Irving Wallace - The Man

At once, the reason for the altercation in the living room was clear to him. Crystal had arrived as usual, and found the Secret Service waiting, which was unusual. The irresistible force had collided with the immovable object.

Douglass Dilman threw aside his electric blanket and swung out of bed. He stood up, straightening his blue pajamas, stuck his feet into the misshapen slippers, picked his polka-dot cotton robe off the chair and pulled it on. He walked to the bureau mirror and looked at himself. His black kinky hair, as always after sleep, was shoved high into a peak at the back of his head. He took the wide-toothed comb and ran it through his full hair, smoothing down the peak. He poked at the inner corners of his bloodshot eyes, to wipe and clear them. He studied his broad indelicate countenance. He was dark-well, black, but not coal-black-and his features were Negroid. His forehead was high, his nose full and wide, his lips heavy and protruding.

Now in his fifties, he was overweight, not yet fat, but stocky and thick. Tim Flannery, he remembered, had asked for the statistics last night, and he had said that he was five feet ten inches (cheating a half-inch for more stature) and 180 pounds. His appearance, a big-city ward heeler had once told him, worked for him. His lack of height, his tackiness, the antithesis of the fearsome young Negro buck, combined with mild, refined Caucasian speech and mannerisms, made him more acceptable to the white labor voters; his unmistakable Negro features made him authentic and agreeable to the black menial voters. Oftentimes in the past, he had wished that he could be all one or the other, like the members of his family. Pitiful dead Aldora had been light tan, often mistaken for a Spaniard, and he was sure this had contributed to what had happened. Wretched Julian, his son, was as dark as himself, black really, but possessed of features less coarse than his own. Pathetic Mindy, his daughter, was (or had been when he had last set eyes on her six years ago) white and beautiful, white and lovely, which had pleased her mother, had worried him, had made Julian resentful, and had made Mindy herself haughty and impossible.

He thought that he heard Crystal’s sharp voice through the wall. “Wake him up!” she was demanding.

He knotted the belt of his robe, crossed to the door, went through the narrow hallway, and turned left into the living room.

The sight that met him was not unexpected. Beneath the arch that led from the entry hall into the living room stood the shiny, bulging Crystal, shapeless in her tent of brown coat, still holding the morning newspapers in one hand and the inevitable huge straw basket (for leftovers for her sister’s hound) in her right hand. Blocking her way stood lanky, elderly Hugo Gaynor, Chief of the Secret Service, and the well-proportioned ex-California athlete whom Dilman recognized as Lou Agajanian, Chief of the White House Detail of the Secret Service.

It was Crystal who saw Dilman first.

She waved her fat hand and shrieked, “Senator! They won’t let me in-I gotta get up breakfast.”

Gaynor spun around, and Agajanian did the same, and both were instantly respectful and apologetic. “Mr. President,” Gaynor said, “we have no idea who this lady is. We can’t let people without credentials in here simply because they say they work for you. Can you imagine what-”

Dilman nodded. “She’s quite safe, Mr. Gaynor. Crystal has been my housekeeper for years. I should have advised you last night… Hello, Mr. Agajanian, I think we’ve met once or twice… Good morning, Crystal. It’s all right now. You can come in.”

Obediently the agents parted, backed off, and the magic of it made Crystal’s eyes widen. Her unsubtle black face was almost comically transformed from indignation to triumph to pleasure to awe. She waddled toward Dilman, halted, eyes blinking. “I-I almost forgot to say, Senator-President-Mr. President-but I want to be the first to wish you well, and also for my sister and brother-in-law and the kids.”

“Thank you, Crystal, thank you.”

She began to go sideways, still awed, and then she stopped. “We stayed up late and it was all over the television. Everyone was sorry about the others, but we’re happy that, if it had to be, then mercy, we’re sure-enough happy it is you. I-I almost didn’t come here this morning. I was sort of sure you’d be in the White House, with a special fancy staff, and not needing me any more.”

Dilman smiled. “I won’t be in the White House for a while, and you can be sure, Crystal, I’ll want you then as much as I want you now.”

She seemed overwhelmed with relief. “Thank you, Sena-Mr.-Mr. President-” Suddenly her round face broke into a toothy smile, enamel and gold, and she said, “I’ll have to take lessons how to talk to you. What’ll it be this special morning, anything special?”

“The same as always, Crystal. Give me fifteen minutes or so. I’ve got to shower and dress.”

She was off to the dining room and kitchen, straw basket swinging, and Dilman smiled at the two Secret Service executives. “She’s here every day,” he said, “and weekends her niece comes in.”

Gaynor said, “We’ll have to trouble you for a full list of your employees and friends.”

“You’ll have it today.”

“Mr. President, there are a number of calls that have come in-”

“Anything important?”

“I don’t believe anything urgent. The Secretary of State wants to speak to you when you’re up. Oh yes, one personal call-well, he phoned two or three times from New York-a young man who claims to be your son.”

“Julian?”

“That’s right, Mr. President. Gave the name Julian Dilman. Said he’d call back again at half past nine.”

“All right. Better give me time to get myself cleaned up and into some clothes.” He started to go, then said over his shoulder, “You can ask Crystal to make something for you. You must be starved.”

“Thank you, Mr. President,” the two Secret Service officers said simultaneously.

The tone of their voices hung inside Douglass Dilman’s ears as he walked back to the bedroom. He was attuned to every nuance of every utterance that came from his white colleagues. The changeable inflection of speech was their civilized weapon of subtle mockery and superiority without insult, even when you were a congressman. This was their best weapon when they found that your skin was black and thin. You could not prove disrespect, but you could know its vibrations. He remembered one committee hearing when General Pitt Fortney had appeared as a witness before him and the others. He had posed a question, and Fortney’s reply, in print, on the record, had been beyond reproach. In writing, it was a general replying sensibly to a senator. Across the committee tables, verbalized, it had been a West Point white general speaking downward to a semiliterate jigaboo. Perhaps he had been oversensitive that time, and on several other recent occasions. For years he had tried to curb his excessive sensitivity, as other men tried to reduce their weight. It took diligent, unremitting work. It could be done. But then, every once in a while, you put on sudden sensitivity as you put on extra weight, and suffered for the added burden.

Throwing aside his robe, entering the bathroom, he decided that the two Secret Service heads, Gaynor and Agajanian, had been courteous in their behavior. And now it seemed reasonable that they should have been. To their dedicated eyes, a Mr. President was a Mr. President, whether he was Grover Cleveland or Woodrow Wilson or Dwight D. Eisenhower or T. C. or Douglass Dilman. All that mattered to them, their jobs, their future, their pride, was that they keep the pounds of flesh entrusted to them, whatever its pigmentation, alive.