Night of Camp David

by Fletcher Knebel

  He looked at her sharply. “Don’t tell me you’ve been up there too in the middle of the night?”

  “No, Jims. President Hollenbach and I only talk to each other over the phone—when he calls for Joe.”

  “Well, then…” Jim was surprised. Presidential idiosyncrasies were the bloodstream of Washington gossip, yet he’d never heard of Hollenbach’s apparent penchant for sitting on a mountain perch in the dark.

  “I’ve got my sources.” Her black lashes fluttered, teasing him.

  “I’m sure there are none better, Rita, but mine aren’t bad, and I’ve never heard anything about Camp David. Honestly.”

  “Maybe you don’t know the right Secret Service men,” she said. “As I get it, it’s different than it was with Lyndon Johnson. Lyndon turned off the lights to save money. Mark does it because he loves to think in the dark—or some such. But let’s hear it from the horse’s mouth. Was it really spooky?”

  “No, not exactly,” he said, knitting his brows as he thought. “He turned off the only light, and there wasn’t much of a moon. Lots of snow outside. What I thought was a dead tree trunk turned out to be a Marine guard. But the fireplace was cheerful enough. Oh, what the dickens, if it hadn’t been the President there, I wouldn’t have given it a second thought. Still, it was kind of strange.”

  “I think it’s priceless,” she said. “Mark Hollenbach, our Mr. Perfection. It’s nice to know he’s a little strange at times, like the rest of us. But what happened up there that made you jump like a Jack-in-the-box a few minutes ago?”

  Yes, thought Jim, what actually did happen up there? Not much, really. A mere mention of his name along with a dozen others, and yet that mention was sticking to his mind like adhesive tape.

  “I don’t want to make a federal case out of the thing,” he said, “but it was kind of intriguing.” He told her of the vice-presidential conversation, trying to remember it as precisely as he could.

  She smiled affectionately and shook her head.

  “So Jim MacVeagh’s on the list!” She said it with a touch of incredulity.

  “Is that so surprising?”

  “Surprising?” She studied him a moment.

  Damn it, he thought, there’s that statistical look again, as different from her mood of a few minutes ago as sandpaper from honey.

  “No, not surprising, knowing how Hollenbach’s mind works.” She smiled, quickly laving him with tenderness again. “But it’s an idea that takes a lot of getting used to. James F. MacVeagh being considered for vice-president. Jims, honey, you don’t have any more business being thought of for vice-president than I do. You’re a lovable bum. You’ve got a tantalizing Scotch cleft in your handsome chin. You’re sweet, you’re kind, and you’re usually on the side of the angels—when the angels aren’t against what the corn farmers in Iowa want—but you use only half the brains God gave you. Also, sweetheart, you’re lazy.”

  “Thanks, baby.” He lowered his brows in simulated displeasure. “I’ll make you head of the MacVeagh Forever fan club.”

  “Well, aren’t you lazy?”

  “I guess so.” He fingered the bridge of his nose, musing. “At least, Mark told me I was last night.”

  “Are you taking this thing seriously?”

  “No, I guess not. Still, the party has gone further and done worse, as the man said.”

  Rita reached across the table and took his face in her hands, framing it as a mother would a child’s.

  “Jims, if you won’t be serious, let me. I’ve watched you for a lot of months now and, God knows, I’ve thought about you plenty. I think you’re a pretty good senator, but please, honey, don’t get bitten by this vice-presidential bug. Oh, I know you’d make a fascinating and glamorous candidate, but a vice-president could be a president if something happened to Hollenbach….And do you really think you’ve the stature for it? Do you think much about foreign policy—what we should do in Europe, in Asia and Africa? Have you got what it takes to steer the economy, to quiet racial turmoil, to be sensible and steady about the bomb? Have you got the wisdom to do all these things and more?”

  She’d withdrawn her hands and was searching his face, not unkindly, but intently, with her black eyes. He was too taken aback to answer. Their knowing political talk had always been about the mechanics of the business—the method of getting elected—never the ability to govern. Rita’s questions reminded him of those he heard from troubled housewives at women’s club meetings or from high school students on TV panel shows. He’d always fabricated his answers hurriedly, relying on platitudes and textbook generalities, and he’d realized they often sounded vapid and dissatisfying. Such questions were outside the trade, almost immaterial, as though you were to ask a real estate agent whether he loved the land.

