Page 72 of Playworld

“Keep it on the news, this is important.”

Mrs. Potts walked in. She was wearing pearls and black heels; her tan raincoat was also beaded and her cheeks were flushed.

“I heard someone shot the president,” she said.

“No one shot the president, Sharon. He missed.”

“I said they shot him,” she said, “nothithim.” The Pottses had sudden spats like this all the time, though now Mrs. Potts doubted herself. “At least that was what Sean said downstairs.”

Sam Donaldson had joined Frank Reynolds. He had a phone next to him, and all the cubed lights on it were flashing. He picked up the receiver, placed it to his ear, hung it up.

I said, “Sam Donaldson sort of looks like Martin Landau fromSpace: 1999.”

Mr. Potts chuckled at this. “He does, doesn’t he?”

“Hey, Mrs. Potts,” I said, “you kind of look like Barbara Bain.”

“I don’t know who that is.”

“He’s right,” Mr. Potts said, “but you’re prettier.”

“Is that an apology or a compliment?”

“It’s both,” said Mr. Potts.

Lyn Nofziger has told reporters at the hospital that the president was not wounded…

Mr. Potts said, “Griffin, is your dad the voice on that Schlitz commercial? With the guy fromGet Smart?”

“No one does it like the bull,”I said.

“Bet he made a lot of shekels on that.”

“Ay caramba,” Cliff muttered.

Off camera, another reporter spoke to Frank Reynolds, after which Reynolds’s shoulders slumped.

Hewaswounded!

“Turn it up, please,” Mr. Potts said.

My God…he was…the presidentwashit…he is in stable condition. All this information—The pages Reynolds was holding in his hands shook.The presidentwashit. He was hit in the left chest. According to this…

“Can you hear that?” Mrs. Potts said.

“Hear what?” Tanner said.

“Exactly,” she said, and nodded at the screen. “All the typing in the newsroom has stopped.”

She was right. Off camera and off mic, someone in the newsroom said to Donaldson and Reynolds,One shot. Stable condition.

Reynolds, furious, pointed at the reporter off camera.Speak up!

The reporter repeated himself.

Reynolds said,The presidentwashit…One…My God…The presidentwashit…All this that we’ve been telling you is incorrect.He took a long beat to gather himself.We now must…redraw this entire tragedy in different terms.

Softly, Mrs. Potts said to her husband, “Drink?”