The Mountain Cage (26 page)

“That Bill Clinton was always a right smart young feller,” one of the President’s old mentors from Arkansas had said in a television interview, after President Clinton had won a second term by a landslide, “but it was Mary who done whipped him into shape.” Hillary could well believe that. President Bill Clinton, despite his many accomplishments in office, struck her—in his public persona, anyway—as the kind of charming rogue, weak at the center, who might never have won over the American public had he not been preceded in his office by the upright John Glenn and the dour Bob Dole. He could be grateful that people had grown tired of such rectitude and now wanted to enjoy the fruits of prosperity with a more congenial and lax chief executive.

“Ms. Rodham,” Mary Steenburgen Clinton murmured as she shook Hillary’s hand, “I am so glad you and your daughter could both be with us. I must tell you that of all the dinners we’ve had in the White House so far, I have looked forward to this one the most.”

Hillary very much doubted that, but the sincerity and warmth in the First Lady’s voice was enough to win her over. “You gave a wonderful performance in
Time After Time,”
she responded. “It’s one of my favorite films.”

“That British dude who played H.G. Wells in it wasn’t bad, either,” Chelsea added.

Hillary glanced at her daughter, who probably didn’t know that it was widely rumored that Mary Steenburgen Clinton had been romantically involved with her leading man in that movie, which had been made before her marriage to Bill Clinton, but the First Lady was still smiling.

“Malcolm McDowell, you mean,” Mary Clinton said. “No, he wasn’t bad at all.”

This President and his wife had a reputation for informality, and people were already moving toward the entrance to the dining room in no discernible order. Hillary lingered near her daughter, who was answering Ms. Clinton’s queries about her postgraduate work and her life in Boston, uncertain of what to do now, when she felt a hand gently touch her elbow.

“Ms. Rodham?”

Hillary turned and found herself looking up into the eyes of the President of the United States. He had shaken her hand impersonally at the earlier ceremony, when the members of the Venus mission had been presented with their medals, but now his gaze was definitely focused on her. With that broad grin and that twinkle in his eye, she could almost believe that he was flirting with her, unlikely as that was with his wife standing nearby.

“Mr. President,” Hillary said.

Bill Clinton took her right hand and pressed it between both of his. “You and your sister astronauts have accomplished a wonderful thing,” he said, “traveling to Venus and back. I’ve always had great admiration for brave and brilliant women, and it’s a privilege to have you all as our guests.”

He was a charmer, all right.

Their eyes locked … and then the moment passed.

The President moved away and gracefully took the First Lady’s arm.

Chelsea glanced at Hillary and smiled.

Hillary followed her daughter toward the White House dining room, where the tables waited beneath the glittering chandeliers.

Afterword to “Hillary Orbits Venus”:

This story seemed a natural after writing “Danny Goes to Mars,” and in fact I had the idea for a Hillary story not long after “Danny” was published, yet this story balked at being written and didn’t reach fruition for some years. I just couldn’t get a handle on Hillary as a character, a difficulty I seem to have shared with a great many Americans. Are we talking about Lady Macbeth here, a grasping materialist, a sincere do-gooder, or simply a woman greedy for power? Maybe we’re simply talking about a politician, a species of being whose primary
modus operandi
is not to give away the game one is playing and one’s deep longing for that game’s ultimate overriding goal, namely power, to the citizenry at large. When these masters of game-playing, deception, sincere-sounding insincerity, and hypocrisy are complex enough in their personalities, depicting them convincingly, rather than only caricaturing them, poses a formidable task.

Hillary Clinton is, to her credit, endlessly interesting. In the age of reality TV and a public appetite for gossip that seems to increase by the day, the least we can expect of our rulers is that they provide us with plenty of entertainment.

A number of characters in “Hillary Orbits Venus” are obviously based on real people. Here is what happened in our world, prejudicially known as “the real world,” to some of them:

Judith Resnik and Ellison Onizuka were mission specialists who died aboard the space
shuttle
Challenger
when it exploded seventy-three seconds after takeoff from Cape Canaveral, Florida on January 28, 1986.

Jerrie Cobb was one of thirteen women pilots who passed all of NASA’s rigorous tests for astronauts in 1960, before NASA made the decision to accept only men with experience as military test pilots into the astronaut corps. Cobb testified at Congressional hearings in 1962 in favor of accepting women into the astronaut program, but sixteen years passed before women became astronauts in the U.S.; in 1983, Sally Ride became the first American woman in space. Jerrie Cobb has spent nearly four decades as a pilot flying seeds and medical supplies to people living in remote areas of the Amazon rain forest, and has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy was not in Florida during the flight of Apollo 11, but in Massachusetts, where he was involved in a car accident near Chappaquiddick that resulted in the death of a former Kennedy campaign worker, Mary Jo Kopechne.

Richard Feynman’s last public service was as a member of the presidential commission appointed to investigate the causes of the
Challenger
disaster. His testimony at a hearing on February 10, 1986, in which he demonstrated the lack of resiliency in the
Challenger’s
O-rings at low temperatures by dropping a piece of the material used to manufacture them into ice water, dominated that day’s news reports of the commission’s findings. He died on February 15, 1988, with his wife, Gweneth Howarth Feynman, at his side; they were the parents of two children, Carl and Michelle. “Infinity” (1996), a motion picture about Feynman’s early years and his marriage to his first wife, Arline Greenbaum, featured Matthew Broderick in the role of the young Richard Feynman.

