The President's Palm Reader: A Washington Comedy

by Robert MacLean

  “Well that’s fine, Word.”

  “That line under your fingers means a real strong grip, sir.”

  He didn’t even look. Sat there with his hands folded, staring at his thumbs and being a good boy. Seamless. When they get to that stage anything can be going on in there.

  I sat with him the whole rest of the afternoon, it seemed to make him feel better. The next day I came back and did the same thing. And the next.

  Days passed and we didn’t speak until five o’clock when I said, “Bye, sir,” and he’d sort of half-smile and give me a wave. It was like some kind of Samuel Beckett thing.

  Once the Vice President came in. It was the first time I’d seen him. He was fat in an unmerry way and wore a green plaid jacket that wouldn’t have closed over his tummy if he’d cared to try. Nose like a kosher gherkin. Shoelace tie. His pants were baggy enough to have a tractor seat sewn in the lining.

  There was no introduction but I stood up. He went around the desk and held something before the chief executive. “Just sign here, Mr. President, can you, right there?” He watched me as he pointed the place, watched me as the President unscrewed his pen and scratched his flourish, watched me as he came back around the desk and went out, pulling the door softly closed and still watching.

  Then we sat some more.

  The red phone rang once in a while but the President didn’t seem to want to notice. With each ring his lips made little aunt-kiss puckers and quavered to the side as if he were sniffing with one nostril, but otherwise he affected to ignore it.

  Usually it stopped after a few rings and we settled back into ourselves but one time it just went on and on and on. I hate when they do that, if you don’t want to be there you don’t want to be there. I picked it up myself.

  “Look,” I said, “I know who this is and I want you to stop calling here.”

  Somebody chuckled in Chinese and the line went dead.

  “He has to get up in the middle of the night to do this, sir. His people probably have him caged up too.”

  He was kind enough to smile.

  “Are we really an empire, Word?”

  I looked up. This was his first display of interest in anything since the day I’d met him. I tried to answer carefully. “Well, yes, sir. It’s an empire. It’s sort of an empire. But it’s a force for good, sir!”

  He muttered something and returned into himself and I lost him again. I didn’t know what to do!

  Days later he said, “But they don’t want to be in an empire! Nobody wants us!”

  I nodded for a while before it occurred to me to answer. “They have to think for themselves, sir. That’s the kind of empire it is.”

  He stared at this.

  “You know, Word, maybe we should just—Sometimes I think they do it best down in the banana countries. Just, you know, wear sunglasses and tell everybody what to do. Democracy’s best, isn’t it?”

  Now, when the patient ponders like this it’s the analyst’s discipline to keep his finger out of the balance, maybe ask a leading question. But you have to know when to interject. “It’s the best thing, Mr. President.”

  “It’s the best way?”

  “It’s the best way.”

  The thought challenged him. I could see him wrestling with it. “And—and I’m the President?”

  “They voted for you, sir!”

  The insight buoyed him. He rocked in his chair.

  Then he stopped and his face fell. “No,” he said. “No. Hum Fat—Hum Fat says—”

  He saw me shaking my head. “They’re the bad guys, sir.”

  “But Word! That’s simple-minded capitalistic dogmatism! Hum Fat says so!”

  “Doesn’t matter, sir.”

  He gazed at some unspecified horror. Everything had been razed and over his denuded landscape he scrambled madly, searching for something real, something to shelter him while he rebuilt.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, sir.”

  “And you say—My palm says I’m going to be a great president?”

  “It’s all there, sir.”

  He tested the water with a toe. “You know, Word, I haven’t been—I’ve been goofing off around here. I haven’t really been doing the job.”

  “You were just fazed, sir! You know how it is, you make the All-Stars and it throws you, you fumble in the end zone. You just lost the combination!”

  “It took me by surprise!” he laughed.

  “Sure!”

  “Of course my wife—” He nodded as if he didn’t have to complete the thought.

  “She loves you, sir!”

  “No I mean, she’s been—She wouldn’t let them—She’s been a great help to me, Word! It’s okay, isn’t it? Women are as smart as we are now, aren’t they?”

  “Well, yes, sir. But she’s not the President.”

  “I know, I know. I guess so.”

  He stood up and went to the window, slapping his fist into his hand and rubbing it, getting ready to throw. Guy leading off on first, he didn’t want to wind up. He slapped it, slapped it. Rubbed.

  Then he turned to me. “Word,” he said. “From now on: I’m going to be the President!”

  He worked his jaw around and smiled, and it was a wild, wonderful, wide-open smile!

  “Ata boy, sir!”

  Well, easier said than done, of course. But he’d broken through, that was the thing! He was back in the game!

  The feat exhausted him and he went up early that day, got right to bed. Next morning I came in at nine and he was already there, still keen but looking a little wary.

  “How’s everything, sir?”

  “Good, Word, good. I, uh, I told my wife I was going to be President.”

  “Ah. How’d she take it?”

  “Well—You ever been married, Word?”

  “Not exactly, sir. I’ve never really had the time.”

  “Too committed to helping others, I guess.”

