The same cold smile stays fixed on his face. “I’m afraid the same question applies, Ben. What ties?”
So much for the loyalty card. “Well, you’re obviously good at the chess moves. Let’s walk through them for a moment. Let’s say you claim Bobby took a drug, though what drug you’re not really sure, with Kurt and me and you. That won’t work because, as you pointed out, you’ll be singing solo, your word against his. Against ours. And if you tried it, the whole story could create a lot of sympathy for Bobby, running a dignified race against a smear campaign. So all in all, you wouldn’t have much to gain.”
Allan snorts. “If smear campaigns didn’t work, George Bush wouldn’t have become president. I suppose you’re more or less right about the rest of it. But tell me, if you and Bobby have got this all worked out, why bother to come out all this way to see me?”
“I thought you would want to see a campaign based on issues and we could agree to help keep it that way.”
“By keeping my mouth shut.”
“By keeping an honorable silence about something you agree is nobody’s business to begin with.”
“‘All that must be done for evil to flourish in this world is for good men to do nothing.’ Edmund Burke.’’
“Bobby’s politics and yours may not be identical—though they’re a lot closer than you think—but he’s not evil. We’re talking about private and public, not good and evil.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. If I were to tell the truth, you would make me out to be a liar.’’
“As you say, it’s no tea dance. And this is not some public business you could claim the taxpayers have a right to know about.’’
I see I have gone as far with this as I am going to get. Allan still enjoys a debate too much to permit any real conclusion. But I have arrived at one: we can try to force him to keep his mouth shut. Period. Nothing else will work.
We talk about a few other things, each of us trying to convey the illusion that there is no real animosity between us—this is a game and we’re just players making prescribed moves, nothing personal and all that. And while there is some truth to that, for me the animosity is as vivid as neon. I shake hands with him before getting into the taxi, and there is something several shades too light and too fond in his goodbye. As the cab pulls away, I am struck by the conviction Allan has already thought of a countermove.
12
I brief Bobby in his car on the ride back from the airport. As we leave the airport access road, sprouting from the border of a large cornfield there is a huge red, white, and blue billboard saying Elect Richard Wheatley To Be Your Senator, his smiling full-faced picture gazing at us from the bottom corner. A quarter of a mile of cornstalks later is another billboard, blue and white, with a huge picture of Bobby in the center. Underneath his photo it says, Bobby Parrish—He’ll Stand Up For You. I am not an admirer of the slogan. There are too many ways to read it depending on which word you emphasize, and Bobby is not running the kind of red-meat populist campaign where such a call stirs the blood. It doesn’t even say what office he’s running for. But no doubt the pollsters and the media advisers and the ad agency and Scott Bayer put their heads together, and this is their attempt to do what all campaigns want to do: raise your positives and increase your opponent’s negatives. Representative Wheatley—He’ll Lie Down for Them.
I give Bobby the bad news first. He seems not very startled to hear Allan has undergone a political conversion, and he is also less troubled about Allan’s pulling a fall surprise than I would be in his shoes. When I comment on his composure, he says, “If Jerry Rubin could become a bond salesman, then Allan can become a neocon.” But it also turns out he knows the good news about Kurt: he has already called Bobby this morning to offer to hold a fund-raiser. I imagine Bobby has made the calculation, then, that even if he chose to try,
Allan would have a hard time making a drug-use charge stick. Maybe it’s because of his brush with cancer or his war experiences or dealing with his father’s dying when he was still a boy, but whatever it is, he is able to live with uncertainty as if it’s an old roommate. That makes him patient, decisive, and a bit more detached than the rest of us. I also get the sense, however, that Bobby is having to tap some inner reserves to get him through this period. Campaigning is not second nature to him, particularly not now when not just an office but everything in his career is at stake.
“Everything else okay?” I ask, thinking of Laura.
“So far. The leaks seem to be continuing, but I’m just glad to be able to get back to focusing on the campaign. I want you to know how much I appreciate your help.”
I shrug. “We’ll have to see how much help I actually am.”
“You are. I don’t think I could have worked through this without you.”
I begin to get uncomfortable at this uncharacteristically emotional response. “Hey. You stand up for them, I’ll stand up for you.”
He glances at me. “You don’t like the slogan?”
I tilt a hand back and forth.
“It’s just for billboards and a few local papers,” he explains. “On TV the spots will end with ‘He’s on Your Side.’”
“Better.”
He explains to me the rationale of the billboard’s pitch. I look out at the summer countryside and notice that in just the few days I’ve been gone, the leaves have begun to change from July’s bright green to the deep—and to me, melancholy—blue-green of August. I try to veer away from the sadness I always feel in this month. The late-afternoon light is hazy with humidity. Thoughts about what waits at my office, about Laura, about how I will look into the leaks in Bobby’s campaign all skid through my mind, but I find I keep thinking about Allan Bernstein. We pass an enormous field of soybeans and a smaller one of alfalfa, then an Arby’s, a Denny’s, a Taco Bell, an Exxon, a Mobil station, and a Pizza Hut.
“The governor has started to help,” Bobby says.
“And none too soon. What’s he doing?”
