Sixty Days and Counting

Frank went over to the Optimodal Health Club just after six, waved to Diane on the elliptical in the next room, and stomped up the stairmaster for the equivalent of about a thousand vertical feet. After that he showered and dressed, getting into one of his ‘nicer’ shirts for the occasion, and met Diane out in the lobby at the appointed time. She too had changed into something nice, and for a second Frank considered the possibility that she lived out of her office and Optimodal, just as he had contemplated doing before building his treehouse. What evidence did he or anyone else have to disprove it? When they arrived in the morning she was there, when they left at night she was there. There were couches in her big office, and she went to Optimodal every morning of the week, as far as he knew.…

But then again, she certainly had a home somewhere. Everyone did, except for him. And the bros in the park. And the fregans and ferals proliferating in the metropolis. Indeed some twenty or thirty million people in America, he had read. But one thought of everyone as having a home.

Enough – it was time to refocus on the moment and their date. It had to be called that. Their second date, in fact – the first one having occurred by accident in New York, after discussing the North Atlantic project at the UN. And now they were in a Lebanese restaurant in Georgetown that Diane had recently discovered.

And it was very nice. Now they could celebrate not only the actual salting itself, but its subsequent success in restarting the thermohaline; and now, also, Diane’s invitation to become the new Presidential science advisor.

She was pleased with this last, Frank could see. ‘Tell me about it,’ he said to her when they were settled into the main course. ‘Is it a good position? I mean, what does the science advisor do?’ Did it have any power, in other words?

‘It all depends on the President,’ Diane said. ‘I’ve been looking into it, and it appears the position began as Nixon’s way of spanking the science community for publicly backing Johnson over Goldwater. He sent NSF packing out here to Arlington, and abolished his science advisory committee, and established this position. So it became a single advisor he could appoint without any consultation or approval mechanism, and then he could stick them on the shelf somewhere. Which is where these people have usually stayed, except in a few instances.’

That didn’t sound good. ‘But?’

‘Well, in theory, if a president were listening, it could get pretty interesting. I mean, clearly there’s a need for more coordination of the sciences in the federal government. We’ve seen that at NSF. Ideally there would be a cabinet post, you know, some kind of Department of Science, with a Secretary of Science.’

‘The science czar.’

‘Yes.’ She was wrinkling her nose. ‘Except that would create huge amounts of trouble, because really, most of the federal agencies are already supposed to be run scientifically, or have science as part of their subject, or in their operation. So if someone tried to start a Department of Science, it would poach on any number of other agencies, and none of them would stand for it. They would gang up on such an advisor and kill him, like they did to the so-called intelligence czar when they tried to coordinate the intelligence agencies.’

This gave Frank a chill. ‘Yeah, I guess that’s right.’

‘So, now, maybe the science advisor could act like a kind of personal advisor. You know. If we presented a menu of really robust options, and Chase chose some of them to enact, then … well. It would be the President himself advocating for science.’

‘And he might want to do that, given the situation.’

‘Yes, it seems that way, doesn’t it? Although Washington has a way of bogging people down.’

‘The swamp.’

‘Yes, the swamp. But if the swamp freezes over’ – they laughed – ‘then maybe we can iceskate over the obstacles!’

Frank nodded. ‘Speaking of which, we were supposed to be going to try iceskating down here, when the river froze over.’

‘That’s right, we were. But now we’ve got this so-called heat spell.’

‘True. Return of the Gulf Stream.’

‘That is so crazy. I bet we will get freezing spells just like before.’

‘Yes. Well, until that happens maybe we can just walk the shore then, and see where you could rent ice skates when the time comes.’

‘Sure. I think the Georgetown Rowing Club is going to do it, we can go check it out. I read they’re going to convert to a skating center when the river freezes over. They’re going to put out floodlights and boundary lines and everything.’

‘Good for them! Let’s go take a look after dinner.’

