softcover edition.
Tucking it under his arm, he continued to browse. The air in the bookstore was musty and comfortably moist, unlike the atmosphere of the White House which seemed always to be dry, the kind of air that could give someone a sinus condition; the familiar ambiance of old books was pleasant. And yet tonight he could not quite relax, could not seem to isolate himself, as he usually could in bookstores like O’Hare’s, from the responsibilities of the presidency- responsibilities which were his own by inference and because of his duty.
The plain truth was, he was worried about the President.
Outwardly Augustine was the same sensible, forthright figure he had always been, but at the edges, Justice thought, he was beginning to weaken. Six months ago he would not have made those remarks on Israel, as essentially reasonable as they had been. They were politically damaging and upsetting to the influential Jewish electorate, as Maxwell Harper, in his superior fashion, had pointed out that morning. Six months ago the President had not been so bothered by attacks in the press. Hadn’t he gone on national television several times to quietly and eloquently defend himself and his administration on controversial issues? Hadn’t he laughed publicly at the disparaging comments in Newsweek about his “neurasthenic habit” of mumbling distractedly to himself from time to time, his “obsession with railroads” and his “adolescent predilection” for humming and sometimes informally singing folk ballads such as “John Henry” and “The Wreck of Old 98”?
Lost in thought now, Justice turned abruptly out of the stacks and climbed the stairs to the bookstore’s street level. Six months ago the President had not seen fit to spend an average of ten days a month at The Hollows-nor, for that matter, had he found it necessary to unburden himself to a Secret Service bodyguard. Six months ago it had looked as though renomination and reelection were certainties; but now, with his popularity under forty-five percent in all the polls, not only the press but several prominent Washington political figures were saying that the Peter Kineen coalition would, after all, be able to take the nomination away from him in Saint Louis “Two dollars,” the clerk at the front counter said.
“Excuse me?”
“This book. It’s two dollars plus tax.”
“Oh,” Justice said, “sure.” Embarrassed by his abstraction, he paid the man quickly and took the copy of Murder on the Calais Coach into the muggy night.
As he made his way through the crowds, past the sidewalk flower vendors and the sellers of beads and trinkets and leather goods, he thought about Peter Kineen. Kineen was a reactionary, considered by many to be a dangerous man: a latter-day Ronald Reagan. If he was able to wrest the nomination from Augustine in Saint Louis, the party might be in serious trouble. And the country would surely be in serious trouble, because even if Kineen lost the election, the minority-party candidate would almost certainly be Elton Kheel, the governor of Illinois, who was an old-line machine politician and who was reputed to be a closet hawk on foreign policy despite his avowals to the contrary.
Justice was hardly an expert on politics, but his close proximity to the President had given him a certain inside knowledge; it seemed obvious to him that the only hope for the future lay with Nicholas Augustine. Which meant that the President had to draw himself together, seal off vulnerability, rally the party around him as he had done four years ago.
And he will, Justice told himself. You had to have faith, that was all.
You had to have faith.
Five
Claire was lying on her back in the canopied rosewood bed, the covers pulled up to her breasts and her hands resting palms up at her sides, when Nicholas Augustine came through the door that connected their two bedrooms. It was dark in the room, except for a pale shaft of moonlight that filtered through the south window and lay across the edge of the bed at her feet, as though it had prostrated itself there. Her eyes were closed, but Augustine could not tell if she was asleep.
He hesitated, holding the edge of the door with his left hand. But then she stirred, turned her head and opened her eyes. “Nicholas?” she said.
“Did I wake you?”
“No, I was just resting. Couldn’t you sleep?”
“No. I have a hell of a headache.” He rubbed his temples with the heels of both hands. “I suppose I drank too much wine at dinner.”
“I suppose you did,” she said mildly. “Did you want to join me?”
“Would you mind?”
“Of course not.”
Augustine crossed the room, shed his bathrobe, and moved in beside her. The sheets were warm from her body, scented with the musky fragrance of her perfume, and when she laid her hip against his he felt desire move through him. But he lay quietly, looking up at the quilted underside of the canopy; she was a very desirable woman and he wanted her, and yet his mind was so full of political matters that he could not focus on the physical need.
She turned onto her side so that her breast flattened along his rib cage, reached up to touch his temples with her cool fingers. Massaging them gently in small circles, she asked. “Does this help?”
“A bit,” Augustine said. Wexford, Oberdorfer, Maxwell Harper, Israel, the Indian problem in Montana and the meeting with Wade and Hendricks and Sandcrane that had not gone at all well this afternoon
… “A little bit.”
Seconds passed, a minute or two. Then Claire began to rub her thigh against his beneath the silk of her nightgown, in the same gentle rhythm, and he felt the need climbing within him, felt himself starting to respond. One of her hands lowered to open the buttons on his pajama top, to stroke his chest, and he rolled over to her then, and kissed her, and drew the straps of her gown away to release her breasts to his hands and then to his lips.
“Yes, dear,” she said, “that’s nice.”
But he did not have a full erection; even her touch did not give it to him. Israel, the Indians, the convention in Saint Louis… stop thinking! A little desperately, he tried to force himself to concentrate on the softness of her body, on the movements of her hands and of his own. Nothing happened. So he concentrated on himself, willing an erection, mind pleading with body-but that had even less effect, you could not begin to make love by focusing on yourself. Sex was two people, equal partners seeking to become one Claire said, “It’ll happen, dear, it’ll happen,” and guided him to her. But she was not ready, her vulva was dry, the body as always telling truths that the spirit would deny, and he felt the last of his rigidity slip away. Damn it, damn it! Angry with himself, dismayed, he pushed away from her and lay on his back again, staring up at the canopy, listening to the dry rasp of his breathing. Beside him Claire made a soft sound in her throat that might have meant anything or nothing at all.
This was the sixth time in succession and the fifteenth or twentieth time in three months that he had failed her, failed himself. For years he had been able to keep this part of his life wholly segregated, unaffected by political pressures; now he seemed to have lost that ability. Impotent, he thought, and the word lay bitter and ugly in his mind. Where did all the power go: the potency, the strength? He was the same man he had always been, and yet things kept happening that intimated he might not be.
Maybe he should see Doctor Whiting, his personal and now the White House physician. But Whiting was a somewhat supercilious little man who thought exercise and a proper diet were the answers to most medical problems and that mental strain could better be relieved by positive thinking than by any medicinal aids. No, there was nothing Whiting could do-and he would have been embarrassed discussing impotency with him in any case. What he needed more than anything was another few days at The Hollows-to be home again in California, to lie with Claire in the big brass bed with the springs that could sing like train wheels in the night…
He realized that she had moved to him again; she caught his hand in hers. “Is there anything you want me to do, dear?”
“No,” Augustine said, “it’s just not going to work tonight.” He felt irritable; his headache was worse now. He drew his hand away. “You’re disappointed in me, aren’t you.”
“Of course not-”
