“Very well, Mr. Barron,” Morris said, seeming to swallow enormous distaste according to some prearranged plan. “I’ll come right to the point. How would you like to be President of the United States?”
Barron froze around a smart-ass wisecrack reply that wouldn’t take form behind his eyes, froze in déjà vu Berkeley attic other girl seated on other floor big eyes honey-blonde hair digging him watching Luke Greene, Woody Kaplan, Markowitz, the girl with the pigtail, dark roomful of other eyes glowing, looking at him——birthplace of the Social Justice Coalition now controlled two Southern states, twenty-eight Congressmen, pivotal must-buy force in New York, every Southern state, Illinois, California. Full circle from Baby Bolshevik messiah dreaming of power in Berkeley attic Sara worshipfully staring to leader of screwball third party to Jack Barron plugged into electronic-circuitry-hundred-million-Americans to listening to pathetic relic gibber impossible desperation-dreams of returning expiring (now kook third party itself) G.O.P. to power.
“Do I get to choose Luke Greene for my running mate?” Barron shot back a matching improbability.
“Conceivably,” said Morris. Barron’s turn to be jarred again at incomprehensible answer; the S.J.C. and the Republicans were at opposite extremes of everything except for a mutual loathing for the monolithic center-dominating Democratic one-party government Party. Morris must really be around the bend, or…what?
Barron clocked Carrie, now totally absorbed in the dialogue he saw she saw as jockeying between two men of power, not private, for-her-benefit-only performance of Bug Jack Barron—at last a scene to swallow up network programming in that head of hers, blow secretary-network-watchdog cool. At least Carrie’s buying Morris’ load of bull, hook, line, and sinker.
“Okay, Morris,” said Barron, “so you’ve got a pitch to make; go ahead and make it.”
“It’s simple, Barron,” Morris said. (Barron could sense him shifting into set-spiel pattern.) “The Republican Party has elected only two Presidents since Roosevelt, and we’ve got to win next year to continue to be taken seriously. And we can’t afford to be choosy as to how. The only way we can conceivably win the election is as part of a coalition with the S.J.C. behind a common presidential candidate and on an overriding common issue.
“The only common ground we have with the Social Justice Coalition is opposition to the Freezer Utility Bill. They want public Freezing and we want competitive private Freezing. But we can both agree on opposing the Democratic position, which amounts to the Foundation position. The only man we can nominate who could also get the S.J.C. nomination is you. You’re a founder of the S.J.C., you’ve just knifed Benedict Howards, you’re a close friend of Luke Greene, and you’ve got Bug Jack Barron.
“A hundred million people will see you every week from now till Election Day. We can do with you what we did with Reagan, and do it in spades, using the program, and by the time you’re nominated you’ll already have a bigger following than any possible Democratic candidate. I’m dead serious, Barron. Play our game, and we’ll make you President of the United States.”
President of the United States. The words made weird acid music (“Hail to the Chief,” with electric guitar beat, natch) even coming from a pathetic lunatic. Barron was vastly amused at the reflex-response in his own gut, recalling aural memories of the Inauguration of J.F.K., more amused pleased at pole-axed Carrie Donaldson staring at him, eyes as bright with little-girl wonder as Sara’s had ever been in Berkeley days. Didn’t know you were balling the next President of the United States, eh, baby? Jesus H. Christ on a Harley-Davidson!
Barron leaned back accidentally on purpose, kicked the vidphone, tilting it sideways and up, giving Morris a nice shot of Carrie’s boobs, fumbled it enough, smiling, to show Morris he was speaking to totally bare-ass Jack Barron, watched Morris blanch.
“Come on man,” Barron said, scratching his balls ostentatiously, “even the next President’s gotta get laid once in a while.” (Let’s just see how much crap this stuff-shirt fruitcake will really take.)
“Well,” Morris said through miser-purse drawstring-lips, “what do you say, Barron?”
“What do I say?” exclaimed Jack Barron. “I say you’re out of your fucking mind, is all. For openers…openers? This is all so loopy there ain’t no openers, gotta hand it to you, you’re a nut, but at least you’re a nut with style. First of all, I loathe everything you stand for. The Republican Party these days is nothing but a collection of Little Old Ladies from Pasadena, Wallacite screwballs and paranoid fat-cat misers whose idea of a good President is someone about ten light-years to the right of Adolph Hitler. You couldn’t win a Presidential election with Jesus Christ and John Fitzgerald Kennedy on the ticket. Why don’t you crawl back under your wet rock where you belong? Way I see it, a Republican label is a dose of political tertiary syphilis. Do you get the impression I don’t care for your Party, Governor Morris?”