“Campaign appearances, some fund-raisers. A TV spot for next week. He’s enjoying it, too. He really doesn’t like Wheatley.”
“They ran against each other for the state legislature thirty years ago. Roberts whupped him.”
“Is that right? I never knew that.”
A green light switches to yellow. Bobby slows, stops. I look at a Burger King and remember that in college Allan and I actually did play chess once or twice. He got me in a knight fork, threatening my queen and taking my rook. He went on to beat me soundly. The image sticks. He’s going to fork us. I tell Bobby, “I think I know what Allan’s going to do.”
“What?”
“Two things. He’s going to tell Wheatley you did take drugs so Wheatley will get his friends in the press to keep on you about it.”
He sighs. “Well, I’ll have to try to handle that. What’s the second thing?”
“If you’re cornered into denying ever having used hard drugs, I suspect that a couple of weeks before the election Allan’s going to write an editorial confessing his own youthful indiscretion. And buried in his hot scorn about the legacies of the sixties will be a reference to people he knows who’re running for high office who’ll be setting drug policy in the future. At least one of whom took something a lot stronger than the marijuana he’s admitted to. Et cetera, et cetera.”
Bobby stares into the middle distance. The light turns green. A car behind us honks. Bobby glances up, then presses down on the accelerator. “That sounds about right,” he says. “I’ll have to handle that, too, I guess. Though I’m not exactly sure how.”
Caught up in the problem, I think aloud. “Why not try a preemptive strike.”
“Preemptive strike?”
“Contact a few of your friends in the press and tell them someone in Wheatley’s office has been calling old college friends and asking them about drug use. And tell them that Wheatley, or Clive on
Wheatley’s behalf, is going to start getting reporters to harass you about it.”
“And get them to call Kurt?”
“Right.”
“And Allan, too?”
“Well, what do you think?”
“You mean tell them that Wheatley is trying to find someone to set me up? And warn them that Allan is the guy? I don’t know, Ben…I don’t like it. We don’t know Allan’s going to come out of the closet on this. Plus for a reporter to write about the thing at all, he’s going to have to mention the drug-use rumor, and that automatically gives it currency. It’s too preemptive.”
I nod. He’s watching the road, so I say, “Right.”
“It’s got two other problems, anyway,” Bobby says.
“Well, it was just off the top of my head.”
“It relies on you and Kurt to say I never used drugs other than marijuana. But everyone knows you’re my oldest friend. And it looks like Kurt’s going to be doing fund-raising. So if the focus ever shifts from Wheatley’s tactics to the truth of the rumor, you two guys won’t look exactly impartial.”
“Allan will never look impartial.”
“Maybe. There’s still the second problem. I’ve had a few days to try to get used to the idea I might have to deny having used drugs. And I just can’t get used to it. It plain sticks in my craw. Now, I know if Allan accuses me of drug involvement, my saying to reporters it’s none of their business will just hand Wheatley the issue and probably the election. But I don’t know if I can do the other.
And your idea involves lying to some reporters outright, in advance, so I can use them. That’s Clive Sanford territory. Not to mention my essentially forcing you and Kurt to lie. If the story comes to you, what you say is your business. It may never come to you. But I can’t bring you to the story. I can’t do that.”
“You’re right, it’s a bad idea. I’m still a little bit rusty at all this. But I have to tell you, if some reporters start hounding you, you’ll have to do something. You can’t let things get started. What if Scott Bayer and Cindy and I say Wheatley and Sanford are playing dirty? If the hounding keeps up, Kurt at least ought to mention the phone call he got.”
Bobby’s face gets a familiar determined cast—he’s made up his mind. “We’ll see. There are a lot of rumors that swim around campaigns that never get reported. This ought to be one of them.” Then he smiles. “But I have to tell you, I’m glad to hear you including yourself when you talk about the campaign.”
“I did?”
“Yes,” he says, glancing at me. “Gotcha.”
He looks back at the road and his face regains its meditative expression. He’s thought the drug-use problem through and is ready to face the circumstances if they present themselves. He looks at the clock in the dashboard, probably thinking about his next campaign activity.
“Speaking of Clive Sanford,” he says, “I think we’ve got some good news coming. Jeremy Taylor—remember him?”
“The journalist who dresses from Gentleman’s Quarterly? Yes…”
“He called me this morning for my comments on a story he’s written. It’s going to run sometime in the next few days. It’s on the campaign behind Wheatley’s campaign—the one to make me look bad by any means. Taylor found out the chemical drums on Wheatley’s land are empty, and I think it pissed him off. Freddie McMasters has come forward and is willing to be quoted as saying that he believes they were planted there to get me to lead with my chin and to attack Wheatley in panic after the story about my seeing a psychiatrist came out.”
I whistle and explain to him about running into Freddie at the airport before I left. “I told him he’d been had.”
“Well, whatever you told him sure lit a fire under him. He’s also going to be quoted as saying Clive Sanford directly solicited him for dirt on me.”
This news makes me turn toward Bobby. “That’s great. But won’t Clive just deny it, say Freddie’s your former law partner out to make trouble?”
