Taft 2012 (12 page)

“Uh, yeah. Funny you should mention that.”

Taft looked sharply at the agent, who was pulling several small items out of the white bag. Cardboard packages; a bar of soap; a razor.

“Oh, no.”

“Oh, yes. I’m sorry, Bill, but if you’re serious about spending God knows how long, the two of us, wandering from state to state without a larger guard detail, then you’re going to have to let me use every tool at my disposal to keep you safe. That means not Tafting it up every second of the day. And that means, the mustache comes off.”

C
hicago was exactly as Taft remembered it: that is to say, unrecognizable. The city had been in such a state of construction and flux during his day—especially following the Great Fire in ’71, when he was but a youngster—that it seemed a completely different yet hauntingly familiar place each time he visited. Today was no different. There were more roads, taller skyscrapers, and a greater profusion of people to be seen as he and Kowalczyk passed the South Side, but that was offset by the pervasive, living
spirit
of the city.

Not to mention the smell.

“Is that a hot dog vendor my nose detects?” said Taft, his face lapping up the breeze from the open passenger-side window.

“Bill, you look like a dog yourself, hanging your head out of the window like that,” answered Kowlaczyk. His crown full of stubble gleamed in the afternoon sun that slanted through the windshield. Old snow lay scattered in random, filthy heaps along the roadside and the edges of parking lots. “At least we’re lucky we didn’t run into any blizzards. Still, you might want to roll up
that window before you catch cold. After all, you have a little less of your winter coat to keep you warm.” He pointed to the place where Taft’s whiskers had previously bristled.

“Go ahead and laugh, Kowalczyk,” Taft said dryly. “Get it all out.” He did indeed feel bald without his mustache, but, in a way, the shave suited him. It was as if a great pressure had been magically hoisted away—the weight of his own image, his own identity. Since he’d shaved it off, no one had given him a second glance, not even when they’d sat in the packed truck-stop diner that morning, breakfasting on French toast and bacon as the television above their heads blared Pauline Craig’s latest tirade concerning Taft.

“I almost wish I were president right now,” Taft had growled, a forkful of greasy lusciousness hovering in front of his lips. “The first thing I’d do is outlaw this absurd custom of mounting televisions in every damned public space. Whatever happened to conversing with one’s fellow man while in a restaurant?”

“I’m sorry, what?” Kowalczyk’s glazed eyes were glued to the screen.

“See? It’s a scandal, I tell you. Why did we ever fight a war for independence if we’d eventually wind up signing our lives over to this … this … idiot machine.”

“Idiot
box
.”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s called an idiot box, Bill. And, rest assured, you aren’t the first grumpy old guy who’s had those thoughts.” But before Taft could protest, Kowalczyk laid a finger over his lips. “Check it out. It’s getting worse. Or better, depending on your warped point of view.”

Sitting in the car with the sights, sounds, and smells of Chicago whizzing by, Taft didn’t want to remember what they’d seen on that truck-stop TV earlier in the day. But he couldn’t push it out of his mind, either; Craig, it now seemed, had fully cast off any reservations
and become the most ardent, barking proponent of William Howard Taft that he’d ever remembered having. On her show that morning had been a guest named Marsha McCursky, a woman who identified herself as a labor leader, although Taft had no idea what kind of labor she represented. She spoke in vague, rhetorical terms about things like a return to true Progressive values—she stressed the capital
P
—and something she called “protoconservatism,” whatever the hell that was supposed to mean. She warned of the dominance of corporate power and influence in American society. At the same time, she seemed to be almost against corporate regulation. If Taft heard her nebulous platitudes correctly, she seemed to be saying that less regulation would give the government less opportunity to sneak into bed with the lobbies, and that it would prevent corporate consolidation by lessening covert government backing of such activity.

The backward logic of this idea made his head spin—even more so considering that it was being foisted on the public as his own legislative legacy. And what rubbed him even rougher was the “TAFT 2012!” slogan that had been emblazoned across McCursky’s shirt, not to mention the shirts of at least two people Taft had seen in the diner at the next booth over.

