So Close (11 page)

              He grimaced.  “You know what, let’s order first.”  He waived the waitress back over, then, without consulting me, asked for another vodka stinger, a bottle of champagne, the seafood tower—with a wink to me—and the surf and turf for two.

              “Is that how you impress the ladies?” I asked as the waitress retreated.  “What if the Senator had insisted I become a vegetarian?”

              “I’d expect you to politely pick on the side dishes.”

“Is that what Alison did?” I boldly shot back. 

“Wow, good memory.  Alison is a girl who likes to be taken care of,” he said in the present tense and I suddenly wasn’t sure if this was a date or just a makeup for the makeup.    

              “So, how’s Pym?” I changed the subject as the waitress showed Pax the champagne label.

              “Effortlessly running the charity social scene in three cities.  It’s funny, because with all her education and commendations, she doesn’t really work.  She buys dresses that make her look thoroughly unfuckable, she’s photographed wearing those dresses, and she raises money from other people who want to be photographed wearing dresses.  But Taggart thinks she is the fucking second coming.”  He tasted the champagne, then nodded his approval, and I wondered if he’d felt this hostility to Pym two years ago—and I’d missed it—or it had grown.  “She gets an alcohol sponsor to donate a case—or some friend to donate a signed football to the silent auction and Taggart acts like she’s just split his stocks.”

              “Well, there’s something to be said for trying to be the best at what interests you—I mean, at least she’s not half-assing it.”  I smiled.  “How’s James?” I asked about his younger brother.

              “Cricket’s already looking at boarding schools.”  He emptied half his glass without even pausing to toast.

              “Oh.  Did you go to boarding school?”

              “She popped me in for a year when she first met Taggart, but then she pulled me out again when she needed someone to talk to at dinner.”

              “And James doesn’t make small talk?”

              “James is Taggart’s mini-me,” he said by way of an answer as the seafood tower arrived.  “Forgive me,” I said as my phone rang.

              “Tom?” he asked.

              “My other boss.”  I twisted away in my seat.  “Billy?”

              “Is chicken supposed to be pink on the inside?”

              “No.”

              “It’s not like a burger?”

              “No, it’s not like a burger.”

              “I told Lyle it was like a burger.”

              “Billy, did you eat raw chicken?”

              “Just a little.  I’m fine.”

              “You don’t sound fine.”

              There was a short pause before he spoke.  “I just need to sweat it out.”

              “What time is Delilah getting home?”

              “Let me check the stars and give you an estimate,” he quoted Grammy.

              “Ugh.  She have Ray Lynne with her?”

              “Neighbor’s gonna drop her off in a few.  I’m
fine
, Mandy.”  He was suddenly feisty like
I
had called and interrupted
his
evening. 

              “I know you are.  You keep me posted, okay?”

              “Okay.”

              I turned back to Pax.  “One more second.”  I dialed Delilah.

              “To what do I owe the honor?” she answered.

              I tucked my head and put my hand over my mouth.  “Your son is about ten minutes from having undercooked chicken coming out both ends.”

“He’s just being dramatic because I said he couldn’t go out on the nights I needed him to watch Ray Lynne.” 

“Mom, he sounds bad.”

“Mandy, I need the tips—Saturday’s my big night.”

“Never mind.  I’ll call Grammy.”

“Don’t you dare.”  She all but reached down the line to slap me.  “I have this under control.”

“That’s what Billy said.”  I turned back to Pax a second time.  “I am so sorry.  One last call.  Grammy?” I said as soon as she answered.  “I need a favor.”  I wasn’t totally sure how it was my favor when I was the one three hundred miles away, but I begged her to go anyway.  She didn’t like being at the park after sunset.  “Just have Billy text me when you get there, okay?”

I turned back to find Pax with a bemused smile like when people around the hotel pool watched the guys trimming the hedges like they were an exhibit.   “What?”

“Nothing.  You, just, uh, have a lot going on.”

“All in a day.  So, what
are
you doing?”  I saw that he’d finished another glass while I’d been triaging.

“Second-in-command at Westerbrook Equities, Palm Beach branch.”  He was talking to his empty plate.  “I’ve finished my Series Seven—rocked it—and I’m thinking b-school in a few years.”  He suddenly sounded like somebody else, like he’d gained twenty pounds and twenty years between sentences.

