by Ward Just
Red Lambardo smiled thinly and moved closer. "Axel tried to put one over on me. Along with the memo he sent me a letter from some refugee organization that supports the Spanish exiles, 'Our Republican friends living in the vastness of the Pyrenees blah blah blah...' Christ, I didn't know any of them were still alive. Axel's comrades live longer'n crocodiles, all those Pepes and Pablos buying dynamite to blow up Franco's tomb or carbomb the king. Axel suggested a thousand dollars. But we have our own homeless, our poor Vietnam vets doing their damnedest to cope even after all these years. Who are they in the Pyrenees anyway? I don't know them. I don't give a crap about them, out of it for sixty years, singing the Internationale and waving the Red flag, fuck them."
"There are only a few of them left, old men and some women. Trying to get by."
"Forget it," Red said. "That kind of trouble I don't need. You've got to watch your back in this town. Particularly when you give money. God Washington's a hard place."
"Try the Pyrenees some time."
"People just waiting to slice you up when you make the wrong move." He squinted at the Homer. "You can't be too careful. That's how people get marginalized once and for all. They go off the screen. They're untouchable, more trouble than they're worth."
"Like Bud Weinberg?"
"Exactly," Red said.
"He doesn't know where he stands."
"He better find out."
"He wonders if he has any support at your place."
The chief of staff's;ghed and shook his head. "Weinberg was helpful to us in the campaign. He raised money in places we didn't expect. So we owe him. But we don't owe him as much as he thinks we do. He doesn't understand that we operate in a different reality. This is the White House. He doesn't understand the fundamentals of the world we live in."
"The rumors are false."
"I'm glad to know that, Alec. But it depends on who you talk to, doesn't it? Buddy Weinberg's got some enemies and they're smarter than he is. They threw smoke and Bud didn't stop it. He miscalculated. He said, What the hell, I'm innocent. But you know as well as I do that smoke's fire. There's no difference between them, except that in some ways smoke's worse because it's so formless, you see, like a cloud in the sky that's Abe Lincoln's beard one moment and a white bunny rabbit the next. I'm talking perception here. Bud didn't get ahead of the curve. So he's an embarrassment and he's got to withdraw, the sooner the better. Someone has to tell him that and make it stick. It's not going to be me because I don't want the White House anywhere near him. You want to?"
"Why not you, Red? You got him there."
"I never thought I'd have to draw diagrams for Alec Behl. So I'll just say that I've better things to do with my time. This is pissant stuff compared to the rest of our agenda." Now Red watched the President's wife approach with Avril Raye. He tried to place Avril and failed, a fat lady who was always around. She wasn't political; he knew that. He thought she was someone's wife but, Jesus, she needed an aerobics class or fewer cashews. "No one gives a damn about France. We could send old man Grendall to France, no one'd care. We could send Wilson. We could send you. But we're not sending Bud Weinberg, so have a word with him, Alec. Help us out. It'd be a favor I wouldn't forget." The chief of staff stepped back because the women were almost within earshot. "And drop over to the White House some afternoon; our First Lady could use some reliable company. She never sees her old friends anymore and we're not so pleased with some of her new friends. Why is it that people think they can make new friends in the White House? It's always a mistake. You have to stick with the friends you have and hope they fit in and if they don't, tough shit. Isn't that true in life generally?"
"Sorry I was cross with you, Alec," the President's wife said. She smiled dully. "I've gotten so grumpy lately."
"We all have," Alec said.
"The President's waiting," Red said.
"And I like it when you call me Flo."
"We've been friends a long time," Alec said.
"I've taken up bridge, did I tell you? I used to play bridge in Oak Park eons ago and now I'm playing again, two tables in the private quarters. We have some lunch and then we play, my buddies and me. And I see my life dribbling away around the bridge table. It's a high-stakes game but that isn't the reason. I never see my old friends anymore, so many of them are irritated at the White House, one thing and another. I can't keep the problems straight. I was explaining it to Avril. She pointed out that if you were our ambassador there'd be good reason to go to France. Can you believe it, I've never been. I've never seen the Louvre. I've never seen a château. Jackie Kennedy used to travel abroad all the time, Eiurope, the Aegean. In India she met a maharajah. I guess in the early days the White House was everything she hoped it would be; and then she needed a vacation like any ordinary person, so she went abroad. If I had an escort then I could see Louvre anc the châteaux of the Loire."
