Page 58 of Jackie

“I’ll need Texas to win,” he says when he calls from L.A. “For that reason alone, Johnson’s the choice.”

“Bobby agrees?” I say, knowing the answer.

Jack laughs. “Of course not. But I told him if we win, the first thing I’ll make Lyndon do is push Bobby through for AG.” Bobby and Lyndon Johnson are oil and water. A few months ago, when Johnson called Jack “a little scrawny fellow with rickets,” Bobby hit the roof. Jack just let it roll off his back.

On the phone now, he is happy. I can feel it—that sense of high.

My mother and I watch on a rented television set as Jack, flanked by Kennedys, gives his acceptance speech to close the Democratic convention. “We stand today on the edge of a new frontier…not a set of promises—it is a set of challenges….”

“They love him,” my mother says.

“I know,” I say.

—

The day after Jack gets home from California, Eisenhower’s CIA director, Allen Dulles, flies up to Hyannis Port to brief him on the training of Cuban exiles.

“Training for what?” I ask.

He hesitates.

“You can’t tell me, can you?”

“It’ll be like that sometimes,” he says, “until I figure this job out. Not that I’ve got it yet.”

“You will.”

“I’m not always sure I’m up for it.” He glances at me. “Forget I just said that.”

…

August.

Norman Mailer is sweating—a wrinkled, poorly tailored suit, pale searing eyes, boot-black hair. I’ve heard he likes pretty women and he likes to fight—bedrooms, barrooms, streets. He’s come to meet Jack for a piece he’s writing.

“Can I fix you a drink, Mr. Mailer?” I say as we walk into the living room. His eyes pause on my face. Disconcerting how he looks at me, like he’s rummaging around. “A cold drink? It’s so hot,” I say, as if the smile might bring things back to the surface. A sheen of sweat on his face. He reminds me of Aristotle Onassis, that same carnal insistence in his gaze.

“I would like a drink,” he says. “Thank you.”

“A daiquiri?”

He smiles. “No one here needs me on rum.”

For a moment I like him. “Iced tea, then?”

“Please.”

I ask about Provincetown, where he lives. “I’ve never been,” I say.

“It’s one of the few coastal towns in America that’s still a true fishing village, a Wild West of the East.”

“I’d love to go.”

“And how will you go?”

A funny question. “In a car, I imagine, like anyone else.”

He smiles, a wolfish smile. “What would it be? Three black limousines or a sports car at four a.m. with dark glasses?”

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