American Savior (39 page)

“I’ll stay out here and watch with my good friends for a while,” he announced, and we took up positions facing the screen. Out of respect, we gave him the remote. He flipped from channel to channel—ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox, PBS—sometimes getting up to grab another celery stick or a doughnut, or ducking his head into the back room to have a moment with his mother. One by one, returns started to trickle in from the Midwest. And announcement by announcement, I felt a creature of hope come to life in me again.

Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin, states that had been in the Democratic column in recent elections, all seemed to be going for the Divinity Party this time around. “The margins are small,” Wales noted, as we watched the numbers appear on the screen. “But the electoral college doesn’t care about margins.”

North and South Dakota, two places you’d expect to go Republican, were next to fall into our column, the margins more comfortable. Kansas and Nebraska also went for Jesus by a percentage point or two.

Zelda had come over and was squeezing my hand. The pundits on every channel kept puzzling over this turn of events, shaking their heads, saying that nothing like this had been seen for as long as anyone could remember. “Nebraska not going Republican in a presidential election,” Slam Davidson marveled, “when is the last time that happened?”

“There will be some questions about vote fraud, I can assure you,” Betbette was saying with his usual confidence, when we stopped over
briefly at Fox. Anne Canter had joined the big two now, and her ebullient early mood was sliding into the swamp. She seemed personally offended. She swung her hair to the side, she frowned. Before Jesus switched channels, I heard her say, “A lot of the rural precincts have not been counted yet, and rural voters tend to—”

Jim Wearer kept his face expressionless, neutral, objective. He let the analysts from both sides have their say, and after ten minutes of watching, you weren’t sure if there was a good and a bad in the world anymore, a right and a wrong, a winner and a loser.

Bulf Spritzer was strutting excitedly back and forth across the stage, holding a clipboard in his hands, calling for underlings to put this or that chart up on the screen, and practically shouting, “High drama!” News was being made, big news, and big news gave him a tremble.

But, despite the run of good reports, it was too early to open the champagne. Senator Maplewith was easily winning Texas, with its huge load of thirty-four electoral votes. Neither Jesus nor Anna Songsparrow had set foot in the Lone Star State during the campaign, even though he’d supposedly been born there, and again I thought Wales’s inexperience had been at work. He was a news producer, a
local
news producer, and Jesus had picked him to run a national presidential campaign. It was a cosmic joke.

The hyenas of doubt had smelled the fear in me, and come to feast.

I spent five minutes calling around to my security people—the stair landings, the elevator, the lobby, the perimeter of the hotel, everything locked up tight. Someone from the management called to ask about releasing the elevator lock. “Absolutely not,” I said, maybe with too much force. “He won’t be coming down for another hour at least. If we need to move earlier than that, we’ll use the stairs.” I hung up and turned my attention back to the TV.

In Indiana, Maplewith enjoyed a comfortable lead. She was piling up the big and medium-sized states, while we tacked on Montana (three) and New Mexico (five), and kept fielding phone calls from associates in Florida and Illinois, hoping for good news and getting none.

But, then, as Palm Beach County started to be tallied, we nudged
ahead by a single percentage point in the Sunshine State. We pulled even in Illinois. The room had grown louder. Stab was standing up, watching not the TV set, but my mother and father’s faces. My dad was pounding his cast rhythmically into his left palm and saying what he liked to say at the dog track when his greyhound was making a move on the far turn, “Come on, come on now. One time!”

With things still very much uncertain, we came to the West Coast, where Alowich was expected to take Oregon and Washington, and we were almost guaranteed California. As more numbers were posted, more precincts tallied, our lead in Florida wobbled, disappeared, reappeared.

“Maplewith,” Jim Wearer told us, “is now two points ahead in Illinois.”

Nevada was also up for grabs. “We lose Florida, Illinois, and Nevada,” Wales said, checking and rechecking his math, “and we end with 269. Even with California.”

“One short,” I heard myself say.

“The site I’m looking at says Cook County is going for us,” Nadine put in excitedly.

The phone rang. Zelda answered it. She put her hand over the receiver and looked across the room at me. “Illinois!” she mouthed, with her eyes opened wide in excitement. I would not let myself believe her.

