Political Timber (13 page)

I put my hand on his shoulder. “I’m so glad you stayed, Mos.”

“Ya? Well, good. Do you feed your volunteers? I’m starvin’, like.”

I laughed and laughed, more than he thought made sense.

“Pretty easy to amuse these days, Gordie. Ain’t getting many laughs lately, huh?”

I stopped laughing, shook my head no.

“I’m sorry for that,” Mosi said. Then he shrugged, because what else could he do? “Got any fliers?” he repeated. “Got any food?”

I looked at his round face, and it brightened my spirits. But it didn’t give me any more energy for going back to the job I didn’t want to do.

“No, and no,” I said. “Let’s go eat.”

Mosi beamed. “You’re the man.”

“Remember, Mr. Mayor, don’t inhale now.”

I laughed, choked, laughed. Choked.

“He’s in the inhaling, the devil is. Can’t let him get in you, that devil. Long as you don’t inhale, the devil stays out of your deepest, most secret, most important parts. You can still be a virgin the other way.”

I picked up the guitar and played. Jesus, I was good. My god, I was good. I was loud and I was fast and I was really, really good.
Brilliant
would not be too strong a word.

Mosi has a microwave in his private padded garage with the many guitars and the TV and the stereo. Mosi’s parents buy him whatever toys he wants and give him his privacy in his padded-garage world, just as long as he promises not to get a driver’s license because they don’t want him behind the wheel of a car. That’s the deal.

Mosi’s parents love him.

So do I.

So Mosi had the microwave and the Foley campaign sprung for every single frozen burrito they had at the Li’l Peach.

Mosi was plucking a wine-sweet tune out of his orange sunburst Fender Telecaster when me and my lead belly fell asleep on the hard carpeted floor of the soft padded garage.

I was still a little fuzzy as I sat with my parents watching the day’s events play out on the TV. (I think it was the burritos hanging with me longer than anything else.)

I couldn’t believe it was me up there.

“I’ll tell you what, Gordie,” my father joked. “If you don’t finish at least fourth in this field, I’m changing my name.”

He was right. With this being a special runoff election for my grandfather’s suddenly vacated job, there wasn’t the usual time to thin out the field of crackpots, so the race was open to anybody who could get the three hundred signatures and find the office to file. Fringers. Libertarians who wanted to gain control of the government so they could then disband it. One-note wackos like the antidog guy, the antirecycling guy, the pro-assault-rifle lady. It seemed like every concerned citizen, every community activist who ever saved a tree and got his picture in the paper, and every part-time real-estate broker with too much free time was in the contest, threatening to wake this town up and put it right after decades of “old-school political hackdom and machine dictatorship.”

Nobody mentioned any names, but we in the Foley household all shifted in our seats every time we heard the reference.

I could not believe it was me. Like a cloud of smoke and thirty feet of space separated me from my image on the screen. It didn’t look like me, didn’t move like me. The people who greeted that me did not treat him the way real people ever treated me.

Unfortunately, the haze lifted fairly early for me. The haze of the afternoon, and the haze of feeling like the election was there, in my TV, and I was here, in my family home.

Maureen Tisdale-Morrissey laid a beating on everybody. A brutal beating. The other candidates combined did not add up to her percentage.

The number two candidate was the chief of police, a man nearing retirement who already had a good job and a good pension to look forward to.

Number three was a personal-injury lawyer who was famous as the first guy in the country to advertise for clients in a big way on TV. He was so rich from marketing his ad-strategy video to other lawyers that he pledged to take no salary if elected.

Number four, a fraction behind number three, but way, way, way ahead of the rest of the pack, was a local high-school student and radio personality who drove a nice car and dated the most excellent girl since the beginning of girls.

“I knew you could do it,” my mother said as the newscaster declared the top four slots locked up two hours before the polls closed. She leaned over and kissed me on the head. “I think it was my vote that put you over.”

“Sorry, babe,” Dad said as he stood to shake my hand. “I canceled you out.”

“I hate it when you do that,” she said as the phone rang.

“It’s got to be for you,” Dad said, laughing a sadistic little laugh. “You might as well just camp out with the phone now. Your life is over.”

“Ma,” I whined, “do I have to get that?”