  “I’m asking as a citizen, Jims,” she continued, “not as a woman who’s been around politics for ten years. But have you ever studied yourself to discover whether you’ve got what it takes?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Rita.” He was testy. “You sound like the emoting little mothers who gush around at the civic associations. If a man knows the ropes in this business, he can handle any job. It’s as simple as that.”

  “Is it?” Her large eyes were fastened on his and she was not smiling now. “One thing I do know about you, Senator MacVeagh. You loathe self-analysis. You’re afraid to mar the trim little picture you have of yourself—loving father, family man, good provider, happy politician—and a very discreet and very satisfying lover.”

  He bridled. If he was as shallow as that, why did she bother to coax him to Georgetown with a voice of cashmere? “My, aren’t we scratchy tonight.” He held out his arm. “Here, dig in your nails and draw some real blood.”

  She ignored the move. “Oh, I have no illusions that we can turn you into a statesman. The MacVeagh career will go onward and upward regardless, as gorgeous as a fireworks display on the Fourth of July. Jims, you’re one of the lucky ones. You’ve got a hex on destiny.”

  “To be blunt about it, you don’t think I’m the caliber for vice-president, do you?”

  “To be blunt, no. I don’t.”

  “And who, in your unlimited sagacity, would you pick?” His voice grated now and he was glad of it. There was the bitch in every woman.

  “Karper. And be honest, darling, so would you, now, wouldn’t you?”

  He thought a moment while his irritation ebbed. He grinned. “Yes, I guess I would. For ability anyway. Maybe Nicholson on straight politics.”

  She leaned forward, her chin in pinched fingers, and searched his face again, seemingly striking a balance of his features. “Give up the hope, Jims. In the first place, Mark won’t pick you, believe me. Second, even if he did, you’re not the cut for it. You’re gentle, you’re wonderful in bed, and you’re nice to have around the house—but not the White House. Let’s face it. You play at life, Jims. You don’t work at it.”

  Her voice was soft, but it stung like needles hidden in fur. Her mood offended him. Personality dissection was a rare trait with Rita.

  “You make me sound foolish,” he said.

  She came around the little table, framed his face again in her hands, and kissed him on the lips, so hard he could feel the sharp edge of her teeth. She released him quickly.

  “Jims, Jims, you don’t understand a thing about women, do you? It’s part of your low-life charm. The minute you mentioned what Mark said last night, I thought of us. Don’t you realize? If you ever ran for vice-president, we’d be through.”

  “Through?” He tried to put unfelt surprise in the question, but failed.

  “Of course. If Mark picked you, you’d be trailed by newspapermen everywhere you went—and it wouldn’t do any good to put your convertible in a parking garage three blocks from here. Jims, it would be all over.”

  “Rita.” There was a plea in the sounding of her name. He ros
e from the table and put his arms around her, but she gripped his wrists and held him away.

  “It’s only a matter of time anyway, darling,” she said. “You were going to end it sometime soon. I could feel it. Tomorrow, next week, next month.”

  “How about you, baby? Weren’t you ever going to end it?”

  Her black eyes, wide and staring, were moist.

  “Don’t ask things like that, Jims, please,” she pleaded in a whisper.

  “Rita, you know it doesn’t figure…”

  “No, Jim MacVeagh, it never figured. And now, with this new ambition eating at you, I know for sure it’s over.”

  She dropped his wrists and walked from the room, her sandals slapping the floor, a barren sound. From behind the door, Jim could hear muffled noises and he knew that she was crying.

  He felt suddenly alone, immersed in nostalgia and misty regrets, as he had when, as a boy, he left summer camp to return to school. He was alone, in a ridiculously small kitchen in a house where he didn’t belong, and he wouldn’t feel right until he left. His eyes caught a pair of tall wooden salt and pepper shakers in a wall recess. They were exactly like Martha’s. You’re a louse, MacVeagh, he told himself. And he almost meant it.

