Boomsday

by Christopher Buckley

  Ireland? Pointless. Appealing in a way, since his great-grandfather had come over and spent his life working in a coal yard in South Boston. You probably didn’t have to spend too much actual time in Ireland. But then the Irish press would hate you.

  He ran it by Lisa that night after some cosmic coitus. (She was working their way through the third edition of The Joy of Sex and had found a position called “la grande morte.”) Her only comment—about the ambassadorship—was, “I wouldn’t have to, like, learn a language or anything?”

  That would be one advantage to London or Dublin, Frank considered. Then he thought of all the paperwork. His fellow Owl Steve Metcalf had been nominated to be ambassador to some utterly pointless country in Africa and had spent $150,000 on lawyers filling out the four-hundred-page financial disclosure form—“Please list all stock and securities traded in the last 40 years”—only to be humiliated in front of some grandstanding senator who asked Steve what countries his country shared borders with. Uh . . .well, Senator, I’m certain that the embassy has people who, uh, stay on top of issues of that, uh, nature. A bit embarrassing, considering that the country was an island. Steve never quite recovered socially.

  Frank was in the process of mentally writing off an ambassadorship when his private phone rang. “This is the White House operator . . .”

  “Frank? Bucky Trumble!”

  They always managed to announce their names with a little trumpet blast, frank recognition of, and unbridled joy in, their own importance.

  “The president and I were just talking about you. He asked me to give you a call, in fact. . ..”

  Chapter 16

  Randy’s speech on the floor of the Senate had the predictable effect: It got him on the nation’s front pages and the evening news. The Times denounced him in unusually harsh personal terms. (“It appears that the junior senator from Massachusetts may have left more than one body part in the muddy fields of Bosnia.”)

  But it also got him invited on the late-night shows, which, studies now showed, provided over 80 percent of the nation’s youth with 100 percent of their political information. The idea of aging, self-indulgent Boomers killing themselves rather than becoming an oppressive financial burden to their children and the nation was not anathema to these young viewers. In fact, to them it sounded like a darn good idea. They especially liked the part where the government would eliminate all death taxes so Mom and Dad’s money could flow straight to them.

  Cass accompanied Randy to New York City for the Letterman and Jon Stewart and Colbert shows and to Los Angeles for the Jay Leno show. Randy might excite vituperation in older, more serious-minded TV hosts, but to them, he was a million-dollar gift certificate, proof of the existence of a bemused, smiling God. They loved him.

  Letterman asked, “Aren’t you the one committing suicide here?”

  Randy replied, “Maybe. But if I can convince a majority of the U.S. Senate to commit suicide along with me, this country would be a whole lot better off.” They loved everything about Randy: his funny accent, his wealth, the fact that his colleagues hated him, his screwball idea, even his fake leg, which he obligingly removed on the Jon Stewart program. “This is where I hide the tequila,” he said. Cass, looking on from the greenroom, smiled at the precision and deftness with which Randy was rendering the lines she had written for him. As media training went, this was as good as it got. She’d come a very long way from teaching disgraced hospital owners how to spin. Her CASSANDRA blog was getting so much traffic that she had had to hire a staff of five just to keep it fresh. A woman from IBM—the head of its entire corporate communications department—had called to say she wanted to have lunch with Cass at someplace in Manhattan named Michael’s to explore “possible strategic synergies.”

  Within a week of Randy’s TV blitz, the media was treating Voluntary Transitioning, if not with respect, with less reflexive derision. Adjectives such as “outrageous” and “despicable” and “unthinkable” that had been initially Velcroed to the phrase were now replaced by “bold” and “revolutionary” and “dire yet deserving of discussion.”

  An editorial in The Washington Post made the paradigm shift official: “Whatever else Senator Jepperson is up to, we’re beginning to suspect that his real intention all along was to force the issue of Social Security to the forefront of a Congress that has been in continual denial, even amid crisis and collapse, and that much, Mr. Jepperson has emphatically accomplished.”

