(2004) Citizen Vince (21 page)

“Hello?” She sounds worried.

“Debbie.”

“Hey there.” Her relief washes over him.

“I’m sorry to be calling so early. It’s just…”

“I’m glad you called. I miss you, too. When are you coming home?”

“I don’t know. Monday maybe.”

“How’s New York? Is it beautiful?”

“Yeah,” he says. He could touch all four walls of this hotel room without taking more than a couple of steps. “It’s…something.” He wishes he could just curl up next to her on the couch, on their couch, in that place he knows so well. Mostly, he wishes this case were over, and that he’d never seen Donnie Charles at the airport yesterday. He can picture the big detective—jaw wired shut—driving across the city, bottle by his side, his black eyes staring ahead.

“Maybe we could go there together someday, Alan? No work. Just do the tourist stuff. See the Empire State Building. Take a carriage ride in Central Park.”

He leans back on the bed and closes his eyes. “Sure.”

LAST THOUGHTS: THERE
hasn’t been a really funny television show since
Get Smart
; patty sausage is better than links; how long does the phone company keep sending bills after you’re gone; the passing game is killing professional football; Italian food is vastly over-rated; it would’ve been cool to own a dog.

Vince stares out the window, watching the buildings pass. He can’t keep up with his own brain, and he tries to concentrate on the things he’s seeing—to limit himself to visual stimuli. He wonders how long you get to carry memories—wonders if they go out with the lights. What about all these things you’ve seen: the sunrises and straight flushes. What happens to all of that when you’re gone? Greedily, he wants a few more images…nothing profound, just some beauty to look at. He wishes he could ask Ange to drive south—most of his favorite buildings are in lower Manhattan: City Hall and the old Standard Oil Building, the marble and cast iron faces of Chambers Street—but they’re heading north. Vince racks his brain to come up with the buildings he’d like to see north. The Met…The old Carnegie Mansion. The Ansonia and the Arthorp on Broadway.

Twice Vince puts his hand on the door to jump out in traffic, but both times he loses his nerve. They take the exit toward LaGuardia, and Vince wonders why Ange is keeping up the illusion that he’s going to get on a plane. Maybe the airport is where Ange does this kind of business. Maybe Vince’s corpse will be packed into a crate and shipped to Sicily.

There’s a kid on a bike staring from an overpass and Vince makes eye contact with him and wants to cry for the flash of future he feels from that kid’s eyes. He wishes he could just follow that kid and spend the rest of his life on a bike, zipping in and out of traffic, the freedom of it, closing your eyes and taking your hands off the handlebars…the only thing moving in a static world—a kid is invincible from the seat of his bike, or so he thinks. Invincibility: that’s what Vince misses. He closes his eyes and can see the parked cars bleeding past, the people on their stoops, can almost feel the wind on his face and in his hair.

Jesus, it’d be nice if there were someplace to dump all those things that you’ve felt and seen, like taking the film out of a camera. That’s why people write books and stories, no doubt, to leave some impression behind, to share a sense of the beauty and pain. This is what I saw! Or graffiti: I was here! Goddamn it, I was here! Why the fuck didn’t you ever write anything down; why didn’t you record your time here? How hard could that be?

And then, strangely, the car turns into the airport and Ange lays on the horn and serpentines through the cabs and pulls into the turnaround in front of ticketing—men hauling hard Samsonite to the curb, women smoking with one hand, carrying travel bags with the other, the taxis swarming like summer mosquitoes. Ange puts the car in park and turns to Vince. “Here we are, Donuts.”

Vince doesn’t know what to say. “You’re…you’re just gonna let me go home?”

Ange tilts his head. “Yeah. John told you that you could go home. Why? What’d you think we were doing?”

“I thought…but…you said it wasn’t that easy.”

“Yeah, John wants a favor from you. You didn’t get that?”

“No,” Vince says. “I thought you were going to—”

“Going to what?”

“You know…”

Ange grins. “You thought I—”

“Yeah.” He frowns and mocks the big man’s voice.
“This thing is bigger than us, Donuts.”

Ange stares at him and then explodes in laughter. His hands go to his big gut, and his dark eyes squeeze into slits. “You thought…Oh, Jesus! I never said I was gonna…I just said John had plans for you. That’s all.”

“Well, of course you didn’t
say
you were gonna do that. Who tells someone they’re going to shoot him?”

