by Joe Klein
I was up quickly, scanning the crowd. I couldn't see Daisy. I saw a lot of other people I knew, and then Susan was next to me, tugging me gently into a small room behind the altar, handing me an envelope with my name on it. "She left you this," she said. "It was inside the one she left for us."
It was a small envelope from the hotel in New York that we'd stayed in during the primary, the note inside scrawled in scratchy ballpoint: "Aw shit, Henry. It was an empty threat. I coulda never given them up--and I think I would've had to. But you were an inspired partner in crime, most fun I ever had (with a guy). So my run is done. Remember: Oxygen. Big Love, L."
I handed it to Susan. She scanned it and then hugged me. "Jack's wrong," she whispered in my ear. "He isn't the one responsible for this. It was me. I was prosecuting a case, being a lawyer--being a hard-ass. I was making the case for politics as usual. I kept hoping someone would rise for the defense."
"You're so good," I said, pulling back from her. "You should never be the one who makes the case for politics as usual."
"Henry," she said, but I was out of there, out into the church, which was empty, except for the crowd around the governor, shaking his hand, consoling him. Richard was there, but I didn't stop to say hello. I raced down the aisle, out the door--and there she was, halfway down the path, in the dappled shade of a loblolly pine, arms crossed, in a black silk blouse and black pleated skirt, sheer stockings and low black heels, waiting for me. I was terrified.
"So what happened?" she asked, coolly.
"It's a long story," I said. "And I promise, I will tell it to you, tell you every last bit of it, and then I'll answer every one of your picky, acute questions. I'll do it until you are completely satisfied. I'll do it for years, for the rest of our lives, if that's how long you want. But only if you agree to several ground rules. First, I have to have the same rights as you do. And the most important is, I get to be as candid as you--and that means if I think the positives you did in Florida were just okay, I have a right--"
"But that wasn't--"
"--I have a right to say it without my life--our lives--crashing down around me. And second, the second ground rule has to do with what really was going on in New York: I will not fuck around with this anymore. The world, our world, moves just too fast to guarantee anything. But, Daisy, I am just totally fucking in love with your eyes, the way you see things--no. Shit! I am so bad at this. It's more than that. I'm in love with . . . whatever it is . ." She was beginning to frown, but not her eyes. ". . with the thing that makes you who you are. Your heart. With you. Okay? I'm in love with you. . . . Daise, look, I'm kind of a mess. I have no idea who I am anymore. And this--I realized this the last few weeks without you--this is the thing I'm most certain of in my life: the way I feel about you. So those are the two ground rules." "Deal," she said immediately, and threw her arms around me. "Did you actually think it was gonna be a hard sell?"
"Oh God, Daisy," I said. "Thank you."
"You think," she whispered in my ear, "maybe we could go somewhere and continue this conversation with fewer clothes on?"
Perhaps I was wrong about sex and anticipation. There is also love. What we did that afternoon was neither campaign sex nor noncampaign sex. It was something different entirely. It filled my heart with joy. I shouted at the ceiling, "I would like to dedicate this afternoon to the memory of Olivia Holden."
I told her about Libby. I told her about Freddy Picker. I told her about our adventures in Miami--except for Claudia-Gloria, and I made a quiet now to myself that I would tell her about that, too. someday. I told her about the scene with the Stantons.
"They're right, you know," she said. "Picker will never survive this." "Someone will," I said. "There is going to be a president of the United States--but that's gonna happen without me."
"Really?" she said.
"I guess."
"Henry, we're political animals," she said. "You're going to want to do this again."
"Maybe, but differently," I said. "Without--it's not the conviction. Maybe it's without the ambition. Maybe it would work if I did it humbly. I don't know. You think it's possible to do it gracefully? Look, Daisy: I don't want to even think about that now I want to go find that beach we used to talk about in New Hampshire and just have my hands all over you for a very long time."
We were facing each other in bed, each up on an elbow. "You know," she said, "I don't think I was ever so happy as I was at that stupid Hampton Inn in Manchester--getting our three hours of sleep each night."
"So let's go there," I said. "Forget the Caribbean."
"You think?"
I thought about the dreary parking lot, the probability of bumping into Danny Scanlon, the last week of that campaign. It was getting on toward mid-April: there probably weren't any leaves on the trees up there yet.
"How about Bermuda?" I said.
