The President's Palm Reader: A Washington Comedy

by Robert MacLean

  “I am successful! I can’t talk to you! It’s not a big deal, all right! It’s a medium-size deal! Accept life!”

  She folded her arms and looked around at the room. I knew what she was thinking.

  “Money doesn’t excite me,” I said. “It’s too easy to get.”

  This was an unfortunate analogy. She went out to the balcony and stared off.

  I was torn. I was sure I’d heard the Divine Voice. Relax , kid, it had told me. Have a good time. I knew I’d heard it!

  I followed her outside. She gazed at the sea. I turned her to me and pushed her hair back from her cheek, which had the effect of stripping her lips bare. She helped by flicking her head a little.

  “All right,” I sighed, “so I’ll be a society palmist.”

  She bent her head. I sniffed her hair.

  She raised her face. “Not if you don’t want to.”

  “Sure I want to.”

  “Really, Wordy?”

  “Sure,” I said. “I’m Mr. Easy.”

  See? Showing off .

  Now, as the elevator door slid open, I was struggling with the feeling that I’d been had. Alberta was changing incomes without skipping a paycheck, was one possible construction.

  It was an unworthy thought I suppose but what would happen when she’d gone through her me phase? I’d be discarded, another wet and panting mount. Another Belton.

  She shot cheerfully out of the elevator full of her success downstairs and almost broke into a skip in the hall. I followed helplessly.

  The room had an alien look. Story of my life. I lived in a country of hotel rooms, airports, taxi rides. Just when I was getting the habits of the maid figured out it was time to move on.

  Alberta browsed among open suitcases, plucked an armload of supplies and sailed into the bathroom. “Make yourself excited, darling, I’m coming.”

  I put my pants on a hanger and folded the pockets down to keep my stuff from falling out. The change, the Stim-U-Dents, the emergency condom. You never know when you’re going to get stuck in an elevator.

  I poked around in the luggage. “Where’s the Vogue?” I called.

  “What?”

  “Where’s the Vogue?”

  “In my blue bag.”

  “It’s not there.”

  “In the big case.”

  “No. “

  “Wait a minute, I’ll find it.”

  I found it myself and lay on the bed flipping pages, vertiginously depressed. Two days out of Eden and already choking on the apple.

  Food. These anxiety attacks, sometimes you’re just hungry. I dialed room service but the kitchen was closed.

  I looked at the magazine some more and then lay there limp, staring at the ceiling. I wasn’t a man, I was a marionette!

  She came out in something lacey, walking geisha-bent to hold it closed at the thighs, slid onto the bed and squirmed over. “Here I am,” she whispered.

  I got up and went into the bathroom, closed the door. A hot bath, maybe. Get in, go weightless.

  No, I was too down. I’d never be able to drag myself out.

  I leaned on the sink and faced the mirror. You have to do what you want to do, remember? You have made a life of doing whatever you want to do. Don’t falter now.

  Yes, I said, fine. What do I want to do?

  The moral effort drained the last of my strength. I dropped onto the pot, but after a few minutes’ communion with the colon I despaired of release. I ran water into cupped hands and bathed my face, and came out pressing a towel to it.

  “Wordy,” she said, the magazine propped on her thighs, “your horoscope says someone you care about deeply will prosper this month. That could be you!”

  I threw aside the towel, got in on my stomach and turned my face away. “I don’t believe that crap,” I said, burrowing in.

  She got under the covers and slinked over, applied herself to my flank. “Mm,” she said.

  “I’m tired.”

  “Me too. It’s been such a day. Aren’t you glad to be back?” She circled my waist, drew me into the double S, fingertipped my ariel.

  I rolled brusquely onto my back. “Look,” I said, “I’m not doing this.”

  “It’s all right, darling, you just lie there.”

  She nipped my nips and grazed towards my center of Atman.

  “The TV,” I said. “I’m not doing the TV.”

  “Oh, Wordy! After all that work!” She came up and lay on my shoulder. “Why not?”

