Undertow

by Warren Adler

  The camera zoomed in, caught a tight shot of Don’s face, then the director punched off.

  We stood silently looking at the blank set.

  “It was stupendous,” I said. I meant that. Don’s words were charged with emotion.

  “I think he really believes it now,” Davis said.

  “What do you think the reaction will be?”

  “Demagoguery has great appeal. But lots of people will see through it.”

  “How could they?”

  “Now you’re suffering from megalomania by association.”

  He was a snotty bastard, that Davis. I walked back into the house. Don was surrounded by Max Schwartz and his friends.

  “Fantastic.”

  “Great.”

  “We’re with you.”

  It was, of course, the litany of sycophants.

  “Shall I run it back, Senator?” the director’s voice boomed over the speaker.

  “No. Not necessary. I’ve said it all. I don’t wish to see it.”

  He broke through the know of well-wishers and walked over to me. He was ecstatic, warm, and flushed.

  “What do you think, Lou?”

  “You and me, Don. We’ll tough it out.” We embraced. Tears welled in my eyes. God, I loved that man.

  “I was sitting there looking suddenly into that lens. It was just then that I finally made up my mind. I wanted to crawl into their heads and make them believe. Make them, Lou. You know what I mean.”

  “You’re damned right,” I said.

  “We’re going right to the top.”

  “You said it, baby.”

  Davis came back into the house. He had recovered his usual aplomb. Barnstable was a new man, revived, as if he had just had a transfusion of adrenalin.

  “Let’s get to work,” he shouted. “Get me to the telephone.”

  Karen, still in her chair, was glassy-eyed. Don’s mother was smiling and proud. She embraced her son. As they embraced, Don looked at Davis, who had already begun to take notes.

  “Well, Davis, what do you think?”

  “We have lots of work to do.”

  “Right.”

  “We’ve got to go to Marlena’s funeral in Philadelphia tomorrow.”

  “What an ordeal!” I said.

  “There is no escaping that one,” Davis said.

  “I guess not.”

  XXXVI

  It bugged Ernie, like an itch you couldn’t scratch, like a pinprick in some unspecified spot. It was like a kid who had just eaten the chocolate, with the brown liquid stickiness still at the edges of his lips.

  “Did you eat the chocolate, kid?”

  “No.”

  “But I see some of it still on your lips.”

  “There’s nothing there.”

  “You just licked it off.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “But I saw it.”

  “You’re mistaken.”

  Ernie shook his head. How do you unravel that? He was annoyed with himself. Is it important to know or even believe that Senator James did indeed sleep with that girl? Who gives a flying fuck about that? And the delay in reporting the drowning. An intelligent person could accept an honest explanation. There was apparently no violation of the law. It seemed such a simple equation.

  He tried to imagine himself in the senator’s shoes, tried even to assume the intensity of his ambition. The options were few. Admit the philandering. Don’t admit the philandering. In the absence of proof, why admit it? Because, you dummy, this is below the line of the acceptable national standard. You just don’t go around screwing strange women after you make the marriage contract. If you do and get caught, then you have abused the contract, have abused your word. You lied. You cheated, that’s why. And once you start cheating on your word, it becomes a never-ending maze, a coverup.

  Aha, but there is an acceptable standard of lying. You cheat on the marriage contract. You deny it. Sexuality is a strong drive. What harm is there in it? The contract is archaic. Cheating on a spouse has the precedent of history, from time immemorial. It has the authority of common usage. But what happens then to the moral question? You break your contract. You break your word. That is immoral. He remembered deciphering his college course in logic.

  He was lost in the tangle. The fact is that the American people, in politician’s terms, votes, don’t like to know that their presidents are sexual cheaters. They don’t want to see the photographs. Hell, the guy is human. Accept his frailties.

