Democracy (16 page)

Jessie had stared at him fishily from under her tennis visor and Adlai had wanted the New York stripper medium bloody and Inez had walked out of Dwight Christian’s house with Jack Lovett and now Jessie was tearing her bread into little chicken-shit pellets.

“Could you do me a favor? Jessie? Could you either eat the bread or leave it alone?”

Jessie had put her hands in her lap.

“I’m still kind of working on the immediate plan part,” she said after a while. “Actually.”

In fact Jessie Victor did have an immediate plan that Thursday evening in Seattle, the same plan she had mentioned in its less immediate form to Inez at Christmas, the plan Inez had selectively neglected to mention when she described her visit with Jessie to Harry and Adlai: the plan, if the convergence of yearning and rumor and isolation on which Jessie was operating in Seattle could be called a plan, to get a job in Vietnam.

Inez had not mentioned this plan to Harry because she did not believe it within the range of the possible.

Jessie did not mention this plan to Harry because she did not believe it to be the kind of plan that Harry would understand.

I see Jessie’s point of view here. Harry would have talked specifics. Harry would have asked Jessie if she had read a newspaper lately. Harry would not have understood that specifics made no difference to Jessie. Getting a job in Vietnam seemed to Jessie a first step that had actually presented itself, a chance to put herself at last in opportunity’s way, and because she believed that whatever went on there was only politics and that politics was for assholes she would have remained undeflected, that March night in 1975, the same night as it happened that the American evacuation of Da Nang deteriorated into uncontrolled rioting, by anything she might have heard or seen or read in a newspaper.

If in fact Jessie ever read a newspaper.

Which seemed to both Inez and Harry Victor a doubtful proposition.

When word reached them in Honolulu on the following Sunday night, Easter Sunday night 1975, the night before Janet’s funeral, that three hours after the Warner Communications G-2 left Seattle, bringing Harry and Adlai Victor down to Honolulu, Jessie had walked out of the clinic that specialized in the treatment of adolescent chemical dependency and talked her way onto a C-5A transport that landed seventeen-and-one-half hours later (refueling twice in flight) at Tan Son Nhut, Saigon. “Maybe she heard she could score there,” Adlai said, and Inez slapped him.

14

S
HE
did it with no passport (her passport was in her otherwise empty stash box in the apartment on Central Park West) and a joke press card that somebody from
Life
had made up for her during the 1972 campaign. This press card had failed to get Jessie Victor at age fifteen into the backstage area at Nassau Coliseum during a Pink Floyd concert but it got her at age eighteen onto the C-5A to Saigon. This seems astonishing now, but we forget how confused and febrile those few weeks in 1975 actually were, the “reassessments” and the “calculated gambles” and the infusions of supplemental aid giving way even as they were reported to the lurid phantasmagoria of air lifts and marines on the roof and stranded personnel and tarmacs littered with shoes and broken toys. In the immediate glamour of the revealed crisis many things happened that could not have happened a few months earlier or a few weeks later, and what happened to Jessie Victor was one of them. Clearly an American girl who landed at Tan Son Nhut should have been detained there, but Jessie Victor was not. Clearly an American girl who landed at Tan Son Nhut with no passport should not have been stamped through immigration on the basis of a New York driver’s license, but Jessie Victor was. Clearly an American girl with no passport, a New York driver’s license and a straw tennis visor should not have been able to walk out of the littered makeshift terminal at Tan Son Nhut and, observed by several people who did nothing to stop her, get on a bus to Cholon, but Jessie Victor had done just that. Or so it appeared.

By the time Jack Lovett arrived at the house on Manoa Road that Easter Sunday night with the story about the American girl who appeared to be Jessie, the blond American girl who had left a New York driver’s license at Tan Son Nhut in lieu of a visa, Inez and Harry Victor were speaking to each other only in the presence of other people.

They had been civil at the required meals but avoided the optional.

They had slept in the same room but not the same bed.

“You’re overwrought,” Harry had said on Friday night. “You’re under a strain.”

“Actually I’m not in the least overwrought,” Inez had said. “I’m sad. Sad is different from overwrought.”

“Why not just have another drink,” Harry had said. “For a change.”

By Saturday morning the argument was smoldering one more time on the remote steppes of the 1972 campaign. By Saturday evening it had jumped the break and was burning uncontained. “Do you know what I particularly couldn’t stand,” Inez had said. “I particularly couldn’t stand it at Miami when you said you were the voice of a generation that had taken fire on the battlefields of Vietnam and Chicago.”