At quarter after eleven, Jesus stood up and walked over to stand beside me near the end of the couch.

“The difference between you and me,” I said, glancing at his face, “is that if you win you’re at peace, and if you lose you’re at peace.”

“My whole point in coming to earth,” he said, “is to demonstrate that there is no difference—ultimately—between you and me.” I assumed he was joking. We were both watching the TV screen. After a second or so I turned and I was looking at him with such an expression of puzzlement that he laughed. “Muse on it when I am gone.”

“Where are you going?”

“Downstairs to give my acceptance speech.”

At that moment, almost as soon as those words were out of his mouth, twenty-six minutes after eleven, eastern time, ABC news was the first to
announce that their projections gave the state of Illinois to Jesus Christ. An enormous, deafening cheer went up in the room. Forget Florida, forget Nevada, with Illinois in our column, as long as California didn’t disappoint, we would come in at 290. “We’re in,” I said in a voice so full of astonishment that Zelda sent a beautiful smile my way. She was getting phone calls telling her the same thing. Norman Simmelton urged caution. My mother passed the beads through her fingers faster and faster. My dad came around behind me and gave me a deep tissue shoulder massage with his good hand. But Jesus stood there calmly sipping apple juice, as alert as an owl on a tree branch at dusk.

As long as California didn’t disappoint.

At 11:40 Jesus suggested we switch to CBS—of which ZIZ was an affiliate—and after we’d been watching for fifteen minutes or so, in a state of intense excitement that I can compare to no other feeling I’ve ever had, CBS’s chief election correspondent Mortimer Redds (an early idol of mine), spoke these famous words: “Based on hard returns and exit polling from the state of California, CBS news is now prepared to declare….” He paused for two seconds and checked the latest information coming in on his earpiece, “is prepared to declare that Jesus Christ has been elected president of the United States.”

There was a roar in that room to burst your eardrums. We jumped and we hugged and we kissed and we wept, we surrounded Jesus and touched him anywhere we could—shoulders, elbow, face, hair, fingers. Anna Songsparrow came out of the back room with tears on her cheeks. She and her son had a long embrace, and then the phones were ringing off the hook. It was not long before Colonel Alowich called and conceded. Jesus was exceedingly gracious. It took Maplewith another hour—she was hoping for a turnaround from rural counties in Illinois, and did not get it. Jesus was gracious again. “Marjorie, listen,” I heard him say, “I want you to consider something. I said the same thing to Dennis, I want you both to consider serving in my cabinet. No, no. For the good of the country. I want you to sleep on it.”

And then Secret Service types were coming through the door and telling me they were officially taking over security for the president-elect; we
had no choice in the matter this time. I should order my men to “stand down” as the head guy, Richard Diamond, put it.

I felt the bottom of my stomach fall away. On the one hand, I had gotten used to protecting Jesus from harm; it was my work, my identity, and I was sorry to let that go. On the other hand, I had been weighed down by a premonition for so long by then that I thought I’d end up dying of anxiety before I saw whether Jesus had been playing another trick on us with his hints, or whether he’d drop dead, dematerialize, or be killed by another nutcase. I did not want to leave the jubilant feeling in the room, and I did not relish the idea of going downstairs and telling Dukey and his guys that we were off the case, that their moment in the spotlight was over. At the same time, I felt this immeasurable relief, knowing that Jesus’s safety was now in the hands of professionals. In my excitement, in the mix of feelings of the moment, I neglected to call the hotel and tell them to release the one working elevator.

I stayed in the suite for another few minutes to enjoy the celebration. Walesy was popping open expensive champagne the Simmeltons had bought, and everyone was getting a taste. Stab was jumping up and down, yelling. My father had tears in his eyes and was hugging my mother. I peeled Zelda away from the phone long enough for a prolonged kiss; we got a round of applause for it.

“He’s going to make me under secretary for Health and Human Services,” she whispered into my ear, and I squeezed her extra hard in congratulations and told her she’d be perfect for the job.

