The President's Angel Read Free Page A

forebears had taken the surname after dropping a Middle Eastern one. The country had been whiplashed by a decade of change. All it wanted was to stop.
    Matt had the requisite presidential thick hair which he could run one hand through when he was putting on an “aw gee” act with the Press, and which, coupled with an engaging grin, could make a woman’s heart twist. Also he was smart. He was direct, directed, and tough, and he had politically cunning advisors.
    His concern was to run the country.
    Theirs was to see that he got reelected at the completion of his term. The goals were sometimes contradictory, but until the President saw the angel at the foot of his bed, that did not bother him unduly. He was popular in the polls. Playing the part of a President may have been more important than being the President, he found. He had been astonished in his early days to discover … how little power he had. But he had the style that went with the perks that the people associated with power; and that was a form of power in itself. He could order a cup of coffee or a limousine. He could change his busy schedule at will, and pick up the telephone and call anyone in the world. He never had to handle money or pay a bill. He could walk into the War Room and spot (with a flick of an electronic switch) where every friendly submarine in the world lay hidden at that moment, and some of the enemy ones as well. He could spy on the missiles of the Eastern Empire. He could light boards with darting slashes to represent military units, his own or those of the Barbarians he played against. And he enjoyed it. But power is an elusive thing. It was diffused between a hundred units and a hundred thousand men and women, and at times it seemed to him that his job was merely to maintain the fiction of a monarch in command, while his advisors scurried like squirrels from one group to another, offering flattery, warnings, or rewards.
    During the day, the President was kept too busy to wonder about the questions that pursued his nighttime dreams.
    During the night he could not keep the dreams at bay.
    Here is a dream he had after he saw the angel. He was walking across a lawn of fallen leaves. The leaves were wet and mildewed from a long period of rain or perhaps from wet and mildewed skies. At the end of the lawn was a shallow pond. Its water was black. In it he could see the sodden leaves that had dropped to the muddy bottom. There was also a kind of sea grass that thrust like spiky eels above the surface. It was in every way unpleasant. He thought: I have to do this fast, or else I‘ll never dare. So he jumped in.
    When he jumped, he realized he was wearing his favorite cashmere sweater and gray flannel pants, and the water was above his head. It was so cold he could not move, and he would drown if he did not begin to swim, but he could not move. He called for help. A woman, walking across the lawn, asked indifferently if he wanted cheddar or Jarlsberg cheese.…
    He woke up trembling, struck by the joy of being still alive. Then he groaned at what the dream might mean. He took dreams seriously. Was it a warning that he was leaping without looking?
    And if so, into what?

2
    For many weeks that fall the angel did not reappear. The President had time to relax into himself. Also to take his soul by the scruff of the neck and scold it for deceiving him. In other words, he got a grip on himself. His staff relaxed as well under the beam of his easy smile. The President began to laugh at the apparition he had seen.
    He even spoke of it to Frank. The valet, his white-haired, balding confidant, listened with his usual calm detachment. He neither ridiculed the idea nor accepted it.
    â€œCrazy?” prompted Matt.
    â€œI’ve seen too many impossible things,” said the older man, “not to believe in impossibility.”
    â€œNonsense!” snorted the President, annoyed to discover the responsibility for denouncing it lay