  When she returned, her face orderly with cosmetic repairs, he was sitting at the pink kitchen table and rubbing the bridge of his nose. His thoughts were on a darkened lodge at Camp David, with the fingers of firelight, the moon’s pencil tracings, and the President whose torrent of anger spilled over the hapless form of Patrick O’Malley.

  “Trouble?” asked Rita.

  “Not concerning me, no….It’s the way the President talked and acted. I didn’t tell you, but he made a joking reference at the Gridiron dinner about the need for a national wiretapping law—so the FBI could automatically listen in on everybody’s phone. Naturally, I thought he was kidding. But later at Camp David he said he was in earnest, and he convinced me he was. Good God, imagine monitoring every phone conversation!”

  “Especially ours,” she said lightly. He could see she wasn’t taking the proposal seriously.

  “And then,” continued Jim, “he really blew his top over O’Malley last night. He even accused Pat of deliberately trying to smear him and the administration. It didn’t make any sense. Jesus, Pat was only trying to save his own skin, maybe not too intelligently. But Mark has the screwball idea that Pat was trying to sabotage him—Hollenbach—personally.”

  She laughed and shook her head. Black wavelets fell across a cheek. “As I said, dear, everyone’s a little strange at times, even Mr. Perfection. I’ll never forget the time his temper shot up like a rocket—over not much, it seemed to me. Yes, everyone has his hidden peculiarities. Except you, of course. You don’t change, darling. You’re as transparent as a glass bowl.”

  “And not much inside, to hear you tell it,” he replied. His mind was elsewhere, fastened on the picture of Hollenbach, restless, agitated, fired with indignation over O’Malley’s supposed malice. What had Rita said?

  “You say Mark lost his temper once with you?”

  “Not with me,” she said. “All he ever says to me are flirty little things, very flattering from a president.”

  “But he blew his top about somebody else?” MacVeagh was intrigued.

  Rita scooped up the coffee cups and saucers, and kissed the cleft on his chin as she stepped past him to the kitchen sink.

  “Hand me those spoons,” she ordered. “I never give information over a messy table.”

  She tidied silently for several minutes, then sat down across from him again with a swirl of her wide-flaring skirt. She tapped a cigarette on the table and leaned forward while he lit it for her. “Unlike you, darling,” she said, “I have all the vices. But I’m doing better. This is my first today.”

  “And so the President got mad once?” he asked.

  She pursed her lips in reproof for his insistence. “Yes, Mr. Chairman,” she said. “Yes, he did. Usually the only things I hear from the President are pretty nothings, all about how nice I look over the phone and when is Joe going to let me get married—that kind of thing. It’s supposed to flatter me and it does. After all, how many girls can say the President sweet-talks them?”

  “Four hundred eighty-three. I know. I’m taking a poll.”

  She thrust the tip of her tongue at him. “Anyway, I thank him and I put Joe on and that’s that. but one day the gentlemanly Mr. Hollenbach, with all his talk of excellence, wasn’t excellent at all. Actually, he sounded off and he came through just a little mean and shabby. Or maybe human is the right word.”

  “When was that?”

  “Couple of months ago—January, I guess. I know it was a Friday morning because I get my hair done on Fridays at noon, and I remember it was a mess that morning.” She inhaled deeply and blew out a spike of smoke. Jim noted that she invested even so routine an act with a sensuousness that stirred him.

  “Your hair is never a mess, baby,” he said, skipping its appearance when her head rested on his bare shoulder earlier.

  “You’re a liar, Jims, among other charming traits. Anyway, the President called that Friday morning and asked for Joe. There was none of the usual sweet talk. I told him he must have forgotten, that Joe was on his western tour. Oh, yes, he said, well, did I know about the Davidge appointment. Davidge was being considered for assistant secretary of the treasury.”

  “The Chicago banker?”

  “That’s the one.”

  Jim frowned. “I never knew his name was up. Hollenbach appointed Lavallier and we confirmed him.”

