If Men Were Angels

by Reed Karaim

  Myra looked at me and smiled. “It’s amazing, isn’t it? Remember following Crane around in the snow in New Hampshire?”

  “Who would have thought it?”

  “He’s not there yet,” Craig said. “The president’s started hammering him out west. I guess the ads are hard.”

  The biplane banked overhead and sunlight glittered on the edge of a wing. The sound was like a lazy mosquito on a hot summer afternoon. Randall’s cameraman walked by chewing on a roll the size of a brick, the smell of cinnamon floating above the odors of asphalt and aviation fuel.

  “He’s not there yet,” Myra said. “But sometimes it feels like it.”

  A thin crowd pressed up against the wire fence at the edge of the tarmac. A single sign waved in back: CRANE in red letters on a field of white.

  “See someone you know?” Myra asked.

  The faces were visible through the interlaced diamonds of the fence. I know you all, I thought. I know who you are and what you want.

  “No . . .”

  “Come on, who’s your buddy?”

  “I was just remembering something Duprey said to me once, something about the mysteries of public affection.”

  She blinked. “He said that?”

  “I believe he did.”

  “There’s no mystery,” Craig said. “There’s greed, there’s self-interest and there’s revenge, fucking the other guy. That’s always big. And at the bottom of it all, there’s fear. People do everything they do because they’re afraid, or because they want to stop being afraid.”

  “Christ, Randall,” Myra said. “It’s eight-thirty in the morning.”

  “I think there’s more than that,” I said. “I think this campaign’s about something more.”

  He snorted. “This campaign. This campaign has had a sweet run, but it’ll turn out like all the others. You saw Dan Balz’s story in the Post.”

  Balz had written the day before about a split within Crane’s campaign. There were those, led by his chief pollster, Susan Douglas, who thought it was essential that he narrow his message. Robin’s name had come up as one of those opposed to the idea.

  “They’ll be polling on the color of his ties by the end,” Craig said, “or what kind of shoes he should wear.”

  Craig’s producer waved at him frantically from the edge of the runway, a cell phone held a foot from her ear. He strolled over to join her. Myra watched him leave.

  “Never vote for a wingtip man,” she said.

  “Oxfords?”

  “Okay. Dependable.”

  “Slip-ons?”

  “Depends. Tassels?”

  “Sure.”

  “Give the country away.”

  “To who?”

  “Tassels? Anyone! Commies. Welfare mothers.” She hunched her shoulders and whispered, “The French!”

  The crowd behind the fence stirred, unfurling a homemade banner: “Georgians for Crane!” They held it across their chests, pressing against the fence, the words chopped into pixels of color, broken fragments of their smiles trapped in silver above the cloth.

  “I woke up a couple of days ago on the bus,” Myra said, “and I didn’t know where I was. We were heading into some city and I thought for a moment I was back in Chicago, riding the bus home. Then I saw this woman standing on her lawn with this dog, a terrier, that she’d dressed up in red, white and blue with an Uncle Sam top hat stuck between the poor dog’s ears. And I thought, no, I’m on the road with Thomas Crane.” She swept her eyes across the crowd, the tarmac, everything. “You see my point?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Randall doesn’t know what he’s talking about. None of us do. This country: go figure.”

  Myra peered into the bottom of her bag with disgust.

  “I better clean this out or I’ll be chased by every dog from here to Canada.”

  She crossed the tarmac with a jaunty, elfin stride, wearing stockings with miniature cartoon tongues running in a neat line down the back of her legs. This country, I thought. This country, indeed.

  I heard the people by the fence stirring and looked up to see Crane’s limousine rolling through the gate. I stepped out of range of the jet engines and dialed the bureau on my phone.

  “The prodigal reporter checks in,” my editor said dryly.

  “It’s been crazy.”

  “Kelly wants to talk to you.”

  “We’re boarding here. I’ll call her later.”

  “Don’t let it wait.”

  “Right.”

  “Do you have anything daily?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll call you when I see what the schedule looks like.”

  The limousine door opened. Crane and then Robin stepped blinking into the sunlight. I watched her pull her hair out of her eyes and lean forward to speak into his ear.

  “Talk to Kelly, Cliff.”

  “Right. I’ve got to go.”

  Crane was at the fence, reaching through the wire to touch fingers stretched toward his. Robin stood by the limousine watching him, the morning sun diaphanous in her dress, one hand still frozen in her hair. Her bare arm was the color of wheat when it catches fire in the high summer light. When Crane smiled, she smiled, when he frowned, you saw it reflected like a faint cloud shadow in her wide blue eyes.

  We flew to four rallies that day, floating from small sunbaked airport to small sunbaked airport. We made four stops, and I didn’t make a call from any of them. Starke fought his way through the crowded aisle of the plane as we rumbled into the air one final time to tell me there had been a message for me in the press room at the last rally. “Kelly someone. She says to call as soon as possible.” I thanked him and when the giddy, exhausted chatter had fallen off and reporters had returned to their seats, most of them sleeping to the reassuring roar of the engines, I saw Robin standing in the galley, a glass of wine in her hand. She waited until she was sure I saw her, and then she slid back into the front cabin.

