The Faithful

Chapter Thirteen: Hillary Steps Up and Stands Down

Available Chapters: Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three, Chapter Four, Chapter Five, Chapter Six, Chapter Seven, Chapter Eight, Chapter Nine, Chapter Ten, Chapter Eleven, Chapter Twelve, Chapter Thirteen

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Chapter Thirteen

Hillary Steps Up and Stands Down

Tuesday, June 3, 2008
South Dakota Democratic primary:
Hillary Clinton: 56%
Barack Obama: 45%

Montana Democratic primary:
Barack Obama: 58%
Hillary Clinton: 40%

“Oh, why shouldn’t she stay in there ‘til the last primary vote is counted?” I asked; and I was feeling as querulous as the question sounded.

Maybe I wasn’t cut out for happiness. After a few hot nights between the sheets with Rodney, I was losing my edge. Why shouldn’t Hillary play it through now? We were down to Puerto Rico and the last two primary states. I was tired of listening to the Obama staff rant and rave about her refusal to withdraw on the day before Democratic party officials were scheduled to meet and decide what to do with the Michigan and Florida delegates. We were confident that they would not hand them all to Hillary. She wasn’t going to win this. But I had come around to the point of understanding why she needed to count every vote.

“What are you saying?” Chloe asked, her question ending in a near gasp. It was an article of faith in the Obama campaign that Hill should have packed up her pantsuits and sensible low-heeled pumps and checked out some time ago. “Don’t let anyone else hear you say that,” she teased. “Kanesha may have you up on charges.”

“I’m just saying that she may as well stay in now after hanging in this long,” I said, defensively. “I don’t mean that she should take the fight to the convention - just run out the primary clock.“ I sighed. “Her candidacy is as historic as Barack’s. Counting every vote is part of her legacy to the next woman running for president. Wouldn‘t he do the same? Wouldn‘t the first openly gay candidate do the same?” Chloe blinked her big blue eyes. “I’m losing my edge,” I concluded.

“Yeah, I noticed,” Chloe grinned across the desk at me. She was wearing gold gladiator sandals; and, yes, they looked fantastic - all that shiny leather wrapped around her shapely calves. “Give it a month. You will suddenly notice that Rodney has an unappealing trait or two; and you will begin to make sarcastic remarks again. All will be right with the world.”

“What are Reggie’s unappealing traits?”

“He promised he wouldn’t put pressure on me to become a vegetarian just because he is, but he does.” She folded her arms across her chest. “He looks at me funny while I‘m eating meat.”

“I’ll tell Mom,” I said. “She’ll make him stop looking at you funny.”

“Oh, ha. Is that your best jab of the day?”

“Yes,” I said, sighing again, more heavily this time. “It is. I’m pathetic.”

“I hear your stomach growling,” she said.

We were waiting for Caroline to bring us lunch. After helping orchestrate the press release announcing Barack’s resignation fromTrinity United Church of White-Haters and Race-Baiters, Kanesha was out having lunch with Rodney and his equally beautiful and apparently flawless cousin William. (The church’s recent “invited speaker”, a white Catholic priest, spewed anti-Hillary tirades like gushers of green bile from a movie character possessed by the Devil. My question: Who invited that guy and as part of what agenda?) Kanesha’s mother, the fearsome Odelle, was scheduled to swoop in for another predatory visit later that day, her second visit to Chicago in two weeks, breaking her previous record of two visits in two years. (Oh, yeah, something was up.) Reggie was in Minneapolis, part of the advance team preparing for Barack’s victory speech there on Tuesday night when - at last! - the voting would be done.

“For two people in love and on the winning side of political history, you both look a tad glum,” Caroline said. Bearing bags of deli sandwiches and bottles of wine, she came in like the first spring breeze sweetly blowing off a warm lake.

“Something you don’t like in the poll numbers? Billary eruptions? Did one of Hillary’s crazy fans attack an Obama supporter? Don‘t you think that Barack‘s resignation from his church will close that chapter?”

“Thomas is losing his edge,” Chloe said.

