The President's Palm Reader: A Washington Comedy

by Robert MacLean

  Letting Reb into his life had been like letting a stranger use your bathroom. You think all he needs is a quick pee but you can hear him in there doing a noisy number two, going through your medicine cabinet, using your deodorant, your nail clipper, your floss. Then he throws up and hangs himself. When you break in he’s up on the shower rod, rotating slowly. It’s hard to get rid of the guy!

  Until this, Reb had been on his way. Now I was on mine. Would it stop there?

  She had harumphed over the girlie-magazine remark at the news conference and now that he’d started asserting himself he was staying out late, slipping off to a strip club with a couple of agents where they sat up front with their drinks on the runway.

  It wasn’t that easy to hide where he’d been. He’d get home and go right into the bathroom, wash off the caviar. You don’t notice, I told him. They notice.

  But one of the girls, carried away by the possibility that she was actually making it with the President, disarmed by his gee-you’re-pretty charm, had hung a hickey on him above the collar line. Not very professional of course but there it was.

  We tried make-up. We tried toothpaste. We sun-lamped it. We put him in a neck brace. I don’t know if she was convinced. And if that wasn’t enough the President had contracted crab lice. He took every precaution of course, always wore his little rubber suit, but soon he was thrusting his hand into his pants before his wife and scratching convulsively, sort of turning away. We got him the short-hair shampoo but after two treatments of that you need a skin graft and his howls can scarcely have escaped notice.

  Already she was glaring and shaking her rattles. She would see to things all right.

  I followed Alberta into the bedroom where she was touring the closets.

  “You think we should leave it all to Mrs. President?” I said. “It may be more complicated than she realizes.”

  “I’m sure she can handle anything we can.” She draped dresses over an open suitcase.

  I sat on the bed. Leaned my elbows on my knees and flicked my fingers at one another. I wasn’t sure she even knew her husband had had a breakdown. Was having, by the sound of it.

  “It’s just—These other guys are going to push him around.”

  She stopped sorting hangers and looked at me. “Wordy, what is it? I thought you wanted to go!”

  “My bags are packed,” I assured her.

  She looked at me doubtfully.

  “He’s a butterfly in a parking lot with these people! I don’t know what they’ll do! He’s in their way, they might—” I shrugged.

  “Oh, I think that’s a little OTT.” Which is Albertaspeak for over the top.

  “I don’t know what he’ll do,” I said, despite myself. “Those feelings of anxiety that come out of nowhere, most of us just go to the doctor or something. Suppose he—he’s back in the box! There’s some insidious double inside him making the decisions! We could be seeing the fall of our civilization here!”

  “Darling, you do take yourself seriously. You always pretend to know everything.”

  “Am I really only pretending? I’m so relieved.”

  It certainly wasn’t a comfortable position. The overflowing sewer of your good intentions and so forth, I hate that. I wanted to run out of the room.

  “All I know is—” I looked at her helplessly. “—I can’t go.”

  She sat tentatively on the bed, leaning towards me but not quite reaching out. Confused. I couldn’t blame her.

  I mean under all the misdemeanors you know your heart’s in the right place, right? Maybe this was my chance to prove it. Maybe I just wanted to cut a more cavalier figure before eternity. Before her, more like it.

  And what is this, has it become impossible to perform a good act? Everything has to be gain? What’s in it for me, me, me?

  “Oh, Wordy!” she said, moving over beside me. “You care about the President!”

  “Sure!” I said.

  Somebody has to give a damn!

  “Oh, I’m so thrilled! We’re going to save the world together!”

  12.

  Recky stomped into the bedroom and put a hand on her hip. “Sarah-Jane?”

  No answer.

  “Boy!” She kicked her shoes across the room, undid her belt and worked her jeans down over her hips. It was stomach straining work. She was hammed like an African carving.

  She threw the jeans at a hamper, dropped her underpants to her ankles, kicked them in the same direction and walked into the bathroom. She had one of those helpless-ankle walks that involved swinging one arm from the shoulder as if she were balancing more weight than she had.

