Keesh folded his arms and chewed a fingernail.
The President turned it upsidedown to try it. “It’s easier this way,” he said, but it slipped on over his head and he couldn’t get it up again over his chin.
“Please be careful, Mr. President!”
“Heh heh,” he said as from down a well. “I can’t, uh—”
A crewman came in and whispered something to Keesh. “Sir?” said the latter.
The President turned his shoulders towards him.
“We’re heading towards LAND, sir!”
“Well that’s—How can—We can’t do that!”
He groped for the walkie-talkie and when it was put in his hand raised it to his neck and pried at the pot. “Turn the boat around!” he shouted. He drew back, the sound must have hurt him. “Full ahead! Is that a roger? Do I have a roger on that?”
He held the receiver where his ear might have been and then handed it away. “Tell him not to hit the land,” he instructed.
An aide relayed this into the receiver and the President bent forward and tried to unscrew the pot. Keesh tugged at it with all possible delicacy while the aides judged angles and urged it with the tact of engineers.
Shoop’s interest was by now almost entirely detached. He looked like he was watching television.
Then, as if to place us on equal footing with the President, the lights went out. Some kind of total electrical failure, there was no light anywhere. Naturally this went unnoticed by him. “Hard right!” he called, though whether to the helmsman or to the pot-pullers was not entirely clear.
I went outside to see if I could see anything. No lights in the distance. That meant we weren’t near land, right? No headlights, no streetlights. No houses.
Inside, through the wind, a rage of voices.
“Mr. President?”
“Mr. President?”
“Mr. President,” said Alberta, “can you hear me?”
I struggled along the passageway. The wind and the waves gave me the impression of speed and we were leaning way over to one side, so either we were riding hard against the wind or we were turning fast.
No auxiliary electrical thing was kicking in. If I could find the cockpit I could tell them to cut the engine—I assumed they were doing nothing without the President’s say-so—but for all I knew they’d shut down anyway. But then, even if we weren’t moving we were moving, you know what I’m saying? I didn’t know where they hid out anyway and it was so dark I could hardly see my drink.
I made my way around the whole periphery and didn’t spot a light. We were in no imminent danger.
But then we veered violently and there were screams in the rec room. People falling, furniture sliding around. It may have been then that we lost the chopper, I don’t know. At some point it slipped its stirrups and slid into the sea.
Well, this was it. This was what it all came down to. I hung on the railing, salt spray contaminating my scotch, and contemplated the chaos.
“I resign,” I said, toasting the void.
The President was just insufficiently evil, that’s all. So full of sincerity he’d talked himself out of everything he’d ever wanted.
“I am through being an agent of Providence,” I pronounced, raising my glass.
And of course we’d go down with him. If not here, there. Crooks, now. A gang of crooks.
That’s what involvement gets you. I had conceived this whole thing as an effort-saving device. Now look.
“FUCK THIS!” I screamed.
I had not escaped after all. I had something to say.
We leaned over the other way. Behind me, shrieks.
I don’t know how long I stood there, hanging out into the night, hurling through nothingness, constructing a myth for myself even as the nosecone overheated.
The waves tore at us, or we at the waves, I don’t know.
I felt light. Naked. No Longer Weighed Down By Hope.
Fairly luxurious state of affairs, really. Perhaps a little too gorgeous. When the explosion came I was already giving up on it.
At first I didn’t know what it was. The explosion, I mean. There was a sound, I guess you’d say, more like a vmf, really, a sudden rush of air. You felt it more than heard it and everything gave. Just everything gave.
I didn’t even know I was flying till I sensed the glow behind me, garish orange and not showing anything except the sea below, with shadows from the waves and hard to say how far down, like a quick shot from a movie.
If I was that high it would be like hitting concrete, splat, but it opened up and I plunged in streamlined as if I were being pulled through a ring. I shot way down past my floor until I was more than ready to breathe again and was kicking and clawing for the top long before I stopped dropping.
Which wasn’t easy either, kicking and clawing. I had executed what can only be described as a testicle flop on the way in and now the coordination was off. Desperation in the diaphragm. Missed it, breathing. By the time I was able to get back up to the air I was barely able to control the impulse.
Took an hour.
The surface was mountainous, and it was raining wreckage and flaming fragments. I ducked under by stages to avoid the fall-out and after a while I found something big enough to float me and crawled on and clung.
When I bobbed high enough I could see the glow from the main cinder and surfboard-paddled in that direction as best I could, but it was a ways away and hard to keep in sight. After a futile while the waves doused it and I concentrated on not slipping off.
It wasn’t until dawn that I caught sight of anybody. The sea was calmer now and off in the distance I saw this wobbly-looking thing almost submerged like drifting seaweed with people perched on it. Turned out to be a makeshift raft. Survivors on shards of hull and things had grouped up and manged to hook and hammer their small craft together.
I picked up a piece of lifeboat and paddled towards them. Fes in torn shirt and drenched hair was standing with one foot on the main flotilla and the other on something he was wiring to it. The President, in boxer shorts and over-the-calf socks, stood on something steady surveying things.
