Boomsday

by Christopher Buckley

  “She’s clearly dealing with some issues,” said Cohane. “It’s not pretty to watch.”

  Cohane, who made his first fortune developing a package tracking technology which he sold to FedEx for $540 million, said he was taking the unusual step of criticizing his daughter because he found her proposal to offer seniors incentives to kill themselves “morally repellent.”

  He is a member of President Peacham’s “Owl Nest” of major donors. To be an Owl, a person must donate at least $250,000 to the national party.

  He said he had never discussed his daughter with the President or his staff, but wishes “the Attorney General had prosecuted her to the full extent of the law: Tearing up golf courses is a very serious crime, to say nothing of trying to overthrow the government.”

  Cohane said he had not spoken with his daughter in nearly ten years, after a “family squabble,” and that she had rebuffed his several attempts at reconciliation, including a “mind-boggling” cash gift.

  “She’s an angry kid,” he said. “I feel sorry for her. She’s all screwed up.”

  He said he was coming forward because he was in the process of “increasing my visibility at the national level” and wanted to “publicly distance myself from someone I happen to be related to but am in no way associated with.”

  Cass stood in the marble lobby listening to the sound of her heart. She didn’t know quite how long she’d been there, not moving, and then she heard a distant voice, ever so familiar to her. It was yelling insistently in her ear, shouting at her, screaming, bellowing: All right, girls—let’s put on our big-girl panties and move it!!!

  It was the voice of her drill instructor at Fort Jackson. There’s something to be said for basic infantry training, Cass thought as she headed out the door onto the shimmering heat of K Street. Too bad they didn’t issue M-16s in civilian life. She’d have used it.

  Gideon Payne, hat in hand, mopped his moist brow—Lord, it was warm—and pressed the doorbell to the attractive redbrick house on Dumbarton Street in Georgetown. A servant dressed in a white jacket opened the door almost immediately.

  “Signor Payne! Buon giorno.”

  “Buon giorno, and how are you today, Michelangelo?” Gideon loved calling a living human being Michelangelo, even if it was only a butler. The interior was blessedly cool.

  “Monsignor is expecting you, signor.”

  He led Gideon across the highly polished creaking floor that had in its day absorbed the footfalls of a Supreme Court justice, an ambassador, and various cabinet members of various administrations. It was over 150 years old and had high ceilings and a graceful curving staircase above an eighteenth-century Italian fountain that burbled softly. Lustrous oil paintings with religious themes hung on the walls. In a niche stood a minor but rather good Saint Sebastian by Donatello. Michelangelo opened the twin doors to the study.

  Gideon’s host, seated behind a museum-piece rosewood desk, rose and smiled broadly. He was a handsome man in his early fifties, tall and dark, beautifully tanned, graying about the temples, with an athletic build. He was gorgeously accoutred in the raiment of a monsignor of the Roman Catholic Church. Around his neck hung an especially fine silver chain and crucifix that had once adorned the sternum of Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti, future Pope Pius IX and promulgator of the doctrines of the immaculate conception and papal infallibility. A family keepsake.

  “Geedeon.”

  “Massimo.”

  The two men embraced warmly. Gideon’s friendship with Monsignor Montefeltro went back years, but they had really bonded during the affair of the Stomach Madonna.

  As a good Southern Baptist, Gideon had been brought up to despise papists and popery. But as a canny Washington operator, he knew the value of coalition building. From his earliest days at SPERM, he had reached out to the Roman Catholic Church to make common cause. They were natural allies in this war. Monsignor Montefeltro had been posted to Washington as its number two, a sort of shadow papal nuncio. The actual papal nuncio was Rudolfo Cardinal Moro-Lusardi, the pope’s ambassador. Massimo reported not to him, but directly to the Vatican. For his part, Massimo Montefeltro viewed American Baptists as (barely) more evolved than swamp creatures; but as a Jesuit-trained diplomat, he was acutely aware of the value of a man like Gideon Payne. The odd thing was that these two dissimilar men actually liked each other.

