Irving Wallace - The Man

George Murdock scratched one scarred cheek and then the other. “I guess I can only say I hope your boss is tough underneath, Edna. This vilification is just the start. Every President is a target. He asks for the job and he’s got to be prepared-”

“President Dilman did not ask for the job.”

“He did when he ran for the Senate, and he did when he accepted the gavel as President pro tempore of the Senate. Dilman is a bigger target than the others, because he’s black on white and can’t be missed. There he is. Everything he does will be judged not only for its wisdom but for what it means coming from a Negro. The facts of life, Edna. Every day is going to be worse for him.”

Her gaze went to George, and for once she was not calmed by his matter-of-factness. “You think it’ll be worse?”

“Unquestionably.”

She resolutely prepared herself to speak what had grown in her mind. “If it is, George, then, well-maybe he can take it, but I can’t. I’m going to quit.”

He was so startled that he stopped abruptly to study her, to gauge how serious she was. She knew that her upset expression convinced him. He took her arm. “Come here a minute,” he said. He led her to the last bench before Pennsylvania Avenue. After they sat down, he said, “Edna, I thought we settled your quitting that first day, when you took my advice and decided not to resign.”

“It’s never been completely settled in my mind, George. That first day I made up my mind to stay because you convinced me he needed help and because-you know-I felt so sorry for him. But I’m too close to what’s going on, and I can’t stand it. How can I explain it to you?”

She clasped her hands and looked down at the pavement. “I’ve had enough of the mental strain, George. The position is hard enough without that. I’ll be honest with you, I really will. I finally figured it out. It’s not that I suffer every day with him, get hurt because he’s hurt, the way I felt with T. C. No. I-I’m as liberal as anybody, but I can’t somehow identify with him in the same way. He’s so different from me. I know this is awful, but it is his color, I guess, his whole background, so different from anything I know. Yet I can understand him. So I’m outside him, but I have to be there. You know what-it is like a bullfight-having to go to a bullfight and watch. He’s the bull, practically helpless, no chance, and the men with the banderillas and the picadors with their lances are sticking him till he bleeds, goading and hurting him, until he’s weaker and weaker, and the matador comes out and finally drives the sword in behind his neck. If I have to be close up, watching, maybe I can’t feel like the bull, I can’t suffer that way, but I can hate what I see of all the torturing before he is finished and dragged away. I can be revolted and sickened by it. Well, George, that’s the way I feel, being in those offices with Dilman. I can’t stand it. I hate having to go in and see him tomorrow.”

George Murdock squeezed her hand. “Edna, he has only one year and four months left in office. Surely-”

“How many days is that? Four hundred, four hundred and eighty or more? That’s four hundred and eighty bullfights. No, George. He can find other help now. He’s settled into his office. And me, I can find a better job, without agony, typing for someone who doesn’t have to worry about anything more than sales volume or competitors undercutting him.”

“You couldn’t stand it after these years. You’d go stir-crazy. You’d wither.”

Edna Foster shuddered. The word wither made her think of spinsterhood. Maybe this was the time to test him on that, too. “Then I could do something more interesting. I didn’t tell you, but Hesper kind of subtly asked me if I’d like to move to Phoenix and help her and Miss Laurel with T. C.’s papers and documents, and her correspondence. She’s-”

“Edna, no, I can’t have you leaving me now.”

She met his eyes, which were genuinely anxious, and she felt a wave of relief. “George, that’s nice of you, but-”

“I mean it,” he said, almost desperately. “I’ve got no right to ask you to do anything for me. I realize that. But you know, I haven’t been able to-to sort of talk to you more seriously-about the future-because I’ve been trying to get myself set, better established.”

There could be a moment of truth, she knew, far from any bullfight. “George,” she said firmly, “as far as I’m concerned, you are well enough established. I mean, from my point of view.” She had never been more eloquent about her longings for their future, and she awaited his reply with trepidation.

He sighed. “Maybe,” he said. “I suppose I always set my sights too high. You know how I feel about you. Nothing is too good for you. Maybe I’ve wanted too much. Tonight, if things were the way they were yesterday, I-I might say more than I have up to now. But tonight I can’t, Edna. I got a one-two punch today, both on the button, and I’m shook up, I’m badly shook up.”

She turned fully toward him. She had known something was wrong. Why had she not penetrated his moodiness from the outset? “I suspected you were worried,” she said. “Tell me, George. Maybe I can help.”

“First off, I had a cable from Honolulu this morning. Uncle Victor, the senile bastard, he went and got himself married. Can you beat that? After twenty years a widower? Some island social dame nailed him. And him seventy-nine. I didn’t think the old bastard was that feebleminded. Well, that blew it-good-bye, nephew George. I bet they’re collaborating right now on the new will.”

“George, my God, you were depending on that pie in the sky? I never gave it a second thought.”

“Well, I don’t know if I counted on it or not. But somehow it was always there to think about. So that’s out.” He hesitated. “That’s not the important thing, though. Something worse happened in the mail.”

“What?”

He ran his fingertips across his pocked cheek. “Edna, I lost three newspapers today. They-they dropped me. Far as I can figure out, I’m not ‘in’ enough. They switched to the big wire services instead of keeping their own correspondent. They figure the big ones, exclusive or not, are closer to the inside.”

She felt weak, helpless, and faintly guilty because he was not inside. “You still have nine papers.”

“For the time,” he said, “and for now, less income.”

“I don’t understand, George. I know you’ll make less, but-”

George Murdock’s nails dug at the bench between his knees. “The whole tone of Weidner’s letter,” he said. “There’s a point of no return with Tri-State. If I lose another paper, I’m through. They’ll buy some other columnist. In fact, if they can’t sell my column to more outlets, I may be through anyway. I didn’t even have to read between the lines. He wrote, ‘If you don’t pep up that daily column, don’t come up with something hot, in place of those warmed-over handouts, we’ll have to reappraise the whole situation. I can’t understand why you’re not doing better.’ Then he said something dirty.” George Murdock glanced at Edna worriedly. “I don’t know if I should tell you.”

“Tell me, go ahead, tell me everything.”

“He wrote, ‘I can’t understand why you’re not doing better. After all, you are going steady with the personal secretary to two Presidents. Who has a better pipeline into the White House, especially today?’ Goddammit. Can you imagine?”

She felt sick. “Oh, George, how could he!”

“He did… I tell you, I’ve got a good mind to quit. Here you were talking about quitting, when that’s all I have on my mind. The effrontery of the bastard, thinking for one minute I’d risk the respect of the only decent woman I’ve ever known, for personal advancement.”