The President's Palm Reader: A Washington Comedy

by Robert MacLean

  Here again of course it was hard to reassure him. The whole moral tone of Washington was maintained by the constant scrutiny and routine disgrace of people who had somehow managed to pay off their mortgages. If they could get him on something, they would.

  And there was this thing, this whatever that Reb had on him. He didn’t circle too close to it. If it bobbed up in his ravings he turned and paced the other way.

  I watched till he passed behind me.

  As to actually Saying Something, his statements—the White House Spokesman’s statements—were speechwritten and trimmed in Cabinet and Mrs. President monitored anything he might let slip on the lawn between the door and the chopper.

  There was still Congress. He could sponsor legislation, encourage this, lobby against that. Take a role.

  The bills came over for his signature—he took a wad of them out a drawer to show me—but he didn’t, he didn’t know! Should he sign them? He’d shown them to his wife and she’d liked some of them but she always said ask Reb.

  He didn’t want to ask Reb! He hated Reb! It was practically written in stone that the vice president disappears after the election! Presides over the Senate! Counts hands!

  Reb was running everything, how was that for humiliating! And she let him!

  He knifed into the chair beside mine and faced me, wringing the armrest with both hands. “Word!” he whispered, “I don’t—I can’t—She won’t let me! I’m a fraud! Jack had all those women! I’m a fraud, I’m a fraud, we—She doesn’t—”

  His face balled up and sobs bowed him down, jerked him down to the armrest, my arm. He clutched at me, weeping with the freedom of a child.

  For a moment I thought the President was coming on or something. Didn’t know what was being asked of me here. But his shoulders hove with such abandon I could not but pat one.

  Gradually he was restored to speech. I gathered his wife had been withholding herself for decades. Something he’d said, he didn’t know.

  Even when they’d first been married it had been like wrestling an Australian feminist just trying to get her to do it. Then she’d go rigid and close her eyes. The motion made her what can only be described as sex-sick and she’d have to lie there and fan herself, take deep breaths.

  “Spoils the ambience,” I said.

  He’d been patient. He’d been patient. Now that she was old and safely damaged, slipping awkwardly away from herself into something a little riper, let’s say, and he was President and everything—not that he believed in casual sex or anything but, you know! Just to validate his presidency!

  But he just wasn’t pulling the perks. The aura of awe was gone. He’d be telling his anecdote at a state dinner and nobody’d be listening! Even his wife was showing signs of patience.

  They knew! He was being perceived as weak! It was only a matter of time until—

  He rose again and paced, squinting and squinting, strenuously and at length.

  Oh sure, he wanted to do something about it. Make some sign of protest at least! Wear his hat in the house or something.

  But he didn’t have a hat!

  But no, no. No, no. Best to back off. Avoid situations where his writ didn’t run. Preserve the prestige of the presidency.

  Mostly he just sat in the Office biding his time. Alone, isolated, mocked by his colleagues, treated with irony by his staff, numbed into acquiescence by his wife’s assurances, he had nothing to do but trace maps and practice his politician’s wave. Get his palm read.

  If papers came in for his signature he signed them. Maybe he’d go out into the offices and make the copies, stand there exposing himself to the green rays. Somebody had to. Then he’d come back to the desk and sort them into piles, wrap them up and spend the afternoon kneading the bubbles out of the masking tape.

  Sometimes Reb or W.T. would come in to check on him, use the bathroom. He just nodded and smiled. Afterwards he’d always find a little square of toilet paper stuck to the wall in there, he didn’t like to guess quite how.

  He didn’t let them see what he was thinking.

  Heh heh.

  Just nodded and smiled. He lived in his mind now. It was all he needed.

  He had begun to talk to his body. One night he had awakened with the intuition that his body was another being and he had begun to talk to it, like a plant. Try to make friends.

  But he couldn’t be completely honest with his body. That bothered him. He’d lie there looking at it, pinch the fat. He (it) was getting older. Was this the best thing available? Maybe he’d made a mistake.