  She turned the shower on and fine-tuned the temperature, came out working her top up over her head and dropped it on the pile, her boomers swinging like gong sticks. She went back into the bathroom and put on a shower cap, tucked her hair up under it in the mirror, did something out of sight that took a minute and slid the door open and got in the shower.

  “O-o-o-o-o-o-oh, I don’t care if it rains or freezes, I’ve still got my plastic Jesus, Ridin on the dashboard of my car,” she sang. She gargled along more or less musically and then got out and turned off the taps, towelled down. “Ye-e-ew, deco-rated mah LAH-ahf, DaDEE daDEE daDA DAH-ah—”

  She wiped the mirror, pinned her hair back and searched her face for blemishes, bending her nose both ways. With a fingertip below each temple and a thumb behind each ear she gave herself a facelift, looked at it left-three-quarter-profile, right-three-quarter-profile, tried some other suture points and looked at her neck. Getting older despite her efforts.

  She pushed her bazooms to her chest and made them swell, squeezed them into pirate-movie cleavage and examined the effect from several angles.

  “Reyub?”

  She heard something downstairs, splashed Eau du Dah Day under her arms and minced out wrapping a towel around her.

  “Hon?”

  He was already walking into the room. “Don’t you never wear no clothes around here?”

  “Well what am I asposed to wear when I’m takin’ a shower? Gee, I’m glad to see you, hon! Gimme kiss-kiss.”

  “Go on and put something on yourself!”

  She marched over to the closet, threw the door open and yanked a peignoir from a hanger, almost bottle-opening my nose off. The door bounced back to and I put my eye to the crack. She punched her arms into the sleeves.

  “You go around like that all day?”

  “Not just generally, no.”

  “Well what are people sposed to think? What are the servants gonna say?”

  “So? I can live! Least I don’t go round like you! You look like a bum from a slum!”

  “This is a perfectly respectable outfit.” He sat on the bed and puffed. “I want you to try to remember that you have a po-sition to fulfill!”

  She held thumb and forefinger a picometer apart. “I don’t even give a little iddy biddy piece of kaka, Reb.” She flicked it at him.

  “Well you better,” he barked. “You gone be the First Lady of this here country one of these days!”

  “In eight years! Maybe! You want me to not take my clothes off for eight years? Just, go crazy and die, Reb!”

  “Might not be that long,” he winked.

  “Honeycakes, you’re Number Two and that’s how it’s gone be for some time to come. Every time they call you Mr. President in the Senate you get all swole up. Come on, take that jacket off, you’re sweatin’ like a ice pitcher.” She tugged it to his shoulder.

  “Don’t fuss at me!” He peeled it off and threw it aside. “Just gimme one of them de-signer puke towels and I’ll pass it around under my collar.”

  “Don’t put that jacket on my pillow! I don’t want your cooties!” She plucked a Kleenex and shook it at him, pinch lifted the jacket away and dropped it towards the hamper.

  He scowled and mopped himself and as she watched him she seemed to suffer a change of heart. She sat beside him. “Oh, hon, why are you so upset at me all the time? Come on now,
get this shirt off.”

  “Because you go around like a sex pot!” he snapped. “I been all day dealin’ with”—he grunted as he pulled free of the shirt—“bureaucratic stu-fuckin-pidity—I tell you I got a short-range lazer unit, you can hold it in your hands like a rifle, tear the ass out of an elephant at fifty yards. You think I can get that sucker through the House? God damn!”

  “Hon, you’re all stressed and depressed! You overdud it! Lemme give you a little mas-sage.” She got behind him on the bed and worked his collar muscles. “You want me to squeeze the pimples on your back?”

  He shook away but she hugged his neck and brought her cheek to his, talking soft.

  “How ‘bout I fix you somethin’ o’ my own for supper and send the cook home? I got a receep for chicken wings, you gone absolutely dah. We can stay home and watch a fillum on the big screen, have some o that rosey wine? Why’nch you have a little lie-down first.”