And so they finished the meal cheerfully, moving from one great Levantine dish to the next. Even the basics were exquisite: olives, hummus, dill – everything. And by the time they were done they had split a bottle of a dry white wine. They walked down to the Potomac arm-in-arm, as they had in Manhattan so very briefly; they walked the Georgetown waterfront, where the potted shrubs lining the river wall were lit by little white Christmas tree lights. All this had been overwhelmed in the great flood, and they could still see the high water mark on the buildings behind the walk, but other than that, things were much as they had been before, the river as calm as a sheet of black silk as it poured under the Key Bridge.

Then they came to the mouth of Rock Creek, a tiny little thing. Following it upstream in his mind, Frank came to the park and his treehouse, standing right over a bend in this same creek – and thus it occurred to him to think, Here you are fooling around with another woman while your Caroline is in trouble God knows where. What would she think if she saw you?

Which was a hard thought to recover from; and Diane saw that his mood had changed. Quickly he suggested they warm up over drinks.

They retired to a bar overlooking the confluence of the creek and the river, on the Georgetown side. They ordered Irish coffees. Frank warmed up again, his sudden stab of dread dispelled by Diane’s immense calmness, by the aura of reality that emanated from her. It was reassuring to be around her; precisely the opposite of the feeling he had when –

But he stayed in the moment. He agreed with Diane’s comment that Irish coffee provided the perfect compound of stimulant and relaxant, sugar and fat, hydration and warmth. ‘It must have been invented by scientists,’ she said. ‘It’s like made to a formula to hit all the receptors at once.’

Frank said, ‘I remember it’s what they always used to serve at the Salk Institute after their seminars. They’ve got a patio deck overlooking the Pacific, and everyone would go out with Irish coffees and watch the sunset.’

‘Nice.’

Later, as Frank walked her back up through Georgetown to her car, she said, ‘I was wondering if you’d be interested in joining my advisory staff. It would be an extension of the work you’ve been doing at NSF. I mean, I know you’re planning to go back to San Diego, but until then, you know … I could use your help.’

Frank had stopped walking. Diane turned and glanced up at him, shyly it seemed, and then looked away, down M Street. The stretch they could see looked to Frank like the Platonic form of a Midwestern main street, totally unlike the rest of D.C.

‘Sure,’ Frank heard himself say. He realized that in some sense he had to accept her offer. He had no choice; he was only in D.C. now because of her previous invitation to work on the climate problem, and he had been doing that for a year now. And they were friends, they were colleagues; they were … ‘I mean, I’ll have to check with my department and all first, to make sure it will all be okay at UCSD. But I think it could be really interesting.’

‘Oh good. Good. I was hoping you’d say yes.’

The next morning, at work his doorway darkened, and he swung his chair around, expecting to see Diane, there to discuss their move to the Presidential science advisors’ offices –

‘Oh! Edgardo!’

‘Hi, Frank. Hey, are you up for getting a bite at the Food Factory?’ Waggling his eyebrows Groucho-istically.

‘Sure,’ Frank said, trying to sound natural. It was hard not to look around his office as he saved and shut the file he was working on.

On the way to the Food Factory, Edgardo surreptitiously ran a wand over Frank, and gave it to Frank, who did the same for him. Then they went in and stood at a bar, noisily eating chips and salsa.

‘What is it?’

‘A friend of mine has tracked down your friend and her husband.’

‘Ah ha! And?’

‘They work for a unit of a black agency called Advanced Research and Development Agency Prime. The man’s name is Edward Cooper, and hers is Caroline Churchland. They ran a big data mining effort, which was a combination of the Total Information Awareness project and some other black programs in Homeland Security.’

‘Wait – she didn’t work for him?’

‘No. My friend says it was more like the other way around. She headed the program, but he was brought in to help when some surveillance issues cropped up. He came from Homeland Security, and before that CIA, where he was on the Afghanistan detail. My friend says the program got a lot more serious when he arrived.’

‘Serious?’

‘Some surveillance issues. My friend didn’t know what that meant. And then this attempt on the election that she tipped us to.’

‘But he worked for her?’

‘Yes.’

‘And when did they get married?’

‘About two years before he joined her project.’

‘And he worked for her.’

‘That’s what I was told. Also, my friend thinks he probably knows where she’s gone.’

