(1964) The Man

by Irving Wallace

  “Invite me, Arthur, go ahead, invite me.”

  “You are invited. I’ll get to you tomorrow with the date.”

  “You won’t forget, this time?”

  “I hadn’t forgotten, Sally. I’ve been busy. I am still busy. Except now that you are a government girl, I can justify it as mixing business with pleasure. I must run, Sally.” He paused. “There is only one thing I want you to do for me. When we meet, I want you to be wearing the white sequined gown. You know, the décolleté one. Good-bye, Sally.”

  When she floated out of the booth, she was surer than she had ever been. She would be a First Lady of sorts yet—not Dilman’s, but Arthur Eaton’s.

  It was a quarter to seven in the evening. The after-work, going-home traffic had abated. The Presidential limousine sped through the red lights and darkened thoroughfares toward the brownstone row house on Van Buren Street.

  This morning, when he left his private residence, the journey had taken twice as long, and Douglass Dilman had not imagined that he would return so soon. All through the busy, depleting, and eventually upsetting day, the conviction had grown upon him that he must return as soon as possible.

  Because of his second argument with his son, his appointment schedule had dragged on longer than planned. His last visitor had left him a half hour ago. Then he had requested Edna to inform Nat Abrahams at the Mayflower Hotel that their dinner must be postponed from eight o’clock to eight-thirty. Before she departed for the night, Edna had confirmed the change, adding that Mrs. Abrahams was confined to bed with a cold and that Mr. Abrahams would be coming alone.

  After that, Dilman had telephoned Reverend Paul Spinger directly.

  “Paul, is Wanda back from work yet?”

  “She’s in the kitchen. I can get her for you, Mr. President.”

  “No. I’d rather not speak to her on the phone. Simply ask her to stay there. I want to see her alone. Just for a few minutes.”

  “I’ll tell her, Mr. President. How was your first day in the White House?”

  “I don’t know, really, Paul. I’ve been too busy. . . . Look, Paul, I want my visit kept hush-hush. You understand? It’s not easy to arrange on this end, but I intend to manage it. See you all shortly.”

  After notifying engagements secretary Lucas and press secretary Flannery that he was through for the day, and would spend the entire evening in his new dwelling, Dilman had stepped outside. He had come upon the Secret Service agent, Otto Beggs, the one who had accompanied him from the brownstone this morning. Beggs had been waiting beside the colonnade to accompany him again in the short walk to the ground-floor elevator. Dilman had remembered the husky agent was on a split shift, which might explain his disgruntled expression. Dilman also remembered that it was Beggs who had warned him he could travel nowhere alone.

  As they strode through the chilled darkness, he had taken his measure of Beggs. It would not be easy, he had told himself, but he was determined to have this one important private visit. When they had entered the ground floor, Beggs had turned left, but Dilman had turned right. Almost comically, Beggs had scrambled back to his side.

  Dilman had informed the agent that he wanted to make a short visit to his brownstone residence before dinner. There was a civil rights matter that he had to discuss informally with Reverend Spinger, his upstairs tenant. Dilman had insisted that he did not want the press alerted to this unscheduled meeting. Therefore, he wished minimum security maintained in order to allow his going and coming to be unnoticed. There had been a brief disagreement, nervous on both sides, and, at last, Beggs had consented to reduce their protective escort to three agents in the limousine, and one motorcycle policeman ahead and one behind, without sirens being put into use until they left the immediate White House area.

  He had been pleased at how quickly and quietly the limousine had been made to appear, and how swiftly and stealthily their departure had been accomplished.

  During the ride to Van Buren Street, he had known that he could not repeat this kind of rendezvous many times. Despite the ease of this slipping away from the President’s House and its prying eyes, there were always too many others, elsewhere, watching and whispering. Sooner or later he would be caught in the act. He could not constantly use Spinger as his camouflage. And, at the same time, he could not risk the possibility that his friendship with Wanda Gibson might be made public. It would be misunderstood and misinterpreted. Being a colored Chief Executive was bad enough. Being a Negro President with a mulatto lady friend was impossible. To survive, he must reinforce his public image as the loner, the bachelor. It would make him less threatening, less publicized, and make the resentful electorate feel more secure. Nevertheless, this one personal meeting with Wanda was imperative. If it developed as he expected that it would, the result would solve everything.

