In quiet times, when memory floated, I imagined that little cat had been brave.
Quiet times brought on sentimentality.
I looked at Carter, the smudged glass globe against my fingers. Behind my hand the near-empty bottle was a column of light. Carter himself stretched sideways and ballooned as though in a funhouse mirror . . . it came to me in a wash of smells and color, that scene in the alley.
He hadn’t hit it. Not once.
There he was beside me, thin and bulgy-eyed. He shook his head, tried to stop the whole deal. Because it was my idea, I was up to bat first. He had put up his hands to grab the bat from me, fell back when I pushed against his chest and stumbled away as I raised the implement.
Down it went. Down it went.
He had never joined in.
“You need to visualize the rabbit,” I said, shoring up my supports. My words were not slurring. I’ve always held my liquor. “Fix it firmly in your mind. The rabbit is what defeats us in the end, no matter what we do.” I saw a leaden pinpoint shrinking inward; I saw dry motes of dust, the gray hours. Then my eyes glanced across Carter. In passing it came to me how sad he looked. My eloquence was moving him. Possibly, just possibly, he would be able to let go.
Back then I was advising clients to use punching bags for aggression, often with images taped to them. It was an innovative therapy and independently pioneered. But Carter was fairly sophisticated, and I felt instinctively it would be better to keep the self-expression abstract.
“So what are you going to do with the rabbit? Now that you have it? It’s in your sights, Mr. President. What are you going to do?”
For a time there was another pause, Carter seeming to gaze at me.
Before long he stood. “You know, friend,” he said in his gentle voice, “all of Creation is under this blue dome of sky. Maybe someone tossed up that bunny’s burrow with a plow blade; maybe it had a litter a coyote got into. There are animals that go mad if you kill off their young. Heck, swamp rabbits live maybe two years, if they’re lucky. Reckon that poor fella’s bones are somewhere near that pond as we speak, covered up in good old Georgia dirt.”
At this point he clapped me on the shoulder. I noticed his glass was still practically full: a good three fingers of the good Échézeaux. Was it going begging?
Something in his bearing was lighter. I understood that he was leaving. He wouldn’t need to lean on me again. He’d gotten what he came for.
And, sure enough, he would go on to a resurrection. He would rise from the ashes of a failed presidency to attain the stature of a well-respected elder statesman. It’s the job of men like me, behind the scenes, to shape and position; sometimes only a nudge is needed. Meanwhile, the public faces of our strength—our avatars, so to speak—are held up as heroes.
But we know what we do.
I took the presidential hand and held it.
Finally it was withdrawn.
“I appreciate you seeing me,” he said warmly. “You let me know if you ever need anything.”
With that he turned and stepped away. And did I whisper it, or did it only run silently through me? Out of its misery.
As he disappeared through the glass doors I stayed where I was, standing. The afternoon had been intense, and I couldn’t risk stumbling. It occurred to me he had a point, partly. I was the fall guy for doing what had to be done. I bore the weight of other men’s hesitation.
I saw the fullness of the three fingers then. Carter had left me with something.
The Lady and the Dragon
THERE WAS REJOICING AMONG media watchers when prominent newspaperman Phil Bronstein, then the husband of actress Sharon Stone, was bitten on the foot by a Komodo dragon.
The attack occurred at the Los Angeles Zoo, where the celebrity couple was touring behind the scenes so that Bronstein, reportedly an admirer of fierce carnivores, could get a close view of the ten-foot Indonesian lizard. It happened with lightning speed: Just as Bronstein stepped near the giant reptile to pose for a photo, “Komo” the dragon bit him. Jaws clamped rigidly onto the editor’s foot had to be wrenched off; the bite severed tendons and necessitated the surgical reconstruction of his big toe. Still, it was widely regarded as comic, and tabloid reports of the incident belie a barely suppressed delight.
Had Bronstein not been married to Sharon Stone, his misfortune would surely have garnered more sympathy than derision, if far less press. As editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, he was successful but hardly a celebrity in his own right. But the joke was a clear one: The man-eating lizard was a perfect proxy for Stone herself.
Bronstein’s entry into the cage of the lizard was managed by zookeepers, who recommended the editor remove his shoes, lest Komo mistake them for the white rats that were a staple of his diet. And though the keepers’ judgment in allowing the lizard and the barefooted man into such close proximity
