The Ex-President

by Jeff Soloway

  “I told you, he didn’t have a gun.”

  “That’s not what I heard.”

  “It’s a lie, Shell. There was never any terrorist. Chomp’s team just wanted publicity. Why do you trust these people? Their arguments are nonsense. They win elections only by humiliating their enemies. Why don’t you hate them like I do?” I felt that if I could win some small concession from her, then someday maybe some better debater could come along and convince her, convince the whole mass of Chompians, that they’d been misled. Every liberal’s fantasy. Mine was perhaps more vivid, since my debate opponent was still caressing my hand.

  “Easy,” she said. “It’s just like Chomp always says. I’m full of love.”

  I laughed involuntarily. She tugged on my hand, and I leaned forward—obediently but voluntarily—and kissed her. She returned my kiss so hard I had to brace myself against the bed to keep from toppling over.

  “The other side hates us more,” she said when we disengaged. “You saw them this morning. Thousands of them. Screaming at us, laughing at us, wishing we were dead. But you and me are different.”

  “I think you’re right.” I touched her cheek and her scar. “But I have to help my mother.”

  “Stay for a little while. She’s fine.”

  “Could you go take her a message? Her phone won’t work on the island.”

  “Why don’t you take the message yourself?”

  “I can’t get off the ship. I never got an invitation for the island party. I don’t even have my cruise ID. I’d never make it through that line anyway. Chomp’s guys are still looking for me. Could you help me, Shell?”

  “Sorry, Mr. Lazybutt. You’ll have to do it yourself.”

  I had pushed her as far as she could go. We could show off our scars, share our stories, make out all we wanted, but we were still adversaries. For her to aid me would be treason.

  “Okay, Shell. Thanks for the first aid. I’d better go.”

  “I like your T-shirt, but you should change if you’re a wanted man. I’ll lend you one of Dad’s. Take that off.”

  She fetched a T-shirt from a drawer. It bore the Yellowstone National Park insignia. “Our favorite trip,” she said. After I took off my shirt, she kissed me on the bare shoulder, but like you kiss your man after a hard day’s work, not like you kiss a cruise ship fling. Then she pulled the Yellowstone shirt down over my head. No lingering. She even popped a new hat and a pair of sunglasses on me.

  “Thanks, Shell. I’m ready.” Maybe I could find Chuckles before they caught me.

  “Me too. We’ll go together.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I can help get you off the ship. You’re afraid for your mom. I get it. But I’m telling you, she’s fine. I’ll prove it. We’ll go to the island and find her together.”

  “Thanks, Shell. Really. But I can’t leave, even in disguise. They’re checking IDs on the gangway—”

  “VIPs don’t take the gangway. I was just there hanging with my buds. There’s a better way.”

  Chapter 22

  We strolled arm in arm down the hallway, looking, I hoped, like any pair of young, newly romancing Chompians, our hookup exalted and intensified by shared political commitment. Shell carried her family’s VIP party invitation and, in addition to her own ID, her father’s.

  Out in the brighter light of the hallway, I looked down at my new Yellowstone shirt, faded and a little threadbare, as befit the souvenir of a favorite trip. I wondered if Shell’s family had ever been to St. Barts or even Bermuda, as I had; unlike me, they could have afforded them. My cosmopolitan travel-writer lifestyle had made me snobby without making me rich, the very combination Chompians hated most. I vowed never again to be scornful of them. I now knew how dangerous it was to laugh at a Chompian.

  VIPs were moving unhurriedly down the hallway as if they owned the place, which they did, in the same sense that stockholders own a company. They feared no hassle and no line. At the aft end of the hallway, past all the decreasingly stupendous suites, was an ordinary, unlabeled door, imposing in its simplicity. Beside it stood a guard in a CHOMP jacket. He nodded and spoke to everyone who opened the door. Most of them nodded back.