Ange can barely talk through the laughter. “That’s fuckin’ hilarious, Donuts. You thought I was going to—and you just sat there! Oh, fuck! You cool son of a bitch!”

Ange laughs so loudly that a couple walking by with matching suitcases stops and looks into the car. “I…I can’t believe you just sat there, thinking I was going to—”

“Well, you could’ve been a little more explicit. What’d you say—I couldn’t go without…compensation?”

Ange is crying. He hisses laughter, reaches over, and puts his hand on Vince’s shoulder. “You thought…Oh Jesus…Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. That’s fuckin’ hilarious!”

Now Vince is laughing, too, and the two of them are doubled over, struggling to catch their breath, slapping the dashboard.

Finally, Ange wipes his eyes and shakes his head. “God, I like you, Donuts. I wish you could stay around. You’d really liven things up. And just so you know, if I was gonna do that, we always send two guys for that.” He wrinkles his face as if he’s eaten something sour. “It’s really hard to do by yourself.”

Vince wipes his own eyes with the back of his sleeve. “Then what’s the favor? what’s the…
compensation?
”

That word breaks Ange up again and he looks like he’s going to
have a heart attack, slaps at his chest and makes a gun with his finger, points it at Vince, who falls—head to his knees, crying with laughter.

“Oh-my-God,” Ange says when he can talk again. He hums a last laugh and reaches into his pocket, produces a roll of bills, and presses them into Vince’s hand. “Okay.” Catches his breath. “Here’s what John wants you to do: take this money, fly back to that little pissant town where the FBI apparently sends all the rats, buy a gun, and shoot that snitch Ray Sticks between his lyin’ fuckin’ eyes.”

1980 / November 2 / Sunday / 4:13
A.M
.

He sneaks off to the bathroom to be alone, as he often does now, slips out of his shoes, and just stands in front of the mirror, staring at the strange, wan face that opposes him: sandy hair gone gray and an overall quality of melting—the ’76 smile long since faded, eyes drifting at the corners. He turns on the hot water. Out there, the room will have dissolved into pacing and hushed voices…the meeting of worried eyes. He knows that when he leaves the room there is only one topic of discussion: how to handle him, how to direct him away from his flawed instincts. Their deference aside, he knows how they feel. Shoot, he feels the same way. Long ago, they convinced him that he was not tough enough, not decisive enough, too religious. Long ago, they convinced him that they couldn’t afford his genial naïveté—this stubborn belief that if he does his best, the best will happen. Long ago, they convinced him that the opposite is in fact true. He is his own worst enemy.

Now he believes what they believe—that it is their job to protect him from himself. Their common enemy stares back in the mirror. Steam rises from the hot water. He sets down his briefing papers and puts his hands beneath the tap, holds them there as long as he
possibly can, happy for any physical sensation that gets him out of his own head.

“Ow!” He shakes his red hands and waits to see if anyone heard. But it’s quiet. It gives him a perverse thrill, to be so by himself like this. He is never by himself anymore. And yet he is always alone…and the more people in a room, the more alone he is. He runs his warm, wet hands over his face. Afterward…if it goes badly…what then? Golf? Go on TV? Go back home? What does a person do when this is over? When you’ve reached this place and been sent back down—wanting. He forgets sometimes that this is also about him…about his life, that there is a person at the core of this enterprise. Caddell will get a new batch of numbers and say, matter-of-factly, that they’re still facing the basic problem: people simply don’t like him. Not his administration or his policies; him. And the others in the room will nod and take notes, as if they’re talking about a dish soap or a TV show, and he will try to do the same, but inside is a voice, weakened, but still: Wait! This is
me!
They don’t like
me!
It’s really an amazing thing—the polls show that they believe he is a better man than his opponent, that he is more intelligent, more compassionate, and less likely to lead them into a catastrophic war…and still they want the other guy.

He wonders sometimes, Who are these people? Who are these people who can believe that a man is good and smart and honest and charitable…and still not like him? What kind of a people are these? He still hears the pollster speaking directly at him for one of the few times:
Look, the problem is this: You remind them of their weaknesses.

Sometimes, he feels as though he’s sitting on the other side, with the men in the room, looking at the buffoon behind that desk like a puzzle that can be solved, like a product that can be sold better, and that’s usually when he excuses himself to go to the bathroom…to look for his own face in the mirror, to see if he’s still there.

