THE PRESIDENT IS COMING TO LUNCH

by Nan

  “No.”

  She looked around the enormous open space where not even the toilet was enclosed. “You don’t have a tape deck or a radio?”

  He watched as she took off a sweatshirt and then a blouse. “When I want to hear music,” he said, “I go to a concert.”

  Tessa rolled down the legs on her second pair of jeans. “Where do you go when you want to watch TV?”

  Bud smiled as she pulled off the last of her clothes. “Would you like to take a shower?”

  Tessa shook her head. “Are you kidding? I’m all nice and sweaty.”

  Bud stopped masturbating and got up. He went to the kitchen sink and took a fresh bar of soap. He pointed toward the shower. Tessa crossed the floor stark naked, parading along an imaginary runway.

  He stood her directly under the spray, grabbing a fistful of hair to keep her in place as she complained that the water was too hot. He began soaping her up, scrubbing vigorously as she squirmed. His hands were everywhere, feeling for irregularities, looking for skin blemishes, pinching and slapping as though he were examining a rump roast. When she finally passed inspection, Bud turned off the water and plunged her into a cold Jacuzzi. She screamed and huddled close to him as he took the clippers and cut her toenails. Then he carried her out of the tub and wrapped her in a large towel. His hands pressed against Tessa’s body to ensure she was completely dry.

  “What comes next?” she asked. “The interview or the written test?”

  But instead of answering her question, he said, “I hate using condoms.”

  “Aren’t they ever a bore?”

  “I’ll send you to my doctor. It’ll only take a few days for the tests to come back.”

  “Do you think they’ll have to put a clip on my ear or can we get away with merely branding my ass?”

  Bud carried Tessa to the bed. “Welcome to the eighties.”

  She flopped back onto the pillows. “At least if I could watch television.”

  He lay down next to her and began to masturbate again. “You can watch me.”

  Tessa pushed his hand away and took hold of his penis. “What the hell. I was never one for spectator sports.”

  Bud lay back. “Slower. Lift it higher. Don’t hold it so tight.” The phone rang. Bud put a finger to Tessa’s lips as he switched on the speakerphone. “Yup?”

  Phyllis’s voice filled the loft like the whine of a raga. “Darling, did I wake you?”

  “Yes.” He smiled at Tessa, motioning for her to continue.

  “Oh, good. Then you haven’t seen Fay’s column?”

  Bud rolled his eyes. “What did she say about you this time?”

  “Darling, it’s what she said about you.”

  “Me?” Bud turned toward the speaker. Tessa kept going like an appliance.

  “Listen to this,” Phyllis gushed. “ ‘Not since Lindy’s launched its cheesecake has this town been stood on its palate by anything as decadently delicious as Truffle Pot Pie.’ ”

  Tessa opened her mouth in surprise. She applauded silently, then sprawled across Bud’s chest as Phyllis continued to read.

  “ ‘Bud Willis, that hunk of a super chef at Libby’s,’ ” Phyllis paused and repeated slowly, “ ‘that . . . hunk . . . has come up with a dish rich enough to have its own Swiss bank account. Take it from an old Twinkie freak, this is cuisine with a capital Q!’ Well, darling, how’s that for a wake-up call?”

  Bud was about to answer when he realized that he was wet. He had come all over himself.

  * * *

  Libby was afraid to breathe. It occurred to her, as the blood rushed to her stomach, that she might possibly be brain-dead. But no. A quick check revealed that only her heart had suffered irreversible damage. She sat back, surprised at how little immediate pain there was. No gasping for breath. Her life hadn’t even flashed in front of her eyes. Yet she was having an out-of-body experience. She floated upward and, from a safe distance, watched the frozen expression on the face that was once hers.

  “I’m not hiding anything,” she said. “What are you talking about?”

  Birnbaum stared at her. “You want me to be honest?”

  “Only as a last resort.”

  “I don’t buy what you’ve been telling me. I think there’s more to it.”

  “You bet your ass there’s more to it!” Libby got off the bar stool, hoping she’d think of something to say while on her feet. She began to pace. “There’s a whole lot more to it!” So much for the cue. Where was the song? “Oh, Birnbaum, I had such a wonderful divorce. It was every woman’s dream. And now it’s gone.” She sighed. “Cal asked me to marry him.”

