Author: Jed Mercurio
Category: Other
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“Who is it?” Peter slurs.
“It’s Jack.”
“Jack, shit, what time is it?”
“Peter, I need you to call our friend.”
“Now?”
“Sure, now.”
“It’s late.”
“He’ll be awake.”
The President reads blue files till his brother-in-law calls back a half-hour later.
“They won’t put me through,” he says. “I’m persona non grata, persona nota-ona-da-lista.”
“Does he know it’s coming from me?”
“I left a message.”
“OK. Well. Good night.”
The President finishes the blue files and starts on the red. His son stirs, and he goes to him before he wakes the First Lady or the nanny. The President listens in the doorway without putting on the light as the boy babbles to himself semiconsciously, emitting urgent but incomprehensible noises. He lifts him out of the cot to make sure he’s not wet or smelly, after which the boy grizzles in his father’s arms for a few minutes before dropping back to sleep. Then the President eases him down onto the mattress and pulls the blankets up to his chin.
The President lays a hand over his chest and stoops to kiss his head. If the subject loses the election, his son will remember nothing of these years; his recollections of his father in the White House will vanish behind the mist that obliterates our infantile consciousness. His father, the President, will become a ghost.
The phone doesn’t ring, so the President tries Frank’s numbers himself, first trying his place in L.A., then Palm Springs, from where one of his entourage laughs and asks if it’s Vaughn Meader making a prank call, to which the President replies, “Mr. Meader is busy tonight so I called myself,” after which there is a short pause, and then the stooge very respectfully informs the President that his boss is playing in Vegas, connecting him to the private line in his suite at the Sands.
A girl answers. “Who’s calling?” she says.
The President hesitates.
“Who’s there?” she says.
“Jack,” he says.
“Lemmon?” she says.
“Kennedy,” he says.
“Oh, my God!” she says before exhorting Frank to the phone.
“It’s kind of late, Jack,” he says nonchalantly, enjoying the ambiguity.
“The way I remember, it’s only about now you’re getting over the previous night’s hangover.”
“I got a hangover cure now.”
“What’s that?”
“Stay drunk.”
The President laughs. “I miss you, Frank,” he says.
“I miss you, too, Jack,” says Frank.
But then an awkward silence follows. The President says, “Thanks for the birthday present.”
“Don’t mention it, man,” Frank says.
And now the President gets irritated again. He recalls the first time Frank called him “man”—at the Palm Springs compound, when there were a couple of grand hookers in the pool (grand being not a compliment to their splendor or dignity but how much they cost each), the girls challenging the men to join them, prompting Frank and the senator to shed their polo shirts and shoes, whereupon Frank dropped about three inches in height, creating an awkward moment between them, as to that point the subject never had definitive proof he used lifts, and he dared to feel the more desirable as they gazed down at the giggling girls pointing their glistening breasts, dared to crown himself the alpha alpha, until Frank dropped his pants to uncage a brutal schlong, winked darkly and said, “This makes me first, man,” before leaping into the pool.
The President waits for Frank to sense his affront and offer something conciliatory, maybe invite him back out to the Springs one time, but there’s only tense silence on both ends of the line. Through a gap in the curtains, the President sees the agent with the flashlight off and his eyes scanning the trees. His breath condenses in the night air. The Secret Service circle the farm-house, and the President observes a dark figure carry a flask of hot coffee to another agent on patrol by the dirt track that leads out toward the highway. But the President can think of nothing to say down the line to Frank, instead radiating the hesitation of inchoate feelings.
“You don’t sound too good, Jack,” he says.
“Mr. President?”
The President wakes in his rocking chair with red files open on his lap. He realizes he must have fallen asleep. Neither man will swallow his pride for the other, despite Frank’s desire to mingle with power or the President’s to once more transcend the twenty-five-foot fences of Palm Springs, there to have his pick of bathing beauties frolicking in the pool, their bodies slick and complaisant, their mouths opening and shutting on demand.
“Mr. President?” the agent repeats. He stands over the President, the book shut in his hand with the page marked by his index finger, saying, “I apologize for waking you, Mr. President, but your orders are never to let you sleep like that because of your back.”
“Thank you—yes,” the President says dreamily, but soon the pain is so excruciating it takes five minutes with the agent’s help to rise from the chair.
He needs crutches to get to the bedroom. His wife’s eyes open in the gloom, but she remains motionless as he balances on the crutches to take the weight off his spine. He fears she’ll turn over and pretend to be asleep.
He murmurs, “You know I can’t do this by myself.”
She says not a word in getting out of bed and untying his brace, and still not a word as she helps him onto the mattress.
In the morning, the trees drop beneath his feet as the helicopter bumps into the air and the children wave from the porch. At once, he misses them. He longs to stuff them in his pockets and carry them to work.
