“But I always win!” I interjected.
“… and you get in fights…”
“But I always win!”
“… and you’re generally a smartass!”
“Better than being a dumbass!” I leaned over and gave Marilyn a quick kiss.
Carolyn Hobson said, “They’re all a bunch of smartasses, if you ask me. I think it’s a job requirement.”
“What was that about fighting?” asked Debbie.
“I heard about that,” commented Wayne.
His wife, Barbara, nodded. “That’s right, you got in that fight, like a month before the election. That made the TV news. It got you the women’s vote, that’s for sure!”
“What?” came from several people around the table.
“Well, it wasn’t much of a fight. I was just sitting there in a late night diner having some pie with a reporter after a campaign speech. It was late, I was tired, the place was empty and quiet. It was just us and a woman in a booth at the end of the place. Anyways, this drunk comes storming in, smacks around the owner of the place and a waitress, and then grabs the woman and tries to drag her out. I got up and knocked him on his kiester and we got the cops there and they hauled him away. It turned out that he was her husband, she’s six months pregnant, and he’s been using her as his private punching bag, and she finally got sick and tired of it and tried to get away.” I turned to Wayne and added, “He’s doing three years in Hagerstown.”
He nodded and added, for the others. “I remember that. The police released the security tape footage of it all. It was like watching a cop show on television. He really cleaned the guy’s clock!” Then he turned to me and asked, “Didn’t you do something like that in the Bahamas once? I thought I read that in the Sun.”
I admitted as much and gave a brief retelling of that incident. Then I turned back to Wayne and said, “It wasn’t that big a deal. Besides, you’d have done the same. I read your bio in the Sun, too. You were in Viet Nam. You earned a Bronze Star, right?”
“So did you, Carl,” interjected Marilyn. That made a few eyes open around the table, but I just waved it off. I didn’t want to get into it that night.
Fortunately, I didn’t have to. We had been talking all through dinner, and I was saved by the bell, or more specifically, the mike. It was time for President Bush to make a few remarks, and he went to the dais and the lights dimmed and then he gave a fairly average speech, with a lot of rah-rah sentiment and absolutely no content. He thanked us for our service, promised to work with us, promised an open door and an ear to speak into, etc., etc., etc. How much of this was true was questionable. He was a politician, after all.
Like me, now that I thought about it!
We ended the evening on a pleasant note. I told the others to feel free to drop by my office sometime, and we promised to have them over to the house. None of the others had a home anywhere near large enough for a large group. While Marilyn and I weren’t by nature ‘big party’ people, we had always hosted the big summer and fall parties, and were sure we could handle something here.
For one thing, we had already made a big decision concerning how we were going to live. Back in Hereford, we didn’t have servants, but made sure the kids did chores and we cleaned the house ourselves. The only thing we subcontracted out was lawn maintenance and having John Caples run his brush hog over the place a few times every year. We thought it was important that the kids be brought up as normally as possible. You put kids in private schools and surround them with chauffeurs and servants, the result is not pretty. You end up with a bunch of drugged out jet set kids. No way, not us!
The house in the Bahamas we treated differently. That was our vacation home. We had a local maintenance company clean and take care of everything before and after every visit; they would restock the pantry and liquor cabinet as needed. We planned to do the same here in Washington. There was no way that Marilyn could take care of our kids and house in Hereford, and then come down and do the same thing in an even larger home here in D.C., nor could I. We would hire a maintenance and staff company. Fortunately, there are plenty of outfits capable of handling it, and we had already hired one. There was also a lively industry in catering parties and even a ‘party consultant’ business.
Remember the first Van Wilder movie, the good one? In it, a perpetual student, Van Wilder, played by Ryan Reynolds, gets cut loose by his father and has to survive on his own. He earns money by becoming a ‘party liaison’, and arranging parties and inviting interesting guests. Well, Van Wilder would have done quite well in Washington! These people actually exist, and we had already been given a couple of names by the interior designer we used.
Marilyn and I went home and sent the sitter home. The kids were sleeping and the house was still standing. Sunday we would head back to Hereford. This was a screwy setup.
Chapter 109: Chief of Staff
Wednesday, January 30, 1991
By middle of January I was feeling like I had made a mistake. By the end of January I was quite sure I had made a big fucking mistake! Stuff seemed to be piling up around the office, not much was getting accomplished, and I was hearing rumblings among the staff. I mentioned this all to Chuck Hanson, my Chief of Staff, but he assured me it was just people settling in. Meanwhile, despite my orders not to, he kept shoveling lobbyists at me, and with no particular rhyme or reason. One morning he had somebody pushing ‘clean coal’ followed immediately by the Sierra Club. They ran into each other in the outer office and immediately got into a shouting match! What a clusterfuck!
The final event, to my way of thinking, occurred on Wednesday, the 30th of January. I was in my office and about two or so, Chuck informed me my afternoon appointment was here. I glanced at my calendar book, and it had been blank. My standing orders were that anybody could write things in my schedule (within reason) but that if it wasn’t in my book, it wouldn’t get done. Back on my first go, when I was with Lefleur Homes, it was actually a bit of a company joke. Even after everybody started switching to PDAs and computer calendars, Carl Buckman kept his calendar book. On the plus side, I never missed anything I put in the book.
I sighed in exasperation, and bit off the complaint. “What if I had scheduled something else, or wasn’t here, because it wasn’t in the book?” Chuck would have just given me a blank stare and ignore this. I simply told him to show them in. I stood up and slipped on my suit jacket, since I had been in shirt sleeves, and wanted to look like I knew what I was doing.
Chuck opened my door and went out into the common area, and then ushered in two men, both on the large side. He introduced them. “Congressman, this is John Talbot of the American Petroleum Institute, and Morton Adrianowicz of Dunder Logan Simkins. Gentlemen, Congressman Carl Buckman.”
“Gentlemen, it’s a pleasure to meet you. Please, come in.” I glanced over at Chuck and said, “Thank you, I can take it from here.”
“Are you sure, Congressman? I’d be happy to help.”
“No, that’s all right. I can handle things.” I was still irritated over the scheduling issue and wanted him away for a bit. I closed the door behind him as he left my inner office.
I showed the men over to a couch and armchair set over in the corner of my office. They shared the couch, and I sat down in the armchair. Something about the two men seemed familiar, or maybe it was just the one man, the second. The first guy was from the API, which was the lobbying group for the petroleum industry. The second guy had to be a lobbyist from one of the city’s multitudinous law firms. Still, what in the world did these guys want with me? I had nothing whatsoever to do with oil.