  Dilman felt the automobile braking to a halt beneath him, and through the rear window he could make out his beloved Victorian-style residence. The street was empty, except for parked cars and a Negro boy carry a cumbersome filled grocery bag, whistling off key, as he meandered toward his home.

  Beggs stooped and got out, and Dilman followed him. He noticed that the two other agents, who had left the front seat, were consulting in undertones. As he started for the entrance, Dilman saw one agent planting himself before the house, and the other hustling up the sidewalk to the rear.

  When Dilman reached the front door, he realized that Beggs was a half step behind him.

  Dilman opened the door and said, “Mr. Beggs, from here on in, I’d prefer to be alone.”

  Stolidly Beggs replied, “Sorry, Mr. President, I’m not allowed to do that.”

  “Well, I can’t let you sit in on the meeting. It is private government business.”

  “I won’t invade your privacy, Mr. President,” Beggs promised. I simply got to be near where you are. It’s risky enough as it is, sir.”

  He would not be dissuaded, Dilman could see, and so, with a shrug, Dilman went inside, followed by Beggs.

  They strode down the hallway and mounted the stairs to the upstairs landing. As they arrived, the door opened. Reverend Spinger, his wife behind him, both conscious of the Secret Service Agent, greeted Dilman formally as Mr. President. Dilman introduced Beggs, and then entered the warm, old-fashioned living room. When he turned to address the Spingers, he was surprised and alarmed to find Beggs still behind him and inside the room.

  “Mr. Beggs,” said Dilman, “you promised me some privacy.”

  Beggs’s ruddy face was helplessly apologetic. “You’re on your own from this point, Mr. President. I’ll just remain standing here inside the door.”

  Dilman frowned, and looked at Spinger. “Reverend, is there anywhere I can see you alone for five minutes?”

  “We can go to my study in the rear,” said Spinger.

  Permitting Spinger to lead him out of the living room, Dilman could hear Rose offering to heat Beggs a pot of coffee, and Beggs accepting with thanks on the condition that he could drink it standing at his post.

  Dilman trudged after his friend, until they came to Wanda’s bedroom.

  “She’s waiting,” Spinger whispered.

  Dilman nodded. “Paul, you’d better not go back. I told him we’re having a conference. Can you keep yourself out of sight for a little while? It won’t be long.”

  “I’ll go to our own bedroom.”

  Dilman lingered until Spinger had gone, then he started to knock, but suddenly restrained himself. He did not want Wanda to call out. Instead he turned the knob several times, rattling it, and went inside.

  She was at the window pulling down a shade, her back to him, when she heard his entrance. She came around slowly, smiling, and Dilman’s heart quickened at the sight of her. Although he had telephoned her every evening from downstairs in the past week, he had not seen her for what seemed an eternity.

  He stood motionless on the far side of the tastefully decorated bedroom, enjoying the sight of her. He was positive that no woman on earth
at thirty-six was at once so youthful and so serenely mature. Her brunette hair was swept back from her refined cameo face, each diminutive feature crinkled upward in genuine pleasure. Her softly draped chartreuse blouse clung to her small bosom, and her slim, forest-green skirt accented her shapely legs. She appeared taller than her five feet three inches, and she looked definitely mulatto rather than white. Dilman would not allow himself to believe that he was shading her in his mind’s eye to make her duskier, because he wanted her that way, and wanted what he planned to be possible.

  Wanda Gibson spoke first. “Doug, I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to—to see you.”

  He crossed to her, embracing her more spontaneously and closely than he had in months. He enjoyed her soft hands behind his neck, and he kissed her cheek, and then her lips. “Wanda, I can’t tell you how much—how difficult it has been without you.”

  She disengaged herself. “We’re together right now. That’s all that matters.” She took his hand and led him to the love seat before the portable television set. “How were you able to get away, Doug?”

