The President's Palm Reader: A Washington Comedy

by Robert MacLean

  THE PRESIDENT’S PALM READER

  A Washington Comedy

  by

  Robert MacLean

  Pretentious Pictures Publications

  Now it can be told—the investigation even the FBI couldn’t make!

  ATTENTION: This book makes fun of politicians and their sexual peculiarities. It makes fun of certain presidents, vice presidents and secretaries of state. It makes fun of women. It makes fun of gays. It makes fun of Americans. It makes fun of blacks, Hispanics, rednecks and bible-thumpers. It makes fun of Canadians, Russians, Brits and French people. It makes fun of Africans, it makes fun of Asians, it makes fun of Latinos. It’s a lot of fun.

  “I enjoyed this book from beginning to end. The author is hilarious, sarcastic, witty, incredibly smart, and knows how to tell a story. I am definitely going to read all his books.”—Winslow (from the customer reviews of The President’s Palm Reader)

  “I think your writing style is fascinating and very entertaining.”—John Locke

  “Robert MacLean is a wonderful novelist, and that rare bird—a very funny and totally relevant comic artist!”—Collector Guy

  “This was the most hilarious book I have ever read. I laughed out loud again and again. I kept thinking this is the craziest book I have ever read and why I am reading it and then I would hit another part that had me laughing some more. I was kind of sad when I finished it.”—Pat Thompson (Goodreads)

  “I could easily recommend FOREIGN MATTER for its laugh-out-loud plot, characters, and dialogue, but MacLean’s true mastery lies simply in his love of language and his endlessly inventive and amusing turns of phrase… MacLean also knows how to present physical comedy sequences that are on par with the best of Chaplin and Keaton.”— Jon Zelazny

  Also by Robert MacLean:

  Mortal Coil: A Comedy of Corpses at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon FR, Amazon DE, AmazonIT and AmazonES and Smashwords .

  and the Toby books:

  Foreign Matter at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon FR, Amazon DE, AmazonIT, AmazonES and Smashwords.

  Total Moisture at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon FR, Amazon DE, AmazonIT, AmazonES and Smashwords.

  The Cad at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon FR, Amazon DE, AmazonIT, AmazonES and Smashwords.

  Will You Please Fuck Off? at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon FR, Amazon DE, AmazonIT, AmazonES and Smashwords.

  And they're at Sony, Nook, Kobo, Diesel, iTunes—the whole street.

  To contact Robert MacLean visit his blog, The Devil’s PleasureGarden.

  Ebook design by 52 Novels www.52novels.com

  Cover by Peter Ratcliffe www.peterratcliffe.com

  Copyright © 2011 Robert MacLean

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted by any means, whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic, without written permission by the author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law with the exception of public domain materials contained herein.

  Contents

  Now It Can Be Told | Also by Robert MacLean

  Dedication | Epigraph

  1. | 2. | 3. | 4. | 5. | 6. | 7. | 8. | 9. | 10. | 11. | 12. | 13. | 14. | 15. | 16. | 17. | 18. | 19. | 20. | 21. | 22. | 23. | 24. | 25. | Coda

  Contact

  For Noreen

  As poets have mournfully sung

  Death takes the innocent young,

  The rolling in money,

  The screamingly funny

  And those who are very well hung.

  —W.H. Auden

  1.

  We got out in front of an office building. When Alberta opened the door the Washington heat came in like steam from a bathroom.

  “Can you wait?”

  “No waitin’, lady.”

  “We’ll be right back.”

  She got out and the driver looked at me. I shrugged at him and followed her.

  “Lady!” he called. “Where do you want this luggage! LADY!” But she had already pushed a door open and disappeared into the lobby.

  I looked both ways before crossing the sidewalk, stepped smartly over and went inside, contracting against the air-conditioning.

  She was standing across a desk from a tall black guy with a gun. Also a uniform and a mustache. Middle-aged but muscled. He had his hands on his hips.

  “I am glad to see you back, Mrs. Haines, but you know I can’t let you up there without an appointment. I gots to call!” He picked up a phone.

  “Austin, do you remember the night Senator Weintraub’s daughter locked herself in upstairs and screamed that you wanted to kill her? Something you gave her to smoke, I think. You’d had some yourself, you were pretty worried. Remember who talked her down in time so you could open in the morning?”

  The elevator door opened. She walked around the desk and got in.

  “I’m calling that in,” she said.

  He looked at me.

  Careful not to meet his eyes I circled widely and got in too.

  The pilot leaned out. “What floor?” he whispered.

  “Haines,” he said, not turning.

  “And don’t let that taxi run off with my bags.”

  The door closed. We lifted away and the man kept his eyes on the panel.

  “Now don’t let him scare you.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “That’s his favorite trick. Just be yourself.”

  “Okay.” Myself. That’s always a hard one.

  “I’ll do the talking at first. You just stand there and exude whatever it is. It always works. Have you prepared your remark? Darling, be a love and keep your hands out of your pockets.”

  “Mr. Haines’s office.”

  “Don’t be a little Bossy Boots,” I said

  “Here we are.”

