Worst Case Scenario by Michael Bowen

without illusion or self-deception, who’d see her as she saw herself at two in the morning: a matron whose charm had turned brittle with the approach of middle age, whose once-lancing curiosity had atrophied in the dreary days after Washington went from Camelot to California east, who now treated The New York Times Book Review as Cliff Notes for cocktail party conversation. She’d left Richard not because of his weakness but because of his greatest strength and her icy fear that she was unequal to it.
    And Michaelson had blamed himself, Marjorie knew. He’d felt that he should have sensed the unspoken anguish, should have found a way to restore his wife’s disintegrating spirit, to show her that he loved her as a woman and not a credential or an ornament. Nixon he could forgive; himself, for many years, he couldn’t.
    Marjorie understood what searing pain the divorce had produced, and if she’d been granted some fairy-tale power to spare Michaelson that yawning ache, she would have. At the same time, though, she wondered what he’d be like now if he hadn’t gone through it, if he hadn’t experienced that single transcendent failure and that long black night of self-doubt. Would he have turned into a slightly less obnoxious version of Pilkington, with intelligence a mile wide and an inch deep, clever but not wise, bright but not thoughtful, recycling prefabricated quips, trading on carefully rehearsed spontaneity, confusing power with strength, knowledge with judgment, verbal facility with vision?
    She didn’t know. She did know that the end result of Michaelson’s trauma was someone whose instincts she trusted. She would have trusted him in a situation room, making decisions while lieutenant colonels moved model ships around a map board. And she trusted him in a hotel lobby, letting her know he was there but not jumping on her the moment she walked in and signaling to every bellhop in the vicinity that she’d come to a tryst.
    Michaelson held the door open for Marjorie as they reached the Radisson, and was still a step or two behind her when they began to cross the lobby. He was startled when a man even taller than he and far huskier suddenly loomed in front of him.
    â€œExcuse me, sir,” the man said in something just north of a drawl, with a very slight slurring on the two s’ . “I would appreciate a word with you, please.”
    Michaelson checked his first instinct, which was to say, “Certainly. How about sometime when you’re sober?” The abruptness of the man’s approach and the almost exaggerated politeness of his diction couldn’t hide the keening anguish wrapped around his words, his tone, the expression on his face. He might be drunk or close to it, but he deserved better than dinner party repartee.
    â€œThis is Marjorie Randolph,” Michaelson said, gesturing toward his companion, who had turned back and was looking questioningly at the scene. “I’m Richard Michaelson, as you presumably know. I’m afraid I can’t carry the introductions any further than that.”
    â€œMy apologies, ma’am,” the man said to Marjorie with apparently deep sincerity. “I didn’t realize you were with this gentleman, or I wouldn’t have intruded this way.”
    â€œThat’s quite all right,” Marjorie said. Michaelson noticed with some amusement that Marjorie’s own tidewater accent slipped a couple of degrees toward Tara. “And I have the pleasure of being introduced to whom, please?”
    â€œTodd Gallagher, ma’am.” The man bowed slightly.
    Michaelson considered offering to go for mint juleps.
    â€œIf you’ll excuse me for interrupting,” he said instead, “the word you’d like to have with me concerns Sharon Bedford, correct?”
    â€œYessir,” Gallagher confirmed, wheeling back to face Michaelson. “Once the cops got through with me, I greased