by Jim Crace
By the time Leonard has examined most of the many monuments and numbed himself by reading the legends and dedications, as he had tried to numb himself that morning with the moisturizer ingredients, the atmosphere in the Capitol grounds has modified. The vigil has been separated from its banner and pushed back fifty yards toward Lavaca Street and the festival tents, where the protesters are required to be dignified, disapproving, and silent out of sight of the Capitol’s main entrance. The save-a-girl-for-me campaigner, after being frisked for drugs, is “taking a walk,” as advised. A platoon of state troopers has created a security corridor through which the ticket holders for the Bush event are required to walk. Secret Service men, in suits not dissimilar from Maxie’s but wearing sunglasses, ear sets, and chest holsters, stand on the Capitol steps watching everything and everyone. Security at last. Leonard’s throat goes tight and dry in seconds. He wishes he had kept the apple now. Eating it would give him something innocent to do while he takes stock, while he identifies his options. He needs a coping strategy.
It is only when he sees a now familiar shorn-headed man walking confidently toward the Capitol steps that he is prompted—is obliged, perhaps—to show himself and get in line, a few yards back from Sniper No. 1, and begin the shuffle forward into the shadow of the dome. He’s frightened every step of it. Self-conscious too. The bruises and the cuts are bad enough, but there is also women’s makeup on his face. He spreads and smudges it when he wipes away his sweat. There are flesh-pink marks on his jacket sleeve. He takes deep, cooling breaths. This is Leonard’s single chance to prove and validate himself in Texas. Maxie has made that much clear. “Be big about it, man,” he said, meaning that any other option would be small. So Leonard stays in line, fixes his eyes on the scalp ahead of him, and concentrates on Private Alexander Sharp, his cruelly wasted life. What’s the problem, anyway? What’s he frightened of? He reminds himself of Nadia’s reassuring gloss, delivered over breakfast that morning when Leonard admitted to feeling nauseous: This is just a demonstration. At a seat of government. In a democratic state. Against an elected leader. What could be more natural or more American than that? All he has to do, as agreed in every detail, is wait until Laura is at the podium, and when, as she must, she says child for the first time, simply get up on his two hind legs and shout toward the president.
“Shout what?”
“Jeez, Leon, speak your mind. Just make it loud. And keep it short and simple, yeah? All I’m sayin’ is, in circumstances such as this, ‘Out’ is way more eloquent than”—Maxie holds up his clenched fist, Mr. Perkiss style—“than ‘Let’s battle for the death of the fascist insect that preys on the lives of the people.’ You won’t get deeper in than ‘Let’s.’ You hearin’ me, my good advice?”
Leonard hears him. He’ll plagiarize the giant-sized words from the silent vigil on the lawns. He’ll call out clearly and with a space between each word, “Troops … Out … Now.” That’s his opinion, after all. U.S. troops and UK troops. And, as Nadia reminds him, as a Briton in America, he has the right, a duty even, to speak his mind; that’s what alliance means. “Respect with honesty—like, show them that you care by telling them the truth.” Anyway, it hardly matters what he shouts. As Maxie says, he cannot expect to get beyond the first two words before he’s bustled away, maybe pushed and shoved a bit, maybe questioned fiercely by one of those men in sunglasses, and then probably turned out onto the street as soon as the Bushes have returned to Crawford. The worst that can happen is that they all get slammed into Travis County jail for a night of “sobering up” with all the other weekend criminals, the drunks and speeding drivers, the wife abusers and the crackheads: “That’s why you’re carryin’ those six ten-dollar bills. Protection money, man. You gotta watch your ass.”
