“You’re not saying anything.”
“Well this was your idea.”
She adjusts her placemat, making sure the lines are parallel, flush with the lines of the table itself. His side of the table is a mess, twisted napkins deformed out of his nervousness at the encounter
“You could have given me a little notice”
“Well it’s not my fault you never read any of my emails”
The table is pristine, cold. Food untouched. The president, puts his napkin on the table and begins to stand.
“Where are you going, Jack?”
“I’m coming over there”
It’s a long table, plenty of distance between the two of them
“No you’re not. Jack, you come near me and I’m out of here.”
It’s an awkward moment, Jack half-standing, afraid to approach the woman and too proud to sit down. He throws his napkin aside, it lands in an aquarium, sinking slowly, the fish pecking at the crumbs which unsettle from the cloth itself.
“God dammit Margaret, this is our last night together!”
She can feel the confrontation, one had so many times in the past, coming on. She reaches down, picks up her purse, removes a phone, begins dialing. Jack stands silent, nothing to be done, the intimacy is gone, destroyed by his soon to be ex-wife’s invitation of someone on the other end of the line. But there’s something to be done. He stomps toward her, she stands in response. They wrestle over the phone, their grunts sounding over the sound of the line ringing, ringing.
“Hello?”
They stop to consider the new development. Jack reinitiates the struggle.
“Bring the car around,” calls Margaret into the phone.
“Don’t you dare,” calls Jack.
He can already feel the weakness of his words.
“Right away, miss.”
The struggle is over. Margaret adjusts her hair. Misaligned from the encounter. Jack stands with the phone. She extends her hand. He places it in hers. They lock eyes. He looking for a sign of warmth. Something from the past. She looks right through him.
“Best take that napkin out lest the fish overfeed themselves.”
She places the phone back in her purse. Leaves the room. Out the door. Out of his life. Jack looks around the room. His plate is the only one that has been touched. Her place is immaculate.
Like she was never even present.
He goes to the aquarium.
Retrieves the napkin.
Wrings it out.
A door opens.
It’s the chauffer.
She steps inside of the limo.
Taking his hand.
Two perfectly manicured hands touching in a gesture of couthness.
She sits in the limo.
Now she has the next twenty-five years of her life to consider.
Already considered though.
Considered for years.
In solitude.
A slave to his wishes.
She makes a cup of ice.
Prepares to pour herself a drink.
The limo pulls away.
She reconsiders.
That was the old her. The one not in control of her life.
She recorks the bottle.
Places a piece of ice in her mouth.
Bites down.
“Driver?”
A little muffled through the pieces of ice.
“Yes ma’am.”
“The bookstore.”
“Yes ma’am.”
A hand reaches for a bookshelf.
It’s a directory.
The hand of a reporter.
At his desk.
3AM.
The place buzzing.
The news never stops.
“Hello, this is Morris Steinbeck of the New York Times.”
Flipping through the directory.
The cap of a sharpie pen in his mouth.
Multitasking.
Big story.
Presidential divorce.
First ever.
What’s the angle to take?
New prospects for the president?
Legalistic precedents?
Follow your gut, Morris
The story is with the woman
“Mr. Thompson? I was wondering if you could give me some information on your daughter’s course for the future?”
“Plans? Dreams?”
“Hello?”
Click.
No worries, many more names in the directory.
Puts the phone down. It rings right away.
“She’s gone where? Barnes and Noble?”
Gets sharpie marker on his face as he scrambles to write the address down on a legal pad
The pen dancing across the paper.
Now another pen dancing across paper.
“Sign here”
A signature.
“And here”
Another
“And again here”
Jack Crawford is dying to get out of this situation
“Only a few more of these to finalize the separation”
Jack stands up.
“No more”
“We’re divorced. The whole world knows, you don’t need me to sign anything else.”
“Any more signatures have one of my assistants do it”
A weasel-like man, takes his papers, in a briefcase, leaves the room.
Jack alone with his lawyer.
“Can we go visit the troops, you know, a morale booster?”
“It’d sure get my morale up”
“I can have Jones bring Air Force One around”
“Do that”
Jack’s a sweaty mess.
He still has the napkin.
Uses it to blot the beads from his forehead.
Stuffs it in his pocket
It’s a bit of a souvenir now
Another hand goes in a pocket
Out comes a pack of chewing gum
Morris Steinbeck
Camped outside of the Barnes and Noble
Like a paparazzi
In the bushes
He sees the limo
No one else seems to notice the first lady’s presence
He’s the only one making a big deal of this
Realizes this
Gets up
Brushes himself off
Chewing, chewing
The black smudge still on his face
Walks into the bookstore
Walks through the aisles
Reminds him of his youth
Trying to relocate his mother in the supermarket
She went to the produce section, he to the sugar cereals
Got to bring the box back to her
Anyway
Not in the engineering section
Nor the fiction section
Nor the self-help section
That was his first guess
Looking for that head of grey/red hair
There it is
He walks right by, no big deal
What language was that she was reading?
Looked like Chinese
Passes by again
Definitely Chinese
English too
Something about spirituality
It’s a text
She’s in the philosophy section
It’s Chinese in her hand now, before Morris got here it was a yoga book
She’s just sort of wandering
She takes a few books, all a bit mystic and eastern to the counter to purchase. Stands behind a customer
Sees a small note card, a flier?
Posted to a column in the bookstore
Next Tuesday!
In store readings, poems, speeches
Open mic
Isn’t today Tuesday?
Could be a sign
She always did want to be a public speaker
So many years polishing Jack’s words for him
Letting him be her mouth.
