Boomsday

by Christopher Buckley

  “No big deal. I was just under the impression that since you’re a senior partner in the firm, you might be involved—even interested—in the profit-making aspect.”

  “I was up late. The Senate vote on Social Security. I had a zillion e-mails and postings. I think we’re reaching a critical point here. I’m feeling a lot of anger out there.”

  “Happy to be part of your infrastructure,” Terry sniffed.

  “Why are you so bent out of shape? I’m the one who’s being asked to pay for your retirement. The Senate voted yesterday to raise my payroll taxes thirty percent. And because they didn’t want to offend the Wrinklies lobby—God forbid Boomers should have to pay their fair share—they only raised it on everyone under thirty-five years of age. So you can retire at sixty-two.”

  “Fuck the minks. Vicious little bastards. Look, I was just yanking your chain back there. I know you’ve been working hard. You’ve been working too hard. Come on. I want you to go home right now, throw a few things in a bag, and go to that resort in the Bahamas. It’s an order.”

  “Can’t. Too much going on. I’m calling for demonstrations.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Demonstrations. Come on, gramps, you remember the sixties. A protest. The time has come. Yesterday’s vote in the Senate proved that. I’m calling for an economic Bastille Day.”

  A look of incomprehension and alarm played across Terry’s face, like that of a ship captain upon being informed that a giant squid had just engaged in battle with the propeller—and was winning.

  “Cass,” he said calmly, “let me explain. This is a public relations firm. We’re in the business of . . .we apply fig leaves. We spread calm where there is uncalm. If there is noise, we apply silence. We make things better. At the very least, we seek to make things seem better. See where I’m taking this? Do you think that our clients come to us for help because on the side we urge people to—rise up against the United States government? Let me answer that. No. That is not what we do at Tucker Strategic Communications.”

  “CASSANDRA has nothing to do with TSC.”

  Terry said, “You’ve been reading Ann Rand again. I can tell.”

  “Ayn Rand. And what’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing. Except every time I see one of that nutty broad’s books open on your desk, you start acting like some fruitcake messiah.”

  “Who was it who told me, a long time ago, ‘Anger is the best motivator’? Wasn’t it your generation that started the whole youth movement thing? Come on, Terry. Forgotten what it’s like to be young and angry?”

  Terry shrugged. “I’m middle-aged and angry. With good Scotch, I can deal with the anger.”

  “So we’ve gone from ‘Don’t trust anyone over thirty’ to ‘Don’t drink any Scotch under thirty’? Is this what’s become of your revolution?”

  “The anthems from my revolution are now background music in TV commercials for cholesterol pills, onboard navigation systems for gas-guzzling SUVs, and hedge funds. Everyone sells out. Boomers just figured out how to make it an industry.”

  “Well, there’s something to make you feel good in the autumn of your life. In your gated community golf courses. While my generation, in the spring of our lives, are forking over half our paychecks to pay for your meds and martinis.”

  “I don’t even play golf. All right. Fine. You save the world. I’ll deal with the fucking minks.”

  Terry stormed off. He pushed an Aeron chair out of his way; it slid across the conference room and slammed fecklessly into the credenza where he kept his “Spinnies,” the Oscar statuettes given by the American Academy of Public Relations.

  Cass thought, Uh-oh. Dad’s mad. But there was work to do.

  It was at 4:02 a.m. the following morning that the idea came to her.

  She’d had little sleep, a lot of NoDoz, and way too many Red Bulls. In a calmer, sunlit hour of the day, she might not have written what she did. But the day had been a trying one. A few hours after her head butting with Terry, she read on the Internet that her father, now hugely wealthy from yet another California high-tech start-up, had just donated $10 million to Yale University.

  She was no longer on speaking terms with him, and she didn’t want to upset her mother, who was not all that well. She called her brother, who was in some sort of touch with their father. His report did not improve Cass’s mood. Lisa, the current Mrs. Frank Cohane, had a son by a previous marriage. He was now seventeen and applying, as it happened, to Yale. As her brother relayed all this, Cass remembered her father telling her years ago, “I’ll buy Yale University a whole new football stadium!”