For a moment Leonard imagines being put into a cell with Nadia. Then something worse: he’s sharing a cell with T-shirt Man, whose eyes are black and whose wounds have not begun to close. “So, Brit, do you love my shirt today?” he says; his great hand takes the wad of ten-dollar bills and reaches out for bones and saxophones to crush. Leonard shakes away the thought and next imagines—hopes, almost—that rather than a jailhouse beating, he gets heroically deported. The police and FBI see he’s British, not a U.S. national, and feel obliged to treat him gently. They’re allies, after all. They run him out to the airport and they put him on a plane, untouched, unscathed. They add his name to those not welcome in the U.S.A., along with other progressive icons: Fidel Castro, Graham Greene, Paul Robeson, and the Marxist drummer Eber Hardt, one of Leonard’s idols, a complex and percussive man. They stamp his passport deportee, and—his heart jumps a beat at this—they say he won’t, “as in never,” be allowed back in again. “Don’t even try it, bud. You’re not welcome here. You disrespect our president.”
But what kind of jazzman can’t work in America? That’s unthinkable. Eber Hardt’s exclusion all but ruined his career. What Leonard does today might scupper his career as well. There is a dollar cost to everything. He shuffles forward in the line, trying not to panic but to persuade himself there isn’t any danger of exclusion. He must believe in order and civility, that in America men in uniform and men who work for agencies will show restraint and moderation as a matter of training, as a matter of course, as a preference. They won’t throw random punches or flout the rules or trample on his rights or send him home to Britain on a whim. Leonard will not be the victim of a beating or a rubber stamp for deportees, just the appropriate victim of procedures, and such procedures will not be capricious or violent. In America, it must be safe to exercise a right of protest, even a noisy one. Safer, probably, than exercising a right to barbecue.
Leonard lifts his head. He’s calmed himself at last. Ahead of him, Maxie has engaged some strangers in the line in conversation. He’s talking, as ever, but he is talking quietly, matching his demeanor to his suit and haircut. The elderly couple he has singled out seem fascinated with him. The man even takes hold of his arm briefly to mark a joke that Maxie’s made. So Maxie will reach the ticket and security check in respectable company. He looks just like a decent Texan now, on home leave from his army unit or his aircraft carrier, with his proud mama and pa, attending on his president. Leonard has to nod his head in admiration. Maxie is a true professional, a skilled and practiced blender-in. Leonard ought to do the same, associate himself with someone in the line. But he does not trust himself. His mouth is far too dry to be convincing. He’ll give himself away at once. Two words from the tongue-tied British weirdo with the makeup and the scars and they will call the police, he’s sure of it. So as the line progresses into the south foyer of the Capitol and begins to ascend the stairs toward the second floor and the legislative chambers, he stays quiet and studies every detail of the festival program, hiding his face, hoping to look busy. There is a color photograph of the first lady on the opening page, among the “highlights” and a long list of other participants. Who are these writers and celebrities? He’ll have to ask Nadia to recommend some new American novels. Frank McCourt, Kinky Friedman, and Gore Vidal he knows, with varying degrees of vagueness. But other names—Gutkind, Salinas, Obama, Minutaglio, Hinojosa-Smith—are unfamiliar, except that they seem to tell the same story about America as any U.S. movie credit sequence or war memorial or heroes’ monument: that the country is a melting pot.
Leonard pivots on his heels to look down the stairs, wondering if there are any black or Hispanic faces and to see if Nadia has joined the line yet. His back is turned when the commotion starts on the second-floor landing. The line of ticket holders breaks loose abruptly, creating space for the fracas like playground kids. Guests step aside or press against the banisters and walls. There is shouting. Maxie’s voice. Three men in black suits are struggling with each other at the top of the stairs, just before the ticket check and access to the representatives’ chamber, where Mrs. Bush is slated to speak.
“Ticket or no ticket, you’re not coming in, no way,” the smallest one is saying. “Now just step
out of line, sir.” He reaches out and takes hold of Maxie’s wrist. “Make it gentle. Move away.”
“Don’t even touch me, asshole.” Maxie throws a punch, but it falls short. The third man speaks into his lapel radio—“Backup, backup”—while his colleague repeats, “You’re not going in. Just walk aw—” He catches Maxie’s second punch full on the cheekbone and the push-and-shove begins again, dangerously close to the stair top. The older man who shared Maxie’s joke a minute or so ago is backing away from the scrum, pulled clear by his wife. He’s holding his ribs and looking both shocked and bruised. The backup beef arrives in the shape of three DPS officers in their light brown uniforms. They hardly make a noise but just reach out and take hold of a limb apiece, as quickly and as undramatically as three shepherds taking up a ram. It lasts a minute at the most. This is democracy at work. Order is restored with firm civility. Maxim Lermontov is hoisted off the ground. Neatly, though not noiselessly, he is carried, cursing like a teenager, in his deceiving suit along the hallway, out of sight, and very nearly out of Leonard’s life for good.