  They both sat down, and he said, “I wasn’t able to, but I did. The Secret Service, the advisers, the press, they keep you on a leash like an unruly pet. I sneaked away. I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it twice.”

  Her brown eyes had been studying every movement of his face, he knew. “Doug, you’re not sleeping,” she said. “I can tell.”

  “I’m not eating, or living, or thinking, either. From early morning till night you’re on a roller coaster, it feels, going, going, and when you try to sleep, you’re still going, like there’s no place to get off. Why did this have to happen to me? I’m the wrong man for it, Wanda. I’m not geared to it. I try not to let anyone know, but I’m scared and confused.”

  “Doug, you are as well prepared for the position as any man on earth. We’ve been through all that.”

  “In the House, in the Senate, it was different,” he said. “What you did was part of shared responsibility. Your ayes and nays were in chorus, not solo. But as Harry Truman once said of the Presidential desk—the buck stops here. No one to pass it to, Wanda. End of the line. Certainly, I understand what is going on. None of the legislation has any mysteries. It’s the final responsibility that’s getting me down. You turn around, to hand some document to someone else for the final decision, and you know what? There is no one there. Yours is the final decision. That’s what is so damn oppressing.”

  “I don’t think that is your worry at all, Doug.”

  He was taken aback. “No? What do you think is my worry?”

  Wanda bent toward him, took a cigar from his coat pocket, and began to unpeel the cellophane. “Your color,” she said simply. She handed him the cigar. “Here. You need it. Besides, I like the fragrance. It’s more you, and like old times.”

  He bit off the cigar end, and she lighted it. He viewed her through the first cloud of smoke. “My color,” he repeated dully.

  “That’s always the worry with you,” said Wanda. “If you were white, you might be shocked and a bit overwhelmed by the job, but you’d fall into it, manage it. Now what you’ve always been trying to—oh, not to have it noticed by anyone—hide—has been exposed to every person in the country, in the whole world, and that’s what is scaring you. That’s it, Doug, and don’t deny it. You are afraid you can’t make ordinary mistakes like other ordinary human beings. You are afraid of making Negro mistakes in front of your white peers.”

  Her bluntness startled him. He was immediately defensive. “Well, there’s some truth in what you say, but I think you’re exaggerating it, Wanda.”

  “I’m understating it, Doug. I know your strengths, and you know them, too, and we don’t have to go into that. You can’t hide your blackness any longer, not by putting your head in the sand, not by losing yourself in the crowd, not by being a yes-man so no one will remember you have a voice. I won’t discuss this part of you in relation to your family, or to me, or to your work in Congress. It’s not the time for that, and I have no right to bring it up when you are so engulfed by other demands. But, Doug, there you are, there you are in the White House, and nothing can change it. The whole wide world knows the color of your skin, and like it or not, they’ve got to accept it, and, more important, so have you. Once you accept that in your mind, you can begin to act as a human being. Then I think you won’t be so troubled.”

  Momentarily he was annoyed with her, because she was speaking the truth, and he did not want the truth, least of all from her. “Act like a human being?” he said. “Do you think anyone’ll let me? Don’t you read the papers, any more, or listen to the radio?”

  “Doug, I know what’s going on, exactly. Our people are singing Moses, they’ve got Moses, and that’s an unfair pressure for you. And the bitterest whites are hating more than ever, and persecuting us more than ever to get their hate out of their systems, because they can’t get at you. And the in-betweens—I listen, I overhear them—they don’t know what to think. They feel threatened and uneasy because your presence makes them feel like members of a minority for the first time. They don’t believe you’ll rule as a white, like T. C., but as a black man, and they’re worried you’ll make their precious pure-white Christian land into a Dark Continent. They should know how little they have to fear from you.”

  Dilman winced at the last. He fought to keep his dignity and manhood in her eyes. “Wanda, believe it or not, I only want to do my job now, do it, get it over with, and go back to where I came from. Yet it seems no one will let me. The Negroes want this and that because I’m Negro. The whites want this and that because I’m not white. T. C.’s gang wants me to be T. C., when I’m not him at all. You want me to be—to be something else. God, even my own son—”

  He broke off, lost in misery, and she waited, and then she said, “You saw Julian?”