  One night in New York during their media tour, Randy summoned Cass to his hotel room, ostensibly to go over the next day’s schedule. It was late, and she very well could have begged off, but she went. When she walked in, the lights were turned down low, Patsy Cline was singing “Three Cigarettes in an Ashtray” over Randy’s iPod speaker, and she saw the neck of a bottle of Dom Pérignon protruding from a frosted ice bucket in a way that seemed, well, suggestive.

  There was Randy, sitting on the edge of the bed, wearing an expensive silk kimono.

  “You wouldn’t make a one-legged man chase you round the room, would you?” He smiled.

  Cass had known something like this was going to happen. There had been a few signals. A few dinners, just the two of them, legs—his good one, that is—accidentally grazing against hers under the table. Her feelings for this peculiar man were complicated. But he made her laugh, and he was not dull. And he wasn’t bad-looking. And he was rich. And not married. And evidently running for president.

  A few days ago, she’d said to him, “Why do you want to be president?” He’d told her about the day of his acid epiphany in the lobby of the JFK Library.

  “You want to be president because of an acid trip you took?” she’d said.

  “It’s not such a bad reason, really. Have you ever taken acid?”

  “No,” Cass said. “My life is enough like an acid trip as it is. When you do announce, let’s leave out this epiphany, shall we?”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not sure the country is ready for a candidate who says he wants to be president because he swallowed a triple dose of LSD while staring at a photograph of John F. Kennedy. But I could be wrong.”

  “I think the country would welcome it.”

  “Well, we could find out. If you’re wrong, at least it will be over quickly. Like by noon the first day.”

  Randy considered. “You could be right. And that’s a pity. I think there’s a hunger out there for the truth. That’s why I think we’ve come so far with this nutty idea of yours. It’s so fresh.”

  “You do this pronoun shift. You may not even be aware of it. If it’s a ‘bold idea,’ it’s ‘ours.’ If it’s a ‘nutty idea,’ it’s ‘yours.’”

  “Grammar Nazi. Would it be enough to say I want to be president to . . .”

  “I’m listening.”

  Randy said, “I was about to say, ‘To give something back,’ but it sounds so pathetic. What it really boils down to is, I’d like to be in charge for just five minutes. Balance the books. Get us out of debt. Be nice to our friends, tell our enemies to fuck off. Clean up the air and water. Throw corporate crooks in the clink. Put the dignity back in government. Fix things. What else . . .? Can’t have Arabs blowing up our buildings, certainly, but I now know that we don’t need to be sending armies everywhere. Among other things, it’s expensive. . ..”

  “I’m sorry, were you talking? I went to sleep after ‘balance the books.’”

  “It’s not that bad. What do you want me to say? ‘Bind up the nation’s wounds, with charity toward all and malice toward none’?”

  “I think we need to work on it.”

  “Evidament.” Randy sighed.

  “No French.”

  “Quite right. Muchas gracias. Qué bonita es este burrito.”

  Now here they were in a hotel suite that was decorated for sex. She’d finally run out of reasons not to go to bed with him. She looked at him sitting on the bed and said, “It’s been a long day. I don’t think I have the energy to run.” />
  “Glad to hear it. Why don’t you walk that bottle of Dom Pérignon over here. Damn thing cost three hundred and fifteen bucks in room service. Reckon we might as well drink it.”

  Cass brought it over and sat on the bed. “That may be the only time in history the words reckon and Dom Pérignon have been used in a single sentence.”

  “I’m just a simple boy from Boston,” Randy said, twisting off the cork with the expertise of a three-star sommelier. “You remember that beer we drank in Bosnia? Right before I got us blown up?”

  “The beer you drank. I was on duty.”

  “It wasn’t that bad, really. But this will be better. Certainly ought to be, at these prices.”

  “Do rich people also complain about prices?”

  “Always. It’s how they got rich.”

  He poured the Champagne into their glasses. The tiny bubbles tickled on the way down.

