Sixty days and counting - Kim Stanley Robinson [173]
“Jesus, I’ll bet.”
“All he had to do was shoot a little higher and I would have been a goner. He was only about thirty feet from me. I saw something out of the corner of my eye and looked over. That’s probably what saved me. I can still see him. He didn’t look that crazy.”
“He was, though. He’s spent some time in institutions, they say, and a lot more living at his mom’s, listening to talk radio.”
“Ah yeah. So, like the guy who shot Reagan.”
“That’s right.”
“Same place and all—it’s like a goddam rerun. ‘Hi honey, I forgot to duck!’ ”
“That’s right. He also said to his surgeons, ‘I hope none of you are Democrats.’ ”
Phil laughed so hard he had to rein himself in. “That poor guy didn’t know whether he was in a movie or not. It was all a movie to him.”
“That’s true.”
“At least he thought he was playing the good guy. He was a cloth-head, but he thought he was doing good.”
“A fitting epitaph.”
Phil looked around the office. “I’ve been thinking that JFK was really unlucky. A lot of these people are so crazy they’re incompetent, but his guy was an expert marksman. Amazingly expert, when you think about it. Long shot, moving target—I’ve been thinking that maybe the conspiracy folks are right about that one. That it was too good a shot to be real.”
Whatever, Charlie didn’t say. Instead he said, “Maybe so.”
It was a gruesome topic. But natural enough for Phil to be interested in it right now. Indeed, he went methodically down through the list: Lincoln had been shot point-blank, Garfield and McKinley likewise; and Reagan too; while the woman who took a potshot at Ford, and the guy who had tried to fly a small plane into the White House, could hardly even be said to have tried. “And a guy shot at FDR too, did you know that? He missed Roosevelt, and Roosevelt got a good night’s sleep that night and never mentioned the matter again. But the mayor of Chicago was hit and later on he died.”
“Like John Connally in reverse.”
“Yeah.” Phil shook his head. “FDR was a strange man. I mean, I love him and honor him, but he’s not like Lincoln. Lincoln you can understand. You can read him like a book. It’s not that he wasn’t complex, because he was, but complex in a way you can see and think about. FDR is just plain mysterious. After he had his polio he put on a mask. He played a part as much as Reagan. He never let anyone inside that mask. They even called him the Sphinx, and he loved that.” He paused, thinking it over. “I’m going to be like that,” he said suddenly, glancing at Charlie.
“Hard to believe,” Charlie said.
Phil smiled the ghost of his famous smile, and Charlie wondered if they would ever see the full version again.
Then there was a knock on the door, and Diane Chang came in.
“Hi honey,” Phil said, “I forgot to duck!” And there was the full smile.
“Please,” Diane said severely. “Quit it.” She explained to Charlie: “He says that every time I come in.” To Phil: “So stop. How do you feel?”
“Better, now that you’re here.”
“Are you still doing Reagan or are you just happy to see me?”
The men laughed, and again Phil winced. “I need my meds,” he said. “President on drugs!”
“Rush Limbaugh is outraged about it.”
They laughed again, but Phil really did seem to be hurting.
“I should let you go,” Charlie said.
Phil nodded. “Okay. But look, Charlie.”
Now he had a look Charlie had never seen before. Intent—some kind of contained anger—it would make sense—but Phil had always been so mellow. Hyperactive but mellow. Or seemingly mellow. Maybe before the shooting was when Phil had worn the mask, Charlie thought suddenly; maybe now they would be seeing more of him rather than less.
“I want to put this to use,” Phil said. “We’ve gotten a good start on the climate problem, but there are other problems just as bad. So I want to push the process, and I’m willing to try all kinds of things to make it happen.”
“Okay,” Charlie said. “I’ll think about some things to try.” By God I will!