The President's Angel (8 page)

A few minutes later two marines jogged through the sleet, weapons at port arms and puttees flashing white, down to the White House gate, across Pennsylvania Avenue and into the wet park. They stopped before the beggar, sitting blanketed on the bench. Their uniforms were drenched. One on either side, they marched him quickstep to the Presidential Palace.

He met them at the door, two dripping marines at smart salute flanking a short and dirty, ragged, bearded, wet rat of a man. Undistinguished. Middle-aged. A blanket covered his shoulders, sending up the heavy smell of wet wool. Matt looked directly at no one.

“Take him to the kitchen. See that he is given something to eat. Get something for yourselves. Frank.” He turned to his valet. “See that they have what they need. As for this man.” He gestured idly. “Give him some dry clothes and bring him to my study.”

He turned away before the others did. Waiting, he felt a thrill of excitement. He had no idea what he would say to the man or what he wanted from him. For the moment he was satisfied to have brought the beggar in. He congratulated himself that his charity was guarding the man from the elements, that he was having him dried and fed. Not even a dog, a horse, is left outdoors, he thought, without a shed. He rubbed his hands before the fire, then turned his back to it, surveying the richness of his room.

Frank knocked, and at the President's order, opened the door to let the beggar in, then stood politely to one side. The vagrant looked a different man. He was dressed in a clean white shirt and a pair of the President's old brown slacks, only moderately too big. He had showered. His beard was hastily clipped. Matt forced his muscles to relax. He realized he was hungry for this man to make a first false move—break wind or shy under the sofa crazily, spit on the Oriental rug, perhaps, or maybe even spring at his throat. Glory and a footnote in history books belong to the crackpots who take potshots at a President.

Yet this man stood before him calmly, with no evidence of servility. Moreover, he showed no lack of ease.

This wordless exchange had occurred in the time it took to blink, and the President was aware of his own annoyance.

“Do you like it?” He waved one hand around the room. “Sit down. Some drinks please, Frank.”

“Sir. You shouldn't be alone with—”

“This gentleman is too wise to make an unnecessary move.”

“Sir, the secret service would—”

“Do as I say. What would you like? Scotch? Cognac?”

“Hot chocolate would be nice,” the beggar said. The man had a pleasant voice, relaxed, not at all what Matt expected.

“Don't you want a drink?” he asked, surprised. “I have a good cognac here. Or perhaps a glass of vodka? You can have anything.” He was testing the man. He wanted to make him drunk.

“Chocolate with marshmallow, if you have it. And perhaps I‘ll put in a dollop of brandy,” said the other, leaning back in the sofa. “Usually I don't drink.”

“Never?”

“But I‘d like something hot now. It's cold out there.”

“Chocolate,” Frank repeated. He left the door open when he left. The President could see a sentry stationed respectfully six feet beyond the door, and suddenly he wondered who the prisoner was. It had never occurred to him before. He turned back to his guest.

The vagrant was observing him with a strangely steady stare. He neither spoke nor moved.

Matt sank into a chair. He cut short a desire to point out his possessions, the beauty of the pictures on the walls, the colorful cushions, the antique rug. “Did they feed you well in the kitchen?”

“I thank you.” He half rose, gave a modest bow, and settled back on the couch as gracefully as an English lord, though more slovenly, being in clothes a size too big. He gave a little tug at his pants at the knees. He crossed one leg. And slapped both hands on his thighs. “It's very kind of you to take an interest in me.” He smiled up at the President sweetly. It's a challenge, Matt thought.

“I have no interest,” he said. The lie hung between them in the room. He rose and turned away to stab at the fire roughly with the poker. “I don't like to see men suffer needlessly.” Then suddenly he burst out: “Why do you sit out there? What do you get from it? Night, day, rain, snow. Are you mad? Staring at the White House. What the hell do you think you're trying to prove?” He was waving the poker at his guest.

“Does it bother you?”