Alec nodded. Her voice had risen and he had an idea she was about to break down.
"A private visit," she said. "You could take me to the châteaux. And along the way we could lose the Secret Service. Avril could arrange security."
"Yes, of course," Avril said, her eyes worried, turning to Alec for help. A dozen people had gathered around them, listening in. They were smiling at what seemed to be repartee. Virginia Spears leaned forward, looking hard at the President's wife, knowing at once that something was not quite right. The First Lady, talking intently ;o Alec, was unaware that she was spilling her Champagne.
"We'll see," Red said quietly. He put his hand on her elbow.
"No press," she said again.
"You could go incognito," Alec said, trying to keep things light.
"A new haircut?"
The others around them began to laugh. How droll. The President's wife hadn't changed her hair in twenty years; it was a signature as distinctive as her husband's striped shirts, evidence of stability, a stubborn refusal to follow fashion.
"I thought I'd love it," the President's wife said, her voice rising again. "Who wouldn't love it? So many worthwhile things to do and all the time in the world to do them and everyone watching, inspecting you while they listen to every word. At first you love it and then you think you can't do without it and they can't either, the cameras and the attention and admiration because you're the President's wife and live in the White House and—the good you're doing, being there. You should read the letters sometime, they'd break your heart. Except when you leave, the sick are just as sick and the elderly as old and the children as famished and the dispossessed as insulted, and the flood waters are still rising. I'd thought about it so long, even in my dreams at night. I'd read everything and talked to the people I admired. Jackie was so reticent, no help at all, when I talked to her in late 'sixty-two, I guess it was. I thought she had a secret and didn't want to let me in on it. Do you think she had some private knowledge that she dared not share? Of course I was so young then, just a freshman congressman's wife, even younger than she was."
"The President's asking for you," Red said loudly. The others had begun to stir, a nervous silence becoming a kind of expectant hush that spread in the foyer, people turning their heads at Red's harsh voice.
"—and then later, after the assassination and all the stories, I couldn't bring myself to ask her again. Wouldn't it have been indecent? Jackie, how did you manage to save yourself?"
"Flo," Alec said gently, and at the name the President's wife smiled warmly, her eyes brimming.
"Well, well!" Red Lambardo cried. "And here he is at last! Here's the birthday boy, Axel himself!"
Alec looked up. The old man was gliding through the upstairs doors, the nurse behind him. He was guiding the wheelchair himself, pausing at the top of the curving staircase to observe his party. He was bathed in yellow light from the chandeliers, the scar a dark line on his cheek; but his white shirt was dazzling and he wore a red rose in - is lapel. He looked down, his eyes half-lidded, smiling crookedly. Something almost boyish about him, Alec thought, except
he was not in motion as a boy would be but still as a piece of sculpture. His hands were clasped in his lap. Red began to clap. Presently the room was loud with cheers and applause, the President cheering loudest of all, then raising his glass in a toast.
"Mr. Behl?" Agent Eilock was at Alec's elbow.
"Later," Alec said. He bent to listen to something the President's wife said, but Red intervened, removing the Champagne glass from her hand. She began to clap politely as he led her away, Virginia Spears trailing close by.
"There's a lady at the door," the agent said.
"You take care of it." Alec snapped. The applause diminished. His father had a distracted look on his face, as if he were trying to remember something.