  He put his chin on her shoulder. “Want to watch a dirty movie on the television?”

  Cass said, “Sure, but do you really want an item appearing on Page Six of the Post the day after tomorrow about how Latex Ladies Three was charged to the hotel bill of a certain senator?”

  “Good thinking, Devine. You’re a good handler.” He leaned forward and kissed her on the lips. “Want to be part of my brain trust?”

  “I don’t know.” Cass kissed him back. “What’s in it for me?”

  “Expensive French Champagne? We’ll start you off in the secretarial pool. Can you type?”

  Successful, busy men are by nature impatient, and though Frank Cohane found it pleasant enough to listen to Bucky Trumble go on and on about how much the president appreciated his efforts in recruiting more big-donor Owls to the party, he was thinking: Can we move along to the part where I get a “significant” ambassadorship?

  Instead, Bucky cleared his throat and said, “Frank, I need to speak with you about something. On a discreet basis.”

  “Okay.”

  “It concerns Cassandra Devine.”

  Frank’s stomach muscles contracted. “Yeah?”

  Bucky cleared his throat again. “I believe you two are . . .”

  “Related. Yeah. She’s my daughter.”

  “Right.” Awkward silence. “That was our information as well.”

  “We’re not in touch. It’s been many years.”

  “I guess that would account for your not having brought it up.”

  “Bring what up? I said, I haven’t talked to her in—hell, this century.”

  Another silence. “What I’m about to tell you is highly sensitive information.”

  “We keep secrets here, too, Bucky.”

  “You’re aware she was arrested and charged with a very serious crime.”

  “It was on the cover of Time, and she’s, ah, my daughter, so—yeah.”

  “The government—that is, the attorney general—decided not to pursue the charges, on the strictly legal grounds that successfully prosecuting her would in all likelihood prove difficult.”

  “Uh-huh.” Where was this going?

  “So she walked out of jail a free woman. It only then came to our attention—that is, the president’s and mine—that she was the daughter of one of our most valued donors.”

  “I don’t know how many ways to say it, Buck. We haven’t seen each other in—”

  “That’s not really the issue.” Pregnant pause. “Is it, Frank?”

  “It is as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Let me tell you how we see it. If I may?”

  “Shoot.”

  “Let me state clearly and absolutely that the White House did not influence the decision of the attorney general. But the AG is a cabinet officer in this administration. So you have a situation where as far as the media would view it . . .the government decided not to prosecute the daughter of a major party donor.”

  “I didn’t ask you for any favors for her.”

  “No, you didn’t. You absolutely didn’t. And the president and I appreciate that. We do. Still and all, Frank, it might have been helpful if you’d given us a little, you know, heads-up that this radioactive young lady was—your daughter.”

  It had been a long time since anyone had criticized Frank Cohane, even mildly. (Except his wife, who exercised high, middle, and low rights of spousal criticism.) He was tempted to tell Bucky Trumble that if he felt that way, he could return Frank’s half-million-dollar donation.

  But people, even very successful ones, tend not to speak that way to someone who sits at the right hand of the president of the United States, a position that for all its many faults still packs a nasty punch. Especially when they’ve told their wives that they’re about to be appointed to the Court of St. James’s and they’ll be presenting their credentials to the queen of England. And probably staying over at Buckingham Palace for dinner.

  “I’m . . .” Frank reached for the word. What was the word, anyway? “Sorry if . . .I’ve been busy as hell here. We’re launching a new software, and I’ve been focused 24/7 on . . .”

  Bucky let him prattle on a bit and then said, “I understand. But sooner or later the media are going to make the connection. So the question really is, where do we go from here?”

  The sentence hovered between the two men like a malignant hummingbird. Frank saw the “significant” ambassadorship he wasn’t even sure he wanted suddenly going pfffut. Which, human nature being what it is, suddenly made him crave it above all earthly things. He saw himself explaining to Lisa that she would not, in fact, be dining with the queen and Prince Philip.