Mary Steenburgen was born and grew up in Arkansas. In 1980, she won an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress in “Melvin and Howard” and married Malcolm McDowell, her costar in “Time After Time;” they were divorced ten years later. Active in politics, she campaigned for Bill Clinton in 1992. She married actor Ted Danson in the late 1990s; President Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton were guests at the Steenburgen-Danson wedding.

In 2000, Hillary Rodham Clinton won election to the United States Senate from New York State.

FEARS

I was on my way back to Sam’s when a couple of boys tried to run me off the road, banging my fender a little before they sped on, looking for another target. My throat tightened and my chest heaved as I wiped my face with a handkerchief. The boys had clearly stripped their car to the minimum, ditching all their safety equipment, knowing that the highway patrol was unlikely to stop them; the police had other things to worry about.

The car’s harness held me; its dashboard lights flickered. As I waited for it to steer me back onto the road, the engine hummed, choked, and died. I switched over to manual; the engine was silent.

I felt numb. I had prepared myself for my rare journeys into the world outside my refuge, working to perfect my disguise. My angular, coarse-featured face stared back at me from the mirror overhead as I wondered if I could still pass. I had cut my hair recently, my chest was still as flat as a boy’s, and the slightly padded shoulders of my suit imparted a bit of extra bulk. I had always been taken for a man before, but I had never done more than visit a few out-of-the-way, dimly lighted stores where the proprietors looked closely only at cards or cash.

I couldn’t wait there risking a meeting with the highway patrol. The police might look a bit too carefully at my papers and administer a body search on general principles. Stray women had been picked up before, and the rewards for such a discovery were great; I imagined uniformed men groping at my groin, and shuddered. My disguise would get a real test. I took a deep breath, released the harness, then got out of the car.

The garage was half a mile away. I made it there without enduring more than a few honks from passing cars.

The mechanic listened to my husky voice as I described my problem, glanced at my card, took my keys, then left in his tow truck, accompanied by a younger mechanic. I sat in his office, out of sight of the other men, trying not to let my fear push me into panic. The car might have to remain here for some time; I would have to find a place to stay. The mechanic might even offer me a lift home, and I didn’t want to risk that. Sam might be a bit too talkative in the man’s presence; the mechanic might wonder about someone who lived in such an inaccessible spot. My hands were shaking; I thrust them into my pockets.

I started when the mechanic returned to his office, then smiled nervously as he assured me that the car would be ready in a few hours; a component had failed, he had another like it in the shop, no problem. He named a price that seemed excessive; I was about to object, worried that argument might only provoke him, then worried still more that I would look odd if I didn’t dicker with him. I settled for frowning as he slipped my card into his terminal, then handed it back to me.

“No sense hanging around here.” He waved one beefy hand at the door. “You can pick up a shuttle to town out there, comes by every fifteen minutes or so.”

I thanked him and went outside, trying to decide what to do. I had been successful so far; the other mechanics didn’t even look at me as I walked toward the road. An entrance to the town’s underground garage was just across the highway; a small, glassy building with a sign saying “Marcello’s” stood next to the entrance. I knew what service Marcello sold; I had driven by the place before. I would be safer with one of his employees, and less conspicuous if I kept moving; curiosity overcame my fear for a moment. I had made my decision.

I walked into Marcello’s. One man was at a desk; three big men sat on a sofa near one of the windows, staring at the small holo screen in front of them. I went to the desk and said, “I want to hire a bodyguard.”

The man behind the desk looked up; his mustache twitched. “An escort. You want an escort.”

“Call it whatever you like.”

“For how long?”

“About three or four hours.”

“For what purpose?”

“Just a walk through town, maybe a stop for a drink. I haven’t been to town for a while, thought I might need some company.”

His brown eyes narrowed. I had said too much; I didn’t have to explain myself to him. “Card.”

I got out my card. He slipped it into his outlet and peered at the screen while I tried to keep from fidgeting, expecting the machine to spit out the card even after all this time. He returned the card. “You’ll get your receipt when you come back.” He waved a hand at the men on the sofa. “I got three available. Take your pick.”

The man on my right had a lean, mean face; the one on the left was sleepy-eyed. “The middle guy.”

“Ellis.”

The middle man stood up and walked over to us. He was a tall black man dressed in a brown suit; he looked me over, and I forced myself to gaze directly at him while the man at the desk rummaged in a drawer and took out a weapon and holster, handing them to my escort.

“Ellis Gerard,” the black man said, thrusting out a hand.

“Joe Segor.” I took his hand; he gripped mine just long enough to show his strength, then let go. The two men on the sofa watched us as we left, as if resenting my choice, then turned back to the screen.

We caught a shuttle into town. A few old men sat near the front of the bus under the watchful eyes of the guard; five boys got on behind us, laughing, but a look from the guard quieted them. I told myself again that I would be safe with Ellis.

“Where to?” Ellis said as we sat down. “A visit to a pretty boy? Guys sometimes want escorts for that.”

“No, just around. It’s a nice day—we could sit in the park for a while.”

“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea, Mr. Segor.”

“Joe.”

“Those crossdressers hang out a lot there now. I don’t like it. They go there with their friends and it just causes trouble—it’s a bad element. You look at them wrong, and then you’ve got a fight. It ought to be against the law.”

“What?”

“Dressing like a woman. Looking like what you’re not.” He glanced at me. I looked away, my jaw tightening.

We were in town now, moving toward the shuttle’s first stop. “Hey!” one of the boys behind us shouted. “Look!” Feet shuffled along the aisle; the boys had rushed to the right side of the bus and were kneeling on the seats, hands pressed against the window; even the guard had turned. Ellis and I got up and changed seats, looking out at what had drawn the boys’ attention.