Shelley's Heart

by Charles McCarry

  Clark looked at his watch. “If that’s all, I’ll excuse myself,” he said. “I’ve heard enough about the Hubbards for one day.”

  “Bear with me for one moment longer, please,” Olmedo said. “There is one more element.”

  Clark turned expressionless eyes on Olmedo.

  “I’ll be brief, and unless you wish me to be otherwise, unspecific,” Olmedo said. “There may be grounds for an article of impeachment that has no bearing on the theft of the election.”

  “Stop right there,” Clark said.

  Attenborough woke up as abruptly as he had gone to sleep.

  “Oh-oh,” he said. “Here comes the raghead. ‘Thou hast done things unto me that ought not to be done.’ Book of Genesis, chapter the twentieth, verse the ninth.”

  “Please, Tucker,” Clark said. “Leave the Bible out of it just this once. Mr. Olmedo, I haven’t heard a word of this. Your allusions are Greek to me. Do you understand me?”

  “As you wish,” Olmedo said, his mild brown eyes fixed on Clark’s cold, accusative face, “but permit me to say that Horace Hubbard is the key to containing a situation that no one wants to see develop.”

  “None of us, maybe, but we’re not alone in this world.”

  Olmedo said, “Let me ask one final question. Are you really so reluctant to help? Is the President of the United States, your old friend, on his own?”

  “That’s not what I said,” Clark replied. “I can’t speak for the Speaker, but I’ll do the best I can to see that due process is observed and justice is done. In fact I’ll work hard to make that happen, and if immunizing Julian Hubbard and this female spy is the only way to do so, I’ll try to help you out. Try.”

  Attenborough had relapsed into a trancelike silence. Only one dim lamp burned on a table on the other side of the room. Olmedo leaned closer to the Speaker, noting the unhealthy hue of his skin; he too explained this to himself as a trick of the light. “Mr. Speaker?”

  “Me, too,” said Attenborough. “But like Sam says, all we can do is try.”

  “Then you will be doing all we have asked or could wish,” Olmedo said. “I’ll tell your friend what you’ve said.”

  “You can tell Lockwood anything you want to,” Clark said, “but we haven’t been talking about my friend, Counselor. We’ve been talking about a President accused of high crimes and misdemeanors.”

  “I’ll tell him that, too, sir.”

  Clark’s face was as blank now as Lockwood’s had been earlier. “You do what you have to do,” he said. “But don’t expect miracles.”

  14

  Arriving at Macalaster’s dinner party on Hammett’s arm, Slim Eve wore a dark dress that showed a discreet two inches of cleavage and flattered her fair skin and her plum-blue eyes; her hair was curled; she was all smiles and silken calves.

  “Who’s the Cosmopolitan girl?” Macalaster asked.

  “It’s Slim, I told you,” Hammett replied.

  “The transformation from ecofreak to starlet is a little disorienting.”

  “That’s the trouble with you journalists,” Hammett replied. “You’re waterbugs living on the surface of experience.”

  Across the room, Attenborough was asking Zarah Christopher how she spelled her name. “Ah, the twin that stuck his arm out and the midwife tied a red string on it!” he said.

  Slim approached. “A red string?” she asked “Why?”

  “To mark the firstborn twin. Good thing, too, because the other one shoved past him and was born first. Genesis, chapter the thirty-eighth, verse the thirtieth: ‘And afterward came out the brother that had the scarlet thread upon his hand: and his name was called Zerah.’ Judah begat the twins—other one’s name was Pharez—upon his lonesome daughter-in-law, Tamar. Not knowing it was her, of course, Judah being a righteous man. She snuck up on him, kind of.”

  Slim gazed at him in wide-eyed admiration. “That’s amazing!” she said.

  “That’s more or less what Judah said,” Attenborough replied. “But thank you. Nothing I enjoy more than amazing a lovely young lady.”

  At table, Slim looked at the place cards. Zarah’s was next to Attenborough, at the end of the table. Slim said, “Can we swap? I’m left-handed.” Even though this meant sitting next to Hammett, Zarah, who was left-handed herself, agreed.

