjoyment of the peace they maintained.

  It was all absurd. The people above were no more intelligent or capable than any random collection of maroons down below, but somehow, through a combination of luck, foresight, birth, and skill in some esoteric but influential occupation—Chomp’s magnetism on television, Thule’s knack for angel investing, the NFL owners’ persistence in bribing local legislators to support their stadium finance bills—the people around this table had ascended to positions of incalculable power and influence. And why? Most of them weren’t even particularly good at their jobs. Thule’s latest start-ups had bombed; Ch
achkey’s last movies were turkeys; the owners’ teams never made the playoffs; Chomp had quit. No one cared. Not policy but victory applied to all of them. For having once won in life’s lottery, these people would forever be exalted. And now my mother was enjoying the fruits of her first win. Just by sitting at this table, I was too.

  Power isn’t chess; the smartest rarely win. Forget all those dim-witted strongmen like Stalin and Hitler who leveraged a knack for machination and oratory into dictatorship; just think of all the boring nonentities who won obscure elections or inherited minor fiefdoms and served out their terms or their lives unremarkably, except that every decision they made touched (and in some cases destroyed) the lives of dozens or hundreds or thousands of even less memorable people.

  “You, my friends,” Chomp began, “my trusted inner circle, the diamonds among the crap heap of the modern political establishment, you deserve to hear the truth. Don’t worry. Our plans are proceeding. The speech on the island tonight is still on—and it’s still going to be unbelievably spectacular, believe me. Good news. We just spoke to Fox. They’ll be there. All our loser enemies who said otherwise—wrong again! CNN and the rest of the failure networks are begging to come too. Too late! The nation will watch on Fox. They’ll hear all about our plan, our adventure, our creation, our new world. Whatever you want to call it. You all know already. Most of you. But there’s one thing you don’t know. And I’m afraid it’s going to hurt. So get ready.”

  He paused. We were all leaning over the table, the better to catch his every word. He was the winner among the winners.

  “A man is dead,” Chomp said. “Died on board the ship, just a few hours ago. Not just any man, not even just any passenger on this magnificent Chomp cruise. For one thing, this man, ladies and gentlemen, was a dear friend of this beautiful woman.”

  The entire table, clear on the importance of this speech if not yet on its purpose, first gasped in shock and then cooed in sympathy, except the libertarian, who famously had no patience for sympathy or death. He had already enlisted a cryogenics firm to freeze his body in ten years on his fifty-fifth birthday.