“Chloe says that Reggie looks at her funny when she eats meat,” I offered.

“Omigod!” Caroline laughed and clapped her hands. “Victory is ours! When the campaign staff stops obsessing politics 24/7, the election is won.”

“Thomas thinks that Hillary should stay in until the primaries are over,” Chloe said, giving me one of those “nyah-nyah” looks that I remember so well from childhood when I was the one throwing them at my older brother.

“What difference does it make at this point?” Caroline asked, shrugging her shoulders as she began unpacking lunch. That took the “nyah” out of Chloe’s pretty little peach-lipped pout. Caroline handed me a corkscrew and a bottle of white burgundy from France. “Evan might make partner,” she said, in reference to her fiancé, a lawyer with a prestigious law firm. She held up her hand to silence our cheers, looked each of us in the eye and said, “The partners are all Republicans. Every one of them. A Republican.”

And so we drank and ate and talked - mostly about Caroline’s greatest fear, that Evan would go over to the dark side and become a Republican by virtue of making the expedient choice. I was waiting for my turn to confess my greatest fear, that I didn’t know how to be part of a “couple” and wasn’t sure I wanted to learn - when Kanesha came in. Wordlessly she extended her hand for a glass of wine.

“What…” Chloe began.

“Now?” I finished for her.

“My mother is bringing Jilly Norton with her again,” Kanesha said. I got up and gave her my chair. She sank gratefully into it. “Michael is with them.”

“What?!” Chloe said. “WHY?” she screamed. (I can’t remember hearing Chloe scream before.) “Why is she bringing them HERE?”

“She says that Jilly is going to write her book on the Obama campaign whether I help her or not.” Kanesha paused to take a long sip of wine. “It will be better if I help her - Mama says.”

“And Michael?” Caroline asked, putting a venomous spin on his name.

“Mama says he has something to contribute.”

“Your mother is a bitch,” Chloe said, narrowing her eyes.

“You think?” Kanesha asked, grinning. And then she looked at me and said, “Oh, by the way, Thomas, William isn’t entirely straight and Rodney isn’t entirely gay - and they are not, strictly speaking, cousins.”

“Not cousins?” Caroline asked.

“Their mothers’ second husbands are cousins.” She paused, waiting for another question from the floor, but we were waiting for more answers. “They went to prep school together.” Another pause. “William says they ‘experimented’ in giving one another blow jobs.”

“So?” Chloe said. “That happens in all boys schools, right?”

“And prisons,” I added sarcastically.

“They also played with girls - together.” She paused. “You know. William and Rodney and girls, sometimes one or two or three.”

“Why not four?” I asked on my way out the door.

I’d played with girls too when I was in high school, even the first year of college. But why had the “cousins” chosen to spill the contents of their childhood memory books to Kanesha? Couldn’t Rodney have shared his boyhood sex stories with me? I was pissed - so pissed that I behaved in an unconventional way for me by walking to the closest tavern and ordering a tall draft beer which I drank standing up at the bar. Then I ordered another one.

And that’s why I missed the big meeting in Kanesha’s office - and the private one afterward that threatened to blow up our little campaign family. This is what Chloe told me later as she drank and I sobered up with coffee:

Odelle only knew one kind of entrance; and that was grand. Wearing a purple suit, black heels and a dramatic red and purple woven hat angled diagonally on her head like a tipsy crown, she led the way back to Kanesha’s office as if it were her own. Without looking at Jilly or Michael, Kanesha fell in behind her mother. After Jilly and Michael came Chloe. (Then Caroline, who Chloe said, “wasn’t exactly invited but appointed herself a stand-in for you, Thomas.”)

“Sit,” Odelle said, lowering her open palm; and they sat, Chloe grabbing a folding chair which she positioned into a corner, the better to see everyone without being obvious about it. “I’m getting Reggie on speaker phone,” Odelle announced.

When Chloe heard his strong, masculine “Hello,” she felt a thrill in her genitals. They all called out greetings and he responded to Chloe’s voice with a quiet, “Miss you, Baby.” I miss you too. She did.