  Because the Speaker’s voice was so loud, other conversation was impossible while he explained to Slim how he happened to know the Holy Bible by heart. “My daddy thought that the Lord gave me this loud voice I’ve got because it was His will for me to grow up to be a preacher,” he said.

  “And did you agree with that idea?” Slim asked.

  Her rapt tone of voice reminded Macalaster, who sat on her other side, of the dating advice in Eisenhower-era magazines for unmarried females: Get the boy talking about himself.

  Attenborough had not answered Slim’s question. His eyes were closed. He had nodded off. She touched the back of his hand with her long, polished fingernails. She said, “Well?”

  The Speaker woke up and gave her an admiring look. “No, lovely lady, I didn’t share my daddy’s conviction in this matter,” he said. “They dragged me to tent meetings all over West Texas. Everybody else was shedding tears of joy and speaking in tongues. I’d be the only one in the congregation who never could get the spirit.”

  “Did that bother your father?”

  “You bet it did. On the way home from worship he’d tie me up to the tailgate of the pickup truck and try to beat the spirit of the Lord into me with a harness strap.”

  “How awful!” Slim cried.

  Attenborough gave her a pat on the arm, as if she had been the one whupped with a one-inch trace. Then, deftly, he laid a child-size hand on her thigh under the table. She reached down and captured it in her own larger hand, which was surprisingly rough as a result of her work on the farm. “But how did learning the Bible come into it?” she asked.

  “Well,” said Attenborough, “I figured I needed to find a way around the situation and the only means I had was a good memory, so I began memorizing the Good Book, a chapter a day. After that, when my daddy would haul out that harness strap, I’d sing out something like, ‘And he said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.’ Book of Exodus, chapter the thirty-third, verse the nineteenth. It worked; Daddy figured the Lord must be whispering the words in my ear because I was too dumb to learn them on my own, so he laid down his rod—or his harness strap, to be more accurate.”

  The rest of the company, all but Slim and Hammett, laughed in appreciation of the Speaker’s anecdote. Slim’s large mascaraed eyes swam with sympathy. She squeezed his hand, which had been lying inert in hers. He squeezed back and held on.

  “Were you gentle with your own children, Mr. Speaker?”

  “Tucker, call me Tucker,” Attenborough said, stroking the backs of her ringless fingers with his thumb. “Never had any, never was married.” He gave Slim’s hand a meaningful squeeze.

  She said, “Didn’t you ever want children?”

  “Wanting ‘em is a whole different thing from knowing what to do with ‘em after you’ve got ‘em,” Attenborough said. “In my psychology course in college, I read where sons make the same mistakes as their fathers.”

  “Oh? Where’d you go to college?”

  “Saul Ross State College in Alpine, Texas; majored in yelling at football games, minored in panty raids. El Paso for law school. Anyhow, I thought I might do the little critters like my daddy done me, so I didn’t have any.”

  Slim said, “I can’t believe you would have done that, Tucker.”

  “Then somebody else would have, pretty lady. Any kid coming into this world is like somebody from another planet parachuting into the gulag. The guards grab ‘em as soon as they land and start slapping ‘em around and yelling stupid orders at ‘em, saying no to every simple request, making ‘e
m eat when they don’t want to and starving ‘em when they’re hungry. The kid thinks, What’s my crime? What am I guilty of that I’m locked up in this damn concentration camp with crazy people four times as big as I am yellin’ at me and beatin’ on me all day long? And there’s no escape, by God; you can’t go back where you came from, where nobody bothered you and all you did was snooze and listen to the pipes gurgle. It’s a life sentence with no parole.”

  A waiter in a tuxedo was clearing the plates. He said, “Are you finished with your salmon, Mr. Speaker?”

  Attenborough knew this young man from many previous dinner parties, and he had looked him up soon after arrival and given him a twenty-dollar bill to keep his water glass filled with Absolut vodka. “I’m gonna pass on the salmon,” he said. “But I could use a little more of that ice water when you have a chance.” With an indulgent smile the waiter whisked the empty glass away and after a moment returned with a full one. Attenborough drank deeply.

