Benchley, Peter - Novel 06 (61 page)

 
          
 
"What are they?"

 
          
 
The President turned his head and smiled at
Burnham. "That's what I like about you, Tim. No bullshit. Some of the
other ass kissers I have around here, they'd say, 'Right, Mr. President, the
unborn. I spend every waking moment deeply concerned about the plight of the
unborn. Fact is, I have a bill right here that gives them each two-fifty and a
Jap car.' " He turned back to the window and gestured vaguely into the
distance. "I think of them as being out there, Tim, billions of them, the
kids who haven't been born yet, and they're like a jury waiting to judge me.
What I do now will determine the kind of lives they'll lead, whether they'll be
rich or poor, happy or hungry, whether thousands of them will have to die in
some foreign country while they're still green—"

 
          
 
Honduras
, Burnham concluded. I knew it. He's trying
to decide whether or not to invade or carpet-bomb or wipe the whole place off
the map.

 
          
 
"—and they're looking down to see what
decision I'll make. When I first got this job, I used to imagine George
Washington out there, and Abraham Lincoln and F.D.R., sitting in judgment on
old Ben Winslow. But then I realized they're all cold as catfish and can't make
any judgments. The people who count are the people still to come. You know one
of the worst things I ever heard in my life? It was on 60 Minutes, and Rosalyn
Carter was talking about Reagan and she said—I mean, granted, she has a bias,
but this really hit me—'My grandchildren will curse that man's name.' Jesus
Christ! How would you like to have that on your tombstone: 'My grandchildren
will curse his name.' " The President turned his back to the window and
reached to his desk for a glass of watery bourbon. "I think about that a
lot. I don't want anybody's grandchildren cursing my name. Drink?" He
pointed to a bar cabinet in a comer of the office.

 
          
 
"No, thanks."

 
          
 
"You don't drink at all, do you?"

 
          
 
"Not any more. I did. A lot. For a long
time. But then it started driving the ship, and I decided it was time to get
off."

 
          
 
The President nodded. "How do you get
away from yourself?"

 
          
 
"Funny you should ask. I've been
wondering the same about you."

 
          
 
Burnham regretted the impertinence instantly,
but before he could apologize, the President said, "I bet you have."

 
          
 
"Mr. President, I didn't—"

 
          
 
"I bet you're the only sumbitch around
here who thinks that way, except maybe Evelyn. You think any of these other
fellas give a hoot how I manage to cope? No. Whether I cope, yeah, that they
care about, but /low—forget it. It's like being a prizefighter: Between rounds,
they stick smelling salts under my nose and slap me around and pop my
mouthguard back in and send me out for the next round, and long as I don't get
knocked out—which means they're out of work— they could care less."

 
          
 
A buzzer sounded on the President's desk.
"Just as well," he said as he reached for a button. "Self-pity
makes me sick." He leaned toward a speaker phone and said,
"Yeah."

 
          
 
"Mario Epstein," said the hollow
voice of Evelyn Witt. "He says it's urgent."

 
          
 
"Everything's always urgent with him.
Tell him it'll have to wait. I've got urgent business of my own."

 
          
 
"Yes, sir."

 
          
 
The speaker phone clicked off. The President
straightened up and started to speak, but the buzzer sounded again. Angrily,
the President spun back toward his desk and mashed the phone button.
"What!?"

 
          
 
"Mario says it's critical that he speak
to you, sir. Now."

 
          
 
"Is he the President?" the President
yelled at the plastic box.

 
          
 
"No, sir."

 
          
 
"Did sixty-some goddamn percent of the
American people vote that half-breed egghead into this office?"

 
          
 
"No, sir."

 
          
 
"Then you tell him that I am the one who
decides what's urgent around here, and at the moment I am trying to decide
whether his children—if he ever learns how to have any—will spend their lives
in a palm tree being shot at by a bunch of coke-heads, which perhaps he will
agree is a fairly urgent matter and whatever two-bit business he's got will
wait till the morning, and unless he has got convincing evidence that the republic
is about to be vaporized, I will not be disturbed!''

 
          
 
Burnham watched, mesmerized, as the President
yanked open one of the desk drawers, jammed the speaker phone inside it, and
slammed the drawer closed. He wondered how the President's message would be
relayed by Evelyn. Surely not verbatim, but, equally surely, not too
sugar-coated either: The essence of the President's mood had to be conveyed.

 
          
 
The President smiled at Burnham and said,
"Evelyn earns her money."

 
          
 
"I'll say."

 
          
 
"She's a great filter. I get to sound
off, which makes me feel good because there're times that smart-ass will try
the patience of Job, but I can't speak like that to his face too many times or
he'll eventually get so pissed he'll push his ejection button and up and quit,
which I can't afford."

 
          
 
"What will she tell him?"

