The Ex-President

by Jeff Soloway

  As she hooted at him, she glanced back and caught me staring. But she only seemed pleased that I’d appreciated the performance. She wore a glittering white top with oversize buttons. I assumed it was expensive; it was too absurd to be cheap.

  She introduced herself as Marlene Stedley. “We’ve been married thirty years. How long you two been married?”

  I’d anticipated the question but it still rumbled in my gut. My mother was grinning devilishly. I felt certain that she was about to invent some tale about our lavish wedding at the Rainbow Room, where our five hundred guests danced the night away before a wildly expensive one-time-only reunion of REO Speedwagon. I could see her taking my arm and elaborating on the joke at our every appearance on the ship for four days straight.

  But she wasn’t in the mood. “He’s my son,” she explained gently. “I’m divorced.”

  “My daughter’s divorced!” This was a woman who lived to find common ground, at least with supposed fellow Chompians. “From a real jackass. Right, Shell?”

  A young woman across the aisle shook her face out from under a brown leaf-pile of hair. “Good for one thing only,” she affirmed. “At least when he wasn’t drunk.”

  The young woman and her mother shared a laugh. The political right seemed different when I was a kid. Among Chompians, chastity had been relegated to a second-rate virtue, along with humility. Chomp himself, an admitted libertine, confessed to weakness but never regret.

  “At least you have your son,” Marlene went on. “We have two children. But our son is no longer with us.” Her husband nodded proudly.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “How did you lose him?” I guessed he’d been killed in one of those previously overlooked desert hellholes that had somehow become the new linchpins of American security. Chomp had entered no new wars, but he and Farthing had reenergized several of the old ones. I was hoping I could thank this woman for her sacrifice and her son’s service, which I sincerely honored, no matter what I thought of the cause, and thus achieve my own common ground with her. The two of us were alike in this desire to connect. We were both equally decent, except that one of us held insane political beliefs. I was pretty sure it was her. If there was a God, I hoped first thing in the afterlife he would tell us which side was correct, the left or the right.

  “In utero,” she answered. “I think about him every day.”

  I wanted to express sympathy but had no idea how. My mother reached over the seat and clasped Marlene’s hand. The two found common ground in human touch.

  “We’ll meet on the ship!” Marlene declared. “We’ll share a dinner table! You know, he speaks to me.”

  The divorcée—Shell—groaned and lifted her face through the pile of hair. “Mom, you’re scaring them.”

  “Get out. Am I scaring you? Just because I talk to my son?”

  Shell groaned louder.

  Her mother ignored her. “I just hope he’ll listen now that we’ve moved so far away.”

  “Marlene!” her husband warned, and the woman turned around and settled back in her seat.

  The chanting was getting louder. The protest crowds were gaining mass and energy as we neared the port.

  I felt a rap on my knee. Shell was leaning across the aisle. Her pretty face was pale under her rumpus of hair, and her mouth pursed and mischievous. “Cruising with your parents sucks,” she whispered.

  “Right.”

  My mom, her eyes still closed, snorted just loud enough for me to hear and jabbed my side with her elbow. What kind of strange kinship were we developing? She had become my wingman. Wingmom.

  “He signed the back of my neck at the last rally,” Shell confided. “His guards wouldn’t let him sign anywhere else. It’s washed off, but you can see it on Instagram. I needed two mirrors to take the picture. How many rallies have you been to?”

  “This is my first. I can’t wait.”

  I expected a look of pity from her, and maybe even disdain. A virgin at my age.

  “I could tell,” she said cheerfully. “I like it up front, so close you can see his spit.”

  “What’s it like?”

  She leaned closer across the aisle. I had the feeling all eyes in the bus were on me, but I stayed fixed on hers. Her smile was all delight and danger. This was the most deliciously intimate question I could have asked her.

  “You ever totaled a car?”

  “No.” I’d never owned a car.

