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

To download a text file of this chapter for printing or ebook readers - click here

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.

Chatper Twelve: Dead Democrat Walking

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

To download a text file of this chapter for printing or ebook readers - click here

Chapter Twelve

Dead Democrat Walking

Oregon Democratic Primary, Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Barack Obama: 58%
Hillary Clinton: 42%

Kentucky Democratic Primary, Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Hillary Clinton: 66%
Barack Obama: 30%

“The Clinton campaign has been focused on Barack Obama’s performance with white working-class voters in a few states, but they fail to mention Senator Clinton’s abysmal performance with the black voters all over the country.”

- political consultant and Obama supporter, Jamal Simmons.

For the wife of the “first black president”, Hillary wasn’t doing so well with one of his prime constituencies--and she had only herself to blame for that since she started the race with a lot of African-American support including prominent politicians like New York Congressman Charlie Rangel. Barack had unified upscale white voters (“wine liberals”) and African-Americans. Some of the working class white vote that Hillary was winning would go to him--and some to the Republican candidate, which would be true even if she were the nominee. (When push comes to shove in the voting booth, a significant number of Joe Six Packs will find it hard to opt for a woman or a black man. I know these guys. My brother is one of them.) White women would come over to the light. (Come on? Do you see those aging Boomer chicks who marched for the Equal Rights Amendment and abortion rights pulling the lever for John McCain?)

Nine super delegates pledged their support to Barack in one day alone. Hillary’s donors were defecting, checkbooks in hand. And they were writing out checks to the Obama campaign. The mood of the money people in our office was exuberant. If the rest of us were still trying to maintain an air of cautious optimism--[And with the Clintons on the other side of the fence, who dare gloat too soon?]--they had surrendered to spiritual joy. (Any minute one of them would surely start speaking in tongues.)

On the personal front, Kanesha, Caroline and I were adjusting to the idea that Reggie and Chloe were in love. (Who would have thought it possible for either of them?) They didn’t talk about it, but then again, they didn’t need to talk. Their eye contact and body language spoke for them. I think it’s rather sweet, Caroline said. They’ll burn themselves out in a year, Kanesha said, but oh, what a year it will be.

I would have been feeling pretty good about everything if we weren’t awaiting the imminent arrival of Kanesha’s mother, the formidable Odelle Bradshaw, the African American Mother of Advertising, an influential figure in the Democratic party in New York City--and her--what?--new gal pal, reporter Jilly Norton.

“Jesus,” Reggie said, striding into my cubicle. “They’ll be here in fifteen minutes.”

“Maybe their plane will be late,” I offered hopefully.

“Already landed.” He smiled and rolled his eyes. “We are done for, bro‘.”

“Well, fuck, then…” I glanced toward the door and there was Chloe, resplendent in a black jersey wrap dress, a string of perfect pearls and possibly the hottest pair of shoes on the planet: red snake and leather, twining straps going up her instep and around her ankle, set on an architectural pyramid-shaped gold heel. “Wow!” I said to her. “You keep outdoing yourself.”

“Shoes matter,” she said primly before giving Reggie a smile that somehow put the dress and shoes, the whole package of her stylish beauty, into bas relief. “Are you guys ready to meet The Woman?”

“I’d rather eat worms,” Reggie said, a saying he’d picked up from Chloe who seemed to have spent her childhood rather eating worms. I noticed that there was no “we” talk between them as there had been with Caroline. (Thank God .) “She’s got some bomb to drop on us or she wouldn’t be flying out here.”

“She hates to fly,” Chloe added, helpfully.

“Especially to Chicago, which she really hates,” Reggie said.

We had no time to ponder the meaning of all that. With a great whoosh of air and sound, the front doors were flung open. Her voice preceded her.

“I’m here to see my daughter, Kanesha Bradshaw!”

We looked back and forth from one to the other. Reggie shrugged, manfully squared his shoulders and stepped forward, out into the hallway.

“Ms. Bradshaw? Jilly? Please come this way.”

Chloe and I waited respectfully inside the cubicle as Odelle Bradshaw swept by. I remembered standing in a little park area somewhere in the East 70s overlooking the East River in Manhattan as a huge ship cruised by. The vessel seemed to take up most of the river, with mere ribbons of water on its sides. I held my breath and almost reached out to touch it though intellectually I knew it wasn‘t really that close. That’s how I felt as Odelle made her way down the hallway to Kanesha’s office. Dressed in a floor length black mink coat--which she wore with the authority of a woman who had paid for the damn thing herself--buttery black boots and a black Fedora with an Africa cloth band, she was magnificent, the Mother Ship, claiming obeisance. Jilly trailed her like a little brown tugboat, hoping for the chance to serve.

