Note: The picture mentioned is NOT Maggie Dawson's Pulitzer-prize-winning photograph. That wasn't taken in the Original History! For a description of THIS photo, please see Chapter 11 of my other story, "The Sound of Silence".
CHAPTER TWENTY
NASA had arranged for a car to pick up Yardley on the private airstrip outside of DC. Al could not help hesitating for a fraction of a second before climbing into the back seat. Although the Associate Administrator's briefings had kept his mind occupied during the flight, the relief of exiting the plane had made him aware of his discomfort. Nevertheless, he set his jaw and sat down, loosening the top button of his uniform as he did so.
As the city rose around them, it occurred to him that the two of them would probably be sharing a hotel room. The prospect filled him with a vague horror. He had been getting better at making it through the night without disturbances—or so he had thought until the night at Elsa's. Perhaps it was just the bed in his apartment that he was growing accustomed to. The last thing he wanted was to wake Yardley up with his screams. Bad enough to wake Elsa.
To his infinite relief, Yardley seemed bent on showing Congress just how spendthrift NASA could be. As it turned out, he was only TDY at the Kennedy Space Center. In fact, he worked at HQ and made his permanent home in Washington. Therefore it was most economical to have Al as his houseguest. He had a bedroom and a half bath on the main floor of a stately West End home, all to himself and a good distance away from the reunited couple. Phyllis, the administrator's wife, was a very considerate and capable hostess, and saw to it that Al was much more comfortable than he would have been in the most costly hotel.
For the first two days, Yardley was putting in time at NASA Headquarters, which left Al more or less to his own devices. On Monday he pored over the charts and budgets and projections that the Congressional committee had been given, trying to sketch out some kind of speech. As he understood it he was there to proclaim his undying loyalty to the Apollo program, which he would guard with his life, his dignity, and his sacred honor—at least, that was how he interpreted it. Yardley was there to field the tough questions: Al was just for show value.
That was fine. He could handle that.
On Tuesday he went to Capitol Hill, because that was what good little sailors did when they visited Washington. He visited the Lincoln Memorial, wandered around the grounds, and then made his way through the Smithsonian, just for something to do. By the time he found his way back to Casa Yardley, he was almost ready to collapse into bed.
On Wednesday he donned his dress whites, put on his most somber military expression, and stepped out in front of the Congressional funding committee.
There were seven members, ranging in age from forty-three to sixty. Two women, five men, every single one of them cut from the same cloth: a very pragmatic, sober, boring and unimaginative cloth. Yardley answered their questions succinctly and straightforwardly, giving the most pertinent information first and presenting everything in a simple and logical manner. This was probably the best way to deliver information to this crowd, but the problem was that logic dictated that Apollo be concluded. Really, it had been the most logical course of action the last time the question had been raised, too. What had saved them then was an appeal to patriotism and the Democratic desire for popularity. It seemed to Al that if they didn't get these prunes excited about the lunar missions they might as well have stayed in Florida throwing pebbles into the sea.
He said as much to Yardley during a brief recess in the proceedings.
"Trust me, Calavicci," he said, smiling a little. "You just sit back and let me take care of it."
"Take care of it?" Al protested. "Every word you say makes it look more and more sensible to shut Apollo down!"
"Exactly," Yardley said. "That's exactly how you have to play it. You see, Calavicci, Congress is full of fools, but they're overeducated, proud, self-important fools. If I came in there fighting tooth and nail, trying to tell them that they're wrong, and they'd balk like mules. So I go in there saying almost exactly what they're thinking, then as I go I start working them slowly around to my point of view. That way, by the time I pull out the aces they're eating out of my hand."
"That's quite the gamble," Al pointed out. "What if you push them over the edge and can't get them back again?"
Yardley laughed. "Life's a gamble, Calavicci!" he said. "You've just got to make sure you hedge your bets a little!"
Al decided he liked this man. He really liked him.
"How are you hedging yours?" he asked.
Yardley reached out to brush something off of one of the Naval officer's epaulettes. "I brought you," he said, smirking a little.
Al laughed hollowly. Some ace in the hole he was. "Sir, I…"
"Trust me, Calavicci. They're going to be eating out of our hands!"
MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMAfter that, Al watched Yardley carefully. He realized that what he said was true: he was gradually adding a more and more positive slant to what he was saying. Encouraging factoids like the program's excellent success rate somehow snuck their way in between accounts of the projected delays. What Al couldn't see was the words having any effect. As far as he could tell, the dour-faced politicians weren't yielded at all. After making a point about the necessity of replacing the S-II to ensure that there would be no glitches in the flight, Yardley paused for effect, and scrawled a note on the corner of one of his papers. As he launched into another litany of cost figures he slid the page across the table towards Al. In the engineer's careless but still uncommonly legible hand were the words We've got Idaho.
