“Oscar, do you realize how crazy that sounds? Do you know how pale you look when you talk like that?”
“I’m leveling with you here. You know I always level with you, Yosh.”
“Okay, you’re leveling with me. But I can’t do that. I can’t live that way. I don’t believe in it. I’m sorry.”
Oscar stared at him.
“I’ve hit the wall with you, Oscar. I want some real food, I want a real roof over my head. I can’t close my eyes and jump blind and take that kind of risk. I have a dependent. My wife needs me, she needs looking after. But you — you don’t need me anymore. Because I’m an accountant! You’re setting up a situation here where I have no function. No role. No job. There’s nothing to account.”
“You know something? That had never occurred to me. But wait; there’s bound to be some kind of income transfer. There’s scrap cash around, we’re going to need bits of equipment and such…”
“You’re establishing a strange, tiny, alien regime here. It’s not a market society. It’s a cult society. It’s all based on people looking deep into each other’s eyes and giving each other back rubs. It’s theoreti-cally interesting, but when it fails and falls apart, it’ll all become camps and purges just like the Communist Era. If you’re determined to do that, Oscar, I can’t save you. Nobody can save you. I don’t want to be with you when the house of cards comes down. Because you will be going to prison. At best.”
Oscar smiled wanly. “So, you don’t think the ‘congenital insanity’ plea will get me off?”
“It’s not a joke. What about your krewe, Oscar? What about the rest of us? You’re a great campaign manager: you really have a gift. But this is not an election campaign. It’s not even a strike or a protest anymore. This is a little coup d’etat. You’re like a militia guru in a secessionist compound here. Even if the krewepeople agree to stay with you, how can you put them at that kind of risk? You never asked them, Oscar. They never got a vote.”
Oscar sat up straight. “Yosh, you’re right. That’s a sound analysis. I just can’t do that to my krewepeople; it’s unethical, it’s bad practice. I’ll have to lay it on the line to them. If they leave me, that’s just a sacrifice I’ll have to accept.”
“I have a job offer in Boston from the Governor’s office,” Peli-canos said.
“The Governor? Come on! He’s a worn-out windbag from the Forward, America Party.”
“Forward, America is a Reformist party. The Governor is or-ganizing an antiwar coalition, and he’s asked me to be treasurer.”
“No kidding? Treasurer, huh? That’s a pretty good post for you.”
“The pacifist tradition is big in Massachusetts. It’s multipartisan and cuts across the blocs. Besides, it has to be done. The President is really serious. He’s not bluffing. He really wants a war. He’ll send gunboats across the Atlantic. He’s bullying that tiny country, just so he can strengthen his own hand domestically.”
“You really believe that, Yosh? That’s really your assessment?”
“Oscar, you’re all out of touch. You’re in here all night, every night, slaving away on this minutiae about the tiny differences be-tween nomad tribes. You’re pulling all the backstage strings inside this little glass bubble. But you’re losing sight of national reality. Yes, Presi-dent Two Feathers is on the warpath! He wants a declaration of war from the Congress! He wants martial law! He wants a war budget that’s under his own command. He wants the Emergency committees overridden and abolished overnight. He’ll be a virtual dictator.”
It instantly occurred to Oscar that if the President could achieve even half of those laudable goals, the loss of Holland would be a very small price to pay. But he bit back this response. “Yosh, I work for this President. He’s my boss, he’s my Commander in Chief. If you really feel that way about him and his agenda, then our situation as colleagues is untenable.”
Pelicanos looked wretched. “Well, that’s why I came here.”
“I’m glad you came. You’re my best and oldest friend, my most trusted confidant. But personal feelings can’t override a political dif-ference of that magnitude. If you’re telling the truth, then we really have come to a parting of the ways. You’re going to have to go back to Boston and take that treasury job.”
“I hate to do it, Oscar. I know it’s your hour of need. And your private fortune needs attention too; you’ve got to watch those invest-ments. There’s a lot of market turbulence ahead.”
“There’s always market turbulence. I can manage turbulence. I just regret losing you. You’ve been with me every step of the way.”
“Thus far and no farther, pal.”
“Maybe if they convict me in Boston, you could put in a good word with your friend the Governor on the clemency issue.”
“I’ll send mail,” Yosh said. He wiped at his eyes. “I have to clean out my desk now.”
Oscar was deeply shaken by the defection of Pelicanos. Given the circumstances, there had been no way to finesse it. It was sad but necessary, like his own forced defection from the Bambakias camp when he had moved to the President’s NSC. There were certain issues that simply could not be straddled. A clever operative could dance on two stools at once, but standing on seven or eight was just beyond capacity.
It had been some time since Oscar had spoken to Bambakias. He’d kept up with the man’s net coverage. The mad Senator’s per-sonal popularity was higher than ever. He’d gained all his original weight back; maybe a little more. His krewe handlers wheeled him out in public; they even dared to propel him onto the Senate floor. But the fire was out. His life was all ribbon cuttings and teleprompters now.
Using his newly installed NSC satphone, Oscar arranged a video conference to Washington. Bambakias had a new scheduler, a woman Oscar had never seen before. Oscar managed to get half an hour pen-ciled in.
When the call finally went through he found himself confronting Lorena Bambakias.
Lorena looked good. Lorena, being Lorena, could never look less than good. But on the screen before him, she seemed brittle and crispy. Lorena had known suffering.
His heart shrank within him at the sight of her. He was surprised to realize how sincerely he had missed her. He’d always been on tiptoe around Lorena, highly aware of her brimming reservoirs of feminine menace; but he’d forgotten how truly fond he was of her, how much she represented to him of the life he had abandoned. Dear old Lorena: wealthy, sophisticated, amoral, and refined — his kind of woman, really; a creature of the overclass, a classic high-maintenance girl, a woman who was really put together. Seeing Lorena like this — all abraded in her sorrow — gave him a pang. She was like a beautiful pair of scissors that had been used to shear through barbed wire.
“It’s good of you to call, Oscar,” Lorena told him. “You never call us enough.”
“That’s sweet of you. How have things been? Tell me really.”
“Oh, it’s a day at a time. A day at a time, that’s all. The doctors tell me there’s a lot of progress.”
“Really?”
“Oh, it’s amazing what millions of dollars can do in the Arneri-can health-care system. Up at the high end of the market, they can do all kinds of strange neural things now. He’s cheerful.”
“Really. ”
“He’s very cheerful. He’s stable. He’s lucid, even, most of the time.”
“Lorena, did I ever tell you how incredibly sorry I am about all this?”
She smiled. “Good old Oscar. I’m used to it now, you know? I’m dealing with it. I wouldn’t have thought that was possible — maybe it isn’t possible — but it’s doable. You know what really bothers me, though? It isn’t all the sympathy notes, or the media coverage, or the fan clubs, or any of that… It’s those evil fools who somehow believe that mental illness is a glamorous, romantic thing. They think that going mad is some kind of spiritual adventure. It isn’t. Not a bit of it. It’s horrible. It’s banal. I’m dealing with someone who has be-come banal. My darling husband, who was the least banal man I ever met. He was so multifaceted and wonderful and full of imagination; he was just so energetic and clever and charming. Now he’s like a big child. He’s like a not very bright child who can be deceived and managed, but not reasoned with.”