Some Japanese units in the Philippines had held out till the fighting in the Home Islands ended. They were a sideshow; the Americans hadn’t pushed hard after driving them from the bigger towns. “I’m sorry,” Mike said, and then, “I was never in the Philippines.” He didn’t want her to think he could have had anything to do with her husband’s death.
“I understand,” Midori Yanai said. “I really do have to go now, so sorry. Please excuse me. Maybe we will see each other again. Good-bye.” She started away.
“Sayonara,” Mike called after her. She looked back over her shoulder to show she’d heard and wasn’t ignoring him. He stood there watching her till she disappeared around a corner. Then he kicked a pebble down the street. He felt like a sixteen-year-old kid trying to figure out how the whole business of women worked.
Well, no man would ever figure out the whole business of women, not if he lived as long as Methuselah. But godalmightydamn, wasn’t trying to unravel it the best game in the whole wide world?
* * *
Charlie walked out of Sears with a sour expression on his face. He kept not-quite-cussing under his breath. Esther set a hand on his arm. “It’s okay, honey,” she said.
“Like fun it is,” he said. “The TVs they’ve got in there have bigger screens and better pictures than the one we bought a little over a year ago-and they cost a hundred and fifty bucks less. We wuz robbed!”
“No, we weren’t. We just got one as soon as we could.” Esther was more reasonable than he was. She went on, “It worked the same way with radios and refrigerators, too, and cars when we were little kids. They all got cheaper and better in a hurry.”
“Maybe we should have waited, then.” He still felt like grumbling.
“Why? Okay, we paid more money. But we had the television, and we’ve been watching all the shows on it since we bought it. If we’d waited, yeah, we would have bought it cheaper, but so what? We could afford it, and we wouldn’t have got to see all that stuff.”
“Wait a minute,” Charlie said. “Remind me again which one of us is the Jew.”
She poked him in the ribs. For good measure, she added, “If you were a Jew, Buster, I would know it.”
Charlie’s ears heated. He wasn’t circumcised. Pat was, not only because he had a Jewish mother but also because these days they pretty much did it to a baby boy unless you told them not to. They said it was cleaner and healthier. Maybe they were right, but Charlie liked himself fine just the way he’d come out of the carton.
When they got home, Pat was watching Tim Craddock-Space Cadet. He didn’t care that the TV set cost too much or that the picture was little. He’d grow up with television, and probably take it for granted in a way Charlie never did. He would have trouble remembering a time when it wasn’t around to give him something to do.
It was giving him something to do right now. Whether he’d done everything he was supposed to do. . “Have you finished your homework?” Charlie asked him. “Tomorrow’s Monday, remember.”
“Aw, Dad!” Pat said. “After the show, okay?”
“Okay-this once,” Charlie said after a moment’s thought. “But from now on, you get it done before you start goofing off, you hear? You had all weekend to take care of it. Instead, you’ll have to rush through it at the last minute, so it won’t be as good as it oughta be.”
He felt Esther’s eyes on him when he came out with that. He had trouble saying it with a straight face. As a reporter and as a speechwriter, he’d worked to the tightest of deadlines. Getting it done by 7:45 was more important than prettying it up. Well, if Do as I say, not as I do wasn’t a parent’s oldest rule, it ran a close second to Because I said so, that’s why!
Pat’s face lit up. He didn’t care about the lecture. He cared about Tim Craddock and the Martians with antennae pasted to their foreheads. “Thanks, Dad! You’re the greatest!”
Charlie wasn’t so sure about that. He feared he was an old softy. But hearing it did make him feel pretty good.
When Charlie walked into the White House the next morning, a plump doctor was coming out. Tadeusz Pietruszka was Joe Steele’s physician. Charlie hadn’t seen him for a couple of years-in spite of moving slower than he had, both mentally and physically, Joe Steele never even came down with a sniffle. So Charlie heard the surprise and worry in his own voice when he asked, “What’s up with the boss?”
“Nothing serious.” Dr. Pietruszka touched the brim of his fedora and went on his way.
He might be a good doctor. If he took care of the President, he’d better be a good doctor. But he would have flopped as a politician. He made a lousy liar.
Instead of going to his own office, then, Charlie headed for Vince Scriabin’s. He asked the Hammer the same thing he’d asked the doctor: “What’s up with the boss?”
Scriabin sent him an Et tu, Brute? look. “It isn’t anything much,” he said. Charlie stood there and folded his arms. For once, Scriabin wasn’t going to be able to wait him out. “All right!” The Hammer sounded impatient. “He came down with a headache in the middle of the night. He took some aspirins, but it wouldn’t go away. Betty talked him into calling the doctor.”
“Good thing somebody did! What did Pietruszka have to say?”
“That he had a headache. That his blood pressure could be lower, but he’s not a young man.” Scriabin bared his teeth in what looked nothing like a smile. “None of us here is a young man any more.”
Since Charlie had a bald spot on his crown and was graying at the temples, he could hardly call the Hammer a liar. He asked, “Did he do anything besides take his blood pressure?”
“He gave him a sleeping pill. And he told him to call if he didn’t feel better when he woke up.” Scriabin bared his teeth again. This time, he didn’t even try to smile. A cat that looked like that would have been about to bite. “Not a word about this to anyone. I shouldn’t have to tell you that, but I will anyhow.”
“You know I don’t bang my gums,” Charlie said. “Did I start telling the world about uranium?”
“Let people start worrying about whether the boss is well, and that will blow you up higher and faster than a pipsqueak thing like an atomic bomb.” Scriabin turned away to show the discussion was over.
Charlie slowly walked to his own office. He should have been working on a speech about how much the community farms were producing and how everybody who worked on them was part of one big, happy family. It was drivel, of course, but a familiar kind of political drivel. He couldn’t make himself care about it. His deadline was still two days away, and he had other things on his mind.
Sometimes a cigar was only a cigar. Sometimes a headache was only a headache, too. Sometimes it wasn’t. Sometimes it meant you were having a stroke. Charlie’s uncle had complained of a headache just before he keeled over. Two days later, he was dead.
Joe Steele wasn’t dead. He came down late that afternoon. If he looked pale and puffy, well, he could still be feeling the pill. The pill could account for the way he groped after words, too. He still had his marbles-he asked Charlie how the speech was coming.
“It’ll be ready when you need it, Mr. President,” Charlie said.
“Of course it will.” Joe Steele blinked at the idea that Charlie could suggest anything else was possible. Stroke or not, sleeping pill or not, he was pretty much his old self, in other words.
By the time he had to deliver the speech, he was his old self. He’d never been an exciting speaker. He still wasn’t. But he’d always got the job done, and he did once more. Charlie let out a sigh of relief-in his office, with the door shut. One of these days, it wouldn’t be a false alarm. This time, it had been.