“What is the purpose behind this weird gathering, Mother?” Kanesha asked.

“Politics make strange bedfellows, Baby Girl,” she said, her loud gravelly voice softening a touch on the word girl. “By this time next week, Hillary will be banging the drum for Bama. The party comes first, for you as well as for her.” She looked around the room. “Where’s Thomas?”

“He had a faculty meeting at the university that he couldn’t skip,” Caroline lied smoothly. “I’m sitting in for him.”

“It’s good to have you back,” Odelle said, a flicker of amusement in her eyes. With a nod to Kanesha, she said, “Jilly’s book will come out a year into Barack’s presidency, when the honeymoon is well over. You can all help Jilly with the book - and thus have some influence over its direction - or you can refuse to cooperate because you’re mad that your little affairs will be footnotes to history.”

Looking far less uncomfortable than she had in the previous meeting headed by Odelle, Jilly smiled and said to us, “I would really appreciate your cooperation.”

“How much?” Reggie asked; and Odelle broke the tension by laughing heartily.

Chloe listened and watched as they negotiated terms without appearing to be doing so. Reggie insisted that Jilly’s book had to reflect Barack’s character - “his grace and intelligence, the depth of his compassion for others, his strength and idealism, his belief that Americans can and will transcend the racial divide…“. I want you to understand the faith of his followers, Caroline said. Odelle wanted some assurances from Jilly that she would do all that in exchange for reasonable access.

Michael Westwood caught Chloe’s eye. He looked a little thinner, less pasty-faced than he had the last time she’d seen him. What are you doing here anyway? She telegraphed with her eyes. He seemed to understand the question because his eyes crinkled a little in response. That white boy spanked Kanesha. Surely Odelle wouldn’t have him here without good reason. Spanked, Chloe thought. She hadn’t been spanked in a while. A few hard whacks that would drive her clit against a firm surface….

“What is Michael’s role in this?” Reggie asked. And his disembodied voice was like a swizzle stick stirring the spanking fantasy around in her mind. “Is he Jilly’s assistant now?”

Everyone laughed, even Michael, who blushed a little too.

“Michael needs a good job,” Odelle said. “I can get him that job by picking up the phone. To show his appreciation, he wants to give me all the Clinton campaign files that he downloaded from seven of their computers last weekend.”

“Jesus!” Reggie said.

“Yes, praise the Lord,” Odelle said dryly.

“Barack would never go for that,” Kanesha said.

“Ah, but I am not giving the material to you and Barack. I am giving it to Jilly for her book.”

And that was that. As their discussion was winding down, Odelle produced a sheaf of papers from her briefcase. Confidentiality agreements. They would all sign them.

“On pain of death?” Caroline asked.

“Or other punishment?” Chloe added, making momentary eye contact with Michael as she did; and she caught Kanesha observing the exchange.

“I want Kanesha to be your primary contact,” Odelle said to Jilly - and to Caroline she said, “And I want you to send me a weekly report on what transpires here. I want to know when Jilly arrives and departs, whom she sees and what is asked and answered and, of course, I do not want to hear that she has been left free to walk about on her own.”

“Got it,” Caroline said. She’d whipped a tiny notebook out of her pants’ pocket and was making notes. “You can count on me,” she said, giving her best admiring young white girl smile to Odelle - and that is just how easily she got back into campaign headquarters.

“You can definitely count on Caroline,” Reggie echoed.

Chloe narrowed her eyes and once again those eyes made contact with Michael Westwood’s. He smiled, a brief turning up of the corners of his lips. She did the same. Suddenly she could imagine that WASP boy/policy wonk bringing one of his meaty hands down hard on her buttocks. Ouch. Ohhhh….

(Later Thomas would ask: Did they really think that Kanesha was oblivious to the signals Chloe’s superheated sexual brain was sending to that bastard?)

