Boomsday Read online

  Boomsday

  Christopher Taylor Buckley

  From The Washington Post

  Reviewed by Judy Budnitz

  Does government-sanctioned suicide offer the same potential for satire as, say, the consumption of children? Possibly. One need only look to Kurt Vonnegut's story "Welcome to the Monkey House," with its "Federal Ethical Suicide Parlors" staffed by Juno-esque hostesses in purple body stockings. Or the recent film "Children of Men," in which television commercials for a suicide drug mimic, to an unsettling degree, the sunsets-and-soothing-voices style of real pharmaceutical ads. Now, Christopher Buckley ventures into a not-too-distant future to engage the subject in his new novel, Boomsday.

  Here's the set-up: One generation is pitted against another in the shadow of a Social Security crisis. Our protagonist, Cassandra Devine, is a 29-year-old public relations maven by day, angry blogger by night. Incensed by the financial burden soon to be placed on her age bracket by baby boomers approaching retirement, she proposes on her blog that boomers be encouraged to commit suicide. Cassandra insists that her proposal is not meant to be taken literally; it is merely a "meta-issue" intended to spark discussion and a search for real solutions. But the idea is taken up by an attention-seeking senator, Randy Jepperson, and the political spinning begins.

  Soon Cassandra and her boss, Terry Tucker, are devising incentives for the plan (no estate tax, free Botox), an evangelical pro-life activist is grabbing the opposing position, the president is appointing a special commission to study the issue, the media is in a frenzy, and Cassandra is a hero. As a presidential election approaches, the political shenanigans escalate and the subplots multiply: There are nursing-home conspiracies, Russian prostitutes, Ivy League bribes, papal phone calls and more.

  Buckley orchestrates all these characters and complications with ease. He has a well-honed talent for quippy dialogue and an insider's familiarity with the way spin doctors manipulate language. It's queasily enjoyable to watch his characters concocting doublespeak to combat every turn of events. "Voluntary Transitioning" is Cassandra's euphemism for suicide; "Resource hogs" and "Wrinklies" are her labels for the soon-to-retire. The opposition dubs her "Joan of Dark."

  It's all extremely entertaining, if not exactly subtle. The president, Riley Peacham, is "haunted by the homophonic possibilities of his surname." Jokes are repeated and repeated; symbols stand up and identify themselves. Here's Cassandra on the original Cassandra: "Daughter of the king of Troy. She warned that the city would fall to the Greeks. They ignored her… Cassandra is sort of a metaphor for catastrophe prediction. This is me. It's what I do." By the time Cassandra asks Terry, "Did you ever read Jonathan Swift's 'A Modest Proposal'?" some readers may be crying, "O.K., O.K., I get it."

  Younger readers, meanwhile, may find themselves muttering, "He doesn't get it." The depiction of 20-somethings here often rings hollow, relying as it does on the most obvious signifiers: iPods, videogames, skateboards and an apathetic rallying cry of "whatever."

  But Buckley isn't singling out the younger generation. He's democratic in his derision: boomers, politicians, the media, the public relations business, the Christian right and the Catholic Church get equal treatment. Yet despite the abundance of targets and the considerable display of wit, the satire here is not angry enough – not Swiftian enough – to elicit shock or provoke reflection; it's simply funny. All the drama takes place in a bubble of elitism, open only to power players – software billionaires, politicians, lobbyists, religious leaders. The general population is kept discretely offstage. Even the two groups at the center of the debate are reduced to polling statistics. There are secondhand reports of them acting en masse: 20-somethings attacking retirement-community golf courses, boomers demanding tax deductions for Segways. But no individual faces emerge. Of course, broadness is a necessary aspect of satire, but here reductiveness drains any urgency from the proceedings. There's little sense that lives, or souls, are at stake.

