Mark Costello - Big If

Vi knew that Potter Niles still loved Bobbie. Vi knew this from the support checks he sent every month. Bobbie, whose personal finances were often chaotic, asked Vi to cash these checks. Potter always wrote a little note on the memo line— Come back to me , or words to that effect. Bobbie got the checks in the mail, tore the envelopes, sometimes tearing the checks too in her impatience, and never read the long, anguished letters Potter included with the checks. He must have guessed this, for he wrote a Cliffs Notes version on the paper she did read. Bobbie endorsed the checks on the back in lavender ink, scrawled No! next to Come back to me , and gave the checks to Vi, who endorsed them for deposit to her NOW account. Vi’s bank cleared them and sent them on to Potter’s bank, which cleared them again, debiting his account, and so Bobbie’s reply came back to Potter canceled with his monthly statements.

Come back to me/No! — this was the exchange for May, when Vi started acting as Bobbie’s banker.

Give me one good reason, said Potter on the memo line for June. You’re boring , Bobbie scrawled and gave the check to Vi.

July was: But I love you/Even this is boring .

Come back to me/I hope you find someone special —August.

I have: you/So have I: someone else —September.

Who is this Vincent Asplund, the man who keeps depositing my checks — is he your lover now? asked Potter in October. We sleep together yes , said Bobbie cruelly.

Come back to me —and so on through the calendar to Christmas and beyond.

Vi knew that Bobbie would not go back to Potter Niles. Bobbie dreamed of being Mrs. Admiral, living the gracious life she saw in magazines, throwing tinkling drinks parties for the NatSecCom set. She talked about it often, drinking in the bars — her future perfect life. This was the real Bobbie Taylor-Niles. The rest of her biography — three divorces, four abortions, seven maxed-out credit cards, one personal bankruptcy — was an accident, a draft. She would quit the Service on her wedding day and say goodbye to Vi and the crowds.

Some nights, Vi and Bobbie sat alone in hotel bars, talking about men or bullshitting with the other agents coming in, or the campaign hangers-on, the preppies of the press pool, a stray congressman or two. Bobbie, seven years an agent at the White House, a moth at the ballpark lights of power, seemed to know every man who ever had a bit of it, and it was entertaining, watching Bobbie flirt.

Other nights they stayed in the room. Vi would do her isometric exercises, pushing on the walls, as Bobbie had a cigarette and a Stolie from the minibar. Then Vi would do her crunches as Bobbie had a cigarette and called the Admiral back in Georgetown. Vi would take a shower, come out, towel down, and check her e-mails as Bobbie had a cigarette and watched a movie from the in-room entertainment menu, talking from a cloud of smoke, telling, in installments, the story of the struggle that was Bobbie Taylor-Niles.

Bobbie had grown up poor in a Tulsa trailer park. She fucked her way into the Air Force at the age of seventeen (she was a minor, her stepfather wouldn’t sign, the recruiter was willing to be flexible). She joined the base police, liked the white armband, the way she looked in the white armband, went to college on the Vandenberg-Cal State extension program, made decent grades (Bobbie wasn’t stupid), joined the Service after her discharge, did her rookie tour in Crim, married Doyle Doak (thinking he was somebody important because he had his own parking space; she was so unworldly in those days), took a transfer to Protection, trying to move up, to get closer to the real people, the ones who run the world and have the money. She spent seven years inside the White House, guarding the first daughter — happy years for Bobbie. The famously feminist first lady was busy with her teas and her causes, leaving the first daughter, a doggish teenager, completely in the dark on basic woman things (the poor kid was bursting into puberty wearing baggy overalls and cotton boxers, for God’s sake, Bobbie said), and Bobbie, who loved the kid, took it upon herself to educate the first daughter in the things that every woman needs to know, how to win and keep a man, how to keep him satisfied, how to slip a condom on his hog without him knowing it, using just your lips and tongue and one index finger. The first lady caught Bobbie and the daughter in the Lincoln Bedroom covering the G-spot and its meaning to a girl, and the old witch hit the roof, sending Bobbie into exile, the Siberia of crowds.

Bobbie told these stories in the motel rooms, talking from her cloud, gray layers in the lamplight at her head, as she had perhaps another vodka for her nerves. Vi would listen as she ironed her clothes and kevlar for the morning, and Bobbie’s too, and cleaned their weapons on the bedspread if she was in the mood. They talked and watched TV until one of them could sleep, usually Vi, and then they killed the lights and Bobbie watched the movie end. Sometimes — more and more, it seemed — Vi would wake up before dawn and find Bobbie in her bed, a shock the first few times, but not after that. Vi would close her eyes and drift away, and, through the night, the women found each other in the sheets, sleeping thigh-to-pelvis, sweating, flinching, jerking, dreaming of two ropelines, guarding each other in their dreams.

Bobbie showed up twenty minutes latethat Sunday morning. Vi got in the car and they set out for the Galleria-at-Bull-Run, which was not a mall, but an all, Bobbie said.

“They have one of everything,” Bobbie said, digging through her Fendi bag as she drove the Admiral’s Lexus down the highway to Bull Run. “It’s a goddamn Noah’s Ark of luxury retail.”

Vi took the bag from Bobbie. “You look at the road.”

Searching through the bag, Vi found old charge slips from the better stores in Washington, lipstick, Chap Stick, dirt, grit and several kinds of pills, sticks of gum and foil from the gum, an empty bottle of Visine, Kleenex in a travel pack, breath mints in a roll, condoms in a gold case with a snap, a nickel-plated Smith & Wesson Ladyliner nine, and a crumpled pack of Silks, Bobbie’s brand of cigarette.

“They have this one store,” said Bobbie, lighting up. “Little lingerie boutique, everything’s from France, shit’ll blow your mind. They cater only to the most elite mistresses in Washington, cabinet rank or higher, none of them dumpy congressional oversight babes, unless, I guess, you’re sleeping with the Whip.”

“Why would they let you in then?” Vi didn’t mean this the way it came out. She only meant that the Admiral, though rich and well connected, was not of cabinet rank.

Bobbie said, “Because they recognize in me a woman of rare taste, you pissy little cunt. We’ll stop at Neiman afterwards, get you something nice to wear. Remember, Vi, there’s no excuse for being plain.”

“I’m not plain, I’m functional.”

“Yes, but we can help you.”

They saw the first sign for the Galleria-at-Bull-Run and after that they watched the signs, searching the horizon for the megamall. Exit 8 was for long-term parking and tour buses. Exit 9 was for RVs needing sewer hookups.

Vi said, “You ever think of Felker?”

Bobbie said, “I do. That poor dear, dear man. I get weepy when I think of how he risked his life to save that dog.”

“No, he killed the dog. It was the baby that he saved.”

Bobbie said, “Well anyway, he risked his life and that’s what counts.”

They rode along and Bobbie talked about her wedding plans, a full-dress ceremony in the festive Pentagon Rotunda, big names on the guest list, senators and such, drinks and dinner for three hundred, on and on and on, the band, the wine, the parting gifts, the finger bowls and napkin rings. She had every detail nailed except the year. Vi was always glad when Bobbie talked about the napkin rings. It meant that Vi could just nod for a while and not have to listen very hard. All of this — planning for a wedding, shopping, lingerie, the compulsive gabbing — was Bobbie’s way of dealing with the stress of vacant mode.