Abuse of Power - Michael Savage [47]
“Keep your powder dry.”
Jack nodded. “I always do.”
13
Jack thought of his apartment on Union Street as his Fortress of Solitude. The only people who knew he owned it were his real estate broker, the bank, and his former wife—and he wanted to keep it that way.
He hadn’t even told Tony. Jack kept it separate from his everyday life, a place where he could seek refuge, to reflect and reminisce.
A twenty-two-story sixties-era complex right off the Embarcadero, it was just a block from the bay. The beauty of the building was that there were four or five entrances and exits on various floors, and he sometimes marveled at how difficult it would be for any of the “progressives” who had threatened him over the years to stalk him here.
You could elude a rampaging army in this place.
He inwardly thought of the complex as a mini-UN. It was populated by a variety of people of various nationalities, and riding the elevator to the twentieth floor was often an education in cultural diversity. One day he’d be smiling and winking at a Norwegian child in a stroller and the next he’d be chatting with a businessman from Tokyo.
The view from his window was spectacular. Facing north, it looked out across the bay. And just beyond the Richmond Bridge, you could see the East Brother Light Station, a small island lighthouse that had been in operation for over a hundred and thirty-three years.
Jack had spent part of his honeymoon on that island, staying at the bed-and-breakfast there. And while he had found the place charming, Rachel had complained that they were too isolated to have any fun—beyond the bedroom, that is. Jack loved and could enjoy the birds, the bay, even the winds. That contrast in their attitudes was one of the many reasons they were no longer married.
As with many marriages, Jack and Rachel stopped sleeping together years before the sex stopped. They had side-by-side separate beds, and later they slept in separate bedrooms.
He liked to watch movies on TV, she liked to read. He went to bed early, she read until after midnight. He got up at first light, she slept until eleven. He was obsessed with politics and TV news, she found this too predictable. “What’s the point of getting excited,” she used to say to him, “they’re all liars and you can’t change a damn thing.”
The sex between them had been great for years, endless and heated. But Jack wasn’t made for marriage. It was a strain on his nature. He couldn’t conform to another person’s needs and wants.
The only interest he really had was his own ego. He believed he could make the world a better place. She was cynical about “the good guys winning.”
But she was loyal and faithful. That kept them together. Nothing entered her life that she did not want to be there. She had an iron will.
Jack both admired her for that and was repelled by it. Being married to a Margaret Thatcher was no picnic, he would say, while admiring the iron lady’s strength. Her love for him blinded her to what she considered his egotism and his other flaws and quirks.
His father had warned him, “Two rules, Jackie boy, never, ever agree with a friend who leaves his girlfriend and puts her down. They’ll get back together and blame you. And one other thing: never touch another guy’s girlfriend. Ever.” He never cheated on her and he never put her down. Even after the divorce.
But Rachel ignored Jack’s work. She rarely commented on any of his broadcasts or even his columns. This was her way of hurting him. When at first she did not leave him because of his habit of withdrawing into himself she left him in a more fundamental way, abandoning him where it hurt the most. Ignoring the things he was proudest of.
Eventually, they both wanted more than a memory of how things were.
Much of Jack’s past was here in this apartment. After the divorce, boxes that had been stored in his garage in Tiburon had been dragged out and sifted through, yielding a collection of mementos he had gathered over the years:
Some of his childhood toys made of metal, his favorite a vintage 1940s