After a while she came back to the cockpit and sensibly got in the wind shelter under the glassine half shell. I was in the airflow pocket at the stern, seated and twiddling the wheel with one little finger.
“Champagne?” I suggested.
“You shouldn’t drink and drive,” she said.
“You drink for both of us.”
“When we land. Or throw anchor. Whatever.”
In the cockpit’s air pocket the sound of the motor and the shearing of the foils through the water were all as subdued as the wind. We could talk, and did. The Jersey shore was low and autumnal, not with bright New England colors but more a brown sludgy tone, never very high over the horizon. Possibly the hurricane had ripped all its leaves away too. The East Coast was very obviously a drowned coastline; it had been like that even before the floods, and now more than ever. From our angle it looked like land on this planet was an afterthought.
Charlotte got a call and took it. She glanced at me as she listened, mouthed Fed Ex with her hand over the speaker, then nodded as she listened.
“Yeah, I’m on my way down now. By boat. My boatman. Yeah, the captain of my yacht. All congresspeople get a yacht, didn’t you know that?
“No, I know.
“Listen, you said you would need help in Congress. So now I’m there.
“No, of course not. But it’s not just me. I’ve been talking around the new members, and there’s a lot of them like me. It makes sense, right? Because now’s the time.
“I hope you’re right. I’ll try, sure.
“Shit yes we’ll back you. Just keep the president in line and it’ll happen. You’re the crucial figure in what gets tried. It’s fiscal policy.”
Then she listened for a long time. After a while she began to roll her eyes at me. She put her finger on her wristpad’s microphone. “He’s giving me all the reasons he can’t do it,” she said under her breath. “He’s chickening out.”
“Tell him the Paulson story,” I suggested.
“What do you mean? What about Paulson?”
Quickly and urgently I outlined the story for her. She nodded as I spoke.
When I was done she took her finger off the mike. Suddenly her look was fierce, her tone of voice likewise. She snapped, “Listen, Larry, I understand all that, but it doesn’t matter. Do you understand? That doesn’t matter. Now’s the time for you to be bold and do the right thing. It’s your moment, and you don’t get to do it over again if you get it wrong. And people will remember. Do you remember Paulson, Larry? He’s remembered as a chicken and a sleaze, because when the whole system was going down he ran up to New York and told his friends he was going to nationalize Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, right after he told everyone else he wasn’t going to. So his friends sold their shares while they were still worth something, and everyone else lost big-time. What? Yes, it would have been insider trading if he had had any investments in that stuff himself, but as it was he was just helping his friends. And now that’s all he’s remembered for. All. Nothing else. Your biggest move is what you get remembered for, Larry. So if it’s a bad one, that’s it. So fucking do the right thing.”
She listened to her ex for a while and then laughed shortly. “Sure, you’re welcome. Anytime! Talk to you later. Hang in there and do the right thing.”
She clicked the phone off and grinned at me, and I grinned back.
“You’re tough,” I said.
“I am,” she said. “And he deserves it. Thanks for the story.”
“Seemed like it was time for the stick.”
“It was.”
“So now you’re an advisor to the chair of the Fed!”
“My Fed Ex,” she said. “Well, he likes to be able to ignore me. I tell him what to do, he ignores me. It’ll be like old times.”
“But he’s doing what you told him to do this time, right?”
“We’ll see. I think he’ll do what the situation forces him to do. I’m just clarifying what that is. Actually you are.”
“It sounds way better coming from you.”
“I don’t see why.”
“Because you’re a realistic person, and he knows that.”
“Maybe. He thinks I’ve gone nuts, grinding in the city as long as I have.”
“Which is true, right?”
She laughed. “Yes, it is. Maybe I do want that champagne.”
“Good for you.”
I checked the ocean ahead and clicked on the autopilot, then went to the hatchway to the cabin, tousling her wild hair very briefly as I passed her. “Someone has to have the ideas,” I said down in the cabin.
“I thought that was you,” she called down the hatch.
“I did too,” I said as I came back up. “But these other ideas you’ve been talking about lately don’t sound familiar to me. So I’m thinking it’s not me. More like Karl Marx.”
She snorted. “If only. I think at best it’s Keynes. But that’s okay. It’s a Keynesian world, always has been.”
I shrugged. “He was a trader, right?”
She laughed. “I guess everybody’s a trader.”
“I’m not so sure about that.” I unwrapped the foil and wire from the champagne bottle, very old-fashioned, very French, and then aimed the cork to the side and sent it flying to leeward. Poured her a mason jar glass and sipped from it myself before giving it to her.
“Cheers,” she said, and clinked her jar to the bottle I was holding.
Then after she had drunk about half her glass, and I was back to steering, or at least supervising the autopilot, she got another call.
“Who’s this? Oh! Well, thank you very much. It’s a pleasure to hear from you. Yes, I’m really looking forward to it. It’s a very exciting time, yes it is.
“Yes, that’s right. We were married when we were young, and we’re still friends. Yes. He is very good. Yes.” She laughed, seeming a bit giddy; I thought the champagne had gone to her head, but then realized who it must be. “Well, he was so brilliant we had to get divorced. Yes, one of those. It was like nuclear fission, or is it fusion. Anyway that was a long time ago. But now we talk, yes. He has the right ideas, I think. Yes, there’s a big group of us in the House, and I think in the Senate too. What? The court? Haven’t you packed the court already?”
I could hear the laugh coming from her phone, a familiar-sounding soprano cackle.
“Okay, I look forward to meeting you. Thanks again for calling.”
She let the phone fall to the bench, stared at the Jersey shore, then out to sea.
“The president?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“I thought so. What did she want?”
“Support.”
“Of course, but… wow.”
She looked at me and smiled. “It may actually get interesting.”
Late in the day it got colder and the swell a bit higher, and I let the Shearwater down and brought it in to shore, looking to spend the night at a marina in Ocean City Bay, where I could recharge the batteries and take off at dawn. The harbormaster radioed to say there was a space in the visitors’ slips, so as the sun was going down behind the Maryland shore I puttered in behind the floating seawall and followed the harbormaster’s gestures into a slip. She tied off at one cleat, I tied the other, and there we were. Once the battery’s charger was plugged in, Charlotte and I walked up to a restaurant with its windows overlooking the marina. The Highway Fifty Terminus. Nice view. I could have barbecued on the boat but didn’t want to. This was nicer, and we needed a break, needed the space for a while.