"I'm at the White House now," Ralph answered. "I'm on the staff."
Gold was impressed. "How come I haven't read about you?"
"You probably have but didn't realize it," said Ralph. "I do a lot of work as a source. An unnamed source."
"Seriously?"
"Yes. You see, Bruce, I'm in the inner circle and very little of what I do gets outside. It really boosted my stock here when they found out I knew you," Ralph continued. "The President was very pleased with what you had to say."
"Tell him," said Gold, "I'm glad. Tell him I tried very hard to be fair."
"You were," said Ralph, "and he knows that. Very fair. We got lots of gushy reviews, like Lieberman's, but most of those were from people who wanted something. I can't think of any that was more pertinent and balanced than yours."
"I hope," said Gold, "that I wasn't too unsparing."
"You were just unsparing enough," Ralph reassured him. "This President welcomes criticism, Bruce, and he found your suggestions helpful. Particularly those about his sentence structure and paragraph organization. You seemed to understand him better than anyone else."
"Well, Ralph, there were a few things that did puzzle me."
"What were they, Bruce?"
"Well, frankly, Ralph—"
"Be frank, Bruce."
"Most Presidents wait until their terms are over
45
before they write their memoirs. This one seems to have started right in the day he took office."
Ralph assented with a modest laugh. "That was my idea," he admitted. "This way he had a crack at more than just one best seller. He might do one every year. That boosted my stock way up with him too."
"There was one more thing. But I decided not to go into it."
"What was that, Bruce?"
"Well, Ralph, he must have spent an awful lot of time his first year in office writing this book about his first year. Yet, nowhere in the book does he say anything about being busy writing the book."
Ralph cleared his throat softly. "That's a point I think we overlooked. I'm glad you didn't go into it."
"Where did he find the time?"
"We all pitched in and helped," Ralph replied. "Not with the writing, you understand, but with most of the other junk a President has to attend to. Every word was his own."
Gold said he understood.
"This President really knows how to delegate responsibility, Bruce. Otherwise, he never would have gotten it done. It would be a lot like Tristram Shandy trying to write down the story of his life. Bruce, remember Tristram Shandy and that paper I copied from you?"
"I certainly do," said Gold with a touch of pique. "You got a better grade than I did and even had the paper published."
"I got a better grade on all the papers I copied from you, didn't I?" Ralph reminded him. "Bruce, this President is a very busy man. He has to keep doing so many things a lot faster than he's able to write about them, even when he's doing nothing more than writing about all the things he's supposed to be doing. That's why he needs all the help he can get. Bruce, have you ever thought of working in government?"
Gold learned in that instant what a heart felt like
46
when it skipped a beat. "No," he answered steadily. "Should I?"
"It's fun, Bruce. There are lots of parties and you get lots of girls. Even actresses."
"What kind of job would I have?"
"That's difficult to say now. I'll have to ask around. But you've got the right educational background and a gift for punchy phrases I think we can use. I can't promise anything this second. But I'm sure it would be something very, very big, if you'll say you'd consider it."
"I would consider it," Gold disclosed, after a breathless pause.
"Then I'll sound out sentiment diplomatically. I'm sure it will be favorable. I keep running into Andrea Biddle Conover down here. Remember her?"
"Of course," Gold replied.
"I thought you would. She had a crush on you that year at the Foundation."
"She didn't."
"Sure, she did. Still does. I always felt there might be something between you."
"There wasn't," Gold insisted, with regret. "She never said anything."
"She was too shy."
"I always liked her."
"She always asks about you."
"How is she?"
"As nice as ever. Tall, pretty, cheerful, smart. And very, very rich, with those fine, strong, beautiful teeth."
Gold pursed his lips and whistled silently. "Give her," he said, "my best. Tell her I asked about her."
"I will," said Ralph. "Are you still married to Belle?"
"Of course."
"In that case, give her my love."
"I will. And you say hello to Sally."
Ralph said, "Sally who?"
47
"Your wife," said Gold. "Aren't you married to Sally?"
"Oh, heavens, no," Ralph replied. "I've been married to Ellie ever since my divorce from Kelly. There was that legal problem over my annulment from Norah, but Nellie, thank the Lord—"
"Ralph, wait, for Chrissakes!" It was in self-defense that Gold protested. "You're boggling my mind."
"What was that?" Ralph asked in surprise.
"You're boggling my mind."
"Bruce, that's a good phrase," Ralph cried crisply. "Damned good. I don't think I've ever heard boggle used with an animate subject before. I'll bet all of us down here can start getting mileage out of that one right away. That is, of course, if you don't mind letting us have it."
"Ralph—"
"Excuse me a minute, Bruce. I want to get it down exactly the way you said it. How did it go?"
"You're boggling my mind."
"I preferred it the first way."
"That was the first way."
"I guess it's good enough." Ralph sounded disappointed. "Now what was it you wanted to say to me?"
"Ralph, you're boggling my mind."
"That's the way!" Ralph exclaimed.