He turns off the water and takes the briefing file off the counter. Opens it again, as if there might be something he’s missed in State’s
report on the conditions for release: noninterference; return of the Shah’s wealth; the unfreezing of assets; and the cancellation of lawsuits. And even then, the hostages will be released a few at a time, trickled out over months.

Three months ago, this would have been good news. Three months ago, just having a coherent adult negotiating on the other side would have been a tremendous development. But now, two days before the election…this is simply what it is. It is not progress and it is not news and it is nothing but what it is. Bad weather. For weeks, he has listened to coercive voices suggesting that Iran’s war with Iraq is the only answer: trade arms for people. He resisted this, but now he sees why it kept coming back. It was his only chance of winning.

Instead, he clung to the genuine hope that an agreement could be reached, that the Iranian parliament would come back with reasonable conditions. And now…What’s the quote Jody is always repeating, from a masked student on the embassy steps in those first days:
We have brought America to her knees.

His knees.

Who are these people who believe he is to blame, who mistake bluster for bravery? What sane man would want to lead these people?

He looks at his watch. Too early to call Ros. Sunday. Chicago. Sunday in Chicago. He pictures his schedule—meeting with black ministers. This was to be a key day of campaigning, last big push, shoring up the base for the stretch. He was going to turn the tide today and he’s been moving to this point for weeks: twenty hours a day, dawn on the East Coast, night on the West: rallying labor unions and teachers and ethnic ministers.

They don’t like him.

Sunday. Chicago. Sometimes at home, when he couldn’t sleep on Sunday mornings, he’d rise early, careful not to disrupt Ros, reach to the nightstand for his Bible, and run his fingers along the gilt-edged pages, thinking about that day’s Sunday-school lesson. He’d lay the ribbon aside and simply allow the book to fall open. That’s what he’d like to do now, but he knows what the guys in the room would do: stare
at their shoes, roll their eyes. There’s a Bible back on
Air Force One.
There has to be one in this hotel room; no doubt there’s a bed somewhere and, next to the bed, a Bible. Or have they stopped doing that, putting Bibles in hotel rooms?

Sunday. Chicago.

He closes his eyes and tries to picture the ribbon and the soft gold-edged pages cracking and the book falling open, and he sees, in his mind, the Psalms of David, both willful and desperate, the plea of a strong man, the cry of a king:
Judge me, O Lord; for I have walked in mine integrity.

He opens his eyes, reaches out and touches the face in the mirror, the cool glass.

We can go a couple of ways on this,
Jody was saying just before he left the room, and then the two sides made their cases, the two ways they could use these conditions to political advantage. The hawks said that he needed to shake a fist and say,
No! These terms are not acceptable!
Flags and fists; look presidential.
After a year, we refuse to bend to Iran’s terms. We will not be held hostage.
He thinks of this way as the sword.
Out-Reagan Reagan,
one of them said. The second way is to claim victory. Imply that the terms are close and that the actual release of the hostages is a mere formality:
Only a matter of time. We have been delivered.
Contrast his statesmanship with the belligerence of his opponent. He thinks of this path as the shepherd. The sword and the shepherd. These are his choices. And the implication:
There is still time to make good of this.

Raised voices argued these two points, fingers pointed, men in suit coats and open collars paced around:
Last chance for…It is imperative that…
And then Jody raised his hands and they all stopped and looked, not at Jody, but at him. His decision. The future depended…Waiting. Did they hate him with every bit of themselves, hate his shortcomings and his weakness, his lack of both gravity and humor? Did they hate him as much as he hated himself?
They waited. How long is a moment? He looked from face to face and then at the briefing papers in his lap. Someone cleared his throat.

In this job you always disappoint half the room.

And that’s when he left, excused himself, and now here he is, alone, staring at this face in the mirror, trying to remember when he was simply himself, before he was a collection of disappointing polling numbers and failed ideas, of weaknesses.

There is a third way, too.

Sunday. Chicago.

The briefing papers fall open to the most recent photos of some of the Fifty-two.

I have walked in mine integrity.

At that moment he decides.

He will walk back out to the room, and announce that they are flying back to Washington. Canceling today’s campaign appearances. He will not raise the sword and he will not claim victory. He will tell the truth: we are simply not there yet.

And in all likelihood he will lose.

