"We don't really want just anyone."

"I could recommend a few nuns from my old school who might be able to give you some pointers on treating other people with common courtesy. Once you've learned all about that, why don't you call my token black female ass back up and talk to me again." Eleanor hung up so hard that the telephone bounced.

Marshall, in the conference room next door, howled and wheezed with agonized laughter.

"You have a problem, Caleb?" Eleanor shouted.

"You're some P.R. whiz," he shouted. "He even called you personally - he usually has one of his munchkins do the scheduling."

"You got me in a bad mood."

"It was perfect. This story will spread all over town and you'll be even more in demand than you are now. You couldn't have done better."

"Whom should I be nice to?"

Marshall hooted, "Not one of those cold-blooded, cock-sucking sons a bitches. They crank out these talking-heads programs like bad sausage. They have to fill air time every night. Their Rolodexes are full of white men and everyone nags them about it. If they put you on TV, then they can point to you and prove how radically diverse they are."

"Oh. I thought it was because of my cogent analysis."

"That too," Senator Marshall said.

The phone rang again a few minutes later. This time it was Anita Ross of the Style section of the Post. "Ms. Richmond, we've heard how you stiffed Dr. Lawrence. We'd like to do a feature on you for the Style section."

Marshall was still sitting within earshot, apparently having nothing better to do with his time, so Eleanor hit the mute button and shouted, "It's the Post."

"Fuck 'em."

"Ms. Ross," Eleanor said, "why not call me in a couple of weeks, when I've had the chance to get settled in. Why, the ink on my badge is hardly dry."

"You'd better know that by taking on the Professor, you could become an instant culture hero. But only if the story gets published."

"A culture hero in five minutes? Not bad."

"Some have come and gone here in fifteen minutes," Ms. Ross said pointedly.

"Well, its been nice talking to you," Eleanor said. "Call back in twenty minutes and see if I'm still around."

"Nicely done," Marshall said. "What do you think of my thoughts?"

Eleanor realized that Marshall was waiting for her to look into the book. "I really can't say. I haven't had a chance to open it up yet."

Marshall tottered into her office, audibly grinding his teeth from pain. "Go ahead, have a look, I'll just stretch out here on this couch."

Eleanor picked up the book and opened it. The first page was blank, and the second, and the third. She riffled through the pages. They were all blank.

"Senator, what is this?"

"It is my tabula rasa. A work in progress. You're going to ghost­write it for me. Just like the old song says, 'Ghost writers in the sky.'"

"What do you want me to write?"

"Don't trouble me with details, woman. I don't have much time left."

"But I can't just go out and write it."

"Listen to me. When you made the 'Colorado is a welfare queen state' speech you set me to thinking. I am as much a part of the problems as Jesse is or Ted Kennedy or for that matter that poor little Shad Harper son of a bitch you nailed in Denver. You know, I love this country. I never had much trouble with money because my dad left me a lot of property and I had the privilege of being a maverick. The one thing I noticed in forty-eight years of public service, forty-four up here, is that the rarest thing in life is a person who speaks the truth. The most dangerous thing in life is a person who constantly refers to 'values.' If I was going to write down my testament, that is it. None of us has the right to tell anyone else how to live. None of us has the right to hold back anybody else for any reason - race, religion, income, or what have you. The rest of life is an open field, a crap shoot. The role of government is to make it an equal crap shoot for everybody. Not real profound, but real effective."

"So what do you want me to do?"

"If you feel able to adhere to the general message I just laid out-"

"I do."

"Feel your way through this P.R. maze, go out and represent me on TV, and keep writing your best thoughts down in this goddamn book. Represent freedom and honesty - whoops, there I go talking about values again."

"You really think that someone like me is the person to represent a card-carrying member of the power structure, like you."

"You're goddamned right. I never get co-opted by nobody. Nobody is ever going to co-opt you. And in this auto-erotic, skill to stay in the Beltway town, that's a huge advantage."

"When I go public, how do I identify myself?"

"Why, as Eleanor Richmond."

"If you want to. Lady, you're my last gift to the country."

By the end of the day, Eleanor's calendar had been filled for the summer. One major interview show a week, and two print journalists a week. Her first interview would be with the Alexandria Gazette on Friday. Even Dr. Lawrence called up, full of contrition about his lack of sensitivity, and tried to take Eleanor out on a date to the Maison Blanche. Eleanor was a hot topic for the rest of May and June.

It didn't take her long to figure out why: she was close to Senator Marshall, and everyone in town had heard rumors that Senator Marshall was dying. They would pump her for information about the Senator, in more or less subtle ways. She would ward off their questions and then talk about whatever she wanted - which is what Washington people always did with the press anyway.

35

"Floyd Wayne Vishniak," said the digitized voice from the computer, and an array of fresh windows popped into life on Aaron Green's high-resolution video screen. One of the windows was a photograph, a head shot of a white man with lank blond hair, not short enough to be short and not long enough to be long, sticking out from beneath a blue baseball cap that were turned down at the corners, giving him a sad and bedraggled appearance, and his skin was flushed and glossy under the blaze of an electronic flash. This was not a posed shot. It had been taken from a low angle as Floyd Wayne Vishniak rode down an escalator at a shopping mall some­where. He was staring down into the camera with a blank and baffled expression that had not yet developed into surprise. He was wearing a tightly stretched, inside-out, navy blue T-shirt with a couple of holes in it and he had the ropy muscles of a man who got them by doing physical labor and not by working out at any health club.

This image was not the only window on the computer screen. There was a small one next to it, this one showing a brief video clip that kept looping back and replaying. It showed Floyd Wayne Vishniak sitting in the cheap seats at a sports arena somewhere, leaping to his feet along with all of the other people in his vicinity to shout abuse at some miscreant down below. In this clip, Vishniak was wearing a tremendously oversized, bright yellow foam rubber hand over his real hand. The long finger of the hand was extended. Just in case this message was not clear, it had been printed with the words FUCK THE REF. And in case the ref did not happen to be looking in his direction, Vishniak could clearly be seen mouthing the same words - chanting them over and over - in unison with all of the other sports fans in his section. In Vishniak's other hand he was holding a plastic beer cup the size of the Louvre. While he was waving his giant yellow digit in the air, beer sloshed over the rim and splashed down on the shoulders of the fan in front of him, who reacted, but either did not care or was afraid to make a big deal out of it. Floyd Wayne Vishniak was not a person that most people would consider picking a fight with. He was not especially big, but he was tightly wound in the extreme.