“I didn’t think you were all that naive, Barron,” said Morris, and now Barron saw the naked, ugly, raw, no-bullshit nitty-gritty in his face, in his voice, remembered that fluke or not, this was the Governor of the largest state in the Union, that hopeless, kook, perpetual-loser party that it was, the G.O.P. still had great gobs of industrialist Madison Avenue Wall Street insurance company banking money behind it, and now Morris was reminding him of it with face, voice, bearing. “You think we don’t know exactly what you are, what you’ve been, and what you think of us? You really believe we’re all that stupid, Barron?”
“And you’re still trying to sell me the Republican nomination,” Barron said, sudden déjà vu of Morris’ face becoming Howards’ face, Morris’ deal becoming Howards’ deal, intimations of wheels within wheels within wheels of power meshing, clashing, one invisible Frankenstein Monster, with Howards and Morris but two visible aspects of the same unseen iceberg.
“Yes,” said Morris, “but not because we like your smell. I loathe you as much as you loathe me, but we both know that when you reach the upper levels of power there are times when you’ve got to set all that aside for strategic reasons. You’re a marketable commodity, Barron, like a nice ripe Limburger, an image behind which we can unite with the S.J.C. to win the Presidency, the only image that can create a Republican-S.J.C. fusion against the Democrats and Howards. Image, Barron, image is what counts—like Eisenhower or Reagan—not the man. We need your image, and Bug Jack Barron to sell it, and never mind what the real man behind the image is like. That doesn’t win elections. All the voters ever see is the image.”
For a hot moment Jack Barron forgot Carrie, wide-eyed, naked, power-adoring beside him; forgot economic sponsor-network squeezing-power of G.O.P., forgot Bug Jack Barron, was back in Berkeley Los Angeles red-hot Baby-Bolshevik Sara beside him close to the blood-innocent-fury days.
“And if I accept—and if I’m elected,” he said coldly, “think I’d really make a good little Republican President?”
“That’s our problem,” Morris said. “We both know you’re no politician, but neither was Eisenhower. You’ll have plenty of the right advisors, men of substance and experience to run the government for you. You won’t have to worry about—”
“I’m nobody’s whore, and don’t you forget it!” Barron shouted. “You don’t sell Jack Barron like soap, then toss him aside like a used condom when you’ve gotten what you came for. You can take your goddamn nomination and shove it up your ass! You’re right, I’m no politician, and if you want the reason, look in a mirror sometime if you’ve got a strong enough stomach. You’re lower than a Mexican bordertown pimp; you’d have to stand on top the Empire State Building to reach a cockroach’s balls. You and your kind are vermin, lice, clots in the bloodstream of humanity. You’re not fit to clean my toilet bowl. I’m an entertainer, not a whore. Value given for value received. You’re the last of the dinosaurs, Morris, and it’ll be a pleasure to watch you sink screaming into the tarpits where you belong.”
“Who the hell do you think you are?” Morris practically sna
ke-hissed. “You don’t talk to me like that, and get away with it! You play my game, or I’ll destroy you, lean on your sponsors, pressure the—”
Jack Barron laughed a harsh, false, tension-release laugh. Every schmuck in the country thinks he’s got more going than poor old Jack Barron, he thought. Howards, Morris—matched pair of cretins.
“You’re pathetic, you know that, Morris?” he said, “Know why? Because I’ve got this whole call on tape, that’s why. Your fat face and your big mouth, all ready to run on Bug Jack Barron any time I find you—shall we say, tiresome? You’ve taken your cock out in front of cameras, and I can play it back to a hundred million people any time I want to. You’re naked, Morris, bare-ass naked! I get a hint, or even just a vibration that you’re making waves in my direction, and, baby, I lower the boom. Go stick your tongue out at babies, Morris, you’re wasting your time trying to scare me.”