"A little early for Bermuda," she said. "Might not get perfect weather."
"Okay, Jamaica. Ibiza. I don't care. Wherever." I jumped out of bed, throwing on clothes. "I'll tell you what: you get on the phone and start making arrangements. I've got one last piece of business to do here." "Which is?" she asked.
"Stanton was looking directly at me when he talked about being responsible for Libby's death," I said. "He was apologizing. The least I can do is look directly at him when I quit. I'll be back soon. Maybe we should round up Jennifer and some of the other muffins--Libby's crowd--for a last, ceremonial dinner."
"Henry." She was up, out of bed, an arm around my neck, a hand on my cheek. "You may be all flicked up and confused about yourself--but I know who you are. And Libby did. And I'm sorry I was too damn proud to answer all your phone calls the past few weeks, and I'm sorry I wanted to hurt you after New York. And I do love you--but you've always known that."
"Daisy, this is the best thing that's happened--"
"Since we kissed in front of the hotel on the day we held Harris under forty in New Hampshire," she said. "That was the first time you told me that you loved me, even if you didn't actually say it."
"Henry, it must be mental telepathy," Jack Stanton said, when I found him in the kitchen of the Mansion, rooting around in the refrigerator, fixing on a package of Oscar Mayer bologna. He was wearing jeans, a purple western shirt and running shoes. "I just sent Tommy over to find you."
"Look, we need to talk," I said, in a tone of voice he understood immediately.
"I know that," he said. "And we will. But we've got some business first. Let me tell you what I've done. I've called Picker. I am going to fly down there in about fifteen minutes and hand him Libby's file-and apologize for compiling it, and tell him that I am pulling out of this race tomorrow. I've called a press conference for eleven A. M., out the backyard here. I figure that's what she would've wanted me to do." I nodded.
"You know what her note to us said?" he asked, with a smile. "It said, 'I am so flicking disappointed in you. SHAPE UP!' What did yours say?"
"It said she could never have given you up."
"Henry, look. I know what you think, and what you're intending to do-but could you just do me one last thing? Come with me now down to Florida. You were with her last week. You did the interviews. Picker may have questions. I figure we should make all the information we have available to him, and you represent a big part of that information."
"All right," I said. "Let me make a call first."
"She okay? Daisy?" Stanton asked. I nodded. "Tell her I'm sorry about blowing her off in New York, too."
And so it was back to first things, Jack Stanton and me in a small plane, flying from dusk to darkness across the South. There was an airstrip in Capps, just north of Tallahassee, and a wood-paneled station wagon with "Pickerwood" painted on the side waiting for us there. The driver was an ancient redneck whose name also was Henry. It was a perfect Deep South night, wet and wild, steambath humidity and flying insects; the windshield was stained to the point of opacity. Henry tried the wipers, which only made things worse. "Flyin' scum," h
e said. "We're almost there."
We turned down a dirt road flanked by live oaks draped in Spanish moss. A quarter-mile in, there was a white fence and lawn behind it. In the distance stood an elegant white plantation house with three thick pillars and two curved, embracing wings. The dirt mad turned to gravel beyond the fence, the gravel became a vast circular drive with a large plaster fountain in the middle, dripping gently, crystallizing the wetness of the night. Ancient yellow lights burned in the plantation house. There was the sound of a viola: Picker's younger son working on Sinfonia Concertante in his room upstairs. Every sound, every sense, seemed augmented--the slam of the car doors as we got out, the chatter of the insects, a distant owl. There was a misty moon, several days past full--Libby waning.
Picker's older son, Fernando, greeted us at the door and promptly disappeared. Picker stood just behind him, dressed casually--jeans, a striped, button-down dress shirt with the sleeves rolled, bare feet. He was deeply tanned, the wrinkles around his eyes paler than his skin, and pronounced; his hair was slicked back, as if he'd just gotten out of the shower. He ushered us into a den just off the main hall. There was a large console television in a corner, a dark green Chinese Art Deco rug, two flowered chintz sofas at right angles facing the television; the walls had bookshelves most of the way up, with a strip of plaid wallpaper--the sort of thing you'd find in a cocktail lounge with a hunting motif--above them, interrupted occasionally by brass sconces, which provided most of the quiet light in the room. Picker snapped off the television, asked if we wanted a drink. Stanton said Diet Coke, I nodded and Picker pulled a couple out of a small refrigerator in a cabinet below the bookshelves. He drank Orangina.