‘What!’

‘That’s what he told me. On the night she disappeared, you see, there was a call from a pay phone she had used before, a call to the Khembali embassy. I take it that was to you?’

‘She left a message,’ Frank muttered, more and more worried. ‘But so?’

‘Well, there was another call from that pay phone, to a number in Maine. My friend found the address for that number, and it’s the number of your friend’s college roommate. And that roommate has a vacation home on an island up there. And the power has just been turned on for that vacation home. So he thinks that’s where she may have gone, and, as I’m sure you can see, he furthermore thinks that if he can track her that well, at his remove, then her husband is likely to be even faster at it.’

‘Shit.’ Frank’s feet were cold.

‘Shit indeed. Possibly you should warn her. I mean, if she thinks she’s hidden herself –’

‘Yeah, sure,’ Frank said, thinking furiously. ‘But another thing – if her ex could find her, couldn’t he find me too?’

‘Maybe so.’

They regarded each other.

‘We have to neutralize this guy somehow,’ Frank said.

Edgardo shook his head. ‘Do not say that, my friend.’

‘Why not?’

‘Neutralize?’ He dragged out the word, his expression suddenly black. ‘Eliminate? Remove? Equalize? Disable? DX? Disappear? Liquidate?’

‘I don’t mean any of those,’ Frank explained. ‘I just meant neutralize. As in, unable to affect us. Made neutral to us.’

‘Hard to do,’ Edgardo said. ‘I mean, get a restraining order? You don’t want to go there. It doesn’t work even if you can get one.’

‘Well?’

‘You may just have to live with it.’

‘Live with it? With what?’

Edgardo shrugged. ‘Hard to say right now.’

‘I can’t live with it if he’s trying to harm her, and there’s a good chance of him finding her.’

‘I know.’

‘I’ll have to go find her first.’

Edgardo nodded, looking at him with an evaluative expression. ‘Maybe so.’

At the Quiblers’ house in Bethesda this unsettled winter, things were busier than ever. This was mainly because of Phil Chase’s election, which of course had galvanized his Senatorial office, turning his staff into one part of a much larger transition team.

A presidential transition was a major thing, and there were famous cases of failed transitions by earlier administrations that were enough to put a spur to their rears, reminding them of the dire consequences that ineptitude in this area could have on the subsequent fates of the presidents involved. It was important to make a good running start, to craft the kind of ‘first hundred days’ that had energized the incoming administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933, setting the model for most presidents since to try to emulate. Critical appointments had to be made, bold new programs turned into law.

Phil was well aware of this challenge and its history, and was determined to meet it successfully. ‘We’ll call it the First Sixty Days,’ he said to his staff. ‘Because there’s no time to lose!’ He had not slowed down after the election; indeed it seemed to Charlie Quibler that he had even stepped up the pace, if that were possible. Ignoring the claim of irregularities in the Oregon vote – claims which had become standard in any case ever since the tainted elections at the beginning of the century – and secure in the knowledge that the American public did not like to think about troubling news of this sort no matter who won, Phil was free to forge ahead with a nonstop schedule of meetings, meetings from dawn till midnight, and often long past it. He was lucky he was one of those people who only needed a few hours of sleep a day to get by.

Not so Charlie, who was jolted out of sleep far too often by calls from his colleague Roy Anastopholous, Phil’s new chief of staff, asking him to come down to the office and pitch in.

‘Roy, I can’t,’ Charlie would say. ‘I’ve got Joe here, Anna’s off to work already, and we’ve got Gymboree.’

‘Gymboree? Am I hearing this? Charlie which is more important to the fate of the Republic, advising the President or going to Gymboree?’

‘False choice,’ Charlie would snap. ‘Although Gymboree is far more important if we want Joe to sleep well at night, which we do. You’re talking to me now, right? That’s what telephones are for. How would this change in any way if I were down there?’

