Christopher Buckley - Boomsday

“Among other things, I knew him before he was a client. Why are you being such a hard-ass about this?”

“Because I don’t like Randy.”

“Okay. So. Don’t sleep with him.”

“I think you’re getting way wound around the axle,” Terry said. “I’ve seen it happen before. Young, impressionable account execs-they go over to the client side. They drink the Kool-Aid. You end up having to deprogram them. I’ve seen it happen to the best minds of my generation.”

“Thank you, Allen Ginsberg. No one was focused on this before I came along. Now everyone’s talking about it. It’s my friggin’ Kool-Aid.”

“And you’re drunk on it. Resource hogs. Wrinklies. Norman Rockwell goes to Auschwitz?”

Cass looked down at the floor. She said quietly, “I’m just trying to get a debate going about the future of Social Security.”

“All right,” Terry said. “I don’t want you to get hurt. I’ve been around politicians way longer than you have. When push comes to shove, trust me-it’s you over the side first, not them. Wait a minute. Why am I even having to tell you this? He blew you up in a minefield! ”

“Yeah, and he’s the one limping for the rest of his life. Give the man a break. If you don’t like my Norman Rockwell thing, I’m open to suggestions.”

Terry considered. “Why not celebrity endorsements? Like the milk ads, only they’re drinking poison. They’ve got little purple hemlock stains on their upper lips. ‘Got Transitioning?’”

Cass smiled. “You can’t help it, can you. Even when you’re being a total jerk, you’re brilliant.”

“Either you’ve had too much Red Bull,” Terry said, “or you’ve gone over to the dark side. Either way, you’re grounded. Lose Norman Rockwell.”

“This is no time for timidity.”

“That’s right,” Terry said. “Next Tuesday is the time for timidity.”

It was an old joke between them. On any given day on Capitol Hill, someone said, “Now is not the time for partisanship”-usually when he or she was about to be crushed by the opposition. Whenever Terry or Cass spotted the quote in the paper, one rushed to e-mail it to the other first. Whoever spotted it second had to pay for drinks that night.

“I’ve gotta go,” Cass said. “I’ve got a meeting on the Hill with Randy.”

“Tell Ahab I said hi.”

“That is so funny. I am, like, paralyzed with laughter.”

But in the elevator down to the lobby, Cass found herself wondering if she was, in fact, crossing some Rubicon of weirdness. She looked idly at her shoes. They looked dry.

She was disappointed, even quietly furious, over Terry’s reaction to the Norman Rockwell campaign. He might at least have said it was clever. Maybe it was a passion deficit on his part. Terry was a generation older than Cass. He could hardly be expected to muster the zest she was bringing to this issue. He’s also completely jealous, she told herself. “Ahab.” Honestly. Let’s all breathe into a bag and get on with it, shall we? One of the colonels in Bosnia used to say that.

As the elevator doors dinged open, she forced a shrug. Whatever . Thank God, she thought, for “ Whatever .” “Whatever” could stop any unwelcome thought in its tracks. To be or not to be. Whatever . We have nothing to fear but fear itself. Whatever. Mission accomplished. Whatever. It was the philosophical equivalent of a Jersey barrier. Maybe she’d have it inscribed on her tombstone: Here lies Cassandra Devine. Whatever. So very meta . Like Transitioning.

Her BlackBerry began humming like an epileptic bumblebee. A news alert. She read: FATHER OF TRANSITIONING DIVA CASSANDRA DEVINE BLASTS OWN DAUGHTER.

She stopped. Took a deep breath. Stared at the display. Scrolled down:

Billionaire California hi-tech wizard Franklin Cohane says his daughter Cassandra Devine, originator of Senator Randolph Jepperson’s “Voluntary Transitioning” scheme to save Social Security, gives him “the willies.”

“She’s clearly dealing with some issues,” said Cohane. “It’s not pretty to watch.”

Cohane, who made his first fortune developing a package tracking technology which he sold to FedEx for $540 million, said he was taking the unusual step of criticizing his daughter because he found her proposal to offer seniors incentives to kill themselves “morally repellent.”

He is a member of President Peacham’s “Owl Nest” of major donors. To be an Owl, a person must donate at least $250,000 to the national party.

He said he had never discussed his daughter with the President or his staff, but wishes “the Attorney General had prosecuted her to the full extent of the law: Tearing up golf courses is a very serious crime, to say nothing of trying to overthrow the government.”

Cohane said he had not spoken with his daughter in nearly ten years, after a “family squabble,” and that she had rebuffed his several attempts at reconciliation, including a “mind-boggling” cash gift.

“She’s an angry kid,” he said. “I feel sorry for her. She’s all screwed up.”

He said he was coming forward because he was in the process of “increasing my visibility at the national level” and wanted to “publicly distance myself from someone I happen to be related to but am in no way associated with.”

Cass stood in the marble lobby listening to the sound of her heart. She didn’t know quite how long she’d been there, not moving, and then she heard a distant voice, ever so familiar to her. It was yelling insistently in her ear, shouting at her, screaming, bellowing: All right, girls-let’s put on our big-girl panties and move it!!!

It was the voice of her drill instructor at Fort Jackson. There’s something to be said for basic infantry training, Cass thought as she headed out the door onto the shimmering heat of K Street. Too bad they didn’t issue M-16s in civilian life. She’d have used it.

Gideon Payne, hat in hand, mopped his moist brow-Lord, it was warm-and pressed the doorbell to the attractive redbrick house on Dumbarton Street in Georgetown. A servant dressed in a white jacket opened the door almost immediately.

“Signor Payne! Buon giorno.”

“ Buon giorno, and how are you today, Michelangelo?” Gideon loved calling a living human being Michelangelo, even if it was only a butler. The interior was blessedly cool.

“Monsignor is expecting you, signor.”

He led Gideon across the highly polished creaking floor that had in its day absorbed the footfalls of a Supreme Court justice, an ambassador, and various cabinet members of various administrations. It was over 150 years old and had high ceilings and a graceful curving staircase above an eighteenth-century Italian fountain that burbled softly. Lustrous oil paintings with religious themes hung on the walls. In a niche stood a minor but rather good Saint Sebastian by Donatello. Michelangelo opened the twin doors to the study.

Gideon’s host, seated behind a museum-piece rosewood desk, rose and smiled broadly. He was a handsome man in his early fifties, tall and dark, beautifully tanned, graying about the temples, with an athletic build. He was gorgeously accoutred in the raiment of a monsignor of the Roman Catholic Church. Around his neck hung an especially fine silver chain and crucifix that had once adorned the sternum of Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti, future Pope Pius IX and promulgator of the doctrines of the immaculate conception and papal infallibility. A family keepsake.

“Geedeon.”

“Massimo.”

The two men embraced warmly. Gideon’s friendship with Monsignor Montefeltro went back years, but they had really bonded during the affair of the Stomach Madonna.