This could be an opportunity. She looks around. Puts her books on a cart. Someone else will deal with those. Sees the podium. There on the other side of the bookstore. A small gathering. What will she say? Needs to make a bold statement. What’s the procedure here? She makes her way across the space. So strange not to have the press, the white house staff all following her every move. No, just the limo driver outside and the occasional secret service man. But she needs to detach herself from even those people. All part of the past. Part of his past.
Someone bent over a clipboard. Signing his name. She does the same.
She takes a seat amongst the others. It’s not a great attendance. Someone has been very optimistic about the turnout. By her count, there’s a three to one ratio of chairs to people. There’s an older gentleman quietly dragging his eyes across some words he has scribbled on a paper. On the other side of the aisle, there’s a younger man bouncing in his chair. He reminds her of the beat poets from her youth. Probably this one’s into rap music. Or do they call it hip-hop? Never even heard of the beat generation, she’d wager.
At the podium a man gets up to speak.
Morris has taken a seat amongst the crowd
“Open format here folks”
“Free form speaking. Please refrain from any obscenities”
This is what Margaret wants
Something relaxing
Calming
Though she’s not sure about the slam poet nearby
He’s got her a little on edge
Just waiting to send his words like daggers all over this bookstore
Morris is taking it all in
The moment
The bookstore
The smell of paper
That dry, musky scent of freshly inked canvas
You come to the bookstore for that scent
Hope you can buy one book and take the smell home with you
But you can’t
It’d take thousands to get your home smelling like that
So he scribbles
He’s moving ahead of the scene
Anticipating the first lady’s next move
Will she speak
Is she here to listen to a specific person
(No one specific noted on the agenda)
Who’s first on the list?
Not the rapper, though he’s clearly ready to go
No
The older gent
Calmly walks to the front
Arranges his papers on the podium
You can feel a day of his life in each word of the poem he’s about to read
Feel the days before he reads it
A single poem
A month of his life
He begins
“My tonsils”
The audience in rapt attention
“They were taken from me when I was young, before I could make the decision as an adult”
“To seize them”
“Tear them from my body”
“And so it goes”
“The years tearing away”
“My eyesight”
Morris trying desperately to get the whole poem down
Maybe he’ll lead with this
(Unless she speaks)
“My hair”
“My ears”
“My erections”
“Oh well”
“At least I still have my appendix”
One laugh from the back of the audience as he makes his way back to his seat
Goes back to the podium
He forgot to say thank you
“Thank you”
Margaret locks eyes with the old man
She’s certain that he’ll recognize her
Doesn’t
Or if he does he’s hiding it
Just a glance and a tip of an imaginary hat that isn’t there
The beat poet takes the podium
That’s what she thinks of him
He’s a beat poet for his generation even if he doesn’t know the term
“War”
“Thrust on my senses like a homer driven for the fences”
She squirms a little in her seat
This is political
He’s talking about her life
The people she knows
Knew
“I hear shrapnel and clusters and bunker bomb busters”
“I hear screaming and clinging and noises that linger”
“I hear engines and motors and the sound of the rotors”
“Of the death in the night, of the carnage before light”
Maybe not Jack
He’s not a war president
He’s just angry at the news
In general
Morris scribbling down in a fury
He’s threatening to take the attention away from the rapper
His pencil is that loud
“And I bring home to my baby, thinking maybe, the day will be, this play will be”
“Mine for the acting, not for reacting”
“Mine for the taking, and I won’t be shaking”
He’s pacing now, pulled the microphone off of the podium
(Like nobody was expecting it)
(Shouldn’t he be hanging out with his friends?)
(Isn’t the crowd a little old for his target audience?)
There’s no other open mic nights tonight
“As I grasp life its trophy”
“Its trophy”
“That’s me”
“I see”
“In the shine of that trophy”
He throws the mic down on the ground
Margaret stifles a snicker
Don’t laugh, Margaret, you’re next
What are you going to say?
No plan whatsoever
Just to let the words come forth
She stands before the host reads her name
“Margaret Thompson”
Uses her maiden name
Keeps from being a dead giveaway
She’s still shocked no one has said anything
Morris practically has a seizure when he sees her stand, hears her name
Can’t believe he’s getting an exclusive on the first moments of her new life
She walks to the podium
Funny how the others have warmed her
Calmed her
She’s feeling far more organic
More at one with the Universe
Remembering the dinner
The artifice
“I don’t know about any of you”
“But I’m coming from an awfully dark place”
She feels like a preacher
Not a televangelist
But a negro preacher
Waiting for the “uh-huh!” to come sounding from the audience
“And it’s taken me quite some time”
“Quite some time”
“To realize that there’s no light out there that’s going to light this darkness”
“I’ve looked for the light all over”
“In laws made by others, books written by others”
“In drinking, in games”
“And I’m just now coming to see that I am the light that will purge my own darkness”
The hip-hop youngster, eyes totally transfixed on her every word
(Morris too)
“And I’m just now coming to see that we all are the light”
“Each of us”
“And so I say, bathe your thoughts in that light”
“Wash your home and your loved ones in it”
“I do not know how strong this light will become”
“But I know that it will be stronger yet”
“Thank you”
Jack holds his hair down
Immaculately sculpted
But even his hair gel can’t withstand the engines of Air Force One bearing down
Walks across the tarmac
His chief of staff at his side
Explaining schedules
Rattling off names
All Jack can think about is hanging out with some honest to goodness men
Talking about fucking and drinking
He served in the air force
He knows the language
He likes that warm space of bravado and vulgarity mixed with a hint of kindness
Though he’s just looking for the former tonight
