Benchley, Peter - Novel 06 (19 page)

 
          
 
WHEN MY TIME IS DONE, ONE THING OF WHICH I
WILL BE PROUDEST IS OUR RECORD IN HELPING WOMEN ACHIEVE THE FULL AND COMPLETE
EQUALITY IN AMERICAN SOCIETY THAT IS THEIR BIRTHRIGHT.

 
          
 
(Long, sustained applause. Burnham said to
Cobb. "That must've given him a high," and Cobb replied, "Oh
yeah, by now he was on a roll.")

 
          
 
WE HAVE APPOINTED MORE THAN TWO HUNDRED WOMEN
TO IMPORTANT POSITIONS OF GREAT RESPONSIBILITY IN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AND
THE JUDICIARY. I HAVE NAMED, AND SEEN CONFIRMED BY THE CONGRESS, TWO WOMEN
ADMIRALS AND THREE GENERALS. AND THERE WILL BE MORE. I PROMISE YOU.

 
          
 
(More applause. Burnham said, "Damn right
there will. Evelyn Witt, for one.")

 
          
 
THE APPOINTMENT OF MARY TO THE FEDERAL BENCH
GIVES ME PARTICULAR PLEASURE ... IT IS RARE FOR A PRESIDENT TO HND AN OLD AND
DEAR FRIEND SO HIGHLY QUALIHED FOR SUCH A VITAL JOB.

 
          
 
AND SO. LADIES AND GENTLEMEN . . .

 
          
 
("Listen now," said Cobb.)

 
          
 
I ASK YOU TO JOIN ME IN A TOAST TO A GREAT
FRIEND, A GREAT WOMAN, A GREAT AMERICAN . . . WHO WILL SOON BECOME A GREAT
JURIST. . . . LEARY O'MARY!

 
          
 
(The silence was so total that Burnham thought
the tape had ripped. But then he heard a few isolated laughs, a few coughs, the
tinkle of glassware, the scrape of chairs shifted nervously on the floor, the
thud of a hand covering the microphone.)

 
          
 
The President's voice, frantic:

 
          
 
MARY OLEARY! MARY O'LEARY!

 
          
 
There was laughter, and applause, and the tape
stopped.

 
          
 
Burnham said, "He blamed me?"

 
          
 
Cobb nodded. "It got worse. The Signal
Corps guy who brought me the tape said Mary O'Leary got up to reply, and
everybody was feeling fine—except the President, and he was covering himself
pretty well—and O'Leary, the dizzy dame, thanked the President and asked
everybody to join her in a toast to—you won't believe this—to her great friend,
President Winslow T. Benjamin."

 
          
 
"Oh my."

 
          
 
"And that's not all. She got a huge
laugh, a real ballbuster, the place went nuts, and the President had to sit
there and smile like he thought the whole thing was hilarious and play the good
sport while all the time he felt like a complete asshole."

 
          
 
"So how's that my fault?"

 
          
 
"You know as well as I do, around here
fault is in the eye

 
          
 
of the fault-finder. He couldn't do what he
would've liked to do, fire everybody involved—the driver who drove him there,
the dude who introduced him, the secretary who typed the speech, O'Leary
herself. So he had to blame the poor schmuck who wrote it. He told the Signal
Corps guy that that's what had been on the page he read from."

 
          
 
"That's bullshit!"

 
          
 
"Who cares? The point is, your tits were
the ones in the wringer. And the question is, why didn't he squeeze?"

 
          
 
"Warner, on the grave of my sainted
mother ..."

 
          
 
"Your mother lives in
Scarsdale
."

 
          
 
"Yeah, but she can't live forever. On the
blood of my children, then, I do not know. I was in there, he was yelling at
me, I almost had a convulsion in the Oval Office, and the next thing I know,
Pow! I'm his bosom buddy."

 
          
 
"Congratulations," said Cobb. "I
guess."

 
          
 
"No. No congratulations. I don't like
it."

 
          
 
"Please. Spare me the 'umble-man act.
Ninety-nine percent of the human race would sell their souls to have the
President say 'howdy' to them, let alone say how valuable they are."

 
          
 
Burnham raised a finger in what Cobb, like
Sarah, recognized as his Johnsonian posture, and asked ponderously, "Why
should he flatter me? I can do nothing for him. Let him carry his praise to a
better market."

 
          
 
Cobb did not smile. He nicked at a pencil
eraser with a thumbnail, then said, "What is it with you and Doctor J.?
You keep him on your bench, like a ready reserve. He's your favorite pinch
hitter."

 
          
 
"Yep." Burnham felt himself
reddening. He begged Johnson to help him now, but the good doctor declined; he
had scorned self-puffery. How could Burnham explain his implausible adoration
of a man who had been dead for two hundred years, a man with cosmic perceptions
and timeless intuitions, a man who had answers for questions that would not be
asked for centuries?