We waited a respectful dozen paces or so, then Chloe and I followed. We were invited to the meeting--not that we wouldn’t have been fine with a summary statement later from Reggie and Kanesha. We breathed in the expensive scent of Oriental spices that lingered in Odelle’s wake. Slightly in the lead, Chloe cast a mischievous glance back at me. I grinned. Oh, yeah, we were in for it--but we would have a story to tell for the rest of our lives.

Odelle threw her mink on the back of Kanesha’s chair and sat down, signaling by lowering her open hand that we should all sit too. We did. Chloe, Kanesha, Reggie and I squeezed onto the sofa, with Chloe perched on the arm, her thigh grazing Reggie‘s leg. Jilly took the folding chair.

“You young people have a lot to learn about running a political campaign,” she said, her voice heavy with judgment as she made eye contact with us, one by one, settling finally on her daughter. “Are the sex lives of campaign workers that compelling? Do you think our little games matter at a time when this country is in crisis?” she asked; and Kanesha, biting her lip, shook her head indicating that, no, of course they were not. (Odelle, if you’d seen what I’ve seen and heard what I’ve heard, you might at least grant us “compelling.”) “And all this nonsense about online photo albums!” She sneered at us, each in turn, saving her daughter for last again.

“I’m going to tell you just how much trouble you might have caused were it not for my intervention,” she said. “And I want you to pay attention.” She shone a benevolent smile on all of us equally. “Listen and learn.”

I did pay attention; and this is the story Odelle told us:

She saw those damn cell phone photos a few days after the party where they were taken. Jilly sent them to her--anonymously, or so the white girl thought. How ignorant they are in their arrogance! (It took her thirty minutes to locate far more titillating photos of Jilly and Michael Westwood’s wife Pam--pink tongues lapping at waxed pussies.) Odelle laughed out loud at the shots of her and ________, CEO of her own company, blonde/blind ambition personified, with her hand on Odelle’s big black breast. They were both drunk, martinis and no food, a deadly combination. No white woman had ever touched Odelle’s breast. For that matter, neither had a black woman. But having ______ touch her was so shocking that she couldn’t do anything but stand there looking down at the white hand. Her alcohol-dazed expression said it all.

“I admire you,” _____ said. “You started out when it was difficult for women, especially black women, and you have come so far.”

Oh, spare me the sanctimonious I’m-with-you-sister admiration, Odelle thought.

Black women faced (and still do) sexism and racism, but the corporate world preferred dealing with black women over black men, perceiving the women less a threat. Like many high-achieving women of her race, Odelle made more money, had better jobs and acquired more tangible assets than black men. And don’t think all that hasn’t made the black man angry at his women.

Difficult!? She finally said to _____: Before we got so high and mighty career wise, we had jobs and our men did not, albeit as maids, cooks and nannies and while we were doing that back breaking work for low wages, we often had to endure being fucked by Mr. Man while on the job. Can you imagine how a black man felt when a baby he thought was his was delivered and the bastard child looked like his wife's boss? Zora Neale Hurston said many times that black women are the "mules of the world."

The mules of the world!
______ backed off--literally backed off, her hand frozen in the position of clutching a breast. That should have been the closing shot in the sequence. The white girl had no aesthetic sensibility.

“What are you trying to leverage for yourself with this shit?” Odelle asked Jilly, whom she’d summoned to her office, an exquisite corner space in a Park Avenue South building, with floor to ceiling windows and a panoramic view of the Flatiron Building and downtown.

She’d watched the Twin Towers collapse in that office, alone with the white man who’d been her secret lover for a decade, holding hands, tears running like streams down their faces, the streams momentarily trapped the spilling over into rivulets in the crevices surrounding each mouth. Oh, if her daughter knew she dated white men, what would she think? The position paper she gave Kanesha on the interracial dating issue was the classic one. If a black girl dated a white boy when I was attending Indiana University in the late 60s, early 70s, she was ostracized by black boys. They would not date us -- even though they sneaked around with the white girls behind our backs.

She met this white man, a prominent lawyer, at a fundraiser. He asked if she dated white men. She said: Once I was with a white man who I might have slept with, but he spoiled it by asking me, "Would you be offended if I made a pass at you." Of course I said, "Yes!" A black man would never have gone there. He would have risked being slapped by making the hit, than ask permission. Her white man laughed, his head thrown back, and finally said, “Baby, I won’t ask; I will take.”

