Citizen Hughes - Michael Drosnin [53]
It went on like that for a month, until Hughes learned that, unfortunately, Maheu had recovered, and quickly moved to keep him from returning to his full and complex life.
“Bob, are you well enough—I mean your knee—to go to a meeting?” he asked innocently. “I assumed you might be well enough because somebody told me you were up the other night.”
They were no longer joined as shut-ins, but they were still joined in unholy matrimony.
SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE: Act III
“Now, Howard, I am getting pretty damned disturbed about what seems to be developing into a compulsive need to give Bob hell. We never talk about the small miracles we pull.
“I am really trying to do a job for you in innumerable areas, but I have to get the feeling when I hit the sack tonight that I do not have your backing and that perhaps I should indulge in the sure-fire way of gaining your complete confidence—DO NOTHING OR SCREW UP THE DETAIL.
“Howard, I really feel very badly about having to speak so frankly, but as they say that’s how the cookie crumbles, and they happen to be your cookies, so you can crumble them any way you choose.”
“I dont desire this unhappiness on your part. I am the one who suffers the most from it.
“It does not make me feel happy, and it certainly does not benefit my health to quarrel with you.
“I do not claim it is a one way street by any means. I will try to improve.”
“Howard, until now, and I repeat now, I have been genuinely interested in protecting our flanks wherever they may be. I have been concerned about a 12:01 AM closing on the Slipper, protecting your image in Ecuador, choosing a Presidential candidate, making sure that all of your investments to date in Las Vegas run profitably, keeping a door open in the Bahamas, stopping the Boulder City Council from passing a resolution condemning our position on nuclear tests,’ preventing the White House from revealing the contents of your letter to the President—the contents of which to date I know nothing—but which they claim could prove embarrassing.
“If all of these things are unimportant then perhaps you should tell me precisely what you expect me to do, because I’ve just about lost my courage in trying to exercise my own judgement. Honest to Christ, Howard, you make it impossible for me to know what you want, how you want it, where you want it, and when you want it.”
“Do I detect in your last message a slight hint of your uncertainty with respect to the future and what it may hold for the two of us?
“If so, I think it is about time you lay it all on the line with no reservations.
“I think our relationship needs re-examination and re-clarification, either as worthless or as deserving of your loyalty and allegiance.”
“Howard, you certainly have my loyalty, devotion, and friendship. It is inconceivable that anything could ever happen which could cause this to change.
“I am referring to many years of continued, consistent dedication and loyalty which I defy you to find in any other human being. If all of this has been in vain, then I feel sorry indeed—not for myself but for you. I say I feel sorry for you because if you, in fact, don’t recognize it when you really have it, then you must be a terribly unhappy person.”
“I must say I am astounded. A month or two ago I asked you if there was not something under the surface that I was unaware of. I said you seemed preoccupied and I feared an explosion one of these nights that would wreck our relationship. You told me I was imagining things.
“I want earnestly, Bob, to achieve immediately a better relationship with you. I know we have been over all of this ground before, and I know that getting you to admit that there could be any improvement is next to impossible.
“But I want to try anyway.”
“Howard, you keep referring to a better relationship. I have no problem in this area, but by indirection you keep sending little messages which indicate that you