  I had my sunglasses, my new outfit, my new date, my borrowed VIP confidence. I’d never seen this guard. He’d never seen me. Where was Jimbo? He might still be searching the line at the gangway, or perhaps he was combing the ship’s public hotspots—poking his flashlight up the water-slide tube, upskirting buffet tablecloths, dredging the swimming pool. Or maybe he was back inside my room, working on his Sudoku, waiting for his men to find and return me.

  The guard nodded at the couple ahead of us. “Straight down, watch your step, careful in those heels, ma’am.”

  The female half was a stately woman with a statelier hairdo, topped by a bun that shone like polished chrome. For an instant I thought she was Mrs. Chachkey, but then she spoke: “Is it safe out there?” A younger voice. The bun was platinum blond, not gray.

  “Guaranteed, ma’am. The island’s been checked and cleared, just like the ship.”

  “Thank you for your service.”

  Then it was our turn. The guard’s face was flat and hard, like the surface of a mallet. One stroke would finish me. His eyes seemed to pause at my face, but Shell cried out, “Stay fresh, Frankie,” and gave him her fist. He maintained his deadpan as he bumped it. She waved flirtatiously as we passed, her hand drawing all his attention, and then we were through the doorway and on to the hidden staircase.

  “You know him?” I asked.

  “I know everyone on this floor.”

  Several floors down, we arrived at a fluorescent-lit loading zone, a place clearly meant for no passengers, or no ordinary passengers. The ship’s crew was hard at work preparing for the evening’s and the next day’s festivities. Workers dragged pallet jacks piled with shrink-wrapped mystery goods. Forklifts and golf carts zoomed past. We passenger-pedestrians kept to the breakdown lane on the side. Uniformed workers glanced at our linen shirts, cream-colored dresses, slacks, heels, and boat shoes and tried not to look annoyed.

  Up ahead, the carts, the workers, and the aristocracy were veering right. We followed them and turned too, and there it was: a massive rectangular hole in the iron skin of the ship. Through it we had a screen-shaped view of the lights of Chomp’s new island nation: a line of lampposts along the pier, their globes like a glowing string of pearls; the red flow of brake lights from golf carts speeding into the heart of the island; the flicker of moonlight gleaming off the myriad-faceted sea; the stars scattered generously over the palm trees on the horizon.

  But we were a long way from that vision. In front of us a line of passengers, mostly couples, led to a group of security guards. They seemed to be examining invitations and feeding ID cards into a computer. These would be ship’s security, not Chomp’s.

  “They’re checking,” I whispered.

  She patted my hand. “Everyone’s getting through.”

  And they were. But only because everyone, unlike me, was properly documented. I tried not to look at the guards. Some of the couples were whispering and pointing, marveling at the industrial energy around them. The weirdness of the scene testified to the trouble taken to accommodate them. Everyone knew the lines were a lot longer above, at the regular gangway, for the regular passengers. People will put up with any annoyance for the sake of exclusivity.

  The line was moving quickly.

  I whispered, “If I can’t get through—”

  “Strap on a sack, okay? We’re fine.”

  “But if I don’t, please try to talk to my mother. Chomp’s giving a speech at eleven, right? She’ll be in the audience. Tell her to get back to the ship and find the chief of security or one of the senior officers. And tell her to check her texts from me if she can.”

  “Is she still with Cho
mp? Do I just drop her name and we all hang out?”

  We were now close enough to hear the beeps of the card-scanning machine. There were only two couples ahead of us. I kept my eyes on floor. Leave eye contact to Shell. She could get us through.

  “Only you,” a guard said. “You’re okay. Her ID doesn’t match.”

  I looked up.

  The woman with the platinum bun turned, distressed, to her companion, who inflated himself to full height and volume. His bare forearms were speckled with the spots of age and outdoor recreation. I watched him carefully. I assumed he was about to launch a verbal bull-rush against the ship’s security guard, this South Asian giver of injustice. Could I mimic his obnoxious hauteur?

  Instead the man leaned forward and whispered. He reached into his pocket. The guard listened and nodded respectfully but refused to back down. He pointed to his machine, which had made the decision. Not him. Two other guards, who’d been standing watchfully behind the machine scanners, stepped forward.

