Chaper Four: Star Power

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 Four

Star Power

SUPER TUESDAY

Total votes casts in caucuses and primaries in 24 states:
Hillary Clinton 50.2%
Barack Obama 49.8%

Delegates:
Barack Obama 827
Hillary Clinton 822

I jumped off the bus at the next stop and ran back to the office. Nausea welled up in my throat. I swallowed it down. This was no time to be standing on a cold street in Chicago puking my guts out. My heart was pounding in my ears - and not from the minor exertion of the run. Had I tiptoed away from the door while Kanesha was being sexually assaulted - or raped?

I burst through the doors and rushed past the donations staff and volunteers, who were processing online donations 24/7 now. Nervously chewing the dead skin at the edge of a nail, Kanesha stood with her back against one of the few doors that closed at the rear of the vast room of cubicles and warrens (variously described by the media as being like a vast insurance claims department or a newsroom.) The two lovers in sweet disarray, Reggie and Caroline, were flailing their arms and talking in loud whispers that sounded like hisses. Surely they’d learn to do that from Kanesha; and it came in handy now when their words would have carried through the vast empty space all the way upfront to the eager listening ears of the donations staff.

Who are you protecting behind that door? Caroline asked, her cell phone clutched in her hand.

Why are you protecting him? Reggie demanded. And how did he manage to keep that white shirt looking so crisp and clean at the end of a very long day and a little sex? The immaculate white shirt, pressed jeans and beautiful vintage jacket--the outfit he’d been wearing the day he walked into the office with his dreads swinging--were his basic wardrobe. Casual elegance. Even with the dreads cut and his hair a conservative head-hugging tight curl, he wore it well. The bastard has hurt you!

Panting, I stood in front of them. I looked into Kanesha’s deep dark eyes and I swear I could read her heart, mind and soul in them for a few brief seconds before she shut down and became her well-defended self again. She needed my help - with those two, not the supposed mystery man behind the door she was guarding.

“She was attacked,” Caroline said, her beautiful blue eyes flashing wild sparks.

“We heard her calling for help,” Reggie said, unable to disconnect his hand from Caroline’s back even in what he considered to be Kanesha‘s gravest moment. “I was going to break the door down.’

“I was going to find someone and get the master key,” Caroline said.

“But she came out looking like this and said she was fine,” Reggie finished.

“Fine!” Caroline managed a shrieking hiss. “Fine! Look at her! I don’t care who is in there. Why should we cover up for him?”

Kanesha looked disheveled and bruised, her lips slightly nibbled and swelling. She was proud that her lips weren’t as full and “protruding” as some black women’s were. If she looked in a mirror then, she would have really been upset. Who would have guessed she had a taste for rough sex? I would. It’s always the powerful women (and men) who want to feel a little pain with their pleasure. The tighter the emotional bindings, the more intense the feelings required to loosen them. I telegraphed an I get it message with my baby hazels into Kanesha’s dark pools; and I was sure she got it right back. (Caroline and Reggie are just too damned straight to pick up on a kinky nuance. They probably think that the interplay of his deep black velvet and her polished alabaster skins is as taboo and kinky as it gets. )

“Let me talk to Kanesha,” I said, edging past the Avengers. “It’s okay, Baby, you can let me help,” I said softly to Kenosha, drawing her into a one-armed embrace ending in a neck massage. She trembled and softened against me. “I understand,” I said, nodding my head to the other two, indicating they should go away.

“We’ll be right outside if you need us,” Reggie said.

“I’m not leaving here until I find out who is in that room,” Caroline said.

“If someone is still in that room,” I said. “Maybe he’s gone. And maybe Kanesha didn’t want to be cornered by the two of you alone in there so she kept you outside.”

With that, we slipped back first, one at a time, into the office and locked the door behind us. Stacks of file folders swept to the floor, the small space looked nearly as disheveled as she did. I heard a faint rustling, like an athlete’s knee cracking softly, from behind the desk on the floor. It’s okay, Kanesha said. The young man with the athletic injury stood up. Michael Westwood! Blue-eyed, baby-faced policy wonk Westwood! Sweat pasted the edges of his blonde hair to his pasty white face forming a border. He looked like something my six year old niece might have done as an art project.

“A white man,” I whispered, so it wouldn’t be heard through the door. (Could he be any whiter?)