  “And what did you say?”

  “You know, you’ve got some nerve. What the hell makes you think you can waltz in here and ask me a question like that?”

  “If all you did was sleep with the President once, why are you so worried about what’s in the file? What are you afraid we might find out? That you saw him again? That you’ve been seeing him through the years? Is that what you’re afraid will ruin your wonderful divorce?”

  Libby smiled. Sherlock Holmes he wasn’t. As soon as lunch and dinner and lunch were over, she’d definitely have to consider another shot at Broadway. She stared at him and patted his hand. The bastard wanted an encore. “Oh, Birnbaum, I never figured you for an incurable romantic. Poor darling. I bet you still wait up for Santa Claus.”

  “Almost every night.”

  “That’s some life you have.”

  He smiled. “I know. But if there really is a Santa Claus, I’m going to be the guy who finds out.”

  Libby suddenly felt close to him. “What price Santa?”

  He began shuffling his papers. “I think we better get back to work.”

  “Don’t be a sore loser! Just because I found out more about you than you found out about me.”

  “Don’t count on it. I happen to be a professional in the security business.”

  “Well, I happen to be a professional in the insecurity business which, as anyone can tell you, is a much bigger field.”

  “Once the President enters the restaurant,” Birnbaum said matter-of-factly, “no one will be allowed in or out.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. What if someone wants to leave?”

  “Once the premises are secure and the President is in place, we require maximum access and egress.”

  “I’m tired of hearing about what you require! What about me?” Libby hadn’t expected to sound as desperate. She frightened herself. “Birnbaum,” she said softly.

  “Yes?”

  “There’s something I need to know.”

  “What?”

  Libby took a deep breath. “Meat or fish?”

  “Jesus!”

  “It’s a perfectly reasonable question.”

  “Judging from my reports, there’s no telling what he likes.”

  “Birnbaum, I don’t need snide comments.”

  “What do you need?”

  “I need to know if it’s meat or fish.”

  “My job is to keep the President safe. I work for the U.S. Government. The White House Staff works for the President. It’s their job to keep him happy.”

  “Oh, come on!” Libby tapped her pencil. “When all you guys go bowling after a hard day protecting the President, someone must let it slip that he liked the foie de veau better than the fra diavolo.”

  “Listen, I don’t care which he likes. So long as what he eats doesn’t kill him.”

  “I assure you nothing he eats here is going to kill him.”

  “No, I’m the one who can assure you of that. My men have been watching the place since Monday.” He opened a folder. “We have the names of the meat man, the fish man, the bakery . . .”

  “Are you telling me that you had someone out there spying on Charlie Ryan?”

  He looked at his list. “I don’t see any Charlie Ryan.”

  “Well, there you are! So much for Birnbaum of the Secret Service. Charlie Ryan is my fish ma
n.”

  “No, he’s not. Your fish man is Mazzelli.”

  “Mazzelli? Are you crazy? I’ve been doing business with Charlie since the day I opened. Mazzelli is a two-bit . . .”

  “We found that a number of your suppliers had been changed in the past few months.”

  “What do you mean you found? How?”

  “Tax forms. We checked the sales tax exemptions and . . .”

  “My God! What a bunch of yentas!” She hesitated. “Who have you got for flowers?”

  “Horton-Ness.”

  It was worse than she thought. He knew it wasn’t Flowers by Sophie before she knew it wasn’t Flowers by Sophie. There was no telling what else he had found out. “If you don’t mind,” she said, getting up, “I’ll check this with Sonny.”

  “I think you should hear what I have to say first.”

  “Birnbaum . . .”

  “I have to talk to you.”

  “Please don’t talk to me. You don’t talk to me and I won’t talk to you. You’re a real killer when you talk.”

  “Me?”

  “You should quit the Secret Service. You should become ambassador to Russia. All you’d have to do is buy a ticket for the opening night of the Bolshoi. Go to Russia, Birnbaum, and talk to the party officials. By intermission, they will all be dead.”

  “Sonny wanted a kickback on everything. Your old suppliers refused. He got rid of them.”

