“All right,” I said.
I watched him do the knots. When he was finished I took up a position over the top balcony.
“Over here,” he said, standing at the sheer drop.
“No,” I said. “Over here.”
He shook his head.
“Let’s just take them one at a time,” I smiled.
“Uh-huh. Listen, I spent time around back figurin’ out who wasn’t home before we come in. You know who’s home down there? And under them? And under them? Cause they gonna know you there, baby.”
“I’ll be quiet.”
He made a patient face and came over and braced with the rope as I Batman-walked backwards down the wall. Always had this fantasy about like if there was a fire in one of these places I could just swing under from balcony to balcony, get out that way. Figured to do that, have the rope for safety.
It went okay until I got to the glass doors, where I didn’t want to put my feet and make any noise, maybe step through. Finally though there was nothing else but to do it and I squeak slipped and fell and the rope stretched. I landed knees-bent paratroop-style, bounced up again as the rope contracted and dropped out over the railing.
The distant earth swerved beneath me and hope withdrew itself. But the rope strained straight and I touched down tippy-toe on the railing below, a tad too light for traction. Inside, taxpayers were watching TV. I pranced along the railing in an underwater ballet, Shoop following. The rope dragged noisily and when I made the dark end it twanged off the corner and threw me forward.
I fell outward at the wall and clawed at the bricks, dug my fingertips into the grooves. I still had a foot on the railing but I swear I could have clung there indefinitely and crawled up.
Shoop peered over at me and shook his head.
I breathed heavily. Didn’t have to look down, I could feel down. Of course the idea of total safety is folly at the best of times but here it was an inversion of the known.
I checked with all the deities I could think of and, palms fly-tight to the wall, toe in the grillwork, annoyed from above by adjustments in tension, I regained my hold on the solid world and breathed, sweated, breathed. Wow.
Then, gripping the edge of the ninth balcony with one hand, I allowed myself to be lowered until I had to let go, scrambled against the wall until I could touch the railing of the eighth, climbed down the side of that and so forth until I toed in the seventh-floor railing and eased down to the floor. I pulled in rope. The bedroom was dark. I crept along to the light.
The living room. She was on the rug with her back to me, leaning on the couch in an odalisque pose. He sat in profile without his glasses, leaned forward and rubbed his eyes. He wasn’t wearing his pants.
What was she doing on the floor? My stomach fell the other seven stories.
He wore his hands like a mask. “God-damn son of a bitch,” he said.
“It’s normal,” she soothed. She touched his knee.
He dropped his forehead into his hands and stared at something between his legs. Some source of despair.
Her shoes were kicked away. The catch at the top of her dress was undone. The planes in her back.
Well, that was it. That was definitely it.
20.
“There’s a third man,” she said. “I found out that much. Belton, this is absolutely off the record. They mustn’t know it’s us.”
“What do you think they’d do?” He smiled at me.
“This is the biggest story of your career and we’re giving you an exclusive.”
“How about not for attribution? An informal source. What did you have to put out to get this?”
“A little understanding.”
He laughed at me. “Well, Machiavelli said men must either be caressed or annihilated.”
“Typical male logic. I see no reason not to do both.”
“She’ll enjoy sex more under a right-wing government,” he told me.
“What would you know about what I enjoy?”
“Absolutely off the record?”
He was painting her into a corner, her look said. She would remember to thank him.
The waiter cleared the plates and whisked crumbs into a clap-top dustpan.
“Do you like children?” Tiffany asked me.
I shrugged. It’s like when they ask you if you like music, you’re supposed to say yes.
“No,” Belton put in. “Never have. Even when I was a kid I didn’t like them. I couldn’t wait to grow up and be among people whose company was less wearing. Of course it hasn’t always worked.”
He glanced away from Tiffany, from me. Apparently the affair was winding down.
“The President,” he resumed, “is being impeached because he is an incompetent buffoon. That isn’t the same as a coup.”
“What these men have in mind—”
“And what Congress lets them do are two different things.”
“That’s not how the Secretary of State explained it.
“He was getting you ready for bed.”
“He said a President with grass-roots support and the military behind him can dominate Congress, even act without it. If he has to. He says we’re going to have a new style of government. He has the subtlety of an ostrogoth, I’ll admit, but I believed him.”
“And he and Rawlins and this third man are going to bring it about.”
“Well you’ve seen the speech!”
He lifted a page. “Where did you get this?”
“Do you really have to know?”
“It doesn’t prove anything. Where’s the rest of it?”
“Belton, really, the country is in danger. Are you going to help?”
“Help what? Keep that poltroon in office?”
“But you’re the kingmaker. People believe you. If you tell them—”
“Oh, I see. You want me to trot out this evil-triumvirate fantasy on the show. Alberta, do you have any idea what their lawyers could do to us?”
“Belton, try to see beyond that.”
“Look, don’t you think I know I’m being used? Don’t you think everybody knows you’re working for the CIA? You and that psychotic marine who opened fire yesterday?”
