“Free,” she said.
“Your body,” said Rubin.
Kathy jumped up from her seat and shook her body. She was laughing now.
“I've never felt so free. I'm free.” She reached toward Rubin and hit the screen.
“Ignore that,” ordered Rubin quickly. “Ignore it. It's not your wall. Don't make it your wall. Don't make it your prison. It's their wall.”
“Their wall,” said Kathy.
“Their prison,” said Rubin.
“Their prison,” said Kathy.
“They built it. They paid for it. It is their prison.”
“Their prison,” said Kathy.
“Not yours.”
“Not mine.”
“You are free. Your ears understand what the rest of your body forgot. Their problems are theirs. You had made their problems your problems. You had bought into their negativity.”
“Their negativity,” said Kathy.
“You are always free. As long as you can make contact with your ears that remembered your freedom and power, you will always be free. It is they who are in jail.”
“Poor people. I know what it feels like. I feel sorry for them.”
“Them. Right. As long as you know it is they who are in jail and not you, you will be free.”
In her joy, Kathy reached out for Rubin but remembered they were separated by walls that kept the guards and officials prisoners of their own negativity.
She blew him a kiss and as an afterthought added her own observations.
“Do you remember how we learned that there are people who are consumed by negativity and how they bring negative life forces to others? Well, just before my press conference the most negative person I have ever met came as a contestant. Very negative. He was even arguing with the two others. One was one of us, a Powie. Yes, let me transmigrate my mind back to the scene.”
Kathy closed her eyes and pressed fingers to her temples.
“Yes, he was with an Oriental. The Oriental was nice. The girl was nice. He was negative. Yes. And I should have known not to have that press conference with him around. I should have delayed it.”
“You've found the negative force that put you here.”
“Yes,” said Kathy. “He exuded negativity. And I ignored it, and paid the price.”
“Did he have dark eyes?”
“Yes. Yes. I see them. Handsome. High cheekbones.”
“And wrists. What did the wrists look like?”
“Thick. Very thick wrists, almost as though the forearm went right into the hand.”
“Oh,” said Rubin, reaching into his pants for one of the pill packs. He didn't even look. He took two. He took three. He kept taking them until numbness released the panic in his body.
“He wanted to know about help with a witness. He said he had a court case against him.”
“You didn't send him to us, did you?”
“No. The press conference came first. Afterward he came up to us and talked a lot about witnesses and things, but then the FBI came and took me away. They arrested me, Rubin. You didn't tell me the right day.” Kathy's voice became tense.
“No. Don't start thinking like that or you'll begin to believe you're trapped in jail, Kathy,” said Rubin.
So the evil one was after them, Rubin realized. He had to tell Beatrice. He had to warn her.
But Beatrice did not care about the evil one. Beatrice had discovered a colossal foul-up in the President's plane plot.
“I know a Powie is turning evidence against us,” said Rubin. “I'm sorry, Beatrice, I should have taken greater precautions when I set up the colonel. But I'm at my limit for Motrin, Valium, and Percodan. I can't take the pressure anymore.”
“Well, you will. Because this foul-up is the end all of foul-ups. This one is unforgivable. I will never forgive. One I can't forgive.”
Rubin did not think of his ears as some positive rung on a ladder of happiness. He thought of their needing to be covered by his palms. But Beatrice slapped his hands away.
Rubin dropped to the floor and curled into a ball.
Beatrice fell on him. She grabbed an ear in her teeth.
“Rubin, you pathetic imbecile. Do you know what you did to me?” she said through teeth clenched on Rubin's ear.
“No, dear,” said Rubin, very careful not to move his head quickly lest he leave a piece of himself in Beatrice's mouth.
“You missed.”
“Missed what?” begged Rubin Dolomo.
“Missed what!” screamed Beatrice, spitting the ear out of her mouth and pushing his head away so she could get up on her feet and deliver a more satisfying kick. “Missed what! Missed what? he asks. Missed him!”
“Who, dear?” begged Rubin, trying to find a stronger part of his body to receive the kicks.
“Who? he asks! Who? he asks! And I married this... this failure. You missed our main enemy. You failed in a Beatrice Dolomo threat.”
“But we've threatened everyone.”
“This one I really wanted,” said Beatrice. “This one is behind everything, every one of our problems.”
* * *
The President's Oval Office was clear of everyone else when Harold W. Smith entered. He had not been listed on the guest sheet; this time was in the official records as a period of rest for the President.
The first thing the President said was:
“I am not giving in to crooks and frauds.”
Smith nodded and sat down without waiting to be invited to do so.
“You're here because America is not for sale. I am not for sale. I will not give in. They may get me. There's a good chance of that. But if the President of the United States caves in to this petty blackmail, then the entire country is for sale.”
“I couldn't agree more, sir,” said Smith. “Apparently they already are pretty familiar with your security system. Though I agree you can't give up, you also can't do business as usual.”
The President took off his jacket and dropped it on his chair. He looked out into the protected garden just outside the Oval Office. No one could see in, a precaution quite necessary in the age of the sniper rifle.
He was not a young man but he had a young spirit, and stamina that would shame men forty years his junior. Ordinarily he was smiling. Now he was mad, but not mad that an attempt had been made on his life. That was part of the job.
The President of the United States was mad because American servicemen had been killed, a senator to whom he had lent his plane so that the man could fly home to his seriously ill wife was dead, and the people he was sure were behind the crash were still playing legal games with him.
“This court system we have is precious, and I wouldn't tamper with it for the world. But sometimes... sometimes...” said the President.
“What makes you sure it was the Dolomos?” asked Smith. “I am aware of the threats made by Kathy Bowen, aware also that she had to know of the plan to destroy you and
“We have the black box,” said the President, referring to the tape recording of the entire flight. “The man who flew that plane into the ground had the mind of a nine-year-old. His mature memory had been wiped out.”
“Like the mailroom people who forget what they were working on.”
“Like the Secret Service men.”
“And this Powie gave Armbruster a letter in a Ziploc bag.”
