“To ask you a favor.” He waited for her blanket promise, but she was silent. He went on. “Wanda, now that I’m-I’m President, seeing you on the old basis is going to be impossible. You know that.”
“I know that, Doug.”
The trace of sadness in her voice accentuated his growing fear of losing her. He said, “I don’t want to lose you.” He added, “I need you to-to push me forward. Wanda, I figured it out early this afternoon. I was hiring a white Southern girl for my social secretary-”
“Well, that took courage.”
“Senator Watson’s daughter. She’s exactly right for the position. There’ll be some dirty digs, but there would be whatever I did.”
“What about Diane Fuller?”
“I’m getting her another job, secretary in the press section of Miss Watson’s department. But there remain a couple of key openings, secretarial openings, administrative ones, on the White House staff. We’ve had resignations, as you can imagine.”
“Yes.”
“Now there are these openings.” He paused. “Wanda, I want you to accept one of those jobs.”
She did not appear surprised. “That’s thoughtful of you, Doug. Unfortunately, I already have a good job.”
“Vaduz Exporters? Wanda, this is the White House. You’ve told me yourself, a dozen times, you don’t like your boss-who is that director?-Gar, Franz Gar. Well, here’s a chance to leave him. I know you have a well-paying setup at Vaduz, but you told me it is mechanical and dull, and you have no contact with people. It would be different in the White House. The work might not pay as much, but I’d look after that soon enough. It would be fascinating for you. Most important, it would be helpful to me. I could see you every day. We could talk.”
“And no one would know we were friends? How nice,” she said bitterly. “How shrewd of you, Doug. And courageous, too. What if someone found out I was also your girl friend?”
Her caustic challenge disturbed him. “Don’t become angry, Wanda. It would only be temporary, a temporary arrangement, like my own job. Later, we-”
“No, thanks,” she said flatly. “Until now our relationship, platonic as it is, has at least been honest. Even if it means not seeing you, I refuse to change that. I won’t let what there is between us become surreptitious and back-door.”
“Wanda-”
“Absolutely no, Doug. You’re having a rough time, and I hate to make it rougher. But I’m not moving into Harding’s closet. When you have the nerve to see me again, you’ll know where to find me, if it’s here or someplace else. Doug, I-”
The soft knocking on the door stopped her, and brought Dilman to his feet. “Yes?” he called out.
The door opened partially, and Reverend Spinger slipped in, and closed it behind him. He looked from one to the other. “Haven’t you been hearing it?”
“What?” Dilman asked.
“The noise out front-” He started for the covered side window.
Dilman listened. What he had been too engrossed to hear above his conversation with Wanda, he heard now. There came through the walls the rumble of many voices. “What’s going on?” he asked apprehensively.
“I couldn’t get a good look from our room,” said Reverend Spinger. “There seems to be a lot of people gathering in the street. I can get a better peek from here.”
He flattened against the wall, and parted the shade from the window by several inches. At last he let go and shook his head. “Just from what I can see, there must be a couple hundred out there. There’s the press, for sure, ’cause I could see the television trucks, and I’d guess some more Secret Service, and of course, the neighborhood is all spilling out.”
Dilman’s immediate reaction was one of annoyance. “How in the devil did my coming here get out?”
Reverend Spinger scratched his cottony pate. “Doug, you abdicated privacy when you were sworn in to this job. No matter what you attempt, you won’t know privacy again for a year and five months. To restate in another form what Voltaire told us, the public is a heartless monster, and since you can’t do as he suggested-chain the monster or flee from it-you must be on guard against it every minute of every day.”
The clergyman’s words reminded Dilman of his precarious situation. He saw Wanda standing, staring at him, and his annoyance melted into shameful trepidation. He detested himself for his cravenness, and for Wanda’s knowledge of it. Yet he could not be other than what he had always been.
“Wanda, I’ve got to go. Will you-?”
Tactfully Spinger drifted out into the corridor.
Dilman moved closer to her, and at once, by a trick of lightning, or from the anxiety in his mind, her mulatto coloring was again more white than dusky. “You see what it’s like, my dear. There’s only one solution for the present. Please reconsider taking a job in-”
“No, Doug. I’ll wait for you to phone.”
He wanted to beseech her, but she had turned away from him. “All right,” he said at last. “Only, don’t give me up.”
He joined Reverend Spinger in the corridor. As they started for the living room, Spinger said, as if to give support to the fiction, “You were conferring with me.”
Dilman nodded absently. “Yes… encouraging the Crispus Society to cooperate with the government in playing a-a more aggressive role in furthering civil rights by legislation and legal means, and joining us in condemning vigilante action and violence on both sides.”
They emerged into the living room, and Reverend Spinger said, “Yes, that would sum it up, Mr. President.”
Dilman went to the door that Otto Beggs had opened. He halted before his bodyguard. “What’s all the racket downstairs?”
“The press missed you, and I guess found out where you were, Mr. President. The minute they started charging after your scent, Chief Gaynor knew it might attract crowds. So he rushed over quite a few of the White House Detail. I’m sorry, but I had nothing-”
“Forget it,” said Dilman.
Dilman looked around to say good-bye to Rose Spinger, when suddenly Wanda Gibson burst into the living room.
“Doug-!” Then she stopped, teetered in her tracks, and froze, horribly aware that they were not alone with the Spingers, that a stranger was also in the room.
Dilman’s Adam’s apple jumped. He could see Beggs staring at Wanda. Dilman felt an onrush of panic. He tried to keep his voice even. “Is there anything that wasn’t clear, Miss Gibson?”
“N-no, Mr. President,” said Wanda, her voice flat and emotionless.
“I’d like a copy of your shorthand notes,” said Dilman. He waved a good-bye, and then went across the landing and rapidly down the stairs, followed by Beggs.
As he emerged into the night, it was not the impact of the reporters’ shouts and bellows that momentarily unnerved him, but the battery of lights from the television kliegs and the explosion of flashbulbs. Beyond the rim of lights, and cordon of Secret Service agents, he could see hundreds of black neighborhood faces and fluttering hands, and could hear shouts of encouragement.
Fingers gripped his arm, and he was relieved to find that they belonged to Tim Flannery. The press secretary’s mouth was close to his ear. “Mr. President, don’t ever leave me flat-footed again. Somebody in Chief Gaynor’s office leaked it. Don’t let them interview you. Let me go to the microphones and tell them it’s too late tonight to answer questions, but that you’ll make a short statement.”
“Very short, Tim.”
He allowed Flannery to precede him down the stone steps to the three standing microphones. He could hear the shouted questions: “What were you doing here, Mr. President?… Did you see Spinger alone or with other Negro leaders?… What were you talking about?… Was it about the Turnerites, Mr. President?”
Flannery held up his hand, then bent over the microphones. “Gentlemen, no questions. Save them for the press conference. The President will make a brief statement, and that’s it for tonight.”
Flannery stepped aside, and Dilman made his way to the microphones. He felt wooden and insincere. He said, “Friends, because Reverend Spinger, head of the Crispus Society, was confined to his quarters with a cold, I
