Author: Jed Mercurio
Category: Other
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Yet in this corridor of faces turned in admiration, instead of contorted into customary Old World sneers, the First Lady’s regal bearing pays off in an instant; the years of marriage, of assumed monogamy, of strife hidden for the sake of appearances, bear bountiful political fruit. The President has landed in this land of sniffy haute couture not in the company of a prim little Midwestern cookie-baker but on the arm of an American princess, who not only charms the proletariat but, at the reception this evening, the President of the Republic himself, by conversing fluently with him in his native tongue.
In the French fashion, le President must keep many mistresses. Perhaps while his American counterpart is over here, he’ll donate him one like they did the Statue of Liberty. He is a king, this French aristocrat with the martial corpulence of a tank, a reminder that great men can change history, within certain obvious limitations, and many of them are driven to plunder women, and what a pale and pathetic world we would inhabit were only the advertently monogamous permitted to run our industries and govern our institutions, a world inherited by bloodless men woken from their dreamless sleep by the crash of lovers, racers, gourmands and warriors, while men with appetites and the appetite for change fall beneath the juggernaut of conventional morality.
Le President must appreciate that the President is a man of equal, if not substantially stronger, appetites. He must see. He must. His snout twitches at the First Lady’s perfume as a hound scents a trail, before his eyes glow in admiration, as, to the President’s surprise, do his. Yet it is the American President who possesses the queen, from whom so much of the king’s status stems, although for some heads of state their choice makes marriage resemble riding a tiger.
Men make their match not with the woman they can get but with the woman they can keep. A man at some point in his life will sleep with a woman far more attractive than his usual quarry, for whatever reason (she is naïve, she is a masochist, she is drunker than a monkey), and fall instantly in love. But there will follow the woman’s epiphany, which may occur the following morning or after their marriage, in which she glimpses the power of her beauty, a point from which he cannot prevent losing her, and men come to understand this fact in their sexual careers. One does one’s best to bed beautiful women, and one’s worst by becoming attached to them. Yet the subject appears to have mastered the impossible, a fact indicated by the admiring gazes of men as august as le President, and when they return to the embassy that night, the subject remembers first looking upon his bride-to-be before she embarked on housekeeping and motherhood and her dreadfully suffocating worship of monogamy.
As he soaks in the giant, gilded bathtub, the steam of those days swirls around, when she was the woman a man could get but couldn’t keep, as witnessed by her fiancé, in his car waiting for her to walk out from the restaurant on that night of their first meeting, the knowledge striking the fiancé through the rain-spattered glass of his windshield when he saw her strolling out with the then junior senator as challengingly as if she were a bitch marking a tree.
Before marriage, the subject had a longish dalliance with a movie actress, a dazzling beauty separated from her husband. (The husband eventually became the First Lady’s clothes designer, a position holding pressures and responsibilities at least equal to the engineers who build our space rockets.) Gene, the actress, was actually someone he seriously considered marrying from their first night together. She turned heads wherever they went. He offered his career as the reason for breaking up, but the truth was every man would kill for her, and she knew it. He couldn’t arrive ten minutes late at a restaurant without finding a chancer at her table, her hand in his as she gazed up at him, whether he was or wasn’t the bigger, better deal, and through cocktails she’d give a serene stare that warned, “Don’t be late, don’t put me down and expect to find me where you left me.” In a wife, he required a woman who would capitulate for fear of losing him. Given the kind of drab mouse that can be, he’s done rather well for himself.
She slips into the bathroom with a daiquiri she’s had the embassy valet make. Steam condenses on her face, making her skin glisten. The President can see she’s excited about the day that is just ending, and he’s proud of her. “They love you,” he says, “almost as much as I do.”
The First Lady takes part in a number of solo cultural engagements while the President conducts a crowded schedule of political summits. Dr. Feelgood treats his back in secret before the President competes with his French counterpart in debates on Franco-American relations. The President receives greater respect than advisors predicted. He suspects General de Gaulle has decided he must have something going for him to have kept such a lovely wife.
This afternoon, while the First Lady visits Marie-Antoinette’s house in the company of the Minister of Culture, the subject carves out some time between meetings at the embassy for Fiddle and Faddle to administer a scalp massage in the private quarters. It is now nearly a week since the subject last had extramarital relations. He is complaining of a tension headache, testicular aching and incipient sexual toxemia.
Aides and Secret Service agents appear not to notice the girls troop into the room. His crutches stand propped against the wall inconspicuously; perhaps he hopes these young women will disregard his chronic infirmities as they would a pitcher’s sore shoulder or a running back’s sprained knee, minor injuries that will heal by the weekend. The President asks how they’re enjoying the trip, and they’re agog with questions about his summit with the French head of state.
He says, “He wants Louisiana back but I offered to trade Canada.”
Priscilla laughs, and she is the one he asks to stay for a few minutes when Jill has left. He struggles into a supine position, saying, “My next engagement’s in ten minutes.”
