Citizen Hughes - Michael Drosnin [163]
It was all working out so well. Not only had he succeeded in drawing Maheu fully into the fight, but now the fight itself was a perfect excuse to keep the opening date open. Better yet, it was clearly Maheu’s own fault. And beyond all else, he had finally flushed out his partner’s true feelings, all the anger he feared, all the passion he desired.
“You keep telling me that I am imagining things when I speak of misunderstandings between us and that none exists except in my mind,” continued Hughes. “Then a time comes like this morning and you take the wraps off and expose a pent-up condition of resentment that is just boiling over.
“I do not agree with anything in your message—not anything at all,” he added.
“I think today is fortunate, in a way, because you have finally taken the wraps off and said what is on your mind, and what is at the root of all our troubles.
“It does no good to gloss over these things and pretend they dont exist,” Hughes went on, warming to his role as marriage counselor in his own stormy marriage. “If we dont lay them on the table in front of us, they will never be resolved.
“I assure you that, if you feel even half of what you said in your message, it has to be straightened out to the point where you look at the situation entirely differently.
“It is just absurd for two people in the position we are in, where each depends as completely on the other as we do, to have the compressed, bursting package of bitterness and resentment, bottled up inside one of us as you disclosed this morning.
“And, I assure you, Bob, it is not a one-way street,” Hughes continued, abandoning his even-handed approach, “because for every feeling of injustice, or whatever it is that is bugging you, I feel just as strongly in the opposite direction.
“Just as convinced as you appear to be that I am wrong and that you are getting the bad end of the deal, etc., just as convinced as you appear to be that you are mistreated, and that you have to take some kind of revenge, just as firmly convinced of this as you seem to be, you may rest assured I feel equally strongly that you are 100% wrong.
“So, I am sure this walled-up bitterness must not be permitted to continue between us,” he concluded, having laid things on the table with a vengeance. He now turned back to the matter at hand.
“Meantime, Bob, please do not allow us to have a further misunderstanding about the Landmark.
“I am asking you, for the record, not to give a go-ahead on the basis of any specific date, and not to make any preparations for the opening. Also, I implore you, Bob, not to permit some rumor to leak out about a July 1st opening, or anything else in connection with this matter, until we get these issues settled.”
Finally, to really nail down an open date, Hughes added a stern P.S.: “Bob, the above is really important if we are to have any chance at all of healing this breach between us.”
Maheu didn’t know what had hit him. The CIA tough guy was flat on his back, crying for mercy.
“Even a person who professes to be as rough and strong as I do will eventually hit the canvas when he is consistently clobbered on all parts of his body and head,” wrote the outmatched challenger, throwing in the towel. “He is bound to become punch-drunk. Then to find himself on the canvas and to be kicked in the groin too, I don’t think he is entirely unreasonable if he eeks out: ‘Ouch, this hurts.’
“As to the Landmark, Howard, I am sure you realize that the logistics involved in an opening are many. If we are not going to open on July 1, we would very much appreciate your giving us a fixed date.”
With Maheu on the ropes, Hughes now shifted his tactics. There was no need to beat his sparring partner bloody. A TKO was sufficient. Besides, why let Maheu claim all the sympathy? Hughes too was in pain. Deep pain.
The terror over the opening, which had brought their marital strife to a head, had also forced Howard Hughes to look inward, to examine his life, to search his soul. He began the long journey with a brief but seemingly heartfelt review.