  Even Cassandra, the nominal hero, fails to elicit much sympathy. Her motivations are more self-involved than idealistic: She's peeved that her father spent her college fund and kept her from going to Yale. And she's not entirely convincing as the leader and voice of her generation. Though her blog has won her millions of followers, we never see why she's so popular; we never see any samples of her blogging to understand why her writing inspires such devotion. What's even more curious is that, aside from her blog, she seems to have no contact with other people her own age. Her mentors, her lover and all of her associates are members of the "wrinklies" demographic.

  Though I was willing for the most part to sit back and enjoy the rollicking ride, one incident in particular strained my credulity to the breaking point: Cassandra advises Sen. Jepperson to use profanity in a televised debate as a way of wooing under-30 voters, and the tactic is a smashing success. If dropping an f-bomb were all it took to win over the young folks, Vice President Cheney would be a rock star by now.

  Christopher Taylor Buckley

  Boomsday

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  For Monie Begley

  When you are old and gray and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book.

  Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt.

  – HERBERT HOOVER

  Prologue

  “Thank you, Wendy Wong in Washington, for that report on the deteriorating economic situation.

  “In Florida today, another attack on a gated community by youths protesting the recent hike in the Social Security payroll tax.

  “Several hundred people in their twenties stormed the gates of a retirement community in the early hours this morning. Residents were assaulted as they played golf. Demonstrators seized carts and drove them into water hazards and bunkers. Others used spray paint and garden implements to write slogans on the greens.

  “One such message, gouged into the eighteenth green, read: ‘Boomsday Now!’ The word refers to the term economists use for the date this year when the first of the nation’s seventy-seven million so-called Baby Boomers began to retire with full Social Security benefits. The development has put a tremendous strain on the system that in turn has sent shock waves through the entire U.S. economy.

  “A maintenance worker at the golf course said it might be, quote, weeks before residents were able to play golf.

  “In other news today, the vice president has shot yet another lawyer, this time, he says, in self-defense.…”

  Chapter 1

  Cassandra Devine was not yet thirty, but she was already tired.

  “Media training,” they called it. She’d been doing it for years, but it still had the ring of “potty training.”

  Today’s media trainee was the chief executive officer of a company that administered hospitals, twenty-eight of them throughout the southeastern United States. In the previous year, it had lost $285 million and one-third of its stock market value. During that same period, the client had been paid $3.8 million in salary, plus a $1.4 million “performance bonus.”

  Corporate Crime Scene, the prime-time investigative television program, was doing an exposй and had requested an interview. In her negotiations with the show’s producers, Cass had learned that they had footage of him boarding the company jet ($35 mil) wearing a spectacularly loud Hawaiian shirt and clenching a torpedo-shaped-indeed, torpedo-size-cigar in his teeth while hefting a bag of expensively gleaming golf clubs. Unfortunate as it was, this footage was only the appetizer. The main cinematic course was video of the company’s recent annual “executive retreat” a
t a Bahamas resort of dubious taste. It showed the client, today’s trainee, along with his fellow executive retreatants-doubtless exhausted after a hard day of budget cutting and crunching numbers-drinking rum punch dispensed from the breasts of anatomically correct female ice sculptures, to the accompaniment of a steel drum band, a limbo bar, and scantily clad waitresses dressed as-oh dear-mermaids. It would all make for a spirited discussion on the upcoming episode of CCS, especially when juxtaposed against the footage they were also running of patients parked like cars in an L.A. traffic jam in litter-strewn corridors, moaning for attention, some of them duct-taped to the wheelchairs.

  “So they don’t fall out,” the client explained.

  Cass took a sip from her seventh or eighth Red Bull of the day and suppressed a sigh, along with the urge to plunge her ballpoint pen into the client’s heart. Assuming he had one.

  “That last one was a lot better,” she said. They’d done four practice interviews so far, with Cass pretending to be the interviewer from the television program. “If you have the energy, I’d like to do just one more. This time, I’d like you to concentrate on smiling and looking straight into the camera. Also, could you please not do that sideways thing with your eyes? It makes you look…” Like a sleazebag. “It works against the overall tone of you know…transparency.” The man was as transparent as a bucket of tar.