  “I got T-boned at a four-way stop once. My bad. Knocked straight into a ditch. The back door was caved in, the side windows shattered, but me and my friend, we were just knocked around. We were fine. We kicked open the door and crawled out. And then guess what? We went crazy. Hugged. High-fived. Danced like we were in a video. Laughed and laughed and laughed. That’s how I feel when I’m close to him. Everything was a disaster, and then suddenly we’re fine. This time I’m gonna meet him. They say he plays drinking games, even though he doesn’t drink.” She lowered her voice, so that neither mother could hear. “At the island, everything will be different.”

  “Sorry?”

  “You don’t know? That’s okay. Lots of people don’t. You’ll find out.”

  As usual, the VIPs got the news in advance. The remarkable thing was that they had kept the secret.

  “Is he running again?”

  “It’s so much better. I can’t stand all these lame-os here bitching about the TV news. Who cares what they say? Or don’t say. We’ll make them pay attention. Make the whole world pay attention.” She looked out the window. The chanting was even louder. “Those stinkers are planning something too. What do you think it is?”

  She settled back in her seat and popped her earbuds in.

  Chapter 5

  The Port of Miami occupies a highly secure artificial island between Miami proper and the southern end of Miami Beach. It’s perfect for keeping protesting riffraff far away. But in Miami, as in many cities, local government had protesting riffraff’s back. Most big-city mayors hated Chomp and routinely, even eagerly, granted permits to the scruffiest of activist groups. If these anti-Chomp, anti-establishment renegades felt any qualms about being the darlings of municipal powerbrokers, they kept it to themselves. They could at least enjoy the antagonism of local police departments, which universally loved Chomp, even more so after his martyrdom/resignation. The contrast between permits freely given and security grudgingly provided had led to some of the bloodiest protests since the Vietnam War.

  The Miami protest marchers had been gifted a whole lane of the island’s access road, right along ours. As we entered the cruise ship terminal, I saw that most of an adjacent parking lot was cordoned off, giving the marchers a designated zone in which to gather, chant, unfurl banners, assemble fancy political props, or just chill out and howl at us. Their area was packed already, and more marchers were arriving every minute.

  The bus stopped in a protected stretch of asphalt just between the protest zone and the walkway to the terminal. Helmeted security troops stood by along the metal bicycle-rack barricades. I assumed they were city cops, but they might have been National Guard or Port Security. Their uniforms had no insignia. Their bare half-faces, under their RoboCop visors, looked steely and robotic. Human sympathy flows out through the eyes; block those up, and cruelty and brutality seem to stand unchallenged. As the bus door opened, the cops turned their broad armored backs to us and faced the crowd.

  As I stepped off I felt like a vanquished soldier being paraded through Rome. The chanting walloped our ears immediately: “We chased out the racist.” The air was heavy with humidity and hate. Though the protesters’ voices were united, their faces, unlike the cops’, expressed their individuality—some looked almost amused, some thrilled, some infuriated, some disdainful. As I stared at those in the front lines, their chanting seemed to grow lustier, their faces more animated; my gaze was stirring up the
ir anger. I wanted to hide my head under my shirt like a photographed perp, but at the same time I felt a sullen rage. Didn’t these people know that mockery provokes more than it demoralizes? They should; after Chomp’s election, they were mocked by the Chompians often enough. And why were these protesters mocking anyway? They were the ones who had lost. No, we were the ones who had lost. Really I was one of them. But it’s easy to forget which side you’re on when your allies are screaming at you.

  The chanting somehow got even louder. I could hear nothing else, not the idling of the bus, or the instructions of the RMB shepherd, or the voices of my fellow passengers. No one was reasonable anymore. No one cared about improving lives through laws and institutions. Politics had no more meaning than professional sports. Chomp stood for his people the way LeBron James stood for Cleveland. His fans gloried in his victories. His enemies hated him reflexively. Whether his policies improved or damaged people’s lives was beside the point. For the Chompians, glory was enough. Chomp knew what people wanted: not policy but victory. His opponents, on this one point, seemed to agree.