When the First Lady returns, she is brimming with inspiration for her White House restoration, and at their engagement that evening once again she shines in a stunning gown. The President opens his speech by joking that, since no one has noticed, he’s the man accompanying the First Lady on this tour.
The next day, the party flies on to Vienna, the journey throwing the President’s back into spasm. As soon as they’re hidden inside the embassy compound, he demands his crutches and hobbles to their quarters with word going ahead to run a hot bath. Fortunately, Dr. Feelgood’s charter flight lands at a private airfield an hour after the SAM touched down. Three people are required to lift the President out of the tub and lay him on a mat, and then the Old Nazi shoots him up with painkillers, muscle relaxants and amphetamine, his favorite cocktail after a daiquiri.
In the morning, the President’s back is locked so tight he can’t walk two steps. But, thanks to Dr. Feelgood’s next course of injections, the Leader of the Free World bounds down the embassy steps to greet the Soviet Premier.
The Premier favors a hat, the great leveler for the short and bald, which is why the subject deliberately eschews them, all the better to broadcast the excellence of his stature and the lush magnificence of his thatch. For the ceremonial handshake, the President stands erect, so Mr. Khrushchev only comes up to his shoulder. The latter clasps his hand so hard the President feels a pop in the base of his spine, but his smile never flickers thanks to the elixirs swirling through his system.
In the private meeting, the Premier sprays the President with vitriol concerning Berlin, nuclear arms and Cuba. He seizes on the President’s sensitivity to the last and goes on the attack. In the end, the President confesses the invasion was a mistake, yet his efforts to open meaningful negotiations on nuclear disarmament and cooperation in the governance of Berlin are bludgeoned by a lengthy tirade on the merits of communism and the crimes of Western imperialism. As the meeting ends, the President enquires about the medals on the Premier’s jacket, which Mr. Khrushchev reveals are peace medals. The President says, “Well, I hope you get to keep them!” The Premier chuckles, and, at a banquet at Schönbrunn Palace, he continues the metamorphosis, even cracking jokes with the First Lady. His own l
umpy spouse is apparently his third, the first one having died during a famine, so he must take comfort in the knowledge that this one looks extremely unlikely to perish from starvation.
As usual, Dr. Feelgood arrives at the embassy early the next day to effect the President’s pharmacological transformation from cripple to vigorous Leader of the Free World, while the jocose farmer from last night’s banquet has once more reverted to a hard-nosed communist, who scorns suggestions of a ban on testing nuclear weapons as an initial step toward disarmament. The President endeavors to vocalize his fears that nuclear war might arise from unstoppable escalation, or even by mistake, that as the two great powers who hold the fate of mankind in our grasp, we must collaborate in the quest for peace, but the Premier returns to the subject of Berlin, voicing the certitude of a treaty with East Germany that will lead to Soviet troops taking control of the western portion of the city.
The President says, “The United States must and will honor its commitment to the people of West Berlin.”
The Premier says, “We will sign the treaty whether you like it or not. If you use force, Mr. President, then I will use force. If you want war, that’s your problem.”
His words haunt the President as the party flies on to Great Britain. The fat little peasant without even so much as a high school education is the Russian bear who expects to triumph in the pit because he sniffs weakness. He is wrong, but he doesn’t know he’s wrong, and he will believe that confrontation will intimidate the President of the United States into making mistakes.
* * *
As they drive into London, the President sees streets lined with people, not cheering as they did in Paris, but waving BAN THE BOMB banners grey as gravestones.
Rolling two limos behind is a pair of military aides, one of whom wears the Football handcuffed to his wrist. They accompany the President everywhere, usually within a minute’s call, never more than ninety seconds away. They rode on the SAM in seats set apart, in their crisp, dark uniforms, sipping mineral water, the black Football granted a seat of its own. Sometimes the President swears he thinks he hears it tick.
Over the English Channel, alone in their private cabin, he peered down into the slate sea and had never been more fearful, not even in the Pacific. We possess in our nuclear arsenals the power to obliterate each other, and his hopes for the future will disappear from this earth just as the wakes of the ships below perished in immemorial waters. He pictures silver darts rising in banks from beyond the Caucasus, blips on radar screens and telephones ringing, blank men in uniforms confirming codes and then our own missiles groaning in their silos, becoming beasts ascending from the underworld. He sees them merge, over the ocean, making ten thousand metal crosses in the sky, each one to mark the grave of a million dead. His hand is on the button, and it trembles.
At Buckingham Palace, the President is received by the Queen, who is flawlessly hospitable, but, despite being a relatively young and pleasant-looking woman, she’s so aristocratically buttoned up he couldn’t imagine going to bed with her—her Monagasque counterpart being a different matter entirely, however. Sources suggest her consort has felt the same way ever since they were married, and has pursued affairs of such surgical delicacy that the President wants to sequester him over brandy and cigars, as even he might have something to learn.
The President notices Jill has positioned herself prominently when he returns to the embassy, and there is a sufficient hiatus before his luncheon engagement with the Prime Minister for her to accompany him to his quarters for twenty minutes, after which he orders an aide to conscript the Secret Service into emplacing security measures for a private social arrangement this evening.
