“Yeah, Mom wanted me to go to Canada and take a scrape,” said Georgia carelessly. Bobby winced at the cold and heartless term, although he knew it was standard lingo in Hunter Wallace’s Amurrica. “She was insistent about it, but I muled up on her and I wouldn’t do it.”
“You kept the child to defy your mother?” asked Bob, gently probing.
“Nah,” said Georgia “It just seems like such a rotten thing to do, killing a baby. Especially your own. Like, bad karma, ya know? I mean, it’s not like it’s her fault her mother is some skeezy slut who was too drunk to make the guy wear a condom, is it?” It was a spark of goodness in all the rotten darkness of Georgia’s life, and for the first time, Bob was encouraged. She might go for it, he thought.
About the time of Allura’s birth, Lily Escott had died of advanced cirrhosis of the liver; a lifetime of champers and Chardonnay at the liberal drinky-dos followed by long nights of Chivas and Stoly chasers neat finally caught up to her. Marvin Halberstam gallantly took over the role of guardian angel to his wife’s screwed-up kid. Halberstam sat Georgia down in his study in the house on K Street, which Amber had inherited, and told her, “Look, chickadee, so far you’re just an embarrassment, not a disaster. I can live with that. This is D.C. and it’s not like this kind of tsimmes is uncommon from your generation, plus you got the whole escape from Stalag-17 thing going for you, so you always gotta excuse. Me being Joosh, I of all people can tell you, such an excuse can cover a multitude of sins. Our people used the Holocaust as our excuse for a hundred years, and now we’ve got the loss of Israel to last us another century.
“Look, let’s face facts,” Halberstam had continued, waving his thoroughly illegal Cohiba cigar in the air. “You flunked out of Columbia, and any more college would be a waste of time and money. It’s not like you’re ever going to have to earn your own living or you’re ever going to need an education for anything. On the other hand, at this point I don’t see any need to ship you off to Paris or Honolulu or any of the other places of exile where our kind of people dump their family skeletons. You’re not that far gone yet.”
“Gee, thanks!” said Georgia. “Praise from Caesar.”
“So such a deal I’ll make you: I am getting for you a job at Loughlin and Wintersham, the publicists. You start off at three hundred grand a year, which I know is peanuts in this town, but there are perks. You get Class A federal government medical insurance, because the firm handles a few government accounts, and that includes rehab whenever you need to dry out a bit. You’ll have a full expense account and you can write off most of your meals, just say you were with a client, or you can fill up on hors d’oeuvres every day from all the receptions and cocktail parties you’ll be going to. If you don’t want, you’ll never have to buy any groceries. The work is easy; you could do it in your sleep. You’ll be writing up press releases and throwing parties for Congresspeople and corporations and big-shot writer and professor types with books they want to plug, general schmoozing, you get the idea. You like parties, right? Now you can plan your own, with somebody else’s money. Plus we’ll get you a nice place of your own, in Georgetown maybe, and your mom and I will take care of your rent and utilities. We keep Allura out of your hair; we pay for the nanny and the pre-school and everything. In return, all we ask is that you try, try, try not to fuck up and to keep your name off TV and out of the internet gossip pages, at least until you can find a nice sugar daddy to marry. Maybe a Senator. With your looks and that body, a Senator you should be shtupping. If only I hadn’t met your mother first…” Halberstam shook his nose regretfully and looked down it at Georgia with a lust he had never tried to disguise from her, although he was careful to hide the fact from Amber and Amber’s attorneys who controlled the Escott multi-millions.
“Okay, you got a deal,” Georgia had told him. “You guys can get on with your big political wheeling and dealing and your backroom intrigues, and I’ll just go off in a corner and hide like a little mouse. Two conditions. First, I want you to get one of your rabbi buddies to get me a kosher card saying I’m a Jew, so I can have a hamburger or some chicken on my Caesar salad without getting arrested.”
“Done,” Halberstam replied.