Ma picked it up, said some warm greetings, some thank-yous, some nice-to-hear-from-yous, and one big congratulations. Then she came back into the room.

“Gordon? You have a breakfast date tomorrow?”

“Ohhh.” I remembered.

Dad looked puzzled.

“Maureen,” Ma said to him. “Tisdale-Morrissey.”

Dad looked back at me. “The lady who just kicked your fanny all over the city? You want me to go with you, son?”

“Ha-ha, Dad. I can take her if she tries any rough stuff.”

“Gord, I’m your father, and I’m not so sure.”

The phone rang again. I whined to my mother. Then the FinsFone rang in my pocket.

“Shit. Dad?” I flipped him the phone and headed for the door. “Think you could handle that for me? Please?”

“Ah... what the hell,” Dad said. “The old guy’s had a tough year. I guess I could absorb a little gloat from him.” He picked up. “Who? Who? I’m sorry, sir, but does Gordon know you? Are you a close personal friend?”

Dad was having himself a good time as I left.

She was sitting on her steps when I pulled up.

“Egads, a politician,” Sweaty said. “I don’t usually get into cars with known criminals.”

I threw open her door. “Who you kidding, you do it all the time.”

She hopped in, kissed and congratulated me. “I’m so proud,” she said. “Champagne, Gordie. You know, it’s the only thing for this.”

I drove to the world’s easiest liquor store. The place that sold me my first six-pack of Haffenreffer when I was fifteen using Mosi’s fake ID that had his picture on it and that said I was twenty-seven years old. The place that had sold to me with six different IDs since that time.

“I can’t sell to you, man,” the clerk said.

“What are you talking about?” I rummaged through my wallet for Fins’s gold card, which I was sure would cinch it.

“Don’t bother, man,” he said. “Not only are you underage. Not only are you a celebrity right about now. But you are a celebrity mostly
because
you’re underage. That would be pretty stupid, me selling to you with you all over the TV and everybody calling you ‘The Kid.’”

He gestured over his shoulder at the little black-and-white TV, where the election was still the topic of the day. “No more screwing around for you, boy. You’re a public figure.”

With that, I turned and scuffed across the filthy floor to the exit.

“But I
will
give you a two-liter Sprite, free, if you give me your autograph.”

I got back to the car, and I think my face told Betty the story. She was sympathetic, which was something, because when Sweaty Betty has a yen for champagne and doesn’t get it...

“Scoot over,” I said. “I’m exhausted. You want to drive for a while?”

“Do I want...? Are you kidding?”

I shook my head, settled quietly into the passenger seat.

W
HEN I WALKED INTO
the dining room of the Meridien, I felt special. Big-mucky-looking businesspeople all in the same suits were leaning hard into each other, making important points, at every table. A few of them even looked up at me as I was led to Maureen’s spot at the far corner of the room. They grabbed quick looks, tossed me small nods of recognition, even made comments to each other as they gestured in my direction. It wasn’t attention like, “Wow, there goes a big deal.” It was more like, “Say now, there’s something you don’t see every day.”

The polished-silver gleam of the place settings jumped up at me, as if they themselves were lighted rather than reflecting the chandeliers. There was a thickness to the room, carpeting that made you feel suspended off the floor, swirls of green-and-rust drapes hanging over the windows and falling all the way to the baseboards. I tried not to stare as I passed all the people who truly belonged here, but I couldn’t help but be fascinated by the table manners that allowed them all to be intensely focused on each other, running the whole world, probably, while making the eating of a meal as neat and precise as Swiss watch repair.

It felt to me like the room was full of money and brains and style and the people who knew how it all worked.

I was wearing the same jacket and tie I had worn all the day before.

“Gordon, love, I could not be more proud of you.”

She was more impressive in real life than she was on the radio or at the old softball games.

“Thank you, Mrs. Morrissey,” I said, the first of the day’s many sweats breaking out along my collar.

“Pshhh,
you
call me Maureen.”

“But not Mo.” I reminded her of Mad Matt.

“Correct.”

We started eating, picking at the English muffins, cheese and apple Danish, toast, and black-currant jam the waiters kept bringing. The food was great, the service thing a treat, but I was uncomfortable.