  She eased him down onto the bed and got him over on his back, undid his pants and rubbed his belly as a child might hypnotize a frog. The long shadows, the seashell roar of the distant traffic. She pulled his pants off over his shoes and slid her hand under the waistband of his shorts. Head back, feet apart, he lay like a corpse on a table.

  Slowly, slowly, she lured him over on his side towards her. He grunted as in sleep. Her peignoir fell away to the hip.

  I was excited!

  Having a noticeably idle hand and nothing else particularly to do with it he lifted it over and set it on her thigh and just sort of left it there. She came alive under it and wriggled over to apply herself to him and he got up off the bed and said, “I got to get to a meetin’.”

  “Right now?”

  “Oh, now, Recky, I’m the VP! I can’t go around—It ain’t right!”

  “Oh, Reb! Kiss me big!”

  “Where’d the girl put my shirts?”

  He snapped the door open and looked at me.

  I looked back at him. I had taken the precaution of removing my clothes and now stood holding them in a bundle figleaf-wise, though like him I still had my shoes on.

  A moment passed while he reconfigured the information. Several emotions parallel-parked in his face. He worked his tongue over his lower lip and settled his weight.

  “Well, fan-fuckin-tastic.”

  Recky’s forehead said puzzlement. “Where’d he come from?”

  “Huh!” laughed Reb, looking at her. “You are something else en-tire.”

  “Reb! Whah is that man in our closet without any clothes on?”

  “If you ain’t the cheapest hoe-a,” he said, looking at me but addressing, I believe, his wife.

  “Reb, ah am fit to be held down, here! He idn sposed to be there! I want you to call the police!”

  “Po-lice is all over the place, Miz Rawlins. Right down the hall if you want one. Be kinda hard for him to git in here lessen you brung him now, wouldn’t it.”

  He looked at her.

  She looked at me.

  I looked at him. At her.

  “Except for I didn’t do it! Make him tell you!”

  “Stuff.” He came into the closet and took a clean green plaid jacket from among a long line of green plaid jackets.

  Semibent, I watched without moving. “Yeah, but I’m sayin’, Reb!”

  He went out and picked up his pants and headed for the door. “You must be confusin’ me with somebody who gives a shit.”

  “Reb!” She knee-walked to the edge of the bed. “Don’t leave me alone with him!”

  He turned and pointed at me from the shoulder. “You ever say anything about this, boy, and I’ll reduce you to dead decayin’ matter!”

  I nodded faintly.

  “YOU DUMB WIRE!” she shouted, but he was already gone. “All right, boy, you just WAIT!” She sank onto her heels and breathed as at mid-weep.

  Conscious of myself as a blur in her peripheral vision I dressed quietly, came out of the closet and hovered as tactfully as I could. Folded my tie, put it in my pocket.

  “What are you doin’ here!” she said, close to tears. “Why can’t you call and leave a message like normal people?”

  I sat on the edge of the bed at a diplomatic distance.

  “And what’s the idea takin’ your clothes off!”

  “I wanted to surprise you.”

  She shied at this. Things had gone unbearably wrong.

  “Well you musta been in there when I’s alone! Why didn’t you surprise me then?”

  “I was just going to when I heard the Vice President coming.”

  “How’d you get past the guards?”

  “An aide got me in. He told them I was—” I gestured vaguely.

  “My God, what do these people thank of me, here?”

  I shrugged and looked at the floor.

  “Which aide?”

  Of course I hesitated to betray an ally. “Norman.” I mean what the hell, it was his problem.

  “Well,” she said, “I’m not in the mood right now.”

  “Okay, I’ll call you.” I got up to leave.

  “Wait,” she said. She climbed down and went into the bathroom, closed the door.

  I looked under the bed, reached around under the mattress, eased the closet doors open and tapped all the pockets, felt along the shelves, opened hat boxes, sifted dresser drawers, fingered jewelry boxes, frisked knick-knacks and looked behind the pictures. No safes. Not among my skills anyway, opening safes.

  I had already done the downstairs. Not that I know anything about searching but it had to be here somewhere. He wouldn’t carry it on him. The Secret Servicemen were looking for it too and they might see it even if he taped it to his body.

