girl. She’s in there with some lawyer pounding her like he’s drilling for oil off the California coast, right now. I bet he’s already bust a nut once and is still digging away to prove what an incredibly California buffed-and-tanned physical specimen he is.”
“What the hell has that got to do with you?”
“I warned you. I told you about her. I said she would betray you. You cannot trust women.”
“I can’t trust you.”
“No. No, you can’t. That’s very good, Michael. But you can trust money. Money cannot lie. It is a means. It is a tool. And a bad workman cannot blame his tool. What have you done with the tools I gave you, Michael?”
I didn’t say anything. He clacked his teeth together.
“You saved her life. That was good work. I bet she told you she loved you, after that. I bet she did. I bet she said nice things. But she lied, didn’t she?”
“I don’t think so. She just doesn’t see it the same way. The, you know, the words. It means something a little different to her, that’s all.”
“We’re in America, Michael. Telling someone you love them means only one thing, doesn’t it? That you’re not going to make the beast with two backs with the next warm body that falls in front of you. That’s the American way. Or is that what you want? An America where love means nothing?”
“Are those the choices?”
“Hell, yes, those are the choices. How many do you want? We are fighting many wars, Michael, on many fronts. And this is the war at home. The war of meanings. The war of cultures. And right here, right now, you’re on the line, Michael. I may be a professional politician with opiate lesions all over the front of my brain, but my money doesn’t lie. She may be a sweet girl who’s nice to you, but she’s upstairs right now making a lawyer fill her with his little suits. Taking my side means only that honest American love will win the day.”
“With this book? This thing, this reset button of yours?”
The shades made his eyes look like empty sockets. “A return to our roots. The mission would be easier if the book’s effects transmitted over TV or the Net, but it naturally leads us to a grass-roots politics from the times of Washington and Lincoln. Town hall meetings. Stadiums. We can devise a million different events where the book is brought into play in front of crowds from all cultural and subcultural areas. We’ve been breeding pop stars in L.A. for exactly this kind of thing. Take some piece of greedy cracker trash with symmetrical features, vacuum the Cheetos dust off it, train it in a Disney pod, stick boobs on it and have its videos made by porn directors, and everyone under sixteen is yours. Also, the gay people. I never understood that. You could retrain fifty thousand of them at a time, putting the book in front of them at a stadium concert. Instill proper morals in them. Erase the sicknesses in their heads and make of them proper Americans who know what love means.”
I looked at him. I had no idea what I was seeing. “You think this comes down to the nature of love in our time? Is that what you’re selling?”
“I dunno. Are you buying it?”
“You are an evil old bastard.”
“I am the chief of staff. You know how H.R. Haldeman described the job when he was chief of staff to Nixon? ‘I’m the president’s son of a bitch.’”
“Fuck me, I think you said something honest just then. I feel faint.”
“These are hard times. I’m not going to be a child about the hard decisions. We’re fighting what must be World War Six outside the country, and what is very probably Civil War Three within the country. You’re going to help us bring that one to a conclusion. You’ll save lives, I think. You’ll certainly be saving a country and a way of life. Buck up, Michael. You’re close to the end now. I can feel it in my bones. It’ll all be over soon. And just in time, eh? You’ve got no money left, you’re adrift in a state that should be hacked off the end of the continent like a tumor, and your girlfriend’s upstairs fornicating with a lawyer. If that was my girl, well, I’d rather she were fucking a dog, wouldn’t you? Or a donkey. I’ve seen those shows, down in Tijuana. Horrifying, really. Yet