Alberta sat nearby hugging her knees and I could see Shoop reclining on his elbow, basking.
Keesh stepped from shaky piece of flotsam to shaky piece of flotsam counting cats. His whites were all char-stained and stuck to him but his hair was exactly in place, I don’t know what he put in it.
His three crew people were there, I think that’s all he started with. The copter pilot, the aides, the Servicemen, tatters and blackened faces. Glad-to-be-alive looks.
The cats looked a little put out, not being big swimmers, but every time Keesh shrieked a name he was rewarded by an answering whine or a spectacle of some sort of heart-rending cuteness. So they were all there.
Everyone but Norman.
I was happy to have my paddle. Black fins patrolled the surface, cutting and diving. Dolphins come to butt us shorewards one might have hoped, but nothing friendly stood up on its tail and squeaked. Made you feel fragile.
Fes grappled my plank over and I stepped aboard.
“Put that over here,” said the President.
We did so and I went and sat by Alberta.
“Are you all right?”
“Oh, yes.” She watched the President admiringly.
“Bring that around over there,” he said.
“I’m all right too,” I said.
I looked at Shoop, who seemed fairly post-blast blasé. The others were busy assembling things.
Apparently what had happened was that the vahz had broken in all the tumbling around and unblinkered the President. They had lost contact with the control room but Keesh had found some candles he kept for some reason near the TV and the President had delegated Norman to go below and find the fuse box, wedge a dime in or something.
Keesh had shoved him at the stairs and, armed with candle and lighter, Norman must eventually have stumbled all the way down to the, you know, the bottom w
here the bilge is. Of course the candle would have kept blowing out and he would have advanced a little and relit, advanced a little and relit. After wandering the labyrinth for a while he must have found himself up to his knees in bilge which he would be too unnautical to know is generally part gasoline.
What with spillage from all the tipping around, the mixture must have been two hundred proof and he might have smelled it if he hadn’t had the cold. Added to which, Keesh stored some of his equipment down there and when Norman flicked his Bic several drums of hairspray had gone up As One.
Sharks darted, searched, dove.
If anything was left of Norman it would certainly suffer post-trauma syndrome for some time to come. But there wasn’t much hope. My own dinner jacket was practically ruined.
Still, we were here.
“You were lucky,” I said. I had been outside when it happened and more or less available to leave the scene.
“The waterbed helped.”
“The waterbed?”
“It cushioned the shock.” `
Now that I noticed, everyone else looked raggedier and more shipwrecked than she did. She had a black slip on that wasn’t even ripped.
Except the President. His shirt retained its wash-n-wear press.
“Eliot, get in the water and get that. Come on, come on, it’s got to be done.”
“You were in a waterbed?”
“Keesh has a waterbed.”
“You were in a waterbed with Keesh?”
She gave me an old-fashioned look.
I waited.
“Well if you must know we went into the bedroom to get the pieces of pottery out of the President’s hair. They’re dangerous, you know, and—” She shrugged. “—the motion tipped us in.” She looked away.
I looked away.
The sea, the sharks. The President pacing the deck.
“So,” I said.
“Well he is the President, darling.”
“All right, get that tied on over there.”
Didn’t seem to be that much to say.
“And he, uh. Did all right?”
“He’s a big, strong President.”
He turned around. “Want to go another time? I could do it!”
“Wordy, we have been growing apart lately.”
The President put his hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry Word. It just happened.”
A shark munched at the raft.
Incredible as it may sound, I felt peaceful.
“That’s it. That’s it. Move it a little. That’s it.”
“It’s all right, sir.”
“Andrew, poke that shark away from there.”
“I guess the best man won.”
“I’m glad you see it that way, Word.”
He gazed off at the middle distance. There were things to do.
Helicopters.
Coda
So that was basically that.
On the afternoon news America saw aerial shots of sea-tossed survivors and a President in their midst who could pull them together in the face of a crisis. A President in command.
He was the last one up the ladder, stood there handing up cats, and as he stepped from the raft it wallowed away in the waves. He had brought us through.
And we said as much into the microphones that met us on the hospital lawn, still wrapped in our blankets. Alberta managed to imply that he was just too much man, perhaps the teeniest bit brutal.
During the days that followed Americans saw a President whose first months in office had taught him how to guide a` government, a President who could cabinet-shuffle to the point of unwrapping a new deck, a President who could send his wife to Wyoming to judge a cactus contest while he held interviews she might better not inquire into, maybe take the opportunity to rethink herself. They didn’t actually hear him say that but he was clearly a President who could do it.
In short, a President.
At his suggestion Congress pushed all discussion of possible impeachment down the agenda until it found itself with less pressing business. He had a few things of his own in mind.
Not that you have to be popular to be president or anything, there were enough examples to show that, but they loved this man. And they loved to love him. The market soared out of sight, he had trouble holding the dollar down and he made brilliant progess in the arms talks, got concessions for on-site inspection in exchange for charge cards at Neiman Marcus.