  We gathered by the side of the bus as our luggage was hauled out of its underbelly. Porters hovered nearby. The Chompians of the viral videos reveled in facing protesters down with vigor and spittle, but my fellow riders waited silently. I’ve been in protests before, including many in Latin America, where both the police and the rabble expect broken bones, but this was even more distressing. At least there I could sympathize with the downtrodden against their hated rulers. Here my mother and I were standing among supporters of the hated tyrant, or ex-tyrant. We were suffering for a man we despised. At least, I hoped she despised him.

  I stayed close beside her. The heat and confusion seemed to slow the luggage handlers. The crowd, perhaps worn out after the initial burst of excitement, eased up on the volume.

  Shell nudged my arm. She already had her bag. “Will you listen to those donkeys? They’ve been out all morning in this sun. Guess it’s a lot easier when your ancestors spent ten thousand years picking tamales in the desert.” She pulled out a plastic mister and spritzed herself in the face. “Want some?” Without waiting for my answer, she spritzed me too, right in my face and then behind my ears, as if the water were perfume.

  I saw that my mother’s face was beginning to redden in the heat. I asked to borrow Shell’s mister and then spritzed my mother, on the neck only to avoid smearing her makeup. She sighed gratefully and made a show of standing straighter, like a well-tended rose.

  I turned back to Shell.

  “What’s Chomp planning?” I asked.

  “You’ll see, bub. How’d you get on the bus anyway? When you’ve never been to a rally.”

  “I’m a writer. I’m interviewing Chomp this afternoon.”

  Her eyes widened. I might have told her I was a spy for Chuck Schumer. “You’re lying,” she said.

  “I review luxury cruises. I’m interviewing him for a promotional piece.”

  “Are you going to his room? You have to tell me what it’s like. What he’s like. I bet he’s way funny once you get him alone.”

  “I’ll tell you all about it. If I’m lucky, Chomp and I will hit it off. That happens sometimes after my interviews.” Mostly interviews with young bored PR minions. I’d never tried hanging out with a former real-estate tycoon, former reality-television star, former president. “I could try to introduce you to him afterward. But you have to do something for me.”

  “What?”

  Her wide eyes seemed to hide the rapid whirring of her brain, as if she was considering all the things she might be willing to do.

  “Tell me what’s going on with this cruise.”

  “Shell!” Her mother was screaming and waving her ripple-skinned arm from about fifteen feet away. Her smile was enormous, toothy, and terrified. “We got to go!”

  “I will,” Shell said to me. “I promise. Find me later.”

  “Where?”

  “Anywhere. You can’t miss me.”

  She started trotting off after her parents. I realized too late I still had her mister.

  My bag finally came, but my mother’s larger one required some tugging. Now that most of the passengers were gone, the chanting had fizzled out. A few protesters found a new way to amuse themselves. “I hope you get rammed by a whale,” one of them yelled. “A big fat white one!” Any one of a number of pale, hefty passengers might have been the target. A few of them slumped a little as they plodded toward the terminal. Nothing wins over political opponents like a good fat joke.

  In the distance, I could see cars, taxis, and buses unloading non-VIP passengers at a different unloading zone, presumably less illustrious, beside a side entrance that was farther from the protest barricades. The non-VIPs looked younger and livelier. The remaining passengers around me glanced their way, longing to summon a youthful militia to their beleaguered outpost. One man was indeed coming toward us from their direction, but he was ungainly and middle-aged, no one’s idea of a hero.

  “Lady!” This protester’s voice soared above the others. “You’re making white nationalism sexy again!” He waved his CHUMPS FOR CHOMP sign.

  A few protesters laughed. I realized he was talking about my mother. She smirked as she continued gazing at the bus but otherwise pretended not to notice. I, on the other hand, was ready to strangle someone.

  And then I heard someone shouting her name. How did the protester know it? I turned. Not a protester at all.

  The man hustling in from the other unloading zone was Clark. My mother saw him too. “Him,” she murmured.

  He stepped off the walk and into the roadway where we were waiting. He stopped and spread his arms as if for an embrace. His face too spread out, his cheeks crinkling into lines that suspended a tremendous grin. “We found each other!”

