Asterisk by Campbell Armstrong

Just don’t let it go to your head, kiddo .
    When he got to his office on the morning after the burglary, the newspapers had already been stacked on his desk by Miss Grunwald, who came in at some ungodly hour and who took some perverse delight in staying as late as she could at night. Fiftyish, her gray hair dyed purple, she had survived the comings and goings of administrations. She dated as far back as Eisenhower. Then she had been a junior secretary in the typing pool, a mere stenographer. Now she was Bannerman’s own private secretary and, in that capacity, she was virtually the assistant chief of staff.
    She didn’t like Thorne; nor did Thorne have any special affection for her. She was a martyr, a complainer, she always worked harder than anybody else and for small thanks. In her eyes was the light of some profound belief in a sacred mission: that of keeping the White House running. He knew it gave her a personal pleasure to have the morning newspapers on his desk long before his own arrival at 7:30. It was a task she could easily have delegated but didn’t.
    Thorne took his jacket off, hung it on the back of his chair, took out his notebook, and began to go through the newspapers. The secretary from the adjoining office, Sally Winfield, came in with his coffee.
    â€œWhat’s new in the news?” she asked.
    Her regular greeting. He watched her set the coffee down. She was a skinny, pretty girl of about twenty-two who thought it was “a riot” to work in the White House. It was said she had slept with someone over in Justice, who repaid the favor by recommending her for this position.
    â€œMore of the same,” Thorne said. He was opening an advance copy of Newsweek . There was a long article critical of Foster’s handling of the economy. Inflation, unemployment. The same old song. He didn’t even bother to abstract it because he had sent it up before and Bannerman himself had called to suggest he might save himself the trouble of such summaries unless—as the great man put it—it was something “bright.” He flipped through Newsweek , marked an article about the proposed price rises in steel, then opened The New York Times . A critical article on the op-ed page: “Does Foster Understand Black Africa?” He cut it out, put it to one side, read the letters. Foster sometimes liked to look at stuff from correspondents: the compliments from Out There. I’m delighted to see we have a president strong enough to stand up to the OPEC countries , one of them began. He began to snip it out; it would make the Old Man happy.
    His telephone rang. It was Farrago, the press officer. Droopy Max, the corps called him; his sartorial inelegance had prompted the name—floppy bow ties that belonged to the dark ages of the polka dot fad, pepper-and-salt tweeds of the kind you might only encounter these days on the bodies of retired missionaries.
    â€œYou got the summaries?” Farrago asked.
    â€œJust about,” Thorne said.
    â€œLazy fart,” Farrago said. “You guys that live in sin misdirect all your energies.”
    Thorne put the receiver down, and picked up the Star . Joseph Donaldson’s syndicated column regularly machine-gunned the administration. It has sometimes crossed my mind that our president’s secrecy in government, despite all the fanfare and hype about openness, is almost a match for the furtive machinations of his near-namesake in South Africa. Take the recent strange decision to cut $3.3 billion from the defense budget.… Thorne finished reading, skimmed the Post , then called Sally Winfield back when he was ready to dictate.
    She sat with her slate-gray dress hitched up her thigh; her small breasts were always highlighted by tight sweaters that suggested to Thorne some atavistic longing for the fashions of the late 1950s. He watched her take shorthand and listened to the sound of his own voice droning … Campaign