"So," he said.
"Well, I've pretty much decided to get out of this thing tomorrow," Jack Stanton said. He and I were sitting in one of the couches; Picker in the other, his bare feet up on a lacquered oak-log coffee table. "That's what CNN is saying," Picker said.
"And I wanted to come and apologize," Stanton said. "You heard about my . . . friend--the one who died?" Picker nodded. "She and Henry here spent last week compiling this," and he took the Picker file out of a brown envelope and handed it to him. "She died because she thought I was gonna use it against you. And I might have, though I hadn't made up my mind yet. I might have. And so I wanted you to have it--that's the only copy left. We destroyed the others. I wanted you to have it because it might help you to know what others are gonna be digging after, and maybe finding--and because I probably shouldn't have sent these folks off to do it in the first place. I'm really sorry."
Picker had been scanning the file as Stanton spoke. He flipped it aside now "You're a musician--right, Governor?" he said, nodding upstairs. We could hear his son stop and start, stop and start, working hard at the Mozart. "You know how when you're learning a new piece, you'll hit a passage--a little thing, a bar or two--and say to yourself: 'Shit, I'll never get that sucker.' And you work at it, you sweat over it, you become a little crazed by it. Then, suddenly, it falls into place--and you're still a little crazed by it, you can't stop doing it. You're in love with your ability to do it. It feels so damn good. You may even start neglecting the easier parts of the piece and search for other tough passages to master. It's sort of an addiction. I've warned Felipe about that because . . ." He paused, gathered himself "Because that's how my life has been. It's what speculating in oil leases was like, what politics was like. I did it for the pleasure of the challenge, and things always seemed to fall into place. I'm not so sure it's a particularly admirable way to live."
Stanton nodded cautiously. "Yeah, it's a danger--when you do it for it, and not for them."
"Jack, I never did it for them," Picker said, his dark eyes fierce on Stanton. I was stunned by the harshness of this; it was a startling thing to say. It appeared we were in for an interesting evening. "That was why I quit the first time--part of it, at least. Because I knew that everything up until then had been all about me." He got up from the couch, came around in front of us. "And I could do anything. I could handle any passage. I could make a fortune, I could win an election--and the thing about cocaine was, it only reinforced that. It made me feel that anything I wanted to do was the right thing to do. You ever try it?"
"Yeah, once," Stanton said. "Freaked me out. Made me too speedy. Also I have a kind of screwed-up, sensitive nose."
"I loved it," Picker said, then looked at me. "Reggie Duboise was wrong, though: I couldn't handle it, either. It was the first thing I'd come up against I couldn't handle. That was really what fucked up my marriage--not . . . anything else. I knew, after Reggie saved me, after he found me and Renzo together, that I had to quit being governor. Truth was, I wasn't doing a very good job of it anyway. I had to quit and get my life together. And I did. My sons saved my life. It's the most basic lesson, right? Giving to them saved me from my own selfishness." He paused, looked at me again. "So is Renzo pretty far gone?"
"He's hangin' in there," I said.
"Good," he said. "I can't say I ever knew him very well. It was just a coke thing. I mean, the stuff made you feel so--like the hair on your arm was a sexual organ. He touched my arm. And, you know, since I could do anything, since everything was permitted--I did that, too." "You don't have to--" Stanton interrupted.
"No, I'd better," Picker said, sitting back down. "I have to. I did do that, and I still don't quite know what it means. It wasn't a high-brain activity. It was something my body did when stoned. I walk along a street, and it's women I look at. I've been dating a really nice--I suppose I'll have to tell her now, too. A helluva price to pay." He shook his head.
"No one needs to find out," Stanton said. "Reggie won't talk. Renzo won't talk."
Picker eyed him closely. "I had no intention of ever taking this as far as it went. I felt an itch. I figured I'd put a toe in. I liked what Harris was doing. He was closer to right than you were, or so it seemed--although, I realized when it got going, that that was mostly appearances. He was still doing his Poli Sci class. It was a vanity campaign. But I figured: I'll do it for a week. I missed politics--the rush when you move them. Right, Jack? It's better than making money." He paused, leaned back, began to drift away from where he was headed. "That's why a guy like Larry Harris couldn't ever be president. You need someone who knows the emotional part of the game, the symbols, the theater, how to use the power. And you also need someone who really knows the issues--not like Larry, not academic fantasies. Someone who knows what's doable."