  The passengers behind us grumped. We were so close to the island, the stars, and the beach; to be held up by an interloper was not just aggravating but insulting. Finally, the man took his date’s hand and led her back past us, gallantly refusing to abandon her, at least not in front of fellow VIPs. The woman held her head defiantly high. Now I noticed that her dress was bright red and flared in the back, an overturned candle whose flame licked at her calves. A younger date trying to sneak by, perhaps with his wife’s ID. A few Chompians, especially the women, shook their heads. She had tried to steal their status. All illegals are the same.

  The next couple stepped forward. Then us.

  “Sorry, Shell,” I whispered. “Just give my mother the message. She’ll leave and you can flirt with Chomp yourself.”

  She whispered back: “Is she in trouble like you are?”

  Shell was right to be fearful. I had no business endangering her. If she stayed out of trouble, she could be a duchess in the new country.

  “Next,” said the guard.

  “I’ll handle them.” A white-shirted officer stepped forward. It was Chuckles. I stepped ahead of Shell and handed him my invitation and my ID. I leaned close to him, as if I too was about to try negotiation or bribery.

  “They’re looking for you,” Chuckles said softly, as he inserted the card in the machine. The monitor displayed an image of Shell’s father. “So was I. Carmen ID’d your father.”

  “He’s not the killer,” I whispered. “But he saw the killers. He took a photo of Chomp’s bodyguards busting into Clark’s room. The one they call Jimbo killed him. He’s the one looking for me.”

  “Where’s your father? I tried his room. Chomp’s guys were there.”

  “He’s waiting for me at the library on the Mediterranean Deck. He has the photo. You have to get to him before Jimbo does.”

  Chuckles said nothing.

  I heard murmuring behind me. I was holding up the line. Shell prudently stood a few feet behind me. I wondered if she could hear us.

  “You know they’re lying,” I whispered. “They told me they killed that activist. Did you know that?”

  “I was afraid of it. Okay, smart guy, come with me. We’ll find your dad and check out his story.”

  “My mother’s out there. She told me to meet her. If I’m in trouble, so is she. Can you go and bring her back? I can’t contact her while she’s on the island, but I think I know where she is.”

  “With Chomp?”

  “I hope not.”

  “Only Chomp security and party staff are allowed to leave the ship. And passengers. They’ll stop me.”

  “Then let me get her. In the meantime, you can find my father and check out his photo.”

  The other guards were all staring at Chuckles. So were the passengers. Another illegal, so soon after the last. We should expose them all. Punish them. Frighten off the rest.

  Chuckles returned the ID to me. “Enjoy the party.”

  Chapter 23

  Outside, there were three lanes on the pier: a slow lane for plodding Chompians, in which VIPs and regular passengers were finally mingled; a middle lane for jogging workers; and an express lane for small vehicles. Golf cart drivers slowed only long enough for workers to leap onto the vehicle’s sides and cling to the roof supports, then they pulled away at their whiniest maximum. Those employees who missed their chance jogged on but kept glancing hopefully behind.

  Halfway down the pier, we heard a distant angry grind and looked up—a pair of colored lights were drifting down from the sky. A helicopter. And another far behind it.

  At the end of the pier, we were greeted by a concrete arch studded with irregularly blinking yellow lights, like the marquee of a retro movie theater. A wooden sign, newly affixed, read WELCOME TO CHOMP ISLAND. We passed under it and officially entered the world’s newest country. An old but spirited Chompian knelt and kissed the concrete. His comrades formed a work detail to haul him up. He resurfaced laughing and spitting, the knees of his chinos smudged with dust.

  We entered a paved plaza surrounded by thatched-roofed, faux-native kiosks and closed-up shops, designed to give passengers on normal cruises a chance to spend money immediately upon arrival. But these shops had been given a lightning overhaul. A new sign read MALL OF CHOMP. A smaller read COMING SOON: BULGARI, CARTIER, HARRY WINSTON, AND TIFFANY! So much for T-shirts or snorkel gear. But no new structures had gone up, only new signage.