  They recognized in each other a kindred risibility, ecclesiastical equivalents of the famous remark by the skeptic who said he didn’t understand why two psychiatrists, meeting each other on the street, didn’t burst out laughing. It wasn’t that Gideon and Monsignor Montefeltro believed they were part of a joke, but that they were mutually conscious of their own outrageousness: two splendid peacocks in the service of Christ.

  They admired each other’s sartorial style. Gideon was fascinated by the Roman Catholic Church’s ecclesiastical garbs and vestments. He had in him a bit of Miniver Cheevy’s yearning for “the medieval grace of iron clothing.” He would listen to Monsignor Montefeltro for hours as he talked in detail about the finer points of stoles, soutanes, phelonions, and cinctures. After a particularly engrossing description of the holy father’s new Lenten chasuble, spun from Persian silkworms and woven with ground Badakshan lapis lazuli, Gideon sighed with wonder and declared, “How very drab by contrast are my own brethren!”

  Monsignor Montefeltro smiled and rattled off the names of half a dozen Southern Baptist televangelists whose combined incomes were larger than the gross domestic product of Delaware and who dressed like archangelic pimps. Gideon’s own attire—floppy-rimmed Borsalino, silver-tipped cane, high starched collar, cravat, velvet vest, gold chain, and watch fob—itself suggested a Natchez riverboat gambler who was trying to maintain a low profile while visiting up north and not quite succeeding, on purpose. Both men wore rings on the pinky finger. Gideon was envious of the fact that by protocol, Monsignor Montefeltro was entitled to have his kissed. Gideon meanwhile could offer other portions of himself for the same office.

  Monsignor Montefeltro had risen to prominence by courting wealthy American Catholic widows, persuading them that the path to sainthood lay in leaving their (husbands’) fortunes to the church. He had to date brought in a total of over $500 million for Mother Church. In recognition of this service, he received a living allowance that would certainly have given St. Francis of Assisi pause, if not an embolism, and for his base of operations, so to speak, the Georgetown town house, which could not by any means have been called monastic.

  “I saw you on the television,” Monsignor Montefeltro said. “You were very good, Geedeon. But that woman! Dio mio.”

  “Oh, Massimo, it was a catastrophe,” Gideon said. “An epic catastrophe.” There were few others to whom he would have made such a frank admission.

  Montefeltro smiled. “Still, you were very good. At least you didn’t murder her for the cameras.” Montefeltro’s English was actually Oxford level—he was, in fact, fluent in seven languages—but he found it expedient, especially with the widows, to employ a slightly flawed syntax and accent and sometimes forgot to switch back to his normally impeccable English.

  Both men laughed.

  “Next time, I will. It is that woman that I have come to discuss.”

  “Then you must stay for dinner,” said the monsignor, “for I have the feeling that you have very much to relate to me.”

  Chapter 19

  “Wonderful news,” said the junior senator from the great state of Massachusetts as Cass entered his office. “We lined up two more— Hey, what happened to you? You look like you ran into a tornado.”

  Whatever the right metaphor, Cass did look at a minimum out of sorts. Her eyes were red and puffy. She had gotten out of the cab to walk up Capitol Hill to try to clear her head and then burst into tears by the Robert A. Taft Memorial and Carillon, a well-known D.C. locale for emotional outbursts. She had a good sob lasting fifteen minutes, all the time trying to conjure the voice of the drill instructor from basic training to s
hake her out of it.

  “I’m okay,” she announced with defiance. “I’m fine. I am totally . . .fine.”

  “Then why is your chin doing that quivering thing?”

  “Because my father,” she said in a voice loud enough to carry into the outer office, “is an asshole.”

  Randy said in an even voice, “Well, I rather thought that was established a long time ago.”

  She handed him the BlackBerry and commanded, “Scroll.”

  “Sweet cakes, you know I hate these damn things. Couldn’t you just tell me in your own wo—”

  “Scroll.”

  “All right, all right, keep your knickers on.”

  He read it, groaned, and tossed the device onto his desk. “At least he’s consistent. What a prick. Sorry, pumpkin. Now look, we got two more votes. They ate up the ‘meta’ business. The smart ones get it right off. The dumb ones, forget it. It really is in that regard representative, the Congress. Remember what Senator Hruska said about—”

  “Excuse me,” Cass said. “Are we finished consoling me and now on to Senator Jepperson’s thoughts of the day?”

