But this time, the White House had called him.
The president went briskly through the motions of pretending to be honored that Gideon should carve time out of his busy schedule to visit with the most powerful man on earth.
“What do you make of Jepperson’s Transitioning bill?” he asked.
“I view it, Mr. President, as an abomination. To quote Jefferson, as opposed to Jepperson, ‘When I consider that God is just, I tremble for my country.’”
The president cast a sidelong glance at Bucky by way of signaling his aide, Don’t let him start rambling on about Jefferson, for God’s sake.
“Yeah,” the president said. “That’s pretty much how we view it. Hell of a thing. And a hell of a different thing than that woman with the Virgin Mary tattooed on her stomach. We don’t think you had anything to do with that, by the way.”
“Thank you, sir,” Gideon said heavily. “That’s most generous of you. Of course, the real issue with respect to Mrs. Del—”
Bucky Trumble leapt in. “Mr. President, Gideon is the preeminent moral authority in this country in the matter of the sanctity of life. I don’t think anyone disputes that.”
“I sure as hell don’t dispute it. I know. That’s why we need him. That’s why we called him in.”
Gideon thought, Why all this slathering on of butter? What do they want, these two sinners? But opportunity trumps suspicion. Gideon had been in Washington long enough to know that when powerful people need something from you, it is accompanied by the sound of a very large dinner bell.
“You’ve seen the polls,” the president said. “The kids, the eighteen-to-thirty-year-olds, they’re going for it. In a big way.”
“Is it any surprise, Mr. President,” Gideon said, “that the young people of this country should be so easily led astray, when we have failed them so profoundly in moral leadership?”
The president frowned.
Gideon added, “I did not mean by that you personally, sir.”
“Uh, no. No.”
“I mean that we as a society have failed them. For what have we offered them but a false banquet of materialism? Video games, pornography, filth, copulation, fast food, downloads, uploads. ‘Thou hast prepared for me a feast, yet I hunger. My soul thirsteth for the Lord.’”
“Right,” the president said. “That’s why we need to come out swinging. Crush this cocksucker.”
Gideon stiffened. He was, after all, a reverend. People, even presidents, weren’t supposed to talk this way. He shot Bucky Trumble a perturbed look. Bucky shot back a look that said, Suck it up, pal. He’s the president of the United States.
“Grab him by the throat,” the president continued. “Kick him in the nuts, cut off his dick, put his head on a pike . . .”
Gideon cleared his throat. “Ah. I have spoken out against—”
“You know who’s behind all this, don’t you?” The president leaned forward, eyes blazing, setting the hook.
A look of solemnity came over Gideon’s face.
“Yes, sir, I do. The ever so inaptly named Miss Devine.”
President Peacham shook his head in disgust. “What she did to you on that TV show. It was inexcusable. Atrocious. Uncalled for. If she’d done that to me, I’d have reached over, grabbed her by the hair, and slammed her goddamn head on the table.”
Gideon shifted in his seat. It was awkward enough to have the matter of your having supposedly killed your own mother brought up in the Oval Office, by the president. Was he also suggesting that Gideon had been . . .cowardly on the TV show?
“I do appreciate that sentiment, sir,” he murmured.
“Ugly business. Fucking ugly.”
Gideon was speechless.
The president said, “Hell, Gideon, I’m a sinner and a salty man. I apologize. But this is how I talk. Among—friends.”
“I thank you, sir, for your friendship.”
Bucky Trumble leaned forward and said, “The president and I were hoping that you, Gideon, will take the lead against Jepperson.”
“Well, as I say, I am speaking out. I have hardly been idle. But, sir, why not take the lead yourself?”