  “I really don’t know why we’re even agreeing to the interview.” He sounded peeved, as though he’d been frivolously talked into attending a performance of The Marriage of Figaro when he’d much rather be at the office, helping humanity, devising new and more cost-effective methods of duct-taping terminal patients to their wheelchairs so they could be parked in corridors all day.

  “Terry feels that this is the way to go. In cases like this…” The client shot her an “I dare you to call me a criminal” glance of defiance. “That is, where the other side has a strong, uh, visual presentation, that it’s best to meet them in the center of the ring, so to speak. We’re looking to project an image of total…up-frontness.”

  The client snorted.

  “That no one is more upset at the”-she glanced at her notes to see what artful term of mendacity they were using at the moment-“‘revenue downtick.’ And that you and management are”-she looked down at her notes again, this time just to avoid eye contact-“working around the clock to make the, uh, difficult decisions.” Like where to hold next year’s “executive retreat.” Vegas? Macao? Sodom?

  The client generously consented to one final practice interview. He left muttering about persecution and complaining of the indignity of having to fly back to Memphis via commercial aircraft. Terry had sternly forbade him the company jet. Tomorrow, the client would spend an hour in a soup kitchen ladling out faux humanity to Memphis ’s wretched, an act of conspicuous compassion that would be inconspicuously video-recorded by one of his aides. If Corporate Crime Scene declined to air it, perhaps it might come in handy down the line-say, during sentencing deliberation. Cass sent him off with a DVD of his practice interviews. With any luck, they’d cause him to jump out his corner office window.

  Cass wanted to go home to her apartment off Dupont Circle, nuke a frozen macaroni-and-cheese, pour herself a goldfish bowl-size glass of red wine, put on her comfy jammies, get under the covers, and watch reruns of Law amp; Order or Desperate Housewives or even the new reality show, Green Card, in which illegal (but good-looking) Mexicans had to make it across the U.S. border, past the Border Patrol and minutemen and fifty miles of broiling desert, to the finish line. The winner got sponsorship for a green card and the privilege of digging ditches in some other broiling-or, if he was lucky, frigid-part of the country.

  Yes, that would be lovely, she thought, then realized with a pang that she hadn’t posted anything on her blog since before work that morning. There was an important Senate vote on Social Security scheduled for that day. She hadn’t even had time to glance at CNN or Google News to see how it had turned out.

  The light was on in Terry’s office. She entered and collapsed like a suddenly deflated pool toy into a chair facing his desk.

  Without turning from his computer screen, Terry said, “Let me guess. You had a wonderful, fulfilling day.” He continued to type as he spoke.

  Terry Tucker had built a successful PR firm, Tucker Strategic Communications, on the premise that those with a debatable claim to humanity will pay through the snout to appear even a little less deplorable. Terry had represented them all, from mink ranchers to toxic waste dumpers, dolphin netters, unzipped politicians, makers of obesity-inducing soft drinks, the odd mobster, and pension fund skimmers. Terry had apprenticed under the legendary Nick Naylor, at the now defunct Tobacco Institute. Cass had been with the firm for eight years. Terry had promoted her quickly, given her regular raises, and promoted her to partner. He’d never once made a pass at her. He treated her like a kid sister or niece.

  “Jesus, Terry. Where do you find these clients? In Dante’s Inferno?”

  He kept typing. “Huh?”

  “The man’s…I’ve seen more sympathetic people on the E! Channel’s True Hollywood Stories.”

  Terry’s fingers went on clickety-clicking. “This ‘war criminal,’ as you put it, is a client of Tucker Strategic Communications. Someday, if all the crap we learned in Sunday school is correct, he will answer to a higher authority. Higher even than a morally superior twenty-nine-year-old PR chick. In the meantime, our job as strategic communicators is to-”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just-couldn’t we find like maybe just one client who wasn’t…I don’t know…”

  “Evil?”

