I protested, but feebly. I was tired. And, after all, it’s not every day that a girl gets a lift from a potential President.
Halliday stayed in the lobby for a couple of minutes while Les, the appointment girl and I piled into one of the limousines. Then he came out, jogged to the limo and slid in beside me.
“All set. They’ll get your car back to the airport.”
I nodded. I was too damned sleepy to wonder what had happened to the people who had filled the other two limousines. And all the way back to Minneapolis, Halliday didn’t smile at me once.
Sheila Songard, the managing editor at Now, was given to making flat statements, such as: “You’ll be back in the office in two weeks, Marie. He won’t get past the New Hampshire primary.”
You don’t argue with the boss. I don’t, anyway. Especially not on the phone. But after Halliday grabbed off an impressive 43% of the fractured New Hampshire vote, I sent her a get-well card.
All through those dark, cold days of winter and early spring I stayed with Jim Halliday, got to know him and his staff, watched him grow. The news and media people started to flock in after New Hampshire.
The vitality of the man! Not only did he have sheer animal magnetism in generous globs, he had more energy than a half-dozen flamenco dancers. He was up and active with the sunrise every day and still going strong long after midnight. It wore out most of the older newsmen trying to keep up with him.
When he scored a clear victory in Wisconsin, the Halliday staff had to bring out extra buses and even arrange a separate plane for the media people to travel in, along with The Man’s private 707 jet.
I was privileged to see the inside of his private jetliner. I was the only news reporter allowed aboard during the whole campaign, in fact. He never let news or media people fly with him. Superstition, I thought. Or just a desire to have a place that can be really private—even if he had to go 35,000 feet above the ground to get the privacy. Then I’d start daydreaming about what it would be like to be up that high with him. . .
The day I saw the plane, it was having an engine overhauled at JFK in New York. It was still cold out, early April, and the hangar was even colder inside than the weakly sunlit out-of-doors.
The plane was a flying command post. The Air Force didn’t have more elaborate electronics gear. Bunks for fifteen people. There goes the romantic dream, I thought. No fancy upholstery or decorations. Strictly utilitarian. But row after row of communication stuff: even picturephones, a whole dozen of them.
I had known that Jim was in constant communication with his people all over the country. But picturephones—it was typical of him. He wanted to be there, as close to the action as possible. Ordinary telephones or radios just weren’t good enough for him.
“Are you covering an election campaign or writing love letters?” Sheila’s voice, over the phone, had that bitchy edge to it.
“What’s wrong with the copy I’m sending in?” I yelled back at her.
“It’s too damned laudatory, and you know it,” she shrilled. “You make it sound as if he’s going through West Virginia converting the sinners and curing the lepers.”
“He’s doing better than that,” I said. “And I’m not the only one praising him.”
“I’ve watched his press conferences on TV,” Sheila said. “He’s a cutie, all right. Never at a loss for an answer.”
“And he never contradicts himself. He’s saying the same things here that he did in New York. . . and Denver. . . and Los Angeles.”
“That doesn’t make him a saint.”
“Sheila, believe it. He’s good. I’ve been with him nearly four months now. He’s got it. He’s our next President.”
She was unimpressed. “You sound more like you’re on his payroll than Now’s.”
Les Trotter had hinted a few days earlier that Jim wanted me to join his staff for the California primary campaign. I held my tongue.
“Marie, listen to Momma,” Sheila said, softer, calmer. “No politician is as good as you’re painting him. Don’t let your hormones get in the way of your judgment.”
“That’s ridiculous!” I snapped.
“Sure. . . sure. But I’ve seen enough of Halliday’s halo. I want you to find his clay feet. He’s got them, honey. They all do. It might hurt when you discover them, but I want to see what The Man’s standing on. That’s your job.”
She meant it. And I know she was right. But if Jim had clay feet, nobody had been able to discover it yet. Not even the nastiest bastards Hearst had sent out.
And I knew that I didn’t want to be the one who did it.
So I joined Jim’s staff for the California campaign. Sheila was just as glad to let me go. Officially I took a leave of absence from Now. I told her I’d get a better look inside The Man’s organization this way. She sent out a lank-haired slouchy kid who couldn’t even work a dial telephone, she was that young.
But instead of finding clay feet on The Man, as we went through the California campaign, I kept coming up with gold.
He was beautiful. He was honest. Everyone of the staff loved him and the voters were turning his rallies into victory celebrations.
And he was driving me insane. Some days he’d be warm and friendly and. . . well, it was just difficult to be near him without getting giddy. But then there were times—sometimes the same day, even—when he’d just turn off. He’d be as cold and out of reach as an Antarctic iceberg. I couldn’t understand it. The smile was there, his voice and manners and style were unchanged, but the vibrations would be gone. Turned off.
There were a couple of nights when we found ourselves sitting with only one or two other people in a hotel room, planning the next days’ moves over unending vats of black coffee. We made contact then. The vibes were good. He wanted me, I know he did, and I certainly wanted him. Yet somehow we never touched each other. The mood would suddenly change. He’d go to the phone and come back. . . different. His mind was on a thousand other things.
He’s running for President, I raged at myself. There’s more on his mind than shacking up with an oversexed ex-reporter.
But while all this was going on, while I was helping to make it happen, I was also quietly digging into the Wellington Memorial Laboratory, back in Minnesota. And its director, Dr. Corio. If Jim did have feet of clay, the evidence was there. And I had to know.
I got a friend of a friend to send me a copy of Corio’s doctoral thesis from the Harvard library, and while I waited for it to arrive in the mail, I wanted more than anything to be proved wrong.