“Gideon, listen to me,” the president said, lowering his voice and boring in like a drill. “I am up to my ass in alligators. I got a collapsing economy. Foreign banks are using the U.S. dollar to wipe their asses. I’m fighting four wars—and looks like another on the way, in goddamn Nepal. Someone tell me what in hell we’re doing in Nepal. I got melting ice caps on both poles. Florida just lost another two feet of waterfront. Hundred square miles of Mississippi just went under. They just found another tunnel under the Mexican border, this one a four-lane highway, for Christ’s sweet sake. I got a drought in the West the Interior Department says is going to make Colorado and Wyoming into another dust bowl. Pakistan and India are going at each other like a couple of wet cats, and don’t get me started on that hairball maniac in North Korea. CIA’s telling me Israel’s preparing to launch nuclear weapons at fucking Mecca. Mecca! Gideon, I don’t have time to take on a one-legged senator who says the solution to Social Security is for us to kill ourselves at age seventy. Shit, the way I’m feeling now, I may shoot myself. And I may not wait until I’m seventy.”
It was flattering to have the most powerful man in the world supplicate in this fashion. But there was something just a tad smelly about it all. He was leaving something out.
“Mr. President,” Gideon said, “with all due respect, why—really—do you want me to take the lead on this?”
The president leaned back in his chair. He nodded as if in acknowledgment of defeat. Then he smiled, looked over at Bucky Trumble, and said to Bucky, “I told you he was smart. Didn’t I tell you?”
“You did, boss. You did.”
The president, calmer now, said to Gideon, “Look here. If I take the lead on this, all it’s going to accomplish is to empower the cocksucker. Don’t you see? His numbers’ll jump. He’s going at the president! It’ll make it a political issue instead of moral issue. Which is what it is. That’s why you’re the only one who can do it. And I’ll back you with everything short of air strikes.”
“What exactly do you propose, Mr. President?”
“Buck,” the president grunted.
“There’s certain information about Jepperson and this woman Devine that you might find useful in this debate.”
Gideon’s eyebrows arched like stretching cats. He stroked his beard with moist, scented fingertips. His lips pursed. Oh my, oh my. Yet a voice whispered, Careful, son. You’re in the lion’s den, and the beasts do raven.
“What kind of information?” he said cautiously.
“The kind,” the president said, leaning forward, suddenly every bit the commander in chief, aiming soul-seeking missiles into Gideon’s eyes, “that causes tides to turn. Let me pay you a compliment: We didn’t call you in here just to fuck around.”
Good Lord, Gideon thought. What had this man eaten for breakfast? Flapjacks with nitroglycerin syrup? Another thought came to mind: Were they recording this? You never knew with the White House. But then why record yourself in the act of offering dirt to a man of impeccable moral rectitude? Impeccable, that is, apart from the business about killing Mother.
“I would like to consider it,” Gideon said nervously. “I would like to pray on it.”
The president’s look of cold command suddenly congealed into panicked horror at the prospect that Gideon was about to invite him to get on his knees in the Oval Office and pray with him. He’d done that the last time with the “Stomach Madonna” woman, as the tabloid press had unfortunately dubbed Mrs. Delbianco.
Sensing the president’s discomfiture, Gideon added quickly, “In the privacy of my own heart.”
The president sighed with relief. “Of course. If there’s anything we can do for you in the meantime . . .”
Bucky shot the president a cautionary look—too late.
“There is something, actually,” Gideon said.
&nbs
p; “Oh?” the president said, as if delighted to hear it.
“The memorial to the forty-three million.”
“Oh. Right.” Shit.
For years, Gideon had been petitioning various congressmen and senators for a memorial on the Washington Mall to the 43 million unborn souls since the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973.
“Well”—the president stood, smiling broadly and extending his hand—“we will certainly give that our prayerful thought.”
Chapter 18
Cass had come up with the notion of a television and Internet advertising campaign to stigmatize old age. This would, theoretically, nudge voters toward greater acceptance of Voluntary Transitioning. Randy loved the idea and, in the spirit of the thing, volunteered to pay for it out of his own deep pockets. Terry was less enthusiastic, for practical reasons.
“Cass,” he said, “some of our best clients are CEOs in their sixties, some in their seventies. You really want to run public service announcements on TV telling them they’re selfish bastards and should kill themselves? Speaking as the founder of Tucker Strategic Communications—and incidentally as your employer—let me just say that this company is not out to commit suicide.”
“Terry,” Cass said, “we’re not urging our clients to Transition.”
