The Ex-President

by Jeff Soloway

  But surely James would try to track me down first. I was the one he hated. Somehow I had to get to my father’s room, find his cellphone pictures and either upload them to the Internet or text them to Chuckles. He had insisted that his crew had the courage and resources to stand up to Chomp, but did they really? Though Chomp routinely betrayed his allies, few actually joined the resistance afterward. Instead they merely slunk off the public stage, embarrassed but not quite destroyed. Chomp’s secret was always to leave them with something more to lose.

  The loudspeakers buzzed once again, and Steve Gouda’s voice commanded the hallway. I braced for a ship-wide APB: “Be on the lookout for a liberal smelling like puke.” Every closed cabin door hid an enemy—except my father’s.

  “Steve Gouda here. We are about to begin docking at beautiful Elysian Island. Debarkation for the Island Independence Party will begin soon. Those of you with invitations, please make your way to the gangway. Don’t forget invites and cruise IDs, without which you cannot—repeat, cannot!—leave the ship. Steve out.”

  I realized I had forgotten to bring the invite. Then I remembered it didn’t matter—I had no cruise ID either. Harvey had taken it. Maybe my father had one. Maybe he could escape and find my mother.

  There was no security by the elevators. A woman was studying her makeup in the polished chrome elevator doors as she waited, her face a reflected smear of pink. James would make mine the same pink smear when he caught me.

  A storm of voices blew in from down the hall. A woman in a tube top and glittering sandals was leading a troop of young Chompians like Delacroix’s Liberty. “Come on! We’re late for the line!” Typical cruise ship rallying cry. But these cruisers truly were, in their way, preparing to man the barricades.

  They lustily chose the stairs instead of the elevator. I allowed myself to get swept up among them, hoping no one noticed my bruises or my breath or the strangeness of my face in their crowd. A fugitive is like any foreigner—always aware of his peculiarity even as he struggles to look like everyone around him.

  On the next floor a costumed Witch—somewhat younger than the last one I’d met—had set up shop beside the elevator. She was hawking T-shirts that read MAKE OUR NATION NEW AGAIN. A crowd had surrounded her. “It’s a first edition!” she declared. “The president said he’ll sign them on the island tomorrow!” The one thing I still possessed was my wallet. As my posse thundered by, I purchased a T-shirt in the largest size available and threw it on immediately. It dangled halfway to my thighs. Bystanders applauded, but a few turned away when they saw my face. One said, “Better wash up, dude.” I accessorized my outfit with a new red baseball cap. Too bad she had no sunglasses. I scuttled down the stairs.

  The next floor was my father’s.

  The hallway past the elevators was filling with passengers. The women wore one-piece bathing suits or skirts shorter than my new T-shirt, but also wispy wraps, for modesty and protection from the nighttime breezes. The men wore khaki shorts and long-sleeved shirts. Some were pushing on toward the elevators; others were mingling in the passage, waiting for friends or family. I struggled against the flow of the crowd. James too would have trouble moving if he were chasing me. But he would have colleagues ready to converge from other points.

  Up ahead was my father’s room. Should I check there first, or would my father have gone to the library already? If he was delayed, he’d text, but I had left my phone behind.

  I slapped myself against the wall to avoid a man carrying, for some reason, a boogie board. After he passed, I could see my father’s door in the distance.

  In front of it stood two men in blazers. One of them was yelling at the other, his face red, the muscles on his neck stretched to the point of snapping. It was James.

  He had been quicker than me—he’d skipped the clothes-buying spree. His partner turned his head, perhaps to dodge James’s spittle. He caught sight of me and pointed.

  “Hey!”

  I turned and ran.

  I had to slip between hallway loiterers and swim past travelers moving in my direction, some of whom were also trying to get ahead of the pack, but none trying as hard as me. I listened for shouts from behind. As I approached the elevators and stairs, the chatter around me grew louder; the spaces narrowed; my panic increased. I had no refuge, no resource. Chuckles might protect me, Erica might hide me, but to find either I’d have to roam the ship. Chomp’s men would catch me eventually.