Later, he sees the bed has been made, with not a wrinkle on the cover to betray him, but when the First Lady returns from the V&A, he notices a button on the bedside furniture that is neither hers nor his. He asks her about her visit, but the whole time he’s trying to distract her. She wanders around the room, shedding outer garments, until she lands next to the button. She hovers there, relating her tour of the Victoria and Albert Museum, while he would sweat if he had working adrenal glands.
She glances down, her gaze pointing directly at the button. She hesitates over a phrase, and then continues regardless, eventually withdrawing into the bathroom.
The small, pale button comes from Jill’s blouse, and he quickly drops it in the trash, after which he endures a minute searching the room for any other incriminating evidence. Still, he hopes his wife imagines, as he once did, that the presidency gives the incumbent as much chance of fornicating as being in jail does, and far less of being sodomized, but for all his past indiscretions he hates to contemplate being accused, since it feels such a long while since they had one of those conversations that he possesses no exact idea how it would go, whether the First Lady requires a higher index of suspicion given his office, or will consider her position inflates the ignominy of the betrayal. He still can’t decode her. Her mystery intrigued him from the start of their courtship. Perhaps it wasn’t love at all. Perhaps he was just very, very interested. If he thought marrying her would be the best way of getting to know her, he was wrong.
The London papers contain more pictures of the First Lady than of the President, and she looks elegant as ever in the limousine conveying the couple to Downing Street. The President is familiar with the sights from boyhood when his father was ambassador, and he returned after the war. But the memory of being diagnosed here sours his affections for this city.
He’d been sickly all his life but reached adulthood with the expectation of growing out of allergies and respiratory problems, accepting that he might not be able to play football again but believing his back would eventually heal and knowing maybe he couldn’t eat or drink freely but medication would bring his digestive anomalies under control. All that changed the day he collapsed and came to be informed he was afflicted with an incurable condition of the adrenal glands for which he would require life-long therapy. He remembers the feeling once the treatment restored a modicum of well-being, as he drove the streets where once he’d been the privileged ambassador’s son gazing into a limitless future, the feeling that everyone he saw walking or running or smiling enjoyed an extraordinary gift of good health that he was perversely denied. Already by then, his elder brother had been killed and his sister lobotomized. Like theirs, his life was no longer limitless, and, as if to prove it, his next sister was obliterated by an air crash the following year. In the years that followed, the back didn’t heal, of course, nor did the gut or prostate or thyroid—in fact, they all got mortally worse, to the point where he resigned himself to an unfinished life, but it was here it happened, the shattering epiphany that he’d never enjoy the country-club autumn of a sprightly septuagenarian thwacking tennis balls and goosing waitresses.
There’s more warmth in the first five minutes with the British Prime Minister than in all his summit hours in Paris and Vienna. The PM is an Old Etonian in his sixties, a decorated veteran of the First World War, and charming company. Their first meeting includes State Department staff and officials from the Foreign Ministry, but he says, “Wouldn’t it be less of a bore if it were just the two of us?”
They dismiss their staffs and the Prime Minister adds, “Forgive my suggestion, but you look worn out, Jack. I had them send over a rocking chair.” The PM grins. “Your back and my legs.” He houses about half a pound of German shrapnel in his legs that moves about at regular intervals, causing him excruciating discomfort.
The President slips into the rocking chair and feels his back ease. A butler pours them both a whiskey, and the conversation swings from world affairs to society gossip. Later their wives join them for luncheon. His wife is great fun, and he seems devoted to her. Before the President leaves, he confides that the Soviet Premier bested him in Vienna. The PM says, “I shall give you the benefit of my long experience, and reveal the greatest challenge facing the statesman of today: events. Events, my dear Jack, events.” The Presi
dent chuckles, and, as they shake hands, the PM adds, “Call upon me any time of the day or night. I’m a light sleeper.”
After a week of travel, the First Lady is keen to rest. The President checks with an aide on the progress of the plan to sneak out for a private rendezvous, and he’s pleased to learn the Secret Service has grudgingly agreed to watch his back. Their reluctance stems from the President’s order that they remain invisible and allow his companion and him to conduct themselves spontaneously.
Finally, Dr. Feelgood makes his customary secret entrance, this time via the garden, having stumbled through the foliage and entered with leaves stuck to the soles of his shoes, and instills his potions into the presidential back.
At different times, both Fiddle and Faddle hover in the halls, looking to catch his eye. He makes his choice and tells her to get ready. “What for?” she asks.
“We’re going out,” he says.
“Where?” she says.
“On a date,” he says.
She gazes at him incredulously for all of two seconds before she bursts into a glorious smile.
When they walk out into the summer air, the patches of sky visible between the buildings are fading to night. She wears a beautiful coat, but the evening is mild and dry so he wears a sports jacket.
“Where’s the limousine?” she asks.
“We’re walking. Not far.”