Reb resigned gracefully. He admitted in a not untouching speech that he had achieved all he could in politics. Indeed his now famous gesture was doing him no end of good down home. He had hung the ultimate rat at the Yankees, showed them how people down there felt and went on to a career as a touring evangelist. They say his circus-tent sermons are something to see.
Recky announced their separation, filed for divorce and moved in with Celebrado who, she quietly let it be known, had a twelve-inch tongue and could breathe through his ears.
W.T. put up more of a fight. He insisted, hand on heart, that he was guilty of no wrongdoing and had nothing to hide. On the contrary he had things to say to the Senate subcommittee about how the President had or rather had not been carrying out the duties of his office.
Of course the tape had been lost in the yachting accident and if there were copies they weren’t surfacing. But several people had seen it that night and so had Belton’s technicians and word of his fetish was already out when a fed-to-the-teeth Nola told a New Woman interviewer that his ideal woman was waist-high with big ears and a flat head to set his beer on. This was reported by leading anchorpersons with a neutrality so intimidating that everyone more or less gave him up for dead and Buchwald finished him off with a column about being southern-fried. When he saw the way things were going he took the hint and retired to a free-range chicken ranch where he is said to live the life of a pasha.
Of course I had Norman in mind for Nola. Thought I sensed a spark there. I don’t know, I did everything I could for him, he wouldn’t cooperate.
There was a memorial service in the Bay and a buoy bearing a bronze plaque was anchored out there. For his country and so forth. Mostly it’s underwater.
Once in a while Mrs. President—they still call her Mrs. President—has the Coast Guard fish it up and throw a wreath around it.
Nola dropped out of sight for a while, which was okay, but when the divorce was final she re-emerged with—are you ready?—Blotskie! It was the obvious solution, I should have thought of it myself. For him she was America, she was available and by Russian standards not that bad-looking. For her he was a pulse, what did she want. So they’re all right.
Gora Smardovich was recalled to Moscow where she was reassigned as a state tour guide. You may see her there some time.
Fes was made Captain of the Palace Guard, though the control room monitored his impulses right down to his autonomic nervous functions. Whenever he was called upon to speak he did so slowly and without focus. Wasn’t really Fes till he got off work.
And when he got off work he headed for the quarantine compound across the river with a high CIA fence around it and helped Keesh feed the cats. Never say never.
When all the fuss died down Belton was pretty well in the clear. He had made no attempt actually to blackmail anyone and the only thing they had on him was interim possession of the tape, which was now gone. No copies seemed to have survived, and if they had there is some doubt whether W.T. would have cared to subpoena them or whatever.
He still had the TV show, still had Washington, still had his audience. But, I don’t know, the wrong woman, the wrong work. One night he got out of bed and jumped out his eighth-floor window like it was something he’d forgotten to do. You get that.
I mean I warned him.
Which was sort of tough on Tiffany with the baby coming and everything but she kept up with her birthing classes and when the little stranger arrived he was all brown! Little brown guy!
Turns out Austin was in the picture. Remember him? Page one? White br
oad in the bathroom?
He was a little reluctant to own up at first but when he was presented with the results of the blood test he figured what the hell, may as well bow out while they’re still applauding, call it a career. Time to hang the gun up. I mean he still wears it to work and everything.
So they got married and lived happily ever after. No, really! Some people do it!
Let’s see, did I leave anyone out?
In Shoop I had found someone I could work with. Not that I wanted to follow through on the burglary thing but I mean here was a guy who could not get caught!
I suggested to him that we Huck-n-Jim it for the territories together but no, he said, Washington was what he knew and he was going to open shop for politicos on the Hill who wanted to know a little more about one another. Sort of a research organization. He’d got some press, got some presidential recognition and he was ready to go into contract work. No, he’d just take his third and nice knowing you.
“A third!” I laughed.
He settled out of court for two hundred and seventy-five thousand walking money and started scanning the ads for office space.
Lewman did finally free up the funds, though you could see it hurt him. The FBI had been faked out in the final play and for Lewman there was no glory, no promotion, no picture with the President.
He confronted me with Charlie just as a matter of form but he didn’t even look at me. “I want God to kill everybody,” he said and they led him back down to the truck.
I took my half out of the bank and split. Finkle would resume my caseload I suppose, there was no more to do here. Time to throw myself at the world again. Didn’t want to hang around and be formed by any more vicissitudes.
Hard-hearted Hannah would be staying on as the First Mistress. Played a tougher game that I did, that’s all. These things have to be faced.
Of course there was The Satisfaction Of Having Helped. “You’l1 be all right now, sir,” I said as we shook hands good-bye. I not sure he heard me.
I guess I really should have invested the money but, I don’t know, I just couldn’t get interested. I bought six hundred thousand dollars worth of travelers checks and got on the plane.
The President's Palm Reader: A Washington Comedy Page 31