Startled, Al looked up at the table. The Congressman from Boise was a jowl-faced fifty-something with a wispy gray goatee. He was tapping his pen slowly against the blotter in front of him. He looked, if anything, dead of boredom.
Al picked up a pen and scribbled back, Are you sure?
Yardley glanced at the memo, and nodded, grinning out of the corner of his mouth without even pausing in his rhetoric.
Finally, the morning session ended, and still Al hadn't done anything but sit there like a hood ornament. The committee wasn't going to reconvene until three—Al had heard about Congress and their obscenely long lunch hours, but he had never quite believed it until now—and so that left the better part of two and a half hours for lunch. Yardley invited Al to join him and a couple of his colleagues, but the last thing Al wanted to do was crash a party full of eggheads. He took off across the lawn on his own.
"Hey!"
He froze as a voice rang out.
"Hey! Al Calavicci!"
Al turned to see a tall man in a very expensive suit jogging up, carrying an alligator briefcase. "Al Calavicci! I knew it! Hey, Navy…"
Al closed his eyes, trying to remember. Grease paint and cheap cotton costumes. The voice that was eulogizing over his uniform reached his brain speaking very different words: The weight of this sad time we must obey: speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. The oldest hath suffered most. We that are young shall never see so much, nor live so long. "Edgar—I mean, Paul! Paul Thoroughgood!"
"In the flesh! How've you been? Where've you been?"
Al stared at his fellow thespian, a one-time ragged beatnik now turned corporate savant. "I could ask you the same thing! What happened? Somebody steal your beret?"
Paul grinned. "Naw. Mother Dearest finally got her wish. I'm a lawyer."
Al grimaced. "I hate lawyers!"
"And I hate sailors! God, it's good to see you!" He pulled Al into a bear hug. "My evil twin!"
Al favored his old friend with a toothy grin. "Be careful," he warned, waggling his finger as he recalled the great times they'd had playing opposite one another in King Lear. "You can only kill an Italian once! Besides," he added, scowling; "Edgar and Edmund weren't twins. You're slipping, Toothpick."
"Damn, this is fabulous! What are you doing in Washington?"
"I'm with NASA—trying to drum up some extra dough to cover a little mishap."
"Yeah, I heard about that… listen! D'you have time for lunch?" Paul asked. "I'm meeting an old frat buddy; you're welcome to join us."
Al shook his head. "Thanks, but I don't crash parties."
"Are you kidding? You have any idea how boring it is to have lunch with a lawyer?" Paul asked.
Al shrugged. "I have a feeling that I'm about to find out," he said.
Paul laughed. "You're all right, kid!"
The restaurant was within walking distance, and soon a shapely young waitress was showing them to a table in a quiet back room. Already seated behind an olive-garnished martini was an athletic man with longish, dusty-blonde hair, also clad in costly threads. He looked up as the one-time actors approached.
"Paul!" he said. Then he spotted Al. "And…"
Paul grinned. "An old friend: happened to bump into him and thought you wouldn't mind a little variety with the lunch conversation."
"No, of course not," the other man said, getting to his feet and offering Al his hand. "Any friend of Paul's is a friend of mine."
"Same here," Al said. "Except maybe that guy who ran the poetry bar."
Paul laughed. "Al knows me from my rebel days. We were both raging against the Machine of the 'fifties. Hadn't seen him in years!"
The other man was frowning, examining Al's face pensively. "I'm sorry, but have we met?" he asked. "I have the strangest feeling I've seen you somewhere before."
Al thought uncomfortably of a certain photograph that had circled the country in '73. He hadn't wanted them to use it. He had refused to let them print his name. But it was out there, and every once in a while he had moments like this. Especially in the company of well-educated, conservative types. To cover his discomfiture, he laughed. "I've got one of those faces," he said.
The lawyer shook his head. "I could swear…" He shrugged his shoulders. "You'll have to excuse me," he said. "I'm having a Twilight Zone moment."
"Where are my manners?" Paul exclaimed. "I haven't introduced you. Al, this is Dirk. Dirk, Al. There! Now, let's have lunch!"
They sat and ordered, and slowly got around to the inevitable questions. Paul, it seemed, was living in Washington now. He had a girlfriend who was employed in the Oval Office, of all places, and he was enjoying the freedom of a commuter relationship. Al tried to stay sketchy with details about his own life, sticking to his time at M.I.T. and his recent forays into astronautics. He realized abruptly that Dirk wasn't holding up his fair share of the conversation.
"So what do you do?" he asked. "I mean, obviously you're a lawyer, but… you know. You live here, too?"