  Everything was wrong!

  Perhaps—and now for the first time he began to understand, things were falling into place—perhaps he should end it! For everybody!

  He was The Leader, wasn’t he? Weren’t they all in the same fix? Do them a favor!

  And if he was wrong, if it was the wrong thing to do, so what! There would be no History to blame him. What could it mean at most, another integer wouldn’t be hearing any more Beatle songs?

  That is, if one were persuaded by the oppressive specter of an infinite number of Others, presences like one’s own, more or less.

  Heh heh. Surely not.

  He bent behind his desk—he was at his desk now—and lifted onto it something like a black sample case with a handcuff on the handle. I leaned for a look as he opened it, more or less to avoid meeting his eyes, and saw a dashboard with a row of black dials as for a safe, and below it, aligned with it, a row of chrome toggle switches. At the right-hand end, a red button.

  There was a little briefcase in there the size of a chess set. He opened the snaps and raised the lid, dug a key out of a felt fitting and inserted it in a hole at one end of the dashboard. He dug a second key out of a second felt fitting and inserted it in a hole at the other end of the dashboard. He turned the keys. Glowing green numbers appeared and the words SYSTEM READY flashed, and flashed, and flashed.

  “Heh heh. My transceiver.” He turned it so I could see it better. “Goes direct to the bombers, the subs, the silos, whatever you want. All three. Some. Depends on the scenario. I’ve got a whole book full of scenarios.”

  He held up a book.

  “The bombers are our main attack system and they’re always in position. On their way. When I send them the numbers they just keep going. They’re the closest to the target. Them and the subs. But,” he smiled, raising a finger. “But: they can be recalled. That’s the problem.”

  He shook the finger at me. “But if we let go from the silos, we can’t recall! Nobody can recall! We’d have to shoot them down, and they’re going twelve hundred miles an hour above the atmosphere! Heh heh. Not easy.

  “So, if we want the silos today we just, let’s see, key in—”

  He held the code book in one hand and worked the dials with the other. Numbers fluttered and stopped above each dial and then a little red light came on below it. Six little red lights.

  “—this one! The Situation Room down under the Pentagon is hooked in and their machines will now ask for confirmation. There it is, see?”

  A new number flashed in place of the other one and he showed it to me in the code book, ran his finger across to “CONFIRM”.

  I nodded.

  “And that’s it! That’s all there is to it! Then I just—” He poked something and the first number came back. “—verify each of the digits—” One by one, as casually as twirling car keys, he flicked the toggle switches. A red light above each of them began to flash. “—and press Go!”

  He leaned his cheek on the back of his hand and dreamed at the button.

  “And all the little birds fly. A clean break with the past. Heh heh. It’s the only power I have left, but it’s The Power.”

  He teased the button with his finger. Tickled it. Rat-atatted on it with his nails.

  “Easy, sir!”

  “Heh heh. This is the light! I’ve been wandering in a maze! Like Tom Sawyer in that cave! This is the light! Heh heh. The big light.”

  He sa
t back and smiled.

  Outside, the world’s people surrounded him, spread away from him in widening waves chanting Hate! Hate! Hate! Hate! and shaking their fists like maracas. At his elbow evil androids whispered into the echo chamber of his soul.

  “I feel lighter just thinking about it!”

  Something jarred us and we jumped. A bell, burglar-alarm loud and grinding. The red phone.

  His smile fell away and he forced himself into the furthest corner of his chair, shrinking from the phone, looking from it to me, from me to it, and it rang, and rang, and rang.

  9.

  “He’s—It’s—Oh my God!” I cried.

  For, let me assure you, as soon as I decently could I took smiling leave of the President and went straight home and got into bed and pulled the covers up over my head and lay there fetal and feverish until Alberta got in and held me and rocked me.

  “Didn’t it go well?”

  “It’s all over! It’s finished!”

  “Darling!” she cooed.

  It was like finding an unstable personality at the wheel of your taxi and you can’t get out! You hammer at the door but you can’t get out!

