David Zeman - The Pinocchio Syndrome

Dan Everhardt looked at his watch. Twenty minutes remained before his conference call with the majority leader.

He stood up and stretched. His back gave him a twinge, a reminder of his football days. He also had a trick knee, the result of surgery on the anterior cruciate ligament. But mostly he felt tired. The stress he had been under recently was taking its toll.

He reached for the intercom.

‘Janice?’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘I’m going to take a quick shower. Take messages for fifteen minutes, will you?’

‘Certainly, sir. Did you want to return Senator Buerstin’s call?’

‘After I get out.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Dan Everhardt noticed himself in the mirror as he moved toward the bathroom. His bulk was beginning to sag, he noticed with some displeasure. The heavy-plated lineman’s armor was taking on the look of a middle-aged man’s spare tire. He wished he could find more time for workouts. But these days so many things kept pressing in on him. One less martini at night would help too – but that was not an option either. His nerves were strung too tight. Things hadn’t been going all that well with his wife. They hadn’t really talked in a long time. As for lovemaking, that was a sore point.

He went into the bathroom and peeled off his clothes. He would put on a fresh shirt after his shower, as always. He sweated a lot.

He draped his jacket over the hanger that hung from the hook on the wall. He threw the shirt into the little hamper, then took off his pants and folded them. He turned on the shower, waited for the water to warm, and got in. A wave of sudden weakness stole through him. He worried briefly about his heart. He was over fifty now, and not in the best of shape.

He felt empty. He thought of Pam, lying in bed when he said good night to her last night. She had looked so lonely. He wanted to reach out to her. But so much water had run under the bridge. Like the water ceaselessly disappearing down this drain, even as it pounded down on him from above. All of life, slipping through our fingers, he thought. Nothing permanent.

He recalled the graduation speech he had given at Rutgers last year. He had had that thought at the time – ‘Nothing is permanent’ – but he had not had the heart to express it to all those fresh-faced graduates. They would find it out in time. Why spoil their happy years by bringing it up now? Better to be gentle.

Depressed thoughts like these did not come naturally to Dan, who was an optimist by temperament. But just at this moment they seemed cogent and inescapable. The whole world was like a house of cards, ready to crumble at the slightest touch.

A house of cards … He was thinking of these words when a greater weakness came over him. The soap fell to the floor of the shower with a splat. He made to bend down toward it, but his arm didn’t move.

Something was wrong. He had sensed it a moment ago, perhaps even earlier. But he had ignored it, decided it was nothing. And that was the opening it had come through – his own obliviousness.

His body seized up, frozen like an engine thrown into reverse at full throttle. The room was yellow, then red. A sound like screeching trumpets was in his ears. He didn’t even try to reach for the walls. He sought only to get out the cry that would bring help. But his throat was locked tight, nothing would come out.

Pam. It was the last word in his mind, but it never came near his lips.

He sagged against the wall of the shower. That was where he would have remained, had it not been for the slippery soap under his feet. He fell to the tiled floor with a crash, his bulk forcing the shower door open. His head emerged from the cubicle, water dripping from his hair onto the floor. The bar of soap lay innocently on the drain.

His hands were clenched at his sides. His eyes were wide open. He looked as though he were preoccupied by something beyond this water-soaked room, something terribly urgent and transcendently important.

He tried to make himself move. It was impossible. He lay staring straight ahead, as he would be when they found him.

Hamilton, Virginia, on the Chesapeake Bay

November 16, 6 P.M.

Judd Campbell, having just finished watching his videotape of Washington Today for the third time, rewound the tape on his VCR and began the program all over again. He called out to his daughter, ‘Ingrid, get me a Guinness, will you?’

‘Another one?’ Ingrid, who watched her father’s intake of alcohol and tobacco like a hawk, gave her usual protest.

‘For Christ’s sake, daughter, no sermons. Just get it!’

Judd used the remote to speed through the early exchanges between Dan Everhardt and his adversaries. He stopped when Michael’s face came on the screen. Judd’s eyes, a startling blue-green with touches of gold deep in the iris, focused on his younger son with a combination of great tenderness and stern judgment. Michael was the bearer of the Campbell name and of his father’s torch.

Outside the window loomed the Chesapeake Bay, gray and choppy under a momentary cloud cover. One brave soul was out there on a sailboat. Judd did not look at him.

Behind him loomed the house, its sixteen rooms sprawling under high ceilings, the bedrooms placed along the upstairs front with spectacular views of the Bay. Judd had bought it as a ‘summer cottage’ when he was based in Baltimore, and had fallen in love with the place and moved in permanently. His children loved the beach, and Judd himself was a dedicated sailor and fisherman. His wife had died here. He still kept her bedroom exactly as she had had it when she was alive.

His cardiologists would no longer allow him to sail a small boat alone, but he went out often on his yacht, the Margery , both to sail and to fish. He liked to conduct business meetings aboard the boat, and didn’t care if the colleagues who attended got seasick. He felt more lucid on the water, more free of the fetters of dry land.

Judd Campbell was a self-made man, and liked people to know it. He came from an impoverished Scotch-Irish background and had made his mark on the business world as a textile manufacturer and importer before he was thirty. His patchwork empire of factories grew into a conglomerate that included everything from hotels to telephone companies. Though not a modern man by temperament, Judd saw the computer revolution coming in the 1980s and invested millions in the PC and software markets. By age fifty-five he was an institution in American business.

But he was hardly a household name. And now that age and chronic heart trouble had forced him to retire, he knew he never would be.

It was Susan who brought him the glass of dark ale. She and Michael were having dinner here tonight. Susan had arrived first, an hour ago, and was helping Ingrid in the kitchen. Michael was due before the meal was served.

‘Ah, here’s a face I can live with,’ said Judd. ‘Thanks, sweetie.’

‘Ingrid is still muttering about your ration.’ Susan smiled.

‘Let her mutter. Come here, look at your husband.’ Judd gestured to the TV screen on which Michael’s handsome face was shown.

‘I’ve seen him before.’ Susan patted her father-in-law’s shoulder. ‘Have to get back to work. How many times have you watched that thing?’

‘Never mind.’ Judd went back to his TV as Susan left the room.

Judd Campbell did not try to disguise the special feeling he had for Michael. Even as a toddler Michael had shown a kind of energy and strength that his two older siblings lacked. Judd had taken the child to his heart, teaching him to excel in everything he did. When Michael was learning to swim, to ride a bike, to throw a ball and swing a bat, Judd had repeated familiar anthems in his little ear.