Past the highway, the country falls back into a plain, over which the helicopter tracks the 50 east to D.C. In Washington, the President receives an urgent call from the Pentagon, in which the Secretary of Defense reports that the Soviet Air Force has jumped to a high-alert state and that there appears to be a surge of naval traffic, particularly in their nuclear fleet. The President orders him to utilize all means at his disposal to determine the cause of the Soviet action. Calls bounce back and forth all day between the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon, with the result that the President remains in the Oval Office, either in conference or at the end of the phone, every minute of the day, unable to escape to the pool for a swim, so that he must conduct his stretching exercises as best he can in the short intervals between calls and meetings, and he hesitates to visit the head, even though his stomach is turning over and he suffers an episode of painful diarrhea midafternoon.
The Joint Chiefs gather to brief the President and the Defense Secretary at about 6 p.m., all of whom disavow any knowledge of the motivation for the enemy alert.
The President says, “Do we think they’re building up to an offensive action?”
“We don’t know at this time,” they say.
“Are their movements toward Berlin?”
“There’s an armored division moving toward the city.”
“There are subs outbound from Murmansk.”
The President remains on edge all evening. He paces the Residence. His back is rigid and he passes blood. If the phone doesn’t ring for half an hour, he calls the Pentagon and the State Department to demand situation reports. He’s tempted to call for a Dr. Feelgood tonic, but Adm. B. visits instead to ensure he’s ingested all his medication.
Then at midnight the Secretary of Defense calls. “It was us,” he says.
After a night sleepless with rage, in the morning the President summons the Chief of Staff of the Air Force to explain why one of his (the President’s) nuclear bombers flew a dry bomb run into Soviet airspace two nights ago.
“The mission was successful, Mr. President,” the general says. “Our planners have extrapolated a seventy-five per cent chance of an effective preemptive strike.”
“I don’t want to m
ake a preemptive strike,” the President says.
“A preemptive strike capacity must be part of strategic defense planning, and now you know the Air Force could provide one if you needed it, sir.”
“And now the Soviets think it is in our plans. They went to DEFCON 3.”
“Exactly, sir. That’s why there’s been no diplomatic protest. They don’t want the world knowing we can get our bombers in. They’re frightened.”
“God damn it, General—I’m frightened. Kindly desist from this brinksmanship of yours, both with the Soviets and with your commander-in-chief.”
The general hesitates. He appears perplexed by the President’s tone. At length, he says, “Yes, Mr. President, sir,” and takes his leave.
Later the President tests the door to the Rose Garden, but this time buzzes his secretary to have someone bring the key. Eventually an agent he’s never seen before arrives to open the doors with a deferential word or two, releasing the President into the Rose Garden, where he gasps the summer air. Men’s working relations are complicated by their animal nature, and it’s plain the Air Force Chief of Staff is a man unimpressed by the President’s status or intellect or by the physical attributes that qualify him as a bona-fide alpha male.
When Frank took off those custom-made shoes, on the Olympic podium he stepped down from gold to silver, but his retaliation penetrated to the heart of a man’s psychological vulnerability, and, although someone of his crude bent would take the matter literally—often at parties initiating a pecker contest wherein male revelers are challenged to vent their flies, a parade he invariably expects to win—in the past this has not been a matter to which the subject has ever given much thought, yet now he finds himself in a risible competition. The penetrating psychological effect of Frank’s poolside exhibitionism embarrasses him still, embarrasses an educated, mature male for whom such atavism should be meaningless, yet it isn’t, of course, because males are naturally competitive, and the primal symbol stabs them all. Frank knows that no matter how many women the subject has, the subject always remains smaller, and this thing that should not matter matters a great deal. Perhaps this is the secret power the general feels he wields, that the missiles are splendid, gleaming phalluses, and they’re his, not the President’s.
Fortunately it is fine weather today, as the President officiates at a medal ceremony on the South Portico, where the guest of honor will be our current Last Man in Space. This astronaut is a diametric opposite to our First Man in Space, at every opportunity proclaiming his devotion to God, country, mom and apple pie. There’s something about Our Last Man in Space the subject finds unsettling, although he’s charming and courteous enough during the ceremony, speaking graciously to the First Lady, and it’s only later as the subject recalls the glassiness of his eyes as they peered back that he decides he’s another man who considers he’s better, not just because he’s flown farther and longer in space than any of his predecessors, but because he exerts as much control over his hungers and ambitions as he does over the switches and levers of his space capsule. Apparently the spacemen down in Florida party with fast cars and even faster women, and the President has had some of them come visit Palm Beach for an informal barbecue, where it’s plain every man present has eyes for tails that aren’t necessarily attached to enemy jets, except Our Last Man in Space, who’s prepared to risk his life in a rocket-ship but not slip the surly bonds of monogamy.
Finally, at the President’s regular medical consultation with Dr. T., he’s surprised to receive not just Dr. T., but Adm. B., Dr. C. and Dr. K. too.
“How’s the nausea, Mr. President?” the Admiral wants to know.
“I don’t seem to be suffering as much.”
“That’s good news, sir,” he says.
“Good news,” says Dr. T.
“Because, looking at the numbers,” says Dr. C., “we need to up the testosterone.”
“Not a big increase,” says the Admiral.
