The Unfolding, page 5
“How are you holding up?”
Eisner is standing in front of her.
“No idea. You?”
“I’m fine,” he says. “No skin in the game. Game being the operative word.”
“Pretty big game if that’s what it is. I’ve never seen people act so strangely. It’s like I’m missing something. Is it really the end of the world? Armageddon comes to Phoenix?”
“It’s a big deal. But is the world coming to an end? It depends on what your world is. For some people the world just got started.” He takes off his shoes and socks, and stands at the edge of the water. “Put your toe in,” he says, dipping his own into the water. “It’s warm.”
She laughs. “Are you being metaphorical?”
“No,” he says. “I’m trying to entertain you; you look very sad.”
“I found the expressions on their faces very upsetting. I’ve never seen my father look like that. Stricken.”
They are quiet.
Meghan goes to the edge of the water, takes her shoes off, and walks down the first two steps, splashing heavily. “See, I can have fun.”
“Advantage dress,” he says, rolling up his pant legs and joining her on the steps. “Should we?” he asks.
“Should we what?”
“Go for a swim?” he asks, unbuttoning his shirt. “The water is warm. There’s no one here. And it is the same pool Marilyn Monroe swam in.” He unzips his pants and steps out of them.
“Very convenient that you happen to have a swimsuit on,” she says. He’s wearing black knit boxers and has a good body for an older guy. He plunges into the pool and swims off.
“There might be a molecule of Marilyn Monroe left in here,” he says when he surfaces at the other end.
Meghan pulls her dress over her head and goes in. She’s never done anything crazy like this before; well, maybe she has with friends, but never with a strange man, in a strange place, after such a strange day.
She swims back and forth and back and forth doing flip turns and several laps before she meets him in the deep end.
“Better?” he asks.
“Yes.”
She loves to swim. She loves the water on her skin; she loves that despite the strangeness of everything she is back in her body and it feels familiar. They are like mermaids in the water—except that one is a merman.
The blue lights turn the pool into a lagoon, a dream.
He takes a mouthful of water and spits it at her. “I christen you with the waters of Marilyn Monroe.”
She laughs. As weird as the rest of the day has been, this is magical. She thinks of herself as a woman in a foreign film.
“Look at you,” he says, pointing to her reflection in a mirrored planter on the pool deck. Her hair is wet and slicked back, her face lit from below by the pool light. “There is hope, possibility, a future. Look at me,” he says. “I’m twenty-five years older than you, that’s five more elections. Mark this moment. You have lost your political virginity. You are baptized.”
“Wait, how old are you?”
“Forty-three.”
He is standing very close to her and there’s the sense that something could happen, but then she dives under, turning double somersaults underwater. She pops up far away, in the middle of the pool. “To somersaults,” she says, turning circles underwater, then breaking the surface. “I feel out of my mind. It has been the longest day ever.”
After a while, they get out, grab towels from the stack by the cabana, dry off, and put their clothing back on. She slips her soggy bra off and leaves it tucked into a planter. They go back into the hotel and get into the elevator, skin covered in goose bumps, clean with the scent of chlorine.
“I’d invite you to—”
“I have to get up early,” Meghan says, cutting him off. She’s not sure if he’s a making a pass and doesn’t want to find out. “Flying back.”
“Well then, goodbye for now,” he says.
She walks down the hall to her room, her head high and wrapped in a towel turban. She likes him all the more because he lets her go.
She unlocks the door, slips in quietly, and peeks into her parents’ room. Her mother is fast asleep, lying on the bed fully clothed, her shoes neatly side by side on the floor, with the red, white, and blue flickering light of the television replay bouncing off the walls.
She assumes her father is still at the bar downstairs. She covers her mother with the bedspread and goes to sleep in the other room.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
The Biltmore Hotel
Phoenix, Arizona
4:30 a.m.
Her father wakes her before the sun comes up. “Something to eat before you go? They have twenty-four-hour room service.”
“I’m still stuffed from last night,” Meghan says.
She’d been dreaming that she was riding a bike through one snowy village after another and asking people as she passed through if the next town was going to be the “real thing.”
“I’m sure you’re exhausted,” he says. “Baptism by fire. We didn’t win, but it was a real indoctrination.” He pauses. “I got such a kick out of going to vote with you. More important, I don’t want you to worry. I’m sure you heard a lot of talk last night about the world spinning out of control. As I said to the bartender last night, ‘All men make mistakes, but you don’t want to make the same mistake twice.’ I just want you to know that I’m going to do whatever it takes to get things right.”
“I know.”
“It’s important to see how the process works—and that you definitely did. I’m talking too much; you need to wash your face and get going. The car will be here soon.”
She gets up, noticing how little her body disrupted the bed. She brushes her teeth and packs her bag, stuffing the little bear from the hotel and the baby products in with her clothes.
Her father is in the sitting area between the two rooms; the television is on, volume off.
“Are you up for the day?” Meghan asks him.