  My mother stared at him. Clark’s grin began to quaver and shrink. My mother’s look of loathing is not easily borne.

  “When the gentlemen finally remove my bag,” she murmured to me, “take it to the porters. I’ll be inside.”

  “Okay.”

  But she would have to pass Clark to get to the terminal. She began to circumnavigate him at a considerable distance, like a cargo ship avoiding an iceberg. As we were among the last few bus passengers left, we were all the protesters had to observe.

  Rather than appreciate the dramatic moment, the audience chose to keep heckling. Someone, referring to both my mother’s outfit and her age, asked if she’d been on I Dream of Jeannie. Another shouted, “Shake it like you did for Ronald Reagan!”

  Politics makes everyone assholes. My skin tingled. What kind of movement was this? In that instant I let my country’s hate swallow me. For a brief moment, I became a full Chompian. Bring on the National Guard, gas up the anti-riot Humvees, bulldoze the protesters into the sea. Unlike most Chompians, I had no problem with their ethnicity or immigration status, but there was still lots left over to hate—their snarky cracks, their cheesy rhyming signs, their youth. What did they know about political activism? I had marched against the Iraq War! What did they know about beauty? They pulled duck faces on Tinder, inserted those little cold-sore studs on lips and nostrils, painted each toenail a different color. You couldn’t measure my mother by their absurd standards of beauty, or any standards of beauty, only by her vitality and courage.

  I had never admired my mother more. As Carlton Chomp knew, nothing fires up your supporters more than public martyrdom.

  Her bag was finally yanked from the bus.

  “Mom, I’m coming!”

  I grabbed it, but before I could run after her, she stopped and turned back to the crowd. She waved her hand at them regally. Even as they started booing, she crossed her legs, curtsied, and blew them a kiss. A few cheers struggled up through the boos—from women, by the sound of them—and then a few more. My mother was laughing along with her adversar
ies. No enemy of theirs, no true-hearted Chompian, could be so goofy, so graceful, and so self-aware.

  Clark heard the boos, not the cheers. He set his face for battle and marched to the barricades. He passed right by me without noticing. The cops, who might have protected him from his madness, were all facing the crowd. Only the protesters saw him coming. They whooped. They were finally getting their confrontation.

  But just as he got halfway across the roadway, he had to stop and skip backward—another vehicle was barreling up. This one was a stretch limo. It passed him, passed the bus, and then stopped so hard you could smell rubber. Its back door opened.

  Carlton Chomp stepped out. The crowd gave a collective gasp.

  He was only a few limo lengths away from me. He was taller than I expected and also fatter, though his billowing belly was well hidden by an expensive and expansive suit jacket, and further camouflaged by his height and general air of confidence and good fortune. He wore a plain red baseball cap, in honor of the valiant immigration agents now so cravenly hamstrung by the Farthing regime. Just as the cops’ headgear was designed to intimidate protesters, Chomp’s was designed to enrage them. The few Chompian passengers nearby dropped their bags to wave with both hands. Chomp ignored them and instead strode toward the protesters. On the way, he blew violent kisses—the opposite of my mother’s—while security in ties and glossy CHOMP jackets scurried to keep him surrounded.

  “Thanks for quitting!” someone shouted.

  Chomp made a bullhorn of his hands. The crowd hushed. Even those who hated Chomp wanted to hear him speak.

  What emerged from his mouth was a strange kind of mooing. At first no one understood. The protesters looked all around, at the limo, at the terminal, at our bus, as if they thought some machine was causing the sound. Or some cow.

  Chomp took a breath and began again. Our ears were by now more accustomed to the sound. He was saying, “Loooosers!” Now everyone understood, and everyone was outraged. The whole barricaded parking lot churned like a shark tank at feeding time. One protester tried to organize a chant of “Now resign from humankind” but there was too much free-form booing. I watched the tallest of the bodyguards shout in Chomp’s ear and slice the air with his hand, clearly trying to persuade him to shut up and leave.