“Think it over,” Morris said, suddenly forcing himself back into a tone of sweet-pimp reason. “You’re letting the chance of a lifetime go—”
“Ah, fuck off!” Barron said, he broke the connection, shut off the recorder.
“Jack…” Carrie Donaldson sighed, throwing arms around his waist, wilting to her knees, lips sucking him in naked-lap wish-fulfillment fantasy Carrie blowing him, her mind blown network orders blown cool blown going down on boss-man mind-fucker, raped by simple Bug Jack Barron style vip putdown session. But now Barron saw it for the silly-ass goddamned inverted Sara-fantasy it was: Carrie-Sara turned on all the way by Bug Jack Barron scene, turned off the genuine article. Last thing I want now, he thought, pulling away from her, is to be blown by a wet-dream ghost.
“Later, baby,” he said, “that lox just turned me off.” And on impulse (Bug Jack Barron subliminal walk-that-line balancing-act impulse, he thought wryly even as he dialed) he dialed the unlisted home vidphone number of Lukas Greene.
Greene’s angular black face bleered at him on the vidphone screen over a coffee cup, the master bedroom of the Governor’s Mansion vaguely opulent in the background. “It’s you, eh, Claude,” Greene said, glancing at something off-camera. “Jack Barron—at this hour?”
“Come on, Lothar,” said Barron, “you know I’m a clean liver.”
“Percy,” Greene said, “I’ve seen cleaner livers smothered in onions in Harlem greasy-spoons. Speaking of which—where the hell’s my breakfast?” And almost immediately a white-clad Negro flitted briefly across the screen carrying a breakfast tray, set it down on the bed, and disappeared silently into the woodwork.
“Beauregard,” Barron said grinning, “gotta hand it to you Southern gentleman types. Really got them darkies trained right, don’t you?”
Greene nibbled a slice of bacon, dabbed at egg yolk with a roll, said: “You Commie nigger-loving Northern Liberal faggots is just jealous of Southern-style gracious living. We loves our darkies down here. We just loves ’em, and they loves us; any that don’t, why we just hang ’em from a sour-apple tree. Hey, why you bugging an important man like me at this hour, shade? It ain’t Wednesday night, and we’re not on the air—I hope.”
“Guess who I just got a call from?” Barron said, clocking how Carrie was even more zonked out at the nitty-gritty race-humor between shade Jack Barron and the black Governor of Mississippi.
“The ghost of Dylan? Teddy the Pretender?”
“Would you believe Daddy Warbucks?” said Jack Barron.
“Huh?”
“Greg Morris,” said Barron. “Amounts to the same thing, doesn’t it? Would you believe you’re talking to the next President of the United States?”
Greene took a long drink of coffee. “A little early for you to be stoned, isn’t it?” he said seriously.
“Straight poop, Kingfish,” Barron answered. “Morris offered me the Republican Presidential nomination.”
“Come on, man, stop putting me on, and come to the punchline already.”
“I’m not kidding,” said Barron, “it’s for real, Luke. The schmuck thinks I could get the S.J.C. to nominate me too, put together a fusion ticket, and we could all go out and zap the Pretender.”
“I still think you’re putting me on,” said Greene. “You, a Republican and the S.J.C. in bed with those Neanderthals? Either you’re putting me on, or the good Governor of California’s finally gone around the bend. How could the Republicans and the S.J.C. possibly get together on anything?”
“Morris seems to think opposition to the Freezer Bill’s a big enough common issue to brush everything else under the rug,” Barron said. “The fusion ticket doesn’t run on any common platform, way he sees it, just runs against Bennie Howards. Loopy, eh, Rastus?”
Barron felt a long loud silence as Greene sipped coffee, eyes becoming cold, hard, calculating, saw Carrie, still looking at him hungrily, shift her eyes to stare at the vidphone image of Luke, smelt flesh-wood of Carrie, image-wood of Luke burning. Doesn’t anyone have a sense of humor left but me?
“This is for real, isn’t it, Jack?” Lukas Greene at last said quietly.