But that wasn’t all that was on his mind. Even earlier that morning, back in the hotel room, Taft had unzipped his small leather bag of toiletries to find … himself. That is, Abby’s Taft doll. Not her old rag doll, but the fancy new plastic one—the one that had come in a box labeled “Presidential Action Figure Special Edition!”—that he’d gotten her for Christmas. It seemed she had smuggled it inside his luggage, along with a note that read: “Dear Grandpa, I hope you have a nice trip. Here’s someone to keep you company. Don’t forget about us. We’ll miss you. Love, Abby.”

The note was in the little girl’s shaky handwriting, but he could hear her voice saying the words as if she were on his lap.
Her precocity knew no bounds! A Taft to the core. Yet, for some reason, Abby’s small, sweet gesture only made him feel more moody than buoyed.

It didn’t help that Chicago, as magnificent as it still seemed to be, held a bittersweet aftertaste for Taft. It was there in the summer of 1912 that the Republican National Committee had awarded him the party’s nomination, a decision overwhelmingly unfavorable to Teddy Roosevelt, who had decided to try to take the White House back from Taft. Taft had stayed in D.C. during the convention in Chicago, but Teddy—in a fiery breach of protocol, which should have surprised no one—appeared in person and finally broke all friendship ties with Taft. “We stand at Armageddon, and we battle for the Lord,” Teddy had cried to his dwindling faithful, casting Taft as Satan in his thespian drama-mongering. Taft tried to keep the party together after that, pledging conciliation rather than alienation. But one thing he couldn’t do was reach out to Teddy, not after he began his preposterous run as a third-party candidate, which ultimately split the GOP vote, making way for wooden Woodrow Wilson to waltz right in. That summer in Chicago back in ’12 was, by all outward appearances, Teddy Roosevelt’s Waterloo. But it was also Taft’s—and, as he’d come to understand it, the beginning of the end of Republican progressivism as a whole.

“Bill? You okay?” Kowalczyk’s voice broke him out of his cloudy daydream. He realized that he’d pulled Abby’s Taft doll out of his jacket pocket—just so the white-whiskered head was peeking out—and had been staring at it.

“Yes, I’m fine. It’s just … my mind is wandering, that’s all.”

“I’ll say,” Kowalczyk said, opening his door and putting on his sunglasses. “We’ve been parked in front of this hot dog joint for five whole minutes already, and you haven’t even twitched a muscle.”

Taft looked at the comically rotund head of the doll made in
his image, the vapid grin sculpted into his tiny plastic face. “To be perfectly honest, Kowalczyk, I seem to have lost my appetite.”

Kowalczyk stared at him with an unreadable expression. He shut the car door. “Know what? I’ve got an idea.” He put the key back in the ignition and shifted into reverse. “Over the past five days we’ve eaten at Friendly’s, IHOP, T.G.I. Friday’s, Buca di Beppo, and half a dozen deli counters. You’ve made small talk with plenty of ‘real Americans eating real meals.’ How about we try something different for a change?”

“Sir, I am all ears.”

“If all those food shows on TV are true, Chicago is some kind of mecca for fancy dining. Let’s try to put something gourmet in your belly. Bill, have you ever heard of molecular gastronomy?”

A
s they followed the maître d’ past gaily dressed yet uncomfortable-looking diners, the harsh light, sharp angles, and cold chrome of Atomizer made the place feel more like a clinic than a restaurant. When Taft said as much to Kowalczyk, he stood corrected: “A clinic? More like a laboratory.”

Kowalczyk was right. After determining the location of the highest-rated molecular-gastronomy bistro in Chicago, he and Taft had gussied themselves up as best they could with the contents of their suitcases and headed toward downtown. Once inside, they felt as though they’d stepped into another world. The walls were covered in slate gray geometric panels backlit by neutral neon. A frigid sterility glinted off the oddly hexagonal tables, and a sheen of artificiality clung to everything. And then there was the maître d’: pale, white haired, and clad in a spotless beige boilersuit, he appeared both adolescent and ancient.

“What’s with the Warhol look?” Kowlaczyk whispered behind a cupped hand, but the reference was lost on Taft. “Oh, never mind. Christ, can you believe this place?”

Indeed, he could not. As the maître d’ seated them, he lifted the flap of a puffy rectangular purse slung from his shoulder. A wisp of vapor uncoiled from the open bag. “Your menus, sirs.” He handed them each a translucent pink, paper-thin wafer on which words had somehow been etched. It was barely legible.

“Could you perhaps just tell us the specials of the day?” said Taft as he took the menu. It felt cold and slick between his fingers.