  Cass hung up the phone in a daze. No doubt this unhappy episode contributed to the 4:02 a.m. posting on CASSANDRA calling for “actions against gated communities known to harbor early-retiring Boomers.”

  “Turn on CNN,” Terry said when she arrived at work just before noon, tired, but a good tired.

  “Why? What’s up?”

  “Oh, nothing. Riots on golf courses in Florida. You know, the usual youth movement thing.”

  Suddenly awake, Cass went to her office, flicked on the TV, and watched. She slumped in her chair. There’s a difference between typing on a computer all alone at four in the morning with your veins pulsing with amphetamine courage, calling for insurrection, and watching the results on TV at noon in your office on K Street. Terry buzzed her on the intercom.

  “Turn on Fox News. You just missed a great helicopter shot of some kid chucking a Molotov cocktail at a police riot vehicle. They just turned the water cannon on him. He’s down. . ..?Oooo. Ouch. That boy’s not throwing anything more anytime soon. Those Florida troopers, they do not mess around. By the way, you’ll be pleased to hear that the governor is considering calling in the National Guard— Excuse me. That’s my phone. It’s probably our most lucrative client, calling to cancel their account. Call you right back.”

  Cass watched numbly. She saw the words “Boomsday Rage” appear at the bottom of the CNN screen; felt a rumbling in her tummy. The phones began to ring. They didn’t stop.

  She was on the phone with a producer for one of the networks when her secretary buzzed to say that “two men from the FBI are here to see you.” Terry, already alert, buzzed her and told her under no circumstances to say anything until his lawyer arrived.

  As she gathered her thoughts, Cass reflected that there was probably no better place than here to face the storm. As Terry liked (privately) to say, “Disasters R Us.”

  She was in the middle of not answering the third or perhaps fourth question put to her by the two extremely unsmiling FBI agents when Terry walked into her office. The agents asked him to leave; he told them politely it was his firm and if they didn’t like his company, they could leave. Or they could remain and meet Allen Snyder, Esquire. The Allen Snyder. Of Hogan and Hartson. The name was familiar? Surely? Friend of the director of the FBI? Well, ha, friend of everyone. The Man to See. Rumored to be on the short list for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Dist—

  “Okay, Mr. Tucker,” said one of the agents wearily. “We get it. Mr. Snyder is an eminent personage.”

  The four of them sat around in awkward silence (“Would you two like some coffee?” “No, thank you.” “Water?” “No . . .”), waiting for the great man’s arrival, which came twenty minutes or so later, to the vast relief of everyone—especially Cass, who was trying not to hyperventilate. How embarrassing is that—passing out in front of your boss and the FBI?

  No one likes lawyers until you need one, at which point they assume the raiment of knights. Despite their impatience with Terry’s trumpet fanfare buildup, the agents instinctively recognized that they were now dealing with a lion of the bar. For his part, Mr. Snyder was gentle, courtly, soft-spoken, and professional. There was no “As I said to your boss last night while we were skinny-dipping in the White House pool with the president and the chief justice of the Supreme Court” or any of the usual Washington chest thumping and pecker flexing. Straigh
t to the point, barely above a whisper: “So, gentlemen, how can we resolve the situation?” Brilliant, Cass thought, the way he embeds optimism in the very gambit. It was simply a “situation” in need of “resolve.” Nothing so serious as, say, felonious incitement to violence against persons and property. Nothing of the sort.

  One of the agents handed Mr. Snyder a printout of Cass’s increasingly legendary 4:02 a.m. blog posting, explicitly inciting the furious disenfranchised youth of America to visit violence upon the nation’s . . .golf courses. Well, Mr. Snyder said, that’s certainly very interesting, and we’ll all want to take a closer look, but it has hardly been established that Ms. Devine wrote this. He was no computer expert, but it seemed to him that anyone with rudimentary knowledge of the Internet could hack into a mainframe and send out postings under his client’s name. And even so, under the various statutes of the law, it was very far from clear, from the wording of the posting, that the person who actually wrote it was specifically urging acts of violence. “Actions” here could be understood to mean, well, a number of things, including peaceful demonstrations. Protected constitutionally under the First Amendment to the Constitution, providing for rights of assembly.