  Then Bucky said, “I have some thoughts. May I share them with you?”

  “Yeah,” said Frank. “Sure.”

  “We were thinking that if you brought the connection to the media’s attention, in such a way as to demonstrate that you’re opposed to what she stands for and did . . .that that might solve the immediate problem.”

  The third long silence of their conversation settled in.

  “In other words, you want me to publicly denounce my daughter?”

  “‘Denounce’ is a loaded term. Let’s say distance. As long as you make it clear that you don’t approve of what she did, and clarify that you haven’t even been on speaking terms for—since the last century. I think that would do it.”

  A roar of sea lions suddenly broke in through Frank’s open window and into Frank’s speakerphone.

  “What in the name of God was that?” Bucky said.

  “Sea lions. They probably saw a great white.”

  “Where were we?”

  “You want me to distance myself from my daughter.”

  “I’d sure rather that than us have to distance ourselves from you. The president values you. I can’t emphasize that enough. He talks about you all the time. I’ve gotta go. Will you think about it and get back to me one way or the other? And Frank?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Let’s not put any of this in e-mail, okay?”

  “Of course.”

  “Oh, there is one other thing you could do. I know it would mean a great deal to the president. . ..”

  Chapter 17

  Gideon Payne was of course delighted to receive an invitation to the White House for a one-on-one with the president, but he was suspicious.

  Bucky Trumble had told him over the phone that the president desired “to get the benefit of your wise counsel and maybe even a private prayer session over this Transitioning business.” Prayer session? My, my, my, as Gideon was wont to say, how the wicked do lie.

  Gideon did not trust Mr. Buckminster Trumble, and he did not like President Riley Peacham. The occasion of his last visit to the Oval Office had been an attempt to get the president to intercede personally on behalf of Mrs. Delbianco, his latest Lazarus. “Lazarus” was Gideon’s private term for hopeless coma cases who were about to be unplugged from life support. They were a most lucrative segment of SPERM’s fund-raising. And made for the most poignant photo ops.

  The meeting had gone . .
.“uncomfortably” would be the best word. President Peacham squirmed and frowned and fidgeted throughout Gideon’s rather inspired monologue about the need to keep poor Mrs. Delbianco alive. Never mind that the woman was in her seventeenth comatose year and had been pronounced brain-dead and permanently vegetative by several dozen specialists; or that twenty-three judges had approved the family’s request to remove life support. Life is life, the most precious gift of the Almighty, even if it just, well, lies there growing fingernails.

  What made the case worthy of presidential intercession—where Gideon was concerned—was the fact that a hospice worker reported seeing a recurring rash on Mrs. Delbianco’s stomach in the shape of the Virgin Mary. When a hospice worker informs a local newspaper that a rash in the shape of the Madonna is visible on the stomach of a woman about to be unplugged from life support, it is a certain thing that the hospice worker will snap a photo of it and sell it to the tabloids for almost as much as a picture of a newborn celebrity baby. And that other newspapers will reprint it and that national attention will follow. And with it, Gideon Payne.

  Gideon did not succeed in getting President Peacham to intervene; the around-the-clock prayer vigil outside the hospice that he and his friend Monsignor Massimo Montefeltro organized kept Mrs. Del-bianco front and center up to the moment of her last exhalation.

  Unfortunately, a few months later the hospice worker was arrested for credit card fraud and revealed that she had created the image of the Virgin on Mrs. Delbianco’s stomach herself with benzocaine ointment, to which poor Mrs. Delbianco was allergic. All rather embarrassing, to be sure, but—Gideon insisted—beside the point. Did not the Lord work in mysterious ways? Could He not have directed the hospice worker to paint the image? Who can know the workings of the Almighty? Gideon didn’t flinch. He valiantly defended the worker as a heroine who had done what she could to save a life. Some even suggested that he himself was behind the dermatological hoax. To which he tut-tutted, “My, my, my, how the wicked do lie.”