“Sure do, Rosa.” He grinned, looking her up and down. “I like Mexican real good. But, ah, where’s Mr. Rivera?”
“In Mexico, I think, but who cares?”
“Not me,” he said, giving her his best smile.
As his campaign airplane approached Los Angeles, Will picked up the telephone, the only item on the aircraft that he felt worked consistently well, and called Kate at home.
“Hello?” she said.
“Good evening; this is the next president of the United States.”
“Oh, God, not another dirty phone call.”
“Show a little respect, Missy, or when I’m president, I’ll exile you to the Department of Agriculture.”
“Could you breathe a little harder, please? I don’t feel I’m getting the full effect.”
“I promise you the full effect just as soon as you arrive in L.A.”
“Oh, well, there’s a problem; I can’t come tomorrow.”
“What?”
“A flap at the office. I can’t go into it, but…”
“Kate, I need you here.”
“Will, I’m sorry, but…”
“Kate, I haven’t asked much of you during the campaign, but this is important. The delegates are arriving, and I want them to see you with me on television. Peter, too.”
“So, you want to use my son for window dressing?”
“You bet I do, and you as well. And ANYWAY, I thought it might be a memorable experience for Peter to be at the Democratic convention and see his stepfather nominated for the presidency.”
“Wait a minute, do you know something I don’t?”
“Just take it for granted.”
“Will, I’ll just be a day late, that’s all. You know I wouldn’t be late if it weren’t important.”
“The fund-raiser is the day after tomorrow,” Will said. “You can’t miss that.”
“Oh, is this the one where I get to shake the hand of Charlene Joiner and thank her for screwing you?”
“That’s the one, and short of thanking her, you have to be nice. The press is primed for this event, and it must go well. Look on the bright side; you get to spend some time with Vance Calder, too. You met him in New York, remember?”
“I believe I may have a vague recollection of having met the biggest movie star in Hollywood and the handsomest man on earth, yes. I’ll make you a deal; you spend all your time with Charlene, and I’ll spend all my time with Vance.”
“You want me to spend all my time with Charlene?”
“Well, no, but I figure you won’t be able to, anyway, whereas I can cling to Vance like a mussel, and everybody will think it’s charming.”
“We’ve got the biggest suite at the Bel Air Hotel, so we can put Peter down a hall somewhere, so he won’t hear his mother’s pitiful cries.”
“That’s good geography. Can we put Charlene in Mexico?”
“Probably not; she is, after all, our hostess.”
“I hear there’s a market for her services in Tijuana.”
Will felt a need to change the subject. “The Secret Service will meet you at LAX, and you’ll get VIP treatment all the way.”
“You mean I won’t have to wait for my luggage and a rent-a-car?”
“You’ll go straight from the airplane into a limo, and from there, straight into my bed.”
“Will the Secret Service help with that, too?”
“We won’t need any help.”
“How many events do I have to go to while I’m there?”
“One thousand and sixty, at last count.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“Some of them might actually be fun,” Will said. “The rest, you’ll have to pretend.”
“And I’m so good at pretending.”
“You’ll manage; it won’t be any duller than a CIA old boys’ reunion.”
“It wouldn’t be any duller than that if you were running for head of the Los Angeles sewer department.”
“Speaking of the old boys, do they ever mention the campaign and your place in it?”
At first they did, in sly sorts of ways. I think they finally got over it.”
“They’re not worried what life would be like if the first lady were working at the Agency?”
If they are, they’re too clever to let me know it. Come to think of it, maybe I should start dropping hints that they’d better be nice to me.”
“Wait until I have the nomination, then let ’em have it.”
“Where, exactly, are you now?”
Will looked out the window. “We’re flying over the eastern suburbs of Los Angeles, which go on forever and ever.”
“Are you landing at LAX?”
No, at Santa Monica. The airplane can just about get in there, and Kitty thinks it’ll be easier to manage the press there than at LAX.”
“What do you mean, ‘the airplane can just about get in there’? How long is the runway?”
“Shorter than LAX’s, I think, but long enough.”
“Will you be on TV when you land?”
“If I’m not, I’m firing Kitty.”