 
          
 
"Pretty much what I said, but without the
Don Rickles.

 
          
 
She has a talent for delivering bad news like
it was a blessing. People have told me they didn't even realize it was bad news
until they hung up, and then they still had this feeling of gratitude for
Evelyn. She'll be nice and polite, but she'll shut him off just like a spigot."

 
          
 
"I suspect he doesn't like it when that
happens."

 
          
 
"Kates it!" the President grinned.
"Can't stand it. And the best part is, he won't get angry at Evelyn and he
can't get angry at me—he knows if he pushes me too far I'll cut off his legs—so
he'll have to swallow it. I expect if he had a dog, he'd go home and beat on
it."

 
          
 
The President took a sip of his drink and made
a face. The drink was old; the ice had melted, and Burnham imagined that the
weak bourbon tasted like tepid rinse water. The President went to the bar
cabinet, measured an ounce and a half of bourbon into a fresh glass, dropped in
two ice cubes and rolled them around the sides of the glass with his finger.

 
          
 
"Now, Tim," he said, and he tasted
his new brew, "tell me what you think we should do about
Honduras
."

 
          
 
"What side do you want me to take,
sir?"

 
          
 
"Uh-uh. No more games." The
President sat on the couch and motioned Burnham to one of the chairs opposite.
"I want to know what you think."

 
          
 
"Me? But, sir . . . I . . ." Burnham
suddenly felt the old feelings returning: the tripping heartbeat, the sweat
seeping into his palms. "Why me?"

 
          
 
"Why not? You know all the arguments.
You've taken every side."

 
          
 
"But, sir . . . You've got about a
billion dollars worth of the best brains in the world giving you advice.
Historians, military people, foreign-policy people. I think it would be
presumptuous of me to ..."

 
          
 
"Oh bullshit with your presumptuous, Tim.
All these brains you say I've got on the payroll, every one of them has a
constituency of one kind or another. If I want the military constituency, I
know where to go. If I want to know what the diplomats think, I know where to
go. You have no constituency, Tim. What I'm paying you for is honesty."

 
          
 
"But it wouldn't be fair, sir—fair to you,
that is. I could sit here and give you opinions all day "—Oh, nice! Burnham
said to himself as his mind danced frantically around in a field of options,
struggling to stay a step ahead of his tongue.

 
          
 
You don't even have one opinion, let alone all
these opinions you're going to give him all day—"but what would they be
worth? I've been a sounding board for you, so any opinion I have would just be
a synthesis of other people's opinions."

 
          
 
Not bad, Burnham thought, when the President
appeared not to have a ready reply but simply gazed at the ice in his glass and
twirled it with his finger.

 
          
 
But then the President raised his eyes to Burnham
and spoke with a voice as flat as lead. "What do you think a decision is,
Tim, but a synthesis of people's opinions?"

 
          
 
"Yes! ... of course . . . well ..."
Now Burnham was blushing, and he could hear the march of his pulse behind his
ears. "What I mean is—it may sound paradoxical—but because I have no
constituency and have nothing to lose, my opinion wouldn't carry much
conviction and wouldn't be worth anything, is what I mean."

 
          
 
"What makes you think you've got nothing
to lose?"

 
          
 
"Oh. Well. I mean—"

 
          
 
"Let's start with the confidence of the
President of the
United States
. I am not putting you through this, Tim, because
it amuses me. I am putting you through this because I value your judgment and I
think it can be a big help to the country at a time that, I'm afraid, will turn
out to be a pivotal moment in our history."

 
          
 
"You do?" Burnham was amazed. He
wasn't aware that he had much judgment, good or bad.

 
          
 
"Every time over the past several weeks
that I have asked your opinion and you have given it, it has been based on
honesty, common sense and—I'm sure you don't have any idea you have this—a
pretty sharp political sense of which option would be best for me. And every
time, it has turned out that your opinion has been sound."

 
          
 
"It has?" Burnham hadn't ever
stopped to think that his judgment might be being judged. He had offered his
opinions offhand, and because he had never had any feedback from them, he had
never thought of them as being good or bad.

 
          
 
"Yes. Now"—the President locked his
eyes on Burnham's, forcing him to look at him—"are you finished jerking
off?"

 
          
 
"Sir? I ..." Burnham wanted to look
away, but he couldn't. The President's eyes were like a lizard's. After a long
moment, he said, "Yes."

 
          
 
"Good. Now let's come to a decision. Do
you have a strong opinion?"

 
          
 
"No, sir. There may be one inside me
somewhere, but I'm going to have to find it." An obvious question begged
to be asked, but Burnham hesitated, sensing that with Benjamin Winslow—as with
any man who had for nearly seven years been the most powerful man on the planet
and who was accustomed to being treated like a pharaoh—the line that separated
candor from lese-majeste was thin and fuzzy.