“Why didn't you stay in the shelter?” When he replaced the poker in its stand and wiped his palms on a handkerchief, he saw his hands were shaking. He thrust them in his pockets. But he could hardly control his voice. “Why? I had you all moved there. They feed you, take care of you. Give you medical care. That's what you want, isn't it? To be picked up and cared for? So you don't have responsibility for anything at all? Not even for yourself?” He stopped himself. His outburst was undignified.

Moreover he knew the street people, the dispossessed, were often sick with drink or drugs. Or else they were mentally unstable, sometimes outright insane. There was no way they could take care of themselves.

The two men stared at one another. The silence lengthened. The President saw the man was not so old as he had first surmised. His hair was grizzled, his beard a brindled red and gray. His skin was weathered with a fine tracery of good-humored wrinkles at the corners of the eyes. He could be anywhere from forty-five to sixty, Matt thought. His eyes were arresting, the color of charcoal splashed with light.

“You're obviously healthy.” Matt broke the silence again, this time more calmly. He paced to the silver cigarette box on his desk and offered it to his guest. The beggar shook his head.

“You're not stupid. Why don't you do something useful with your life, earn your way, instead of asking to be taken care of?”

“I'm not asking to be taken care of,” said the man.

“You sit out there in all weather.” The President closed the silver box with a snap and replaced it on the desk. He sipped his drink. “What's your name?” The question carried a command.

“Gabe.”

“Gabe.” The President laughed.

“Short for Gabriel. Romantic mother. You can call me Bill. Some people call me Bill.”

The President was hardly listening. “No last name? You don't even have a name?”

“I do.”

Suddenly the President could not remember why he had invited the man inside. Fury rose in him. He wanted to strangle the man. He could feel his own hands around the vagrant's thick and sinewy neck, fingers fighting the soft tissues of the windpipe which, segmented like a lobster tail, would snap beneath his grip.

He turned away. “How low, how little are the proud, how indigent the great.” The lines went through his mind unasked. Who had said that?

“Why didn't you stay in the shelter?” he asked again. “We set it up for you. You're protesting poverty, aren't you? Greed. Your government's uncaring attitude. Well? We provided for your needs.”

“I had to get back to work.”

“Work!” It was a sneer of contempt. “What? Sitting on a sidewalk?”

“I guess it looks like that.” He smiled shyly.

At that moment Frank reappeared with a tray of drinks and mixers and one cup. He poured from the china chocolate pot and offered the cup to the beggar together with sugar and a spoon.

The President poured another brandy in his snifter, and out of spite poured one also for this guest who did not want a drink. He'd had more than enough, but no holds were barred now, not even against himself.

“That's all, Frank. Shut the door behind you.” He sipped his drink, and felt the flow of burning relaxation deep in his stomach.

This time the butler made no protest. The door closed with a click.

“Well, what is your work?” challenged the President with an evil grin. “What do you do all day, sitting there?”

The beggar sipped his chocolate, eyes closed, cupping it with both hands in delicious gratitude—like a child, Matt thought, quite totally absorbed in cocoa.

“I'm sending light.”

“Light,” repeated the President, with a laugh. That was more like it … loony.

“Some people call them prayers.”

“What do you mean?” The hair rose on the back of his neck. The President knew about lasers, and some of the more secret weapons of his military.

“I'm protecting you with light. I‘m sending light.”

The President's laugh was a harsh bark. “You surround me with light?” The man seemed oblivious to his surroundings. Or to Matt, who began to tremble suddenly; his hands were shaking again. “And exactly how do you do that?” he asked, forcing himself to stay calm.

“It can be done, you understand, from a distance. But proximity helps. Why do you think I‘m here?”

“Here?” asked the President like a stunned ox.

“In this room. I sent you the suggestion to ask me in. You need my help.”

The President stared at the man, aghast. His face went white. Then he took two steps to the door. “Frank!” It was the bellow of a bull. The door burst open to reveal the valet, and behind him, two secret servicemen and a marine. “Get this man out of here. Take him to the park—shelter. No—to jail. I want him put away.”

“On what charge?”