The President waited for silence. At such moments those in his vicinity believed he was nearly godlike in his ability to command a room, the great authority of the presidency merging with his own personality and becoming indistinguishable from it. They felt the spirits of Jefferson and Lincoln and FDR hovering close by, offering a benediction. Were they not in a certain sense his brothers? And Lincoln and FDR had visited this very house, drinking and dining while they settled matters of state. When the President looked left and a shadow crossed his face, only Red Lambardo knew that the Man's sense of well-being was evaporating, dying as the applause died; he had seen his wife's troubled expression, aid knew what it portended. It was so unfair, she had become such a burden, a liability all around, a threat to his equilibrium. Th ; President had expected things to be perfect, and now they weren't.
It was time to speak but still the President waited. The chief of staff knew that he intended to reprise the career of Axel Behl, no easy task, since so many of the old bastard's contributions to the life of the nation were sub rosa, made many years before and dubious even then, not precisely illegitimate but surely on the margins of the law. No one now living, not even the Venerables, could say with absolute confidence exactly what these contributions entailed, except that everyone had been talking about them in the abstract for years, praise for a long-retired conductor whose most brilliant performances had never been recorded. So the President faltered, his celebrated fluency collapsing under the weight of uncertainty; and those in the room would call him to account for any error of fact or judgment. He was fond of enumeration, four-point programs, three-stage negotiations, two-step solutions, always upbeat; Lambardo watched the Man's face grow dour and knew now that his own ass was on the line, for failing to prepare a proper speech. Of course Red assumed he'd know, a figure as celebrated as Axel Behl. But summarizing the career was like describing an iceberg, seven-eighths below the surface. Red had no idea of the shape of things in the darkness and the cold. So much of what Axel represented seemed to be personified by the grandeur and formality of Echo House and its many ghosts, along with the eminent living now gathered in the foyer in a spirit of comradeship and celebration. If only the American people were as good and competent and compassionate as their government, Red thought but did not say.
And then the Man smiled, the one-hundred-watt smile that took your breath away with its whole-souled ardor; and Red knew he'd reached down deep and found the elusive key. The President's voice caught, as it had a way of doing at moments of high improvisation. At that exact moment Red knew why this Man was President—in the absence of a great war or a mighty depression he could give the people a sense of who they were and the splendid destiny that beckoned. The President picked up his cadence, his voice throbbing with the vibrato of a cello. He wanted to give them a brief sermon.
Let us praise the character of Americans who choose a life in the arena. Let us praise the passion for politics and government despite its many disadvantages, the slanders, the misrepresentations, the pettifoggery and the condescension, the unwholesome cynicism of the critics. You need the hide of a rhinoceros and the mind of Copernicus! So Axel Behl was a man very much like himself and the many other fine men and women who served the government—and here it seemed to occur to the President that Axel had always shied from the arena, preferring work in the shadows, the master craftsman who sharpened the swords and prepared the bulls but did not remain for the cutting. The President heard the anticipation in the foyer and lowered his voice another half-octave.
"A patriot, an exemplary Washingtonian, a Washingtonian of principle, honor, and vision, one of us through and through, a true man of state. On behalf of our grateful nation—"
The President put out his hand like a relay runner awaiting the baton, and Red Lambirdo slapped a long blue box into it. The President eased off its cover and raised the golden medal high above his head.
"The Presidential Medal of Freedom to you, Axel Behl!"
The President's voice echoed in the foyer while the old man waited, expressionless, his hands still folded in his lap. There were cries of approval, then a crash of applause. The photographer was maneuvering behind the President, shooting upward to pose him and the old man in the same frame. Red Lambardo had retreated, saying something now to the President's wife, knowing that his Man had lost his way in the beginning but had recovered in fine style; and standing behind the chief of staff was Sylvia Behl, a horrified look on her face. Axel looked like death itself. She leaned heavily on Agent Block's arm, and then Harold Grendall was at her side.
Alec moved to the foot of the staircase, motioning to the nurse to turn the wheelchair in the direction of the elevator. But she was watching the old man and did not notice his son and could have done nothing if she had, for Axel was deep in thought and would move only when he was ready. Alec started toward the stairs. His father was staring at the President, who was nodding and accepting congratulations. Everyone agreed that his remarks had struck just the right note, modest yet assertive; they boosted everyone's morale. He stood now with the medal in his hand, wondering if he should follow Alec. Then he decided against it. Conversation rose again amid the merry crush around the bar.
