Crooked Little Vein

pockets and waited. The sleek dark curve of the car opened up like a boiled mussel, and the chief of staff slid out, blinking in the sun.

“California’s not fit for humans,” he said, squinting at the bright sky. “Whole goddamn state should be sawed off the mainland and floated out into the Pacific. We’ll get to that, mark my words. Except for Disneyland. I like Disneyland. We’ll keep Disneyland. Staple it onto the end of Arizona or something. I always thought Disneyland should be its own state. Disneyland, the fifty-first state of America. Has a ring to it. California? Point the whole state toward Japan and kick it in the ass, that’s what I say.”

I felt like needling the old bastard. “What, the state that gave Ronald Reagan to politics?”

“Ronnie Reagan was no goddamned good to anyone,” he snapped, surprising me. “Everyone knew he had Alzheimer’s while he was president. He was only ever useful as a patsy. ‘Ever met Ollie North, Mr. President?’ ‘I have no recollection of that because my brain is turning into a pile of scabs, Your Honor.’ All he was ever good for. Everybody knows. Those episodes of The West Wing where the president has multiple sclerosis brain-farts? What do you think he was alluding to?”

I laughed. “So you did watch that show.”

He found a pair of black shades in his jacket and fumbled them on. “CIA’s been running Aaron Sorkin for years. He leaks this stuff out under cover of fiction to test the waters. Every time he gets too cute we plant crack on him in airports. Or make him write Studio 60.”

“You’re full of shit.”

He gave that creepy split-skull grin. “Want to know how much we paid Jim Nabors to shoot Reagan with a sniper rifle? Nothing. It was all done for the love of Rock Hudson.”

“Can you do anything but lie? I mean, seriously?”

“I’m a politician, boy. I haven’t told the truth since I was seven.”

“What did you do when you were seven?”

“Chopped down a cherry tree. She betrayed you, didn’t she?”

“What?”

“The girl. She’s in there with some lawyer pounding her like he’s drilling for oil off the California coast, right now. I bet he’s already bust a nut once and is still digging away to prove what an incredibly California buffed-and- tanned physical specimen he is.”

“What the hell has that got to do with you?”

“I warned you. I told you about her. I said she would betray you. You cannot trust women.”

“I can’t trust you.”

“No. No, you can’t. That’s very good, Michael. But you can trust money. Money cannot lie. It is a means. It is a tool. And a bad workman cannot blame his tool. What have you done with the tools I gave you, Michael?”

I didn’t say anything. He clacked his teeth together.

“You saved her life. That was good work. I bet she told you she loved you, after that. I bet she did. I bet she said nice things. But she lied, didn’t she?”

“I don’t think so. She just doesn’t see it the same way. The, you know, the words. It means something a little different to her, that’s all.”

“We’re in America, Michael. Telling someone you love them means only one thing, doesn’t it? That you’re not going to make the beast with two backs with the next warm body that falls in front of you. That’s the American way. Or is that what you want? An America where love means nothing?”

“Are those the choices?”

“Hell, yes, those are the choices. How many do you want? We are fighting many wars, Michael, on many fronts. And this is the war at home. The war of meanings. The war of cultures. And right here, right now, you’re on the line, Michael. I may be a professional politician with opiate lesions all over the front of my brain, but my money doesn’t lie. She may be a sweet girl who’s nice to you, but she’s upstairs right now making a lawyer fill her with his little suits. Taking my side means only that honest American love will win the day.”

“With this book? This thing, this reset button of yours?”

The shades made his eyes look like empty sockets. “A return to our roots. The mission would be easier if the book’s effects transmitted over TV or the Net, but it naturally leads us to a grass-roots politics from the times of Washington and Lincoln. Town hall meetings. Stadiums. We can devise a million different events where the book is brought into play in front of crowds from all cultural and subcultural areas. We’ve been breeding pop stars in L.A. for exactly this kind of thing. Take some piece of greedy cracker trash with symmetrical features, vacuum the Cheetos dust off it, train it in a Disney pod, stick boobs on it and have its videos made by porn directors, and everyone under sixteen is yours. Also, the gay people. I never understood that. You could retrain fifty thousand of them at a time, putting the book in front of them at a stadium concert. Instill proper morals in them. Erase the sicknesses in their heads and make of them proper Americans who know what love means.”

I looked at him. I had no idea what I was seeing. “You think this comes down to the nature of love in our time? Is that what you’re selling?”

“I dunno. Are you buying it?”

“You are an evil old bastard.”

“I am the chief of staff. You know how H.R. Haldeman described the job when he was chief of staff to Nixon? ‘I’m the president’s son of a bitch.’”

“Fuck me, I think you said something honest just then. I feel faint.”

“These are hard times. I’m not going to be a child about the hard decisions. We’re fighting what must be World War Six outside the country, and what is very probably Civil War Three within the country. You’re going to help us bring that one to a conclusion. You’ll save lives, I think. You’ll certainly be saving a country and a way of life. Buck up, Michael. You’re close to the end now. I can feel it in my bones. It’ll all be over soon. And just in time, eh?