Benchley, Peter - Novel 06 (18 page)

 
          
 
It was another of the down-home, good-ole-boy
backwoods sayings that the President collected like other people collect
stamps. He didn't care what part of the nation a saying came from, if he liked
it he adopted it and attributed it to one or another member of his family—a
family whose cast of imaginary (or at least untraceable) characters grew and
spread metastatically across America and its past.

 
          
 
"It means that a President who puts his
trust in writers who think the presidency's a joke"—a buzzer sounded
urgently on the President's desk—"has about as much chance of making it
into the history books as a fart in a cyclone!"

 
          
 
As the President rose to answer the buzzer,
his shoe dragged Burnham's Important Papers off the coffee table onto the rug.
Absently, forgetting for a second who he was, the President leaned down and
scooped up the papers and put them back on the table, glancing at them—with a
brief snap of double-take, first at the papers, then at Burnham—as they left
his hand.

 
          
 
Burnham saw the President frown as he turned
toward his desk, noticed that he seemed distracted as he listened on the
telephone, was surprised at his vehemence when he said into the phone,
"Then let 'em wait, goddammit! All they're gonna do is grow up to be burrs
under the saddle of
America
anyway!"

 
          
 
As the President returned to Burnham, his face
seemed different, softer somehow, and when he held out his hand, he said
simply, "I'm sure glad we understand each other, Tim."

 
          
 
"Sir?" Burnham hopped to his feet,
thinking: I don't understand a thing.

 
          
 
"We're both doing the best we can, and
that's all any of the bastards can ask." The President handed Bumham his
papers and led him toward a door. "You do your job, I'll do my job, and
we'll try to coordinate 'em better. Right, Tim?"

 
          
 
"Right. Sir."

 
          
 
"You bet, Tim. That's great. Thanks for
coming by."

 
          
 
Before Burnham could reply, he found himself
in the corridor between the two Secret Service men, the door closed behind him,
the President gone. He felt that the Secret Service men were eyeing him
quizzically, as if he had been spewed out of the office like a chaw of tobacco
from an angry pitcher, so he cleared his throat gravely, checked his watch
blindly, tucked his Important Papers under his arm and walked down the corridor.

 
          
 
He hadn't gone twenty feet when he felt the
meltdown begin. It was like the sequential failure of the elements of a
computer: first the sweats, pouring down his neck, under his arms, off his
fingers; then tachycardia, the heart hammering faster and faster, from eighty
to a hundred to a hundred and twenty to a hundred and forty beats a minute,
bringing with it the short, panting breath of hyperventilation; then—as the
brain began to hunker down in defense against malnourishment —tunnel vision,
everything blurred but the tiny object at the absolute center of vision, and
that so clear that he could read the address on an envelope being typed by a
secretary in an office thirty feet away; now the next-to-last stage—he had had
this before, but never in the White House; my God! what would happen if he
passed out right on the floor of the West Wing of the White House?—the
accumulating panic and the onset of unconsciousness, all vision pulsing in and
out, a tingling in the hands and arms.

 
          
 
He stopped walking and leaned headfirst
against the wall and took long, deep breaths.

 
          
 
A passing secretary stopped and said,
"Are you okay?" and he nodded and said thickly, "Thinking. Gotta
work something out."

 
          
 
His head cleared. He knew where he had to go,
but he didn't know if he could make it. He turned and aimed for the railing at
the top of the staircase that led to the basement.

 
          
 
He made it in four steps, gripped the railing
and took three deep breaths.

 
          
 
He went down the first few steps, stopped at
the landing and targeted the short staircase leading into the Mess.

 
          
 
He made that crossing without stopping, and
now he knew he would make it, and as soon as he knew that, the panic began to
subside.

 
          
 
It was still early in the morning, but the
waiters would be in the Mess, setting up for lunch, and he didn't care if they
were there or not because what he wanted—what he had to have —would be on every
table in a bowl decorated with the Great Seal of the President of the United
States.

 
          
 
Burnham focused on the table nearest the door,
took two steps and flopped into a chair. His fingers felt for the sugar bowl,
flipped the top off it, and raised the bowl to his lips. He stuck his tongue
into the bowl and curled it like a dog taking water and lapped sugar into his
mouth. The granules dissolved and slid down his throat, and he lapped again and
again.

 
          
 
In a few seconds, he felt the tingling leave
his arms, and his hands were steady enough so he could put the bowl on the
table and spoon the sugar into his mouth. He swore to himself—as he had sworn
the time before and the time before that—that he would carry a Milky Way or a
Snickers bar in his pocket every minute of his life from now on. If he had
pumped some sugar into himself before he saw the President, this never would have
happened. He could prevent the hypoglycemic-shock reaction by overdosing sugar
before the onset of stress. Or so Dr. Arunian had assured him.

 
          
 
Free-floating anxiety, Arunian had called it,
caused by hypoglycemic shock, caused by the body's natural reaction to acute
stress, which is to gobble up all the sugar in the system.

 
          
 
Carry a Snickers bar, and you'll be fine.