  “Something like that, sir.” I prefer fear to paralysis, is what it is. No use rubbing it in.

  “She doesn’t know if I should,” he said.

  “Hm.”

  He tapped a finger, tugged an ear.

  Difficult. In a sense she was the real core of the problem. She stood over him in the bathroom to see if his stool floated.

  Not that I work with any particular system or anything. The Newtonian mechanics of the psyche, every action with its equal and opposite reaction, that’s all been done. But it did seem to me that the President’s celibacy had something to do with his being such a suck.

  I mean having a body is a little like having a pet, you have to let it out to run around the block once in a while. The President had had it with shaking himself off in the toilet! He wanted a meaningless relationship!

  But we were in a double-bind situation, here. He had already been forced to the edge of his resources. Get him into a thing where he might find himself, how shall I say, powerless, and it might terrify him beyond reclaiming.

  Step one was to get the presidency under his belt, see if that put a bulge in his pants.

  “What do you think, sir?”

  “I don’t know. I still want to! I just don’t know what to—”

  “Tell her she’s beautiful, sir.”

  I mean we weren’t going to resolve this one-two-three. What he needed was an interim strategy.

  He looked at me in horror. “Word!” he said. “I can’t lie! I’m the President!”

  “I know, sir, it’s ticklish.”

  “Suppose she looks in the mirror!”

  There was that, all right. Only the absurd daring of the thing could pull it off.

  “If she calls you on it she calls you on it, sir, we’ll both feel bad.”

  He looked like all those method actors who never knew what to do with their hands. The choice always came down to being evil or being stupid. Middle ground eluded him.

  “Just keep saying it, sir.”

  “Okay, Word, I’l1 try it! So let’s g
o. What do we do first?”

  “First we call a press conference.”

  “A press conference!”

  “Sure, sir. You told me you’re going to be President! You told your wife! Now tell them. I mean not in so many words.”

  “A press conference! Word, I don’t know if I can do it!”

  It was the only thing he could do, was my thinking. There was a momentum here, perhaps the only one we’d ever have. Get him out there acting like the President and he might suggest himself into becoming the President, right?

  Plus it was a thing he knew how to do. Public-appearance-wise he more or less had the lie of the table. If it worked he’d come out of it with the country behind him, and if he was going to challenge his rivals in the Executive Branch it wouldn’t be a bad idea to remind them where the power lay. Never hurts to dazzle the marks.

  The clincher was, there were no intermediaries to consult. No one to apply the veto. We just called the Press Secretary and had him set it up for that afternoon, he called downstairs to the pool where the press hung out, those who weren’t on the squash courts, and we had a show!

  I stationed myself in the studio with the reporters. They jostled and jockeyed like rock fans. Most of them had been working the room for years but they still managed to get in each other’s way setting up and climbing over the seats.

  I won’t say I wasn’t worried. He’d only been verbal for a day. Psychologically speaking he was still running back and forth on the surfboard. He’d taken enough Tranxene to get him through it but I was afraid he might stroll out stoned and sit in the drum or something.

  We stood up when he came in. Flashes and polite commotion and we mostly got sitting down again.

  “No formal statement,” he said. “It’s been a while since we talked and I thought I’d see if you were all still here.”

  “Mr. President?”

  He nodded at someone.

  “Sir, how long will it be till there’s an indication how the current phase of disarmament talks is going?”

  “I don’t know, I’m waiting for it too. Our people at the table tell me we’re making progress but it’s too soon to comment. I want to give them a little room. Sam?”

  “Mr. President, it’s common knowledge that the Vice President and the Secretary of State are behind the new bill on cybernetic close-range weapons—”

  “It is? I didn’t know!”

  I bit my lip but he was still smiling.

  “—Has the White House revised its stance on research in that area and what if any impact will this have on the arms talks?”

  “We’re proceeding cautiously there, Sam. We don’t want to jeopardize the negotiations and we have no intention of implementing anything, but research is something else. If they have it, or at least if they know about it, we’ve got to know about it, or we’ll be looking down the barrel of a forty-five. Yes?”

  They threw him some more about that, and about the impact of XYZ on the environment—“We’re on that,” he said, “we’re on that”—and I mean, he was there! He didn’t know what he was talking about but he could sure sit in and play! Even I was impressed.

  “All right, one more. Barbara?”

  “Mr. President, if there were a spaceship hovering over the earth and they asked for three things that would show what life on our planet was like, what would you send?”

  The gallery groaned. Barbara was always asking these space-cadet questions, it was supposed to disarm you.

  “Well,” he said, “I’d send a bible—”

  Grateful embarrassment. Maybe Barbara had him.

  “—uh, an avocado. And, uh.” He didn’t rush it. I sensed the showman at work. “A girly magazine.”

  I mean, right? They were still giggling and gabbling when the Press Secretary stepped forward and closed off.

  “That was great, sir!” I said, back in the Office.

  We stayed late and watched it on TV. It was great. He was fluent, at ease. No question who was President.

  Sam on the lawn: “A White House source says the President has had no part in the drafting of the bill so eagerly being pushed by members of his administration—”

  “Word! They know! They’re saying it on TV! They know, Word!”