And, yes, he ate her pussy; and that was astounding, a miracle of sexual affirmation she’s never expected to experience.

Black men don’t eat pussy? He asked. She replied: I would say that black men don't want to eat pussy...or at least they don’t talk about it or else they act like they had only done it this one time with YOU! Girlfriends used to laugh about that. As recently as the 90s I dated a black man who said oral sex was "nasty." But white women kept saying: It’s not true; black men eat pussy. Perhaps the brothers are less inhibited with white girls…

“What are you trying to leverage for yourself?!” Odelle repeated the question to Jilly Norton; and she shoved printouts from her own favorite photo collection across the desk. “Do you think that you are the only idiot with a cell phone camera?”

“Right,” Jilly said, glancing at the photos of herself and Pam, scarcely blushing. “But lots of young women play with girls in this city--and who cares about us? You are a big name in the New York Democratic Party. You are a big name, period.” She smiled ingratiatingly. “I had to get your attention somehow, didn’t I?”

“And I ask you for the third time and you’d better answer: What are you trying to leverage for yourself with this shit?”

“I want the exclusive story on the destruction of the Obama campaign,” she said.

“For some little freelance girl with a handful of credits--yes, I googled you!--you have a lot of ambition, don’t you? Your only piece in The New York Times magazine was a pleasant little profile of the women in the Mayor‘s life--girlfriend, ex-wife, daughters--and how they influence his thinking--not investigative journalism,” Odelle said sharply.

“You and I both know that Hillary’s people are going to toast Obama.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” Odelle narrowed her eyes and glared at Jilly. “But what I don’t know is that you will get the story if there is one.”

“Pam Westwood’s black ex-lover Reggie Williams is sexually involved with the white fiancée of a young and prominent attorney--who comes from a Social Register Philadelphia family, descendent of a signer of the Declaration of Independence,” Jilly said smugly. “A story like that could play on the racial fears of Americans, black and white. It could be huge. Michael Westwood is joining the Obama campaign in Chicago and he is a spy for the Clinton camp.” She smiled with exaggerated sweetness. “And he is my lover now.”

“My God,” Odelle said. “You are looking for The Monica Lewinsky Story, 2008!”

“And why not?”

Odelle could think of many reasons “why not”--beginning with: The world has changed since then, we’ve moved on to the point where a sex scandal isn‘t the end; people are losing their jobs, their homes, electricity and the food budget, Baby Girl.

“You think you can get that by flashing my tit shots around?” she asked. “I fail to see the connection.”

“I can make those photos go away,” Jilly said. “All I need from you is a reference. Get me into the Obama campaign headquarters as a trustworthy freelance journalist writing another innocuous human interest story.”

“You know my daughter Kanesha works for the Obama campaign?”

“Of course,” Jilly said, smugly.

In that moment, Odelle looked at Jilly and saw the ways in which she was too much like Kanesha. The young girls with their sense of entitlement believed that they could network and maneuver, even bribe and blackmail and blow a dick when necessary, to get where they wanted to go--never mind if they were qualified to go there. And in that instant, she made a tough love maternal decision.

“All right,” she said. “I will make that call for you, Jilly Norton. Let’s see what you do with the opportunity.”

What did Jilly Norton do with that opportunity?

She put out the silly “Hillary is a monster” story and helped or encouraged her white boyfriend Michael to send the Reverend Wright video clips to YouTube where his incendiary rhetoric finally found a wide audience. The latter move led to Barack’s career-defining speech on race in Philadelphia. Hillary Clinton was the Dead Democrat Walking.

“The destruction of the Obama campaign, my ass!” Odelle said. She rose from Kanesha’s chair, stood behind her desk and pointed a finger at Jilly Norton. “As an investigative journalist, you are mired in the adolescent phase. You are fascinated by prurient sexual details--and you thus assume that everyone else will be.”

“Not an unrealistic assumption in Puritan America,” Reggie offered; and Kanesha breathed audibly, no doubt shocked at his temerity in offering a counter argument to her mother’s evolving thesis: All of us, especially Jilly, were paying attention to the wrong things. “I’m just saying….” he said, apologetically shrugging his shoulders.

“And the rest of you!” Odelle continued, ignoring his intrusion. “You have allowed yourselves to get bogged down in extremely personal politics. Lucky for you that I was closely monitoring Jilly’s activities--and when she turned in a draft of this article”--Odelle threw down on Kanesha’s desk a set of page proofs which I quickly realized were from The New York Times magazine section--”I called in a favor and got the piece killed.”