  Macalaster continued to watch with interest as Slim worked her feminine wiles on Attenborough. He was aware that Hammett was also observing the process. Macalaster understood that she was the bait in a trap that Hammett had set for the Speaker. But to what end? What was going on?

  Between courses, Slim revealed that she too was a lawyer. She even knew about Attenborough’s famous one-question victory in the case of the insulted bride. “With your photographic memory,” she said, “you must have been a whiz in law school.”

  “Did okay.” Attenborough, beginning to tire of doing all the talking, said, “You work for the Chief Justice?”

  “No, I just admire him tremendously.”

  “You do? Why’s that, honey?”

  Attenborough’s eyes were no longer smiling. Slim kept up her cheery manner. “Chief Justice Hammett was my professor and academic adviser at Yale Law School,” she said.

  “Taught you how to think, did he?”

  “In a way, yes, I guess you could say he did.”

  Attenborough’s eyes narrowed. This woman must be a goddamn Hammettite. He freed his hand from Slim’s in order to help himself to the most well-done slice of beef from the silver platter offered by the waiter. In his other hand the servant held a silver bowl filled with some kind of vegetable casserole. Attenborough sniffed this dish, then waved it away.

  “No veggies?” Slim said. “I made that ratatouille myself, out of organically grown ingredients. It’s the Chief Justice’s favorite. No salt or chemicals of any kind.”

  “Ratatootie?” Attenborough had slipped deeper into a parody of good-old-boy speech and behavior as the level of the vodka in his water tumbler dropped inch by inch. “Is that some kind of Arab dish?” he asked, pronouncing the word AY-rab.

  The waiter reached Slim. She picked up the serving spoon in her right hand the serving fork in her left. Attenborough’s small, moist, feverishly hot hand pressed her leg, just above the knee. The monkey’s paw, Slim thought with a shudder. His fingers walked upward, as in a child’s game of mousie-mousie. She was unable to defend herself and lift food from the platter at the same time. With amazing swiftness and dexterity Attenborough’s hand lifted her short skirt, folded it back over her napkin, and scurried up the inside of her thigh. Startled, yet not surprised, she twitched slightly, relaxing her legs; through a rip in the crotch of her panty hose, two scurrying fingers found her labia. A third searched for her clitoris; she was back in high school, the pre-enlightened Slim. She clamped her legs shut. Attenborough’s fingers, though entrapped, continued working; she felt the scratch of a fingernail as he enlarged the gap in the nylon.

  Slim finished taking her food, ratatouille only. “What, no meat?” Attenborough said with a look of perfect innocence. Slim returned it, innocence for innocence.

  A testy conversation about Shelley was going on between Hammett and Zarah Christopher. To her surprise, Slim realized that she was approaching orgasm. It wasn’t Attenborough who was producing this pleasure, it was the situation, it was the memory of other men. But she could not let it go on. Feigning interest in what was being said across the table and continuing to eat with her left hand, she reached down and grasped Attenborough’s hand with her free right hand and dug her thumbnail into the tender wrist joint. Nothing happened, so she twisted his little finger until she thought it might break. Attenborough might as well have been anesthetized—which of course he was—for all the effect these karate holds produced. He resisted her effort to drag his hand from her crotch; he was incredibly strong. Moreover, his fingernail seemed to be razor-sharp. Did he keep it long for just this purpose? She felt the fabric tearing between her legs. She grasped his wrist with her other, stronger hand and tried to stop him, glaring angrily into his face. This struggle enlarged the hole in her panty hose. Stroking her exposed skin, he smiled beatifically; then, groping all the while, he turned his head to listen to something Zarah Christopher was saying to Hammett across the table.

  “What do you know about Shelley?” Hammett was asking.

  “Very little,” Zarah said. “Except that he was a totalitarian.”

  Hammett’s sulky face darkened. “Explain that,” he said.

  Zarah liked this rude and dogmatic man even less on second meeting. There was something sly, even unnatural here, as if he behaved as he did on the advice of a psychoanalyst or a case officer. “All right,” Zarah said. “Prometheus Unbound reads like a dream Stalin had in an opium den. Shelley describes heaven on earth as a place where people fall asleep and when they wake up they’re not human any longer. They’ve taken off their human nature and condition like a disguise; therefore they’re happy because now they’re all alike, thinking beautiful thoughts. Utopia always turns out to be an eternal prison camp with people like Shelley in the commandant’s office.”