“Second condition is for you, Marvin. If I ever feel your hand down my bra again, I not only tell Mom, I file a lawsuit the size of the Capitol dome against you, and I e-mail copies of it to every news site and gossip page in the world, plus a number of private e-mail addresses I’ve managed to accumulate in my years of hanging around over on K Street. I may pass myself around like popcorn to everybody else, but not you, Marvin. You don’t get any. Not ever. Got it?”
“Oy, chickadee, you drive a hard bargain…” moaned Marvin.
At this point in Georgia’s Molly-Bloom-like stream-of-consciousness ramble, Bob made a second clinical mental note to himself. No Jews, no niggers, no other women figuring so far in her little Rabelaisian epic, he noted clinically. She still seems to have some standards, in spite of it all. He was glad he could say that to himself.
Finally, she ran down and let him go. “Jesus, Bob, you must think I’m really nuts,” she said sniffing. “Sorry about all that. It’s just that I don’t have any real friends I can talk to, at least no one who wouldn’t turn me in or try to use it to get me in bed.”
“Well, you do now,” said Bob.
“I didn’t even offer you anything.” She waved toward the liquor cabinet. “Brandy, single-malt, imported vodka? You want a joint?” She proffered the marijuana pack.
“No thanks, just coffee will be fine. Black.” Georgia brought him a cup, broached one of the packets of Belmont filters he’d brought and lit a cigarette. “You might want to lay off the hard stuff and the weed yourself for a bit, Peanut. I need to talk to you about some things.”
She smiled and nodded. “Yeah, I figured. Why did you come here, Bob? And why are you working as a street buttlegger in Washington, D.C., of all things? I may be a slut and a stoner, but I’m not stupid. At least not yet. Give me a couple of more years on the booze and the weed and I may be stupid, but not now.”
“Well, for one thing, I brought you a message from your father and your brother,” said Robert, avoiding the main subject. He took out two data chips and nodded to the huge plasma screen that filled one wall in the living room. “Before I play this for you, I have to run this program to make sure your TV’s memory chip doesn’t keep any record of this, nothing that the DHS and FBI surveillance can locate if they do a spot check on your home’s hard drive.” Bob referred to the central hard drive in the apartment that ran all the electronic appliances, from Georgia’s phone to her TV to her personal laptop dataplayer. “I find it difficult to comprehend a society where a father sending his daughter a video letter could get her thrown in prison for watching it, but that’s the way of things here in the Land of Liberty these days. No kidding, Georgia, this is Unauthorized Contact, and you can get in really bad trouble.”
“I don’t think so,” said Georgia with a giggle.
“Why not?”
“You tell me your secret and I’ll tell you mine,” she said with a sly smile.
“Do you want to hear this from your dad and your brother?” he asked bluntly. “Even though you’ll be breaking U.S. law by doing so?” It was her first test, but he didn’t tell her that.
“I’ve been waiting to hear it for twelve years, Bobby. Play it.”
He ran the program to bypass the TV’s memory chip, and then he inserted the chip he had come all this way to bring her. Clancy Myers’ tired and aging face appeared on the screen, the book-lined shelves of his home library behind him. “Look familiar?” asked Bob.
“God, he looks old! They still live in the house on Daly Avenue?” asked Georgia, her voice choking.
“Clancy does,” Bob told her. “Kevin and his wife have their own home now, but Clancy stayed. He always said he wanted it to be there for you if you ever came back.”