  As for the delay, after the first half-hour anyone would know the girl was gone. What was the point in waiting? Was he searching for the body so that he could bury it somewhere, burn it and sprinkle its ashes into the ocean. Why not? What harm would that do? After all, if you’re going to begin to suspend moral purity you might as well go all the way. No, the chances were that all that time was needed to put together the alibi. Of course, the longer you waited the more you needed an alibi.

  So what was he all exorcized about? What was annoying him? Perhaps it was the sense of betrayal. Senator James was the great white hope. He was going to lead us out of the clutches of the mad power centers, the big money, out of the web of greed and disillusionment that has gripped the American experience. He’s just a plain old weak-kneed, scared human being like the rest of us, and that was the story that ought to be written.

  But this television performance. It was an exercise in sophistry that made everything that went before pale beside it. It was fraud incarnate, a lie of gargantuan proportions, the work of a demigod. He felt almost physically ill as he watched the senator perform. And yet the tone was convincing, the words ringing with indignation. The man should have been a Shakespearean actor. Hell, he was a Shakespearean actor. What poise. What subtlety. What sense of nuance. His skill at his craft was awe-inspiring. He was dangerous.

  He had seen the reaction on Ellen. They had watched it in his apartment, sipping Scotch sours. The evening news had played the entire segment.

  “I think he’s fantastic,” Ellen said, after the breathless pause, that clutched in the throat, when the handsome image had faded.

  “You believed him?”

  “No, but I don’t think it matters.”

  “It doesn’t matter that he lied.”

  “They all lie.”

  “That doesn’t make it right.”

  “What would you want him to say?”

  “The truth.”

  “He was great. That’s all that matters. He stands for what’s right.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “I feel it.”

  “Feeling is thinking at the subconscious level.”

  “Ernie, why do you have to intellectualize everything.”

  “Damn it, Ellen, you can’t tell me what he stands for.”

  “Of course I can.” She thought a moment. “He stands for young people, us. He stands for really trying to make a better world.”

  “A liar stands for nothing.”

  She reached over with both hands and held his head.

  “You’re the most marvelously unspoiled man I ever met.” She kissed him deeply on the mouth.

  The truth is the truth is the truth. He had been down this street a thousand times in his mind and in the actions of his life. Unethical means do not make ethical ends. What could this man James do for this country?

  Perhaps—was he being trivial? Wasn’t this, after all, a little white lie, something to be winked at, passed over, like a harmless wart on the tip of one’s nose.

  Now he was rationalizing. It was a simple conclusion: the man was not fit to be the leader. What was the function of a president, anyhow? To inspire us. To expand our awareness. To lead us into ways that will make a better, stronger people, a more aware country. Instead, what was he? Just another bullshitter, covering up some petty meaningless peccadillo with an elaborate façade of platitudes and lies.

  He softened, started to reach out and pat her hair, then checked himself.

  �
�Ellen, I’m not putting you down. I just don’t understand how you can be indifferent. When I say ‘you,’ I mean the collective ‘you.’ I’ve actually been walking around in a fucking vacuum. Maybe it’s me? Am I so thickheaded as to believe that what this man has done is dangerous?”

  “Oh, shit, Ernie, they’re all like that. The president is worse. In fact, he’s the worst.” She sat up. “As a matter of fact, if you really pressed me, what does it matter at all to me? I’m Ellen Kay. I’m me and that’s all that counts, to know me, to be me, to understand who I am. And to give the good things in me to my fellow human beings.”

  “I must really be out of it, Ellen,” he said, sitting down beside her again. “Either that, or everybody around me is so damned narcissistic that nothing, absolutely nothing, is getting through.”

  “Why is it so important?”

  “Because of its effect on our lives. Believe me, Ellen, if you really comprehend it, it gets down to basics, right down to the nitty gritty of our own personal lives.”

  “That’s pretty obvious,” she said acidly.