“No doubt,” he says. He’s wearing a hotel bathrobe over his pajamas, so at some point during the night, he must have changed. “I might take myself downstairs for breakfast or to the pool for an early swim.” He pulls a hundred-dollar bill from the pocket of his robe. “Travel money.”
“I have money.”
“The only money you have is what I put in your bank account. Just take it; buy yourself something at the airport, a magazine or a chocolate bar. Your mother is still sleeping, but go in and give her a kiss.”
Dutifully, she goes into her parents’ bedroom. Her mother is now under the covers, so Meghan can’t tell if she ever changed out of her party clothes. “Bye, Mom; I’m going back to school,” she says, as she bends to kiss her. Her mother’s face is warm and smooth.
“Bye-bye, big girl,” her mother says and rolls over. “Do you know where my eye mask is?”
She hands her mother the pink satin mask, which was lost between the pillows.
“Here you go. One day I hope I have an eye mask just like yours.”
“Christmas is coming soon,” her mother says. “Travel safe.”
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
The Biltmore Hotel
Phoenix, Arizona
5:30 a.m.
After Meghan leaves, her father puts the Do Not Disturb sign on the door, the room key in his pocket, and goes off for a swim in the hotel’s famous pool. He wears his trunks under his bathrobe and travels barefoot because he thinks hotel slippers make him look like an old lady.
He will swim in any pool, in every pool. He swims in every town, in every city, in every country he visits. He believes something is learned by taking the local waters. This was something he did as a boy with his father. Wherever they traveled, they took the waters; his father also took the liquor and the ladies. If there was a city with notable waters but he had no business there, his father started one. Hot Springs, Arkansas. Sharon Springs, New York, which he liked because that was where the Vanderbilts went. Saratoga Springs was a favorite because they also had horses and he could gamble. Sutherland Springs, Hot Wells. Mineral Wells in Texas, where a man could “drink his way to health.” And Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, the same place George Washington had once taken the waters—that’s what he remembers.
The Phoenix pool area is perfectly manicured, undisturbed and empty. Perfection. He goes to the deep end, curls his feet over the words No Diving, and makes a smooth racer’s plunge into the water. Swimming is liberation. In the water he becomes an inventor, a superhero, a man capable of anything. He swims laps envisioning himself as a rescuer of those lost at sea; he swims laps and imagines what he still might do in life. His thoughts unspool; his energy increases; he feels flush with ideas about what should happen next.
He swims until he can swim no more, then he rests against the back of the pool and does a round of water exercises before getting out, taking care to slick back what’s left of his hair. He puts the thick white bathrobe on and pads back up to the room.
His wife is still sleeping. She is flat on her back, pink satin eye mask on, her head on the matching travel pillow. The scale of the pillow, the motionless nature of her position, reminds him of seeing people in coffins with a small satin pillow tucked under the head. The reminder of her life is her breathing. She doesn’t snore—she puffs. With each exhalation, her lips purse—and puff, as if she were saying, “Un peu, un peu,” again and again. When her lips are dry and tight, they’re like a perfect puckered asshole. He’s mentioned it to her—the puffing, not the asshole.
He watches her. Her puffs shift from sleeptalking in French to a kitten purring and then to the strange wheeze and click of a respirator.
He gets up, opens the blinds, and lets the day in. His wife doesn’t stir. He sits in a chair by the window waiting, wondering if she drank and took a sleeping pill. At ten a.m., when his own sense of the day leaking away gets to him, he goes over and shakes her shoulder gently. “Anybody home?”
“I’m here. I’ve been here the whole time.”
Does she remember Meghan leaving at five a.m.? Does she want room service? Does she want to go for a swim before they leave? It might wake her up.
“Just coffee.”
He calls downstairs for coffee. His wife lies there, looking up at the ceiling, still not having moved.
“Did you sleep well?”
“Like a corpse,” she says.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Sky Harbor International Airport
Phoenix, Arizona
6:30 a.m.
In the Phoenix airport gift shop, Meghan buys herself a necklace, a silver phoenix rising. She writes in her journal: “The morning flight back to Washington is like being a passenger on Lincoln’s funeral train. I am surrounded by the grief-stricken and bedraggled. As we boarded, someone said, ‘It’s like the last flight out of Saigon.’ People laughed but I don’t know why. The guy next to me is either a reporter or insane. He has a stack of thin spiral notebooks with words scrawled everywhere; his tray table is down, and he’s typing frantically. One of the men is calling the stewardess Cindy even though her name tag says Katherine. ‘You’re Cindy to me,’ the man says. ‘You look like Cindy McCain, only younger, like you could be her daughter.’ ”
Meghan overhears two women talking. “I went up there last night; the door was open. ‘Close the door behind you,’ he said. ‘It’s not a fucking open house.’ ‘It’s a shiva call,’ I said. ‘Leave it to the Jew to make a joke.”
“My feet are a mess from having to wear serious shoes for so many months—I’ll probably need surgery. Bunions.”