Kanesha covered her face with her hands and cried - quietly, of course. A white man was her secret kinky lover. That shocked the hell out of me. Days ago I’d been sitting across the lunch table from him, talking shop with Chloe and Caroline. Nothing in his demeanor indicated a possibility like this one. We never really know what motivates other people sexually, do we?

It was after 5 a.m. before Caroline and Reggie finally left and we could sneak Michael out. Here is the story Kanesha told me over coffee and pancakes at the diner when we were finally alone.

“I don’t date white men,” she told Michael when he asked her out for drinks.

Her father dated white women. Kanesha thought that was probably the cruelest thing he did to Odelle, her mother, worse than not marrying her when she got pregnant and leaving her when Kanesha was only a year old. On the rare occasions when he picked up his daughter and took her out for a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, he usually had a white woman in tow - or if not actually with him when he came to the door for her, then joining them at the Bronx zoo or in Manhattan at Serendipity for frozen hot chocolates. Growing up, she felt as if her father couldn’t get through the day without his fix of white female flesh. In his forties, he finally married one of them, Katherine, a slightly older flame-haired ad executive who owned a beautifully restored brownstone on Gramercy Park and could afford him. And his choice of Katherine was another insult to her mother! Odelle Bradley had become the top female African American advertising executive in Manhattan by the time Kanesha was in high school.

“That’s incredibly narrow-minded of you,” Michael said, his blue eyes laughing at her. Why were the light eyes of white people so highly prized when you could read everything in them? Unlike dark eyes, they didn’t hold secrets. “It hardly seems in keeping with the spirit of the campaign. Race doesn’t matter. Hasn’t anyone told you?”

“That’s an ideological position, not a personal one,” she snapped.

“You mean it covers your policy statements, not your mind, heart and pussy?” he teased.

In spite of herself, she smiled. And she looked back at that smile as the note of encouragement he’d needed to continue pursuing her - under the office radar, of course. He understood that from the start.

Kanesha grew up hearing strong black women like her mother disrespect black men. But white men were not an option for most of them. How often did white men want overweight black women with loud mouths no matter how accomplished and successful the women were? (“White men only want black women who look white,“ her mother said, but Kanesha did look “white” - slender build, straightened hair, short, clear nails, conservative dress.) And if a white man “sniffed around” a black woman, her sisters - the same ones who disrespected the black man - would tell her she was being a traitor to her race and helping to keep the black man down by lying with The Man.

What does the daughter of a powerful black woman and an absentee black man do?

Kanesha was a virgin until age seventeen. Like many young black women who’d grown up the way she had and also aspired to success in the world, she was sexually conservative, often coming off as uptight. She’d only been with three men--well-educated brothers--when she began having the hottest sex of her life with a pale white man. The first time they did it, he bent her over a table in a conference room at four in the morning, no foreplay. And the second time, after a minimum of kissing and grabbing one another, it was rear entry again, at her desk with the door locked. They’d done it a half dozen times since then, always in the office, in the wee hours of the morning, without removing all of their clothes. The sex was fast and rough; and she came hard every time. Coming every time was a new experience for her. She was so aroused by him that her pussy was swollen and lubricated by the time he had his pants unzipped.
After the first time, she began having the fantasies about him. Spanking. Anal sex. Forced oral sex with his hand like a vice on the back of her neck. She wanted him to pinch her nipples hard and squeeze her breasts together and come on them. And she told him these things while they were doing it in the rear entry position with her bent over the desk.

“Bite me,” she said; and he bit her lips, her nipples, her ass.

“Slap me,” she said; and he slapped her ass cheeks hard enough to take her breath away.

“I’ve never been like this with anyone else,” he said, his face red with exertion and possibly embarrassment.

“Do you think I have?” she asked.


“Wow!” I said to Kanesha when she finally paused to eat her cold chocolate chip pancakes. The swelling in her lips was subsiding and she‘d applied lipstick, combed her hair. “I’m jealous.”
Eyes wide, she looked at me like a curious child as she chewed. I knew what she was thinking. I’m a gay man. Shouldn’t I be having it nine ways from Sunday every day? I was in a dry patch. Yes, there were gay guys in the office but they wore those thick wooly patterned sweaters that are so Chicago and made their beefy upper bodies only look more so. They looked like they were ready to hold hands all the way to Pottery Barn - while, of course, clutching snacks in their free hands. And Kanesha found a straight guy prone to the same fashion mistakes yet willing and very able to fulfill her fantasies behind closed doors. I was born too late - into a time where gays wanted to be straight and straights wanted to be kinky. How crazy is that?
“I thought you didn’t do white men,” I said accusingly.