  Libby sat back. It was intermission at the Bolshoi. She swallowed hard. “You’re wrong. I told him to get rid of them,” she said defensively. “Do you have any idea what that bitch Sophie was charging for begonias?”

  “I thought you ought to know.”

  “Don’t be stupid, Birnbaum.” Libby picked up her papers and began shuffling them. “Do you really think someone could change all my suppliers without my knowing it? Do you really think I wasn’t aware that Sonny was padding the bills?”

  He looked down at his notes. “I need permission for my men to advance the room.”

  “I’d hate to tell you how many times I’ve sent fish back to Charlie Ryan!”

  “We need half an hour today to check the premises. Then after you close tonight, we’ll sweep the room. Make certain it’s clean. No explosives. No electronics. Next we bring in a communications line. The bomb dogs. And that’s about it.”

  Libby nodded. “You know, I started out in this business with Sonny. He was the only one I could trust.” She got up.

  He held onto her arm. “We’re not finished yet.”

  “Birnbaum, doesn’t this ride ever stop?”

  He let go. “I’m not the police. What you do about Sonny is your business. Same as what you do about the dishwasher.”

  “What about the dishwasher?”

  “We don’t want him here tomorrow. He’s an illegal alien.”

  “Oh, my God. I can’t fire Alfero.”

  “Why not?”

  “I just promoted him! I can’t do it.” Libby looked up as she heard the front door open. “But I know who can.”

  Steven walked in carrying his suit on a hanger. He stared at Birnbaum. “Table 51. Birnbaum.”

  “Darling!” Libby said with forced gaiety. “Have you seen Fay’s column?”

  Birnbaum stood up and shook hands with Steven. “You’ve got quite a memory for faces.”

  “Faces, insults, injuries.” He turned to Libby. “Would you mind telling me what’s going on? It looks like there’s a convention in front of the building.”

  She waved the morning paper. “I really must congratulate the kitchen.” Libby got up. “Oh, Steven, that reminds me. Would you please fire Alfero?” She started walking away.

  “Mother!”

  Libby stopped. “And be sure to go over the reservations book with Special Agent Birnbaum.”

  “I’m meeting the fire inspector in a few minutes,” Birnbaum said.

  “He needs twelve tables for lunch tomorrow. No one in and no one out. And there’s something about communication lines and dogs! Oh, yes! Bomb dogs.” She smiled. “Now I really must tell the cooks how happy I am.”

  Steven blocked her path. “Not before you tell me what’s going on.”

  Libby nodded. She rolled up the newspaper and held it in front of her as though it were a microphone. She pinched her nose. “Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea. Thursday. Lunch. Libby’s. The President of the United States.”

  Steven’s mouth dropped open. He looked at Birnbaum, then at Libby. “The President?”

  Libby’s eyes filled with tears. “Yes, darling. Isn’t it wonderful? The father of your country.”

  * * *

  Bud didn’t want to share his excitement with Tessa. He expressed indifference to Fay’s column. Showering and dressing quickly, he paused only long enough to make a doctor’s appointment for Tessa before leaving to meet with one of his suppliers. Bud walked downtown from his loft to the live chicken market on Broome Street.

  Roselli’s was filled with old Chinese and Italian women straight from the pages of an old travel guide. Although there were no chickens in sight, the cackling and the smell were everywhere. Feathers covered the floor. The walls. Even the ceiling.

  “What’s wrong?” Roselli shouted. “I send you my best. The same chickens I send my mama, she rest in peace.”

  Bud stepped around the women with their shopping bags. He nodded toward the back. “Okay?”

  “What? You think I hide the good ones? Go. Go look. You see what crap I have left for them.” Then Roselli turned and smiled at his customers. “Next?”

  Bud walked along the wooden slats caked with droppings into a room filled with crates of frightened, screaming chickens. Two fat women sat on stools, plucking feathers while blood dripped from their plastic aprons. The executioner was a wiry old man with one eye closed to avoid smoke from the cigarette in the corner of his mouth. Depending upon the customer’s preference, he slit the chicken’s throat or chopped off its head. The chicken had no say in the matter.