  Hours later, when I got to my hotel room, the red message light was blinking on the phone. I listened to Kelly’s whispered, nervous voice imploring me to call, hung up and watched the light go out. I sat in the chair beside the bed and thought about the things I should be doing and watched a sliver of light along my door, which I had left carefully ajar, and heard footsteps down the hall and saw Robin’s thin, unwavering shadow fall across the doorway. And only when I heard the hiss of my door sliding across the green hotel carpet did I feel a sudden, scalding sense of shame.

  V.

  WE FLEW into Washington early the next afternoon. The day was bright and hot. Tourists swept across Independence Avenue at every intersection like dazed tropical fish suddenly pulled blinking and gasping into the air. The federal buildings were a washed-out imperial white against a lifeless sky, and the city shimmered distant and remote on the last day of August.

  We rode up Capitol Hill into the shade of the historic, officially labeled trees, and the police waved us into the east parking lot where John Starke waited in the middle of the pavement like a pale Brooks Brothers mannequin. “You’ll be pleased to know the first debate has finally been scheduled,” he said. “Senator Crane and the president will meet at the Ford Auditorium in Detroit next Wednesday.”

  The debates had been floating on the horizon since the Republican convention, the last known obstacle on the trail, the one we knew could still wreck the journey, and there was a moment of silence while we collected our thoughts.

  “The format?” someone asked.

  Starke looked at the piece of paper clenched in his hand. “The format will be an hour and a half, the first hour a question-and-answer period with three members of the press. In the last half-hour, there will be a direct exchange, with each candidate addressing the other twice on a topic of his choice and then the other candidate being given the same amount of time to respond . . . two and a half minutes each. Then five-minute closing statements.”

  “The panel?”

  “It will be jointly announced lat
er.”

  “Why not now?”

  “It will be jointly announced later.”

  “Why?”

  “We’re notifying the members.”

  The press scrum had gathered around Starke, those trapped in the back jumping up and down, holding their recorders above their heads. The boom mikes swung down from above and it looked as if he were trapped under a nervous spider. There was the usual babble of questions until Randall Craig’s voice cut through the others.

  “The president’s staffers have said that they were demanding the direct exchange. They thought it was their best chance to illustrate the president’s greater experience in both world and domestic affairs. Is it true you fought the direct exchange?”

  “Not at all. The senator looks forward to the chance to meet the president on an equal footing.”

  “Are you worried about your candidate’s relative lack of experience?”

  Starke’s mouth pursed and his eyes grew waxen. “Senator Crane has fourteen years of experience in national politics . . .” he began in a monotone that droned on until I drifted loose. Anything else that came up would be in the pool report, and there was something in the eager circle that filled me with dread.

  Nathan Zimmer was bouncing on his toes a few feet away, swinging his arms so the back of his blazer billowed out like a lady’s bustle. He saw me and his face broke into a wide grin. “We’ll find out,” he said. “We will find out.”

  After that, the press conference with the Democratic leadership was anticlimactic. We waited outside the caucus room until Crane and a group of middle-aged men in dark suits appeared. They solemnly announced that they had all pledged to pass Crane’s economic revival package immediately once he was elected. I heard Stuart snort and someone laugh and there were a few shouted questions about the debate, which Crane ignored, and then we were free for the rest of the day.

  I caught a cab and, as it plowed up Constitution toward the National Press Building, I thought about my apartment, old magazines on the coffee table, a single dried plate by the kitchen sink, the dust of eight months everywhere. I would be staying there tonight and I pictured myself inspecting my own belongings like an amnesiac searching for clues to his past.

  The cabby saw me staring at the colonnade of the Canadian Embassy.

  “You visiting Washington?”

  “No. I’ve just been away for a while.”

  “Vacation? You go someplace cool?”

  “No. . . I’m a reporter. I travel with Thomas Crane.”

  In the mirror I saw him purse his lips and shrug.

  “I had George Will in here last night. He had dinner at the White House.”

  I was home. I looked out the window and wondered what Robin was doing.

  Once, the old-timers said, the Cannon Newspapers Bureau on the ninth floor of the National Press Building had the atmosphere of a genuine city room, clattering wire machines, battered metal desks, black telephones heavy enough to use as murder weapons. But that had been before newspaper companies had metastasized into media conglomerates, corporate soulmates to insurance companies in their unceasing devotion to avoiding risk. The bureau I knew, with its burgundy carpet, indirect lighting, broad expanses of laminated mahogany and dashboard gray plastic, could have been an underwriters’ office.

  “The conquering hero.” The receptionist handed me a sheaf of pink message slips without looking up from People. “I’ve been telling people you’re dead for the last week.”

  Ellen sat in her usual spot at the far corner of the copy desk. She was wearing a sweatshirt and jeans, a vestige of her beach-jock past, and yet her skin had the pale, dried-out hue of someone who has not seen enough natural light. I told her the press conference was worth maybe six inches and asked if she had gotten my message about the debate. She pushed her chair back and rubbed her eyes.

  “They made the same announcement at the White House. Thomma’s going to handle it. I need to talk to you.”