The title was: “SEX, LIES AND CAMPAIGN WORKERS: IDEALISTIC AND HARDCORE: The Obama Girls and Boys At Work And Play”

Two bright spots of hot red blazing on her cheeks, Jilly sat up straight in her folding chair and stared ahead, making eye contact with no one. The proofs were upside down but I could make out the photos, some mildly suggestive, of Caroline and Reggie, Caroline and Evan, Chloe and Reggie, Michael and Kanesha. So Jilly Norton never had any higher aspirations than exposing the sex games of campaign workers after all!

“That’s really your whole story?” I asked, my voice filled with angry indignation. “You never got any bigger than sex between consenting adults?”

“Don’t you know that every week we get stories purporting to chronicle Bill Clinton’s sexual adventures, post-White House?” Kanesha demanded. “Barack said in the beginning: We won’t go there. And we don’t.”

“Oh, she had higher aspirations,” Odelle said, “but they were thwarted. She hoped to turn all of you against each other and create a climate of distrust so that you would be sniping at each other and feeding her information behind one another’s back. That was going to be your book deal, wasn’t it, Jilly?

“SEX, JEALOUSY, LIES--AND THE DOWNFALL OF THE POLITICS OF HOPE?

“I saw the book proposal.”

“It’s not too late for that,” Jilly said, standing and flashing her trademark cocky grin around the room as she headed for the door. “Y’all can call me any time you want to talk.”

“Mother, how could you do this to me?” Kanesha asked.

And that was more or less the signal for me, Reggie and Chloe to make for the door too.

Reggie flew out to Oregon less than an hour after the meeting. Kanesha was closeted with her mother up to the minute where she too had to leave for a meeting at a downtown hotel with top campaign strategists. I ran out to teach a class; and Chloe was awash in poll data when I blew her a kiss good-bye. In short, there was no opportunity for the meeting post-mortem amongst friends that day--and, actually, not for many days.

Barack was drawing huge crowds in Oregon; and we were breaking fundraising records back home in Chicago. Every day brought another development. Barack was said to have a “Jewish problem” because he once said that there has to be an end to the occupation of the West Bank. Using Hillary’s New Math, Candidate Clinton daily claimed to be winning in the popular vote and the delegate count (though she was trailing in both.) Speculation in the press was rampant about why she kept running.

WHAT DOES SHE WANT? inquiring headlines demanded.

WHAT IS SHE WILLING TO DO TO GET IT? was the subtext.

Off the record, she’d promised the party leadership that she would stop pounding Barack, but we weren’t counting on her keeping the promise. Her advisors were talking to her about deal-making. It was whispered that Bill was pushing hard for the VP slot for her. (My favorite joke of the day was: If Hillary is VP, Barack will need food tasters. Runner-up: She isn‘t in it to win it; she‘s in it to spin it.) Reportedly, she wanted her name on the first ballot at the Convention--and her campaign debt paid.

“Have ideal solution,” Reggie joked in a text message: “Cabinet position for her that keeps her in DC; Ambassadorship for Big Dog that takes him far, far away.”

Publicly, she kept saying she was “still in it to win” and spinning the numbers. John Edwards’ endorsement of Barack didn’t even seem to faze her. But increasingly, we felt that it was all but over. John McCain was already running against Barack; Hillary had dropped off his radar screen. Polls were showing that Clinton’s key groups of supporters were switching allegiance to Barack. His numbers were up--and hers down--among women, blue-collar whites, Easterners and Hispanics. (Only women over fifty were staying on the sinking ship.) The Democratic Party elite had no stomach for a convention floor fight. They wanted everything wrapped up by June 1 and were pushing super delegates to commit. Going into these two primaries, Barack had his largest lead yet over Hillary in the national Gallup poll: 55% to 39%.

“It’s all over but the over,” Chloe said on the day of the Kentucky and Oregon primaries. She was sitting in her chair, feet propped up on my desk. The heels? Turquoise leather, peep-toed. Her pretty pink toenails peeped out. “But Reggie did have an interesting little bit of news when he called from Iowa,” she said.

“How ‘interesting?’” I asked.

“Caroline will be here in a few minutes. I’ll tell when she gets here. I hate repeating myself.”

“If you hate repeating yourself, it’s not that interesting,” I teased.

That did not motivate her to spill until Caroline showed up with cheese, grapes, bread and two bottles of wine, a white French burgundy and a red, a Malbec from Australia.

