4
If I could believe (as convention tells us) that character is destiny and the past prologue et cetera, I might begin the story of what happened to Elena McMahon during the summer of 1984 at some earlier point. I might begin it in, say, 1964, the year during which Elena McMahon lost her scholarship to the University of Nevada and within a week invented herself as a reporter for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. I might begin it four years later, in 1968, the year during which, in the course of researching a backgrounder on the development of the oil business in southern California, Elena McMahon met Wynn Janklow in his father’s office on Wilshire Boulevard and, with such single-minded efficiency that she never bothered to write the piece, reinvented herself as his wife.
Crucible events.
Revelations of character.
Absolutely, no question, but the character they reveal is that of a survivor.
Since what happened to Elena McMahon during the summer of 1984 had notably little to do with surviving, let me begin where she would begin.
The night she walked off the 1984 campaign.
You will notice that participants in disasters typically locate the “beginning” of the disaster at a point suggesting their own control over events. A plane crash retold will begin not with the pressure system over the Central Pacific that caused the instability over the Gulf that caused the wind shear at DFW but at some manageable human intersect, with for example the “funny feeling” ignored at breakfast. An account of a 6.8 earthquake will begin not at the overlap of the tectonic plates but more comfortably, at the place in London where we ordered the Spode that shattered the morning the tectonic plates shifted.
Had we just gone with the funny feeling. Had we just never ordered the Spode.
We all prefer the magical explanation.
So it was with Elena McMahon.
She had walked off the campaign the day before the California primary at one-forty in the morning Los Angeles time, she repeatedly told the DIA agent Treat Morrison flew down to take her statement, as if the exact time at which she walked off the campaign had set into inexorable motion the sequence of events that followed.
At the time she walked off the campaign she had not seen her father in some months, she told the DIA agent when he pressed her on this point.
How many months exactly, the agent had said.
I don’t know exactly, she had said.
Two points. One, Elena McMahon did know exactly how many months it had been since she had last seen her father. Two, the exact number of months between the time Elena McMahon had last seen her father and the time Elena McMahon walked off the campaign was, like the exact time at which she walked off the campaign, not significant. For the record: at the time Elena McMahon walked off the 1984 campaign she had not seen her father in twenty-one months. The last time she had seen him was September 1982, either the fourteenth or the fifteenth. She could date this almost exactly because it had been either the day or the day after Bashir Gemayel was assassinated in Lebanon and at the moment the phone rang she had been sitting at her desk doing White House reaction.
In fact she could date it not almost exactly but exactly.
It had been the fifteenth. September 15 1982.
She knew it had been the fifteenth because she had arrived in Washington on the fifteenth of August and given herself a month to find a house and put Catherine into school and get the raise that meant she was no longer a provisional hire (there again a survivor, there again that single-minded efficiency), and at the moment her father called she had just made a note to ask about the raise.
Hey, her father had said when she picked up the telephone. This was his standard way of initiating telephone contact, no name, no greeting, just Hey, then silence. She had outwaited the silence. I’m passing through Washington, he had said then, maybe you could meet me the next half hour or so.
I’m at work, she had said.
Some kind of coincidence, he had said, since that’s where I called you.
Because she was on deadline she had told him to meet her across the street at the Madison. This had seemed a convenient neutral venue but as soon as she walked in and saw him sitting alone in the bar, drumming his fingers insistently on the small table, she knew that the Madison had not been a propitious choice. His eyes were narrowed, fixed on three men in apparently identical pin-striped suits at the next table. She recognized one of the three as White House, his name was Christopher Hormel, he was OMB but for whatever reason he had been hovering officiously around the podium during the noon briefing on Lebanon. That’s not policy, that’s politesse, Christopher Hormel was saying as she sat down, and then he repeated it, as if he had coined a witticism.
Just keep on shoveling it, her father had said.
Christopher Hormel had pushed back his chair and turned.
Spit it out, buddy, what’s your problem, her father had said.
Daddy, she had said, an entreaty.
I have no problem, Christopher Hormel had said, and turned away.
Faggots, her father had said, his fingers roaming the little dish of nuts and toasted cereal for the remaining macadamia nut.
Actually you’re wrong, she had said.
I see you’re buying right into the package here, her father had said. You’re very adaptable, anybody ever mention that?
She had ordered him a bourbon and water.
Say Early Times, he had corrected her. You say bourbon in these faggot bars they give you the Sweet Turkey shit or whatever it’s called, then charge extra. And hey, you, pal, crack out the almonds, save the Cheerios for the queers.
When the drink came he had drained it, then hunched forward. He had a small deal going in Alexandria, he had said. He had a source for two or three hundred nines, Intratecs, lame little suckers he could pick up at seventy-five per and pass on for close to three hundred, the guy he passed them to would double his money on the street but let him, that was street, he didn’t do street, never had, never would.
Wouldn’t need to either.
Because things were hotting up again.
Whole lot of popping going on again.
She had signed the bill.
Hey, Ellie, give us a smile, whole lot of popping.
The next time she saw him was the day she walked off the 1984 campaign.
5
She had not planned to walk off the campaign. She had picked up the plane that morning at Newark and except for the Coke during refueling at Kansas City she had not eaten in twenty-eight hours but she had not once thought of walking away, not on the plane, not at the rally in South Central, not at the meet-and-greet at the Maravilla project, not sitting on the sidewalk in Beverly Hills waiting for the pool report on the celebrity fund-raiser (the celebrity fund-raiser at which most of the guests had turned out to be people she had known in her previous life as Elena Janklow, the celebrity fund-raiser at which in the natural course of her previous life as Elena Janklow she would have been standing under the Regal Rents party tent listening to the candidate and calculating the length of time before she could say good night and drive home to the house on the Pacific Coast Highway and sit on the deck and smoke a cigarette), not even then had she framed the thought I could walk off this campaign.
She had performed that day as usual.
She had filed twice.
She had filed first from the Evergreen operations office in Kansas City and she had filed the update during downtime at the Holiday Inn in Torrance. She had received and answered three queries from the desk about why she had elected not to go with a story the wires were moving about an internal poll suggesting shifts among most-likely-voters. Re your query on last night’s Sawyer-Miller poll, she had typed in response to the most recent query. For third time, still consider sample too small to be significant. She had improved the hour spent sitting on the sidewalk waiting for the pool report on the celebrity fund-raiser by roughing in a draft for the Sunday analysis.