“Then I can watch. Oh, boy! Will you try and say something new and different?”
“I try to do that every day, but it doesn’t always work. I have to settle for what’s new and different to the particular audience.”
“Send me a signal,” she said. “If you love me, scratch your crotch.”
Will burst out laughing. “On national television?”
Never mind. Charlene would probably think it was a signal to her.”
“I’ll see you the day after tomorrow,” Will said, still laughing.
“Count on it, my love.”
“I love you.”
“You better.”
As the 737 landed, Will looked across a taxiway into a boiling crowd at the Supermarine terminal. “Oh, look,” he said to Kitty Conway, as they raced past, engines in full reverse, “a spontaneous demonstration.”
“Yeah,” Kitty replied, “and it only took three weeks to put together.”
A Secret Service agent sitting across the aisle from Will briefed him as they taxied back toward Supermarine. “This is the biggest crowd we’ve managed yet, and I want you to know the setup,” he said. He took a sheet of paper from his pocket and displayed a diagram of the area. “We had Supermarine pull all aircraft off their ramp to make room for the crowd. A podium and sound system have been set up, where the airplane will stop, and this area to your left will be press only, except for cameramen, who will be scattered all over the place. If you feel a sudden urge to plunge into the crowd, remember this: The first rows of people, three or four deep, are our buffer zone. All
the people there are campaign workers or invited guests; we’ve run the name, date of birth, and social security number of every one of them through our computers to make sure that none of them has a criminal record or has ever made a threat on a president or a politician.
“Behind them is the general public, and if you push that far into the crowd, it will be almost impossible for us to protect you. That’s how we lost George Wallace; he pushed past the buffer zone, Arthur Bremmer was waiting for him with a handgun, and Wallace spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair.”
“I see,” Will said. “The crowd seems pretty happy; I don’t think we’ll have to worry about an Arthur Bremmer.”
“Senator,” the agent said, “with all due respect, that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard you say. Remember how happy the crowd was in Santa Fe?”
“Yes, that was a good rally.”
“Well, there was a man on a rooftop, probably with a rifle and a telescopic sight. We rushed the roof, but he got away from us.”
“Why didn’t you mention this before?”
“We didn’t want the press to get hold of it, and we thought it was just as well that you didn’t know.” He reached into a small duffel on the seat next to him and took out a vest that matched Will’s suit. “We’d like you to wear this,” he said. “It has a lining made of Kevlar, and it will stop small-arms fire.”
“This is Southern California; it’s a little warm for a vest, isn’t it?” Will looked at Kitty. “What do you think?”
“I think I would not like to be alive,” she said, “if I let you leave this airplane without it, and you got shot. Please wear it for me.”
Will slipped out of his suit jacket and into the vest,
which was surprisingly light. “It fits,” he said. “How did you get it to match my suit?”
“We got the outer fabric from your tailor,” the agent said, “and the vest was made from his pattern by our man. We’ve got three more.”
“Looks like I’ve got a new tailor,” Will said. “I didn’t know the Secret Service provided that service.”
“If you’re nominated,” the agent said, “you’re going to have a new wardrobe of protective garments—an overcoat, a trench coat, some other things. The colder the weather, the more we can protect you.”
The airplane came to a halt, and everybody stood up.
“Funny,” Kitty said, “I feel as though the campaign is starting right now; as if nothing we’ve done so far matters; just everything from here on in. Do you feel that way, Senator?”
“I think I do. It’s very strange.” The door to the airplane opened, and the noise filled the cabin. Somewhere a band was playing “Happy Days Are Here Again.” “Let’s go,” Will said.
He stepped out onto the gangway, and the roar of the crowd struck him like a breaking wave. Clips of old newsreels flashed through his mind—Eisenhower, Kennedy, Reagan, stepping out of airplanes, hands in the air, waving, smiling. He felt like Woody Allen’s character Zelig, superimposed on some old black-and-white footage. His knees were weak as he walked down the steps. Then, as he mounted the platform, the roar became even louder, and suddenly, he felt as if an enormous rush of energy had passed from the crowd to him, and, for the first time, he was one with his audience.