  “He’s not in control!”

  She gathered me to her and body-hugged me, held my forehead. I had the shakes.

  “We’re hanging here by a little strand of a madman’s drool!” I said. “A little tremor of hesitation, that’s all that’s holding us in existence!”

  “N-n-n-o-o-o.” She eased me out of my clothes and pushed me back on the pillows, slipped off her robe and lay listening beside me.

  “He plays this game with the button. The Button!”

  I breathed abnormally.

  She kneaded my neck, my shoulders. I was in knots.

  I had never really looked into the abyss before. I knew it was there of course, I’d seen the Indiana Jones movies, but I always thought I could just lash a limb with the whip and swing over. This was reality!

  “You should see his face when he does it! I mean he has abdicated! There’s nobody there! We’re going to die! Alberta, what are you doing?”

  She left off and looked up at me. “Darling, I’m trying to relax you.”

  “Relax me!” I howled.

  Her head bobbed back on and I hung on my elbows whimpering helplessly.

  “This isn’t working,” she said, my lingam limp in her fist. The firestorm is about to start and for a special treat she humiliates my manhood. It was enough to reopen the debate on whether women have souls.

  “Wordy, you’re not trying. Our affair is past the first phase, isn’t it.”

  I swung a leg over her head and stood up, a little staggered.

  “The President,” I tried to explain, “of the United States, has just come apart in my hands. I: sat there, and watched him crumble, and you: are trying: to fellate me. Do you see any irony in that?”

  “You used to come alive at my touch.”

  “There is NOTHING HOLDING THE WORLD TOGETHER!”

  “Darling, do grow up. Is he impotent?”

  I turned my face as from a wind. How was I supposed to know! I thought of his wife. “Of course he’s impotent!”

  “It seems to be going around.”

  My arms fell to my side. I was alone.

  “He almost launched a first strike against Russia,” I continued.

  “Wordy, I wish you’d try not to take yourself so seriously. If you hadn’t been there he’d have been showing off for someone else. If you were a woman you’d know that.”

  “He is crazy!”

  “Oh, tosh. He feels futile about his life and he wants to work it out, don’t lots of people? Can’t you just fix him or something?”

  “Hah! This guy is gone! His sense of self is entirely experimental.”

  “Of course you always take the difficult position. Oh, Wordy, if we can just get through this we’ll be doing every head of state in the world!”

  “You know you’re driven? The world circuit, that’s all you think about. I’m your ticket to tea with the President of France!”

  “Oh, I was in such a good mood.”

  “You don’t understand anything about me, Alberta, you never have. I am a peripheral man! That’s my karma, I’m sorry! The world has to work right so I can fool around! Now suddenly I’m at the center and there is no center!”

  “Darling, the President needs you.”

  “The heart of darkness has opened up, Alberta!”

  “He confides in you.”

  “I don’t want him to confide in me! Powerful people are already running the government, what are they going to do if he confides in me! What’s Moscow going to do—what’s the SVR going to do if he confides in me!”

  “Don’t get all shirty.”

  “I could be kidnapped and tortured! Protect ME!”

  “Wordy, please! Be a dear!”

  “Look, even if I could do anything I’d have to have some kind of nice-guy complex to get involved here. Even if I could! But I can’t, Alberta. Believe me.”

  She bit her lip with a certain rue. Gave me her I-am-accustomed-to-being-loved-unreservedly look. “Really, you are limited.”

  “Yes! Yes! Now you’re getting it! I’m limited! I’m just a cosmic passer-through here, I don’t like to ruffle the customers. I’ve reached a point in my life where I just want to live quiet and be happy.”

  “Which is a squalid little goal, really.”

  “It’s in the Constitution.”

  “So small-souled.”

  “Too bad.”

  “You said we were all in danger.”

  “Better all of us than just me.”

  “Well, it’s not very stylish.”

  “I beg to be excused.”

  “Rather commonplace, don’t you think?”