  The agents had no ready reply to this inpenetrable fog-bank of legalism. Cass started to say something, but Terry shot her a glance that said, This is costing me $700 an hour—shut up.

  The agents, perhaps concluding that they were for the time being outgunned and needed to return to the J. Edgar Hoover Building in order to get bigger ones, gave their cards to Mr. Snyder and, with pointed sidelong glances at his somewhat trembly client, stated firmly that she should not leave the city limits of Washington, D.C., until their investigation was completed.

  They were almost out the door when the client said, “No, wait.” All heads turned. She said, “Mr. Snyder, thank you. That was really, really great, and I really, really appreciate it. But the fact is, I wrote the posting. I did urge people to, you know, sort of . . .rise up. I am sorry about the Molotov cocktail. I didn’t ask them to do that. I mean, specifically. . ..”

  Washington legal lore has it that it was the only time Allen Snyder, quintessence of legal probity and cool, ever groaned audibly. Terry was merely speechless.

  As the agents led Cass away, she found herself thinking, So this is what handcuffs feel like. Funny what comes to mind in such moments. Fortunately, there were no clients in the reception area.

  Chapter 9

  Cass’s arrest for “felonious incitement to cause damage to persons and property” had the effect she was counting on: celebrity. But with an agenda. A culture polysaturated with Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, and Lindsay Lohan craves the occasional serving of protein. This Cassandra provided. She was young, she was pretty, she was blond, she had something to say, and it had nothing to do with launching a new fragrance or singing career. By the time Allen Snyder had gotten her out on bail, she was in all the news broadcasts and on the front pages of most of the country’s newspapers. Headlines ranged from the sober:

  Blogger Who Called For Social Security

  Protest “Actions” Is Arrested by FBI

  to the not:

  “BOOMSDAY” CHICK

  TO FEDS: TAX THIS!

  Her apartment was staked out by the media, as was, to Terry’s nondelight, the K Street entrance to the offices of Tucker Strategic Communications.

  “Well,” he said over the phone in the resigned yet hopeful manner of his breed, the PR operative who knows that not every disaster can be made to seem a misunderstood victory, “maybe they’ll think it’s something to do with the neighbors.” He meant the Society for the Relocation and Assistance of Displaced Muslim Persons one floor down: the CIA unit in charge of “renditions” of suspected Islamic terrorists, whom they grabbed off the streets, tossed into the back of Gulfstream jets, and whisked off to countries where “interrogation” was still an honorable and competitive profession. The society’s actual function had been revealed by The New York Times a month earlier. But, alas, the media were here for Cassandra, not them.

  “You might as well hang out at my place until we figure out the next step,” Terry said. “Allen’s kind of confused at this point. He’s generally more used to clients who are trying to stay out of jail.”

  “I know,” Cass said. “I’m really sorry. But I can’t urge the people to rise up and then hide behind lawyers.”

  “‘The people’? You going Commie on me?”

  “No, Terry.”

  “It’s that damn Rand broad. Did you see the Times today? That’s what they called you: ‘Ayn Rand of the Blogosphere.’ Oh, Jesus, there’s another camera truck pulling up. There’s gotta be fifty people out front. Wonderful publicity for the firm. Wonderful.”

  “Why don’t you have the mink ranchers send over some minks and unleash them.”

  “Not a bad idea. I’ll see you later. Try not to pour any more gasoline on the fire until I get home. . ..?Cassandra? . . .Hello? You listening?”

  She returned to her battle station at the computer. CASSANDRA’s mainframe server in Columbus, Ohio, was overwhelmed. They’d had to switch over to higher-capacity servers. When CASSANDRA came back online, Cass saw that she had 2.6 million e-mails awaiting her. The thought of reading them made her suddenly feel very tired.

  Her cell phone began to chirrup with calls from bookers for the TV shows. Allen had begged her—instructed her, actually—to refrain from public comment. But she found herself saying yes to the network news, yes to The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, yes to Hardball with Chris Matthews. Yes, yes, yes to everyone—a regular Molly Bloom. What’s the point of starting a revolution, she thought, if you’re going to dodge the spotlight?

