(1964) The Man

by Irving Wallace

The morning after had been her best morning in years. But that entire day, and in the several days following, he had not called, and she had begun to believe that she had invested too much in his promise and her hope. Either he had been drunk and indiscreet, and had now sobered and forgotten the flirtation, or he had weighed it and decided that a married Cabinet officer could have nothing to do, no matter how innocent, with the neurotic half-his-age daughter of a senator. Then, in her misery and consequent drinking, Sally had decided that it was his wife who was to blame. Despite flimsy rumor, Kay Varney was his wife, and was coming home or was home already, and that was it, the fact of it, and good-bye rendezvous and good-bye dinner.

  And then, the other evening or morning, she had forgotten which, she had read Reb Blaser’s column. Arthur and Kay Eaton were—it was in black print, rumor or not, it, was in print—separated, with divorce imminent. The effect upon her was like that of a half-dozen vodkas. She soared. She walked on air. She was ten miles high, and almost in orbit. Her prospects rose with her. The fact that Arthur Eaton had not yet telephoned her, as he had said he would, meant only that he was busy with man’s work and not that he was confined by husbandhood.

  In her exhilaration Sally had wanted to telephone him, chide him for not keeping his word, but her instinct restrained her from this aggressive act. Also, she had told herself, it would have been in poor taste, after that wonderful Reb Blaser story. Eaton would call. Of this she was more certain than ever. If he did not, they would meet soon, and this time she would make sure that he knew of her desire for him. Yesterday she had even begun to think about contriving accidental meetings, when the Frankfurt tragedy had broken over her. As the daughter of a senator, she knew what that meant. Arthur would be busy for a while, busier than ever.

  She had completed her makeup and was content with the result. She went to her wardrobe to search out the proper dress for this first day of a new administration, a day that had brought her Arthur (since Reb Blaser’s column, she had determinedly begun to regard him as her Arthur) to within a step of the Presidency. Holding out and rejecting dresses, she wondered how she could prove her love to Arthur Eaton. She could, of course, give herself wholly to him—not difficult—and let him be young once more and enjoy what he had certainly been deprived of by Kay Eaton. Still, such giving was too easy and rarely guaranteed endurance of a relationship. Mature men required much more. They wanted a woman interested in them, interested in their lives, their careers, a woman as concerned about them as they were concerned with themselves. At night a woman could resurrect a man’s ego in bed. But day had more hours. Successful women, the great courtesans of France, for instance, the mistresses of the rulers, women like Madame de Pompadour, survived and remained on top because they were not only love partners but helpmates. How could she be a helpmate to a public figure already so successful, the foremost member of the President’s Cabinet? How could she be of any use to a public figure who already possessed everything?

  Just as she settled upon the simple blue Galletti suit and removed it from the hanger, something crossed her mind. She recalled her father’s conversation with Talley, and her own conversation with her father. Evidently Arthur Eaton did not have everything, yet. Overnight his position in the Cabinet was insecure. At the same time, overnight, he was the next in line to the Presidency. Senator Hankins and her father were working to keep him in the Cabinet, and believed that they would succeed. Representative Miller was working to make him President at once, but her father did not think this was possible. Clearly Arthur Eaton could use help. She wondered what help she could offer. If she were to come to know this Dilman, know him well, she might succeed, as a woman, where august councils failed. She might convince Dilman that Arthur Eaton was indispensable to him and to the country, that he must not only be retained as Secretary of State but must be given a heavy share of the Presidential powers. But she did not know Dilman, and it was hopeless, and then it occurred to her that she felt she knew Dilman, and then she remembered why.

  It was because of last night’s party, the one that had given her the hangover, the one young Harriet Post, a Senate secretary who was as crazy as herself, had taken her to, a boozing, literary party of the avantgarde Washington crowd, lower-level, black-and-white. A Negro poet, reedy and homosexual and maybe talented, had given it in his unkempt, sparsely furnished, barnlike upstairs flat, above the hall with the sign over it, JESUS NEVER FAILS, on Georgia Avenue.

