“Mark, over here,” a woman’s voice emerges from the corner.
“Desiree, is that you, babe?”
“It’s me. Listen, why don’t we go somewhere where we can conduct our interview more privately.”
“OK. There’s a diner across the street. I’ll meet you there in ten minutes.”
I turn to say good-bye to Lorphelin.
“Au revoir, babe. If I’m ever in Orlando …”
Lorphelin stands and salutes me.
“Until Victory!” he says.
* * *
“Miss, I’ll just have a cup of black coffee. Desiree, do you want anything?”
“I’ll have a scoop of vanilla ice cream with cough suppressant whip and a cup of PMS tea.”
The waitress left and Desiree rummaged in her gym bag, extracting a resumé, which she handed me across the table.
“Hmmmmmm, very impressive,” I said, perusing her vita. “Captain of the Ossining High School track team, played ‘ancient instruments’ in the high school orchestra, Student Council President, President of Thespians and Yearbook, National Merit Scholar, combined SAT scores of 1590, attended Princeton University, spent junior year in Papua New Guinea, graduated summa cum laude, attended Yale Law, editor of Law Review, hired right out of law school by Swazy, Cummings and Bass, made full partner in six months, elected president of the American Bar Association at the age of twenty-six, appointed Attorney General of the United States by President Hallux Valgus — a post you left after a year to become a Supreme Court Justice — a position which you in turn resigned after eight months to race Formula One cars in international competition including the Monaco Grand Prix, which you won for three consecutive years … very, very impressive, Desiree.”
“Thank you, Mark.”
“There are a couple of questions I’d like to ask you. It says here that you played ‘ancient instruments’ in the high school orchestra … what exactly are ancient instruments?”
(Desiree seemed unflustered by the question and I made note of her poise in the margin of her resume.)
“When an orchestra performs a piece of music that was written in a certain era, it’s best to perform that piece using coeval, autochthonous instruments, as opposed to modern instruments — that is to say, instruments of that era and region, the instruments for which the music was presumably written. Most high school orchestras can’t afford ancient instruments, but I was quite fortunate in that Ossining High was a particularly well-endowed school, and to give you an example: in my senior year we performed an orchestral piece written in 3000 B.C. by a Mesopotamian composer; I played an instrument which consists of the inflated bladder of an emu, which is either scraped with a bone plectrum or bowed with stiffened flax fibers. It produces an extraordinary plaintive tone quite unlike anything else I’ve ever heard.”
(I found Desiree’s response to be forthright and thoughtful, and again jotted down my evaluation.)
“Desiree, you stepped down as Attorney General after only a year and then stepped down as a Supreme Court Justice after only eight months. Do you think that this exhibits an immature restlessness and inability to honor long-term commitments or do you think that it exhibits a wonderful kind of boundless, nomadic intelligence and creativity that can’t and shouldn’t be constrained by a single vocation?”
“The latter.”
(Very direct, succinct, confident.)
“Desiree, what sort of position are you looking for with us?”
“Something in security. As you can see, I’ve been in some dangerous situations and I think that my experience would be a great asset to you and your staff. As I alluded to on the phone, I definitely think you need to beef up your security, and now. There are rumors out there about missing fiction workshop participants … things could get rough.”
(There was now positively no doubt in my mind that Desiree would be an invaluable addition to the staff at headquarters, and I made a note of my decision.)
“Could you start tomorrow?”
“Absolutely!” she said, grinning.
“Good. We’ll see you at nine A.M. Report to Baby Lago and she’ll see that you get your W-2 forms and security pass and health insurance information and belt buckle. OK? Desiree, I’ve got to get going now, Arleen’s going to be worried about me. Welcome to Team Leyner.”
I stood up, kissed her on the cheek, and threw some money on the table.
“Mark, there’s one more thing I want to talk to you about. Do you do drugs? There’s something I think you might be interested in.”
I sat back down.
“Desiree, as you know, Mark Leyner is about total fitness and power — muscle mass, density, ripped definition, triceps, biceps, pecs, lats, glutes, intensity, stamina, endurance, mental focus … on the other hand, I do have a responsibility to my fans to forge ahead where most men fear to tread. I mean, we can’t leave the exploration of inner space to New Age Milquetoasts like Terence McKenna. What kind of drug and how much?”
“Well, it’s not really a ‘drug’ per se, although it’ll get you off, believe me. And I don’t exactly have it to sell you, but I know you’ll be interested and I know how you can get it. It’s Lincoln’s morning breath.”
“What’s ‘morning breath’?”
“Y’know, it’s the worst breath of the day — morning breath.”
“Lincoln’s morning breath? Abraham Lincoln’s morning breath?”
“There’s a vial of Lincoln’s morning breath in the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington, D.C. The museum used to be the Medical Museum of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology and it’s located on the grounds of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. They’ve got thousands of specimens, including tissue samples from presidents and military leaders. But when I heard about this, a sealed ampule of Lincoln’s morning breath — I mean a snort or two and who knows — I knew you’d be interested, Mark.”
“Desiree, I think this is going to be a very profitable association for both of us. See you in the A.M., babe.”
I stood up again, turned to leave, and then remembered something that had been on my mind.
“Desiree, in your letter you said something about being the Vatican. Did you mean the building?”
“Yeah, the building,” she said.
Joe Casale made the arrangements. We’ve got the first-class section of Continental Flight 213 to National Airport in Washington, D.C., all to ourselves. Arleen’s wearing a chartreuse skating skirt with an ornate jeweled bodice and boots with jeweled cuffs. I’m wearing Air Jordans, camouflage pants, no shirt, an onyx quarter-pound burger embedded with chunks of diamond on a gold rope around my neck, and a black baseball cap with the words Golden Nugget in gold stitching. When we reach cruising altitude, our stewardess rolls out a five-foot hero with mortadella, cappicola, prosciutto, sharp provolone, and sweet peppers, two bottles of Johnnie Walker Black, and a bucket of ice. We each take a bottle and start on either end of the sandwich. Arleen — by day, mender of shattered psyches; by night, voluptuous temptress and pleasure addict — is a woman of voracious appetites. By the time we make our final approach to D.C., she’s polished off two feet of hero and a fifth of scotch.
As we touch down and taxi toward our gate, I nudge Arleen and flash two White House press passes.
“You said you always wanted to go to a presidential news conference, right, babe?”
“Oh, Mark!! When? When?!”
“Tomorrow morning, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.”
Arleen is euphoric. Ever since that spring afternoon when she shot me out of a tree with a tranquilizer dart, there’ve been two things she’s always talked about wanting to do: see harness racing at the Meadowlands and attend a presidential news conference. I’ve now made good on both of my nuptial promises. And she’s loving it.