  “I don’t know, the whole thing is wrong. I’m not even supposed to be here.”

  “Darling, of course you are! You’re just nervous about being on television. We’ll get you some long socks. Remember to keep you hands away from your face.”

  “I don’t put my hands on my face!”

  “Well, don’t. Oh, Wordy, you’ll be perfect!”

  “How can I be perfect with Belton there?” I couldn’t imagine this being good for business. I was looking at failure. On satellite television.

  “Don’t worry about him, he wants this to go as well as we do. Don’t you want to touch my knockers?” The word excited her.

  “I am worried about him! He could kick the door open any minute and shoot us! Catch us at it!”

  (“I think under the circumstances, Belton, I’d better stay at the hotel tonight.” It was me he’d nodded at.)

  “He could with a camera, you’re right. He’s done that.” She got up and deadbolted the door, demipointed back and lay with her arms up. “Oh, look, I’m tied up! Oh please don’t! Please don’t rape me! Oh! I’m so helpless!”

  I sat up. “Alberta, you’re married!” I felt like a rustic simpleton saying it. “This guy loves you! I think you might even love him! You didn’t really tell me about that!”

  She thought it over without changing position. “There wasn’t much to tell. We’re not really married any more.”

  “Didn’t you love him?”

  “In a general sort of way. Not particularly.”

  “Well you married him!”

  “I guess I must have. He did seize me with a certain passion. I suppose I was reluctant to discourage it.”

  I got up and looked out the window.

  “Oh, Wordy, precious! You’re being very sweet! I didn’t think it mattered to you!”

  “Doesn’t it matter to you?”

  “Yes. It matters to me.”

  I looked over my shoulder at her.

  “You see how dangerous this is? One little concession and you feel trapped. Oh, Wordy, come back to bed!”

  “No.”

  “Oh! I’m the princess and you’re the viking! You’ve rushed into the palace! The court is watching! Oh! You’ve torn off my dress! No, you mustn’t!”

  “He’s handsome,” I said. “Looks good.”

  “Not when you get to know him.”

  “Interesting though, right? Intellectual guy.”

  “He knows a lot, but that’s not the same thing. He never talked to me! Grunts when he arrives, that’s all you get out of him.”

  I explored the vicinity, testing the firmness of things with my toe.

  “Wordy, there’s nothing between us any more.”

  “You were ready to go home with him.”

  “Oh, I was not!”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if you wound up back together. I’m a poker chip, here.”

  “Wordy!”

  “I think you still love him, Alberta. I think you should face that. You’re in competition with him to prove something. And suddenly so am I. I’m going home.”

  “I thought I was home. Us.”

  “Save it for Belton.”

  “I don’t love Belton!”

  “He excites you though, right?” My eyes challenged hers.

  They lowered. “Darling, a girl gets damp on all sorts of occasions. I hope I don’t have to fill out a form every time.”

  She was right. I was being absurd. Weakening my position. This naked pathos was compromising
my control. Be cool, I told myself.

  I stood at the window. “Is he bigger than me?”

  The pause fattened.

  “No, I wouldn’t say that.”

  I let the silence pile up on her.

  “Everyone’s shaped differently, you know that.”

  “He talks like he’s got this big dong or something.”

  “No, it’s not that, it’s just—you have different styles.”

  I let her see I didn’t understand.

  “You know, he’s—so obsessive! That’s exciting too! You’re so—aloof, you get everything your own way. You wait for me to come to you. He conquers! It’s overwhelming! Of course he is a pig. We never kissed or anything, he just clawed my clothes off and worked me over. My dress just came apart in his hands! You’re more delicate.”

  “What do you mean, delicate! I’m not delicate!”

  “Winsome, darling. You’re subtler. You like to be sought out. Come and got.”

  I thought this over. “Yeah?”

  “Oh, Wordy, you’re so sexy! I exist to receive your sperm, don’t you know that? Do come to bed.”

  I was calming down. All right, so I’d sabotaged myself. Exiled myself by an act of chivalry. What you do for passion you live with, right?