The reporter sitting next to her stops typing and turns to her. “Are you writing it down?”
She looks at him. “Pardon?”
“Are you writing down what they’re saying? That’s what they call human interest or material for Saturday Night Live.”
“I got some of it,” she says. “I’m journaling.”
“Nice,” he says. “I’m journalisting. I have to have the story ready by the time we land.”
She lifts the shade and presses her cheek against the cold glass, looking out into the infinite.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
The Biltmore Hotel
Phoenix, Arizona
10:40 a.m.
“It’s a giant fuckup,” the Big Guy mutters to Charlotte as they are checking out of the hotel. “I sent John a message this morning. It’s not his error alone; whoever suggested that Palin woman to him should be court-martialed. If you want to appeal to women voters, don’t pick an idiot. It was more of an insult than anything else.”
“Is that what you said in your note?” she asks.
“Of course not. I said he’d run a strong race and that we are living in interesting times. Sweet and simple.”
She nods.
The front desk clerk hands him a copy of the bill. He takes a good look at it.
“There’s an error,” he tells the man at the desk. “The lunch we had yesterday was not $137. I suspect I know what happened—they charged me for the banana split that we didn’t order but that was sent gratis.”
“Of course,” the desk clerk says. “One moment.” He clicks away at the keys and reprints the bill. “I have removed the ice cream and also the glass of wine as a courtesy. It was lovely having you with us.”
“Thanks, kid,” he says, taking out his Montblanc pen to sign the bill.
At the edge of the hotel driveway, a man is selling McCain/Palin hats—limited-time special, two for one or five for two. He’s made himself a cardboard sign: “Please help. I put my whole paycheck into these hats and it’s only Wednesday.”
“Poor slob,” Charlotte says.
The Big Guy has the driver stop the car. He opens the window and gives the man twenty dollars. “How many do you want?” the man asks.
“I don’t want the hats. Buy yourself a cup of coffee.”
The plane leaves at noon. The people in the airport look the same as they would have on any other day. There is no sense of change, of shock, or even of great joy, which would at least give him something to react to. He wants there to be a difference; he wants people to know something has changed and act accordingly. But it all goes on as usual. The flight from Phoenix to Palm Springs is short. Charlotte has a drink on the plane regardless. He watches her unscrew the miniature bottle of vodka, pour it over ice, and add the smallest splash of club soda. She drinks it with urgency, as if time were running out.
In Palm Springs, walking through the airport, he carries their heavy wool coats over his arm; his-and-hers pelts of defeat.
“Did the altitude get to your ears?” Charlotte asks.
“No, it did not.”
At the house, Charlotte waits patiently while he searches for the key. He’s never liked carrying keys, so at every house the key is hidden under a rock. The problem is that just outside this house there’s an outdoor rock garden with a hundred rocks.
“Pick the one that looks like it’s got something to hide,” Charlotte says.
“I asked Craig to get things ready,” he says, finding the key and opening the door. Every place they go has a set of caretakers, house watchers who turn things on and off in their absence.
He walks in, drops his bags, and begins to undress, removing his shoes, socks, shirt, and pants and leaving a trail of clothing behind him as he walks to the sliding glass doors overlooking the golf course. By the time he reaches the glass, he’s buck naked. He unlatches the door and steps outside, picking up speed as he nears the water. He hurls himself at the pool, cannonballing into the water. It’s his way of announcing his arrival.
“Holy mother of god,” he shouts, as he comes back to the surface.
He exits the pool as though ejected. “It’s a fucking ice bucket. Why can’t he get something as simple as heating the pool right? I could have had a heart attack. Right then and there I could have bought the big one.”
“Always good to dip a toe in first,” Charlotte says.
“The toe should have already been dipped. That’s what those phone calls are about. Make sure to turn the pool on by Sunday so it’s warm for our arrival.”
“Maybe the heater is broken.”
“Maybe people are morons. Why doesn’t anyone do their fucking job?”
“You mean why doesn’t anyone do it the way you would do it?”
“That’s what I said.”
“I knew this would happen,” she says. “You can see it coming from across the river like a thunderstorm.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You were fine all day yesterday, and then as soon as we’re on our own back at the house, just the two of us alone, you lose it.”
“What’s your point?” he asks aggressively.
“Nothing,” she says.
“If I were you, I wouldn’t say more.”
She looks perplexed. “Why shouldn’t I?”
“Now isn’t the time.”
“I have no idea what you’re getting at.”
“I advise you to leave it for now.” He takes a breath. “The world is going to hell and I am not pleased.”
“You’re mad at the world and somehow it’s my fault?”
“I didn’t say that.” He picks up his clothing.
“But at the moment I’m a contributing factor.” She pauses. “I don’t have the energy for this.”
“Because of the drinking or the drugs?”
“Pardon me?”
“You don’t have the energy because of the drinking or the drugs?” It’s the first time he’s mentioned it.