 
          
 
He said to Cobb, "Do you like
yourself?"

 
          
 
"What? What's that got to do with
anything?"

 
          
 
"I don't like myself a lot. I'm okay, I
guess, but I don't see a hell of a lot that's special. I'm average, a reactor,
not an actor. I go along. Johnson was everything I'm not, so when I'm cornered,
I turn to him and he always helps me out. He's ... my friend."

 
          
 
Now Cobb was embarrassed: He had anticipated
an offhand explanation and had received a confession. "Well, I know one
person who disagrees with you," he said, "at least about yourself.''

 
          
 
"Who's that?"

 
          
 
"The President of the
United States
."

 
          
 
Dyanna would love it. She wouldn't understand
it any better than he did, but she would love it because it meant there would
be more contact with the White House and with the Oval Office directly. She
might even get to speak to the President himself on the phone, and for certain
she'd have to carry stuff at least as far as Evelyn Witt's office, which meant
walking through those charged corridors peopled with the men who ran the world,
an occasional one of whom would likely cast an appreciative eye on the
Dixie
dream.

 
          
 
The fact that someone stood to benefit from
that bizarre conversation with the President pleased Burnham, so he decided to
recount it to her with enthusiasm rather than with the amorphous shadow of
foreboding that he sensed was truer.

 
          
 
He pushed open the door to his office and
said, "Wait'll you hear—''

 
          
 
"Sssshhh!" Dyanna sat at her desk,
fingers to her lips, eyes wide, and pointed theatrically to his inner office.
"He's come back!" she whispered.

 
          
 
"Who?"

 
          
 
"That Mr. Renfro. And he brought a
box."

 
          
 
Burnham peeked into his office and saw Preston
T. Renfro looking out the window at the Ellipse. A cardboard crate, large
enough to contain an electric typewriter, rested on the floor beside Burnham's
desk.

 
          
 
"Sorry to keep you waiting," Burnham
said as he strode into the office. "I've been with the President."
Carefully carelessly, he tossed his Important Papers on the couch.

 
          
 
"So I understand," Renfro said.
"My visit is timely indeed."

 
          
 
"What'd you bring me? A box of
secrets?"

 
          
 
"Droll, Mr. Burnham," said Renfro's
mouth, contradicting his eyes. "Very droll. Do you have a knife?"

 
          
 
Burnham didn't have a knife, so he turned to
call to Dyanna, but she was already passing through the doorway, a letter
opener held like a dagger in her hand.

 
          
 
Renfro slit the tape that sealed the crate,
then popped the staples and lifted out a beige rectangular metal box,
approximately twenty-four inches by eighteen inches by eight inches, with wide
slots in the top and the bottom and a power cord gathered in a bow by a wire
bag-tie.

 
          
 
"Where's an outlet?" he asked, and
he directed Dyanna to pick up a large square wastebasket and follow him.

 
          
 
Dyanna set the wastebasket by the electrical
outlet, and Renfro placed the rectangular box atop the wastebasket and plugged
in its cord.

 
          
 
"What is it?" asked Dyanna.

 
          
 
"A document shredder."

 
          
 
"Wow! Neat." Dyanna smiled at Burnham
and said, "See? I told you."

 
          
 
Told, me what? Burnham wondered, and then he
realized that Dyanna was connecting the arrival of the shredder to his summons
to the Oval Office. Well, let her; it'd brighten her day.

 
          
 
"What do we shred?" Dyanna asked
Renfro.

 
          
 
"You, madam," Renfro replied
frostily, "do not shred anything."

 
          
 
"Well ceeyooze me!"

 
          
 
"You have to be cleared to shred,"
said Burnham. "Can't let just anybody shred. It's a privilege you have to
earn. You start by tearing. Then you learn how to rip. Then you rend. Finally
you master shredding."

 
          
 
Renfro shot Burnham an acid glance and said to
Dyanna, "That will be all."

 
          
 
But before Dyanna could depart, Burnham said
to Renfro, "Don't you think she ought to at least know what it is I'm
shredding? So she can make sure I get it to shred."

 
          
 
"You tell her nothing. She has no need to
know."

 
          
 
Burnham shrugged, and Dyanna tumed and left
the office, pulling the door closed with just enough unnecessary force to
punctuate her displeasure.

 
          
 
Renfro activated the shredder, took a blank
piece of typing paper from Burnham's desk and fed it into the slot in the top
of the shredder. The machine gobbled it with a contented humming noise. When
the paper was gone, Renfro lifted the

 
          
 
shredder off the wastebasket and showed Burnham
a small pile of white strips.

 
          
 
"Fettuccine." Burnham said.

 
          
 
Renfro sighed. "If you must."

 
          
 
"A really top-top-top-secret document
would be fettuccine atomico."