  “I know, dear.” She drew a final draught on the cigarette and mashed it out. A faint smudge of lipstick adorned the stub. “But here’s the story. Davidge is an old friend of Joe’s, and Joe asked the President to give him the post as a personal favor. Mark indicated he liked the idea and would think it over. But then that morning, without any of the usual kidding, he told me that Davidge was out, that he had learned that Davidge was trying to ruin him, and that the fellow was only trying to infiltrate the subcabinet in order to spy on him.”

  “Davidge spy on anybody? My God, he’s the least devious man in America.”

  “I know.” She nodded. “I tried to say something of the sort to the President, but he ranted on about Davidge, his words all running together. He was like a regular volcano erupting. Then, all at once, his voice got so chilly, it scared me. He cautioned me not to say a word about this to Joe, that he would call Joe himself in Salt Lake City and tell him Davidge wouldn’t do.”

  “What did he say Davidge had done to him?”

  “I couldn’t make out at first,” she said. “Everything came out so fast. It was a jumble, really. The only thing I caught was his charge that Davidge had made a traitorous speech about the administration and that was ‘the self-revelation of a wicked man’—those were about the words he used—who was determined to hound him out of office.

  “Well, when Joe got back the next week, he said the President had called him to say Davidge wouldn’t do. The President apparently was very polite and apologetic with Joe, saying he hated to turn down a good friend of his, but that he’d found a better man for the job. So they sent Lavallier’s name up to the Senate, and that was that. But the thing about Davidge’s speech bugged me, so I called Davidge’s secretary in Chicago and got her to send me all of his speeches for the last year or so. I went through them line by line and found only one sentence that was even faintly critical of the administration. And it was the tiniest little thing, you’d hardly notice it. All he said was that the Hollenbach administration ought to review its policy on some technical aspect of interest rates. That was all, so help me, about fifteen words.”

  “Did you tell Donovan any of this?” asked MacVeagh.

  “No, I didn’t. I don’t repeat what I’ve heard—unless some guy with rumpled black hair and a sweet chin keeps pe
stering me. But that’s what I mean by strange. It was a funny outburst, so different from anything the President has done before or since. I guess he was working too hard. Or maybe Davidge did him dirt once and we don’t know about it. Anyway, it proves that with all his talk about the life of excellence, our Mr. President is human too. And I think I like him better, knowing he can fly off the handle once in a while. Don’t you?”

  MacVeagh, thinking of Hollenbach’s similar outburst over O’Malley, only half heard. “Yes, I guess so,” he said.

  “You don’t sound like it….Well, that’s enough politics for the night. This is supposed to be our day off.”

  She parted the curtains over the sink and looked out. The windows revealed a square of dirty snow in the handkerchief back yard. The night was overcast, a gray swab, and in the light from the window Jim could see water dripping from branches of the bare sycamore tree against the high board fence. The fence, similar to those which most Georgetown residents used to snare a few square feet of privacy, enclosed the tiny plot like a prison wall. Jim felt it pressing in upon him. Rita dropped the curtains.

  “A miserable, stinking night,” she said. “I don’t know about you, but I’m glad I don’t have to stir out of here until tomorrow.”

  MacVeagh stretched awkwardly. He wanted to leave at once, to get back to the familiar furniture in the McLean house, to get about the business of being the junior senator from Iowa again. He thought of Martha and Chinky, and felt the sourness of remorse in his mouth.

  “Rita, I’ve got to go.” He glanced at his wrist watch as he rose. Ten minutes after nine. “We have a committee meeting at ten tomorrow and I’ve got a batch of reports still to read.”

  Her smile was a sharing one that made him feel even more uncomfortable. “Okay, Jims,” she said. “I understand.”

  And of course she does, he thought. She knows the tug of guilt, the tremor of impatience within him, the way his mind was trying to shut her out even as he watched the rise and fall of her bosom each time she breathed. He took a step and embraced her, kissing her lips and folding her close. Her body slackened and her breasts pressed his chest like warm pillows. But his arm muscles remained taut and there was no dissolving. When he released her, she reached behind him into his back trousers pocket for his handkerchief. She rubbed the lipstick from his mouth.