“Fifty per cent, is all,” says Dr. C.
“Are you sure?” the President asks, and they all nod the same nod.
His final meeting the next day involves some advisors from the State Department. He suggests Fuddle drop by afterward, taking advantage of the First Lady’s late return from Virginia, and invites her back to the Residence for dinner.
She says, “I’m afraid I’ve got plans already, Mr. President.”
“I won’t keep you long,” he says.
“If you insist, sir,” she says, “then obviously I need to make quite inconvenient changes to my schedule tonight.”
“I’d prefer it wasn’t a case of insisting,” he says.
She shifts uncomfortably.
He rises from the rocking chair, whereupon she stands in obeisance of his office, until he says, “Then that’s it, then, isn’t it?”
“I’ve got engaged,” she says.
“Congratulations, er …” he says.
“Diana,” she gasps.
He strolls back to his desk. She remains ill at ease on the far side of the office by the fireplace, unsure if this is a signal for her to sit down again. One might expect the situation to be somewhat commonplace for a young mistress to experience an epiphany, but in actual fact these girls develop insight less frequently than one would ever imagine. The signs of ruthless sexual exploitation are conspicuous, so many of them must continue in denial, or possibly they feel powerless to alter the fundamentally unilateral nature of the arrangement.
For a moment, the subject contemplates apologizing for recently calling on her abruptly in the middle of the night, only in an effort to retain her sexual servitude, but he realizes that in essence he doesn’t especially care for her, particularly when one calculates how many of her type are churned out each year by exclusive schools and colleges.
He says, “You understand national security considerations apply.”
Tears cloud her eyes.
“Thank you,” he says. “Goodbye.”
She wipes her nose and appears momentarily capable of regaining control of herself, but doesn’t, and hurries out with a hand across her face.
After some work calls, he reads reports on the situation in Southeast Asia, all of which appear to slant toward military intervention. Strategic minds sound convinced that an American war in Vietnam will be short and victorious, but that’s what they said about Cuba. He digests all the reports in sufficient time to permit himself a swim.
The Beard accompanies him down to the pool, helping untie the brace, then sits at the side while the President exercises, after which he inquires if the President would like him to bring one of the secretaries down to join them. The President worries that the Beard is becoming temerarious in his zeal to serve his country. The release of orgone energy ensures the President’s well-being, and perhaps the Beard has extrapolated that more frequent trysts will make him an even more effective leader. The President applauds the desire to oblige, but remains anxious to avoid the embarrassment of importuning an unwilling or (worse) indiscreet woman, and so he declines, reminding the Beard that the First Lady returns to town tonight.
In the Residence, he finds her in a much improved mood from the previous weekend. No doubt she is cognizant of her debts having been settled by the President’s banker. The children have arrived semiconscious from the drive, so the three of them—the President, the First Lady and the nanny—attempt to transfer them to their beds with the same care one would use in handling unexploded bombs. He bends gingerly to kiss their foreheads. John twitches his nose before rolling over to sleep. They give the nanny a whispered dismissal and spend a moment in silent contemplation of their sleeping progeny.
He extends his hand toward hers and he’s thankful she lets him take it, after which he draws her close and kisses her on the cheek, smelling her scent and nuzzling her thick dark hair, and then they edge through the yellow Oval Room into their private sitting room, where they kiss.
“I’ve missed you,” he says.
“I’ve m
issed you too,” she says.
That night, they make love, and two months later, to their mutual joy, his wife falls pregnant.
THE GULF (2)
The First Lady’s pregnancy brings the subject’s marital sex life to another abrupt hiatus. As usual, the medical advice they received was unhelpfully equivocal, but they both suffer an overriding anxiety toward precipitating the 50 per cent chance of losing the baby based on the First Lady’s obstetric history of one miscarriage and one stillbirth out of four pregnancies. The subject is grateful for the continuing services of Mary, and occasionally Fiddle-Faddle—though he’s tiring of them both and would welcome their moving on to another office and another philandering boss (there are plenty to choose from in this town)—plus other impressionable young ladies of D.C. pimped by the Beard. These trysts are less frequent than he would like owing to the levels of circumspection on which he insists, even when complemented by periodic encounters he manages to manufacture upon his travels, usually in the form of old girlfriends whose discretion is assured, so it’s with some interest that he notes the arrival on her internship of the girl from Farmington—Marion or Monica—who came to interview the First Lady for her school magazine, but his excitement over calculating a seduction is overtaken by events, when his breakfast in the Residence is interrupted by a defense advisor, who begins with the words, “That thing we’ve been worrying about, Mr. President—it looks as though we really do have it to worry about.”
The advisor relays analysis by experts at the National Photographic Intelligence Center of a recent U-2 spy plane reconnaissance of Cuba that reveals the presence of Soviet SS-4 medium-range ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads over a thousand miles, a matter of some concern given Cuba lies a mere ninety off our southeastern coast, so the President immediately orders a full meeting of what he christens the Executive Committee for as soon as the key members can be assembled.