After the confidentiality agreements were signed and delivered into Odelle’s impeccably manicured hands and everyone had said “good-bye“ to Reggie on speaker phone, Kanesha escorted her mother and Jilly down to the lobby. Michael stayed behind on the pretext that he wanted to “say hey” to a friend in a distant cubicle. Caroline rushed off to call Evan with the good news.

As Michael shut the door, Chloe hiked up her little black skirt to her waist, planted her gold gladiator sandal-shod feet wide and leaned over the desk, her weight on her outstretched arms.

“Spank me,” she whispered.

Her breath caught; and she felt erotic dread in the pit of her stomach - but she felt, yes, longing too. The first slap was brisk, exciting. She gasped.

“You want this,” he said.

“Yes,” she said.

He brought his open palm down on her repeatedly, first one buttock, then another, occasionally slapping her in the center of both. She squirmed and winced. Her white silk blouse clung to her, drenched in her sweat. As his hand came down on her ass, her clit made fast, rough contact with the desk. It hurt; she loved it; she would never have guessed how much. He grabbed her hair with his other hand and pulled her head back. The slaps began to feel like blows, raining down on her burning flesh. Tears spilled down her cheeks. Her breath was so hot that breathing it into her lungs hurt. And then she came in an explosive rush of contractions.

He gently rubbed her ass with both hands as she came down from her high. Omigod, what have I done? she thought, struggling to pull herself together. Now that she was no longer drunk on brain sex chemicals, she knew that Kanesha would inevitably be standing outside the door when they opened it.

And she was.

“I don’t get it,” I said. “What is the deal? First, Kanesha. Now, you. What is there about an innocuous husky guy that makes smart women bare their bottoms and beg for the master’s hand.”

“Please,” she said, her cheeks flushing, though I guessed not nearly as brightly as her ass cheeks were. “I don’t know. One minute I was listening to Reggie’s voice on speaker phone and thinking how much I missed him - and the next minute I was hiking up my skirt, leaning over the table…”

“Too much information!” I said.

“She’s going to tell him, isn’t she?”

“Kanesha tell Reggie? No,” I said with perhaps a little more assurance than I actually felt. But I did not think she would. “Kanesha has been through her own stuff. She’s not going to get in the middle of you and Reggie.”

“You didn’t see her face.”

“Well….” I let that trail off.

Actually I did see her face shortly after she made the discovery. She was running out of campaign headquarters as I was weaving my way back in. I stopped her, held her in my arms while she sobbed that she’d “caught” Michael and Chloe. Michael and Chloe!?

And now here I was, back at the same bar, sitting with coffee this time while Chloe burbled into her cheap white wine.

“Listen,” I told her, “just keep your mouth shut. Don’t you say anything to Reggie. If I‘m right and she doesn‘t say anything to him and you don‘t either - you‘re home free.” Wiping her eyes with a tissue, she nodded. “And only have sex in the dark in the missionary position until that ass bruising clears up, okay?

She threw the tissue at me. It was good to be back on home ground, counseling the gal pals, getting a tissue in the face or a fist to the bicep in gratitude. Maybe I wouldn’t return Rodney’s calls for another day or longer.

On Saturday, May 30, the Democratic Party brokered a deal that The New York Times described as a “blow to Clinton.” The party agreed to seat the delegates from the disputed primaries in Florida and Michigan - but only gave them a half vote each. That dashed Hillary’s last hope though why she had clung to it, I don‘t know. The states broke party rules by holding their primaries early; Barack’s name wasn’t even on the ballot in Michigan - and yet Hillary’s team felt she was entitled to every vote, and delegate, she scored there. Too bad for them. Our supporters had been asked not to get into arguments with her raucous supporters; and, for the most part, they did not - though they were sorely provoked by the unruly Clintonistas. The party chiefs encouraged the undecided super delegates to get off the fence, but many would remain officially uncommitted, out of deference toward Hillary, until the last poll closed.

Yet enough of them came over to Barack that he had the number of delegates necessary to claim the nomination on Tuesday, June 3. And claim is the word. Hillary Clinton did not concede in the speech she gave at a rally in New York City.