Terry furrowed his brow and clicked on one of the storyboard slides in the PowerPoint presentation Cass had prepared. He read aloud:
“Spot number four. ‘Resource hogs’? Now we’re calling old people resource hogs?”
“Problem?” Cass said matter-of-factly.
“Well—it’s a little harsh, isn’t it? I never thought of Grandma and Grandpa as resource hogs. What happened to meta?”
“Terry, Terry, Terry, we’re simply making the point that nonproductive longevity only consumes resources that would be better spent on younger generations, who are currently being crippled with passed-along debt as a result of—”
“Thank you, Ayn Rand.”
“Okay.” She smiled. “So, no problem?”
“What about this one?” Terry punched up another slide: “‘Wrinklies’? We’re calling them Wrinklies?”
“I wasn’t going to put that on TV.”
“That’s a relief,” Terry snorted.
“I’m going to plant it,” she said brightly. “Have a third party send it into CASSANDRA and then make it our own. I think the kids’ll go for it in a big way. ‘Wrinklies. Ew, gross! So heinous.’”
“Was Einstein a Wrinkly? Eleanor Roosevelt . . .Helen Keller?”
“They gave something back. Einstein showed us how to blow ourselves up. Now that’s what I call transitioning.”
Terry gave her a worried look. But on she went. “This campaign is about self-indulgent aging Boomers who are wrecking the U.S. economy and economically enslaving the next generations. This is not about The Miracle Worker or Eleanor Roosevelt. Though she really was wrinkly. Will you please just chill?”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Yes. For heaven’s sake.”
“I couldn’t tell. This one . . .” He clicked on another slide. Up came an image of a group of gaunt, hungry-looking youths staring hollow-eyed at a large empty bird’s nest. The caption read: “What kind of nest egg will you leave them?”
“I guess it works,” he said. “But kind of a downer, though.”
“It’s supposed to be. What’s eating you? It’s like you’re suddenly a double agent working for the American Association of Resource Hogs.”
Terry sighed. “I don’t know. This is starting to give me the creeps. Urging old people to kill themselves. Norman Rockwell it ain’t.”
“Omigod, Terry.”
“What?”
“That’s it! You are such a genius.” Cass hugged him. “You really are. It’s beyond brilliant. I can’t even discuss it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Norman Rockwell.” Cass snapped her laptop shut and dashed out of the conference room, leaving Terry to shake his head and go back to work.
Two days later, she burst into his office with the laptop, smiling like a cat that had just swallowed an entire cage of parakeets. He hadn’t seen her look this happy—ever.
She put the laptop in front of him, fired it up, and clicked on the “Start Slideshow” icon.
Terry watched.
Cass had hired a computer graphic artist to duplicate Norman Rockwell’s sliced-bread, rooster-crowing, soda-fountain, friendly-cop, Thanksgiving-turkey America—only on the theme of Voluntary Transitioning.
The first slide showed a man and wife in their seventies, holding hands, smiling as though they were embarking on an ocean cruise. They were walking into the doorway of a homey, gingerbread-style house whose address might be 15 Maple Street. Above the doorway was a bright yellow sign that read, VOLUNTARY TRANSITIONING CENTER—WELCOME, SENIORS!
The next illustration showed a pair of perfectly healthy-looking people in their mid-sixties thumbing their noses at a frustrated-looking Grim Reaper. The caption read, WE’LL DO IT ON OUR TIMETABLE, THANKS—NOT YOURS!
There were half a dozen illustrations. The last one showed an elderly man in a comfy, fluffy bed attended by an attractive and shapely nurse dressed in a traditional starched uniform. The man was smiling sleepily. The nurse was smiling back at him as she adjusted the valve of an IV drip running into his arm. The caption read, OFF TO A HEAVENLY REST!
Terry looked up at Cass, who was still beaming.
“Well?”
“I’m speechless.”
“Aren’t they fabulous?”
“Lethal injection never looked so warm and fuzzy. A happy occasion for the whole family. I’m sure the Rockwell estate will be thrilled.”
“You were so right. It needed to be uplifting. Randy loved them.”