  “I really feel that I’m talking into a cloud. It’s not you, Ellen. It’s Chalmers, filtering the truth through the Chronicle like he was some godlike censor. The subtlety of it is astonishing. And that pitiful black man, who sees it only through the lens of his grief. And Pierce, the Judas, who sees it through his jealousy. And Hershey, who sees it through his cynicism.”

  “And you, Ernie?”

  “Who sees it through my own anger. Damn it, Ellen, why can’t I be objective?”

  He watched Ellen now nestled in the crook of his armpit, leaning back, staring into space. It was incredible, the power of it. Even Ellen was not immune to their manipulation, a reasonably intelligent, self-aware person. He admitted to himself that it was a narrow frame of reference, but he could feel that there were millions out there like her, millions who could accept the DBJ con job.

  Releasing himself from her, he stood up, paced the cluttered room, with its piles of books on tables and floor. It looked like Stonehenge.

  “My God,” he said. “Why doesn’t it make you angry?”

  She was startled by the suddenness of the words.

  “Angry?”

  He wanted to make her understand that it was not a personal thing, but that proximity to him had simply made her a foil, a representative of so many out there.

  “I mean the man—him—” He pointed to the television set, “just got off the tube—he lied to us. He gave us a snow job. Christ, Ellen, he’s not selling soap. He is on his way to being the fucking president of the United States. He will hold in his hands the largest concentration of power over our lives. How can you not be angry?”

  He knew that all the pent-up frustrations of the last few days were bubbling upward like a volcano, and he also knew that it was his ferocity, not the meaning of his words, that was making an impression on her. She had curled up on the couch, with her limbs under her torso, as if for greater protection.

  “Its becoming an obsession,” she said. “I’m no punching bag.”

  He lay down beside her and held her close, kissed her, felt her stir beside him. She unzipped him, drew down his shorts, stroked him exquisitely. In turn, he rolled down her panties, moved them down over one leg, spread her wide and let her guide his prick into her deeply, feeling the warmth and softness of her body engulf him. He moved in slowly, feeling the ecstasy rise in them both as she responded. Then came the moment when all thought ceased and the cosmic mystery of the evolutionary force became urge, then need, then release, as the convulsion of their mutual orgasm washed joyously over them.

  “How does this fit in on the scale of your priorities,” she said deliberately, a bit too soon, before euphoria had come. She was clever, he thought appreciatively, but her words had only reinforced his view. He refused to intellectualize it, since he was neither confused nor dominated by his sexuality as she was by hers.

  Later, when he was alone, he pulled out his typewriter and jammed a piece of paper into the roller. It is a story that must be written, he argued. Like all journalists, he had been writing it all along, working it out in his mind, groping for objectivity, turning the facts over and over again. He stared at the blank paper. Could he make it subtle enough to pass through Chalmer’s critical appraisal? Should he pander to Chalmer’s prejudice. Wouldn’t that be engaging in the same detestable, manipulative practices the senator used? He could be straightforward and simple. “Senator James is a liar.” He could start it that way. Too raw. Too emphatic. He had to win them first before his accusation would have any credibility. Damn it, the lie itself was not the most important part of the story; it was only the linkage, the clue to the manipulative process. The essence of the snow job was in the method, the delay, the news control, the thought process that went into the planning, the speech, the nuances and subtleties, the shots of the sea splashing over the rocks, the equally craggy face of his mother, the brave show of his wife, the technical proficiency of his organization.

  Finally he began to write the story. Picking away at it on the typewriter, he knew that his objectivity faded with the same conscious movement as a dissolve on a movie screen. He knew that he could not be objective, that he was writing from the vantage point of his generation, of the standing target which had weathered another spray of shot and would not, could not, be upended.

  He wrote all night.

  XXXVII

  “I can’t publish this,” Chalmers said. “You’ve quartered the man and left his carcass hanging from the ceiling.”

  “The man is constructing a defense of half-truths. He’s manipulating us,” Ernie said. “You know it and I know it.”

