What the hell’s this? Barron thought, sneaking a glance at Carrie, eyes ever wider, wet lips open, digging bossman spoiled-brat network-charge lover flapping jaws with real live Governor in the altogether, knowing that whatever the fuck Morris wanted, what he meant to Jack Barron was a way to play with Carrie’s head, at last, knowing just how and for what he would play this call, with Brackett Audience Count of exactly one, namely Carrie Donaldson.
“Congratulations for what, Morris?” He said, flunky-accenting the name, and yes, now Carrie’s eyes were strictly eating him up.
“For your last show,” Morris said. “A first-rate hatchet-job. You must’ve cost Howards’ Freezer Bill five votes in the Senate, maybe a dozen in the House. You’re about to make history, Mr Barron. That show impressed a lot of people, important people. You know that the Republican Party opposes the Utility Bill because it would stifle free enterprise in the—”
“Horseshit,” Barron said, digging effect of word on notorious prude Morris, effect of effect on Carrie as Morris pretended the breach of fartsy gentleman etiquette hadn’t happened. “You oppose the Freezer Bill because there’s big Foundation money behind various Democrats, and you know you’re permanently off Howards’ gravy train, and you’d love to sell out too except Howards ain’t buying. It’s a little early in the day for mickey mousing, Morris. What’s on your mind?”
“Very well, Mr Barron,” Morris said, seeming to swallow enormous distaste according to some prearranged plan. “I’ll come right to the point. How would you like to be President of the United States?”
Barron froze around a smart-ass wisecrack reply that wouldn’t take form behind his eyes, froze in déjà vu Berkeley attic other girl seated on other floor big eyes honey-blonde hair digging him watching Luke Greene, Woody Kaplan, Markowitz, the girl with the pigtail, dark roomful of other eyes glowing, looking at him—birthplace of the Social Justice Coalition now controlled two Southern states, twenty-eight Congressmen, pivotal must-buy force in New York, every Southern state, Illinois, California. Full circle from Baby Bolshevik messiah dreaming of power in Berkeley attic Sara worshipfully staring to leader of screwball third party to Jack Barron plugged into electronic-circuitry-hundred-million-Americans to listening to pathetic relic gibber impossible desperation-dreams of returning expiring (now kook third party itself) GOP to power.
“Do I get to choose Luke Greene for my running mate?” Barron shot back a matching improbability.
“Conceivably,” said Morris. Barren’s turn to be jarred again at incomprehensible answer; the SJC and the Republicans were at opposite extremes of everything except for a mutual loathing for the monolithic center-dominating Democratic one-party government Party. Morris must really be around the bend, or… what?
Barron clocked Carrie, now totally absorbed in the dialogue he saw she saw as jockeying between two men of power, not private, for-her-benefit-only performance of Bug Jack Barron—at last a scene to swallow up network programming in that head of hers, blow secretary-network-watchdog cool. At least Carrie’s buying Morris’ load of bull, hook, line, and sinker.
“Okay, Morris,” said Barron, “so you’ve got a pitch to make; go ahead and make it.”
“It’s simple, Barron,” Morris said. (Barron could sense him shifting into set-spiel pattern.) “The Republican Party has elected only two Presidents since Roosevelt, and we’ve got to win next year to continue to be taken seriously. And we can’t afford to be choosy as to how. The only way we can conceivably win the election is as part of a coalition with the SJC behind a common presidential candidate and on an overriding common issue.
“The only common ground we have with the Social Justice Coalition is opposition to the Freezer Utility Bill.
They want public Freezing and we want competitive private Freezing. But we can both agree on opposing the Democratic position, which amounts to the Foundation position. The only man we can nominate who could also get the SJC nomination is you. You’re a founder of the SJC, you’ve just knifed Benedict Howards, you’re a close friend of Luke Greene, and you’ve got Bug Jack Barron.
“A hundred million people will see you every week from now till Election Day. We can do with you what we did with Reagan, and do it in spades, using the program, and by the time you’re nominated you’ll already have a bigger following than any possible Democratic candidate. I’m dead serious, Barron. Play our game, and we’ll make you President of the United States.”
President of the United States. The words made weird acid music (’Hail to the Chief,” with electric guitar beat, natch) even coming from a pathetic lunatic. Barron was vastly amused at the reflex-response in his own gut, recalling aural memories of the Inauguration of JFK, more amused pleased at pole-axed Carrie Donaldson staring at him, eyes as bright with little-girl wonder as Sara’s had ever been in Berkeley days. Didn’t know you were balling the next President of the United States, eh, baby? Jesus H. Christ on a Harley-Davidson!
Barron leaned back accidentally on purpose, kicked the vidphone, tilting it sideways and up, giving Morris a nice shot of Carrie’s boobs, fumbled it enough, smiling, to show Morris he was speaking to totally bare-ass Jack Barron, watched Morris blanch.
“Come on, man,” Barron said, scratching his balls ostentatiously, “even the next President’s gotta get laid once in a while.” (Let’s just see how much crap this stuff-shirt fruitcake will really take.)
“Well,” Morris said through miser-purse drawstring-lips, “what do you say, Barron?”
“What do I say?” exclaimed Jack Barron. “I say you’re out of your fucking mind, is all. For openers… openers,” This is all so loopy there ain’t no openers, gotta hand it to you, you’re a nut, but at least you’re a nut with style. First of all, I loathe everything you stand for. The Republican Party these days is nothing but a collection of Little Old Ladies from Pasadena, Wallacite screwballs and paranoid fat-cat misers whose idea of a good President is someone about ten light-years to the right of Adolph Hitler. You couldn’t win a Presidential election with Jesus Christ and John Fitzgerald Kennedy on the ticket. Why don’t you crawl back under your wet rock where you belong? Way I see it, a Republican label is a dose of political tertiary syphilis. Do you get the impression I don’t care for your Party, Governor Morris?”
“I didn’t think you were all that naive, Barron,” said Morris, and now Barron saw the naked, ugly, raw, nobullshit nitty-gritty in his face, in his voice, remembered that fluke or not, this was the Governor of the largest state in the Union, that hopeless, kook, perpetual-loser party that it was, the GOP still had great gobs of industrialist Madison Avenue Wall Street insurance company banking money behind it, and now Morris was reminding him of it with face, voice, bearing. “You think we don’t know exactly what you are, what you’ve been, and what you think of us? You really believe we’re all that stupid, Barron?”
“And you’re still trying to sell me the Republican nomination,” Barron said, sudden déjà vu of Morris’ face becoming Howards’ face, Morris’ deal becoming Howards’ deal, intimations of wheels within wheels within wheels of power meshing, clashing, one invisible Frankenstein Monster, with Howards and Morris but two visible aspects of the same unseen iceberg.
“Yes,” said Morris, “but not because we like your smell. I loathe you as much as you loathe me, but we both know that when you reach the upper levels of power there are times when you’ve got to set all that aside for strategic reasons. You’re a marketable commodity, Barron, like a nice ripe Limburger, an image behind which we can unite with the SJC to win the Presidency, the only image that can create a Republican-SJC fusion against the Democrats and Howards. Image, Barron, image is what counts—like Eisenhower or Reagan—not the man. We need your image, and Bug Jack Barron to sell it, and never mind what the real man behind the image is like. That doesn’t win elections. All the voters ever see is the image.”