  I raised my eyebrows impassively and we fell silent.

  After a minute she sat up and hugged her knees. “Well,” she said.

  “That’s right.”

  Silence. “I guess we’ll just have to hope he doesn’t press the button.”

  “The usual thing.”

  Silence.

  “Wordy?”

  “What?”

  “Coming to bed?”

  “I just got up.”

  “But we’re already”—she touched her chin to her knees and shrugged her shoulders—“undressed.”

  “I don’t really feel like it right now,” I said.

  The pit had yawned beneath me. And once the pit yawns beneath you you don’t forget it, ever. I wasn’t about to be coddled into anything.

  She embraced her thighs and her hands came all the way around to her shoulders. “We could go any moment!” She gave me the high beams.

  “You live in a fantasy world, Alberta. All this breathy crap, it’s embarrassing.”

  “I know. It’s silly. Striking these poses, really it’s ridiculous. But it excites me, what can I do! Your eyes on me.” She pressed her breasts to her thighs. “My own body. Your hands.” She shook her head helplessly.

  “Corny,” I said.

  “You like me to come to you, don’t you. You want to be the object.” She curled up on her side with her wrists between her thighs, pout-smiling over something she was doing to herself. “You can watch if you want to.”

  She shook her hair aside and gazed at me over her shoulder, her utterly-female-creature look, until her focus went and an “Oh!” escaped her. She surrendered her skin to the sheet. “I am beautiful, aren’t I. Don’t you wish you were me?”

  I looked on helplessly. What could I say? When the floor is falling away there’s only time for the truth. I did wish I were her!

  Maybe I was—Maybe I was so wrapped up in her because I couldn’t look her enormous sexuality in the headlights! I couldn’t face what it meant!

  I mean you’re supposed to find yourself in the other person and everything, I knew that. I had always been sort of super-sensual myself. Emanuelle-the-guy kind of thing. But I’d been fooling myself! Alberta was
the realization of my suppressed drives! That was me there, writhing!

  Other men acknowledged it! They dressed up as women, they had operations. My life was a lie!

  I stood there, exiled and quivering, while my real self squirmed on the bed, her skin electric. She stretched her leg towards me and touched my chest with a toe-tip. Long toe, she had these luxury-length toes. Arching her foot hungrily she traced a line over to the Rambo muscle under my arm, followed my contour to the hollow at my hipbone and down to the underside of my by now interested zizi.

  Well, what the hell, I could fake it this once.

  I knelt on the bed. She came up blindly and calmed me with a soft open kiss, if that’s the phrase. Distracted me.

  “It’s so big!” she said. “Will it hurt me?”

  I know I’m a weak person.

  “Be gentle! Oh, be gentle! Oh! Oh, plea—Oh, I—Oh! Oh! Oh, don’t hold my legs that way! Oh! Oh! I can’t believe this beautiful man is doing this to me! Oh!”

  Makes you feel quite adequate, really.

  So anyway, I went back to see the President. Always ready to help people, I guess.

  I took a cab to the gate and identified myself to the guard. He made a call and I walked up the steps and in the front door. No one else wanted to know. No one questions the President’s business. I padded past the outer offices like I was used to the place and no one looked up.

  When I walked in he was at his desk as usual musing on something, it might have been how to draw the Chinese a little further down the road to democracy. He had resumed the haggard mask of responsibility, the air of calm control.

  “Hi, sir!” I said.

  He smiled informally. He had always known me. “Hi, Word.”

  I sat down without waiting to be asked, hitched my chair closer to the desk and leaned on it confidentially.

  “Sir, I’ve been giving some thought to our interview yesterday and, well, I just can’t get over that configuration of lines in your hand, sir!”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Yes, sir! You just don’t see them like that! You’re at the center of all these converging lines of, well I see admiration and affection, sir!”

  “Hm.”

  “The whole geometry indicates a great presidency, sir! You’re going to be appreciated for what you have to contribute! I just thought you’d like to know.”