“Okay,” I said as I expertly inserted my handy waiter’s corkscrew into the Malbec’s cork. “What is Reggie’s interesting tidbit of the day?”

“Jilly Norton got a book contract,” Chloe said. She burst out laughing when she looked at my face, registering pure disgust. “It’s not based on the proposal Kanesha’s mother claims she saw--but close enough. She’s writing a behind-the-scenes book about the Obama campaign from the Iowa caucus through the general election in November. David Axelrod, among other key people, has agreed to talk to her.”

“Should we clue them in?” Caroline asked.

“On what?” Chloe asked. “Allegations of interracial sex among young, unmarried campaign staffers?”

“We’ve got a better story than that to tell,” I said. “Why not tell it?”

“Reggie says that he and Kanesha will address that issue with us when they get back from Iowa.”

“Okay,” Caroline said, shrugging her shapely shoulders. She looked stunning in a cream silk blouse, artfully tattered jeans and pearls. Only white women wear tattered jeans and pearls. “They probably have good reasons for cautioning silence.”

“Jeez,” I said, “I hope Hillary isn’t going to co-author.”

We’d finished the second bottle of good wine and were out in the large space sharing plonk with our fellow campaign workers by the time Barack took the stage in Des Moines to celebrate his Oregon win. He’d deliberately picked Des Moines for the clear message it would send: The campaign took off in Iowa with his caucus victory and was wrapping up there tonight, whether he had all the delegates he needed or not. (Listen, Hil: You are not going to win the nomination.)

“There’s Reggie,” Chloe squealed, pointing to him standing just behind Michelle and the girls.

Barack all but declared victory when he spoke.

“Tonight, in the fullness of spring, with the help of those who stood up from Portland to Louisville, we have returned to Iowa with a majority of delegates elected by the American people, and you have put us within reach of the Democratic nomination for president of the United States. While our primary has been long and hard-fought , the hardest and most important part of our journey still lies ahead.

The same question that first led us to Iowa 15 months ago is the one that has brought us back here tonight: it is the one we will debate from Washington to Florida, from New Hampshire to New Mexico--the question of whether this country, at this moment, will keep doing what we’ve been doing for four more years or whether we will take that different path--it is more of the same versus change. It is the past versus the future.”

Once again, I had tears in my eyes as Barack Obama addressed the nation. And there was a masculine hand holding mine. I looked over at the man of my recent fantasies, RST, elegant and sexy. Suddenly I felt my gay-dar kicking in. (He is.)

“Can you call me Rodney?” he whispered.

Squeezing his hand, I wiped a tear away with the other hand. Rodney. Yes, I could call him Rodney.

“What a beautiful name,” I whispered back.

On the other side of me Chloe lightly squeezed my ass in what I took to be a “You go, boy” gesture of support. Kanesha, Caroline and Evan were all smiling at me. I was the last to know, wasn’t I?

“Was it all you dreamed and more?” Chloe whispered seductively in my ear the next morning; and I blushed, to her amusement.

“Someone should order chocolate chip pancakes in honor of Jilly,” Caroline said.

Once again she was wearing one of Evan’s white shirts belted over skinny jeans and boots; and the effect was incredibly sexy. Caroline, Kanesha, Chloe, Reggie, Rodney and I met for brunch at the diner--which we now called “Jilly’s Place.”Reggie looked tired but happy. Shit, we all looked happy. We were happy.

“Explain to me why we shouldn’t be sending up the warning flares about Jilly Norton’s book contract,” I said to Reggie.

“She’s going to write the book anyway, warning flags or no,” he said. “Axelrod and the top people aren’t going to relax and give her the run of the place, betraying all their secrets, like we did.” He grinned at Kanesha. “On balance, cooperating to some extent with her, with any journalist, gives us at least a chance of getting our messages out.”

“Yeah,” I said reluctantly conceding the point.

“What about all the personal stuff?” Caroline asked.

“Nothing we can do about it,” Kanesha said.

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” I teased. “Your mother might find a way to influence the outcome.”

“My mother!” Kanesha said, nostrils flaring and eyes flashing. “Don’t get me started…”

“She’s a major piece of work,” Reggie said.

“Odelle scares the hell out of me,” I admitted.

“Apparently she scared the hell out of Michael too when she went to see him,” Kanesha said. We all laughed. “Jilly told Mama that Michael was a ‘bumbler’ who had good stories--and she was only fucking him for the stories he told her about us. She thought we were her way into the Obama campaign vault of secrets.”