“So you’re getting along with Russell?”

At that name his head sprung up.  “That asshole wanted to push me out, so I just shoved myself in his face.”  He punched the air with the heel of his hand.  “I’m sitting on his bed when he wakes up in the morning, I lie across his desk all day and if he goes to take a shit I hand him the paper.”

“Vivid.”

              He shrugged and I noticed his cheeks were flushing.  “It worked.  Reluctant respect.  He said in a few more months he’ll feel comfortable recommending to Taggart that I’m transferred to the New York office so I can apply to Columbia and Stern.”  He made the schools sound like prisons.

              “That’s great.”

              He scowled, his face suddenly ugly, like when Billy was trying to get me to yell at him because what he really needed to do was yell back.   But this wasn’t Billy. 

“Yeah.”  He refilled his glass, polishing off the bottle.  “I thought about what you said.”

“You did?”

“About the opportunities I have.”

“Oh.  Right.”

“And I’ve been ramming my dick down their throats ever since.”

              I nodded, realizing I not only had my lips pressed together and arms crossed, I had wrapped my legs closed down to my twisted ankles.  The only thing left to do was either lift the metal tray and use it as a deflector against his crass vitriol, or pull my napkin over my head and hope he forgot I was there until he drank himself under the table.

              “Pax?”

              “Yes?”               

“I’m going to the ladies’—don’t get up.”  Although he wasn’t. 

              I went straight to the valet station and handed off the ticket.  It was a highly unclassy thing I was doing, but it had been a highly unclassy hour, despite the lighting and the music, the bubbles and brine. 

              “Uch,” I said out loud as I waited for my car.  He’d been adrift, and now he was going hell-for-leather for something that blatantly made him miserable.  And for a second I felt bad for him again, because maybe he didn’t have anyone in his life to tell him that, and maybe I should go back in and Jimminy Cricket his ass. 

              But then I thought of all the sad sacks I’d had to have breakfast with, the talks Mom gave them over Froot Loops about getting their shit together, and I realized that Pax Westerbrook was not where I should be putting my energy.  Lindsay was right, he had been lucky to get an hour of my time.

              I would drive straight to the Davises and spend the night finishing their packing. 

Chapter Five

It was New Years Day of a Presidential election year and everyone working in politics was about to start obsessively handicapping every contest coast-to-coast, district-to-district.  Gambling addicts loitering around the track have nothing on minions inside the beltway. 

If the Republican incumbent, President Gaitlin won re-election then Tom’s and the other Dems’ ability to affect change would continue to be stymied.  But my attention was shamefully elsewhere.  While my colleagues set up betting pools on potential front-runners and forwarded the latest parody videos around the bullpen, I was preoccupied with cookies.  

Cookies. 

And I just wanted to stop.

You see in fourth grade Delilah was in a grueling “between things” stretch and I’d decided, in order to help myself hang in being her daughter, I needed to create an incentive system.  The idea occurred to me while reading
How to Eat Fried Worms,
in which a nerdy kid gets himself to do exactly that by setting his mind to triumph over his bullies.  By doing odd jobs around the park, I managed to buy myself two boxes of Nabisco Pinwheels and hide them beneath the couch.  After school, if the antenna—and her boyfriend—were working, I’d watch an hour of soaps, struggle through homework and then, at five pm, take one chocolaty wheel from the package.  Twisting the marshmallow from the cookie, I’d savor both like I was being filmed for a commercial. 

For a whole month I had something to look forward to that was under my control.  In the sweltering, overcrowded, rowdy classroom and then on that bus crammed three kids to a seat, all that mattered was the clock ticking closer to my prize.  A cookie was waiting.  Until the day my fingers reached the end of the package, at which point my resolve deflated like a sliced Mylar balloon. 

              The date with Pax had left me with that finished-package feeling, which surprised me, as I hadn’t realized I’d been saving the idea of him as some sort of prize for myself. 