Leonard, still in shock but oddly satisfied as well—he’s smiling, can’t stop himself—has taken his seat in the chamber before he catches sight of Nadia. When he left the loft this morning with her apple, she was wrapped in towels and standing, barefoot and pink-faced, at the mirror drying her hair. Now she is dressed, of course, and prettier than he has ever seen her. During their brief flirtation over politics in Britain, she always wore walking boots and trousers and kept her hair fiercely brushed back from her brow. She’d not worn makeup, or certainly no makeup that was anything but functional. Sunblock. Lip salve. Moisturizer. Dermatitis cream. Nothing colorful. Here, though, when he sees her walking down the left aisle of the chamber looking for her place, her lips are painted red and her hair is teased into a wavy bob so that she looks less like a Sniper and more like a neat schoolteacher or librarian. She’s wearing a granola-patterned linen pantsuit with a butterfly brooch on the lapel. She seems a little taller too. Heeled shoes, perhaps. She looks composed. She cannot know that Maxie has been—what, arrested or just marched out of harm’s way? Leonard’s tempted to hurry after her, whisper the latest developments, and hint that they’d best call off AmBush entirely.
Regrettably for Leonard, this eventuality has already been allowed for in their planning. There was always the possibility that one or more of the Snipers might fail to get inside or within shouting range of Dubya. Whoever’s left, whoever does get into the chamber, must see the whole thing through, and alone if need be: as soon as Laura Bush says child, “Stand up, point toward the president, and shout what you have come to shout, and then resist removal by clinging to furniture or to your neighbor. Grab your neighbor’s belt or necklace. Don’t let go.” So, as instructed, edgily obedient, Leonard stays where he is, near the right aisle, two rows back from Nadia on one of the chamber’s heavy leather chairs, at a representative’s desk with its own telephone and voting keypad. He watches her and hopes she will turn and see him watching. Then he can make the cancel sign. But once she has found her seat, she is immobile, like a worshipper at church, frozen in thought, focusing on the pulpit.
Even Leonard is more composed now. Maxie’s removal or arrest has unburdened him to some extent. He does not have to prove himself in front of the American. He does not have to fear excess—a hidden gun, perhaps; more violence. He only has to be a plucky comrade for Nadia, and he is practiced at that. Many’s the time that he and she have stood shoulder to shoulder in demonstrations or on pickets in Britain, chanting slogans harmlessly. He can do the same today. With any luck, Maxie will be locked up. He deserves it, Leonard thinks. Punching a Secret Service agent must be worth a night in jail. Then he and Nadia can spend the evening together at the apartment without Maxie’s brutish presence. Finally. Today’s three contrasting views of her, in pajamas first, and then the wet-haired woman in her towels, the pretty woman in her suit, have made Leonard think once more that possibly he could make his move on Nadia. Or that he ought to at least try. With Maxie absent for the night, with AmBush successfully or unsuccessfully behind them, and with Nadia’s pregnancy acting on her mood, it could just happen that she tumbles into Leonard’s arms. He’ll ask if she will fix his face again. She stands between his open knees … It’s just a feeble fantasy—he stops himself—but still he returns within seconds to contemplate them making love: this time she lets her wet towels drop, she reaches up on her high heels and lets him kiss her lipsticked mouth while Maxie watches through his prison bars. This will be his sweet revenge for last night’s incident at Gruber’s, for the Texan’s painful, spiteful, fifty-fifty grip on his shoulder, for his turning his back on the saxophone, for—here Leonard’s anger shakes him hard—the clatter of that thrown dime. All Leonard has to do is hold his nerve. The worst he’ll have to do is shout three words.
