Supreme Courtship (21 page)
President Vanderdamp, frowning at this unexpected display, thought,
Oh, shit.
A
mor
, I have been a fool. But now I am yours. Totally yours—if you will have me. Take me, Meetchell. Take me. Send in the
Neemitz. Now!
”
“All right, Connie, but no more Mr. Nice Guy.”
“Cut.”
“Problem?” Dexter said grouchily, dropping the panting Ramona Alvilar onto the satiny sheets of the presidential bed on Air Force One.
“Five minutes, everyone,” Jerry the director called out. He and Buddy approached. “Everything okay, Dex?” Jerry said.
“Yes. Yes,” Dexter said a touch petulantly. “Everything’s fine. Why? Is it not fine for you?”
“No, no,” Buddy said heartily. “It’s fine. Great. I think it’s going totally great.”
“Really great,” Jerry echoed. “But I’m—maybe it’s just me—I’m not sensing a lot of heat. Buddy, does that sound fair?”
“Yeah,” Buddy said. “I think it sounds fair.”
“This is a hot, hot, hot scene here,” Jerry went on. “Ramona’s—Jesus—she’s on fire. We’re going to have to pack her in ice between takes. But when you hit the ‘No more Mr. Nice Guy’ line, it’s coming through like a—I don’t know—BlackBerry text message or something.” Jerry turned to Buddy. “Does that sound valid to you?”
“I think so,” Buddy said as if considering an amendment to Newtonian physics. “She was giving
me
an erection, and I’m ten yards away.”
Dexter sighed. “Fair enough. I’m sorry, guys. I’ve . . . I guess I’ve got a lot on my mind right now.”
“Is everything all right?” Buddy said solicitously. “Anything I can do?”
“No. No. It’s fine.”
It wasn’t, actually. The day before, Dexter had had another argument with Terry over the Park Avenue coop she wanted to buy—or as he now referred to it in conversations with her, “the fucking coop.” She’d found one she liked, on Park Avenue and Seventy-fourth Street, the most expensive latitude and longitude on the planet. It was the bottom floor of a vintage apartment building, something called a maisonette. Dexter assumed the word was French for “hideously expensive.”
“Four million? Four million
dollars
? Terry. Hail Mary, full of grace.”
“It’s New York, Dexter.”
“Thank you for clarifying that. I’d assumed you were talking about a diamond mine in South Africa.”
O
KAY,”
Dexter said to Buddy and Jerry. “Let’s do it again. I’ll rip her clothes off with my teeth.”
“Whoa, Tiger,” Buddy said, giving Dexter a manly shoulder punch. “That’s an original Carolina Herrera. But I love the energy. Throw her onto that bed, send in the ol’
Nimitz
, and we’re out of here. Good to go, Mr. Prez?”
“Yes, yes,” Dexter said, sounding profoundly bored at the prospect of ravishing a woman voted by
People
magazine the third sexiest woman on planet Earth.
There was something in addition to the four-million-dollar maisonette that was taking up a lot of gigs on Dexter Mitchell’s hard drive: a poll that morning in
USA Today
.
If the election were held today, who would you vote for?
Answer:
President Mitchell Lovestorm—
by thirty points over the next most popular choice.
Dexter had shown the poll to his wife, palms moist with excitement. Terry had glanced at it in a bemused way, as if it were a postcard from Aunt Hattie in Bora-Bora. “That’s wonderful, darling. And isn’t it wonderful you aren’t running?”
“But Terry. Look at these numbers.
Thirty points!
”
“Dexter,” she said, “Mitchell Lovestorm is a television character.”
“So?” Dexter said. “We’re all television characters these days.”
“I’m not. Look, sweetheart, it’s a lovely compliment to what you’ve been able to do. And for a nonprofessional actor, too. We’re all so proud of you. But the poll is”—she laughed—“meaningless. Anyway,” she said brightly, like a mother trying to convince a recalcitrant six-year-old that he didn’t really want to go to the zoo today after all, “you’re already president.”
Dexter sighed. “It’s hardly the same thing, Terry. Have you ever heard of the term ‘synchronicity’?”
“Yes,” Terry said. “It’s when you suddenly have a lot of money and just the right apartment comes on the market.”