“I don’t,” she snapped. “Well, I didn’t,” she amended.

“Do you suppose an Obama presidency will lead to this sort of thing all over the country?” I teased. “Girls like you and Caroline crossing the color line! Isn’t that why they’ve been holding the damned line in Mississippi all these years?”

“Oh, ha,” she said.

And I recognized that response Oh, ha. My older cousins, white boys, of course, had been saying that for years. Come to think of it - they looked a lot like Michael Westwood who was surely a typical tow-head tot way back when. I would bet he said Oh, ha!

“Are you kinky with black guys?” I asked.

Her cell phone vibrated on the table between us. Kanesha glanced at it, then picked it up with a ferocious passion. Eagerly she devoured the text message and handed the phone to me. Caroline Kennedy’s editorial endorsing Barack would appear in this Sunday’s edition of The New York Times. We jumped up from our opposite sides of the booth, met in the aisle and hugged. Appalled by Bill’s behavior in South Carolina, Senator Ted Kennedy and his son Representative Patrick Kennedy had already endorsed Barack. It was a Kennedy trifecta. Moreover, Maria Shriver, the Kennedy cousin and wife of Republican governor Arnold, had endorsed Barack at a rally in California attended by Ted, Caroline and Oprah! With John Edwards out of the race and the Kennedys behind Barack, he would be harder to beat.

How could we talk about kinky sex after news like that? At this point in the campaign, we were all pols to the bone. Kanesha and I didn’t get around to the question of what to tell Reggie and Caroline until it was after eight in the morning and time for me to go home, shower and change and teach school.

“Tell them to eat cake,” I said. “Or chocolate pancakes.”

As it turned out, we didn’t have to tell them anything.


I walked into a mad scene, the Tower of Babble except all the babble was Barack talk, at the office that Monday before Super Tuesday. People on cell phones were walking around, bumping into one another or yelling at one another across their cubicle dividers while others were working quietly at their individual altars, computers. The candidate and his wife were returning that night to vote in the primaries the next day and watch the returns here at campaign headquarters. In a corner Michael Westwood recited parts of Caroline Kennedy’s endorsement in Sunday’s The New York Times as if he were invoking a blessing that he really didn‘t expect to quiet the din.

Yet unexpectedly there was a hush in that section of the office when Michael repeated these words of Ms. Kennedy’s:

“Sometimes it takes a while to recognize that someone has a special ability to get us to believe in ourselves, to tie that belief to our highest ideals and imagine that together we can do great things. In those rare moments, when such a person comes along, we need to put aside our plans and reach for what we know is possible.”

Her hands folded waist high in front of her like a penitent, Kanesha’s eyes glistened. She nodded her head as several amongst us, including Caroline, bowed theirs. Church. In the midst of madness with the money counters at the forefront, a believer spoke holy words that moved the faithful. Yes, it was church. I pulled out a camera and began shooting. No one even paid attention to that anymore - which was a good thing. Though the admittedly unreliable polls showed Barack gaining on Hillary, the Clinton campaign still expected a blowout on Super Tuesday that would settle the contest in their favor. In our camp, the mood was cautiously optimistic as it had been. We thought we should and could win and we did expect eventually to prevail. Right, Mrs. Clinton, was on our side.

I had my camera pointed in that general direction when Chloe walked in the door. Bundled in a black cashmere wrap coat with big black fox collar and wearing a black cloche hat pulled down with one side almost obstructing her vision, she looked like a character from an Agatha Christie mystery. The widow/killer. Poison--or a small revolver that fit into a tiny evening clutch?

“You’re not going to believe this,” she said, shedding her coat and hat as we walked into our shared cubicle. She tossed them carelessly onto a chair as if she did not value her clothes though I knew she did. It was an affectation meant to imply wealth. “Evan’s parents will be at the rally at the Regency tomorrow night.”

“Republicans at our party?” I clutched my heart. “Oh, no!”

“Oh, you know they’re for Barack,” she said impatiently. “That’s not it.” She paused dramatically. I admired her outfit, a slim black skirt, white shirt, men’s vest in a herringbone pattern, high-heeled red pumps - the sort of thing Annie Hall might have worn if she were sexier. “They don’t know that the engagement is off. Evan hasn’t told them yet.”

