Eileen Gunn - Stable Strategies and Others

“So we swallowed them, with the help of a little chocolate milk. Then we sat on the floor and listened to Leonard Bernstein records for a while. Pat took off her shoes, and I first loosened my tie, then took it off entirely.”

As he relaxes into the story, Tricky Dick seems to confide in the audience. “Well I tell you, I didn’t feel like my usual cocky, confident self there. I was full of restless energy. I fidgeted. I started to feel very uneasy. Then I realized that the problem was that I had no control over what was going to happen to me. I was accustomed to having control over even the smallest things in my life. And you know, my fath— my upbringing was such that I believed that a man had to be in control at all times.

“But as I struggled to remain calm, I realized that I did have a choice: I could relinquish control or continue to fight for it with the drug.

“I decided I would voluntarily give up control, and I made a gesture of giving, giving control over to the drug. At that moment a great peace descended on me, and I felt as though I had passed into another dimension. I cried freely, letting the tears run down my cheeks — and yet, I felt very happy, and I was smiling.”

Eventually the reporters left the room and the Governor of New York City lit a cigarette and leaned back against the pillows. It was OK to light one, he told himself, as long as he just held it. He lifted it to his lips. As long as he didn’t inhale, he amended. He didn’t inhale. He couldn’t, really, they had him strapped so tightly around the chest.

“ Governor! ” It was the day nurse. “What do you think you’re doing?”

She was right. “Damn,” he said. “Wasn’t thinking. Sorry.” He handed her the cigarette.

Mollified, the nurse, an attractive blonde woman with grey streaks in her hair, smiled at him. “Your wife’s on her way over, Governor.”

“’Bout time.” He sure didn’t feel great just now. They’d pushed it too close, letting the guy get off a shot. Could have shot him in the head, for Chrissake. He didn’t want to blink out the way Jack had — too suddenly to put things in order, make proper goodbyes, say the things left unsaid. Though he wouldn’t want to hang on for a decade like his father, either, tubes plugged into him at both ends, bringing stuff in at the top and taking it out at the bottom.

He wasn’t ready to check out yet at all, thank you very much. At 65, he still had the time and stamina to run for president. He could win, too, and he could do the job.

Funny, though, as a kid, he’d always been happiest in the supporting role. He could have done it for Jack, if things had worked out differently. And in ’64, if that son-of-a-bitch Johnson had supported him for VP, he’d have taken it. They’d have beaten Goldwater, in spite of Ailes and his dirty tricks, dragging out the Jenkins thing and Johnson’s past….

“Hey, Ace, how you feelin’?” It was Ethel.

“I hurt like hell, is how I feel,” he said. “What the fuck happened there?”

His wife turned to the nurse. “You can take a break now, if you’d like. I’ll take care of him if he needs anything.” The woman nodded and left them alone.

“I’ve just been hashing that over with your boys,” said his wife. “After sticking to that guy like a second skin for three weeks, while he shadows you and buys the gun and writes like crazy in his diary, they lose him in the crowd at the last minute, just inside the gate.”

“Jeez.”

“‘Jeez’ is right. This was a totally screwy idea. He could have killed you, vest or no vest.”

“Well, he didn’t. Don’t borrow trouble. This is worth millions in press sympathy.”

“What are you planning to do?” she asked sarcastically. “Announce you’re running for president tomorrow, as you’re released from the hospital?”

He answered seriously. “No, timing’s all wrong. With the off-year elections coming up, the story would be old news real fast. But I’ll be dropping some hints in the next few weeks, and by, say, January of next year, I should be ready to make a definite statement….”

“You’re out of your mind,” she said. “Next time, they won’t miss.”

He turned on the television across from the bed. “It’s time for Tricky Dick .”

“I know you don’t hear a word I’m saying.”

“We’ve already missed the opening monologue.”

“I suppose you’ve got to do it, so go ahead, Bob,” she said. “I don’t have to like it. But next time you uncover a plot, have them pick the guy up right away, OK?”

The next president of the United States looked up at his wife and nodded his head. “I think I’ll do that.” He took her hand, and she curled up next to him on the bed to watch the show.

Tricky Dick’s lips are pursed, his eyes slightly unfocused: he’s transfixed by his own story.

“…then I was the captain of a submarine, steering my vessel through seas populated by my enemies, watching them through the periscope, confident, knowing that not one of them knew where I was. Suddenly, I realized that I was the submarine , not the captain! For a moment, I wondered: who’s the captain? who’s the captain? and then I realized that I was both the captain and the submarine! And I was the sea as well, and the enemy ships! It was all a cosmic game, and we are all one, all the gameplayers and the game itself.”

His voice deepens. “Well, I knew this was a really important insight, and I started to write it down, but just then I looked over and saw that Pat was weeping quietly under the grand piano. I realized that she was having a ‘bad trip.’

“I piloted my sub over under the piano and extended my periscope, which was also my hand, toward her.

“She looked up at me, her eyes dimmed with tears, and as we looked at one another, I realized that she knew exactly what I was thinking, about the submarine and all, and that she’d been crying for each of us, the whole world, in our separate submarines, not knowing that we were really all part of the same game, all one, and I said to her, ‘You know, don’t you?’ And she nodded, without speaking, because she didn’t need to speak, she didn’t need to say one word, she just needed to know, and she knew.

“Of course, afterward when we talked about it, I found out that she had been crying about all the music trapped in the piano, but on some level I think she really did know. You know?”

The Governor of New York City, propped up against the pillows of his hospital bed, laughed out loud. Stories like this were exactly the sort of thing that he tuned in to hear. The master, he thought, was not losing his touch.

The retired president hit the sound button on his controller and watched the people on the screen move their mouths ridiculously.

The son of a bitch looks happy , he thought, happy and healthy. Getting a little jowly, maybe, but I’ll bet he still plays a couple of rounds of golf a week.

What does a guy like that think about? How could he turn his back on it all? Not so much on power — you don’t get the power you think you’ll have as president — but on the chance to change the course of history.

Could I have kissed it goodbye, he wondered, if things had worked out a little different? Stayed with the department store, maybe, or gone into some kind of commercial flying?

Nah, never.

He thought about these things a lot, now that Peggy was gone. Hadn’t spent enough time with her and the kids, it was true. When he retired after his eight years, he had his flying, his ham radio, his photography. He’d figured that there’d be plenty of time, once he was too old to fly, to sit around with Peggy and watch Tricky Dick on the tube. How little we know. Peggy’s probably happier where she is now, he thought wryly. She never cared much for TV, and she’d always hated politics.