“I can’t believe this,” Caroline said, clutching Evan’s hand. We were all together again at campaign headquarters in Chicago for this final primary night. “He is past the number of required delegates to win the nomination - and she is still acting like she has a viable shot.”

“What’s not to believe?” Evan asked. “She’s a Clinton; and they don‘t have a Plan B.”

“Plan B is to Vince Foster him,” Kanesha whispered; and we all bit our tongues while William, standing beside her, laughed quietly.

Some African Americans on the staff were convinced that the death of Vince Foster, Hillary’s former partner in their Arkansas days at Rose Law Firm, part of the Clinton administration in D.C. and her rumored lover, was not suicide. A list of “suspicious deaths” of people close to the Clintons had been circulating on the Internet for months. But Kanesha was joking. Like me, she didn’t think the Clintons were the type to hire contract killers. Verbal evisceration was their style.

Caroline clung tightly to Evan’s hand. She was not happy that Hillary wasn’t rising to the occasion and doing the right thing. I studied his face. He was slightly uncomfortable with us. And that was a new thing. Too many Democrats? Was he already surreptitiously studying his new Catechism?

Hillary barely acknowledged Barack, the winner, in her speech, but he was extremely gracious to her in his. Speaking from a rally in Minneapolis, where the Republican convention would be held, he said:

“Sixteen months have passed since we first stood together on the steps of the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Illinois. Thousands of miles have been traveled. Millions of voices have been heard And because of what you said - because you decided that change must come to Washington, because you believed that this year must be different than all the rest, because you chose to listen not to your doubts or your fears but to your greatest hopes and aspirations, tonight we mark the end of one historic journey with the beginning of another - a journey that will bring a new and better day in America…”

With a lump in my throat the size of a tennis ball, I reached for a hand - not Rodney’s this time, but Chloe’s, because I had refused to stand beside him. His eyes glistening, he stood across the room, smiling at me. Tentatively, I returned the smile. Happiness was no good for me. Couldn’t he see that and let it go?

Reggie leaned across Chloe and said to me: “Don’t be mad at him tonight, not on this night of all nights.”

I smiled more warmly back at Rodney. History was made in America that night. We had all played a small role in the making of history; and we were proud, elated, touched at the core. Barack Obama’s candidacy challenged people on their racial views - and more than that, it forced people to look deeply inside themselves and then stand up and say what they believed. Over and over we’d seen them on news clips and more importantly, heard about them from our staff on the road and from the state campaign staffs reporting in: the people who thronged to Obama rallies, the people who had cast aside their fear and cynicism, doubt and distrust for that moment. Old and young, rich and poor, black and white, Asian and Latino - they came out for him.

“He is the best thing that’s happened to this country in decades,” Caroline said.

“Yes,” Evan said, a low throb of emotion underscoring his firm voice. “He is nothing less than our national redemption. We choose that or we are lost for another four years or longer.”

Caroline started to cry; and he took her into his arms. I rubbed her back as he held her. No, I did not think Evan was going to turn Republican now, at least not in this election cycle. And the next day Caroline would begin planning the wedding in earnest.

Eventually there has to be a Democratic partner in that law firm of Evan’s, right?

“Next on Obama’s Campaign Agenda is Addressing Clinton’s Role” The New York Times proclaimed the next morning. The questions, What does Hillary want? and What is Hillary going to do? were bandied about, largely by the talking heads on television, for less than 24 hours. Reportedly, Hillary spent Wednesday in conversation with supporters who gently encouraged her to do the math - and not The New Hillary Math. By Thursday morning, the Times headline read:

“Clinton Ready to End Bid and Endorse Obama”

I was relaxing with coffee and the papers in my favorite booth at the diner where Caroline and I’d had two confrontational meetings with Jilly Norton. And I was half-expecting Caroline to join me there since I’d told her where I was headed when we spoke briefly. When I glanced toward the door and saw her accompanied by Chloe and Kanesha, I grinned happily.

“Three American beauty roses!” I said, standing to hug them. “What a pleasure, ladies!”