  There had been at least forty persons coming and going, most of them Negro, all drinkers, all too full of T. C.’s death, all discussing the implications of Speaker MacPherson’s accession to the Presidency, and Sally had not enjoyed it particularly. Lately she had grasped at every invitation to a black-and-white party, because it was different, because it might mean a charge of excitement. Unlike her family, she had no feelings against Negroes. In fact, because of her sheltered upbringing in the South, she had always considered them attractive since they were forbidden and hence exotic, and because there were stories she had heard about the men. The stories were not true, she knew, from firsthand experimental evidence. After college, when she had met the jazz crowd from Harlem, she had slept with two of the colored boys in a band before running off with her Puerto Rican. Both brief affairs had been tiresome disappointments, no better, no worse than those with most of the white boys with whom she had slept. Perhaps she had expected too much. Perhaps the Negro musicians had not been able to give enough because they were inhibited by her Southern-supremacy origins.

  The affair or wake last night had been a drunken bore. She had heard from Harriet about the guest of honor, Leroy Poole, and in fact thought that she had read some of his powerful essays on his years as a Negro in Harlem and on civil rights, and she had expected too much, again. Leroy Poole had looked like anything but an author. He had proved to be short, fat, perspiring, resembling nothing more than a jet-black eight ball. He had been supercilious and self-centered, too knowing and opinionated about everything and everyone in Washington and on the earth. He had repeated several choice anecdotes ridiculing MacPherson, who everyone had thought was the new Chief Executive.

  Sally remembered that Poole had read aloud several passages from his second novel (still in the works, stream-of-consciousness), bitter narrative sections that made no sense and gave no fun when you were half drunk. After the applause he had explained the novel, and for a while his idea had held Sally’s attention. It was hard to recall it clearly the morning after, but there was something about the near future in the United States, something about a sudden outbreak of bubonic plague in the heavily Negro-populated county of a state similar to South Carolina or Louisiana (where some counties are 80 per cent Negro), but where the minority whites keep control because of their ties to the outside world. Overnight, to prevent the raging epidemic from spreading, this county is quarantined from the rest of the state and nation. No one can enter or leave. After a few months this isolated county has a population 90 per cent black, and 10 per cent white, and must live this way for several years.

  “There it is, see?” Leroy Poole had squeaked, waving the manuscript in his pudgy fist. “Shoe on the other foot, see? Now we are the Ins and they are the Outs. How come? ’Cause gradual-like, the Negroes begin dominating the voting, buying and spending, law enforcement, the works. And pretty soon Negroes are running government, schools, business. And the poor whites left, the minority, what happens to them? Well, now, don’t you know? Negroes hire white women for their maids and white gents for their handymen. Now the whites go to the back of the bus, to the segregated lousy puking little white schools, and the Negroes got the run of the county. What do you say, friends, how’s that for an acidy parable?” She could recollect little more of it, or perhaps Leroy Poole had refused to tell any more. She had thought it rather novel and cruel, and wondered if he would finish it, and if he did, how it would be received.

  Now, dressing, she realized that, by coincidence, Leroy Poole’s way-out fantasy of last night had—well, a
small portion of it had—become a reality with Douglass Dilman’s accession to the Presidency. Her mind, remembering Dilman, remembered last night when she had found herself on a torn sofa beside Leroy Poole, listening to him discuss Dilman.

  It all came back to her, the connection, Poole and Dilman, not what Poole had been saying. A Negro publisher had given Poole a sizable advance against royalties to write a biography of Senator Douglass Dilman, since Dilman was one of the highest-ranking Negroes in government. Poole had not been enthusiastic, for some reason, but had needed the cash to finish his novel, and had undertaken the chore. He had come to Washington weeks ago, received Dilman’s cooperation, and had been practically living with the Senator, gathering information on the Senator’s background and political career and ideas, and had already begun writing the made-to-order book. She recalled a thread of Poole’s conversation, to someone, to Harriet or herself. “I’ve gotten to know Senator Dilman better than he knows himself, I’ve been that close—but don’t hold it against me, sister!” He had screamed with laughter, a disconcerting high-pitched laughter, and after that she had left Poole for the bottle of Scotch.