Sunday. Chicago. The face in the mirror stares back.

Maybe after…life will begin again. Maybe his face will return to him. Maybe he’ll wake up in a bed and know where he is and judge himself by who he is instead of by what he is not. The men back in the room will stare. They will try to talk him out of this. But, no, he’ll say. I’m sorry. We’re going home. No politics today, fellas. Today
…
today, we walk in our integrity.

Sunday. Chicago. Who are these people? He takes a breath, looks once more at his own face—hopeful and frightened—opens the door, and walks out into the room.

THE FELLAS ARE
cocky and assured, ties off, all triumph and strategy, when one by one they notice the big man in the doorway, his black
hair perfectly combed and parted—it’s a running joke among them that he must sleep standing up, like one of the horses from his movies. That Nancy takes him out to the stable, puts blinders and a bucket of oats on his head, and out he goes.

They snap to attention, almost as if…as if he’s already won. “What are you doing up, Governor? You have a big day tomorrow.”

He holds his hands on the doorframe and leans forward so that his upper half is in the room while his legs remain out. It’s the Duke’s old entrance; he uses it sometimes when he wants to command a room without actually having to enter it. The fellas see it as his gift: a kind of opaque showmanship—detached control.

“Well…” He smiles and the polls jump two points; his eyes are friendly slits. “Well, maybe I couldn’t sleep.”

The fellas laugh; this is not a problem he has.

“Whatcha got there?”

“The terms, sir. The Iranian parliament’s terms for releasing the hostages.” Everyone in the room is bent over the five-page briefing report that the president’s people sent over as a courtesy.

He saunters to the window and looks out. The sun is just coming up, bruising the clouds to the east. There is a stunted skyline, but nothing else to tell him…

“Columbus, Governor.”

He continues to stare.

“Ohio.”

He speaks to the cold window: “When I was making
Dark Victory
with Bogart, the director was this horrible little Jewish fellow named Edmund Goulding and he was always trying to get us to do it bigger and with more emphasis. He used to say, ‘We gotta make it play in Ohio, too. Make sure they get it in Ohio.’ For the longest time I hated Ohio.”

He turns and betrays no sense of emotion, and as they often do, the fellas wonder if he understood his own point. “How about we don’t put that in my speech today?”

More laughter.

A copy of the report is offered, but he waves it off. He likes things like this on notecards and, besides, he doesn’t have his glasses. He hates his glasses; in fact, he chooses to wear one contact lens instead when he has to deliver speeches, and he reads with that one eye, just so he won’t have to admit he wears reading glasses. As if vitality were elective. “Tell me,” he says.

The fellas look from one to another: “Basically…it’s untenable. They’re asking for the kitchen sink.”

“Unfreeze assets. Give back the Shah’s money.”

“Naked pictures of Suzanne Somers.”

“Oh,” he says. “Let’s get ourselves a set of those.”

The room breaks up.

“So…what does it mean?”

The fellas struggle to contain themselves. “Well, sir…it means that he is not going to be standing on a tarmac today or tomorrow with the navy band playing behind him while those fifty-two people get off an airplane and kiss the ground.”

“That’s going to be you on that tarmac, sir.”

Laughter. Someone claps.

“No, no. Come on.” He hates this kind of thing, is superstitious about celebrating too early. In ’64, he refused to admit he’d been elected governor of California even after Pat Brown conceded.

His face is cautious, almost angry. “We’ll use the army band instead.”

Applause around the room.

He holds his hands up. “How are they playing it?”

“Apparently, they’re flying back to Washington. I’d guess he claims victory and hopes that no one notices that the actual hostages are still in Iran. Either that or he rattles the saber. That’s what I’d do. Have him shake his fist and say, ‘We will not bend. We will not be pushed around by these extremists.’”

“What else could he do?”

“He could ask Amy what she thinks.”

Half the room breaks up.

“Or admit he has lusted for the Ayatollah in his heart.”

The other half.

“And how do we play it?”

“That’s the beauty. It plays itself. We look like we’re taking the high road—”

“Right, like…”

“Like we’re above it.”

“Ooh, I like that, being above it. I want to stay above it. Can we do that? Can we be above it?”

Heads nod. “We don’t comment directly on the crisis. We preach caution…”

“It is our deepest hope that blah blah blah.”

“The prayers of a nation…”

“This is not about politics…”