  The door opened and we went out into a hall so cool I wanted to clutch my jacket closed. Made you nervous. There was a glass wall with the network logo all over it.

  We passed through a door and into a region that can only be described as cold. Cold and quiet. I folded my arms and hugged myself .

  “May I help you,” said the woman behind the desk.

  Alberta didn’t even slow down.

  “Excuse me! Do you have an appointment?”

  “You must be new,” said Alberta, “I’m Mrs. Haines.”

  The other woman scrambled around the desk and blocked the way.

  I sensed trouble and hung back. She was big and blonde, this doorperson. Marilynish. A little untucked-looking but she had One Job and nobody was going to make her not do it.

  Alberta drew up, her shoulders restless under spaghetti straps. She was slight and slender and she dressed it. The arch of her eyebrow suggested a superior poise.

  In the waiting room petitioners lowered magazines, looked up from briefcases. I put my hands in my pockets.

  The defender tugged at her tube top. She was nervous. Any number of comments might have vanquished her but Alberta merely froze her with a look and made to move past.

  The blonde’s arm came out and blocked her. “Mrs. Haines! If that’s who you are! Nobody’s sposed to go in there! They’re having a meeting!” She spoke with the awe of the uncomprehending.

  “I certainly don’t know who you are, Ms. Whatever—”

  “Tiffany!”

  “—but the first thing a new secretary should learn is when to defer to the boss’s wife.”

  “I’m not a secretary! I’m an Administrative Assistant!”

  Alberta glanced at the audience. “How clever of you. You won’t have to
learn to spell. You’ll find you get much further on your twa-twa.”

  The Administrative Assistant’s jaw dropped. She was just trying to do her job here!

  Alberta stamped on her toe and stepped back to watch the result.

  The A.A. screamed silently, too outraged to give voice, put her hands out wide and, not even looking down, took an experimental step.

  Alberta pivoted around her and achieved contact with the door, you heard the little rattle, but before she could push it her opponent caught her by the hair and dragged her backwards into a rolling chair. Still navigating by the hair she swung her around in a wide arc and wheeled her to the exit.

  I pressed myself to the wall.

  Alberta clung helplessly to the hand behind her head and with more agility than elegance got a foot on each side of the doorjamb, let her knees bend spring-tight and shot back with a thrust that made Tiffany skip to save her already tingling toes.

  Bouncing wide of target Alberta ejected and sprang for the door but the blonde was on her, pinning her arm behind her and bouncer-walking her out. Arched awkwardly Alberta kicked and twisted until by force of will she wrenched herself free to a sound of ripping that arrested them both.

  From the Administrative Assistant’s hands hung a limp spaghetti strap flagged with scraps of Alberta’s, now that you looked at it, chic little summer number. They examined the damage. Smoothing it to herself, satisfied she was shaped to hold things up, Alberta snapped away the remaining strap with a wince and a jerk, brushed away the other’s attempts to help and tucked in the little frays.

  “It’s not my fault!”

  Alberta raised her face and absorbed this, purse-whacked her as with a rubber chicken and darted for the Forbidden Door.

  After that it was all kicks and claws and yanking each other around by the hair.

  No one interfered. When men are fighting people try to break it up but it’s not so easy with women. You can get hurt. There were interesting moments, I don’t deny that. The buxom blonde and the lithe brunette, arching as if to display their figures. Tendons gliding in backs and so forth. But mostly there was the fear.

  The defender had the weight but it wasn’t working for her. Two headlocks and a clutch-and-face-push had done something cubist to her make-up and there was about Alberta, it seemed clear, something unstoppable.

  She worked the tube top up over Tiffany’s arms—here, one felt, the onlookers were silently with her—and with her ducks more or less in a row dropped her with a kick to the shins and mud-wrestled her under the desk.

  She was still bumping around under there when Alberta was up and moving, snapping a glance into the compact, running a finger along the lip rouge and shaking her hair back. With a look at me she threw the door open and strode in.

  “Belton, darling, I’m back.”

  A dozen faces looked up. Producers, writers, I don’t know who these people are.

  But there was no doubt who Belton Haines was. He was the star of The Haines Report, a daily half-hour of punchy political interviews that had made and demolished more careers than any single force in Washington, and got him so much national attention he was said to be rivalling J.C. himself.

  He was big and beefy and old enough to comb his hair straight back and have it stay. Even if you were one of the few who hadn’t caught the show you’d know who he was. He suggested an aging, still officially good-looking actor, and had the star’s knack of taking up all the room.

  “Well you don’t seem very pleased! I came straight from the airport! Aren’t you going to declare a holiday?”

  The others watched with a certain interest. It was network news that Belton Haines’s wife had left him six months ago. And here she was. Whatever was said here would be all over the industry by quitting time.

  He stood up. The other men stood up.

  “We’re in a meeting,” he explained. “You didn’t go to the apartment?”

  “Well, I wasn’t too sure what I’d find there.”

  “Mr. Haines,” said Tiffany, hanging in the doorway, “I’m sorry!”

  “It’s all right, darling, she did her best. No kiss? Oh well,” she said, before he could move, “I’ve brought you someone for the show. He’s a palmist.”