The band stopped playing, and the audience slowly grew quiet. Will began to speak, and magically, what had become his standard stump speech grew into something else—rehearsed, yet improvised. He was
modest, then amusing, then serious, then finally, inspiring. He knew he had never spoken so well, and when he ended and stepped back from the microphone and listened to the crowd cheer, he felt he had crossed into some fresh, new political territory.
The Secret Service agents herded him and a handful of staff down a funnel of screaming people toward a line of waiting vehicles. Will shook hands on either side of him, felt people grabbing at his clothes, heard them shouting at him. He looked into their faces and found himself wondering if one of them was his Arthur Bremmer, concealing a gun behind a smile, eager to become a footnote of history by ending his life.
Then he was in the back of a Secret Service limousine with Kitty and Tim, and they were moving faster and faster. To Will’s surprise, they drove straight across the runway and out of the other side of the airport. “Isn’t this dangerous?” he asked.
“We got the FAA to close the airport for a few minutes, until we were clear,” Kitty said. “Senator, what happened back there? I’ve never heard you speak like that.”
“I don’t know,” Will said. “I got this incredible rush. That was a very well trained crowd, Kitty.”
Kitty shook her head. “Only a couple of hundred of them were ours. The rest just showed up. Something is happening here, I swear it is. I’ve never experienced anything like it before.”
“Neither have I,” Will said, his heart still pounding. “Don’t let it stop.”
The motorcade turned into the back drive of the Bel Air Hotel and pulled into a parking lot behind a two-story building. Will was led down a tunnel and through a ground-floor door into the handsomest hotel suite he had ever seen. It looked, he thought, like the home of a very rich and very tasteful Hollywood producer. He heard voices, and the first person he saw was Charlene Joiner.
She was standing facing the door, next to Vance Calder and a short, well-tailored man Will had never met.
“Will!” Charlene cried, and rushed forward, kissing him on the cheek.
“Charlene,” he said, “it’s good to see you.” It had been ten years since he had seen her, and she had then been in her early twenties. A decade had made her even more beautiful, and the perfect hair and Armani suit helped. He felt an involuntary stirring in his crotch.
“I believe you’ve met Vance Calder,” Charlene asked.
Will shook the movie star’s hand. “Of course. It’s good to see you again, Vance.”
“And this is Lou Regenstein,” Charlene said, pointing Will at the shorter man, “the chairman of Centurion Studios.”
“Mr. Regenstein, I’m very happy to meet you.”
“Please, Senator, it’s Lou.”
Lou it is. I want to thank all three of you for the magnificent effort you’re making for my campaign. I believe it is the most generous act I’ve ever heard of, and I’ll never forget it. Won’t you all sit down?”
Everyone sat on facing sofas before a fireplace, while Will took off his jacket and removed the vest, which, along with Charlene, was making him warm. “Forgive me, but I don’t think I need to be bulletproof for this occasion,” he said, slipping back into his jacket.
Everybody laughed.
“I want you to know,” Calder said, “that the fund-raiser is fully subscribed, a thousand people at a thousand dollars a head.” He handed Will a check for a million dollars, made out to his campaign.
Will accepted the check and looked at it. “Outside of a couple of defense expenditures, that’s the biggest check I’ve ever seen,” he said. “However did you round up so many people?”
It was easy,” Charlene said. “We simply announced the party would be limited to a thousand, so we had an immediate demand for tickets.”
“Hollywood loves anything exclusive,” Regenstein said. “We hear rumors that tickets are being scalped as we speak.”
Will laughed. “Maybe we should scalp a few ourselves.”
Everybody laughed.
“How is Arrington, Vance?”
“She’s very well, and so is our son, Peter.”
“We have a boy named Peter, too; he’s arriving the day after tomorrow with his mother. He’s at Choate.”
Charlene jumped in. “If you’re on your own, will you come to dinner tomorrow at my house in Malibu? I’m having a few people in.”
Yeah sure, Will thought. “I’m so sorry, Charlene,” he said, “but you have no idea the schedule I’m keeping while I’m here. Your fund-raiser counts as recreational time.”
“Maybe next trip. I’d love to meet Kate,” Charlene said with patent insincerity.