“Did he? How is Randolph of Bosnia?”
“Ooh,” Cass said, “do I sense a note of—something? Hel-lo,” she said. “Who was it that kept telling me to get laid?”
“He’s a client. And what is Tucker’s first law?”
“No schtupping the clients. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, I figured this is different.”
“How, exactly?”
“Among other things, I knew him before he was a client. Why are you being such a hard-ass about this?”
“Because I don’t like Randy.”
“Okay. So. Don’t sleep with him.”
“I think you’re getting way wound around the axle,” Terry said. “I’ve seen it happen before. Young, impressionable account execs—they go over to the client side. They drink the Kool-Aid. You end up having to deprogram them. I’ve seen it happen to the best minds of my generation.”
“Thank you, Allen Ginsberg. No one was focused on this before I came along. Now everyone’s talking about it. It’s my friggin’ Kool-Aid.”
“And you’re drunk on it. Resource hogs. Wrinklies. Norman Rockwell goes to Auschwitz?”
Cass looked down at the floor. She said quietly, “I’m just trying to get a debate going about the future of Social Security.”
“All right,” Terry said. “I don’t want you to get hurt. I’ve been around politicians way longer than you have. When push comes to shove, trust me—it’s you over the side first, not them. Wait a minute. Why am I even having to tell you this? He blew you up in a minefield!”
“Yeah, and he’s the one limping for the rest of his life. Give the man a break. If you don’t like my Norman Rockwell thing, I’m open to suggestions.”
Terry considered. “Why not celebrity endorsements? Like the milk ads, only they’re drinking poison. They’ve got little purple hemlock stains on their upper lips. ‘Got Transitioning?’”
Cass smiled. “You can’t help it, can you. Even when you’re being a total jerk, you’re brilliant.”
“Either you’ve had too much Red Bull,” Terry said, “or you’ve gone over to the dark side. Either way, you’re grounded. Lose Norman Rockwell.”
“This is no time for tim
idity.”
“That’s right,” Terry said. “Next Tuesday is the time for timidity.”
It was an old joke between them. On any given day on Capitol Hill, someone said, “Now is not the time for partisanship”—usually when he or she was about to be crushed by the opposition. Whenever Terry or Cass spotted the quote in the paper, one rushed to e-mail it to the other first. Whoever spotted it second had to pay for drinks that night.
“I’ve gotta go,” Cass said. “I’ve got a meeting on the Hill with Randy.”
“Tell Ahab I said hi.”
“That is so funny. I am, like, paralyzed with laughter.”
But in the elevator down to the lobby, Cass found herself wondering if she was, in fact, crossing some Rubicon of weirdness. She looked idly at her shoes. They looked dry.
She was disappointed, even quietly furious, over Terry’s reaction to the Norman Rockwell campaign. He might at least have said it was clever. Maybe it was a passion deficit on his part. Terry was a generation older than Cass. He could hardly be expected to muster the zest she was bringing to this issue. He’s also completely jealous, she told herself. “Ahab.” Honestly. Let’s all breathe into a bag and get on with it, shall we? One of the colonels in Bosnia used to say that.
As the elevator doors dinged open, she forced a shrug. Whatever. Thank God, she thought, for “Whatever.” “Whatever” could stop any unwelcome thought in its tracks. To be or not to be. Whatever. We have nothing to fear but fear itself. Whatever. Mission accomplished. Whatever. It was the philosophical equivalent of a Jersey barrier. Maybe she’d have it inscribed on her tombstone: Here lies Cassandra Devine. Whatever. So very meta. Like Transitioning.
Her BlackBerry began humming like an epileptic bumblebee. A news alert. She read: FATHER OF TRANSITIONING DIVA CASSANDRA DEVINE BLASTS OWN DAUGHTER.
She stopped. Took a deep breath. Stared at the display. Scrolled down:
Billionaire California hi-tech wizard Franklin Cohane says his daughter Cassandra Devine, originator of Senator Randolph Jepperson’s “Voluntary Transitioning” scheme to save Social Security, gives him “the willies.”
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