Parties in Congress (17 page)

Janet was clearly unnerved. “What happened to conservative fiscal policy being a plus? I thought the economy was our priority.”

“It is,” Hammond replied calmly. “But I’ll be honest with you, Mayor. You may just not be far enough to the right for us. If this were Massachusetts, having a centrist candidate would be more acceptable. But you’re in Virginia, losing by double digits to an avowed liberal lesbian. That can’t continue.”

“So, what you’re saying—” Janet said.

“I mean, it would be a real shame for your party to drop you. Because not only would you lose this congressional race, but I can’t imagine you’d win reelection as mayor here in rural Ravensdale. You know?”

“Yes,” Janet said slowly.

“So I’m understood, then?” Hammond asked, putting his jacket back on and adjusting his cuffs.

Janet conceded. “You are.”

Donna was rabidly livid again. “I suppose you don’t think I’ll go to the press with this? You’ll all come off like a pack of incompetent liars.”

Hammond looked nonplussed. “I anticipated that. We’ll keep you on the payroll through Election Day, but we don’t require your services here any longer. Lay low, and we’ll find a place for you at the beginning of the year. Go to the press, and I’ll guarantee that you’re so savagely discredited that you never work another day in politics.”

“Oh,” Donna said flatly.

“Do we have an agreement?”

Donna swallowed loudly. “Yes.”

“I’m glad. You may go now.”

Bijal watched in astonishment as Donna rose and left the office, clearly defeated in posture and pace.

Hammond handed the marker to Eliot. “Now, Eliot will step you through your new strategy paradigm. And once I’m confident that you both grasp the direction, you’ll need to call your press secretary in so we can address yesterday’s amateurish bungle, as well as your staff restructuring. Any questions before I give Eliot the floor?”

“No,” Janet and Bijal said in unison.

“Good.” Hammond flashed his first smile of the morning. “We’re making real progress.”

*

Bijal opened the apartment door with her shoulder, awkwardly closing it behind her with her foot as she balanced the many take-out bags she was holding.

Fran was sprawled on the sofa, watching a reality show of some kind. “Holy shit,” she said, without loosening her grip on the remote. “You still live here?”

“Yup,” Bijal replied, heading for the kitchen.

“When I hadn’t seen you in a couple of weeks, I assumed you’d either moved out or been arrested for trespassing.”

“Sweet of you to think of me. I guess you’re not interested in the Szechwan chicken I have, then, since you’ve already written me off as a part of the local penitentiary chain gang.” She deposited the goods and began hungrily sorting through them.

Fran’s face lit up like a bonfire. “Ooh…Did you go to Happy Panda Pagoda?”

“I did.”

“Did you get spring rolls?”

Bijal held a greasy paper bag aloft. “Little fat-soaked firecrackers of death, yes.”

Fran leapt up and nearly flew into the kitchen to snatch the oily hors d’œuvres from her. “These are
awesome
!”

Bijal continued to unpack the food. “Yeah, they gave me a spring-roll punch card too. After two dozen, you get a free referral to a cardiologist.”

“Don’t worry, once I gorge myself I’ll drink some juice. That undoes all the damage.” Fran inspected a black plastic bag mixed in with the others, but clearly not from the restaurant. “What do we have here?” she asked as she pulled out a bottle of whiskey. “Bij, did you get fired? Is that why you’re home tonight? ’Cause as a little FYI, you can drink yourself to death with cheaper shit than this.”

“No,
I
wasn’t fired, but Donna Shoemaker was.”

“The Nazi dentist?”

“Uh-huh,” Bijal answered with a nod.

“Got shit-canned?”

“I prefer ‘flushed away.’”

Fran bit her lower lip. “Very poetic. So what does that mean for you?”

Bijal fished out the plastic utensils. “It means I have a new boss with a totally different campaign strategy, new job functions, and now I only work eleven hours a day instead of eighteen.”

“Um…congratulations?”

“Thanks, I don’t know what I’ll do with all my new free time. Maybe sleep…or wash myself.”

“Such a luxurious life of leisure,” Fran said before biting the end off a spring roll and scrutinizing the whiskey label. “Hey, this is made by Arc of Orion.”

“Yeah, I tried it a couple weeks ago and it’s really good.”

“The night you couldn’t drive yourself home, perhaps?”

“Um…I don’t recall, Senator.”

Fran stabbed a piece of sweet-and-sour pork with her fork. “Of course you don’t, Drunky McHotpants. So is the booze to celebrate the termination of your evil sea wasp of a campaign manager?”

“What the hell is a sea wasp?”

“It’s a kind of jellyfish—one of the most venomous animals in the world. Sweet! Shrimp toast.”

Bijal dumped some Szechwan chicken onto a paper plate. “You know, that’s a perfect description of her. Because Donna has no brain, and she does nothing but float along full of poison, stinging anyone in her path. But no, it’s not a celebration.”

“Why not? Did another aggressive invertebrate replace her?”

“He’s a damn sight smarter. I’ll give him that.”

“But?”

“But the NRCC placed him there solely to move Janet further to the right.”

Fran glowered. “How far to the right? Like ‘women should be subservient’ and ‘gays should be jailed’ kind of right?”

“Well, they didn’t mention repealing the Nineteenth Amendment, but they did say that if Janet doesn’t begin to appear more conservative, the party will publicly endorse Phillip Taylor instead.”

“What?” Fran coughed. “That man’s
crazy
.”

“I know.”

“Isn’t he the lunatic who wants to bomb China?”

Bijal skewered a bite of food. “That’s him. He also thinks all welfare and entitlement programs should be done away with and is running on the platform of laying off everyone who works for the government except for the military…oh, and the politicians.”

“Naturally.”