  I sat on the bed. “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Darling, we can’t go back to that beach! You were just letting yourself go!”

  She covered my shoulders with the sheet and drew me down with my back to her. I lay there, pussy-whipped.

  “I don’t want to ambush the future by getting rich!” I told her. I don’t know if I actually meant that but it wasn’t bad.

  “Darling, we have to drive ourselves crazy over something, it may as well be this.”

  “But it won’t work!” I would fail on television. Then what would she think?

  “Don’t be such a cowardly custard, of course it’l1 work! Oh, Wordy, do it for me!”

  I kept my back to her. “I hate everything!”

  “Do you want me to get the cream and work my finger in?”

  “No,” I enunciated.

  She nestled apologetically.

  “Wordy?”

  “What?”

  “Everything will be all right. It will.”

  I sighed. Well, I was in for the whole project. “I guess so,” I said.

  She pulled her knees up and snuggled in. “Oh,” she whispered, “I’m so excited.”

  5.

  Bibbed as for surgery I was wheelchaired into a room with a hair-salon mirror. A woman in white frowned at me and dusted my face.

  I glanced nervously at the clock. Five minutes. In the mirror, fear.

  The contract was all in his favor. In exchange for my appearance on the program she waived all claim on his income. He was off the hook.

  I was on it. Nothing in there obliged him not to treat me like a buffoon. My demurs had availed me nothing. She smiled and handed me the pen, and I signed.

  Now, the moral reckoning.

  I had spent the night sleepless and knotted with worry and was now a mere pretend person. The make-up suggested the possibility of slipping away in a false beard with an ear trumpet. Of course I’d be found. Fevered thought anyway.

  Tiffany came in with a double JD and turned on a monitor. It was among her jobs to relax the guests before the show, bring them double JDs.

  The powder lady unwrapped me and wheeled her tray away. “Thanks,” I said, more or less to both of them. I gulped the sedative and gaped at the dulled-down self.

  Tiffany sat with me. She was real good at relaxing the guests. You looked at her and the bomb doors opened under your prostate. Had a little extra angel food on her but she was shaped nice.

  “I’m not going near that bag lady! She gets all handy. Marguerite go wash your feet, the Board of Health’s across the street! Boy!”

  She hoisted this smile that looked fake, but then you could see the sadness in it as if she were determined not to be thrown, lose the game. She looked pensive.

  “You look pensive,” I said.

  “Yeah? I don’t know, let me think about it.”

  “No, I mean, something worrying you?”

  She sighed and looked blank. Then her face crinkled up and she began to cry. You know, cry?

  I felt helpless, horrified. I mean, somebody throws the script out the window and just cries.

  I inched into the new context. “Hey,” I said, touching her shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

  She dove at me and wept all over my shirt.

  “It’s Belton!” she bawled. “I didn’t know they were still together! I thought they were separated! Bah-hah!”

  “So did I.” Sort of an aside.

  I drew back and tried to make her face me. “But they are separated!”

  She sniffed and swallowed. “Know what he did?”

  “He handcuffed your wrists to your ankles and cut your clothes off with the scissors.”

  “No!”

  “Ah. What?”

  “He made hotel reservations in New York for tonight. For two! And he didn’t even tell me!” She breathed indignantly.

  The show was starting. She went over and turned it up.

  Theme music. An announcer’s voice going for the understated PBS sound. Applause. Belton came out onto a Cavett kind of platform with swivel chairs, nodded the applause down and did some jokes. News jokes. Sort of a Letterman thing but subdued, one hand in the pocket. Wry. Alistair Cookish.

  Did a nuclear-plant joke. Did a gay-rooster joke that must have been aimed at somebody big. I didn’t know the scene, but the laugh became an oo at the low blow. He came back with a dry-martini joke, German waiter brought him three of them, and that got a laugh but some guy stood up and called “Author!” and got a much bigger laugh, and Belton soured.

