There was something in the air back then, Carter winding down, a funky sort of hope, like they were on the verge of a great discovery, and it made him horny, driving past the lawns, buying milk and fudgsicles at the supermarket, women pushing shopping carts in tennis dresses. He followed them for aisles. Shopping made him horny. Working made him horny. Breakfast made him horny — reaching for the Land O Lakes, he spread the melting squaw. Betty Crocker in the flour — what would that be like? Fishy Mrs. Paul, Aunt Jemima dripping syrup, the ripe-tomato Contadina wench. These vestals of the Pik’N’Save, always feeding others, but what about their needs?
He didn’t jerk off in the supermarket. No, he was strong. He waited till he was in the car. Afterwards, he zipped his dick away, wiped his hands on a moist towelette, and had the best smoke of the afternoon, slouched behind the wheel, watching women in tennis dresses return their carts, unloaded, to the automatic doors, or leaving them to drift on wheels across the parking lot.
America. Driving home from Camp David, Tashmo passed the subdivisions speading over hills, except for one stretch of razor-ribboned fence, undeveloped blankness, several miles’ worth. He passed it coming back from camp and wondered why this square of forest stood untouched as every hill around it sprouted homes. One night in the duty shack, he mentioned the blankness to Lloyd Felker. They were watching Johnny Carson and the heat-screen monitors, both of which were pretty dull that night. Felker said the thing you couldn’t see behind the trees, the undeveloped heart of P.G. County, was the black budget at Fort Meade, the National Security Agency.
Tashmo said, “The spy guys?”
“Bet your ass,” said Felker. “They have a fleet of satellites, biggest mainframe ever built. They can listen to any conversation in the world. They make us look pitiful.”
Tashmo later realized that many husbands in his town were commuting to black budgets. He learned to spot them, off-duty at the dump, at his daughters’ school plays, or at Generoso’s on Inspection Saturday. The spies he knew were bearded, brainy, nervous men, good fathers and bad drivers. They would never say exactly what they did or where they did it. They always lived civilian-side cover and Tashmo tortured them for sport.
He remembered the intermission at Mandy’s fourth-grade Thanksgiving pageant. Not a beer in sight and he found himself talking to a dad who said he worked for the FCC. Tashmo toyed with the man, asking intricate questions about spectrum auctions.
“Like what if, for example, I wanted my own band. What exactly are the steps that are involved?”
Shirl had made him go to the pageant. Mandy played a singing turkey and Tashmo wreaked his vengeance on this poor fake regulator.
The guy-who’s-not-a-spy tried to duck the question. He said, “I don’t work in that part of the shop. The Commission, as you know, is quite the little empire.”
“What part do you work in?” Tashmo asked.
“The other part.”
“What does your part do?”
“Pretty much nothing about spectrum auctions.”
Tashmo told his neighbor, Bo Gould, about the pageant dad, forced by his position to pretend to be a bureaucrat, when he was, in fact, a different kind of bureaucrat. They were drinking Sambuca shooters in the Goulds’ elaborate finished basement, playing with Bo’s HO train set.
Bo was smashed that night. He said, “Want to know what I really do?”
Tashmo said, “You work for Fannie Mae. You sing the fight song. Sing it for me, Bo.”
Bo sang a verse—
“O Fannie Mae, O Fannie Mae
You spread the credit widely…”
Then he waved. “Fannie Mae is bullshit. It’s called cover, Tash. I don’t even know why they assigned me that one. I requested the President’s Council on Physical Fitness, but they said that cover was taken. I’m on the waiting list, in case a spot opens up. But my real job is listening from space. My specialty is France. I could be fired for telling you this. Hope nobody heard me.”
After Bo passed out, Tashmo wandered upstairs, taking one last beer from the fridge, making himself a quick burger with fried onions.
To the living room. How do spies live? Picture-window views of other picture windows. A recliner chair, brown leather. He’d always wanted one of these. Test it out, tilt it back. They look so comfortable, but how the fuck do you get up?
Sip the beer. Where’d I put that burger?
He pushed himself up. Bookshelves always tell a story. He read the spines by the streetlights, Principles of Radio, Birding on the Chesapeake, Michener, Uris, von Clausewitz, Jonathan Livingston Seagull. He stepped back from the books and felt the burger squishing underfoot. He peeled it from the carpet and took another bite as Leah Gould, Bo’s wife, padded down the stairs.
Tashmo nodded at her, chewing. “How’s it going, Lee?”
Leah was a handsome woman. She played a bit of tennis at Patuxent Park and when she hit a forehand, she went Uh.
She stared at him that night. She wore pom-pom slippers and a forbidding nightie. She said, “Have you been frying something, Tash?”
It was clearly time to slide. He walked home under the trees, swinging his arms, finishing the beer. He felt it strongly, walking home, the funky hope.
He woke Shirl up, climbing into bed.
Shirl said, “Where the hell have you been?”
“Over at Bo’s. We played with his train set, demolished his Sambuca. Turns out he’s a major U.S. spy.”
Shirl said, “It’s three a.m.”
“Already?”
She rolled away from him.
Tashmo said that Bo could listen to any conversation in the world.
Silence.
Shirl said, “What’s it like inside? I heard they were redoing their kitchen.”
When the men went out with Carter, their families got together for potluck supper on Miss America Night, or had cookouts with games and prizes for the kids by the picnic shelter in Patuxent Park. The wives of the detail made an effort to be friends, even though they had nothing in common except the fact that their husbands had been thrown together by the whim of the assignments wheel, guarding a president none of them had voted for. The wives might not have picked the same husbands again, given the opportunity, and surely didn’t pick, as friends, the wives of men their husbands hadn’t picked, and the kids picked no one, not Carter, not their fathers, not their fathers’ coworkers, and not their fathers’ coworkers’ kids, yet everybody was supposed to bond at these events, and every family brought a dog. The dogs fought, humped, and ran away. The kids blamed each other’s dogs and screamed until they blacked out from the lack of oxygen. It seemed like perfect hell to Tashmo, but Shirl said it was good to get together once a month, eat potluck with Sue Rhodes and Lydia Felker. It was good to get together and watch the world broadcast premiere of The Way We Were or the Miss America, root for good old North Dakoty, the brave deaf girl from Oregon whose singing was disturbing, Hawaii’s always pretty but never seems to win, and what the heck is up in Massachusetts? Is Neet illegal there?
He went to a few picnics, watched the wives. He didn’t jerk off at the picnics. No, he waited till he got home and Shirl was definitely sleeping. He had an iron rule: no Secret Service wives, look and lust, but don’t touch. He tried to obey this rule, to masturbate the urge away, but despite his diligence — well.
He’d be packing to leave Camp David and another agent would catch him in the bunkhouse.