What was this? I had the sense it was some sort of valedictory. I wondered if Stanton was picking it up--undoubtedly he was. But I couldn't see his eyes, only the side of his face. He had the big ears on, that was clear from the intensity of the silences; he was pulling the story out of Freddy Picker, who had his knees back up on the coffee table now and his hands clasped around them.
"Could I have said no when Martha Harris asked me?" Picker continued. "I guess I could have: But I saw how vulnerable you were--and it was very tempting. I could see the whole scenario laying out, just perfect, for me. Though I guess, on some unconscious level, I still wasn't perfectly secure that what was past was past-and that's probably why I did the blood thing."
"It was great politics," Stanton offered.
Picker laughed. "Amazing, wasn't it? I just blurted it out. I really hadn't planned it. And it worked for me on a lot of different levels. I figured, Okay, if I'm gonna do politics seriously again, this time I've got to give something, instead of just getting that rush from them. But there was that other level, too, the one I wasn't quite aware of-but I found out soon enough."
He unclasped his hands, pulled down his knees, leaned forward. "In fact, I was jolted by it-by reality, I guess-as soon as they put the needle in my arm. It's amazing, the tricks your mind can play. All those years out of the business, I'd watch as politicians made fools of themselves-Gary Hart, John Tower, you-and I'd wonder: What ever could they have been thinking about? And then, there I was." He shook his head. "There / was. I hadn't re
ally 'blocked' the past. I'd just refused to consider it. The things I did . . ." He paused, he shook his head again-in amazement, it seemed. "The things that would be considered 'scandalous' if the press got hold of them, those things were so far in the past, so distant-not quite real anymore, just barely remembered-and they had so little to do with who I'd become. It was, like, silly that I could be . . . destroyed by them. They weren't me anymore. They'd only been a moment. And that moment was less important, less a part of my memory, than-what? Than the years I spent on the board of the North Florida Art Institute. But this was potentially lethal. And so humiliating-everything I . . . And when they put that needle in my arm, it was like an electric shock: Why am I doing this?, I thought. This is nuts. And then I began to obsess about the blood. I added up the years since Renzo. Fourteen years. That's a long time, right? I searched my mind: hadn't my blood been tested a dozen times since then? Wouldn't they test for that? But maybe they didn't do it if you didn't ask them to-maybe it was a privacy issue, given gay rights and all. Was it possible that I'd never actually been tested for AIDS?"
The word had an impact. He let it hang in the room. He got up, got himself another Orangina, brought us Diet Cokes. "I tried to push it aside," he said. "I smiled for the cameras. They took that stupid picture of me giving blood. But I couldn't push it aside. I guess it symbolized a whole bunch of things--I mean, what right did I have to be running for president, anyway? What had / ever done to earn a seat at the table?" He stared at the ceiling; he shrugged up at heaven, then looked at his hands. "Then again, what did anyone else have going for them? Unknown politicians catch fire all the time. Who was Jimmy Carter? Who was Michael Dukakis? Who were you three months ago? Why not me? I did seem to be pretty good at it." Picker shook his head and frowned. He sat back down again and leaned forward, anxious to explain himself--and almost relieved, it seemed, that he was finally getting the chance. "But the blood thing kept eating at me," he said softly. "I assumed they'd test all donations. Even"--he laughed--"from presidential candidates. But how long did it take to get results? And what if I did test 'positive' and some orderly decided to get rich by selling the scoop to the tabloids? Can you imagine? Yeah, I guess you can. But I was around the bend. I was sort of like Lady Macbeth--obsessed by the blood. I had to find out. But how? You couldn't just call up and say, 'Hi, this is Fred Picker. Gave a pint the other day. Could you check and see if I've got AIDS?' It wasn't anything you could really ask staff to do, either. I knew I was being nutty. I knew I wasn't being reasonable. And it kept building: Just before the rally in New Haven, I really freaked out, a total anxiety attack. I mean, I hadn't had one of those since--since the day Reggie Duboise saved my ass in Coral Gables. But there I was, shaking, hyperventilating, in the car heading over to the Yale Bowl. I was three-quarters convinced I had AIDS . . . and the other quarter was furious I was acting like such a weakling."