Kim Robinson - Sixty Days and Counting

But then one afternoon, after Frank had given Charlie a call to beg for some intercession on the nuclear regulations issue, and Charlie had passed the word along in a call to Roy, he got a call back from that so-busy man.

It was right before dinner time. “The boss is ready to call it a day, but he wants to talk to your people about this regulation relief. So he’s proposed one of his little expeditions over to the Tidal Basin. We take some takeout to the blue pedal boats, and have a picnic on the water.”

“Oh good,” Charlie said. “I’ll call Frank and we’ll meet you down there.”

“Not me, I’ve got stuff to do. Andrea will be going though.”

Charlie called Frank and described the plan.

“Good idea,” Frank said.

The president would be driven over by his Secret Service detail, and as normal hours of operation for the tourist concession there were done for the day, it would be easy to take over the dock and the tidal pool, and unobtrusively to secure the perimeter. The National Park Service was fine with it; indeed, it was already a little presidential tradition, and from their perspective, being political support from the highest position in government, a good thing. Even the most virulent anti-Chase media had not been able to make much hay out of these expeditions—not that they hadn’t tried, but Phil’s laughing ripostes had made them look like prigs and fools, and they had mostly given up on that front.

The time being what it was, Charlie decided to take Joe along. He went down to daycare and found him occupied in some game or other with a girl his age, but he was happy enough to join the Secret Service detail in one of their lightly armored black Priuses.

After they parked on 15th Street and got out and walked down to the pedal-boat dock, where Phil and Andrea and some of the Secret Service guys were already standing, Charlie followed Joe a short way up the basin’s shore path, agreeing that some rocks to throw in the water would be just the thing. Then Joe found some pea gravel and discovered that throwing it in the water by the handful was just as good as throwing bigger rocks.

Looking north at the Mall Charlie saw Diane, Frank, Kenzo, and Edgardo walking down 17th Street. By coming directly across the Mall, they had almost beaten the car caravan. They were a good-looking group, Charlie thought. Edgardo was gesturing in the midst of some comic soliloquy, making the rest laugh. Frank and Diane walked a bit behind, in step, heads together. As they crossed Independence Avenue at the light, Diane slipped her arm under Frank’s, and as they reached the curb he helped her up with what almost looked like a little slap to the bottom. They too were laughing. A couple out on a balmy autumn evening.

They came down to the Tidal Basin on the pedestrian path, and Charlie and Joe joined them on the way to the dock. Some National Park rangers were untying a clutch of the blue pedal boats. The little round lake was empty, the round-topped Jefferson Memorial reflected upside-down in it, the FDR Memorial invisible in a knot of trees on the opposite bank. The late light burnished things. On the dock Charlie saw in the rangers and everyone else that look of contained excitement that surrounded the presidency at all times. This party would make for a story afterward, people’s faces said. Another Phil Chase moment to add to all the rest.

Phil was expert in ignoring all that, crying out hellos to rangers he had seen before, making it clear he was a regular. His security people were forming a scarcely visible human barrier, intercepting tourists approaching to rubber-neck at the scene, establishing an invisible boundary. Joe rushed to the boats lined up and ready against the dock, attempting to get in the first one, but Charlie caught him just in time by the arm. “Wait a second, big guy, you have to have a lifejacket on. You know that, you’re so funny,” feeling all the while pleased to see this flash of the old enthusiasm.

“Hey Joe!” Phil exclaimed. “Good to see you buddy, come on, let’s be the first ones out! I think I see Pedal Boat One right here in front,” stepping down into it.

He reached out for Joe, which meant that Charlie was going to have to join him, and so Charlie took a kid’s life preserver from the ranger offering it and tried to get one of Joe’s arms through it. A quick wrestling move, similar to the one honed by long practice with baby backpack insertions, got him started, but then Charlie looked up to see that Frank had taken Diane by the upper arm and slipped through the group to the edge of the dock. “Here,” Frank said, ushering Diane into Phil’s boat, “I’ve got to be the one who goes out with Joe, I promised him the last time I took out Nick, so I need to go out with them. So here, Diane, you go with the president this time, you guys need to talk anyway.” She looked surprised.

“Good idea!” Phil said, reaching out to help her step into the boat. He smiled his famous smile. “Let’s get a head start on them.”

“Okay,” Diane said as she sat down. Frank turned away from them to greet Joe and lead Charlie to another boat.

Phil and Diane pedaled away from the dock. Charlie and Frank got in the next one, held in place by rangers with boathooks, and they took Joe and strapped him in between them. By the time they were ready to go some time had passed; Phil and Diane were already midpond, chomping away like a little steamboat across the coppery water. Frank waved to them, but they did not see; they were laughing at something, their attention already otherwise engaged.

P C: Morning Charlie. Have some coffee. Joe, do you want coffee?

JQ: Sure Phil.

CQ: How about hot chocolate.

PC: Oh yeah, that’s what I’m having.

JQ: Sure.

PC: Rain on our dawn patrol. Too bad. Although rain has gotten a lot more interesting than it used to be, hasn’t it?

CQ: Droughts will do that.

PC: Yes. But now is the winter of our wet content. Here you go, Joe. Here you go, Charlie. These south windows are big, aren’t they. I like looking at rain out the window. Here Joe, you can put those right here on the carpet. Good.

(Pause. Slurping.)

PC: So, Charlie, I’ve been thinking that we can’t afford to bog down like we kind of are. We have to go fast, so maybe we can’t afford to fight capital anymore. They’ve rigged the numbers and written the laws.

CQ: So, let me guess, now you want to make saving the world a capitalist project? You make it some kind of canny investment opportunity, with a great six-month rate of return?

PC: This is why you are one of my trusted advisors, Charlie. You can guess what I’m thinking right after I say it.

JQ: Ha Dad.

CQ: Ha yourself.

PC: So yes, that’s what you do. Without conceding that private ownership of the public trust is right, or even sensible, but only because it has bought up so much of the next thirty years. Heck it supposedly owns the world in perpetuity. We’ll change that later. Right now we have to harness it to our cause, and use it to solve our problem. If we can do that, then the capitalism we end up with won’t be the same one we began with anyway. The rescue operation is so much larger than anything else we’ve ever done that it will change everything.

CQ: Or so you hope!

PC: It’s what I’m going to try. I think we are more or less forced to try it that way. I don’t see any alternative. Really, if we don’t get the infrastructure and transport systems swapped out as fast as is physically possible, the world is cooked. It’s like our first sixty days never ended, but only keeps rolling over. It’s like sixty days and counting all the time. So we have to look to what we have now. And right now we have capitalism. So we have to use it.