  The space around the elevators was packed. The doors to one were just closing on a full load of passengers. I heard a growing commotion behind me. Jimbo was coming.

  They say all hunted animals instinctively seek higher places. That’s where most of them die, trapped on some shelterless rock or up a tree. I decided to defy instinct and descend the stairs with the prevailing flow of passengers. “Sorry, sorry!” I mumbled as I pushed by them as delicately as I could, trying for both speed and inconspicuousness.

  The next floor was so crowded that I could hardly step off the staircase. Further descent was impossible. “Line ends here, buddy,” someone said, and I realized that these people were all waiting to leave the ship by the gangway. I could never push through without starting a fight. I edged along the wall and took a second to consider my next move. Maybe I had lost Jimbo in the descent.

  I stopped and looked over the crowd. Conversation here was hushed, expressions resolute, postures tall and straight. My red cap and ridiculous T-shirt won a few friendly nods. Mine was the uniform of the lowest class in the Army, the infantry. Everyone knows the lowest class makes the greatest sacrifice.

  I heard a cry from the staircase above me. “Slow down, buddy! We’re all going to the same place.”

  I was trapped. All I could do was pick the best direction to run.

  And then I saw a face I knew.

  Chapter 21

  She was standing in the mouth of the hallway beside the elevator, amid the accumulating crowd. Her hair was up in a kind of brown bonfire on her head; a single orange lily nestled within it, defying the flames. Once again, an honor guard of young men surrounded her. I pulled off my red cap, in case James had seen it, sucked in my gut, and squeezed through the crowd. People squirmed to make way, knowing that one person’s retreat left them that much closer to their destination.

  I was finally at her side. Also several other people’s sides. “Shell.”

  She turned, and her pale face grew paler.

  “I need your help,” I said.

  One of her men tried to take her elbow. She shook him off.

  More angry voices were rising from the staircase. I hunched my shoulders and permitted a few big men to fill in the space behind me.

  “Could we go somewhere and talk?” I asked.

  She said, “They saw you.”

  Of course they had. And now I was not only surrounded but packed in among them. They would grab me, beat me, trample me. All the Chompians were one beast, and I was one victim. Shell’s men were staring at me. They had been called and would answer.

  “You look like shit,” she said. “Let’s go to my room. I’m sick of waiting here.”

  She lowered her head and slithered back through her posse and down the hallway. I bulled through the slot Shell had opened. I risked a glance behind. James, now at the bottom of the staircase, began to move through the crowd, his head swiveling back and forth, his arms held high, like a soldier protecting his rifle as he forded a river.

  * * *

  —

  We retreated to the emptier midship elevator bank and caught an elevator up. I was once again on Chomp’s deck. The hallway held only a smattering of older, better-dressed passengers, all moving for some reason toward the aft, not toward the stairs and elevator closest to the gangway.

  Shell’s suite was large, dark, and freezing and filled with the intermittent rumble of someone trying again and again to
start a lawnmower. She hit a switch; the recessed lights above dropped a dull yellow glow, revealing a fold-out sofa that was opened, made up, and turned down.

  “All ready for when I come home drunk,” she said.

  “What’s that noise?”

  “Dad. Whiskey makes him snuffly.” She nodded at a door that barely muffled the rumble. The suite wasn’t presidential, but that it was midship on Chomp’s deck and had a bedroom with a real door meant that it was one of the ship’s top fifty. Shell’s parents made the kind of money Chomp cut taxes for.

  Shell sat on the sofa bed. “My parents saw you. They said you were next to him when the terrorist started screaming. They said you stood up to take the bullet for him.”

  “The guy didn’t have a gun.”

  “You didn’t know that. What do you need?” She patted the sofa mattress and quickly yanked her hand back, as if shocked at her own impertinence. “You can clean up in the bathroom if you want.”