Alec had paused at the bottom step, allowing the drama to build a little. The waiters commenced to pass Champagne and the pianist to play Happy Birthday, everyone singing with full throat. Sentiment was never wholly absent from the capital, so there were a few moist eyes watching the old man at the summit of the staircase, bathed in the yellow light of the chandeliers.
Alec gave his father a little wry salute, but the old man's half-lidded eyes never moved. He seemed not to hear the music and the applause and perhaps he was in another place altogether, his eyes fixed on a point just over Red Lambardo's shoulder and widening as if he had seen an apparition or some half-remembered figure from the distant and irrecoverable past, unwelcome from the expression on his face, which seemed to be one of unambiguous astonishment, as if the events of his life had returned in one appalling spasm and he was now reliving each one. He made an abrupt motion with his hand, the push-pull of putting a car in gear; and then he slowly pressed both palms over his eyes and waited. The applause and singing died, replaced by a nervous rustle—and then he shuddered, his head snapping forward, eyes still covered, his body swaying.
The wheelchair glided forward on its own motion, the front wheels slipping over the top step of the staircase. The chair leaned slowly sideways and fell with a crash. The old man was thrown into the banister. Someone cried out and the nurse made a frantic lunge, too late. The empty chair hit the second step with a bang as loud as a pistol shot, and then another and a third as it tumbled violently end over end, Axel rolling behind it. There was a series of brittle snaps, the noise a dry stick makes when it is broken, and Alec knew these were the sounds of his father's bones. Still, Axel Behl fell cautiously, as if he knew there was no urgency in his descent.
A woman screamed, the scream echoing and joined by others in the stampede to avoid the chair, entirely out of control as it careened from one step to the next and finally to the floor, where it broke apart, the pieces sliding wildly across the marble, people scrambling to avoid their path. The old man followed at a distance, his body dropping tactfully from one step to the nex
t, his limbs flapping like a rag doll's, his head bloody and tormented as if beaten; and still he had uttered no sound or given any sign that he was aware of the disaster, except his obvious discipline in remaining sightless, his palms over his eyes until the very end. At last he came to rest near the foot of the stairs.
A waiter dropped his tray with a terrible crash. There was uncontrolled movement everywhere inside the noise. Alec had waited on the bottorr step, at first shocked and immobile but finally beginning to move to intercept his father, when suddenly he was on his back, knocked down by a Secret Service agent who was rushing to the President's side. Now three agents surrounded the frightened President and hustled him from the foyer to the safety of the garden room. The agents were shouting to one another and waving their ugly weapons, telling people to stand clear or to lie down, the President's life was in danger.
Alec did not understand why this should be so. The President had nothing to do with this catastrophe. When he looked closely at his father at last, Alec knew he was dead. He could not be otherwise; there was something terribly out of place with the body and its position on the stairs, one leg bent at an impossible angle, the other curled under him. Blood was on his face and shirt, and that too was unnatural. Alec felt violent movement all around him. The President's wife was surrounded and carried away struggling, roughly handled by the young women in basic black. She was followed by the photographer and Red Lambardo, both crouching as if under fire, covered by Secret Service agents, their guns poked like pikestaffs at the terrified company. The presidential party was hustled out the front door and then to the driveway, where presently were heard sirens and the squeal of tires. Two agents remained at the door, kneeling, with weapons in their hands. One of them was the attractive agent who had spoken to Alec. Her skirt was hiked up around her thighs and she was looking wildly left and right, talking nonstop into the tiny microphone on her lapel.
Alec struggled to rise and to bring himself to the present moment. He had no idea how many minutes had passed. He saw his father lying on the third step, his foot caught grotesquely in the balustrade. Both legs were broken and blood was still leaking from the wounds on his skull, the blood thin and pink as a child's watercolor, leaking down his face and staining his wing-collared shirt. Blood oozed from his eyes and collected on his cheeks. His eyes were half-lidded so that you could not see the irises.