"It's the same way!" Gold retorted.
"You're right, Bruce. I'm glad we didn't lose it. How, Bruce? How am I boggling your mind?"
"With your Nellies and your Kellys and your Norahs and your EUies. I thought you and Sally were so right for each other."
"We were," Ralph answered, sounding puzzled.
"Wasn't the marriage working?"
"Oh, yes." Ralph was emphatic. "We had a perfect marriage."
"Then why did you get a divorce?"
"Well, Bruce, to put it plainly, I couldn't see much point in tying myself down to a middle-aged woman
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with four children, even though the woman was my wife and the children were my own. Can you?"
Seldom had Gold come to a conclusion so swiftly.
"Be sure to tell Andrea Conover I was thrilled to hear about her," he said. "And that I hope we'll bump into each other soon."
"I'll get back to you quickly."
"Please."
Gold's pulse raced with excitement. He had visions. He knew he was ten times more intelligent than Ralph and could go one thousand times farther in government if ever he got a foot in. And if Ralph could get married to Ellie after his divorce from Kelly after that trouble over the annulment from Norah or Nellie, there was no reason in the world he must stay married to Belle.
Gold had just captured this point in his deliberations when his telephone rang again.
"It looks good, Bruce," Ralph declared happily. Not more than five minutes had passed, and Gold could picture Ralph sounding out sentiment diplomatically with a shout down a corridor. Except that Ralph was too well-bred to shout. "You're really boggling my mind the way you're boggling everyone's mind with those phrases of yours. First 'contemporary universal constituency' and now this 'you're boggling my mind.' I tried it out on a couple of people and it boggled their minds. We all feel it would be a good idea to start using you here as quickly as possible if we decide we want to use you
at all."
"What kind of job would I have?"
"Any one you want," Ralph replied, "depending on what's open at the time we take you on. We have lots of turnover."
"Oh, come on, Ralph," Gold disagreed pleasantly. "You can't mean that?"
Ralph seemed faintly puzzled again. "Why not?"
"A Senator?"
"That's elective."
49
"An ambassador?"
"Not right away. At the start, we'll want you in Washington. You see, Bruce, we have a very big need for college professors, and we can't go back to Harvard after all they've done. The country wouldn't stand for it."
"How's Columbia?"
"Still clean. I don't think anyone here associates Columbia with anything intellectual. And Brooklyn, of course, is perfect."
"What would I have to do?"
"Anything you want, as long as it's everything we tell you to say and do in support of our policies, whether you agree with them or not. You'll have complete freedom."
Gold was confused. He said delicately, "I can't be bought, Ralph."
"We wouldn't want you if you could be, Bruce," Ralph responded. "This President doesn't want yes-men. What we want are independent men of integrity who will agree with all our decisions after we make them. You'll be entirely on your own."
"I think I might fit in," Gold decided.
"I'm glad. Gosh, it will be good being together again, Bruce, won't it? Remember all those great times we used to have?" Gold could remember no great times with Ralph. "We'll want to move ahead with this as speedily as possible, although we'll have to go slowly. At the moment, there's nothing to be done."
"I'll need some time anyway," Gold volunteered obligingly. "I'll have to prepare for a leave of absence."
"Of course. But don't say anything about it yet. We'll want to build this up into an important public announcement, although we'll have to be completely secret." Gold listened for some signal of jocularity in Ralph's voice. He listened in vain. "If the appointment we give you is unpopular," Ralph went on in the same informative way, "we'll start getting criticism about it even before we announce it. If the appointment is popular, we'll run right into tremendous opposition
50
from the other party and from our own left, right, and center. That's why it's good you're a Jew."
That word Jew fell with a crash upon Gold's senses. "Why, Ralph?" he managed to say. "Why is it good to have someone . . . who is Jewish?"
"That will make it easier at both ends, Bruce," Ralph explained with no change of tone. "Jews are popular now and people don't like to object to them. And a Jew is always good to get rid of whenever the right wing wants us to."
Gold said nonchalantly, "You're being rather blunt about that, Ralph, aren't you?"
"Well, Bruce, it's better than adopting their policies, isn't it?" Ralph breezed on innocently, missing the point of Gold's objection. "And that's the time we can make you an ambassador, if there's a good European country open that needs one. Or we can make you head of NATO if you'd like."
"Ralph, are you serious? Could I really be head of NATO?"
"I don't see why not."
"I have no military experience."
"I really don't think that matters, Bruce. Don't forget, there are other countries in NATO. I'm sure they have people who know about things like that."
Gold saw no profit in disagreement. "I think I'd rather be an ambassador," he decided.
"Whatever you choose. But that's looking far ahead. I'll get back to you immediately, Bruce, although it might take time. Just try not to think about it. Don't phone me here. They don't like personal calls."
Five days passed during which Gold found it impossible to think of anything else. At the start of the second week, an evil thought entered Gold's mind and refused to depart, a perversive blot of caustic wisdom first obtained by him as a sullen insult from a student to whom he had given a failing grade the semester before.