  Suddenly the creative process began to work inside Sally. She could almost feel it working, and she ceased buttoning her blouse to let it happen. Poole had said that Dilman was a widower, with a son, no one else. That was last night when Dilman was a senator. This morning he was the President of the United States, still a widower, with a son, and no one else. Who would run his life for him, the social part, the feminine part? A new President always made new appointments, hired new personnel. Whom would Dilman hire for his First Lady, his social secretary, his party giver? He might hold over some of T. C.’s staff, and the First Lady’s staff, but there would still be openings that would have to be filled, and there would certainly be resignations. Sally’s mind went to at least a half-dozen of her Southern girl friends who would not, or whose husbands or families would not let them, work under a Negro, President or no.

  That was it, that was surely it, Sally exulted to herself. There would be an opening in the White House for a white girl of high social breeding and with a political background, to assist the new President, a girl who had many Negro friends and so could, in a natural way, give the President guidance in the world of white socialites about him. There would be an opening which she could fill, and in filling it give aid to that wonderful, kindly-looking Negro who had become Chief Executive, and in aiding him, gaining his dependence upon her, she could represent Arthur Eaton inside the White House. She could become Arthur’s helpmate on the highest level.

  Only one piece of the puzzle was missing, and once that was in place the picture was there, made sense, and her future was assured. The missing piece was the image of the go-between who could get her offer of service to the new President himself. And she had that, too. Last night, last night, Leroy Poole, living with Dilman, writing about Dilman, last night a senator’s biographer, this morning a President’s historian.

  Her mind fitted the last piece into the puzzle, and the picture that she saw and embraced was that of herself and Arthur, captioned by the lettering of her imagination: Secretary of State Arthur Eaton and Mrs. Sally Watson Eaton.

  She ran to the cream-colored French telephone beside her bed, and then, as her hand clutched it, she tried desperately to remember the hotel where Leroy Poole was staying. Not the Shoreham, not the Mayflower, not the Hilton or Willard, no. What would that poor, struggling, fat little Negro writer be doing in one of those expensive big places? She eliminated the big hotels. She tried to think. It was some cheap hovel, ridiculously named, in the heart of town. She had heard it mentioned several times last night. It was on—yes, on F Street—heavens, but where—heavens—yes! That was it—Paradise—the Paradise Hotel on F Street.

  She picked up the telephone and dialed for information . . .

  * * *

  The instant after the alarm clock went off, Leroy Poole opened his eyes, reached out and shut off the bell, flung aside his blanket, then settled back on the pillow and, lying perfectly still, began his daily morning exercise.

  For five minutes, he performed this Spartan drill, a system of valuable and mystic calisthenics of his own invention, one known only to himself. As he engaged in it, he knew that his daily ritual would have astounded an outsider, especially a white outsider. Where most men did vigorous bends, push-ups, sit-ups to strengthen their muscles, to give tone to their physiques, Leroy Poole practiced an exercise consisting solely of remaining immobile on his bed, first contemplating his gross body, then conjuring up his gross past.

  Once, wondering if this physical inactivity could be rightly regarded as exercise at all, Leroy Poole had looked up the word in Webster’s Dictionary. Exercise was, among other things, “Exertion for the sake of training or improvement, whether physical, intellectual or moral.” Pleased with the definition, he had continued to practice his peculiar form of exercise under its familiar name.

  Leroy Poole’s morning exercise followed an unvarying routine. After awakening, and removing his blanket, he set his eyes on the mound of flesh before him, gazing at the flabby chest and jelly protrusion of stomach encased in capacious cotton pajamas. Sometimes he studied his hands, the fatness of the sausage fingers. He was not concerned with this obesity of the flesh, the distorted plasticity of it, for he had been told that it was the result of glands, not gluttony. Instead he was concerned that the outer softness so unfairly contradicted the inner hardness, making it more difficult for others, and himself as well, to take his aggressive word sermons and crusading pen seriously.