 
          
 
But how was he supposed to know the President
was going to do a number on him?

 
          
 
Besides, have you ever carried a Snickers bar
in your jacket pocket in
Washington
,
D.C.
, in the summer?

 
          
 
All these thoughts ran through his mind, and
he was feeling much better, almost functional, when he sensed someone standing
next to him and looked up into the limpid black eyes that resided in the round
brown face of L. Reyes, Chief Steward of the White House Mess, who had been
observing Burnham with fascination and some alarm. ' "May I help you,
sir?"

 
          
 
Burnham swallowed another spoonful of sugar
and shook his head. "I'm fine, thanks," he said, and by now he was.

 
          
 
"We're not open yet," L. Reyes said.

 
          
 
"I know." Burnham nodded. "I'm
just having a coffee break."

 
          
 
"But you're not having any coffee."

 
          
 
"Of course not." Burnham popped one
last dose of sugar into his mouth and daubed at his lips with a napkin.
"That's because you're not open." He stood, and smiled at L. Reyes,
and left the Mess.

 
          
 
By the time he arrived at Cobb's door, he was
feeling, if not euphoric, at least like (whose simile was it?) the very button
on Fortune's cap. He rapped lightly on the door and, hearing no voice within,
opened the door and entered.

 
          
 
Cobb was waiting for him, hands folded on his
desk, head cocked like a puppy who senses something exciting in the wind but
doesn't know what it is.

 
          
 
"Come in, my boy," he said,
gesturing grandly at the chair opposite his desk, "and give me a word of
wisdom."

 
          
 
"Jesus Christ!" Burnham said, the
fires within stoked high by glucose. "I was done, fired, out on my can,
and then ..."

 
          
 
Cobb held up a hand. "I know all about
it."

 
          
 
"You do?"

 
          
 
"Well, not all," Cobb said.
"But two minutes ago, I hung up with Himself" He pointed to the POTUS
phone. "He chewed me out for not telling him what a great job you were
doing, then he said—and I do not know what the hell this is all about—'No, no,
I guess you didn't know either.' Then before he slammed down the phone he said
I was to be sure to involve you more—involve you in what?—because you're too
valuable to waste on petty shit. Period." Cobb smiled. "Whatever you
did, share it with your old buddy. You slip something in his coffee?"

 
          
 
"Nothing! I don't know. I know he called
me in there to fire me—why, I don't know, but. ..."

 
          
 
"I do."

 
          
 
"Why?"

 
          
 
Cobb reached for the "play" button
on his cassette recorder. "It wasn't your fault, but you were as good as
gone. Listen."

 
          
 
It was the Signal Corps tape of the
President's address to the dinner for Mary O'Leary. It began with an unfamiliar
voice saying, "I have a special message here for Mary, from a very special
person, and ... no, by golly, I'll be ding-donged but that special person has
decided to deliver his message in person. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my honor
to present to you the President of the
United States
!"

 
          
 
Loud applause, whistles, cheers, and then the
President's voice saying, "Thank you, thank you," in a way that urged
the audience to stop clapping and sit down.

 
          
 
When the crowd sounds had died, there was the
soft crinkle of two sheets of twenty-pound, Kokle Finish, Berkshire Parchment
Bond being unfolded and smoothed on the podium by the presidential hand, then
the last-minute heavy hush that always precedes a presidential speech. And, at
last, the voice that had been described myriad times by myriad scribes as
having true presidential timbre beginning to read the words typed on the
presidential speech typewriter that produced quarter-inch-high letters:

 
          
 
JUDGE THOMPSON. LADIES AND GENTLEMEN AND
ESPECIALLY MARY.

 
          
 
I WANTED TO COME TONIGHT. BECAUSE THIS IS A
SPECIAL NIGHT. AND YOU ARE A SPECIAL PERSON AND .1 ASSURE YOU . . . THAT IS NOT
SOMETHING I SAY TO ALL THE GIRLS.

 
          
 
(Polite laughter from the audience. Burnham
said to Cobb, "Nothing there to get pissed about," and Cobb shook his
head and said, "Wait.")

 
          
 
AFTER SUPPER TONIGHT. I PUT ON MY JACKET
AGAIN. AND HELEN SAID TO ME. "WHERE ARE YOU GOING?" AND I SAID.
"THERE'S A DINNER FOR MY FRIEND MARY O'LEARY. I THINK I'LL GO HAVE A CUP
OF COFFEE WITH HER."

 
          
 
WELL, HELEN LOOKED KIND OF SAD. AND I SAID.
"WHAT'S THE MATTER?" SHE SNIFFLED AND SAID "I KNEW YOU DIDN'T
LIKE MY COFFEE!"

 
          
 
(More polite laughter. Burnham said to Cobb,
"I'm not proud of that, but it's not an indictable offense." The
President continued.)

 
          
 
EVERY PRESIDENT DOES THE BEST HE CAN IN HIS
JOB. HE CAN DO NO BETTER. AND WHEN HIS TIME IS DONE, THERE ARE CERTAIN THINGS
HE CAN LOOK ON WITH PARTICULAR PRIDE.