  “Easy, sir. Easy. I think we’re all right. We must be all right! If they’re eagerly pushing that means it’s not getting anywhere. They can’t move the ball, sir! And it’s our downs! What we need now is our own program. Something to steal the game with! We have to gather our forces!”

  We got out the Congressional Directory and started calling House members at home. “Hello,” he’d say, “this is your President.” You could hear the whole social strategy being revised at the other end.

  He was already pretty tired but we stayed at it all evening. Went through the Senate numbers too. Of course sometimes we got the wrong person, got a little soap-box indignation. I mean we didn’t even know who the leaders were! “Oh, sorry,” he’d say, and softly hang up.

  What we did was divide everybody into little groups and have them over for brunch. Coffee and danishes. He’d push the tray around and encourage them to talk, not having much to say himself, and kind of get a sense of what was going on in the Capitol Building.

  I’d stand at the wall trading shrugs with him, sending him facial signals to keep his mouth shut. Not that he couldn’t cross the street by himself or anything but what he needed now, therapy-wise, was a witness. Someone to look on and sort of recognize him. Verify his progress, not to say his presence. I guess the others thought I was Secret Service or something, I don’t think they noticed.

  So what happened was that some of them began to phone him when something new was being proposed or drafted or whatever, or when there was a development on the Vice President’s bill. A system of contacts was in place with at least a starting-block loyalty to the President, and a kitchen cabinet began to emerge that met regularly over brunch and kicked around a few directions the government might take.

  I mean you get a junior senator in the O.O., he’s plasticene. You can make a giraffe out of him, an aardvark, anything. We were able to shepherd through some fairly constructive legislation.

  We drew up an Anti-Air-Conditioning Act requiring restaurant and cinema owners to issue overcoats at the door in summer. Got an anti-fluorescent light bill through the Senate, were working up an Annoying-Teeshirt Act, and we put together a Loud-Music Law whereby offenders would have their ears and noses cropped and be sexually mutilated, though we expected it to be toned down in committee. It carried a sub-clause illegalizing any Beatle music whatsoever no matter how jazzed-down, new-waved or elevatorized.

  Trying to make this country a decent place to live! I had my contribution to make!

  In between doing that I did what I could to develop the President’s personal sense of possibility, which was a two-tiered project. Not only did he have to reassemble himself, psychologically speaking, but there was his background and education to overcome. I mean he didn’t even know how to swear!

  “Fuck-tit!” he tried.

  “Go ahead, sir.”

  “Dick-balls-shit!” He was exhilarated. “Gee, Word! You just do whatever you want!”

  “Sure!” I said.

  We were sitting around jamming one day when the Vice President came in and caught us. We crossed our legs and sat back suavely.

  Eyeing me again he rounded the desk and stood over the President. His shave was too perfect, he looked like a waxed apple. “Hadjuseff a little press conference, did you Mr. President?”

  Smileless, suddenly nervous, the President said “Yeah!” a little too defiantly. “So?”

  “Huh! All right, sir, just sign here.” He put something down before him.

  “What is it?”

  “What is it? Well it’s a document, sir, that I want you to sign!”

  The President leaned away. “Well I just want to know what it is!” he complained.

  The Vice President looked at him as if he wer
e begging to stay up for one more TV show. Against his better judgment he said, “It’s a list of nominees for the vacancy on the Supreme Court, Mr. President.”

  The President craned for a look. He didn’t want to get too close to the Vice President. “Do I know any of them?”

  “Look, I’m in a hurry, Mr. President, could you just sign this?” He picked up a pen and poised it over the paper.

  “Do you need it now? I’d sort of like to read it.”

  The Vice President looked at me. This was my fault. He looked back at the President, put a hand on the back of his chair and the other on the desk in front of him, and leaned down close to his ear.

  The President cringed. He couldn’t even look.

  “Not now, sir,” said the Vice President. “Not right now. RIGHT FUCKING NOW!”

  The President hung on by the armrests. He could hardly see over the desk.

  “I don’t have to if I don’t want to,” he said. “Do I Word!”

  The Vice-Presidential glare swept the horizon and came to rest on me. He pressed his lower canine to his upper, sauntered back around the desk and stood before me, a mechanic who has found the radiator leak.

  “Just who the fuck are you?”

  “I do palms,” I said.

  “You do, do you. Well you know what ah think? Ah think you are ay phony son of a bitch.”

  I swallowed. “Oh, no,” I said, taking what stand I could. “I’m the real thing.”

  “Reb,” said the President, small-voiced, conciliatory, “does your office have a Disposall?”

  The Vice President dragged his gaze loose from me and allowed himself to become conscious of what the President was saying. “No! I don’t have a Disposall!”

  “Too bad,” said the President, almost whispering. “You could put that in it.” He pushed the paper a little away from him.

  The Vice President crumpled it in his fist, tossed it up in the air and hit it behind him with the racket. He went out and slammed the door.

  We sank into our chairs with relief.

  “Whew!” said the President.

  “Way to hop, sir!”

  We felt that peculiar freedom that comes over us at no matter what age when our parents leave the room.