He threw his napkin on the table and turned to me. “Is that what you meant when you told me I was going to die? Were you threatening me with assassination? Do your clients know that when they consult you they’re opening their lives to government monitoring?”
“You’re so close it’s unbelievable. He’s afraid of everything,” she told Tiffany. “Belton, try to show a little superiority to your circumstances.”
He grinned at me. “Life’s a bitch and then you marry one.”
“You know you’re old when you understand everything,” she agreed.
“We had the perfect marriage, I understand that. We were both in love with your ass.”
“And he’ll say anything to stimulate himself,” she told Tiffany.
“Did you tell him how you like it?”
“Here it comes.”
“Go on, tell him.”
“Did I ever tell you?”
“You didn’t even tell me when you came.”
“You were never there.”
“Under the tail,” he smiled.
“You are a pig.”
“Likes it snug.”
She shifted discreetly in her seat and gave me an I-was-essentially-a-virgin-until-I-met-you look.
Tiffany followed this with little thrusts of the head.
“Was that why you left?” he said.
“No.”
He let it simmer as long as he could. “Well, why?”
“I’d rather not say.”
“Go on.”
“Belton, please. We used to play that lovers’ game of what are you thinking about,” she told us, “only you really had to say. After a while there was nothing but wreckage.”
“Come on, I can take it. Why?”
“Belton, no.”
“I insist, God damn it! Tel
l me!”
“Because you’re boring.”
“Hah!” he sneered. Is it only her body or is it the way she moves it, his look said.
She lowered her eyes.
“No, come on, tell me.”
“I’m sorry, Belton.”
He retracted his chin. “Boring?”
“You made me say it.”
He grinned at us. At her. “Me?”
“Can we talk about something else?”
He sat back, and there was a little silence. “I’m not boring!” He looked at Tiffany. “Am I boring?”
“Not for me!”
His gaze emptied. His hands, limp on the table.
“Darling, don’t.” Her hand touched his and she turned to me. “I promised myself I wouldn’t do that again. You must never tell anyone why you don’t love them. Belton, try to understand. I can’t make myself. I know it’s a fault but I can’t.”
He just sat there. No one knew what to say.
After a minute Tiffany whispered, “You never read my palm,” and held it out.
“Don’t let him do that,” he said.
Nor was I much in the mood. Another pattern of lines. Lonely, broke, live here, die there. So what.
I opened it and turned it in the light. “You’re pregnant,” I said.
“Belton! You told!”
He looked at her in horror. “I didn’t know,” he reminded her.
Call it genius, call it lightening intuition, I don’t know. They get this glossy look. Something goes soft in the eyes.
“My test isn’t even back yet!”
It was kicking him when he was down of course but I didn’t really mind. I smiled at him. “You should be more careful,” I suggested.
“I said what should we call the baby just in case, and he just took off his rubber thing and made a knot in it. He said if he gets out of that we’ll call him Houdini.”
He was immobile. It was sad to see the guy.
“Must have sprung a leak.”
“I coulda kabonked him!”
“Could be worse,” I told him. “Someone to carry on when you’re gone.”
“You’ve been having a little Tiff, darling.”
“This calls for a drink,” I said.
He signalled the waiter impatiently.
Tiffany didn’t seem to have any questions. “Things are well in hand,” I told her.
“Belton, really, there can’t be anything left for us. This is for America. For freedom. To say nothing of your career.”
He waited until the scotch arrived and he’d put one back, asked for another. He sighed. He didn’t want to play anymore.
“All right, Alberta. But you have to make up your mind. Do you want to go public with this or do you want to stop it?”
“Is there a difference?”
“Hah! I know you, Alberta. You want to go public. You want the limelight.”
“I do not!” she said in her plaintive soprano. “Not until they can’t hurt us.” She pouted proudly, “I want to stop them. I want the world to be a nice place.”
“Then you have to get something on him. Something the voters won’t accept. He’s a manizer, he bought a Thai girl, something that could destroy him politically. Then you control him.”
“You mean,” I said, “we have to blackmail an elected official.”
• • •
I lay in an attitude of sleep, knees bent, hand under the pillow.
“Wordy, really! Nothing happened!”
My breath, slack. Almost snoring.
“How could anything? He was so full he could hardly bend! I made him eat until he couldn’t possibly perform!”
I rolled over topways, settled in bottomways, dug my cheek into the pillow.
“All he could do was lie there and confess! It was really rather sweet! Wordy?” She shook me.
“Alberta,” I said wearily, “I don’t care. I’ve only got so much energy, I don’t care. You’re the way you are, I’m the way I am and it’s great, it’s really great. It’s okay. Let’s just go to sleep.”
We lay in the dark.
“Wordy?”
“Yeah.”
“And he was so drunk! He didn’t even get his leg over!”
“Well good, then. Night.”
“He didn’t!”
“M-kay.”
“Wordy?”
“I’m listening.”
