“Your generation,” Cass said to Terry and Randy. “Not mine.”
Terry looked up from his Chiang Kai-shek chicken. “I suppose yours would do the right thing? Dream on. Every generation thinks it’s the most put upon in history. You’ve got your panties in a twist fretting about the deficit. My generation had real crises.”
“Oh, please,” Cass said. “Here it comes. Where were you when JFK was shot? If I hear one more Baby Boomer tell me, in mind-numbing detail, I think I’ll throw up.”
“I was in eighth grade,” Randy said. “We’d just come back from gym and-”
Cass said, “Prosecution rests.”
“It was a big deal,” Randy said. “What does your generation have to match it? The day Paris Hilton’s Sidekick was stolen?”
“Why is your generation so obsessed with itself?” Cass said. “You don’t think it was just as traumatic for all concerned when FDR died? After four years of a devastating world war?”
“Who’s FDR?” Terry said, winking at Randy.
“Sorry,” Cass said, not rising to the bait. “I forgot that Boomers don’t care about anything that happened before 1946.”
Terry said, “That’s right. We were too busy dealing with one disaster after another. JFK, RFK, Martin Luther King, Vietnam-”
“Vietnam…remind me, was that the war that eighty percent of your generation dodged?”
“It wasn’t a very good war.”
“You were waiting for a better one to come along.”
“Still am,” Randy said.
Terry said, “Then there was Watergate-”
“Right. That would be the event that disillusioned you poor Baby Boomers. What a shock it must have been. Here you’d been brought up to believe that sort of thing had never gone on.”
“Inflation, the gas crisis…For your information, Miss Righteous Indignation, I spent most of the 1970s siphoning gas out of neighbors’ lawn mowers for my car.”
“Well, let’s award the Congressional Medal of Honor to Terry Tucker.”
“I hate to interrupt such a splendid jeremiad,” Randy said, “but Mitch Glint of ABBA called me today. He wants to make a statement at the next commission meeting.”
“What does he want?” Cass said.
“He just wants to make a little, you know, statement.”
“Let me guess. The Boomer Manifesto? What else do they want that you haven’t already given them? Toaster ovens? wall clocks? kitchen knives? Maybe 24/7 erectile dysfunction patches?”
Randy pursed his lips. “He mentioned something about a…he’s got this notion for a…”
“Just spit it out,” Cass said. “I’m beyond surprise at this point. Or dismay.”
“Well, it’s sort of a…an Arlington Cemetery, for Transitioners.”
Cass stared. “They want their own cemetery? And where would this field of honor go? No, wait, don’t tell me-here in Washington, on the Mall. Why not? We could tear down the Lincoln Memorial and put it there. What’s Lincoln done lately, anyway?”
“I don’t think they particularly care where it goes. Look, if it gets the most powerful Boomer lobby to come aboard and endorse Transitioning, what’s the big deal? Politics is negotiation. You have to give to get.”
“Why don’t you just offer to have every member of the Boomer generation cryogenically frozen-send the bill to my generation-and brought back to life once all diseases and global warming have been eliminated and there’s peace in the Middle East? Haven’t the Boomers suffered enough?”
“Hm,” Randy said. “Not bad.”
“You can make it the centerpiece of your vice presidential campaign.”
“Where are you going?” Randy said.
“To find a BMW and slash its tires,” Cass said.
The final session of the Presidential Commission on Transitioning and Tax Alleviation was called to order.
Gideon Payne appeared with a large bandage over his head and dark glasses. He looked like the Invisible Man. He was terrified that the Russian hookers to whom (he thought) he had given his precious watch would see him on TV and recognize him. His appearance naturally caused a stir. He explained that he’d had laser surgery for his eyes and while recuperating had fallen down the stairs.
“I assure you,” he told reporters, “that my insides work just fine.” They were licking their chops in anticipation of a final smackdown between him and his adversary, Joan of Dark.
They were disappointed, therefore, when Cass, entering the chamber and seeing her adversary in this condition, went over to him. They couldn’t hear the exchange.
“Reverend,” she said, “what happened? Are you all right?”
Gideon, taken aback by her softness and evident concern, mumbled, “Uh, yes. An accident.”
“I’m sorry. Will you be all right?”
“Oh yes. Yes. Just healing.”
“I haven’t been very nice to you.”
Gideon didn’t know what to say to that. He held his breath. He could smell her perfume.
“But then,” Cass said, “you haven’t been very nice to me, either.”
Gideon cleared his throat. She was so beautiful. He could only croak, “Ah, no, I suppose…not. We got off to a bad start.”
She said, “For what it’s worth, he and I weren’t having sex in that minefield.”
“And I didn’t kill my mother.”
“I believe you.” Cass held out her hand. Photographers snapped away. Gideon hesitated, then reached out and took her hand. It felt soft. He wanted to hold it forever.
“Okay, then.…” She smiled and turned and went to her seat.
“What the fuck was that about?” said the Washington Post reporter to a Times columnist.
Randy looked at Cass as she took her seat next to him. He whispered, “First North Korea, now Gideon Payne?”
“I’m tired of being pissed off at everyone and everything.”
“Are you forgetting that his ancestor shot my ancestor? And that he accused me of screwing you in a minefield?”
“Randy,” she said, “the only time you didn’t screw me was in that minefield.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Randy said. The chair was gaveling the meeting to order.
“Something’s going on,” said the Post reporter, who was watching the exchange between Randy and Cass and wishing he’d brought in a lip-reader.
Chapter 31
Two Months Later…
Few commission reports in history-except those dealing with Who Shot the President?-have been anticipated as eagerly as that of the commission on Transitioning.
The chairman of the commission was a former senator, secretary of labor, secretary of energy, and ambassador to an acronymic organization in Brussels whose actual function no one had ever quite ascertained. His very name, Bascombe P. Bledsoe, bespoke pinstripe, wood paneling, and murmured voices. He inspired confidence by virtue of his dullness. The polar ice caps might be melting, an asteroid might be hurtling toward earth, the international banking system might be in ruins, and Latin America might be in chaos; still, Bascombe P. Bledsoe would not raise his voice or break a sweat. If the moment became truly apocalyptic, he might cough softly and say, “The situation would appear not to be significantly ameliorating.” He was Anodyne Man-the perfect person to head a commission convened to decide whether mass voluntary suicide was the answer to Social Security’s intractable insolvency. And this was exactly why the president appointed him to chair the commission.
Having weighed the views of the various commissioners, he summed up the commission’s findings with a clarity and concision all too rare in Washington: “Further study is needed.”
Those hoping for Sturm und Drang were disappointed. The pronouncement contained little Sturm and virtually no Drang. Commissioner Cassandra Devine, on the other hand, had Sturm und Drang to spare.