  “I think you’re judging him too harshly,” Chalmers said. “Anyway, your position is not to be a judge. You’re a reporter.”

  “If he can get away with this, he’s potentially dangerous.”

  Chalmers sat back in this chair and looked out of the glass-walled office into the huge city room.

  “I think you’ve pushed it too hard, Rowell. This is a hatchet job.”

  “Mr. Chalmers, you can’t have it both ways. I know you favor the man’s basic politics, but what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”

  Was he stepping over the line? He was coming very close to insubordination. Chalmers paused, tamping down the hot coals of an explosive temper.

  “Ernie,” Chalmers began. He could tell that his editor—youngish, greying, with the trim Ivy League look, the Brooks Brother blue shirt and slant-striped tie—was mustering his considerable resources. Ernie knew he had reached him at last, had finally stripped off the veneer of calm objectivity that had been so carefully fabricated and used to propel him to his present position of power. He was annoyed at himself for having found him out, as if he had deliberately slashed the canvas of a superb painting.

  “It’s a great responsibility to run a newspaper like this.” Chalmers smiled, another proven tool of his persuasive arsenal. “We cannot be the repository of all wisdom. Certainly I cannot be. But I do know that we, our political institutions, the whole fabric of our freedom, are endangered by the man in the White House. There has got to be an alternative to him.”

  “And James is that alternative?”

  “I know this is difficult for you to understand.”

  “I don’t think so.” Ernie said. He wished he had not been so belligerent. Chalmers blanched, but let it pass.

  “James, himself, is not important,” Chalmers said. “But he is a polarizing influence, a genuine power force, able to bring together those who believe that social change in the context of justice is necessary now, before power is concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer people. I tell you that man in the White House is going to consolidate his power beyond anything we have ever seen. I have made him a lifelong study. He thrives on opportunism. He panders to all base prejudices.” Chalmers stood up and brought his hands together, fist in palm, angry. “That man has got to go.”

>   “But Senator James, Mr. Chalmers has just proven that he, too, cannot be trusted. I don’t see a particle of difference between him and the man in the White House.”

  “There is a difference, Ernie. Why can’t you see that?”

  Ernie knew what Chalmers was saying.

  “Mr. Chalmers, where there are no ethics, no honesty, there can never be good leadership. That’s all I’m saying. Senator James is not ethical. He’s a liar. He’s a cheat. His real expertise lies in manipulation.”

  “Of course it does, Ernie. That’s the point. He has the ability to get himself elected. Without that, he would be nothing. But in getting elected, he would have a constituency that would exercise a control, a point of view that would be healthy for our country. I think, I truly believe, that the man, the person, is less important than what he represents. In fact, that, in my opinion, is about the best we can ask for. I’m being pragmatic. Young people—”

  “Here it comes,” Ernie thought.

  “—young people don’t easily grasp that the first law is what’s do-able in the environment of contemporary events. Now, I’m not putting anyone down, certainly not the people of your fantastic generation. There is no such thing as a pure politician, and no matter what you say, there never will be one. And this story here,” he waved Ernie’s manuscript in front of his face, “implies that a politician must be as ethically pure as the driven snow. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”

  Ernie listened with the deep look of attention, but his mind was racing elsewhere.

  Chalmers had begun to work himself up. He appeared in need to rationalize his position, to explain to Ernie, almost to beseech him.

  “You see, Ernie, we’re dangerously close to repression. If the president wins the next election, he’ll have four years to subvert us. He’ll put his men everywhere. He’ll build an empire that will last far beyond his constitutional term. I see it coming. They’re all asleep out there. The only man who can crystallize the forces that can prevent such a takeover is Donald Benjamin James. Don’t you see, man, a paper like ours, which represents a similar point of view to the Senator’s, can destroy him politically. What does it matter if some rightwing conservative sheet prints a story like this? Who will believe it? In our paper, it will be taken as gospel. We cannot destroy this man.”