  I went to the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. A peninsula of blood had formed over my eye. My hair looked like something from a crack binger’s mugshot. I took off both my new Chomp T-shirt and my old stained shirt, crammed the smelly old one in the wastebasket, stashed the wastebasket in the under-sink compartment, and scrubbed my chest and armpits with a hand towel. I put the Chomp shirt back on, then I washed my face and rinsed out my mouth. I found the source of the blood, a cut mostly hidden by the hair on my temple, and dabbed at it with a wad of toilet paper. The wad kept coming back red, though there was less red every time. I finally mashed a larger clump of toilet paper onto the most painful part of the cut until it stuck, and put my hat back on to keep it in place. I wiped the watery pink stains off the sink with more clumps of toilet paper. Finally, I unlaced my black sneaker, removed it, pulled down my sock, and examined my foot. A pink-purple Easter egg bulged from my instep. I loosened the laces and put the shoe back on. I took a drink of water. I was better. I was all right.

  I left the bathroom and sat down beside Shell. “I have to get a message to my mother. She’s on the island. Can you help me?”

  “Sure.”

  “Thanks.” I felt a tickle at my temple. Another drip of blood? I lifted my hat and tried to swipe the blood off with my arm before she noticed.

  Her gasp was quiet, almost a coo. She lifted her hand tentatively. I bowed my head. Her fingers, gentle as they were, stung as they touched.

  “It’s a little one,” she said, “but it’s a bleeder. All those head wounds are. Poor thing. And you’re not even drunk. Are you?”

  “No.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “Not much.”

  “Hang on.” She stole away to the bathroom.

  I listened for voices outside, but her dad’s racket drowned everything out. Jimbo would have to pound on every door in the VIP hallway to find me. Pissing off sleeping VIPs is always dangerous. But maybe he’d do it, risk everything, risk his whole career, to take revenge on me. Chomp would approve. He believed in revenge.

  Shell returned with a first-aid kit in one hand and a glass of water in the other. She sat next to me, close this time, and set the kit down on the floor. I bent my head. Her quick fingers set to easing apart strands of blood-clumped hair to expose the cut.

  “You’ve done this before.” My gratitude was both genuine and strategic. A little praise would encourage the nurse to take extra care. My head seemed to take each new sting as a separate insult. My adrenaline had been used up.

  “Lots of times.” She dipped a cloth in the water and started to blot at my wound, much more forthrightly than I had. “The ex was a drinker. Guys who wrestled in college are the worst. They remember how quick and strong they used to be, and forget how fat they are now. Especially when they’re drunk. He’d pick fights in bars. His friends would bring him home for me to clean up. I didn’t mind. He was a lamb those nights.”

  Like any good nurse, she used chitchat to soothe and distract her patient.

  “You told me he did something with a dictionary,” I said. “What did he do?”

  “Hit me with it, duh. I know, who has a dictionary these days? My dad sent it over when we were married. With a little stand to read it on. He said every family should have one. I just thought it looked classy. It was right there for Mr. Jackass the night he wanted to chuck something at me. He wasn’t a bad guy. Worked for my dad for three years, and God knows that’s not easy. But people change. Okay, I never change, but most people do. My ex, how he changed was he started to hate me.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Sorry.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “Have you ever been hated?”

  “Sure.” I saw all the people who had ever hated me, passing by me one by one, as in the dream of some Shakespearean villain. Not such a long line, but every face in it was unforgettable.

  “I hope it wasn’t someone you were married to. The ex tried to hide it at first. He’d look away when he saw me. When I asked him a question, he’d answer, but just with one word. How was your day? Good. Want to fool around? Okay. That’s when he was sober. When he was drunk, I’d get two words—Shut up. At night I tried to be extra sweet so we’d go to bed happy, like you’re supposed to. I’d cook him his favorite. I’d act like he blew my mind after we screwed. But then one night I was so sweet I almost made myself puke, and the next morning I woke up and guess what? He was lying there giving me the stink-eye. Six in the morning and he was already worked up to hate me. How do you fix that?”

  “I’m sorry, Shell. I’m glad you got away.” As my mother had. My poor father, to be lumped with Shell’s ex-husband. But misery is misery, however well intentioned its administrator.

