“I’ve created a monster,” Cass said.
“No, darling.” Randy smiled. “Mother created the monster. You merely added a few finishing touches.”
ABBA had formed a few years earlier when a faction of members of the American Association of Retired Persons decided that aging Boomers needed their own lobby. The split with AARP had been contentious and litigious. Given its demographics-77 million, average household income of $58,000-it had quickly become a formidable lobby. Its guiding philosophy was: “From cradle to grave, special in every way.”
ABBA’s headquarters on Massachusetts Avenue near Dupont Circle had been designed by the architect Renzo Nolento at a cost the organization preferred not to discuss in public. The building’s lobby consisted of an elliptical atrium with brushed steel walls. In an interview with Architectural Digest, Nolento revealed that he had been inspired by the platinum stainless steel finish of the Sub-Zero refrigerators popular among ABBA’s membership. “I wanted to express a certain coldness,” he said, “but also a forcefulness that conveys the idea ‘Don’t fool around with us because we are very powerful, okay?’” The metallic walls were inscribed, “Ask not, what can your country do for you. Ask, what has your country done for you lately?”
Randy whispered to Cass as they were escorted to the greenroom behind the stage, “Here we are again-behind enemy lines.”
He and Cass had debated whether he should accept the invitation to speak to ABBA. The Boomer membership was not particularly happy that Senator Jepperson’s chief adviser, Cass, had been inciting youth mobs to attack their retirement communities. But recognizing the value of getting ABBA “on board” in the Transitioning debate, Randy had been in quiet talks with the leadership. People might not smoke anymore, but the “smoke-filled rooms” lived on one way or the other. And in the spirit of those locales, he had, in the manner of his ilk, been making certain promises.
Among others, Randy had pledged his support for the cosmetic surgery benefit ABBA had been lobbying for, along with a Segway “cost defrayal” so that creaky-kneed (or just plain lazy) Boomers could deduct the full cost of these devices that were now ferrying so many of them around the nation’s sidewalks and malls. He’d also agreed to support other ABBA legislative goals: a federal acid reflux initiative; a grandchild day care initiative; visa requirement waivers for elder care; and a sure-to-be-controversial subsidy for giant flat-screen plasma TVs (for Boomers with deteriorating eyesight).
Randy had been busy. What he had not done was inform Cass of the full extent of his private deal making. She, destroyer of golf courses and assailer of gated communities, disturber of the Boomer peace, may have been “behind enemy lines” tonight, but Randy was among new friends.
Mitch Glint, ABBA’s executive director, stopped by to pay his respects. He extended a somewhat cool handshake to Cass, but a hearty one to Randy. They talked for a few minutes. As he left, he said, “We’ll talk more about those other things.”
“What ‘other things’?” Cass said when they were alone.
“Oh, nothing. Just been keeping the lines of communication open.”
“I thought I was your communications person.”
“And so you are, so you are. Fill you in later. Need to focus on my speech. Got to be on my toes now, or this crowd’ll have my guts for garters.”
She watched from backstage, through a partition in the curtains. Normally, Randy hardly limped at all. But when he was walking out onto a stage, he could make himself look like someone dragging out of the surf onto the beach after having his leg gnawed off by a shark.
That’s my boy, Cass thought.
Randy began, “When I was lying in the hospital bed after the explosion…”
She’d heard that before, many times.
“… thinking about the far greater sacrifices made by other Americans…”
Her mind wandered. She felt, sitting there in the shadows, like a political wife listening to the same speech for the four hundredth time. At least she wasn’t out there onstage where you had to force a smile. They must get the zygomaticus muscle equivalent of carpal tunnel syndrome, the wives.
“… no time for partisanship…”
She thought of Terry.
“… not a Republican issue or a Democratic issue…”
Cass’s lips moved silently: …but an American issue.…
“… but an American issue.…”
She was texting on the BlackBerry when she became vaguely aware, as if some bat had suddenly appeared and was flitting about in the backstage darkness, that Randy was uttering words she did not at all remember reading in the text she had written for him.
“For our agenda is very much your agenda.”
What?
“Indeed, there are more things that join us than separate us.”
What was he talking about? ABBA was the principal lobby for the enemy, the most self-indulgent, self-centered population cohort in human history, with the possible exception of the twelve Caesars.
She looked up from her BlackBerry and stared at the spotlit figure onstage. His right arm was raised in a pantomime of a Greek statue, index finger pointed upward as if to imply some spiritual connectedness with, or sponsorship of, the heavens, or perhaps some passing American eagle, or, failing that, the auditorium roof.
“Ronald Reagan used to say that the nine scariest words in the English language were ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’”
An amused murmur rippled through the audience.
“Well, ladies and gentlemen…”
Where is this going? Cass thought, curiosity turning urgent. She was on her feet now, subconsciously looking about for a long hook.
“… I am from the government. Run-while you have the chance!”
The audience laughed. Cass relaxed slightly. Speechwriters are fundamentally Calvinist: They become nervous if their principals exhibit free will and depart from the prepared text.
“Whatever you thought of his politics, Ronald Reagan was a great man. A courageous man. He took an assassin’s bullet and joked to the doctors as they desperately worked to save his life. He survived and saw through his presidency. He outlived many of his adversaries and contemporaries. Survived-but for what? Only to come down with Alzheimer’s disease. To die a long, lingering, and inglorious death. Was this any way to go? I think the answer must be-no. No way. No way. At all.”
Cass snuck to the edge of the curtain to peer out at the audience. They were stone silent, eyes fixed on Randy. She couldn’t tell what they were collectively thinking, but they weren’t coughing or fidgeting or furtively BlackBerrying.
“My fellow Americans, we are all of us going to make the Great Transition. We can inject ourselves full of drugs, have doctors replace our organs, change our blood, become bionic Frankensteins. But we were born with expiration dates stamped on our DNA. We can fool some of the diseases some of the time, but we can’t fool all of them all of the time. We are all of us sooner or later going to cross the river and rest in the shade on the other side. And just as this generation has always contrived to get the very best from life, so too can it aspire to wring the best from death. My fellow Americans, as Country Joe and the Fish, balladeers of our youth, put it so memorably, albeit in a slightly different context, ‘Whoopee! We’re all gonna die!’ Indeed. So I put it to you: Why not do it the way we’ve lived our lives-on our terms? Why-I put it to you-not do it on our timetable? And finally, I put it to you, my fellow Americans-indeed, my fellow Boomers-if we are going to make the ultimate sacrifice, isn’t the least our government can do for us is show a little gratitude?”