  “Well…yeah. Basically.”

  Terry stopped typing, leaned back in his leather chair, massaged the bridge of his nose with thumb and forefinger, exhaled pensively. Theatrically, the gesture was just shy of a sigh.

  “Do you know what I’m working on right now? What I was working on, before you came in to do an existential download?”

  “Let me guess. Raising money, pro bono, for juvenile diabetes?”

  “The only time, young lady, you’ll hear the phrase pro bono around this office is if someone is expressing a favorable opinion of an Irish rock star. No, I was doing talking points. For our Brazilian client.”

  “The one who wants to relocate the Indian tribe to make room for the gold mine?”

  “Uh-hum. Were you aware that in 1913, this same tribe-I can’t pronounce the name-killed two Mormon missionaries?”

  “Well, in that case, obviously they deserve whatever they get.”

  Terry frowned at the screen. “I know, needs work. Maybe if they fed them to piranhas or something. I’ll massage it. Want to get a pop? Defaming indigenous people always makes me thirsty.”

  Ordinarily, Cass loved going out for a drink with Terry. Listening to his war stories about defending the tobacco industry with Nick Naylor.

  “Can’t tonight. Gotta go back and blog.”

  “‘Gotta go back and blog.’” Terry shook his head. “I’m offering martinis and mentoring. But if you want to go home and blog…” He looked at Cass with his “kind uncle” expression. “Excuse me for asking, but do you by any chance have a life?”

  “It’s important, what I do.”

  “I didn’t say it wasn’t.” He reached out and typed. Onto the screen came the blog’s home page.

  Concerned

  Americans for

  Social

  Security

  Amendment

  Now,

  Debt

  Reduction and

  Accountability

  “How many hours did it take to come up with that acronym?”

  “I know, bit of a mouthful.”

  “She was a goddess of something.”

  “Daughter of the king of Troy. She warned that the city would fall to the Greeks. They ignored her.”

  “And? What happened?”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Just educate me.”
<
br />   “ Troy fell. It was on the news last night. Cassandra was raped. By Ajax the lesser.”

  “Is that why they called the other one Ajax the major? He wasn’t a rapist.”

  “Whatever. She was taken back to Greece by Agamemnon-you remember him, right?-as a concubine. They were both killed by his wife, Clytemnestra. In revenge for his sacrificing her daughter, Electra.”

  “A heartwarming story. No wonder Greeks look unhappy.”

  “Cassandra is sort of a metaphor for catastrophe prediction. This is me. It’s what I do. During my downtime. When I’m not media-training our wonderful clients.”

  “It’s none of my business-”

  “Whenever you say, ‘It’s none of my business,’ I know I’m in for a five-minute lecture.”

  “Just listen. Your generation, you’re incapable of listening. It’s from growing up with iPods in your ears. I was going to say, Kid, you’re young, you’re attractive-you’re very attractive. You should be out, you know, getting…you know…”

  “Laid? Thank you. That’s so nurturing.”

  “You look so, I don’t know, oppressed. You work your butt off here-by the way, I’m giving you a bonus for the Japanese whaler account, good work, sales of whale meat in Tokyo are up six percent-and then you go home and stay up all night blogging with people who look like the Unabomber. It’s not healthy.”

  “Finished?”

  “No. Instead of staring at a computer screen all night and railing against the government and shrieking that the sky is falling, you should be out exchanging bodily fluids and viruses with the rest of your generation.”

  “Earth to Terry. The sky is falling. You saw about the Bank of Tokyo?”

  “No. I’ve been working on the Brazilian thing.”

  “It led the news this morning. For the first time in history, the Bank of Tokyo declined to buy new-issue U.S. Treasury bills. Do you realize what that means?”