  “I was just musing,” Randy said. “I agree with you. He’s a complete penis-head, your father. It’s a wonder you don’t have an eating disorder. How are we coming on the Wrinklies campaign?”

  Cass sighed. “Can we talk about my prick father for just two more minutes? Then I promise I’ll spend the rest of my life on you. I’ll never mention myself again.”

  “All right, on that condition.”

  “You know, I can never tell if you’re being serious,” Cass said.

  “Neither can I,” Randy said.

  “Look at it,” Cass said. “There’s something weird about the timing. Why attack me publicly now? It’s almost as if it’s orchestrated. But who would orchestrate it?” She considered. “The White House?”

  “Darling, don’t get me wrong, but the White House might have other things on their mind.”

  “Like Massachusetts senators?”

  “Well . . .”

  “As a matter of fact, you may have a point. The White House has staked out an anti-Transitioning position. So, darling”—Cass grinned theatrically at Randy—“it might be about you after all. Happy now?”

  A look of quiet alarm came over Randy’s face. “Go on.”

  “Frank’s a big Owl, big fund-raiser for the party. Probably wants to be an ambassador or something in the second term. At least, his wife probably wants it. He comes out swinging against me. I’m—sorry to dwell on me for a moment—somewhat identified as the person who came up with your big idea. So the White House tells him, Go after her. That’ll hurt Jepperson. It’s plausible. It’s one explanation. Unless Daddy Dearest just woke up one morning, drank his fresh-squeezed orange juice, and said, ‘I think I’ll call my daughter morally repellent today.’ I wonder . . .”

  “What?” Randy said, now all attention and fearful that he was going to find himself within the blast radius of the Cohane family saga. No one wants to be collateral damage in someone else’s personal tragedy, especially if you’re running for president.

  “. . .what else they’re planning,” Cass said.

  Randy picked up the phone and said, “Send Mike Speck in, would you?”

  A few minutes later, Mike Speck entered. Speck was a former Secret Service agent who handled what Randy called his “special legislative assignments.” Randy had brought him aboard his Death Star staff at the beginning of his second, scorched-earth Senate campaign. As Randy described what he called “the problem” to the stony-faced, laconic Speck, Cass almost felt a twinge of concern for her father, knowing that this scary-looking man was headed his way. This was surely the senatorial equivalent of sending Luca Brasi to make someone an offer they couldn’t refuse.

  After Speck left, not having uttered more than three words, Cass said, “He’s not going to break my father’s legs or anything, is he?”

  “Maybe a pinky or two.” Randy had already moved on to the next thing. Cass found him very focused these days. “Okay. Now—how’s the Wrinklies campaign coming?”

  “Terry wasn’t hot for it. He hated it, actually.”

  Randy rolled his eyes. “Well, Terry isn’t paying for it, is he? How soon can you get it up and running? We got momentum going here, kiddo. Have you seen the latest numbers? Who was it said it’s the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and end as superstitions?”

  “Huxley. Thomas, not the one who wrote Brave New World.”

  She had seen the numbers, and they were trending—“creeping” might be the better term—their way.

  There had been more violence. The latest incidents had been triggered when the Florida State Legislature passed a law exempting mausoleums from state sales tax. As Boomers faced the inevitability of death, despite their healthy diets and exercise and yoga and not smoking and drinking pomegranate juice every morning, they had started to build themselves mausoleums. As with the mansions they had erected in life, so in death they planned to—sprawl.

  American passions have a certain viral quality. Competitiveness had entered in. Vast mausoleums were going up all over the state, with features that not even old King Mausolus could have envisioned: “grieving rooms” for the visiting relatives, with music playing twenty-four hours a day (in the event the bereaved felt like stopping by at three a.m. for a quiet sob after hitting the International House of Pancakes); theaters with padded seats where the bereaved could watch home movies of the dearly departed. An entire new industry had sprung up around just that: companies that made epic documentaries about you, complete with interviews, testimonials, animations, sound tracks. One aging Boomer—owner of a string of foreign car dealerships—had commissioned an IMAX film of his (not all that interesting) life, to be shown in perpetuity on the walls of his 360-degree mausoleum. Other Boomers were channeling their intimations of mortality into art: commissioning paintings that celebrated their lives, to hang for all eternity in climate-controlled air beside their remains. Carl Hiaasen of the Miami Herald expressed the opinion that it might just be simpler to wall them up in their mansions, “preferably alive.” Vast sums of money were being spent on this literal decadence. In due course, the Florida Mortuary Builders Association petitioned the legislature for “special variance”—in other words, tax exemption. The measure passed in midnight session, when no one was looking.