  She stood and walked into one of the glassed-in offices along the wall. After I followed her through the door, she closed it. Long ago, we had come to know each other in that intimate, professional way that moves past courtesy to candor. When she faced me, her expression had room, if warranted, for sympathy, but none for sentiment.

  “What the hell is going on?” she said.

  I sat down.

  “It’s been busy. It’s been hard to keep in touch.”

  “You have a cell phone, Cliff. They work anywhere. You’ve blown Kelly off for two days.”

  I watched the receptionist stroll past in slow motion, eyes rolling sideways to steal a glance through the wall.

  “I’m sorry. I just got . . . distracted. Where is she?”

  “I sent her out.”

  The way she said it made me look at her. “Where?”

  “I sent her to interview Roger Bushmill.”

  “He doesn’t speak to the press.”

  “He’s going to be in Iowa appearing before the state legislature. He’s trying to build some sort of plant there and he wants a tax break. She’s going to catch him afterward.”

  “I know people in Iowa,” I said.

  “I know you do.”

  “Can I still reach her?”

  “Maybe at the hotel tonight.”

  I know there are worse things than failing to do your job, but it has always been my private vanity. I couldn’t think of anything to say.

  “How’s the campaign going?” Ellen asked.

  “What?”

  “How’s the campaign going? How’s it look from here on in?”

  “. . . Good. I mean, anything can happen, particularly with the debate coming up, but it looks good. You’ve seen the numbers.”

  “Crane looks good?”

  “Yeah. He’s getting great crowds . . . You are reading my stories?”

  “I read every word you write,” she said gently. “They’ve been fine stories.”

  “I am reassured.”

  “How do you feel about him? Crane. Do you think he’ll make a good president?”

  I looked at the desk behind her, a pile of newspaper clippings, a Webster’s collegiate dictionary, a stained coffee cup. I knew I was to blame for this question. I was to blame and that made it much worse.

  “I haven’t gone native, Ellen,” I said.

  She sat down and I saw she was trying to be kind. I wasn’t the only one with something at stake here. In her own way she had bet on me from the beginning.

  “Cliff, maybe you need a week or two back here. Just a shift in focus.”

  “Don’t take me off the road. Not right before the debate.”

  She looked over my shoulder uncertainly.

  “Have you called the people in Berthold to find out what was going on between Crane and Bushmill back then?”

  “I’m calling this evening.”

  “It might be better if you went out there.”

  “I’m not sure it’s worth it.”

  “Explain that to me.”

  “I’ve thought about this a lot. Listen. What crime do we have here? What evidence that Crane has broken a law, betrayed the public trust, done something unethical? We have a little piece of his life that doesn’t make sense. We have a few half-assed allegations from a former aide. We have early help from a friend. Okay, that friend is wealthy, an important constituent. But if a close connection to a wealthy constituent is a crime, then we better lock up Congress.”

  She stared through the wall at the office.

  “How long have we worked together?”

  “Three. No, almost four years.”

  “There are forty reporters in this bureau. There are reporters who write better than you do. There are reporters who are better at going through records—like Kelly. There are reporters who have more talent at finding an angle. There are reporters with a lot more swagger.” She smiled wearily. “But you’re on the road with the man who’s probably going to be the next president. You know why? Because there was
nobody who worked harder than you did. I fought for you to get this chance, Cliff. I said we had nobody who was more honest in their basic approach to our business, nobody else who always made the extra phone call, always checked the last possible source.”

  Ellen slid her chair closer.

  “Maybe it all adds up to nothing. Maybe we’ll wake up tomorrow and it’ll be on the front page of the Times. But we still have questions. You know that as well as I do. I don’t understand what’s going on here.”

  I could see the watercooler through the wall. Two reporters lingered, pretending not to watch us. My back was to the newsroom, but I could feel its weight, figures slumped over keyboards in airless cubicles, fingers moving like nervous crabs as they struggled to tap-dance life into the latest GAO study, the latest hearing of the subcommittee on interior appropriations, the congressman’s latest fatuous statement on whatever. Picking through the shit for seeds, I once heard an old editor call it. This was where I had been for three years. I didn’t want to go back.

  “I’m just trying to be fair.”

  She opened the door.

  “We’ll be fair when we know what we’re being fair about.”

  I went back to my desk and wrote six inches on the press conference. I finished in twenty minutes and tried to reach Kelly at her hotel. She was gone and I left a message telling her I’d be home tonight. The call made me feel like a fool. I thumbed through message slips while other reporters stopped by to offer the greetings attendant upon the returned warrior. If I was in trouble, it was between Ellen and Kelly and myself, and for that I knew I should be grateful.

  By seven-thirty the bureau was almost deserted. I dialed Bill Crane’s number in Berthold.

  “This is Bill Crane,” his recorded voice said. “He’s a great brother, I think he’s going to win, and I think he’s going to be a great president. Good-bye and God Bless the Democratic Party.”

  I hung up and listened to the horns on Fourteenth Street for a while. I felt stale and dull, like an old man who has stared out his window at the same landscape for so many years it has ceased to have any meaning.