Paul and Dirk both laughed. "God, no! Wife wouldn't stand for that!" Dirk said. "I'm from South Dakota. Trying to break into politics: I'm Congressman Emerson's aide. He's actually hearing your petition—I mean, NASA's petition. Quite frankly, I'm not sure that Mr. Yardley has much of a chance of convincing them, not even with his own Naval bodyguard. I'm sorry to say it, but sailors are dime a dozen these days."
"Actually, I'm a pilot," Al corrected. "I'm in the astronaut program."
"Ah, and if they scrap Apollo you won't be able to go into space!" Dirk said knowingly.
"They want to transfer me to Skylab," Al said. "The point isn't to get me to the moon, it's to get Americans to the moon."
"But we've already put Americans on the moon: twelve! Isn't that enough?"
"Fourteen," Al corrected. Damn, maybe Yardley was right about Apollo 18. "And we were supposed to get twenty up there. We're a little short of the mark."
"Fourteen, twenty, what's the difference?" Dirk challenged.
"Six, obviously," Al said acerbically.
Paul laughed. "Relax! He's trying to cut your teeth!"
Al looked suspiciously at his friend. "Yeah?"
"Yeah," Dirk said. "Or is Yardley just going to show you off like a prize poodle?"
"He's not going to like it if I spill the game plan to the enemy's aide," Al warned.
"You'll have to excuse him," Paul said. "Al doesn't like lawyers."
"Yeah, well, I've had a bad experience," Al muttered, his mind involuntarily flying back to the bastard who had spirited Beth away from him.
"We're not all made to the same pattern," Dirk said peaceably. "You know, I was in my third year of law when Sputnik went up. When I heard they were going to put men into space, it was the only time I ever thought I might have made a mistake becoming a lawyer. What's the space program like?"
"I don't know," Al admitted. "All I've been through is check-up after check-up! I feel like a lab rat some days."
Dirk laughed. "Sounds like politics!" he said. "But you're lucky. You've got flight surgeons and physicists looking you over like a formaldehyde-pickled specimen ripe for the scalpel. I've got the press—and let me tell you, the only thing in South Dakota more ravenous than the press is the mosquitoes!"
"They're pretty bad in Florida, too," Al conceded. He knew he was being won over by the other man's charm, but he didn't really mind.
"Press or mosquitoes?" Paul asked.
"Mosquitoes. Second worst place I've ever been for them. I don't know jack about the press."
"Where's the worst?" Dirk asked conversationally, plucking the toothpick out of his glass and eating the olive.
Al shrugged, even though all this talk about mosquitoes was making his skin crawl with the memory of Nature's torturers. "I've heard the Dakota Territories are pretty bad."
Dirk feigned indignation. "Territories?" he blustered in a travesty of a Midwestern accent. "Why, mister, I'll have you know them there territories have been States of the Union for—whoo!—purty near ninety years now!" He chuckled. "Actually, I'm a born and bred Californian," he said, his normal voice resurfacing.
"Really? I spent some wonderful years in California," Al said, before his mind caught up to his mouth. "San Diego."
"What a coincidence!" Paul said. "Dirk's a San Diego man himself. His parents are still out there—aren't they?"
"Wouldn't leave it for the world. I never would have either, but my wife wanted a fresh start. Just as well. Pierre's a great town for the kids."
"How many is it now?" Paul asked. "Three?"
"Not 'till Christmastime," Dirk said proudly. "I'm hoping for another boy, but I think Liz has her heart set on a girl. When are you and Megan going to tie the knot?"
"Hah! She hasn't roped me yet!" Paul said. "What about you, Al? Any lucky lady in your life?"
"I'm coming around for my second pass," Al said. "Wedding's in September. Just a small thing. Neither of us have any family to speak of, and we don't want a fuss."
Paul whistled softly. "Got caught cheating?" he asked.
Al took a forkful of salad to give his voice time to control itself. "Not exactly," he murmured, still more haunted than he wanted to appear. He looked up and grinned. "Hey, you done any theater since the old days?"
The conversation climbed back uphill from there. Dirk was a nice guy, and Paul was almost as much fun as Al remembered. When the meal was finished and the three men rose to say good-bye, Al shook hands enthusiastically.
"Nice meeting you, Mr… uh…"
"Simon," Dirk said. "The pleasure was all mine, Lieutenant-Commander…" He paused expectantly.
"Calavicci," Al offered pleasantly.
Dirk's expression altered marginally. "Calavicci?" he repeated.
"Yeah, that's right," Al said. "It's Italian."
"Yeah, I know…" Dirk smiled, but he still looked strangely uncomfortable. "Hey, listen, I'll put in a good word to Emerson," he said. "About the petition."
"Thanks!" Al said. "I have a feeling we need all the help we can get!"
"Uh… don't worry about it…" Dirk said, strangely absent. "It's the least—least I can do."