  Bud reached into the sack for a handful of feed. He stepped close to the cages, as close as he dared put his face, and whispered, “Here, chick-chick. Here, chick-chick.” He threw the feed as though tossing coins into a very deep wishing well. Stupid birds, he thought. More concerned about lunch than about the old man with cigarette smoke curling up the side of his face. Not so with the birds who hung out at Libby’s. They wouldn’t have taken their eyes off the old man for a minute. No matter what you fed them. Not until Truffle Pot Pie. Bud’s moment had come. He had triumphed over indifference. It was time to give back.

  He unlatched the cage and grabbed a chicken by the neck. “Here,” Bud said to the old man. “Kill it.”

  While the chicken gurgled and flapped its wings, the old man nodded. He brought his hand down like the blade of an ax. The chicken struggled. Bud shook his head no and mimed a very slow slit across the throat.

  The chicken screeched as its blood spurted onto the floor. The old man handed the dying bird to one of the fat women. She grabbed it by the throat and while it was still kicking, pushed it into a pail of hot water to make it easier to pluck the feathers. Bud didn’t wait. He walked out front.

  Roselli looked up. “So you satisfied?”

  Bud took out a twenty-dollar bill. “Give the change to the old man.”

  Roselli called after him. “Why?”

  “You always tip the shaman.”

  * * *

  The kitchen was well into the adolescent phase of its daily life cycle. Stockpots bubbled broth impatient to mature into sauce. Frypans sizzled with sweaty onions losing the opacity of innocence. The prep men washed heads of radicchio and pulled stems from wild mushrooms. Liang and Gan, at the cold station, cut frozen beef into paper-thin slices for carpaccio, and ground up walnuts for the spaghetti squash. Louie, muttering to himself, waited for the fire inspector to get out of his way.

  Fire Prevention Inspector Sidney Green wore no uniform, held no rank, was not a member o
f a fire-fighting team, and had never even owned a pair of red suspenders. He was an inspector. Humorless, pedantic, an idolater of the fire code, he had no doubt been an inspector in kindergarten.

  “Sidney, shame on you!” Libby shouted as she came into the kitchen. “They are dying like flies at Trader Vic’s! Table after table is ablaze with flaming pu-pu platters and you stand here staring up at my sprinklers?”

  F.P.I.S. Green pointed to Birnbaum who stood behind her. “He wants to see it work.”

  “No, he doesn’t.”

  “I have to see it work,” Birnbaum said simply.

  Libby shook her head. “Jesus Christ. The tooth fairy never even had a fighting chance with you.”

  “I need to know that it works.”

  F.P.I.S. Green sighed. “Do you need to know that it works or do you need to see that it works?”

  “I cannot know that it works unless I see that it works.”

  F.P.I.S. Green narrowed his eyes in admiration. “Very good. An excellent argument, albeit one that presumes we agree on a definition of what is knowledge.”

  “I’ll save you a lot of time,” Birnbaum yelled. “We don’t agree. Second, I don’t want to agree. I just want to see the fucking sprinklers work!”

  “No sprinkle now!” Louie shouted, quickly transferring Truffle Pot Pie cases from a baking sheet onto a rack.

  “Now. I want to see them work right now!”

  “You make these ruined!” Louie shouted. “You want sprinkle to work or me?”

  “Good morning! Health Department! Hiya, Libby!” Senior Inspector Irving Dubinsky came in the back. “Fire Prevention Inspector Green! What are you doing here?”

  “Senior Inspector Dubinsky! What a pleasure.”

  “Listen, Sidney, we must do lunch!”

  * * *

  It had been a disastrous night for Cal. He pretended he was asleep while Libby dressed, waiting for her to leave before heading back to his hotel.

  He had never expected her to say no. Not that it was an out and out no. It was a studio no. A non-answer. As though the question had never been asked. A typically Pacific Coast response designed to save face in Southeast Asia and in Beverly Hills where face was all they had.

  He knew he had hurt Libby. He saw the pain in her eyes and felt the desperation as she held tight instead of laughing with him about Rikki. Janos was right. Cal didn’t need six million dollars. He wanted it. But Cal wanted Libby even more. He picked up the phone and dialed his agent in LA. “Smitty?”