May We Be Forgiven
introduces himself as Dr. Rosenblatt.
“We spoke on the phone,” he says, shaking my hand. “I know that last time you were here you didn’t get much of a sense of the place, so I thought we’d start with a tour. The grounds were laid out by the same fellow who designed Central Park and Paris,” Rosenblatt says, leading me through the main “pavilion” and out the back door.
“Nice,” I say, noticing the dappled afternoon light on the rolling hills. “It’s like a national park.”
“We call it a campus,” Rosenblatt says.
A “campus” complete with a bowling alley, golf, and tennis. All of it enough to make insanity look appealing. Tessie loves the tour; she pees and poops multiple times. Rosenblatt ends the tour at a part of the estate slightly off the grid—a long, low building that looks like an old upstate hunters’ motel. “We use this building for a variety of purposes, including as housing for our guests. If security seems a little high, you’re not seeing things. We currently have a former presidential hopeful in-house. We need to be extra cautious: paparazzi have been known to sneak through the woods and so on.”
“Interesting,” I say.
“We treat a full range of issues.”
“Is losing an election an issue?”
“It’s very stressful,” Rosenblatt says. “We’re known for our ability to manage high-profile clients: our remote location, low staff turnover, private airport fifteen minutes away are all on our side. A few years ago, we had a major movie star who had a face lift that got infected, ended up looking like an entirely other person, almost lost his mind.”
“How’d you treat that?”
“Encouraging him to grow a beard until he felt comfortable,” he says, as though it was obvious.
Rosenblatt unlocks the door, ushering me into a room that could have been designed by a Martian who read books in translation about American history: everything is red, white, or blue—or brown. All of it conspiring to seem entirely Yankee, Norman Rockwell, and good for one’s health. The furniture is Ethan Allen, wooden, 100 percent made in America, a style I guess best described as Colonial—I think I’d nickname it “safe” and “timeless.” The hangers don’t come off the rod in the closet, there is a battery-operated electric clock, the lamps all have very short cords. On top of the dresser there’s a small basket with two bottles of water, a protein bar, and some dried cranberries, in case you have to go into survival mode. And as an ironic antidote to the faux-homey approach, a large red-and-white glowing EXIT sign hovers over the door. It’s all like a flashback to an America that never existed, America as it was dreamed by Ozzie and Harriet. On the night table next to the bed, there’s a notepad featuring the logo of this place—an excellent souvenir if you’re into the ephemera of insanity.
I think of Nixon’s furniture: The beloved brown velvet lounger that he used to nap in after lunch in his “private” office in the Old Executive Office Building, around the corner from the White House. I think of the “Wilson” desk Nixon requested for the Oval Office thinking it was the one used by President Woodrow Wilson, but instead receiving the desk that belonged to former Vice-President Harry Wilson, within which, in 1971, Nixon had five recording devices installed. The desk, now back in its original location, the Vice-President’s Office within the United States Capitol, has since been used by Walter Mondale, George Bush, Dan Quayle, Al Gore, Dick Cheney, and Joe Biden. I have no idea what happened to the “bugs” Nixon had wired from the desk down to an old locker room in the White House basement. I look around the motel room and wonder about bugs of all kinds, electronic and bed—there’s been extensive news coverage about epidemic levels of bedbugs.
“Are conjugal visits allowed?” I ask Rosenblatt.
“Up to the doctor,” Rosenblatt says, forgetting that he is a doctor.
Noting that there is no television in this room, I ask, “Does George have a TV?”
“No television on campus, but we have movie nights on Fridays.”
“At home, he has a television in every room. He can’t bear to be alone. Even when he’s peeing he needs someone to be talking to him. You do know he ran a network?”
Rosenblatt nods.
I go on, waxing poetic about George. “He changed the face of television. George was singularly responsible for shows such as Your
Weitere Kostenlose Bücher