‘Yeah yeah yeah yeah, hey Chucker I gotta go now, but listen you have to come in from the cold, this is no time to be baby-sitting, we’ve got the fate of the world in the balance and we need you in the office and taking one of these crucial jobs that no one else can fill as well as you can. Joe is around two right? So you can put him in the daycare down here at the White House, or anywhere else in the greater metropolitan region for that matter, but you have to be here or else you will have missed the train, Phil isn’t going to stand for someone phoning home like E.T., lost somewhere in Bethesda when the world is sinking and freezing and drowning and burning up and everything else all at once.’

‘Roy. Stop. I am talking to you like once an hour, maybe more. I couldn’t talk to you more if we were handcuffed together.’

‘Yeah it’s nice it’s sweet it’s one of the treasured parts of my day, but it’s a face business, you know that, and I haven’t seen you in months, and Phil hasn’t either, and I’m afraid it’s getting to be a case of not seen not heard.’

‘Are you establishing a climate change task force?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you going to ask Diane Chang to be the science advisor?’

‘Yes. He already did.’

‘And are you going to convene a meeting with all the reinsurance companies?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you’re proposing the legislative package to the Congress?’

This was Charlie’s big omnibus environmental bill, brought back – in theory – from death by dismemberment.

‘Of course we are.’

‘So how exactly am I being cut out? That’s every single thing I’ve ever suggested to you.’

‘But Charlie, I’m looking forward, to how you will be cut out. You’ve gotta put Joe in daycare and come in out of the cold.’

‘But I don’t want to.’

‘I gotta go you get a grip and get down here bye.’

He sounded truly annoyed. But Charlie could speak his mind with Roy, and he wasn’t going to let the election change that. And when he woke up in the morning, and considered that he could either go down to the Mall and talk policy with policy wonks all day, and get home late every night – or he could spend that day with Joe wandering the parks and bookstores of Bethesda, calling in to Phil’s office from time to time to have those same policy talks in mercifully truncated form, he knew very well which day he preferred. It was an easy call, a no-brainer. He liked spending time with Joe. With all its problems and crises, he enjoyed it more than almost anything he had ever done. And Joe was growing up fast, and Charlie could see that what he enjoyed most in their life together was only going to last until preschool, if then. It went by fast!

Indeed, in the last week or so it seemed that Joe was changing so fast that Charlie’s desire to spend time with him was becoming as much a result of worry as of desire for pleasure. It seemed he was dealing with a different kid. But Charlie suppressed this feeling, and tried to pretend to himself that it was only for positive reasons that he wanted to stay home.

Only occasionally, and for short periods, could he think honestly about this to himself. Nothing about the matter was obvious, even when he did try to think about it. Because ever since their trip to Khembalung, Joe had been a little different – feverish, Anna claimed, although only her closest ovulation-monitoring thermometer could find this fever – but in any case hectic, and irritable in a way that was unlike his earlier irritability, which had seemed to Charlie a kind of cosmic energy, a force chafing at its restraints. After Khembalung it had turned peevish, even pained.

All this had coincided with what Charlie regarded as undue interest in Joe on the part of the Khembalis, and Charlie had gotten Drepung to admit that the Khembalis thought that Joe was one of their great lamas, reincarnated in Joe’s body. That’s how it happened, to their way of thinking.

After that news, and also at Charlie’s insistence, they had performed a kind of exorcism ritual (they had not put it like that) designed to drive any reincarnated soul out of Joe, leaving the original inhabitant, which was the only one Charlie wanted in there. But now he was beginning to wonder if all that had been a good idea. Maybe, he was beginning to think, his original Joe had in fact been the very personality that the Khembalis had driven out.

Not that Joe was all that different. Anna declared his fever was gone, and he was therefore more relaxed, and that his moodiness was much as before.

Only to Charlie he was clearly different, in ways he found hard to characterize to himself – but chiefly, the boy was now too content with things as they were. His Joe had never been like that, not since the very moment of his birth, which from all appearances had angered him greatly. Charlie could still remember seeing his little red face just out of Anna, royally pissed off and yelling.

But none of that now. No tantrums, no imperious commands. He was calm, he was biddable; he was even inclined to take naps. It just wasn’t his Joe.