By now the oakwood chamber is almost full. All the seats are taken and ticket holders have occupied the galleries, but there is still no sign of any officials or dignitaries on the dais at the governing end of the room, under the canopied square arch with its IN GOD WE TRUST inscription, the national and state flags, and the Lone Star chandeliers. Leonard studies the festival program again, trying to steady his hands and keep his eyes off Nadia, until with hardly a prompt the audience goes quiet, all of its own accord, and attendants come from the back of the room and take up positions in the aisles and in front of the dais. Laura Bush enters through side doors, from the Speaker’s office. There’s no mistaking her, her ordinary smile. She is escorted by some tough old Texan reptile that Leonard recognizes from the local television news, by an awkwardly neat festival chairwoman, and by a younger woman in a black shift dress whom someone in the row behind identifies as Jenna Bush, the daughter. The audience applauds, and Leonard mutters to himself, “Child, child.” He wants the word to be set as a spring that snaps him into noise and action the very instant it is aired, right on the first beat of the bar, or at least before he has the chance to think. He needs to feel as triggered as an athlete waiting for the starting gun.
Of course, there’s someone missing, isn’t there? Leonard straightens at the thought. Where is the president? He did not accompany his wife when she entered with her daughter, that’s for sure. He isn’t on the dais. Leonard raises himself a little in his chair and inspects the front row of the chamber, where the dignitaries are seated in reserved places. None of them resembles George W. Bush. None of them has the president’s distinctive wiry crop of hair or his stiff shoulders, always halfway through a shrug. And none of them resembles George Senior or the president’s mother, come to that. He swivels round and swiftly checks the rest of the room, the galleries even, but not a sign. Laura and Jenna are the only ones. If the president and his parents have come to Austin, as Maxie has said they would, then clearly they will not be attending the first lady’s keynote speech, unless they’re doing it in disguise or are crouching behind the woodwork of the upper balcony. So, thank heavens, Maxie’s “private enterprise,” his plague on all their houses, has proved to be a thorough waste of time. A totally inefficient squandering of time. There is no Maxie and there is no president. AmBush has turned into a farce.
For the first time that day, the rigid knot in Leonard’s stomach loosens and unties. He is a happy man. Their plans can be abandoned. He will play jazz in New York. The Four T’s will not be his only gig in America. Bravo. Bravo. But his relief is still uncertain. Nadia will see, of course, that the president has not arrived and that AmBush should be called off. But almost certainly she cannot yet know that Maxie isn’t there. There is no predicting what she might do if she still thinks he’s with her in the chamber.
Laura Bush is talking at the podium. She looks, he thinks, a lot like Nadia might look in twenty years’ time, if she dyes her hair and smiles. Both women are dressed similarly, in fact, with churchgoing small-town white-bread values in every stitch of their clothes, although Laura’s pantsuit is more pearl than granola, and she h
as a textile bloom on the sprigging of her lapel rather than a metal butterfly. But the lipstick is almost a match. So, oddly, is the hair. They could be mother and daughter, Leonard thinks—Laura, Jenna, Nadia—and the mother comes across as personable rather than viciously Republican, even though she’s reading from the page a little stiffly. It’s something dull about the administration’s billion-dollar-a-year “national reading initiative” that is targeting “low-income children.” Children! Leonard almost jumps. But no, that’s not it. The word he fears is singular. He looks across at Nadia. She seems unstirred. All is safe and well, perhaps.
It is four minutes, actually, before, at last, Laura Bush says the word. But Leonard’s missed it. He is in a reverie. This time it’s Maxie sharing cells with T-shirt Man—and T-shirt Man has two big friends with him. Maxie is apologizing. Maxie’s pissing down his leg. Maxie’s head is making porous thuds against the wall. Leonard’s never hated anyone this much, hate and envy, all in one. For a moment it’s almost as if the commotion from the front of the chamber belongs to Leonard’s reverie and Maxie in his prison cell. But all too soon Leonard is half out of his seat, like everybody there, and trying to find a clear view of the dais. Nadia is on her feet, shouting, “Shame! Shame! Shame!” and has already pushed her way into the aisle before anyone has a chance to seize her arm.