“I don't give a good goddamn. Here!” The President leapt forward to thrust the antique glass paperweight on the desk into the visitor's jacket pocket. “Stealing. Get him out! Get out!” he shouted. “And keep him away. He's not to come close, do you hear?”

But when the door closed on the beggar, on Frank, on the three palace guards, the President inexplicably fell on his knees and pounded the coffee table with his fist, though why—what constituted his frustration—he did not know. He wanted the beggar back again. He had forgotten to ask him about the angel. He wanted no more of the whole business.

Everything was confusion for Matt Adams: insecurity, doubt, fear.

“Oh, God!” he groaned. “Oh help.” He wished he were a little boy again in the warm kitchen of his grandmother's house, and she, his mother's mother, would be taking Toll House cookies out of the oven (the warm smell of chocolate), and he would sit, legs dangling, his chair tucked close to the table, eating warm cookies and sipping his cocoa—

Cocoa!

He caught his breath. The beggar had drunk hot chocolate.

He tossed his cognac down his throat, set down the glass, and started out the door to bed, striding fast to run away from the pursuing thoughts. For one terrifying moment he didn't know if he was the beggar or the President, the child or man.

He plunged into his bedroom and stopped. His heart was pounding. There. He was the President. Back in his body again. His clothes were laid out on the bed. He could hear Frank in the bathroom turning on his bath. How did the man know when he was coming? Eyes in the back of his head. He was the President, but for one awful moment it had seemed quite reasonable that he was the beggar instead, sitting on a park bench sending vibrations to the White House. Or destitute. Indigent. And dreaming of being President.

In all his life Matt had never had that sense of not being himself, of being outside himself.

He was an only child. He'd wanted to be noticed, he remembered. His father had left, and his mother was working—it was one of the depression cycles—first in a retail store, and later in a lawyer's office, so Matt didn't see her much.

He lived in a small town. Sagging brick buildings. Abandoned warehouses. If he hadn't been an athlete, on scholarship to the university, he'd never have gotten out.

But he'd always known he wouldn't stay. He wanted to be loved, yes, and to win; if he couldn't be loved, at least he could win, and then he'd be admired and respected, loved.

He had no trouble making friends. Always in a pack, leader of the pack, and the mud sliding they did and pounding down alleys, and screaming, playing with swords or wrestling with each other, rough and tumble and a lot of physical activity. And then the way of it—the girls. The girls would walk past and the boys would go quiet for a second, as if a monster had passed (they were only ten or twelve) and then erupt into screams and shouts, catcalls, and they'd jump and push each other wildly, and run like crazy, running away from the girls and running toward them, showing off. And the girls in their ankle socks, carrying schoolbooks, would turn their imperious heads and sniff. Or else, sometimes, collapse into giggles themselves and run away.

And later, in high school, he fell in love every third week, they were all so pretty. Betty and Nancy and Mary Lee. He had one girl, Lucy, and they necked and kissed and explored each other's bodies in ways his mother would have beat him for if she'd known.

One day he heard his father had died, this father whom he had never met. He called Lucy and took her out into the woods behind the school and kissed her fiercely. He felt her breasts and put his hand up her skirt, while she squirmed and twisted in delicious horror, as his hand went up into her underpants.

“Stop,” she whispered. “I'll get pregnant.” He felt angry. He was hot, a demon then, and he came all over her, pumping himself clean between her frightened legs, and when he got up from the woodsy, earth-smelling forest floor, he stood looking down at her. He was a man! He wanted to crow. But she burst into tears. She kept smoothing her dress with tight little gestures and looking at him with aggrieved eyes. “Why did you do that?” she asked again and again—as if he had done something to her. And, “There's a stain on my dress. What will my mother say?”

He didn't care what her mother said. Suddenly he disliked Lucy. He held out his hand, though, and pulled her to her feet and put one arm around her and told her everything would be all right. And walked her to the corner where she lived. He left her. He went to his room in his own house and jerked off. Afterward, she began to talk about marriage.