As soon as Dexter had wrapped the steamy reconciliation scene on
Air Force One
he went off to his dressing room and placed a call to Buster “Bussie” Scrump, the Washington pollster and political operative. It had been unkindly but accurately said of Bussie Scrump that his ethics were of a piece with Groucho Marx’s manifesto, “I’ve got principles. And if you don’t like them, I’ve got other principles.”
“Mis-ter President!” Bussie said jovially. They’d known each other for years. “How’s the
Nimitz
? I swear I get goose bumps every time I hear you say that.”
“Fuck the
Nimitz
,” Dexter said. “Now listen, Buss, this is between you, me, and the Holy Ghost.”
T
he investigation into the
Swayle
leak, now in its fourth week, had so far failed to produce any result other than a deepening of the already sour mood within the marble palace.
A defiant and continuingly minty-breathed Chief Justice Hardwether had, true to his threat, called in the FBI, causing almost unanimous ill will. (For once the justices agreed on something.) Clerks asked to submit to polygraph examinations appealed to their various justices, who in turn registered Olympian proxy umbrage and fired off furious, copiously footnoted letters to the Attorney General, with ostentatious cc’s to their own Chief Justice. One such letter had been reprinted in full on the front page of the
Washington Post.
The skies over Capitol Hill darkened with writs and subpoenas, but the Supreme Court being supreme, there wasn’t a whole hell of a lot the Justice Department could do other than to stamp its feet and put out grumbly leaks on the theme of “supreme arrogance.” Juvenal’s
quis custodiet
was quoted so often on TV that three-year-olds became conversant in Latin. Court observers shook their heads in dismay. Not since
Bush v. Gore
*
had the Supreme Court been held in such contempt by the country. Had Chief Justice Hardwether lost his grip?
This never would have happened under Rehnquist.
And these rumors that he was drinking. It was all so very sad.
At the epicenter of this fury and unpleasantness stood Justice Pepper Cartwright, the aggrieved party insofar as the leak went, yet increasingly perceived in the public eye to be the epicentric cause of all the problems. Editorials had begun to appear calling for her impeachment. Every now and then, as the saying goes, Washington needs to burn a witch.
Meanwhile, the President who had elevated her to the high court was mounting the most quixotic reelection campaign in history. He had announced his firm intention not to spend one dime on television advertising, nor a single day campaigning in Iowa or New Hampshire or any of the early primary states. His campaign slogan was almost defiantly prosaic: “Vanderdamp: More of the Same.”
“As a rallying cry,” one pundit put it, “it’s not quite up there with ‘Once more into the breach.’ ”
The Presidential Term Limit Amendment, meanwhile, was busily ratifying its way through various state legislatures. State senators were furious with Vanderdamp for years of having denied them pork. The people, on the other hand, seemed to find the President’s breathtaking honesty refreshing, if not downright unique. According to the polls, many were rethinking their quondam odium. He was up by twelve points—or as they put it in Washington, “double digits.”
In the midst of this howling gale, Pepper blew her nose, dried her tears, and tried to go about the business of interpreting the U.S. Constitution as best she could. But it wasn’t much fun and she missed the view of Central Park. She missed lying in bed and looking out over it and eating hot bagels. Buddy had been wrong about there being no good restaurants in Washington, but she had yet to find New York–quality carbohydrates. Given other developments, this was a minor disappointment.
O
NE LUNCH HOUR
in the Court cafeteria, she found herself standing in line behind Crispus Galavanter.
“Why is it,” he said in his plummy cello voice, “that you and I are always taking up the rear of the procession? When will we take our rightful places in the pageant of greatness? The world wonders.”
Crispus bantered in these mock-heroic tones. His nickname among the clerks was “the Licorice Caesar.” He quite liked it, even occasionally signed his memos “LC.”
Pepper smiled, gathered up her Jell-O with embedded fruit, cottage cheese, and iced tea. Crispus’s tray held a trencherman’s portion of meat loaf, mashed potatoes, lima beans, onion rings, and two Dr Peppers.
“May I . . . join?” Crispus said. It was a mild breach of protocol, as Pepper had papers tucked under her arm, a signal she’d intended a reading lunch. But you couldn’t say no to Crispus.
“How you making out,” he said, “in the midst of all this Sturm und Drang?”
“Okay. No one’s asked me to take a polygraph, anyway,” Pepper said, forking up some cottage cheese.
