Christopher Buckley - Boomsday

“Fascinating,” said Cass, nodding away. “Fascinating.…”

“You need a permit to film on these premises, sir.”

“It’s a documentary,” Terry said, leading the Park Service ranger away from the microphone. “About how people react to the memorial. In particular to that statue.”

“That’s not the issue, sir.”

“Some people think he looks like that Irish writer James Joyce? They say he looks like he’s taking a dump.”

“Sir, you’re going to have to stop filming. Now .”

As the befuddled Jerome continued with his explanation of the contents of the attachй, two men approached. One of them Cass recognized as-her father.

“Hello, Cass.”

“Hello, Frank.”

Frank Cohane stared at Jerome, who reflexively clutched the attachй to his chest. He said to Jerome, “You’re in a world of shit, pal. That’s stolen property.” Jerome blanched. Frank turned his attention back to Cass. “As for you, you’re in a universe of trouble, young lady.”

Cass said, “What are you going to do? Ground me?”

Frank said to Jerome, “Hand it over.”

“Sir, if you don’t stop filming right now, I’m going to have to call the park police.”

“I was just kidding you,” Terry said. “We have a permit.”

“Let me see it,” said the park ranger suspiciously.

Terry patted his pockets. “It’s in the car. C’mon, I’ll show you.”

“Sir, tell your person there to turn that camera off. Now. Or I am calling the police.”

“It’s in the car, right over there. I’ll show you.”

The stricken Jerome began to hand the attachй to Frank. Cass intercepted it.

“Frank,” she said in an oddly declamatory sort of voice, “what would people say if they knew that the president’s own campaign finance chairman had sold software to someone running against the president? Software that allows him to get rich by only admitting people into his nursing homes who are about to die? What would you call such an arrangement?”

Frank, alerted by Cass’s peculiar tone, swiveled. He saw the camera twenty yards away, aimed right at him.

“Shit!” he said. He barked at his companion, a Cohane security man, “Get the goddamn case!”

The man stepped forward and grabbed it out of Cass’s grip. She wasn’t about to get in a wrestling match with him. She let it go. The man and Frank turned to leave.

“Frank,” she said. Her father turned. “Would you call such an arrangement…morally repellent?”

“Okay, okay,” Terry said to the ranger, “if you’re going to make a federal case out of it.” He signaled his assistant to stop. They had what they needed. As they walked off, Terry said to the ranger, “You know, he does look like James Joyce on a toilet. You ought to get the sculptor down here and do something about it. It’s embarrassing. He was a great president, and look what you’ve done to him.”

The resignation of Frank Cohane as finance chairman of the Committee to Reelect President Peacham was a surprise, coming as it did on the eve of the general election.

The terse announcement said only that he had “fulfilled his mission,” that he was confident that the president would be reelected “in a landslide,” and was eager to get back to skippering his yacht Expensive in the upcoming America ’s Cup race.

The next night, Mrs. Cohane was observed screaming at Frank furiously at the tony Georgetown restaurant Cafй Milano and then abruptly getting up from the table and storming out. This fact was duly reported in the Post ’s “Reliable Source” column the next day. The Cohanes put their house up for sale and departed for California a few days later. Mrs. Cohane was still apparently out of sorts, as several people witnessed her in the waiting room of the private aviation terminal at Dulles International Airport barking at her billionaire husband.

The president lost another top aide a few days later when Bucky Trumble, his longtime political counselor, was rushed to George Washington Hospital with a bleeding ulcer. The doctors advised him not to return to the rigors of the campaign.

In a speech in Bangor, Maine, President Peacham announced that he was personally instructing the attorney general to vacate the federal fugitive warrant on Cassandra Devine. Normally, the White House affected a posture of not interfering with supposedly independent actions of cabinet agencies. In this case, the president seemed, if anything, eager to point out that this was his decision and not the AG’s.

At a press conference the next day, he said, “If young people want to go burning their damn”-it was the first instance of a president saying “damn” in public-“Social Security cards, that’s their business. The whole system is so screwed up as it is, that’s not going to make it any worse.” He then announced to an already stunned press corps that if he was reelected, he would appoint Cassandra Devine commissioner of Social Security. “And good luck to the lady if she accepts. And good luck to me if I win. There are times, I have to say, when I almost hope the voters don’t return me to office in November.”

This was fresh, honest talk of a kind rarely if ever heard, and the people responded.

President Riley Peacham won reelection by a narrow margin. When he took the podium to declare victory, it was not altogether clear that he was happy to have won.

Senator Randolph K. Jepperson made a strong showing in the popular vote, less so in the electoral college, the system devised by the Founders in their infinite wisdom occasionally to prevent the right person from winning the presidency. Randy, with Cass and Terry at his side on election night, limped out onto the stage and congratulated President Peacham. He refrained from holding his prosthesis over his head and spent the rest of his speech describing his agenda for the future and why he would make an ideal candidate for president in four years, or eight, or whenever. Whatever.

Frank Cohane’s yacht competed fiercely in the America ’s Cup that fall. On the final race, Expensive suddenly lost steering power on the downwind leg and rammed and sank the French yacht Formidable . The bureau of inquiry found no evidence of damage to Expensive ’s steering prior to the accident. The case is proceeding in the French and U.S. courts and the international court at The Hague. Mrs. Cohane subsequently left Frank for the skipper of the Italian yacht Scuzzi -the dashing billionaire industrialist Dino Filipacci, of Milan. No mention of this or the ramming incident can be found on Google.

Gideon Payne’s attempts to portray Elderheaven’s purchase of actuarial software as “a means of ensuring the very best level of care for our beloved senior residents” did not meet with success with the electorate. He came in seventh in the popular vote. Yet he took his fall from grace in stride. Some thought he appeared almost jubilant conceding the election to President Peacham. A month later, he announced that he was stepping down from the leadership of SPERM in order to marry a Russian national, Olga Marilova, a self-described “hospitality worker.” They would retire, he said, to the country and raise a family, “a large family.”

In January, President Peacham nominated Cassandra Devine to be the youngest commissioner of Social Security in U.S. history. ABBA and other Baby Boomer lobbies fiercely opposed the nomination on the grounds that she would “sabotage” Social Security payments to retired Boomers. Her nomination is being championed in the Senate by Senator Randolph K. Jepperson of Massachusetts, in conjunction with a vigorous public relations effort mounted by her former employer and mentor, Terry Tucker.