“I told you you would come in fourth, didn’t I?” she said brightly.

“You did. Thank you.”

This, for some reason, made her laugh. “You’re welcome. I had faith in you all along. You have a great many fine qualities, Gordie. You’re a credit to your family.”

I found myself floundering in a sea of strange, lightweight compliments and tangling myself in a net of awkward thank-yous.

“You ran a good race. Didn’t embarrass yourself one bit.”

“Thank you.”

“Have every right to be proud. Your grandfather should be quite satisfied with all this.”

“Thank you.”

“Have some more juice, Gordie. Do let them bring you another eggs Benedict.”

“Is that what that was?”

“You are refreshing,” she said. “So, everything all right?”

“Can’t think of anything I need.”

“Tremendous.” Maureen sat back in her chair, took a long sip of cranberry-orange juice, then lightly dabbed at the corners of her mouth with her stiff white napkin.

“The reason I invited you, Gordie, is that I like you. I think highly of you, and contrary to rumor, I like Fins very much too.”

“Glad to hear that. So why’d you whip me so bad?”

She laughed. “Because that’s the way it’s going to be,” she said, more seriously. “Gordie, enjoy your moment here. You finished fourth yesterday, and in the final, you’re going to finish fourth again.”

I didn’t pick up right away. I thought she was playing the political angles to get an edge. “Oh, of course
you
say that. And at lunch you’re probably going to tell the personal-injury billionaire that he’s going to come in fourth. Then at dinner—”

“No, I’m not, Gordie. Because they’re not coming in fourth, you are. And the only reason you’re going to come in fourth is because there is no fifth place. Or sixth or seventh or seventy-seventh.”

I put down my silverware, swallowed hard and dry on my last bite, and took it in.

“Wait a second here, wait a second,” I said, throwing in a laugh mostly to calm myself and get back to the facts. “This is all going to be okay. See, I don’t know if I’m supposed to tell you this, but it seems like the right time. Fins is gonna have a meeting with you. Really, I’m not even interested in the job. Fins just wanted... he’s going to call you. You guys are going to have a talk, you’re going to patch things up, and I’m going to step aside—gracefully.”

“No,” she said flatly. “No, we’re not, and no, you’re not. I have spoken with your grandfather, many times. But not for the purpose he thinks. Gordie, Fins is out, you see, and he’s not getting back in. He just won’t accept it. There will be no reconciliation. That exists in his head, and nowhere else.”

There it swept me. I never wanted any part of this to start with, and I wanted it even less now, but I felt something there, something that hurt, and I wanted to beat it down. I saw, as Maureen’s words landed on my head, I saw my da. I saw him as a little sad deluded person. I saw him as a towering figure brought down to the ground. I saw my da as a fool.

“You’re wrong,” I said, whether I believed it or not. I stood up, making—for this place—a small scene. “You just want the fucking job, and you’re afraid that me and my da are the only ones who can take it away from you.”

Maureen stood across at the opposite side of the round table. Taller than me, slim, elegant but steely at the same time in her sleek gray suit, she quietly urged me to sit. When I wouldn’t, she sat without me.

Then there was a hand on my shoulder. I looked up.

“Why don’t you have a seat and let us explain,” Saltonstall said.

I slipped back down into my seat under the weight of who he was. Saltonstall, the man with the real authority. The man who held the fund-raiser for me, and who had done it probably a hundred times for my grandfather over their many years as a team.

“What are you doing?” I asked him.

“I’m doing what I do,” he said sincerely. “I know you’re angry, son, but you’ve got to listen to this. Fins, he’s been one of my best friends in the business. I will always love the man. But his time has passed.”

“No it hasn’t,” I snapped.

Saltonstall nodded. “His time had passed
last
term, but he couldn’t let it go. So we gave him one more. Out of respect. Then he changed his mind again, and we couldn’t wait for him anymore.”

“This is stupid,” I said. “I won that spot in the final.”

“A gift,” he said calmly. “The fund-raiser? That was a testimonial to Fins. He truly is a beloved man in our circle. But the people there, they were there to salute and bon-voyage. None of them was voting for you in the final. It was a tribute to Fins. And the primary, that was a tribute to Fins, so he could go out a winner.”