“He’s suggested more than once that all private citizens should be armed.”

“I’m guessing he really means only the white ones,” Fran said.

“And he’s openly declared his hostility toward most countries in Asia and the Middle East.”

“Come on. The NRCC wouldn’t endorse that guy. I don’t buy it. It sounds like a bluff.”

Bijal swallowed. “I think so too. And I told Janet as much when we were alone.”

“What did she say?”

“Hammond scared her too much. Before today, she was just worried she’d have to stay mayor of Ravensdale if she lost, but she figured that at least it would get her name out there for next time. Now she’s worried that the Republicans will drop her completely and put someone to run against her in her reelection campaign.”

“That sounds a little paranoid.”

“Normally, I’d agree. But they were nice enough to go ahead and imply that’s what they plan to do.”

“Damn.”

“Yeah, so now I have to go to work every morning for a woman who’s pretending to support some issues that I abhor. So again, no, not really a celebration.”

Fran walked back over to the couch and sat with her Chinese food. “Maybe it’s a sign that you need to get the hell out.”

“I don’t know,” Bijal said, following her. “Part of me wants to stick with it. How will it look on my résumé if I quit the first real political position I get as soon as I take on a bigger role?”

“I’m assuming that while you’re revising it you won’t put ‘once I got promoted, I gave my boss the finger.’”

“Well, no. But even if prospective employers don’t know that I quit,
I’ll
know.” She stared at the television, fixating on the two buxom blondes doing shots of liquor from each other’s belly buttons. “What the hell are you watching?”

“
The Love Jungle
,” Fran replied eagerly. “They put a bunch of women with fake boobs out in the rain forest with nothing but a thatched hut, a stripper pole, and an open bar.”

“What’s the point?”

“They’re all competing for this hunky Tarzan guy. Every week they have physical challenges. You missed the redhead who was wearing an outfit so tight she looked like a busted-open can of biscuits. She was way too drunk to do the vine-swinging shit she was supposed to, and she puked all over the platform and some big chick who punched her dead in the face. It was beautiful.”

Bijal glanced at her watch. “Oh, crap, it’s later than I thought. Hey, O’Bannon’s supposed to be on
The
Tank Guzman Show
in a couple minutes. Can we change over real quick if I promise to immediately come back to the drunken women with low self-esteem?”

Fran shrugged. “I suppose. But if I miss somebody crying or peeing themselves, I’m gonna be mad at you.”

“As well you should be,” Bijal said, taking the remote and changing the channel. “Though you never know—someone might pee themselves on this show too.”

“I’m gonna hold you to that,” Fran replied, waggling a forkful of pork.

Within a couple of minutes, Tank Guzman was introducing the guests in his typical nasal manner.

“Tonight, joining us from the Alabama State House, is State Senator Caleb Prescott, cosponsor of a bill that would make the adoption of children by gay and lesbian parents illegal in his state. On the other side of the debate, we’ve got U.S. Congresswoman Colleen O’Bannon, Democratic representative from Virginia and co-chair of the Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus. Thanks to both of you for joining us this evening.”

“Oh,” Fran said, settling back into the cushions. “You weren’t kidding about somebody possibly peeing.”

“Senator Prescott, let’s start with you. You’ve proposed a bill that many people say legalizes discrimination based on sexual orientation. How do you respond to that?”

Prescott, a man with greasy hair, a small neck, and barely visible lips, cleared his throat and began to speak in a thick Southern accent.

“Tank, I have to say that those kinds of irrational accusations are made by people who simply don’t have all the facts. I don’t support discrimination, but it’s been proven in scientific studies that children of gay and lesbian parents tend to have more psychological problems, are more likely to develop drug dependencies, and are more prone to suicide.”

Fran snorted. “That man is a dick.”

“
Congresswoman O’Bannon, I’m going to let you address the senator’s comments and the allegation that you, as an out lesbian, don’t know all the facts. What do you think about that?”

“Is it me, or is Guzman being purposely antagonistic?” Bijal asked.

“I don’t know, but your girl looks good.”

“She’s not my girl.”

“Well, Tank, I have to say that Senator Prescott is both remarkably prejudiced and misinformed, and I’m not sure which I find more offensive. It’s well-known that a religious fundamentalist group paid for those so-called ‘studies’ he referenced for the sole purpose of producing the results they wanted. No impartial member of the scientific community believes those findings to be true. They are deeply flawed and, quite honestly, motivated by hatred.”

“Ha!” Fran spat as Guzman began speaking again.

“Senator Prescott, the congresswoman brings up a good point. Who funded those studies you were quoting?”

“Uh, Tank, I don’t have that information in front of me, but I can tell you that the congresswoman is wrong. They aren’t flawed. They aren’t bias—”

Colleen jumped in, and not a moment too soon.

“Tank, I have that information right here. The Fundamentalist Alliance for Christ—a group that has for years espoused the practice of ‘curing’ gays and lesbians and making them heterosexual—performed the studies in question. So we can assume they may not be the most impartial folks in the world.”

Tank looked as though he smelled blood in the water.

“Senator Prescott, assuming that particular data may be flawed, what other rationale do you have for this bill? Have there been some specific concerns with adoption by gays in your home state? I mean, what prompted this?”

“Not to my knowledge, Tank. But based on the recent wildfire of gay-advocacy bills over the last couple of years, we hope this will be signed into law as a proactive measure, and that Alabama can be a beacon for the rest of the states on this issue.”

“Oh, my God,” Bijal said. “Look at Colleen’s face. Here it comes.”

“Senator, just for my own edification, you honestly feel that what someone does in the privacy of their bedroom with another consenting adult is reasonable criteria to determine if he or she is a competent parent?”

Prescott squared his shoulders and grinned smugly.