Clinton was at the far end, eating a precariously tall pastrami sandwich and doing the Times crossword while working with his line coach, a Phyllis Diller look-alike, her hair in multicolored twists. Clinton had his beloved table saw set up and every so often paused his multitasking to cut a two-by-four in half or rip a big fancy swirl-cut in a sheet of plywood. I moved toward the mayor, stepping over the half-done pieces of furniture, a table with three legs, a backless cabinet. Random other people wandered around him, secretaries, interns, clerks, and police bodyguards. Reed Blajasevic and the prosecutors came up from the back car negotiating some procedural nicety. In the corner was a TV. The women’s marathon was on. Clinton said, “I’m in a bad mood.”

He looked a little woolly, as if he hadn’t slept particularly well the night before. Senator Hillary, burnishing her creds as stateswoman and pothole politician par excellence, was off on a fact-finding tour of Buffalo and sub-Saharan Africa. The mayor always looked a bit forlorn when his wife was out of town.

The line coach was reading promptingly from a battered paperback: “ ‘Or like a whale.’ And your line is . . . ?”

Clinton said, “My daughter died last night. Ophelia—she dies every night. That’s why I’m in a bad mood.”

Clinton, bored with Shakespeare, started building a chest of drawers as he watched the marathon on the little television. Three hundred of the world’s best female distance runners had started an hour earlier in Far Rockaway. They did two laps around the runways of JFK then struck out across northern Queens. The leaders were a Dane and fourteen Kenyans. The rest were strung out along Bell Boulevard in the brutal New York City heat. The police believed that most of them would eventually be found.

Clinton’s train slipped into a tunnel. It was dark a moment, then the lights came on. The TV flickered back to life.

Reed Blajasevic said they were ready to get the deposition started.

“Sir,” said the first prosecutor, “are you familiar with the 7th hole at the Bonnie Brae Country Club in Hackensack, New Jersey?”

Bill Clinton looked shifty suddenly, eyes darting toward his lawyers, hands fidgeting in his lap. He said, “What do you mean?”

Reed Blajasevic jumped in. “The question is outrageously misleading and confusing!”

“Sir,” said the first prosecutor, his voice rising now, “yes or no, have you ever played the scenic, fabled 7th at old Bonnie Brae?”

Clinton was a cornered beast. He said, “Yes—I mean no.” He bit his lip, desperate with panic. “In what time frame do you mean?”

Reed was waving his arms. “No more questions, damn it! I’m going to the judge!”

The lawyers rose, recessing to the back car for their 47th conference call with the judge.

Bill Clinton slumped on the bench, pale and drained. Lawyers were his kryptonite. I grabbed the pastrami sandwich, jammed it in his hand. I jammed the crossword puzzle in his other hand. I handed a two-by-four to the acting coach and yelled at her to saw something. I was doing something nearly cruel, propping up Bill Clinton like a scarecrow in a field. I couldn’t stand the sight of him deflated.

Bill Clinton slowly rallied. He heard the saw sawing and raised his big panther’s head. He got up from the bench, took the wood from the acting coach, and finished the cut himself.

He turned to me. “Charles, I need you to get me into the owner’s box at Yankee Stadium.”

I groaned. We had been over this before.

Clinton knew that he was asking the impossible. In Clinton’s battle with Rudy Giuliani for the soul of New York City, both men had a base of power. Clinton had the unions, Manhattan glamour-lovers, and blacks and Latinos. Giuliani had the PBA, the head waiter at Elaine’s, and the New York Yankees. Though leader of the free world, Giuliani had found the time to attend all 81 Yankee home games the year before plus a full schedule of 27 intrasquad and Florida spring-training games, sitting in the same seat for every game up in the Bronx, the private box of the fabled Yankee owner George Steinbrenner. Now 83 years old, Steinbrenner was living as a recluse in his vast and rambling Tampa Xanadu, where, rumor had it, his aged and broken-down racehorses and right fielders wandered the grounds aimlessly. This season, Giuliani’s game attendance had been a tad spottier, but he remained the public face of the Pinstripes.

Clinton had a pout on this. “I’m mayor of this city. Me. It’s a signature iconic act for the mayor of New York to go to the Bronx and don that old blue cap with the interlocking NY and all the history and aura that go with it. My mayorship won’t be complete until I’ve made this pilgrimage.”

I said, “What about the circus? The circus is iconic.”

Bill Clinton proceeded to have one of his famous tantrums, the empty tirades of a thousand words in which everything and everyone has let him down. His tantrums fascinate me, like a sped-up movie of a blooming rose, only running in reverse, fury collapsing into self-pity and then into silence. Anger spent, Clinton bit his sandwich, chewing meditatively.

I said, “How about the Mets?”

Clinton just ignored me. Reed Blajasevic and the other lawyers filed back from their conference call with the judge. I repaired to a corner of the subway car, letting the mayor return to his carpentry, acting lessons, and deposition.

Getting Clinton into Yankee Stadium, the very Jerusalem of Giulianism, would not be easy. First I called a friend who was friends with friends of friends of Giuliani’s scheduler. I was able to confirm that President and Mrs. Rudy would be stuck in Washington that night, hosting a state dinner for what was left of the old Iraqi Governing Council. Next I called a guy named Sallie Dogs from Arthur Avenue who’s been known to do a little scalping. I like Sallie quite a bit, but it’s annoying to deal with him because he insists that the FBI is tapping his phone. It’s a question of prestige among Sallie’s peer group up in the Bronx.

“Sallie, hi. It’s Charles O’Malley.”

He said, “Sssh. No names.”

“Sallie, for the thousandth time, nobody is tapping you. You’re not that important. Nobody would bother. Just accept it. It doesn’t make you a bad person.”

I told him that I needed Yankee tickets for that night, the best that he could get.

Sallie said, “How many?”

I did a quick head count of the mayor’s entourage.

“Thirty-six,” I said. “No, wait a second.” I called over to the prosecutors, “When do you guys think you’ll be finished?”

“When justice is done,” said the lead prosecutor.