Occasional Drizzle

I got the call at the office. I could hear the distinctive ring-tone from where I stood, shooting the breeze with an office mate. A former Congressman was supposed to visit us, since it appeared that we had some issues of common interest on which we might partner. I was watching the door, and we talked about former Marine Commandants we had known.

My office mate retired from the Corps, so he had several to talk about. I kept an eye on the entrance, so I wouldn’t miss the Congressman’s arrival.

The Congressman is the son of a former governor of a North Eastern State who found that being a governor’s son is not a career. He became a Marine reservist, and served as a Public Affairs Officer in the first Gulf War. He ran on that, and the Contract With America in 1994, and was the first Republican from the First District of his state in thirty years.

Also the last. He was not terribly popular, and was voted out in 1996. He ran for governor himself on the Republican ticket two years later, against a popular Democrat who had been a big city mayor. The former Congressman took home 19% of the popular vote, and that was it for his public life.

Now he is a lobbyist. There are a lot of perks that go along with being a member of Congress, even a one-hit wonder. He has access to the Cloak Room, and can actually be in the Lobby for which the trade is named. He could be very useful if we needed to get at a particular member, and that is why Government Affairs set up the meeting.

I looked at my watch, wondering if the meeting had been canceled. I listened to tales of Marine leaders. Some of them seemed pretty strange. My list of Commandants was pretty short, being limited only to Al Gray, who had led the Corps during DESERT STORM. I was working in the Pentagon, tasked with briefing the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs on how the air campaign was going. We got in early to do that, and the Commandant would wander in some time before 0600 to look at the big copies of the satellite pictures we were going to show the leadership.

He was a tough, burly guy with a buzz cut and a bulldog face. He normally gripped a canteen cup full of coffee, and just wanted to see how things were going. He seemed like a nice guy.

The ringing at my desk suggested something was wrong. I raced to the office with the unsettled feeling that I was in the wrong place. Our Government Affairs guy  was supposed to be working on the Hill this week, during the recess, and then that assignment had fallen through. The last I heard, the meeting had been changed to our office here on New York Avenue.

I grabbed the phone while it was still ringing and the red light was flashing.

It was Government Affairs, wondering where I was. I reminded him that he had changed the meeting to this office. His voiced indicated he was sick as a dog. He paused, and said ”Oh, yeah. I forgot.”

I told him I would get over to the Hill as fast as I could, but it might be twenty minutes or so. The occasional drizzle they had predicted was drenching rain.

He wheezed said he could kill the time, no problem, and he and the Congressman would be in the Russell Building coffee shop. The Congressman was lobbying some Senate staff during the Easter recess, as the institution girds itself for the melt-down over judicial nominations that will happen with the Members come back after the holiday.

I hung up, cursing under my breath. I felt like I was coming down with something, probably the same sickness Government Affairs had brought to the office. I hoped it wasn’t bird flu. I did not have time to die this week. Nor did I have a raincoat with me, though it was raining sheets outside. I had a parking place in close at Big Pink, and underground parking at the office, so I fully intended to stay indoors the whole day.

But now I was going to have to go outside and find a cab, and all I had was the little folding umbrella in my briefcase. I grabbed a notebook and a decent pen and put on my suit jacket and went to the elevator to go get wet.

I secured a cab from the line waiting outside the Marriott Hotel across 11th Street. The rain blew under the umbrella, and when I got in the cab, I folded it, leaning outside in the rain. What had been on top ran down my arm. It was cold rain, and I shivered.

The driver had no sense of urgency as we slid along the streets. There were more pedestrians than you would think, given the rain, but they must have been tourists on tight-timelines. Steam rose from the manhole covers and formed dense clouds. Near Ford’s Theater, a woman with rain-plastered hair stood in the middle of the road, waving kids across the street from the theater to the little house where President Lincoln died the morning after he was shot.

The Cabbie sighed. He had the right of way, but the woman had a mission to accomplish.

There are two distinct classes of people here in the touring season. Clueless people wandering in wonder, and Type-A people trying to charge through them. I was late for an appointment in the Reagan Trade Center last week, and charged to the door, only to be told I should queue up behind a couple High School busloads waiting to pass through the metal detector.

”It is surprising more of them don’t get killed,” I said. ”They don’t seem to realize they are in a real city.”

”Yes,” he said, his vowels round. ”Here they will step in front of you, and it is worse at night. Even if the insurance pays, it is very inconvenient.”

He wheeled the cab onto Pennsylvania Avenue, toward the big white dome on the Hill as the occasional drizzle poured off the windshield. It sounded like he was speaking from experience.

”But every city is different. In Nigeria, for example, Americans often have trouble. It is the tradition that when a pedestrian is hit by a car a mob gathered and kills the driver. Americans think they should wait for the police, and therefore are torn to pieces.”

”So what do I do the next time I hit someone in Lagos?” I said from the backseat. He did not look West African, I thought.

He smiled. ”You open the door and run as fast as you can.”

He took the jog off Pennsylvania Avenue to head for the Senate side of the Hill. ”But that is not true in Somalia. In Somalia, if you run, a crowd will chase you down and tear you to pieces.”

”So in Mogadishu, if you run someone down, you stay with the car?”

”That would be my recommendation.”

I thanked him for that, thinking he looked like he might have come from the Horn of Africa. A well-spoken man, I thought, a philosopher. He dropped me in front of the security checkpoint that now closes off the street next to the Russell.

It cost me $6.50 for the ride, and I tipped him 50-cents for the cultural lesson.

It was still raining, and I deployed the little umbrella. I was just moist when I ducked into the Member-and-Staff entrance near the corner. I emptied my pockets of everything, keys, watch, phone, wallet, pen, notebook, umbrella, headset, PDA, cigarettes and lighter. I made it though the metal detector and the guards did not ask me for my badge.

Not the best security, I thought. They should have thrown me back out in the rain.

Copyright 2005 Vic Socotra

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