But, I discovered, as I dreamt about him night after night, he was somehow enmeshed in the Scarlett-O’Hara-gripping-the-earth moment I’d had at the post office a few years back.  The end of the hope of having him disoriented me. 
And we didn’t even hook up.
  I hadn’t gotten to eat the cookie and somehow I had eaten the cookie.

Which led me, on the heels of that crappy dinner in St. Augustine, to the bartender with the surfer abs who was as eager to have a girlfriend as I was to be one.  We always went to his place and I was always happy to wake up in my own.  Plus, keeping our daylight interaction to a minimum helped me from being having to deal with the fact that conversation was not what he was bringing to the table. 

Lindsay dubbed him “The Bodtender” as the two of us sliced Davis family photos out of bubble wrap in her new Georgetown home.  She asked if I ever wanted more.  I told her the truth; that I didn’t want to be distracted. “Good for you,” she said approvingly and my chest inflated with pride like a damp sock on a blowdryer.  Her ‘good-for-yous’ felt like chisel cuts incrementally uncovering my legitimacy.

It had taken a string of Sundays marching through fusty old homes before Lindsay finally found their new place.  It looked like any other D.C. townhouse from the street, but the previous owner had removed the back wall and replaced it with glass facing a lawn for the boys to run on.  In addition to the furniture, Lindsay ordered a new set of everything—bedding, linens, lamps.  It seemed like what she needed most was to fill this house with items that had yet to conjure any memories.  They did, however, come with cardboard.  A forest of cardboard.  We unpacked delivery cartons for so much of the fall it felt like perhaps we worked a stockroom. 

              Even after the last box was flattened and bundled at the end of the drive that Christmas, I still made the trip at least once a week, shuttling between the Davis’s worlds in a trench coat that felt alternately flimsy and stifling at opposite ends of the journey. 

Yet, tiring as it was, I loved hanging up the phone or stepping back onto the jet knowing the results of my efforts had an obviously stabilizing affect on their family, giving Lindsay the foundation to provide support to Tom, who provided order to others.  What’s more, Lindsay welcomed my solutions and acted on my suggestions.  She wasn’t counting on my babysitting money—she was counting on me.

By Super Tuesday Senator Charles Merrick of Maine was far out ahead of the other democratic hopefuls, all of whom had stumbled at some point like stallions hitting potholes.  But while his pedigree was impeccable, Merrick’s patrician demeanor quickly became an unanticipated challenge.  He waffled on in front of the cameras like a professor happy to lecture an empty chair, stumping even the most accomplished image consultants.  The search was on for a Vice-Presidential running mate with the relatability that Merrick was watch-through-your-fingers missing.

It wasn’t long before the twenty-four hour news networks started floating Tom’s name.  They agreed that what he lacked in experience he more than made up for in charisma and pithiness.  He could fold up a talking point like a paper airplane and sail it into a slogan.  And, most importantly, he was southern, born and beloved in a pivotal swing state. 

And suddenly, the election had my full attention.  Of course I was excited for Tom that he could possibly be, as they say, a heartbeat away from the Presidency.  But I was personally terrified, because, if he became VP, he’d be replaced at Senator in a special election by someone who would bring his own staff.  Which would leave me unemployed in politics with no college education.  And I was still sending Delilah money every month for Ray Lynne, money I should have been putting aside for night school.

Tom warned us that we weren’t to get caught up in the “search soap opera,” but it was impossible not to think he was being road-tested.  In May his schedule rapidly filled with campaign events and the Davis staff found ourselves at the beck and call of Merrick’s advisers, which was not dissimilar to when Mom dated the guy with the dealership.  Merrick fancied fly-fishing at the asscrack of dawn?—the Davises were there with their wax cloth oiled.  Merrick wanted to see how climate change policy would play in the mid-west?—he had Tom introduce it in a speech that could tank
his
career. 

              But no confirmation.  For every event with Tom, Merrick also appeared in public with the Governor of Iowa and Congressman Ramirez from California, who could deliver the Latino vote.  The office was so tense that Clive broke out in hives.  Then in early June Tom and Lindsay flew back to host a fundraiser dinner for Merrick in Jacksonville.  It was after midnight by the time I got the campaign materials and the Power Point back from the country club to the office and so I was just brushing my teeth when the phone rang.  “Did I wake you?” Lindsay asked tentatively.