  “Thanks to Chomp.” She picked through the bandages in her kit. “That’s when I got hooked. I never did anything political in my life, but I loved his attitude. I saw him in Sterling Heights early in the primary campaign, when he was one out of eighteen. They had him booked in the high school gym! It was so packed he had to go out to the football field. That next day I called his state campaign office to volunteer. I worked the phones every weekend for months. But what I loved was the rallies. I drove to Toledo, Akron, and South Bend. I started driving farther, even overnight. My dad put up cash for hotels. He always has money for a good cause. Sometimes he even came along. The butthead wanted to come too, but then it was no fun, so I started going only on days he had to work. Then one morning when I got back from an overnight, he was home. That was something new. And he was already drunk. Before I could even take off my shoes, he was calling me a whore. I told him he was right, I was fucking someone new at every rally, that’s why I went to so many. That’s when he grabbed the dictionary. Slung it at me with two hands. Only time we ever used it. The corner caught me just over my eye. Bled worse than you were bleeding. He didn’t even say sorry. Just got down on his hands and knees, that pussy, to wipe up the blood. So no one would see it. That’s when I knew I had to leave. So I did. There now.”

  She sat back. I carefully pressed my new bandage.

  “There now,” she said again, with added satisfaction. “Some girls hate fights. I say, bring on the violence. I wished he had hit me earlier. I wished I had hit him first so he would’ve hit me back. Look, you see the line on my eyebrow where the hair won’t grow? Have to look close, but it’s there. I love that scar better than any diamond. See it now?”

  “Sure. It’s shaped like a smile.”

  “Hey, it’s not that big. So. I took you home, fixed you up. You owe me the story.”

  “What story?”

  “The fight. What was it all about? Some hottie at the martini bar? I hope she was worth it.”

  “It wasn’t a bar fight.”

  “Good.” She took a breath, like the one you take before leaping off the springboard. “Was it for Chomp? You were at his table. You know what really ha
ppened. I don’t believe what they’re telling us. I don’t believe he’s safe. Are you security?”

  “Shell—”

  “I saw what you did this morning. You rescued that old guy from a protester—the same protester who attacked Chomp tonight. You were following him, weren’t you? Are you undercover? It’s cool if you can’t tell me. I guessed it back at the dance party when you were talking all that bullshit. Don’t worry, I’ve kept it secret.”

  “I’m not security. I don’t work for Chomp. I’ll tell you who beat me up—Chomp’s men.” Well, Chomp’s man, but that sounded less impressive.

  She didn’t even flinch. “Why?”

  “Because I pissed them off. They’re mean-spirited and cruel, just like Chomp, and more brutal, because no one’s watching them. They’re doing their job the way Chomp likes it. I hate them, and I hate Chomp.”

  She had thrown me a perfect cover story, which was also a perfect excuse to win her sympathy and her assistance, and I had knocked it back in her face. I had as little self-control as Chomp, and even less strategy. Why couldn’t I lie for my cause? Chomp did, and his people loved him for it. Unlike him, I was determined to lose.

  “I’m afraid for my mother,” I said, as a kind of explanation for my madness. “She’s with Chomp now. His men hate her too.”

  She stroked my wrist with a finger. Even that gentle touch stirred up some of the old pain from Jimbo’s hammerlock. Shell and Jimbo were fighting for the same team. Her father’s donations helped pay the brute’s salary.

  She grasped my hand. Was she going to kiss my fingers? Apologize wistfully and then call security on me? She turned my hand over, palm down, and examined my knuckles. “Looks like you didn’t fight back.”

  “I didn’t have a chance.”

  “What did you say to those guys? Sometimes you have to back down. Think of how itchy they are. Some terrorist killed a passenger and tried to kill their boss. It’s 9/11 to them. It’s 9/11 to all of us. We’re at war. And you—you’re a soldier too. You were fighting for us outside the terminal. You were there when the terrorist pulled his gun—”