Clancy spoke on the wide plasma screen. “Hello, Georgia
. I hope Bob is able to get in touch with you and give you this message from Kevin and me. Honey, there is so much I want to say to you that I don’t know where to begin, but I know I have to keep this short. Kevin and I are both well, Kevin is married now, to a fine girl from Helena, and you have a little nephew. His name is Kevin Junior.” A picture of a smiling infant just barely able to sit up was flashed up on the screen for about ten seconds, then Clancy’s face returned. “Georgia, from the very day you disappeared, your brother and I have never ceased to love you and worry about you and think about you, every day.” (Clancy had been advised by the WPD to refrain from including any adverse comments or even any reference at all to Georgia’s mother, since it was unknown for certain what Amber and Georgia’s relationship was like.) “I don’t know what your life has been like, or exactly where you are now, but I know that here in Montana our lives have been poorer and sadder without you. We have missed you every day, in a hundred different ways. Honey, I’m going to ask you something now, and that is that you try to Come Home, even if it’s only for a visit, and bring your little girl with you. Yes, honey, we know about Allura, and I want you to know that we love her and welcome her into our family, even if we’re never able to meet her. Bob Campbell is going to try to deliver this message for us, and if he has been able to do so, you’ll see that he’s grown into a very brave and handsome young man. Well, that’s the kind of young men who always did come out of Montana. Bob is going to talk to you about perhaps Coming Home for good. I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about coming back, Georgia. I honestly hope that you’re happy where you are, but from what I’ve been told, I can’t see that being the case. Not under the—circumstances. If I’m right about that, and you want to Come Home, Bob will help you. I know it’s illegal where you are to even plan to visit the Republic without a permit, and it can get you in a lot of trouble. You’re the one who has to decide whether going or staying will be worse. But if you do want to come, talk to Bobby about it. I was told I have to keep this short, so I’ll just say that even if we never see you again, my beloved child, we will never forget you and we will never cease to mourn your loss from our lives. We love you, Georgia, always.”
Kevin and his wife Tamara came onto the screen next. Tammy was holding the baby Kevin Junior in her arms. The infant was grinning into the videocam, displaying a single new tooth in his mouth, and trying to grab the camera lens, from which his mother had to hold him back. “Hello, Peanut,” said Kevin, his face sad. “Not sure if you even remember what I look like at all, but this is me, Kevin. This is my wife Tamara…”
“Tammy,” she interjected. “Hi, Georgia.”
“Tammy,” Kevin corrected with a smile. “And this is your nephew, Kevin Junior. Say hello to your aunt Georgia, Kevvie.” The baby shrieked wordlessly and clawed at the camera with a maniacal grin. His father waved the baby’s tiny arm and hand at the lens. “We’re told that I have a niece and Kevvie has a cousin,” Kevin senior went on. “Say hello to your cousin Allura, Kevvie!” He waved the baby’s hand again and the infant burbled. “I hope that our two children can meet and play together someday. Maybe even grow up together. Georgia, please, talk to Bobby, listen to what he has to say, and do what you have to do to come back to us. When we lost you, Peanut, it was the worst thing that ever happened to Dad and me. I’m young and I’ve been able to bounce back, especially now that I have Tammy and this little hellraiser. But Dad’s never been right since you went away, not really. He once told me the only reason he had for living was to see you once more before he died. Yeah, I know, that may sound like a grim reason for Coming Home, but I don’t care why you do it, just come. You and Allura are something that’s missing here, Georgie, something we all have a right to. This new land that’s been created for everyone of our kind since the Revolution—it’s something you and Allura have a right to as well, and no matter what you’ve been told or by whom, you need to come out here and see it and understand what you’re missing. This is where you belong, Georgie. Please. Come Home.”
Bob turned off the TV and removed the datachip from the panel. “I have to take this with me,” he said. “I know you’d like to have it, but it’s too dangerous.” He looked over and saw that Georgia was sitting on the sofa with her face buried in her hands, her body shaking with dry, silent sobs. He sat quietly until she lifted her tear-stained face.
“What exactly do you do back in the Northwest Republic, Bob?” she asked, surprising him. “Let me guess. You’re a soldier. I meet a lot of military guys here, some of whom I screw, and so I know the type.”
“Every man in the Republic is a soldier,” he told her. “A lot of the women, too. We have to be. We’re never going back, Georgia. Never. So yes, I’m a reservist and I do a few weekends and thirty days of active duty every year. But as a matter of fact, in my day job, I’m a cop. I’m a detective in the Civil Guard’s Criminal Investigation Division, the CID. I’m Out Here at the request of another agency, because I knew you when you were a kid, and they figured I’d be the best person to ask you a favor.”