“You think I’m a pretentious pill.”
Through a yawn I said, “No, that’s nice. I like it.”
“I can’t help how I grew up.”
It was time to turn. I did so gratefully, embracing the pillow.
“Wordy?”
“What?”
She didn’t say anything.
“Wordy?”
I lay there and suffered.
“I’m just trying to convince you that I’m kind and good and protective and not just unbearably sexy.”
I did not dignify this with a reply.
“Wordy?”
“M.”
“You don’t see me any more.”
I raised myself as from water and looked at her. “I do see you, Alberta. I have a vision of you. It’s coming to me. I see you on a floor by a couch and Tupper sitting over you with his pants off. Is that a true vision, Alberta?”
Her eyes widened in the dark. “Wordy, sometimes you frighten me.”
“It frightens me, too. I hope you gargled.”
“So that’s what you think of me.”
“I have to trust my vision, Alberta. It’s not the truth?”
“Oh, the truth! You wouldn’t know the truth if it came up and pinched you!”
“What did he do, take it out to show you?”
“Well he thought he was in business! Don’t you all? The drunker you get the surer you are, surely you can think that through. I know thinking isn’t your strong suit but if you connect all the little dots very patiently the picture will start to emerge.”
“You didn’t try to help him?”
“What really hurts is that you give me no credit for resourcefulness. Just because he opened up to me, you—” She turned away and curled up.
“I hate to imply that you’re a phony, Alberta, but sometimes you do make a noise like one.”
“People suture themselves up into strangers even when you’ve known them well. I suppose you’re no different. And why am I defending myself? It wasn’t my idea to help the President!”
Not bad, really. Even the supernatural didn’t faze her. Of course when he’d reached for his pants the evening was over and I was up the wall and out of there, I didn’t see anything. But I wasn’t buying.
“Wait a minute, are you inviting me to imagine a scenario whereby you displayed yourself to the Secretary of State in some cooperative pose and when he got his pants off and couldn’t point you didn’t even touch it? Encourage it with a caress?”
“Think what you like.”
“Not very supportive.”
“All’s fair in love and war.”
“Which is this?”
She whirled on me. “What do you mean by that? Don’t you dare say you love me!”
“I didn’t.”
Shoop hammered on the wall. “Hey! I’m tryna sleep!”
She turned her back and snapped the sheet to her shoulder.
I lay with my hands behind my head and stared up at the darkness.
21.
I toked on the joint and sucked it down, held it in. Took some more down on top of that and held it. Sucked down a short one, passed it to Bibi and leaned back in the corner of the hot tub, my arms along the edges.
It was a pool actually, sunk into a garden with a submerged ledge to loll on. The water was hip-deep and roiling and when we sat it came up to her floats and tickled the buds. Our toes necked.
I don’t know whose house it was but we were somewhere in Georgetown enclosed by a vine-covered stockade. It was hot. The water, hotter. A jet churned at the small of my back. Trees
swayed lazily above us and I dropped my head back on the grass and exhaled at them.
This was more like it. The smell of the ganja, the shushing of the leaves and I was in Goa again with nothing to do but indulge the basic joys. Ingestion, elimination, immersion. Meeting people. Being admired. Right?
Nothing wrong with accepting money, it’s on the list. Certainly it can enhance any of the other items, but my experience in actually seeking it out—
I jerked my head from the thought. Trouble with dope is you can free-associate your way down any old drain. That was all behind me.
All I wanted now was to get this done and pass responsibility for the world on to someone else. You think it’s fun being responsible for the world? It’s not fun.
It was time to get back to some serious hanging out, see my friends. This had been an education, I had lots to tell them. Not that they’d believe me. I mean, do you?
Bibi nudged me and gave me the joint. “It tickles my poosy.” Sitting by a jet I guess she meant.
I brought my toe into play to soothe the offended area and she rose up with a little gasp. Water sparkled on her. Ripples played at her pontoons.
“You’re giving me that you-don’t-love-me-more-than-any-of-the-others-but-you-love-me look,” Alberta had said once, emerging from water.
We used to do the crossword in the Trib, stuff like that. Argue about how to make the bed. She liked it with the sheet out at the top, I liked it out at the bottom. Now I’d have to go through that with somebody else all over again.
The sound of her keys in the hall. Her mirror face. Her snoring. (I mean she snored like a lumberjack.) And of course the electrochemical thing.
I mean if she told me she hadn’t gone down on him wasn’t that almost the same as if she hadn’t? It was what she wanted me to believe. Why not believe it, try that?
From this angle I could stretch reality into any shape to accommodate her. Why not do it?
That cunt!
“Why don’t you say something,” she would shriek. We had come down to short exchanges of basic information. Embassies were still in place but the alliance was straining.
“I am listening with interest,” I informed her. “Shouting people are usually addressing the mirror.”
“You always say something cute.”
“Mm. That doesn’t sound right.”
The President's Palm Reader: A Washington Comedy Page 24
