Taft 2012: A Novel by Jason Heller

Author:Jason Heller [Heller, Jason]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781594745560
Publisher: Random House Inc Clients

Fox News Poll

What do you think of former president William Howard Taft?

Respected elder statesman: 35 percent

Forgettable and irrelevant: 27 percent

Dangerously out-of-touch loose cannon: 21 percent

Undecided: 10 percent

Imposter/hoax/fraud: 7 percent

ELEVEN

“Good God, man. Is all this truly necessary? Preposterous! I must look like a cut-rate Manila harlot.”

Taft sat petrified in the dressing-room chair, his face a frozen flinch, as if he were under the straight razor of a bloodthirsty barber.

“No talking. You’re smearing.” The makeup artist fastidiously daubed his cheeks with a pigmented brush. Taft felt like a fidgeting child being scolded by a portraitist—only he was the canvas.

Susan seemed greatly amused by it all. She sat in a folding chair against the wall, her coat lying over her lap and a cup of tea balanced on top of the coat. Surely a woman of such propriety must be able to see the indignity of his current predicament, but, as Taft already knew, she took a perverse delight in seeing him bluster.

“Sorry. I suppose I should have warned you about this,” she told him. “We were so wrapped up in preparing that the makeup part of being on TV completely slipped my mind.”

Taft highly doubted that, but he let it lie. He had other things to worry about, for instance, the fact that this so-called makeup artist was dangerously close to sticking a brush in his eye.

“Steady now, man! I’m too pretty for an eye patch.”

The makeup artist refused to laugh. Instead, he stepped back and inspected Taft’s face from a fresh angle. “Let me just throw this out there, okay? You wouldn’t be interested in shaving off that horrid thing, would you?”

“My mustache?”

“If that’s what you’re calling that thing, then yes. Your mustache.”

“This mustache, I’ll have you know, is the last living presidential mustache in United States history. And, furthermore, it’s a symbol of both affluence and virility—and a dashing one at that, I might add.” It was bad enough he’d already had to trim it.

“Oh, sure. My mistake.” He twirled Taft’s chair around to face the mirror that took up almost the entire length and width of one wall. He had to admit that the Manhattan television studio in which Pauline Craig was headquartered had a well-equipped green room. As Susan had explained, Craig often invited high-ranking politicos, military brass, and the occasional screen or singing celebrity, all of whom were accustomed to being primped and preened prior to placement in front of a camera.

Taft balked at the thought. His armpits had already dampened at the thought of having his voice and moving image broadcast live across the nation—no, the world, Susan had said—and he’d even begun to smell. Stage fright was something he’d overcome long ago; in fact, as Susan had explained the week before, Taft had become infamous as being one of the most long-winded speechmakers in the presidential pantheon. Secretly, Taft prided himself on that fact. After all, an address thoroughly thought out and exhaustively delivered left less room for vagueness or misinterpretation. Susan had insisted, however, that he not use the Craig interview to deliver a soliloquy.

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