“You’re a spy, and you want me to spy on President Wallace for the Republic,” she said baldly.
Robert Campbell’s blood ran ice cold in his veins. Jesus Christ on a raft! he thought. What the hell? How did she know, and who else knows? “Yes,” he said in a level voice, and waited for her to explain.
“I got the call a few weeks ago, and I did my final interview and polygraph with the Secret Service yesterday,” she told him. “The head of the President’s Secret Service detail is this big black guy named Jimbo, and he had to okay me. That’s why I wasn’t worried about a DHS spot check picking up Dad and Kevin’s vidlet; all the spooks have already gone through all my hard drives and portable devices with a fine-toothed comb, the more so because I was born in Montana and they’re worried that some mysterious stranger from my past might approach me one day to betray my country and my Doughboy. They just missed you by a couple of days, or maybe you just missed them, but right now, I’m squeaky clean in official eyes. I report to the White House for my first night shift, I guess you’d call it, on Monday at four p.m. They’ve got the drill down after years of practice. After I fill out all my tax forms in Human Resources, I go up and do the President of the United States. Maybe in the residence itself, since Hunter isn’t married and he doesn’t have a wife to keep in the dark, but more probably in the little side room off the Oval Office with the minibar and the big comfy sofa that every President since John F. Kennedy has kept for the purpose. They call it the executive lounge. Apparently, Reagan never used it for that purpose, but every other president since then has. They even let me in on one of the little Secret Service inside jokes: Hillary had more women in the executive lounge than Bill ever did, and they were better looking.”
“And you agreed to this?” asked Bob. “Why, Georgia?” Why did you agree to let that pervert near you? he thought in anguish. Why, Peanut?
She was brutally frank. “The bennies are great, I get to hang out in the West Wing as well as the residence. I even get my own little cubbyhole office and some data entry and filing to do, to account for my presence in the building, and working in the White House still has a hell of a lot of prestige. My mom can start bringing me to cocktail parties again. I get to ride on Air Force One and be around a lot of exciting people and things going on. My mom and my stepdad are over the moon. I’ve finally made them proud of me. Marvin is already slavering over all the new contacts and inside info I can get him. I signed a six month personal services contract which Hunter can renew, but only with my consent, which I gather he never gets from any of his girls. Six months on my back doing what I would do anyway, for recreation or just out of boredom, and I’m set for life with money of my own so I can support Allura and not be dependent on my mother and that goddamned horn dog Marvin any more. Call it a career move.” She shook her head sadly. “You came here expecting to find a little girl, but she’s lost and gone forever. All you found was a drunk and a druggie a
nd now a high-class whore. I’m sorry, Bobby, more sorry than I can say that you know what I am now and you can’t remember me as that little girl ever again. But do you want my father and my brother to see me as I am, too? Am I the little girl they want to welcome home again? I don’t think so. God knows what you’ll tell them. I’ll leave that up to you. But Peanut can’t go home to Daly Avenue again, ever. She’s dead. She died when she crossed Interstate Fifteen that day.”
“Did she?” Bob got up and moved to a wall where hung a framed linen sampler similar to the ones well-bred young ladies hundreds of years before turned out from their sewing baskets. On it was a poem, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Requiem:
UNDER the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie:
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you ‘grave for me:
Here he lies where he long’d to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.
“From my arts and crafts class at one of my many prep schools, before I got kicked out for being drunk and naked in the boys’ locker room,” Georgia told him. “I look at it sometimes, and yeah, I wonder what might have been. But it can’t be, Bobby. I’ve got to move on, and deep down I know it.”
“Yeah, I guess you’ll get to be around all kinds of exciting people and events over there at sixteen hundred Pennsylvania,” said Bob conversationally. “Nice cute little baby nephew you saw in that video, wasn’t he? Maybe you’ll get to be in the room when your fancy man Hunter Wallace gives the order launching the bombers and the missiles that will burn him alive with napalm in his crib.”
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