“I’m amazed you were sober enough to notice. At Miami.”

“I’d drop that theme if I were you. I think you’ve gotten about all the mileage you’re going to get out of that.”

“Out of what?”

“Harry Victor’s Burden. I was sober enough to notice you didn’t start speaking for this generation until after the second caucus. You were only the voice of a generation that had taken fire on the battlefields of Vietnam and Chicago after you knew you didn’t have the numbers. In addition to which. Moreover. Actually that was never your generation. Actually you were older.”

There had been a silence.

“Let me take a leap forward here,” Harry had said. “Speaking of ‘older.’ ”

Inez had waited.

“I don’t think you chose a particularly appropriate way to observe your sister’s death. Maybe I’m wrong.”

Inez had looked out the window for a long time before she spoke. “Add it up, you and I didn’t have such a bad time,” she said finally. “Net.”

“I’m supposed to notice the past tense. Is that it?”

Inez did not turn from the window. It was dark. She had lived in the north so long that she always forgot how fast the light went. She had gone late that afternoon to pick up the dress in which Dick Ziegler wanted Janet buried and the light had gone while she was still on Janet’s beach. “You pick a dress,” Dick Ziegler had said. “You go. I can’t look in her closet.” After Inez found a dress she had sat on Janet’s bed and called Jack Lovett on Janet’s antique telephone. Jack Lovett had told her to wait on Janet’s beach. “Listen,” Inez had said when she saw him. “That pink dress she wore in Jakarta is in her closet. She has fourteen pink dresses. I counted them. Fourteen.” She had been talking through tears. “Fourteen pink dresses all hanging next to each other. Didn’t anybody ever tell her? She didn’t look good in pink?” There on the beach with Jack Lovett in the last light of the day Inez had cried for the first time that week, but back in the house on Manoa Road with Harry she had felt herself sealed off again, her damage control mechanism still intact.

“I think I deserve a little better than a change of tense,” Harry said.

“Don’t dramatize,” Inez said.

Or she did not.

She had either said “Don’t dramatize” to Harry that Saturday evening or she had said “I love him” to Harry that Saturday evening. It seemed more likely that she had said “Don’t dramatize” but she had wanted to say “I love him” and she did not remember which. She did remember that the actual words “Jack Lovett” remained unsaid by either of them until Sunday night.

“Your friend Lovett’s downstairs,” Harry had said then.

“Jack,” Inez said, but Harry had left the room.

Jack Lovett repeated the details of the story about the American girl at Tan Son Nhut twice, once for Inez and Harry and Billy Dillon and again when Dwight Christian and Adlai came in. The details sounded even less probable in the second telling. The C-5A, the press card. The tennis visor. The bus to Cholon.

“I see,” Harry kept saying. “Yes.”

Jack Lovett had first heard Jessie’s name that Sunday morning from one of the people to whom he regularly talked on the flight line at Tan Son Nhut. It had taken five further calls and the rest of the day to locate the New York driver’s license that had been left at immigration in lieu of a visa.

“I see,” Harry said. “Yes. Then you haven’t actually seen this license.”

“How could I have seen the license, Harry? The license is in Saigon.”

Inez watched Jack Lovett unfold an envelope covered with scratched notes. Lovett. Jack. Your friend Lovett.

“Jessica Christian Victor?” Jack Lovett was squinting at his notes. “Born February 23, 1957?”

Harry did not look at Inez.

“Hair blond, eyes gray? Height five-four? Weight one-hundred-ten?” Jack Lovett folded the envelope and put it in his coat pocket. “The address was yours.”

“But you didn’t write it down.”

Jack Lovett looked at Harry. “Because I knew it, Harry. 135 Central Park West.”

There was a silence.

“Her weight was up when she got her license,” Inez said finally. “She only weighs a hundred and three.”

“The fact that somebody had Jessie’s license doesn’t necessarily mean it was Jessie,” Harry said.

“Not necessarily,” Jack Lovett said. “No.”

“I mean Jesus Christ,” Harry said. “Every kid in the country’s got a tennis visor.”

“What about a tennis visor?” Inez said.

“She was wearing one,” Adlai said. “At dinner. In Seattle.”

“Never mind the fucking tennis visor.” Harry picked up the telephone. “You got the Seattle number, Billy?”

