Norman Spinrad - Bug Jack Barron

“Who the hell do you think you are?” Morris practically snake-hissed. “You don’t talk to me like that, and get away with it! You play my game, or I’ll destroy you, lean on your sponsors, pressure the—”

Jack Baron laughed a harsh, false, tension-release laugh. Every schmuck in the country thinks he’s got more going than poor old Jack Barron, he thought. Howards, Morris—matched pair of cretins.

“You’re pathetic, you know that, Morris?” he said, “Know why? Because I’ve got this whole call on tape, that’s why. Your fat face and your big mouth, all ready to run on Bug Jack Barron any time I find you—shall we say, tiresome? You’ve taken your cock out in front of cameras, and I can play it back to a hundred million people any time I want to. You’re naked, Morris, bare-ass naked! I get a hint, or even just a vibration that you’re making waves in my direction, and, baby, I lower the boom. Go stick your tongue out at babies, Morris, you’re wasting your time trying to scare me.”

“Think it over,” Morris said, suddenly forcing himself back into a tone of sweet-pimp reason. “You’re letting the chance of a lifetime go—”

“Ah, fuck off!” Barron said, as he broke the connection, shut off the recorder.

“Jack… ” Carrie Donaldson sighed, throwing arms around his waist, wilting to her knees, lips sucking him in naked-lap, wish-fulfilment fantasy Carrie blowing him, her mind blown network orders blown cool blown going down on bossman mindfucker, raped by simple Bug Jack Barron style vip putdown session. But now Barron saw it for the silly-ass goddamned inverted Sara-fantasy it was: Carrie-Sara turned on all the way by Bug Jack Barron scene, turned off the genuine article. Last thing I want now, he thought, pulling away from her, is to be blown by a wet-dream ghost.

“Later, baby,” he said, “that lox just turned me off.” And on impulse (Bug Jack Barron subliminal walk-that-line balancing-act impulse, he thought wryly even as he dialed) he dialed the unlisted home vidphone number of Lukas Greene.

Greene’s angular black face bleared at him on the vidphone screen over a coffee cup, the master bedroom of the Governor’s Mansion vaguely opulent in the background. “It’s you, eh, Claude,” Greene said, glancing at something off-camera. “Jack Barron—at this hour?”

“Come on, Lothar,” said Barron, “you know I’m a clean liver.”

“Percy,” Greene said, “I’ve seen cleaner livers smothered in onions in Harlem greasy-spoons. Speaking of which—where the hell’s my breakfast?” And almost immediately a white-clad Negro flitted briefly across the screen carrying a breakfast tray, set it down on the bed, and disappeared silently into the woodwork.

“Beauregard,” Barron said grinning, “gotta hand it to you Southern gentlemen types. Really got them darkies trained right, don’t you?”

Greene nibbled a slice of bacon, dabbed at egg yolk with a roll, said: “You Commie nigger-loving Northern Liberal faggots is just jealous of Southern-style gracious living. We loves our darkies down here. We just loves ’em , and they loves us; any that don’t, why we just hang ’em from a sour-apple tree. Hey, why you bugging an important man like me at this hour, shade? It ain’t Wednesday night, and we’re not on the air— I hope.”

“Guess who I just got a call from?” Barron said, clocking how Carrie was even more zonked out at the nitty-gritty race-humor between shade Jack Barron and the black Governor of Mississippi.

“The ghost of Dylan? Teddy the Pretender?”

“Would you believe Daddy Warbucks?” said Jack Barron.

“Huh?”

“Greg Morris,” said Barron. “Amounts to the same thing, doesn’t it? Would you believe you’re talking to the next President of the United States?”

Greene took a long drink of coffee. “A little early for you to be stoned, isn’t it?” he said seriously.

“Straight poop, Kingfish,” Barron answered. “Morris offered me the Republican Presidential nomination.”

“Come on, man, stop putting me on, and come to the punchline already.”

“I’m not kidding,” said Barron, “it’s for real, Luke. The schmuck thinks I could get the SJC to nominate me too, put together a fusion ticket, and we could all go out and zap the Pretender.”

“I still think you’re putting me on,” said Greene. “You, a Republican and the SJC in bed with those Neanderthals? Either you’re putting me on, or the good Governor of California’s finally gone around the bend. How could the Republicans and the SJC possibly get together on anything?”

“Morris seems to think opposition to the Freezer Bill’s a big enough common issue to brush everything else under the rug,” Barron said. “The fusion ticket doesn’t run on any common platform, way he sees it, it just runs against Bennie Howards. Loopy, eh, Rastus?”

Barron felt a long loud silence as Greene sipped coffee, eyes becoming cold, hard, calculating, saw Carrie, still looking at him hungrily, shift her eyes to stare at the vidphone image of Luke, smelt flesh-wood of Carrie, image-wood of Luke burning. Doesn’t anyone have a sense of humor left but me?

“This is for real, isn’t it, Jack?” Lukas Greene at last said quietly.

“For chrissakes, Luke—”

“Hold on, Vladimir,” said Greene. “I’m getting a flash. You. Bug Jack Barron. Republican bread—and they are still flush. You know, it could work. It just might work. Bennie Howards as bogey-man, we wouldn’t really have to run you against Teddy. Yeah, we just ignore the Pretender, link the Democrats with the Foundation, and we’ve got your show to do it with. A Social Justice President

“Come on, man, what planet did you say you came from?” Barron said, the joke no longer funny. Crazy Luke thinks he’s back in Berkeley wet-dream power-fantasy delusion of grandeur. “You can’t be that dumb, Morris just wants to use the SJC to elect a Republican President, and if he does, he’ll feed all you overgrown Baby Bolsheviks to the fishes. He just wants a fusion figurehead image to lurk behind, is all.”

“Sure,” agreed Greene, “but that figurehead is good old Jack Barron. Even Morris knows what a cop-out you are, so he thinks you’d be a tame flunky. But I know you better, Adolph. Comes nitty-gritty time, I think you’ll remember who you once were. I may be crazy, but I’d be willing to trust you that far. I think the National Council would too, after I got through working on their heads. You get that Republican nomination, and I can get you the SJC nomination. Maybe I am talking to the next President. What did you tell Morris?”

“What do you think I told him?” Barron snapped. “I told him to go fuck himself. You gone around the bend too, Rastus?”

Greene frowned. “You and your big mouth,” he said.

“Hmmm… Morris has got to know where you’re at for openers, so maybe you haven’t gone and blown it. You got that call on tape?” Greene smiled knowingly. “Sure you have. Claude, I know how your head works. How about blipping me the audio?”

“Forget it, Luke,” Barron said. “This is your line of evil, not mine, not anymore. I’m not selling out to Morris or to you either. I sell out to anyone it’s to—” Barron caught himself short; name he was about to say was Bennie Howards. Yeah, he thought, you sell out at all, risk blowing the show, you damn well do it for the big forever boodle and not a half-assed pipedream… Hey wait… . All these silly-ass politicians can maybe give me an extra ace up my sleeve in a poker game with Howards. Why not?

“Come on man,” Greene cajoled, “humor me. Blip me the call. You got your jollies out of it, let me get mine. Nothing else, maybe we can use it against whoever the Republicans—do come up with. That doesn’t hurt you, does it, oh noble hero Jack Barron? Might even boost your ratings.”