Given these new impressions, Charlie was not in the slightest inclined to want to put Joe in a new situation, thus confusing the issue even further. He wanted to hang out with him, see what he was doing and feeling; he wanted to study him. This was what parental love came down to, apparently, sometimes, especially with a toddler, a human being in one of the most transient and astonishing of all the life stages. Someone coming to consciousness!

But the world was no respecter of Charlie’s feelings. Later that morning his cell phone rang again, and this time it was Phil Chase himself.

‘Charlie, how are you?’

‘I’m fine, Phil, how are you? Are you getting any rest?’

‘Oh yeah sure. I’m still on my post-campaign vacation, so things are very relaxed.’

‘Uh huh, sure. That’s not what Roy tells me. How’s the transition coming?’

‘It’s coming fine, as I understand it. I thought that was your bailiwick.’

Charlie laughed with a sinking feeling. Already he felt the change in Phil’s status begin to weigh on him, making the conversation seem more and more surreal. He had worked for Phil for a long time, but always while Phil had been a senator; Charlie had long since gotten used to the considerable and yet highly circumscribed power that Phil as senator had wielded. It had become normalized, indeed had become kind of a running joke between them, in that Charlie often had reminded Phil just how completely circumscribed his power was.

Now that just wasn’t going to work. The president of the United States might be many things, but un-powerful was not among them. Many of the administrations preceding Phil’s had worked very hard to expand the powers of the executive branch beyond what the constitutional framers had intended – which campaigns made a mockery of the ‘strict constitutionalist’ talk put out by these same people when discussing what principles the Supreme Court’s justices should hold, and showed they preferred a secretive executive dictatorship to democracy, especially if the president were a puppet installed by the interested parties. But never mind; the result of their labors was an apparatus of power that if properly understood and utilized could in many ways rule the world. Bizarre but true: the president of the United States could rule the world, both by direct fiat and by setting the agenda that everyone else had to follow or be damned. World ruler. Not really, of course, but it was about as close as anyone could get. And how exactly did you joke about that?

‘Your clothes are still visible?’ Charlie inquired, oppressed by these thoughts.

‘To me they are. But look,’ passing on a full riposte, as being understood in advance – although Phil could no doubt see the comedy of omnipotence as well as the comedy of constraint – ‘I wanted to talk to you about your position in the administration. Roy says you’re being a little balky, but obviously we need you.’

‘I’m here already. I can talk twelve hours a day, if you like.’

‘Well, but a lot of these jobs require more than that. They’re in-person jobs, as you know.’

‘What do you mean, like which ones?’

‘Well, like for instance head of the EPA.’

‘WHAT?’ Charlie shouted. He reeled, literally, in that he staggered slightly to the side, then listed back to catch himself. ‘Don’t you be scaring me, Phil! I hope you’re not thinking of making appointments as stupid as that! Jesus, you know perfectly well I’m not qualified for that job! You need a first-rate scientist for that one, a major researcher with some policy and administrative experience, we’ve talked about this already! Every agency needs to feel appreciated and supported to keep esprit de corps and function at the highest levels, you know that! Isn’t Roy reminding you? You aren’t making a bunch of stupid political appointments, are you?’

Phil was cracking up. ‘See? That’s why we need you down here!’

Charlie sucked down some air. ‘Oh. Ha ha. Very funny. Don’t be scaring me like that, Phil.’

‘I was serious, Charlie. You’d be fine heading the EPA. We need someone there with a global vision of the world’s environmental problems. And we’ll find someone like that. But that wouldn’t be the best use for you, I agree.’

‘Good.’ Charlie felt as if a bullet had just whizzed by his head. He was quivering as he said, very firmly, ‘Let’s just keep things like they are with me.’

‘No, that’s not what I mean, either. Listen, can you come down here and at least talk it over with me? Fit that into your schedule?’

Well, shit. How could he say no? This was his boss, also the President of the United States, speaking. But if he had to talk to him in person about it … He sighed. ‘Yeah, yeah, of course. Your wish is my demand.’

‘Bring Joe, if you can, I’d enjoy seeing him. We can take him out for a spin on the Tidal Basin.’