“I asked Taylor the same question. Freddie’s already shown him the legal work Clive asked him to do on the released federal land, cancelled checks and all.”
“Well, all right! Wheatley will have to fire the son of a bitch!”
“Maybe. But in any case I’m going to get a breather for a few days. It’s Wheatley’s turn to get put on the defensive.”
“Hope he likes it.”
“This guy Taylor has done some good work. A lot of reporters would have heard about the empty drums and said that’s it, the story’s a non-starter.” We’re nearing the river. The car dealers and malls and fast-food places have given way to a thickening residential area, Capes and split-levels and ranches.
“He probably feels guilty about the shrink story he broke. He knows firsthand how Clive handles things.”
Thinking about how Clive handles things makes me start wondering about something else. All in all, Bobby’s led a pretty exemplary life. Yet here Wheatley has gone after two rumors about Bobby: seeing a shrink and using a drug other than marijuana. And it’s awfully damned curious, I think. Both rumors were true. Now, how did Wheatley know that? Two lucky guesses? Or is the leaker in the campaign not in the campaign itself but inside his family?
I decide not to mention this to Bobby. He has other things to think about. I wish I had someone to talk this over with. A delayed wave of fatigue floods me.
“I really miss talking to Jeannie,” Bobby says out of nowhere, the corners of his mouth turned down.
“Talk to her,” I say.
I take in the mail and survey my house. No one has broken in while I was gone. The three bedrooms and study are undisturbed. I sit down, call to check in with my secretary, and think about taking a nap. I’m both tired and wound up. I haven’t slept in a bed in forty-eight hours, and in the meantime have crossed six time zones, eaten at strange hours, and dealt in tricky matters with old acquaintances I have not laid eyes on in over twenty years.
I was hoping when this trip was over to have a sense of release, a sense of having fulfilled a responsibility to Bobby. Instead, seeing Kurt and Allan has reminded me of all the ways a life, and a political campaign, can twist and turn and flourish and founder. And so instead of getting off the campaign raft, without ever recognizing exactly the moment it happened, I find I have gotten on. This frightens me. If I make a mistake now, the consequences will not fall just on me. It’s all too much like another August not so long ago.
I rub my grainy, burning eyes and decide to try to nap for a while. Just as I go to unplug the phone, it rings. My hand hovers for a moment, stutters over the receiver, and picks it up.
It’s Laura.
“You’re back,” she says.
“Yes. And I’m really wiped out. I’m just about to go to bed.”
“Oh, now that sounds nice,” she says dreamily.
There are two ways for me to take this remark. I think I should ignore both possibilities and say I will call her back this evening. Instead I am mute.
“Ben, I need to s-see you.” Her voice is more soft than urgent.
“All right, sure. How about this evening?”
“How about now?”
“I’m really tired,” I say, though I am suddenly no longer sleepy at all. All at once, my picture of her unclothed in bed comes vividly to life.
“I won’t disturb you,” she says. “Too much. You can see me and still get your bed rest.”
I am so stupid with surprise at the direction of this conversation, all I can say is “Oh?”
“We can dim the lights. Or turn them off if you want.” My mouth grows wet.
Thinking I would like the lights on, I make myself say, “I don’t think…”
“I’m at work,” she says. “It’s my break. Usually I swim for forty-five minutes or so and then eat. So I’m f-free. And there are all kinds of ways for a person to get aerob
ic exercise.”
I try to offer a way out of this kind of talk. “You’re in a jocular humor.”
“Who’s joking?” she says.
I never had an affair while I was married. I have never had an affair with a woman while she was married. I know nothing of furtive meetings and elaborate ruses and the constant threat of discovery that gives spice to illicit trysts. I know nothing of forced separations at holidays and birthdays or of surreptitious phone calls, of longing that piles up on itself until space and time can be made, nothing of codes or stolen minutes or wondering what the other person is doing while being denied the means to find out. I don’t want to know any of these things. I only know that as I look over my house with a taste of old brass in my mouth, Kurt’s question about whether I have the life I want comes back to me. No, I do not. Though perhaps it is the life I have earned.
Still, still. The temptation to have Laura here is like someone has poured a drink right in front of me and pressed it into my hand. All I have to do is lift it.
“Laura, this, this is all…This should wait. In a couple of months the election will be over.”
“Why?” she says, her voice marbled with anger and sadness. “Why should the c-campaign have priority over everything? What about me? Or you?”
If Bobby wins, I think Laura will be inclined to go off to Washington, if only for Annie’s sake. If he loses, he will be more emotionally present. I did warn Bobby. He wouldn’t listen. Or if he did, he didn’t act. This may be a chance for me that will not come again, a chance to get a decision reversed on appeal. To recapture a time before what happened happened.
There is something in my throat, an old longing for something forbidden and delicious. “You’re right,” I say. “Come over.”
Ten minutes later she drives along my shaded and quiet street in a borrowed colleague’s car. She pulls into my garage, where, without prompting, I close the automatic door behind her. I see she has a beeper with her in case she needs to be contacted for an emergency. She has had no need even to leave a phone number behind. No footprints, no fingerprints. Neither of us comments on the well-thought-out arrangements.
Sounding the Waters Page 22