“That’s not so strange, is it? Maybe he’s been waiting until he saw them in person,” I offered, thinking about how many things I don’t tell my parents until I absolutely have to. “My brother didn’t tell my parents his fiancée was pregnant until the day of the wedding. She was four months gone by then.”

“He asked Caroline to put the ring back on and pretend they’re still together just for the night,” she said in exasperation.

“Okay, that’s strange. Well,” I amended, “not so strange. They’re WASPs, honey.”

“It’s ridiculous!” Standing in front of the computer, she pulled up her email, quickly scanned the list and opened nothing. Turning around to face me again, she said peevishly, “I have this great little slip dress that I bought on sale at Saks after Christmas. And I thought we would go together!”

“Ah,” I said, pursing my lips to keep from saying, You’ve only been banging him a few weeks, isn’t it soon to meet the parents? “You’re cute when you pout.”

“Do you think he’s ashamed to introduce me to his parents?” she asked.

“You’ve only been together a few weeks. Isn’t it soon to meet them?”

“Don’t you think it’s odd that sweet honest Caroline would agree to the charade?” She fiddled with the buttons on the cuff of her shirt. “Maybe Reggie was a fling.”

“No, I don’t think it’s odd. Caroline is a WASP too. I’m sure the whole thing makes perfect sense to her. No, I don’t think Reggie is a fling. Caroline doesn’t fling. Yes, I do think you’re jealous.” I grinned to soften the blow. “Now that surprises me.”

“Because you don’t think Evan is my type?” she asked accusingly.

“Au contraire! I do think he is your ‘type.’ But a month ago he was engaged to one of your best friends. And you’re not the type to commit easily. So what’s going on?”

“You’re right,” she said, sighing dramatically. “I’m jealous. I feel like the sex toy to Caroline’s bride doll.” She laughed. “I know it’s silly.”

“Yes, it is. You can both be sex toys and brides.”

I thought that was the end of it. Oh, ha! Mysteriously, Reggie didn’t come into the office at all that day. We knew that his importance to the campaign now superceded Kanesha’s. He spoke to head strategist David Axelrod and campaign manager David Pouufe several times a day. So he was probably running errands in preparation for their return to Chicago--but he could have taken to his bed over Caroline’s defection, couldn’t he? And Caroline was already wearing the ring again. End? This installment of As The Campaign Turns was just beginning.

“He gave it to me this morning,” she explained, “and I thought it was safer on my hand than in my bag.”

This morning? Chloe mouthed behind her back. Whenever we were alone, she found another way to ask me if I thought she was Evan’s cheap bit on the side. (On the side of what?) No. I thought she was his revenge rebound lover. But I’m not stupid. I didn’t say that.


Loyal supporters began gathering at campaign headquarters at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday to watch the returns with Barack and Michelle, Axelrod and the rest of the inner circle. Both elegant and proper in a black silk evening suit with big pearl buttons, Kanesha at one point sat next to Michelle on the gray leather sofa for half an hour before relinquishing her seat to another. (She never looked happier.) Caroline in a slim black sheath dress reminiscent of the 1950s stayed close to Evan. Reggie huddled with campaign manager David Plouffe. That left me, Chloe and Michael abandoned on the sidelines. She did look splendid (if simultaneously over and under-dressed) in her pale turquoise silk slip dress with rhinestone and beaded flowers sprinkled down one side. Several times, even in moments of high political tension, I caught Rodney - RST - looking at Chloe, not the TV screen, as if tracing a gold glitter rose across her breast was far more important than vote projections. I suspected Rodney was only working on the campaign for the good of his resume. Someday a photo of him shaking hands with Barack would be the background for one of his Presidential campaign ads.

We all cheered at the good news; and there was a lot of good news. Barack lost the popular vote (and thus the right to be called “winner!”) in the two big states, New York and California - though he gained delegates in those states - but he won Illinois by two to one and also won ten other states: Alabama, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia and Utah and caucuses in North Dakota, Minnesota, Kansas and Idaho. The talking heads were calling it a “tight race” and a “draw” - bad news for Hillary who’d expected to be anointed the candidate that night. In fact, we were calling it a defeat for her.