  He struggled to comprehend. “A what?”

  “He tells people’s fortunes. They love him in the East. His name is Word Wallace.”

  They turned and looked at me.

  “Hi,” I said.

  There was a little pause.

  He looked at her, at me, at her. “A what?”

  “A palmist, darling, don’t be obtuse.”

  Knees retracted as he came around the coffee table.

  I didn’t really want to be there and was ready to explain that. More or less out of habit I looked around for the exit but the waiting room people blocked the door and the Administrative Assistant had moved up behind me. I was surrounded.

  He came over and examined my face. “He’s not from the East!”

  “Of course not but he’s been living in the East. Really, everything he says comes true! Wordy, say something.”

  It was one of those moments when nothing comes up on the teleprompter.

  “We can put him on with the bag lady,” said someone, though by the silence that followed it wasn’t clear just how helpful this was.

  Belton half-turned to the abandoned huddle. “I guess we’d better adjourn,” he said. No one moved.

  He looked at Alberta and at me, forming unpleasant conclusions.

  “I’m his manager,” she said.

  He smiled. “I’m not running a sideshow here. This isn’t Letterman. We use eccentrics sometimes but I can’t put every fraud who walks in here on the program!”

  She stiffened. “My judgment hasn’t been so bad in the past.”

  He gave her a look, and in that look was a story I might have put together for myself before this. He owed her his success. I couldn’t say just how but it didn’t take a fortuneteller to see it. She had made Belton Haines, just as she was, if I may so put it, making me.

  And everyone in the room was suddenly in on it. Now he was surrounded. She had a way of choosing her moment and knowledge of this showed in his face.

  “This is a news program,” he reminded her. “We do news-related things. A few socialites—” He sketched it for her, pacing. The format had changed since she’d been gone. “—a hostess. A high-class madame. Stuff like that. The bag lady, all right, but she’s a local character! Knows all the secrets. But a palmist! We’d be laughed at!”

  No one was buying it but they knew the routine well enough to stand around nodding. He glared at her for walking in out of the blue and putting him in a corner.

  “Oh rubbish! He can tell you all the secrets, and look at him! He’ll be great television!”

  I gave him my three-quarter profile.

  “Study under a master, did you?”

  “Well,” I said, “I was there and everything.”

  “Uh-huh. Learn all the lore? The ancient mysteries? The traditions?”

  I glanced at Alberta. She gave me a go-on-tell-him look.

  “I like to work with my own discoveries,” I said.

  He laughed at Alberta. “No. Sorry. Can’t use him. What’s he going to do?”

  “You could ask him about his famous clients, he does all the big people. Ask him about the King of Siam.”

  “You got famous clients?”

  Actually I had never heard of the King of Siam. I had never heard of Siam. “It’s sort of confidential,” I said.

  “Hah!”

  “You can have him do readings for some political people and tell your audience what they’re really like!”

  “No. Sorry. Magic? Predictions? Come on! People don’t buy that! They want real! My audience wants real! They want to know who’s screwing who! They want us to uncover bribes and scams and who’s putting antifreeze in the wine! They want us to get those guys! Look, last week I went on and defined, I actually de
fined a responsible news organ as one that doesn’t carry a horoscope. You see what I’m saying? It’s beneath us!”

  She looked at him with bruised eyes but he was ready for her. “Nobody cares, Alberta, I’m sorry. You’re going to lose my audience for me. Sweetheart, people just aren’t interested.”

  The silence was pretty final.

  Tiffany had come up beside me slack-lipped with wonder. Now that she grasped what was up she glanced at me sideways.

  “Gee,” she almost whispered, “will you read my palm?”

  2.

  I sat at the bar, waiting.

  Alberta and Belton were having dinner somewhere, no doubt deciding my future. We were to meet here afterwards.

  I had already read the paper and looked the menu over, decided I wasn’t hungry. I’d shown my match trick to the bartender and beat him for a drink, and got all my quarters spinning at once on the bar, but there was no music and the clatter was a little de trop. I looked in the mirror and practiced wiggling my ears without moving my eyebrows.

  The suit was holding up. Generally I just bought one off the rack and wore it till it let go, though I like to think I did it with a certain style. You don’t really need a tailored suit unless you’re built like an Englishman.

  I finger-painted on the bar for a while and then balanced a Babel of beer mats, pretzel plates and peanut bowls on my glass. I was about to crown it with the ashtray when the bartender gave me a look and I unbuilt it.

  I didn’t want my future decided!

  What was I doing here anyway?

  The pages of memory flew open at random and I was starting my exile in Hong Kong. Things had reached a certain point in America and I was trying my luck abroad, hoping maybe to marry into a rich family, help them get the money out.

  But I wasn’t meeting the right girls. I did a little free-lance writing, gee-whiz letters to breweries and lighter companies, that sort of thing. When they wrote for permission to use them in ads I referred them to my schedule of fees. But the money was slow.

  I picked up a little modeling work in Tokyo, American-boy look and everything, but work is the word. You get up at dawn and travel miles to the shoot, stand around under the lights all day with a blow-dryer in your face. And of course they treat you like an object.