“For chrissakes, Luke—”
“Hold on, Vladimir,” said Greene. “I’m getting a flash. You. Bug Jack Barron. Republican bread—and they are still flush. You know, it could work. It just might work. Bennie Howards as bogey-man, we wouldn’t really have to run you against Teddy. Yeah, we just ignore the Pretender, link the Democrats with the Foundation, and we’ve got your show to do it with. A Social Justice President…”
“Come on, man, what planet did you say you came from?” Barron said, the joke no longer funny. Crazy Luke thinks he’s back in Berkeley wet-dream power-fantasy delusion of grandeur. “You can’t be that dumb, Morris just wants to use the S.J.C. to elect a Republican President, and if he does, he’ll feed all you overgrown Baby Bolsheviks to the fishes. He just wants a fusion figurehead image to lurk behind, is all.”
“Sure,” agreed Greene, “but that figurehead is good old Jack Barron. Even Morris knows what a cop-out you are, so he thinks you’d be a tame flunky. But I know you better, Adolph. Comes nitty-gritty time, I think you’ll remember who you once were. I may be crazy, but I’d be willing to trust you that far. I think the National Council would too, after I got through working on their heads. You get that Republican nomination, and I can get you the S.J.C. nomination. Maybe I am talking to the next President. What did you tell Morris?”
“What do you think I told him?” Barron snapped. “I told him to go fuck himself. You gone around the bend too, Rastus?”
Greene frowned. “You and your big mouth,” he said. “Hmmm…Morris has got to know where you’re at for openers, so maybe you haven’t gone and blown it. You got that call on tape?” Greene smiled knowingly. “Sure you have, Claude, I know how your head works. How about blipping me the audio?”
“Forget it, Luke,” Barron said. “This is your line of evil, not mine, not anymore. I’m not selling out to Morris or to you either. I sell out to anyone it’s to—” Barron caught himself short; name he was about to say was Bennie Howards. Yeah, he thought, you sell out at all, risk blowing the show, you damn well do it for the big forever boodle and not a half-assed pipedream…Hey wait…All these silly-ass politicians can maybe give me an extra ace up my sleeve in a poker game with Howards. Why not?
“Come on man,” Greene cajoled, “humor me. Blip me the call. You got your jollies out of it, let me get mine. Nothing else, maybe we can use it against whoever the Republicans do come up with. That doesn’t hurt you, does it, oh, noble hero Jack Barron? Might even boost your ratings.”
“Since you’re twisting my arm, I’ll blip it to you on one condition,” said Barron. “Unless I give you the go-ahead—and I won’t—you keep it strictly private. Just between you and me, Okay?”
“Beggars can’t be choosy,” Greene said. “I’ll set my recorder for the blip.” He did something off camera. “Fire when ready, Gridley.”
Barron took the tape reel off his recorder, placed it on the input spool of the blipper built into his wa
ll complex, fed it into the blipper. “Ready at this end,” he said.
“Blip away,” said Lukas Greene.
Barron pressed the blip button; the blipper compressed the sound of the phone conversation into about ninety seconds of high-pitched chipmunk gabble over the vidphone circuit to Greene’s recorder in Mississippi, to be fed into a deblipping circuit, give Luke his Machiavellian eat-your-heart-out-baby jollies.
“Got it,” Greene said. “Unless you have any more Earth-shaking revelations, Claude, I think I better tend to the business of the state of Mississippi. Later.”
That hot to hear it, eh, Rastus? Barron thought. “I never deprive a maroon of his simple-minded pleasures. Later, Lothar,” he said, broke the connection.
“Jack…” Carrie snaked across the rug arms around his chest wide eyes visions of larger than life sugar-plums of power tickets to circles where it’s at, magic image-musk goddamned eyes why always those goddamned fever-coated eyes same eyes every bitch knows my name sees my dick, gets eyes like fucking vacuum cleaners suck-me-dry eyes for living-color latest Brackett Count hundred million Americans Jack Barron. Now you too, Carrie Donaldson, cool network-programmed secretary-robot with redhot cunt don’t buy bargain-basement Bug Jack Barron image-bullshit too close to home, but let schmuck Morris, crazy Luke whistle “Hail to the Chief,” and it’s welcome to the club, Carrie, baby.
Hey what’s with you man? Barron asked himself as Carrie Donaldson worried his lips with her moist, frantic tongue. Ten minutes ago you wanted action you’re getting right now—Carrie’s mind totally blown fucked out whited out overscrewed in all mental orifices—and you played it for this, is why you riffed with Morris in the first place. Well, isn’t it?
Bug Jack Barron Page 9