  Since no physical exertion could reduce his body to the same hardness as that of his mind and heart, Leroy Poole compensated for this by toiling daily to invigorate and fortify what lay invisible beneath his skull and skin. Like Richard Wright, a boyhood idol, Leroy Poole had learned long ago that “there existed men against whom I was powerless, men who could violate my life at will,” and that their savage and unjust superiority must be combated, even unto death. He had to toughen his will against white men’s bribes: no money, no comfort, no intellectual rationalizing, no compromise promises of future Green Pastures, no white token acceptance and approval could be permitted to negate the searing helplessness and humiliation that he and his family had suffered, were suffering, or allowed to modify and weaken the determination in his mind and heart. These were the muscles—the inner muscles of righteous hate—that Leroy Poole sought to energize and sustain every morning. The exercise performed was a simple one: he remembered his past, and was strong again.

  It was not always easy. It had not been easy this morning. Last night’s party had left him weakened, and a residue of this weakness remained. It had not been the drinks. He did not drink. His abstinence he owed less to the hellfire Baptist upbringing of his childhood than to the fact that drinks made black men as foolish as white men, but while white men could afford such lapses, black men could not. The weakness that carried over from the party was caused by the fact that he had been induced to read aloud a passage from his new novel, and relate some of the story, and he had been applauded and been made prideful and been lulled into believing, briefly, that life might not be so bad after all.

  That was one impediment to his exercise this morning. Another was that he despised the work he must do in the next hours, days, weeks. He resented having to abandon his polemics, his angry and effective articles and essays on his experiences as a Negro and on his ideas about equality, for which he was poorly paid, to undertake a hack political biography that would profit him nothing but money. He resented, too, delaying his great novel, a moral earthquake that would shake the mossbacks and crackers of the South and the pretentious tolerators of the North from their fixed poles of prejudice. He resented delaying it in order to feed the vanity of stupid and ignorant Negro readers who wanted to enjoy vicariously the rise to Congress of one of their own color.

  And there was more that distressed him after the alarm clock had jarred him from his
sleep. He was ashamed of himself for the small corruption of making heroic, to his people, an undeserving ward heeler who, through servility and errand-running and ass-licking, had become a senator. If only he was presenting to his people the figure of a brave and true Negro leader like Jeff Hurley, his beloved friend, his superior in the Turnerites, it would be a worth-while and noble endeavor. But then, he knew, the Hurleys did not become congressmen in the paleface world. Only the handful of Dilmans could make it, because they were puking counterfeit whites. It distressed Leroy Poole that he must spend this precious day typing up notes of his last meeting with Dilman, preparing questions for the next interview, and then spend several months more writing the crummy, phony biography.

  If he could not do his own work, he told himself upon awakening, then at the very least he should be at the barricades, where the action was, where the freedom fight would finally be won, just the way the whites had won their fight at Concord and Bunker Hill. He was miserable about the Turnerite fiasco in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, yesterday. He had known for some time, having learned about it from Hurley, that the first step in the new program was planned for yesterday afternoon. He had not known the result until last night. His mind went back to last night.

  Because he had been offered a ride, and had research to do, he left the party early, over much protestation. The streets were curiously desolate, but then he supposed this was because T. C. had been killed and everyone was at home or in bars glued to television sets. There had been some talk between his driver, a Howard University boy, and himself about the President’s demise and what it might mean to their cause, and they agreed it meant nothing at all. Since the time Theodore Roosevelt had invited Booker T. Washington to the White House, no white President had proved any better than another for them. It was not yet ten o’clock when Leroy Poole was deposited before the small, three-story hotel, rising between an alley and a grocery store, its broken red neon sign shining out: PARADISE HOTEL.