Barack, Michelle and the inner circle left the office around 8:30 and arrived at the Hyatt Regency just after 9 p.m. The rest of us went out into the snowy Chicago night and piled into cars, vans and the stray available limo seat, straggling into the Regency over an hour later. Chloe, Michael, Reggie and I ended up together in an SUV that was squeaky clean yet smelled of dog. (On the plus side: Ours made better time than most of the other vehicles and we got there before the champagne ran out.) She insisted on cracking the windows so the odor wouldn’t “attach” to our coats. Shivering, I pulled her close to me for warmth. As I leaned over her to adjust the window crack, I caught sight of Kanesha with Reggie at her elbow climbing into Regina Dean’s limo. Michael was watching too. It’s just sex, she’d sworn to me about him. But I read a lot more than “just sex” on his wistful and hungry face.

Illinois' most prominent politicians made their comments to the media as they entered the ballroom.

"He's gaining with record turnout, record youth participation," said the Rev. Jesse Jackson. "He's emerging as a healer."

"There's a lot in play, but what we have seen consistently is Barack Obama is getting his message out," said Ill. Attorney General Lisa Madigan. "It is a message of hope, it is a message of change."

"I'd rather be ahead than behind; any politician would," said Senator Dick Durbin. "But it isn't insurmountable."

"This is Super Tuesday. There are more states to come after that," said Mayor Richard M. Daley. "He's in this to win, and he's going to win the primary and he's going to win the general election."

“Dick Durban is a little negative, isn’t he?” Caroline said, her right hand in Evan’s left, that big diamond flashing on her left hand. “He’s jealous of Barack. Well, I think so anyway,” she amended.

“I see my parents,” Evan said, smiling happily down at her as if she really were the trophy he was showing off to them. More to the point, she smiled just as happily back up at him. “You look so beautiful, darling,” he said.

Darling?

On stage, Barack chanted "We can do this! We can do this!" to the cheering crowd. At his side, Michelle beamed without looking like a Nancy Reagan wannabe. I loved the way she pulled that off. "We are the hope for the future."

“I can’t believe them,” Chloe said, holding onto my arm. And she wasn’t talking about Barack and Michelle. We watched the air kisses being exchanged between Evan and Caroline and Evan’s parents. They all looked so pleased with themselves. “Can you believe them?” Chloe asked. I shook my head No. “It’s like Reggie never happened to her and I never happened to him.”

“That is WASP marriage,” I said - and instantly regretted saying it.

Chloe’s grip on my arm tightened as we listened to Barack who was paraphrasing his 2004 keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention before he was elected to the Senate:

"There is one thing on this February night that we do not need the final results to know. Our time has come. Our time has come, our movement is real, and change is coming to America…Only a few hundred miles from me almost one year ago to the day… we stood on the steps of the old state capitol to reaffirm a truth that was spoken there so many generations ago, that a house divided cannot stand; that we are more than a collection of red states and blue states; that we are, and always will be, the United States of America. "It's just remarkable to think that just a few weeks ago Sen. Clinton announced that she was going to close out the nomination here on Super Tuesday, on Feb. 5, and instead I think we have the momentum moving forward," Obama chief strategist David Axelrod said Tuesday night. "We're still the underdogs; we're still fighting the greatest machine in our party and the best-known name, we leave here with new confidence and new resolve."

After Barack’s speech, people began circulating around the room in little groups of twos and threes. Sipping champagne with Chloe and Michael, I kept an eye on Reggie who moved through the room as comfortably as if he were a candidate himself, sometimes with Kanesha or RST at his side. Not far from us, Caroline and Evan and his parents accepted the congratulations of passers-by.

“This is surreal,” Chloe whispered.

“I know,” Michael said. “Look how divided we are by race. Reggie, Kanesha, Rodney - they haven’t come near us. What’s that about?”

“I meant…” Chloe said, then shrugged her shoulders. “Well, you do have a point.”

Caroline blew us a kiss as she and her little family group walked toward the stage. Microphone in hand, Michelle Obama’s assistant Kerri smiled at them. Caroline whispered something to Evan, then hurried over to us.

“We’re going to make an announcement,” she said, those blue eyes glistening as if she were indeed the happy bride.

Evan held out his hand to her; and she scampered back to him.

“May I have your attention, please,” Kerri, a petite redhead, said to the crowd. “We have a happy announcement to make!”

Caroline and Evan stood beside her on the stage with his parents behind them. Barack bounded up the steps. Reggie and Kanesha turned to us and she mouthed, What the fuck is going on?

“I’m not going to cry,” Chloe said, but her eyes were already damp.

To Be Continued Next Week!

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.