The maître d’ sniffed. “Specials?” He swept a hand in front of him as if he were about to take a bow. “Everything at Atomizer is scientifically formulated to be special.”

Taft raised an eyebrow. “I’ll say.” At that moment, he felt something trickle down the inside of his shirtsleeve.

“Uh, Bill,” said Kowalczyk. “These things are melting.”

“What in Hades—” Kowalczyk wasn’t joking. The unusual menus had begun dissolving in their hands. Two large pieces had already fallen off, landing on the table in a puddle of pink, watery goo.

“The menus,” the maître d’ informed them, “are edible. Go ahead, try it.”

Taft cautiously licked one of his fingers. It tasted vaguely of berries. “Hmm, yes,” he grumbled. “Now if I could only read the damn thing.”

The maître d’ smirked. “Your server will be along shortly.”

“So this is—what did you call it—malevolent gastronomy?” Taft said as soon as the white-haired host was out of earshot.

“
Molecular
. It’s the hottest new thing. Or at least it was five years ago. I think.”

Taft dragged a fingertip through the pool of melted menu on the table, which had already started scabbing into some kind of taffylike substance.

“Come on, Bill, keep an open mind. You said you wanted to
get a taste of the real America, right? Well, this is what the people are eating.”

“Hmph. The wealthy and pretentious, perhaps. But the people?” He glanced around at the haughty, miserable-looking patrons seated nearby. “I doubt it.”

When the server reappeared a minute later, all that was left of Taft’s menu was a small, smudged shard that smelled faintly of hard candy. Cupping it in his palm, he squinted and said, “I suppose I’ll be having the Reverse-Osmosis Salmon S’mores. Whatever on God’s green earth that’s supposed to mean.”

The server returned five minutes later with two martini glasses full of carbonated foie gras and a note scrawled on a crumpled napkin. The waiter stood at attention as Taft unfolded and read it to Kowalczyk: “Dear Taft party, your presence is requested at the chef’s table. Please bring your cocktails and follow your server. Regards, Castro Cozmos.”

“Did he capitalize
party
?” Kowalczyk asked, his face innocent.

“Don’t even joke,” said Taft with a sigh. “Well then. I suppose it was too much to think we’d escape the prying eyes of the public, even after the removal of my most distinguishing—and, might I add, distinguished—feature.” He stood up, sniffed his fizzing glass of liver paste, wrinkled his nose, and emptied it into Kowalczyk’s. “In any case, we shan’t be ungracious guests. Shall we?”

CASTRO COZMOS, CHEF and proprietor of Chicago’s acclaimed and trend-setting Atomizer, stood in the restaurant’s cluttered, chaotic kitchen with his arms buried to the elbows in a white industrial bucket full of a pulpy, fibrous, indeterminably meatlike dough. Pale and pasty, he appeared to be made from the same substance as the one he was kneading. The smell was rich and almost rancid; Taft recognized it from somewhere, but he was too
busy swallowing back a bit of bile to wonder about it. Kowalczyk, too, turned slightly green in the presence of the odor, but he remained quiet and put on a wan smile as Castro looked up from his bucket and grinned hugely at them as the maître d’ led them into the kitchen.

“Mr. President! I’ll wash off and be with you in just a second. Please, have a seat over there at the chef’s table.” He stuck his chin out in the direction of a small, rickety table in the middle of the kitchen surrounded by folding chairs and a steady stream of bustling yet slovenly groomed cooks.

The server pulled out their chairs. Taft’s shuddered under his weight. “Careful there,” quipped Kowalczyk as he took his own seat and pointed at Taft’s belly. “I don’t think that thing was made for multiple occupants.”

“That’s quite a bold affront, coming from a bald fellow.”

Kowalczyk rubbed his palm over his scalp. “Oh, this? Remember, Bill, I’m a Marine. This was my hairstyle for years.”

“Really? Is that how they deloused you?”

“Gentlemen!” Castro Cozmos stepped up to the table, turned a chair around, and plunked himself down. He smelled of cigarettes and, of course, the gloppy meat-starch he’d been manhandling. With a grubby towel he wiped his forearms and then began cleaning under his yellowish fingernails. “Welcome to Atomizer.” He shook hands with Taft and then Kowalczyk. “Castro Cozmos, molecular gastronomist.”