“It’s really over!” Kanesha exulted, her own copy of The New York Times clutched to her breast.

“On to the general election!” Caroline called out.

“Yeah, team,” Chloe said - and in that instant I caught a glimpse of the Republican she could well become.

“So, are you ordering bacon or ham for breakfast?” I teased her.

“Ha! I can’t go back to Reggie with pork breath.”

“What? His dick can smell your breath?” I asked. She was sitting beside me and smacked my arm. I remember when Chloe worried about having “penis breath” from an assignation before a date. “Vegetarians always seem a little sanctimonious to me,” I said.

“And judgmental and pious?” Caroline asked mischievously. But she relented and added, “Not Reggie, of course.”

“Right,” Chloe said.

We ordered food and gave ourselves over to the joy of omelets. The biggest endorsement of all was coming in 48 hours. Caroline was studying brides’ magazines. Kanesha had apparently not told Reggie about the little spanking incident between Chloe and Michael, who was back in New York City and working for Odelle’s white lover. Jilly Norton was in Paris spending some of her advance before coming back to annoy us as she followed “part two of the Obama campaign.” I had forgiven Rodney his boyish predilection for girls. And Kanesha was seeing William.

“Does it bother you that he played with boys?” I asked quietly while Chloe and Caroline were comparing stilettos.

“I played with Michael,” she said. “How could anything bother me?”

“Do you think it’s going somewhere?” I asked. (This is why women love gay men; we ask girlish questions.) “Do you want it to go somewhere?”

“I don’t know and I don’t know,” Kanesha said, but she did look happier, more relaxed than I’d ever seen her look. “I can’t really think about being in a relationship until after the election.”

“K, get a life!” Chloe chided.

“I have one,” she retorted. “I am working on the most important political campaign in modern history. That’s a life!”

We all laughed, but each of us in turn admitted that she was right. What was there to do in this country more important than what we were doing now? Since Lyndon Baines Johnson launched The Great Society - the last progressive program - other presidents, even Bill Clinton, had chipped away at its safety net for the least among us. I’d watched the news programs honoring the memory of Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy on the fortieth anniversary of his assassination; and finally I fully grasped what the country lost when two Kennedys and a King were murdered within five years’ time and LBJ squandered his moral authority in Vietnam.

“This country is in real trouble,” Caroline said. For that shining moment, our faces were lit from within - lit with hope and joy and the deepest faith in the man whom we served. “And Barack Obama can lead us to change.”

Who would have guessed that on Saturday in Washington D.C., Hillary Clinton, in ending her historic race for the presidency, would echo our sentiment and say it so well?

“The way to continue our fight now, to accomplish the goals for which we stand is to take our energy, our passion and do all we can to help elect Barack Obama, the next president of the United States…Children today will grow up taking for granted that an African-American or a woman can, yes, become the president of the United States.”

In his tribute for her gracious endorsement speech, he said:

“I honor her today for the valiant and historic campaign she has run. She shattered barriers on behalf of my daughters and women everywhere, who now know there are no limits to their dreams…”

I saw Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in a new light that day. They were the legacy of Civil Rights and the women‘s movement, a black man and a woman running dynamic presidential campaigns that brought yet another new group of young idealists into politics. The mantle fell more lightly and gracefully on Barack’s shoulders than hers. In the end, however, she stepped up her game. She did the right thing.

But, please God, don’t put her on the ticket with Barack, Kanesha said when she called me after Hillary’s speech. Yes, please God. Sometimes the faithful can only wait and pray.

Copyright © 2008 by Carla Dickens. All rights reserved. Please do not re-publish the entirety of this chapter or novel without the prior written consent of E-Reads.

DISCLAIMER
This is a work of fiction that takes place during the Democratic Primary and Presidential Campaign of 2008. With the exception of casual references to certain living public persons, places, and events, and of speeches, news commentaries or statements that are public record, all characters, names and places used in The Faithful are fictitious. Any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The work contains adult themes, language and content and describes sexual situations.