  To offset the revenue loss, lawmakers quietly voted during the same session to increase the sales tax on soda, beer, skateboards, video games, and the hypercaffeinated beverages so favored by the youth of the Gator State. (The legislature was banking that they were too brain-dead to notice that their taxes were being raised.) When this news was revealed in the harsh light of day—and the Florida sun can be pretty harsh—it was not greeted with enthusiasm by younger Floridians, who vented their rage by assaulting and defacing the more extravagant mausoleums. Governor George P. Bush once again had to call out the National Guard. The pictures on television of bayonet-wielding soldiers guarding enormous Boomer tombs at the public expense made Transitioning an increasingly attractive proposition. So, yes, Cass had seen the numbers, and Randy was right: There was momentum out there.

  “Randy,” she said.

  “Um?” He was scribbling notes for his speech that night to ABBA—the Association of Baby Boomer Advocates.

  “We’re not actually expecting Transitioning to . . .”

  “Hmm . . .”

  “Pass?”

  Randy took off his reading glasses and rubbed his eyes. “If you’d asked me that a month ago, I’d have said it was likelier that icicles would form in hell. But you know, we’re getting more and more votes. Just as long as we keep giving away the store, mind you.” He chuckled mirthlessly. “But at the end of the day?” He sniffed philosophically. “Nah. Not a chance. On the other hand, this is America. Our national motto ought to be: ‘Since 1620, anything possible, indeed likely.’” He began to hum the words to the Billie Holiday song:
“The difficult we’ll do right now, the impossible will take a little whi-ile . . .” He said, “That was the Seabees motto in World War Two. Well, point is, we’re making a fine nuisance of ourselves. A very fine nuisance,” he murmured, looking over his text. “I’m told the White House is passing peach pits over this. They’re going to have to deal with Randolph K. Jepperson sooner or later.” He handed her the legal pad. “Want to run this through your washer-dryer? It’s my speech to ABBA. ABBA. Can you imagine naming yourself that? Mamma mia.”

  “I’ve created a monster,” Cass said.

  “No, darling.” Randy smiled. “Mother created the monster. You merely added a few finishing touches.”

  ABBA had formed a few years earlier when a faction of members of the American Association of Retired Persons decided that aging Boomers needed their own lobby. The split with AARP had been contentious and litigious. Given its demographics—77 million, average household income of $58,000—it had quickly become a formidable lobby. Its guiding philosophy was: “From cradle to grave, special in every way.”

  ABBA’s headquarters on Massachusetts Avenue near Dupont Circle had been designed by the architect Renzo Nolento at a cost the organization preferred not to discuss in public. The building’s lobby consisted of an elliptical atrium with brushed steel walls. In an interview with Architectural Digest, Nolento revealed that he had been inspired by the platinum stainless steel finish of the Sub-Zero refrigerators popular among ABBA’s membership. “I wanted to express a certain coldness,” he said, “but also a forcefulness that conveys the idea ‘Don’t fool around with us because we are very powerful, okay?’” The metallic walls were inscribed, “Ask not, what can your country do for you. Ask, what has your country done for you lately?”

  Randy whispered to Cass as they were escorted to the greenroom behind the stage, “Here we are again—behind enemy lines.”

  He and Cass had debated whether he should accept the invitation to speak to ABBA. The Boomer membership was not particularly happy that Senator Jepperson’s chief adviser, Cass, had been inciting youth mobs to attack their retirement communities. But recognizing the value of getting ABBA “on board” in the Transitioning debate, Randy had been in quiet talks with the leadership. People might not smoke anymore, but the “smoke-filled rooms” lived on one way or the other. And in the spirit of those locales, he had, in the manner of his ilk, been making certain promises.