  “What absolute sick nonsense!” Hammett cried, recoiling.

  With a look of deep interest, Attenborough leaned toward Zarah and said, “Is this the Shelley that wrote ‘To a Sky-Lark’?” She nodded. “Never realized he was an early pinko,” the Speaker said. Then, with a broad smile breaking over his puffy face, he lifted his goblet and declaimed, “ ‘Hail to thee, blithe Spirit! / Bird thou never wert—’ ”

  Slim shrieked, “Help!”

  Underneath the table, Attenborough’s middle finger had broken through. His victim leaped to her feet, overturning her chair. Beneath her skirt, she was still holding his wrist in both her hands. It was an extremely short skirt. Slim had truly wonderful legs, and there was no mistaking what had been happening.

  “You filthy swine!” Slim shouted, showering saliva. Her face was crimson and her staring eyes burned with rage and disgust.

  Her sudden movement had dragged Attenborough off his chair, and he staggered after her, attempting to free his captured hand. He held his goblet of vodka in his other hand, trying in vain to keep it from spilling. Suddenly, with a single violent movement, Slim lifted his hand above her head. Then, turning her own superbly conditioned body on her spike heels, she yanked it downward in an expert martial-arts maneuver that slammed him to the floor.

  Attenborough struck the carpet face-first, shattering the tumbler and slashing his hand. Breathing hoarsely, Slim stared down with glittering eyes at his prone body with an expression of triumph and hatred, then lifted her skirt. “Look!” she cried. “I want you all to see this!”

  Hammett stared in horror at the shredded fabric in Slim’s panty hose: pink skin and curly hair showed through a large and spreading hole. “Please!” he cried in genuine revulsion. Obediently Slim dropped her skirt.

  At her feet, Attenborough stirred, groaned, and raised himself on an elbow. His hand was bleeding onto the pale-blue Persian carpet. Macalaster rushed to the Speaker’s side and bandaged the hand in a napkin snatched from the table.

  “Look at that little creep. Smell him!” Slim said. “He’s drunk! But it’s still aggravated sexual battery. You are my witnesses.”

  A pretty impressive list of witnesses, Macalaster thought, gazing upwar
d from his kneeling position at the impassive face of the Chief Justice of the United States.

  “Nineveh,” Attenborough muttered confidentially.

  Macalaster was trying to stanch the alarming flow from Atten-borough’s wound. He said, “What?”

  “Capital of old-time Assyria, Sin City,” Attenborough replied in the same conspiratorial tone. Raising his voice to its normal power, he said, “ ‘Harlotries of the harlot… . I will lift up your skirt over your face. I will show the nations your nakedness and the kingdoms your shame.’ “ Then, murmuring again and winking at Macalaster, “The Lord of Hosts speaking, book of Nahum, chapter the third.”

  Macalaster said, “Can you get up? We’ve got to get you to the emergency room.”

  “No damn emergency room!” Attenborough said.

  “It’s that or bleed to death, from the look of things. Somebody give me another napkin.”

  Zarah gave him hers. Attenborough looked at the blood dripping from the saturated table linen in which his hand was wrapped. “Jesus!” he said. His clouded eyes rolled back in his head until only the bloodshot canary-yellow whites showed, and then he fainted.

  15

  The emergency room doctor, a stern young female wearing gloves, gown, and a transparent plastic shield over her face to protect her from the AIDS virus, examined Attenborough’s wound. It was still bleeding profusely, spattering droplets of gore on her white coat as she turned it this way and that under the strong overhead light, mopping with a swab. Her name tag said ANNA M. CHIN, M.D. She looked intently at his eyes and skin, palpated his right side, lifted his trouser leg, and pressed his calf with a gloved fingertip, noting that the dimple this created in the flesh did not go away. If she recognized her famous patient, she said nothing about it. The Speaker had checked in as Richard T. Attenborough. His health plan card, his driver’s license, in fact all of his documentation, had always read that way, a routine precaution against unfortunate publicity.