“Oh, ha,” I said.

“Did your mother tell Michael that Jilly was just using him?” Chloe asked.

“Oh, yeah, Baby,” Kanesha said. More laughter. “She even told him that Jilly said his wife was a better lay than he was.”

After we laughed so hard, we almost cried, Reggie said, “Jilly expected to create distrust among us that led to infighting which would damage the campaign. In that first meeting with Odelle, she said that our alliances were ‘fragile’--and that fragility combined with our ‘sexual proclivities’ would create a fracture in the racial balance…”

“Tossing bombs to create big intersecting fissures,” Kanesha said. “Mama was surprised that it did not work out.”

“How about her secretly dating the white guy for years?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Kanesha said, “and not just any white guy. An important politician--who was married when they started up.”

“Are they coming out of the closet now?”

“He wanted to go public years ago, but she won’t.” Kanesha shook her head sadly. “Mama has too much invested in her role as an angry black woman of a certain age to let herself be happy.”

“Does anybody think a sex scandal--short of the former governor of New York, Elliot Spitzer, caught with call girls after years of going after prostitution and porn-- has the power to wreck a political career now?” Chloe asked.

“We could not have de-railed Barack,” Reggie said confidently. “Bill and his babes couldn’t derail Hillary.”

“The American public woke up from the Clinton impeachment saga with a stomach ache,” Kanesha said. “And then 9/11 happened. A sex scandal is only going to do big damage if it involves massive hypocrisy, like in Spitzer’s case, or an abuse of power.”

We talked on through numerous cups of coffee. It was great stuff. There’s nothing like shooting the political bull with people who love politics--but not for politics alone because they believe deeply in a candidate, a platform, a cause. I still think we’ll have trouble with Jilly Norton down the road; we haven’t seen the last of Hillary; and those crazy Westwoods in New York, not to mention, Kanesha’s mother, will create havoc somewhere, somehow again.

As we were walking back to the office, me and Kanesha and Rodney together with Caroline and Kanesha behind, Chloe and Reggie ahead--Rodney suddenly said to Kanesha, “Hey, my cousin, a lawyer, just moved to the city. He doesn’t know a lot of people aside from other Harvard grads. And he’s a great guy. Kanesha, would you…?”

Instinctively, I knew it: Something very good was going to happen for K soon.

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.

Chapter Eleven: The Beginning of the End

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

To download a text file of this chapter for printing or ebook readers - click here

Chapter Eleven

The Beginning of the End

Indiana Democratic Primary, May 6, 2008
Hillary Clinton, 51%
Barack Obama, 49%

North Carolina Democratic Primary, May 6, 2008
Barack Obama, 56%
Hillary Clinton, 42%

I changed my mind several times about whether the brunette on her knees sucking Reggie’s dick was Jilly Norton—or Michael Westwood’s ex-wife Pam. The resemblance between the two women was uncanny; and this photo obscured so much of the lady’s face that a positive ID was difficult to make. Like many men, Michael had a type. His type was a slender, straight-haired brunette with small facial features, a woman who favored minimal make-up. With her lips wrapped around that magnificent big black dick, the woman caught in the act could have been either one.

RST had never seen a photo of Pam and so assumed until I set him straight that we were definitely looking at Jilly, the world’s peskiest girl reporter since Brenda Starr left the comic pages (if, come to think of it, she ever has.)

“Straight men are so limited, aren’t they?” he said and looked over his shoulder at me, flashing a big grin.

Was he hinting that he is gay too? Or was he making a self-disparaging comment about his own sexual proclivity group? Unsure, I grinned back. We were in his study examining a cache of photos surreptitiously taken by cell phone. Whose cell phone? We did not know. The photos came to RST via a chain of Harvard contacts. (Somehow get your kids into that esteemed institution because Harvard grads run everything and can get anything they want by making a few calls, sending a few emails) They were taken at an “after-party party”—a private soiree following a big Manhattan fundraiser for the Democratic party held before the Christmas holidays. The sprig of holly in Reggie’s lapel was quite festive.

“It’s always sex scandals with the Dems and money scandals with the Republicans,” I said--and RST nodded. I wanted to bite his neck. “So who are some of the other people?” I recognized Michael snorting coke. And there was one of the male higher-ups in our campaign machine quite frankly and lasciviously checking out another man’s ass. Both are married to dynamic Nordic girls with large breasts. “Is that blonde babe of a certain age who I think she is?”

“Yes, brother, that is ______.”

I sucked my breath in.