  When Terry arrived home, exhausted and annoyed after having to use the Dumpster exit of his office building, he called out to her.

  No answer. He found the note, taped to the refrigerator: “TURN ON TV. LOVE, C. P.S. Sorry (I know I keep saying that).”

  Terry poured himself a large snifter of his thirty-year-old Scotch, girded his loins, and turned on the TV. He recited his mantra from Dorothy Parker: “What fresh hell is this?” The world would always provide.

  “It is quiet, finally, in Florida tonight, following twenty-four hours of mayhem and protest at several golf communities. The incidents were sparked when this woman, twenty-nine-year-old Cassandra Devine, a Washington-based public relations executive . . .”

  Terry let out a low moan. But at least they hadn’t mentioned the name.

  “. . . urged young people who are angry about the recent Senate vote to raise Social Security payroll taxes to take, quote, actions. The FBI arrested Devine, and we hear tonight that she will be formally charged with incitement to commit violence. I spoke to her earlier today. . . .

  “Ms. Devine, did you in fact urge people to commit violence?”

  “Not explicitly, but in effect, yes. I won’t hide behind legalistic terms. Sure I was inciting them. And tonight, Brian, I’m urging young people in the United States to protest the hopeless fiscal irresponsibility of the United States government. That Senate vote was an abomination. It was a vote to take food off my generation’s table in order to feather the nests of aging, self-indulgent, pampered Baby Boomers. What I’m saying is we’re not going to sit still while they bankrupt us.”

  “But don’t Americans have the opportunity to protest the government at the polls, on election day?”

  “Theoretically, yeah. But you don’t get real change until you make a loud noise. Until you sit down in the middle of the street and block traffic. You wouldn’t have had the Civil Rights Act of 1964 without the protest marches. You wouldn’t have had a women’s movement without those protests. We wouldn’t have gotten out of Vietnam without the demonstrations. And we aren’t going to get the Congress to act responsibly, to stop piling up endless debt and entitlements and passing it all on to the next generation, without a little dancin’ in the street.”

  “What are you specifically calling fo
r?”

  “I’m calling on every member of my generation to take their iPods out of their ears and send the U.S. government a message. Not a text message, either. It’s simple. If the government can withhold our money, then we can withhold our money.”

  “By that you mean—”

  “A tax revolt, Brian. I’m calling on members of my generation to stop paying taxes.”

  Terry reached her on her cell phone as she was shuttling to her next TV appearance, in the back of a town car.

  “I know, I know,” she said. “Sorry.”

  “Damn fine job, Bob.” It was a line Terry used around the office when particularly displeased by someone’s work. They were the words uttered by the captain of a supertanker after regaining the bridge only to find that his inebriated third mate, a man named Bob, had run it up on a reef, spilling one hundred thousand barrels of crude oil into a fragile ecosystem, resulting in the extinction of several rare species and $10 billion in lawsuits.

  “Allen called,” Terry said. “Your lawyer. The one who told you not to talk to the press? He’s looking up the actual statute. Something to do with advocating overthrow of the U.S. government. He said he’ll have it by morning. At your arraignment. Oh, and your mom called. She tried you, but your cell phone was off. I told her you were in a TV studio hammering nails into your coffin. She too is thrilled at the prospect of your spending your adult life in prison. So, what act of self-destruction do you have planned next? It’s only seven. You ought to be able to fit three or four more career-ending moments in time to make the eleven o’clock news.”

  “Keep your TV on. . ..?What’s that?”

  “I’m filling my glass with more Scotch. To the brim. Maybe I’ll mix it with sleeping pills. That works, doesn’t it?”

  “Save some for me.”

  “What do you know. This Scotch, it’s older than you.”

  Cassandra’s arraignment the next day at the United States Courthouse drew a big media crowd. As Terry said to her once they’d made it inside, “When it comes to getting your message out there, there’s really nothing like being formally charged with attempting to overthrow the government.”