  “Uh-oh,” said Tiffany. “He’s gonna be hard to live with now.”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re in a sharp mood. Let’s see what you make of our guests tonight. My little attack on astrology last week stirred up the letter-writers so this will be a day in court for the supernatural. Here tonight are two people with special powers of insight, the famous Pennsylvania Avenue Oracle, Gora Smard—”

  Applause, some yays.

  “—some of you here in the studio have seen her around. And: we’ll have a palmistry expert look at a few famous palms! We’ll be back!”

  Commercial.

  I groped for my notes and stared at them just to focus myself. Belton’s staff had taken palm prints from some politicos eager to gamble that the publicity would be good—he seemed to have the clout—and I had to say something about them without actually knowing who they were. The names would be on the monitors but I wouldn’t see them.

  No way that could work. My plan was to stall them with the mystic-sage routine, use up all the time. Get into my magic idiot mode and make a few general remarks qua palmist. Everything-changes-and-then-you-die sort of thing.

  I couldn’t be sure they’d go for it, never dealt with that many marks at once before, but it was something, if only Belton would follow my lead. Not a chance. He’d want me in deep water and he had a ream of writers feeding him material. All I had were the notes.

  I sorted hysterically and wiped my mouth, smearing the face job.

  Audience. Belton. Tiffany touched me up with a Kleenex. I rose for my leap from the cliff but she pushed me down again.

  “If you’ve taken a walk in Washington lately you may recognize our first guest. The mall is her regular beat but she covers the whole District and there isn’t much she doesn’t know about what goes on here. Reporters and Congressmen alike check with her for the latest rumors on the Hill and they say book-makers talk to her before giving odds on an election. Nobody knows how she does it. Will you welcome the Capitol Hill Bag Lady, Gora Smard!”

  Wild applause. This was a night off from sifting the serfdom of history, sort of art class, and the audience was ready.

  She waddled out grinning,
no teeth between the canines, a ragged vinyl shopping bag in each fist. Short, squat, big-jawed. A ski toque loose as chain mail pulled down over the ears and a winter windbreaker over a curtain-print skirt that must have been hitched to the armpits. Elephant legs, Irwin Corey running shoes.

  She hefted the bags up the step still beaming from the build-up, Belton standing by with Suskind suavity, and was seated and swinging her legs before the applause died.

  He tugged his lapels straight. “Well, Gora? Is it magic?”

  “Oh, well, you know.”

  “You never let those bags out of your sight, do you.”

  “No, no.”

  “I hope you don’t mind my asking you this but, what have you got in there?”

  “Oh, well—” She picked at one as if she didn’t know herself. “I’ve got everything in here. Got my radio.” She held it aside and dug deeper and the audience laughed. She looked up and assumed the full grin. “Ha-ha?”

  “They must be heavy! You should have a shopping cart or something.”

  “Oh, well, I had a shopping cart. You know, but the police took it away. Said it belonged to a store somewhere.”

  “Aw,” said the audience.

  “Gora, tell me, where do you sleep at night?”

  “Hoboy! Ha-ha?”

  So everybody felt better.

  “Okay, I won’t ask you about that. It seems incredible but you’re one of the best-known political tipsters in Washington!”

  “Oh, yeah, you know. I like to know what’s going on.”

  “Someone saw you chatting with the Speaker the other day. Were you advising him or he you? Or both?”

  “Oh, well, I can’t really say.”

  “They say you sometimes have information before cabinet officials get it! How do you do it? I know you don’t want to reveal your sources but how do you know what you know?”

  “Oh, I listen to my radio. Go in the TV stores and watch the news. Always like to catch your show.”

  Laugh. They liked her.

  “Well, that’s very nice. You’re not giving me the evil eye out there, are you?”

  “Oh, no, no, you’re okay. Ha-ha?”

  “The reason I ask, there is a feeling among those who know you and talk to you that you’re a kind of talisman—”

  “Talisperson. Ha-ha?”

  “Some people say it’s tempting fate not to consult you. That you put the evil eye on anyone who ignores you.”