"Don't trust Whitey."
The more Gold speculated on his conversation with
51
Ralph, the more he inclined toward the ambassadorship in preference to command of NATO. Military life did not appeal to him: he was not comfortable near explosives. And military prestige was of little weight outside the camping grounds. Neither position, he was forced to remind himself, was a probability. Ralph had guaranteed nothing. Belle had declared stoutly that she would not move to Washington with him if he took a job there, and he was relying on her to keep her word.
An ambassadorship, though, would be lovely, he fancied in periods of luxurious reverie that reappeared between his longer spells of uneventful disappointment. He could easily imagine himself in extravagant quarters in Kensington, Mayfair, or Belgravia, married now not to Belle but to some languorous, exquisite, young blond Englishwoman of noblest birth. She was a floating seraph of ageless and ethereal beauty who brought him tea with sugar cubes on a tray. She was tall and gracefully round-shouldered, had thin limbs, pale, pearly skin, and narrow violet-blue eyes of fascinating depth and brightness, and she adored him. He, for his part, could take her or leave her alone. She never spoke. She wasn't Jewish. They had separate bedrooms with many sitting rooms and dressing rooms in between. He wore elegant silk dressing gowns all day long. His breakfast was brought to him in bed.
When a second week went by without word from Ralph, Gold got to work on the book he owed Pomoroy and the digest of that book he owed Lieberman. He wondered which to do first.
His mother was dead and he could write about her: a young woman, a girl, really, with Sid, who was just a child, and Rose, who was even younger, emigrating from an inhospitable Russian countryside with that young cockalorum of a husband—good God, was he that way even then?—to live in this alien land and die before she was fifty. He had forgotten that Rose was born in Europe too. His mother had never learned English well enough to read it or to understand much when the children were talking to each other. He
52
recalled that long period when her neck was swaddled in odorous bandages—was it goiter? He would have to ask. And he was ashamed to be seen with her in the street. Now, people were emigrating north from Puerto Rico, Haiti, and Jamaica. Blacks had moved down from Harlem and were overflowing into groups interloping from the South and West, and Gold felt besieged and invaded, his safety eroding, his position marginal and impermanent.
His marriage to Belle was just about dead, and he could abstract from that—if he ever learned what those words meant. He did not know what was intended when people complained their marriage was dead or that it was no longer a real marriage. Were marriages ever different? Or was it that people and their surroundings had changed, and that every change had been for the worse? Gold had a thought for another article. On a slip of paper he printed:
EVERY CHANGE IS FOR THE WORSE
by
Bruce Gold
He pinned the slip to the bulletin board above the desk in his studio and began making notes for that work too while he waited to hear from Ralph.
53
Ill
Every Change Is for the Worse
JL HEY had all come together some thirty years earlier at Columbia University in New York, Ralph arriving late with an undergraduate degree from Princeton, Pomoroy departing early without his doctorate after completing his course work and passing his oral examinations. Appraising his talents and wants realistically, Pomoroy had wisely terminated all thought of producing a dissertation on a subject of no authentic appeal, and gone off to find the best job he could. He began as an editorial assistant with a small textbook firm. Now he was executive editor with a larger, general publishing company, where he would likely prosper and remain.
Pomoroy was the editor Lieberman sped to whenever he had still another soiled clump of hastily written pages he felt certain would make an important book, and Pomoroy was the editor who always spurned him first. Lieberman had started one novel, th
ree autobiographies, and several searching studies of current prob-
57
lems he believed indispensable to people charged with solving them. Gold went to Pomoroy only when his chances were better than elsewhere. Pomoroy was no fool.
Harris Rosenblatt, another Jewish acquaintance of the period, was a plodding, unimaginative dumbbell who had come to college from a private school in Manhattan that required students to wear blazers and to have their hair cut and combed trimly and their necks and ears washed. By steadfast drudgery, Harris Rosenblatt had made it through Columbia College with honors and then had fled from graduate work in less than a year before the lengthening threat of unavoidable failure. He married shortly afterward and went to work in some arcane department of an investment house controlled by his wife's family—he himself was incapable of describing what that department did. There he excelled, at work he did not understand and whose meaning he could not apprehend, and he was now a respected adviser to Presidents on national fiscal matters, to whom he always impartially made the same terse recommendation: "Balance the budget." And for these few words, Harris Rosenblatt was regarded in elite business and social circles with something approaching veneration.
Harris Rosenblatt had found, in Pomoroy's acerbic depiction, his ideal habitat, the only one, in Darwinian terms, in which he was fit to survive: three pounds of human brain mass dumped immovably on an area of financial specialization too minute to be defined, in a cranny too obscure to admit any irritating rays of light. It was Harris Rosenblatt, Gold suspected, who had arranged for Lieberman's invitation to the White House at the time of the Vietnam war. Not many people other than the President allowed Lieberman into their homes for dinner. If the White House was going to be so unparticular, Lieberman was not the person to dismiss the opportunity.