Billy Dillon took a small flat leather notebook from his pocket and opened it.

“I have it,” Inez said.

“So does Billy.” Harry drummed his fingers on the table as Billy Dillon dialed. “This is Harry Victor,” he said after a moment. “I’d like to speak to Jessie.”

Inez looked at Jack Lovett.

Jack Lovett was studying his envelope again.

“I see,” Harry said. “Yes. Of course.”

“Shit,” Billy Dillon said.

“There’s a kid who flew in this morning from Tan Son Nhut,” Jack Lovett said. “A radar specialist who’s been working Air America Operations.”

“Her aunt, yes,” Harry said. “No, I have it. Thank you.” He replaced the receiver. He still did not look at Inez. “Your move,” he said after a while.

“This kid is supposed to have seen her,” Jack Lovett said.

“Did he or didn’t he?” Harry said.

“I don’t know, Harry.” Jack Lovett’s voice was even. “I haven’t talked to him yet.”

“Then it’s not relevant,” Harry said.

“She only weighs a hundred and three,” Inez repeated.

“That’s the second time you’ve said that,” Harry said. “It’s about as relevant as this radar specialist of Lovett’s. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“I’ll tell you what it means,” Dwight Christian said. “It means she’ll fit right in.”

Harry stared at Dwight Christian, then looked at Billy Dillon.

“Welcome to hard times, pal,” Billy Dillon said. “Try mentioning Sea Meadow.”

“In fact she’ll outweigh nine-tenths of them,” Dwight Christian said. “Nine-tenths of the citizenry of Saigon.”

“I knew you could dress that up.” Billy Dillon looked at Harry. “You want to make a pass through State? Usual channels?”

“Usual channels, Mickey Mouse,” Dwight Christian said. “Call the White House. Get them to light a fire under the embassy. Lay on some pressure. Demand her release.”

“Her release from what?” Harry said.

“From the citizenry of Saigon,” Billy Dillon said. “Follow the ball.”

There was a silence.

“I may not phrase things as elegantly as you two, but I do know what I want.” Dwight Christian’s voice had turned hard and measured. “I want her out of there. Harry?”

“It’s not quite that simple, Dwight.”

“Not if you’re from Washington,” Dwight Christian said. “I suppose not. Since I’m not from Washington, I don’t quite see what the problem is.”

“Dwight,” Inez said. “The problem–”

“I had a foreman taken hostage on the Iguassú Falls project, I didn’t phrase things so elegantly there, either, not being from Washington, but I goddamn well got him out.”

“—The problem, Dwight, is that nobody took Jessie hostage.”

Dwight Christian looked at Inez.

“She just went,” Inez said.

“I know that, sweetheart.” The hardness had gone out of Dwight Christian’s voice. “I just want somebody to tell me why.”

Which was when Adlai said maybe she heard she could score there.

Which was when Inez slapped Adlai.

Which was when Harry said keep your hands off my son.

But Dad, Adlai kept saying in the silence that followed. But Dad. Mom.

Aloha oe
.

Billy Dillon once asked me if I thought Inez would have left that night had Jack Lovett not been there. Since human behavior seems to me essentially circumstantial I have not much feeling for this kind of question. The answer of course is no, but the answer is irrelevant, because Jack Lovett was there.

Jack Lovett was one of the circumstances that night.

Jack Lovett was there and Jessie was in Saigon, another of the circumstances that night.

Jessie was in Saigon and the radar specialist who was said to have seen her was to meet Jack Lovett at the Playboy Arcade in Waianae. This radar specialist who had or had not seen Jessie was meeting Jack Lovett in Waianae and an electrician who had worked on the installation of the research reactor at Dalat was meeting Jack Lovett in Wahiawa.

The research reactor at Dalat was a circumstance that night only in that it happened to be a card Jack Lovett was dealing that spring.

Jack Lovett did not see any immediate way to get the fuel out but he wanted to know, for future calculation, how much of this fuel was being left, in what condition, and for whom.

The research reactor at Dalat was a thread Jack Lovett had not yet tied in his attempt to transfer the phantom business predicated on the perpetuation of the assistance effort, which was why, on that Easter Sunday night in 1975, he took Inez first to meet the radar specialist at the Playboy Arcade in Waianae and then across Kolekole Pass to meet the electrician at the Happy Talk Lounge in Wahiawa.