Enrica came in and howled like a wolf. Norman, Nadine, and Amelia had a family hug. I made sure Richard Diamond had been introduced all around, and then I said I was going downstairs on a last errand. As I was about to turn away, I caught Jesus’s eye. For a moment I thought he was going to come over and tell me what post he had in mind for me: chief spokesperson, advisor for ecumenical relations, head of the FCC. But he only winked and gave a quick, almost sad smile. It was the last time I would see him alive, but I did not know that then. I nodded at him, paused for a final look at the happy scene in the room, and went out.

I walked down the hallway to the elevator, and while I was waiting
there, I remembered about the lock, and called down to the front desk. It was pandemonium in the lobby, the night manager said; it was going to take another ten minutes to change the elevator setting so it came up to the twelfth floor. “Fine,” I said, “they’ll be celebrating for another ten minutes at least. Just don’t forget to switch it.”

This, again, is difficult for me to admit, but as I turned and walked toward the stairwell, showed my pass, and trotted down the two flights, I felt another wash of bad thought come over me, a twinge of anger or envy or doubt. It makes no sense, I realize that. I had no good reason to be anything but happy and proud at that point—we had won, after all, and against enormous odds—but I felt as though a demon was whispering in my ear. I tried to ignore it. I kept telling myself that Jesus was going to lift the country up, that things would change. I kept telling myself that I would be part of that change, that he had a job in mind for me, something prestigious, essential even, but that he was waiting to surprise me. As a kind of distraction, I told myself that my country, my great country, had elected someone so special that nothing would ever be the way it had been. Inside all of us, there had been this secret hope that one day we would have a leader who actually understood our problems, someone who was not ambitious, and not conniving, and not divisive, and not partisan, and not out to help his friends line their pockets, whose good intentions were not corrupted by foolish philosophies or personal weakness. Down deep inside us a dream had been hiding, and now the dream had risen into the light. Soon it would turn into our national reality. I tried to take the focus off myself that way, but it didn’t work.

A bad Muzak version of “Hotel California” was playing in the one functioning elevator. It seemed to take a long time to descend ten floors. In the marble-tiled lobby—wall to wall with people at that point—I caught sight of Randy Zillins. I could see that he was trying to work his way over to me, but I forced myself through the bodies in the other direction and went out a side door. God knows what would have happened if he’d been able to say a word to me then, if I’d apologized for being curt with him on the phone, or even just taken the time to listen to him rant about something. He might have felt important, for once in
his life. He might have ended up changing his mind and allowing Jesus to have his hour of glory and his four or eight years of hard work. Or he might have turned on me instead. God knows. You can drive yourself crazy looking back over the past and thinking you could have been five percent kinder and changed the course of history. You can drive yourself crazy like that.

Chief Bastattuta was standing in the cold entranceway between two sets of doors. He shook my hand and said, “Good job, kid.” I told him I was no longer on Jesus’s official security detail and that I had to go find Dukey and his pals and give them the news. Already, all over the place, you could see big-shouldered guys with dark suits on and wires in their ears.

“Don’t let your guard down, I don’t care what they say,” Bastatutta told me. I remember having the funny thought that maybe I’d try to fix him up with Enrica Dominique.

I went outside into the cold and the dark, ducked away from the press types near the entrance, and found Dukey in the shadows at the back of the hotel. He was smoking a joint. I came upon him by surprise, and he flung it away as if it had burned his fingers. “Hey, dude,” I said. “We won. They just announced it. We’re in.”

He wrapped me in a bear hug, and when he released me I told him the Secret Service had taken over from us, as of twenty minutes ago. He sulked and smirked. “Can we do crowd control, at least, or something?”

“Sure, just don’t get in the way of the big guys in the dark jackets.”

“Like they scare me,” he said.

I was about to turn away from him when something took hold of me and kept me standing there. Looking back at that moment, I wonder if the sight of Randy Zillins had infected me, sent my mind twirling in a bad direction; if envy and doubt are contagious in that way, even across a crowded lobby. In any case, the fact is that at moment a stream of demon-thought pushed its way out through my mouth in seven puffs of gray vapor. “Duke,” I said, and then I paused and I could have changed my mind, but I didn’t. “I have a question for you.”