  “Watch out, General!” Two men lugging what looked like a load of balsa wood wanted me out of their way. These workers hadn’t come from the ship; they were black and their dialect of Construction Worker English (heavy on the shout and grumble) had a Bahamian lilt. Chomp had hired locally.

  In the gaps between kiosks, paths radiated in all directions. Above one stood a painted sign festooned with glow sticks like radioactive green beans. It read BEACH AND CHOMP GALA. A different path, wider but lacking in signs and illumination, ran inland to a distant clearing where a clump of stumpy buildings blotted out the low-hanging stars. Perhaps a trailer park for resident workers. Would they too be citizens of Chomp’s nation? Perhaps they’d have guest visas.

  We followed everyone else to the beach. A line of tiki torches stretched across the sand, guiding the Chompian pilgrims toward a glowing white pavilion tent in the distance. Shell and I took off our shoes. The golf carts, now groaning under their heavy loads, stayed far to our right. To our left, closer to the water, a team of uniformed cruise staff was stuffing material into a rack full of upright black tubes. Pyrotechnicians. And there was Erica too, seated on the sand with the other Fun Patrollers. I had another friend besides Shell on the island. Two if you counted my mother. I hoped I could.

  Shell was several steps ahead of me. “Come on.”

  We passed by the older, fatter Chompians quickly and silently. Some had stopped to stare out at the sea, which was glittering not just from the moon’s one light but from the ship’s three zillion. A few sighed. Night and the sea always bring thoughts of death, and all of us, even Chompians, have to ponder it from time to time.

  Shell sighed too. “I feel like we’re walking on cotton balls.”

  I knew what she meant. The sand under our bare feet had the soft cake-flour feel of tropical beaches, so different from the beaches of my childhood. I thought of those walks with my mother on the beaches of Long Island and New Jersey, and looked ahead, past the tiki torches and the party tent, to a cluster of rocks far away where the water met the sand. There. She would be there.

  “Feel that breeze,” said Shell. “We’re walking in the clouds. We’re in Heaven. If I see my baby brother, I’m going to freak out. He’d be just eighteen. He’d be voting. Hope he wouldn’t be like you, tricked by the liberals! Coming here would straighten him out.”

  “Here to this island?”

  “No, dummy, here to Heaven. Where you get the
truth direct from God. You’ll see someday. Even fatheads like you will get the message.”

  I was a little touched; she assumed I was going to Heaven. Or maybe she thought we were already there. Everyone’s dream—to reach Heaven without being dead. The wealthy these days increasingly expected to achieve it. She took my hand as we walked.

  “Are you staying on the island?” I asked. “I know all about the plan.”

  “I knew they’d tell you! You see? You really are one of us.”

  “So, are you?”

  “Now that I’ve seen the place, I’ve got no doubts. I have to admit, I was afraid it’d be some kind of salt marsh off the ass end of Haiti. But this? It’s paradise. My dad prepaid three years. Some kind of risk, but the bold get lucky, right? You best believe they’ll jack up the prices. Imagine what our villas will look like. They’re gonna be so fantastic, believe me, the most tremendous villas in the history of villas!” She did a pretty good impersonation of the guy on Saturday Night Live’s impersonation of Chomp, which was ubiquitous enough to qualify as tribute, not satire.

  The foot Jimbo had stomped was getting sore from pushing through the sand.

  “But, Shell, there are no villas. Look around. There’s nothing. No hotel, no swimming pools, no coffee shop, no pharmacy, no infirmary. The lights in that tent up there run off gas generators. It’s not a salt marsh, but it’s not the first world either. Or even the second world.”

  “There’s stuff,” she said defensively. “You just can’t see everything from the beach. It’s probably on the other side of the island.”

  “There is no other side of the island. Have you looked at a map? It’s all jungle. All these cruise line islands are the same. This beach and that plaza are all there is, plus maybe a snorkel cove and a water-ski lagoon. Those buildings we saw are just trailers for a handful of resident workers. The rest commute by boat every day from nearby islands. If you stay here, you’re sleeping in a tent.”