* * *
It was nearly noon, and most of them went to lunch. The President, however, headed for her massage room, adjacent to the indoor swimming pool built during the Franklin Roosevelt administration. Her back was already tightening up on her.
A noon massage was standard procedure. She could and, when necessary, did take medication for her back, but she worried that it might affect her mental sharpness, so she relied very largely on skilled massage. When traveling, even on unofficial trips, her physical therapist, Andrea Jackson, ordinarily traveled with her.
The natatorium smelled of chlorine. When she entered the massage room, Andrea was waiting, and putting aside a tabloid, got to her feet.
“Hi, Andy! Am I glad to see you!” the President said, and closed the door behind her.
“Thank you, Madam President. I hope your morning went all right.”
Florence Metzger’s reply was a grunt. She peeled off her blouse. “Back,” she said, “say hello to Andy. She’s the best friend you’ll ever have.” Andrea unhooked her bra for her, and hung blouse and bra on a hanger while the President positioned herself against the tilt-top rubbing table. Then Andrea lowered it to horizontal, the President on board.
President Metzger provided a lot of back. She was commonly referred to as “Big Mama,” not around the White House, and not generally by the print and broadcast media, but around the country and on the Web. She’d never been married or had a child; the term “Mama” was rooted in the black slang for woman. At six-feet-one and 255 pounds, the President was larger than her therapist, who was almost as tall but 60 pounds lighter. The President’s father, Carl “Muscles” Metzger, had played defensive tackle at the Naval Academy—eventually he’d made rear admiral—and her mother had been Samoan, though raised on Oahu. Both had given their youngest daughter genes for large and strong. She’d attended Cornell on a swimming scholarship, majored in government, and at age twenty-two, at 170 pounds, had won an Olympic bronze in the 200-meter freestyle, and a silver in the 400-meter freestyle relay.
The kinks began to slacken almost at the therapist’s first touch. “What were you reading?” asked the President.
“The National Express.”
“Huh! Anything interesting?”
Andrea laughed. “The lead story starts out, ‘French crowd witnesses winged Ngunda hovering with the Virgin Mary over Lourdes shrine.’ Can you believe they printed that?”
“Hon, they’d print anything.”
“Last week they had ‘hundred-foot angel halts Kansas bus, tells driver and passengers Ngunda is the antichrist.’ ”
The President said nothing for a few seconds, then asked, “Do you believe in God, Andy?”
“I thought you knew I did.”
“I always supposed you did, but I didn’t actually know. What do you think of all the different messiahs turning up around the world?”
“We already had one; that ought to be enough. If we can’t make it with him, maybe we’re not worth the trouble. No, if I was God, I’d tell people to straighten up, get together, and solve their problems.”
“I don’t know. I remember a book I read in college, The Religions of Man. By a Harvard professor, Huston Smith. That was, huh!—thirty years ago. I hardly remember anything specific in the whole book, except for one sentence, but it struck me so, I can just about quote it.”
She stopped there until Andrea prompted her. “What was it?”
“He was discussing Hindu theology. And what he wrote was: ‘Whenever the world falls too far into disorder, and the slow ascent of humankind toward divinity is seriously endangered, God descends to Earth as an avatar, to unblock the jammed wheels of history.’ I don’t suppose that’s an exact quote, but it’s close.” She paused. “Are you familiar with the word ‘avatar?’ ”
The therapist nodded. “It’s like Jesus: it’s God incarnate. Do you think the wheels of history are jammed?”
“Feels like it.” The President paused. “And we could use a little divine help. Maybe he could come down and kick butt.”
The therapist didn’t reply, just worked on the president’s broad back.
“I know,” the President went on. “It’s not likely to happen. That’s what you were thinking, wasn’t it?”
“No, ma’am. I was thinking about all those supposed-to-be messiahs. If they make a difference, a good difference, I don’t much care if they’re a real messiah or not.”