  “He came to the office today. I had to talk to him about his grades and about doing better in school, something more important than ever now. So I had to listen to that Negro-versus-white-school business all over again. I know, Wanda, I know what you’ve said, but there it is, and he has to do well. I told him he was spending too much time with the Crispus Society, and he owed more time to himself and his future. Well, I thought we had it settled, and then suddenly he had to see me again, in the middle of the afternoon, so important it couldn’t wait. So I saw him. You’ve never heard anyone so unreasonable and agitated. Now it wasn’t the Crispus Society he was defending, but those damn Turnerite hoodlums. Sure they got the raw end of the stick down in Mississippi, and there’ll be more of that. But it’s not a Federal matter.”

  “What did he want from you?”

  “To use my influence to get Nat Abrahams to intervene. Heaven knows, Nat does his share helping us. Now he’s busy with something for himself. His office has already told the Turnerites he is unavailable. I have no right, either as his friend or as the President, to influence him. Julian wouldn’t listen. He was practically frothing.”

  Dilman kept working his fist into his palm. “I didn’t know what got into him, and then I finally figured it out before coming here. He must have run into that writer who’s been doing my biography, Leroy Poole, up in the White House. They were both up there at the same time. And Poole—he talks Crispus, but he acts Turnerite. I suspect Hurley is a close friend of his. Poole’s a very eloquent and inciting young man, and to someone like Julian, who is so much younger, and so impressionable, who in fact admires Poole’s writings, that Turnerite talk can be unsettling. I’m sure that’s what was behind Julian’s tirade. Anyway, I had to be very firm with Julian. I told him no and that was that. He didn’t like it. I don’t even know if we’re on speaking terms at this point.”

  Wanda’s hand reached out to touch Dilman’s fist. “I’m sorry, Doug.”

  Anxiously he asked, “You agree with me on this, don’t you?”

  Wanda nodded. “Yes. They’re being mistreated in Hattiesburg, but that’s not unusual, wrong thought it
is. I don’t like Hurley’s talk and what he stands for. Neither does Paul Spinger.”

  Dilman put another match to his cigar. “Good. You make me feel better already.” He glanced at her, and then he said, “That’s why I need you, Wanda. That’s one of the reasons. You’re the only frank and honest person I can discuss my problems with, personal or otherwise. That’s why I came here to see you right now, hard as it was.”

  “Why did you come here, Doug?”

  “To ask you a favor.” He waited for her blanket promise, but she was silent. He went on. “Wanda, now that I’m—I’m President, seeing you on the old basis is going to be impossible. You know that.”

  “I know that, Doug.”

  The trace of sadness in her voice accentuated his growing fear of losing her. He said, “I don’t want to lose you.” He added, “I need you to—to push me forward. Wanda, I figured it out early this afternoon. I was hiring a white Southern girl for my social secretary—”

  “Well, that took courage.”

  “Senator Watson’s daughter. She’s exactly right for the position. There’ll be some dirty digs, but there would be whatever I did.”

  “What about Diane Fuller?”

  “I’m getting her another job, secretary in the press section of Miss Watson’s department. But there remain a couple of key openings, secretarial openings, administrative ones, on the White House staff. We’ve had resignations, as you can imagine.”

  “Yes.”

  “Now there are these openings.” He paused. “Wanda, I want you to accept one of those jobs.”

  She did not appear surprised. “That’s thoughtful of you, Doug. Unfortunately, I already have a good job.”

  “Vaduz Exporters? Wanda, this is the White House. You’ve told me yourself, a dozen times, you don’t like your boss—who is that director?—Gar, Franz Gar. Well, here’s a chance to leave him. I know you have a well-paying setup at Vaduz, but you told me it is mechanical and dull, and you have no contact with people. It would be different in the White House. The work might not pay as much, but I’d look after that soon enough. It would be fascinating for you. Most important, it would be helpful to me. I could see you every day. We could talk.”