“Disgraceful business. You shouldn’t have been put through it. Makes us all look bad. I don’t blame the CJ for being furious. But neither do I think that unleashing the FBI has enhanced the spirit of communality.”
“I begged him not to do it on my account,” Pepper said. “But he’s running hot about it. Went on and on about what a disgrace, etc, etc. I think he’s . . . he’s not in a good way.”
Crispus chewed his food pensively. “I
am
concerned for him. Either he is facing a periodontal crisis—he’s awful minty of late—or he is partaking of John Barleycorn in a voluminous manner. Well,” he said, “the man has been through a crucible. I like Declan. I don’t agree with him nine out of ten times. I didn’t agree with him on gay marriage. But that cat is well out of the bag and it ain’t going back in. No, it can’t have been easy. And now this
Swayle
business. Unfortunate. Say, how is that Jell-O? Would you like some of this meat loaf? It is . . . I have no words to describe its Platonic ideality. Do you know whose recipe it is? Mrs. Frankfurter’s. It lives on after her. Now,
there’s
a legacy. I would be well pleased to have such a one myself. Perhaps my nachos
con everything in el pantry
? Nachos Galavanter. Nachos
Crispus
. I will have the recipe entered into the record. And to think that you were present at the creation. Do you sense the historicity of the moment?”
“Try the Jell-O.” Pepper smiled.
“I demur,” Crispus said. “Demur most strenuously. Jell-O will not again pass these lips.”
“You got enough saturated fats on that plate to kill a marathon runner.”
“For your information, Miss Pritikin, that odious substance on your plate—intending no collateral disrespect to the cottage cheese—was about all I could afford to eat back in law school. That and those repellent Japanese noodles.” He shuddered. “No, neither Jell-O nor ramen shall frequent these digestive organs in this lifetime. But,” he said, “I do worry about Declan. I try to avoid the water-cooler style of discourse, but I confide to you here and now that I am
alarmed
for him. So is Paige, dear, kind woman that she is. But she can’t get anywhere with him. Shuts her out. And when you’re shutting out Paige Plympton, you are denying yourself the very quintessence of humanity. I saw him yesterday and he had a look on him . . . like a character out of Edgar Allan Poe. It gave me pause, I tell you. I said to him, in the most fraternal way, I said, ‘Dec, remember that on the other side of the wall of humiliation lies liberation.’ ”
“What did he say?” Pepper said.
“He said, ‘Did you find that in
Pilgrim’s Progress
or in a fortune cookie in a not very good Chinese restaurant?’ I laughed. He did not. Not even at his own bon mot. When you derive no joy from your own felicity, well, it’s like dying of thirst in your own wine cellar.”
“I feel like a fried green tomato about all this,” Pepper said. “I . . .”
Crispus shrugged. “It’s not your fault someone leaked
Swayle
. But I will say that your matriculation here has been”—he smiled companionably—“not uneventful
.”
Pepper stared forlornly at the remains of her fruit-dappled Jell-O. “Do you think I should . . .” She couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence.
“Eat any more of that ghastly substance? No. You need meat and potatoes, woman. So tell me, Justice Cartwright, what is it you like to do?
“Do?”
“Come on, this isn’t oral argument. It’s not a complicated question.
Do
you listen to music?
Do
you go to movies?
Do
you dance? Solve Sudoku puzzles in the bathtub while listening to Chopin’s nocturnes? Maurizio Pollini is my preferred version. That man is touched by God. All due respect to Horowitz and Rubinstein, but next to him they sound like they’re playing chopsticks. Do you climb mountains wearing lederhosen? Do you shoot elk with high-powered rifles and mount their horns? Do you keep tropical fish? Do you speak to your houseplants? Do you knit?”
“The only thing I’ve been doing,” Pepper said, “is working my Texas butt off.” She leaned forward and whispered across the table, “I’m drowning here, Crispus. I don’t think I’m gonna make this whistle.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Nothing. Bull-riding.”
“Steady on,” he said, wiping his mouth with his napkin, “steady on. For your information,
everyone
feels like they’re drowning the first year. Except maybe Silvio.” Crispus chuckled. “Silvio, you understand, was not appointed by the President, but from on
high
.”
Pepper felt tears welling. “I’m a catty whompus.”
Crispus stared. “What is a catty whompus? Something out of Lewis Carroll? It sounds . . . unpleasant.”
“Something that’s out of place. Something that doesn’t fit. Something like me.”