  His office? His car? His locker at the steam room? They’d have searched there by now.

  No, it had to be here. Even the guards would be careful here. I had gone through the desks, lifted lids on toilet tanks, poked around under cushions. Not even loose change.

  Upstairs I had gone room by room. The furniture, the fishing gear, the golf bag. When a Serviceman went by I whistled and put my hands in my pockets, looked out the window.

  I’d been in the bathroom sticking my fingers in the cream jars when I’d heard her coming. Hadn’t thought I’d been at it that long. Right now I was bouncing on the bed to see into the chandelier when I heard the lock go in the bathroom and dropped to the floor in a casual waiting-for-a-woman stance.

  She came out made up, hugging the peignoir almost closed and stopped to survey the closet-to-bathroom view. “You musta scoped me in my birthday suit, huh?” No telling what private moments I might have witnessed but she was going with the PG version. “What’d you think?”

  “You stop thought,” I assured her.

  She went into the closet and ran hangers until she found something.

  “I’m sorry I spoiled everything,” I said, peering behind a dresser mirror.

  “The real hoot is, he mighta done it if he’da known you’s there.”

  “You mean he likes men?”

  “Honey, he likes politics. Likes to be observed? Knowin’ you’re there without your knowin’ he knows is what does it. There was zero action in this marriage till we got servants, not that it made a whole big difference. You ready?”

  I put my hands in my pockets. “Look, Mrs. Rawlins, I don’t know. This has all been pretty upsetting. I don’t know if I can—”

  “Come on, dude, you only live once.” She came out wrapped in a King Kong fist of black chiffon. “We’re goin’ out and party!”

  “Party?”

  “Sure! Let’s loosen up, do some steppin’!”

  13.

  We went downstairs and out to the car. Doors opened for us, closed behind us and the driver was waiting behind the wheel.

  When I expressed doubt about my clothes she looked me up and down and said, “Nass. Rull nass. Wear the tah.”

  I had to return the compliment. The dress was obviously exciting her. “Are you sure you want to be seen in public w
ith me?” She didn’t seem to know I was up on Blackmail One but I was scarcely her husband.

  “Honey, I am the Second Lady of this planet. If I want to go to an AIDS benefit with a orangutang in a strap-on, that’s what I’m gone do. Come on.”

  I could scarcely be pleased by the comparison but I did my best to keep in step. We got in. She didn’t have to tell the driver where to go. When you’re at the top you communicate by thought transference.

  As we drove she enlarged on her life with Reb. He took a certain pride in not over-grooming himself, in the personal hygiene sense. Never washed, never did his fly up. She’d nagged him about it until he was almost certain not to do it.

  “I’m only gone have to yernate again in”—he checked his watch—“two ars!”

  She’d bought him these Eye-talian bathing briefs to maybe hint him to get his weight down? He wore ‘em with his gut practically hidin’ ‘em and one of his you-knows stickin out at the laig. And that was attractive.

  “Him and W.T. are the charter members of the Polecats Club. They don’t allow no sprucin’ up, it’s sort of a coat of arms. You got to catch a fly in your fist and de-wing it to get in. Go around with mayo on your face. I don’t know how I ever coulda thought he was snappy.” She cozied up to my arm. “I do like a man who can dress. Do you think you can just love somebody without goin’ on ahead and marryin’ them?”

  “You have just described my life,” I said.

  We pulled up in front of a large gray English-looking house on a rolling piece of park. An embassy, it looked like. Used to be. Now it was the French Ambassador’s residence.

  The Secret Serviceman opened the door and I hauled her out. It was hot. She ran a thumb around under the upper band on her dress and took my arm, and we climbed the steps with senior-prom dignity.

  The front hall was high, wide and empty except for the ticket-taker. No receiving line. We followed the noise and found ourselves in a large yellow salon with doors to the garden closing out the heat. Big as it was it seemed full. People stood around drinking in groups and a string ensemble played something sweet and sedate without being somber. French! French culture doesn’t have much to do with anything but it’s nice.