So Close (8 page)

“Exactly what I’d thought,” Taggart tsked, taking the book from Cricket. “We’ll be in Greenwich for the Round Hill dinner.” 

“If you prefer I can do Round Hill on my own,” she said airily in a way that sounded like a deep-seeded hope. 

I watched Pax’s slumbering face.  It was completely relaxed and he held a chintz pillow to his chest as if it were a bear. 

“No, we’ll just cancel the other thing.”  Taggart frowned. 

“Fine,” Cricket said to the window.  “Whatever you think.”  They sat like that for a moment, but I wouldn’t characterize it as a comfortable silence.  

All at once Taggart stood and walked out, shutting the door a little too forcefully, startling Pax awake.  His eyes opened, landing directly on mine—like he expected to find me there. 

I shrunk back as much as the alcove would allow.  Pax lifted to dart his eyes over the couch, then jerked back down.  Cricket slowly returned the date book to its drawer.  Her earrings held in her palm, she opened the French door, sending a waft of salty air into the room.  She stepped onto the flagstone and clicked it closed behind her.  Pax spun upright.  “It is you, right?”

I let out a defeated sigh.  “Yes.”

The door from the patio opened again, sending Pax leaping in beside me.  “Why are we hiding?” he breathed into my ear.

I shook my head.  The door opened and closed again.  “All clear.”  He pointed out to where Cricket took a seat on the veranda and opened the magazine on her lap.  He pivoted in the alcove to face me, blocking my view.  “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I’m not here for yours.”

“And here I was hoping it was my turn to hide.”

He was too good at this.  “The Davises sent me.  I’m working on the campaign and I was just collecting Mrs. Davis’ things from the event.”

“Did she leave a Lladro?”  He nodded to the figurines behind me.  “We have a few to spare.”

“Cricket doesn’t seem like the type.”

“They were the first Mrs. Westerbrook’s.  Pym insists we keep them right here, but really she thinks they’re God-awful—she just does it to torture Cricket.  So what are you looking for?”

I lifted the program as if it proved something.  “I didn’t want to disturb your parents.”

“A hurricane couldn’t disturb my parents.”  He looked at me a beat too long.

“Do you often sleep in your mother’s sitting room?”

“Is it endearing if I say yes?” 

“No.”

He grinned.  “I’m not a fan of the speeches.  It would have been impolite to go to my room.”

“Your people’s rules don’t make any sense.”

“But stuffing one kind of bird into another, then deep frying it, does?”

“Only someone who’s never tried a turducken would ask that.”  I tapped his chest with the edge of the program.  Against my better judgment.

He grabbed it.  “Wait, so you’re working for Davis?” 

“Yes.”  We both held on to the paper.  “Volunteering, actually.  At the moment.  So . . .”

“At the moment,” he repeated.  His skin was still flush from sleep, his eyes a little heavy.  His hair called out for smoothing.  We hadn’t been this close, for this long.  I wanted to lean in and take his lower lip between my teeth.  Which was irrelevant.  “Look,” he said.  “I’m sorry about last time.  It was crass.”

“It was.”  Dammit.  I didn’t expect an apology.  “You weren’t surprised to wake up and see me standing in this glorified doll closet?”

He shook his head.

“Why?” I pressed.

His cheeks suddenly matched the decor.  “Didn’t know I’d woken up, I guess.” He let out a laugh and then released the program to rub at the back of his neck, effectively averting my eyes.

“Oh,” I said.  O
h
.  Despite knowing better, the Delilah part of me that had always sought out impossibly happy endings, only in the Dewey Decimal System, wondered if maybe there wasn’t some kind of potential here. 

And I hadn’t touched anyone, hadn’t been touched, in months.  I’d been so good, avoiding the come-ons from the law students, keeping my head down.  I just wanted to slip my tongue between his lips.  I wanted to touch his stomach.  I wanted to take what he had to offer.  Even if that’s all it was—especially if that’s all it was.  I tilted my chin and gave him the glance, an invitation. 

A look flickered across his face that sent mortification flooding me like a syringe had been emptied into my neck.  “Mandy.”

“I should get going.”  I went to step around, but he caught my arm.

“No—I didn’t mean—”

“Pax?”   It was a girl’s voice.  I stepped back into the alcove.

“Coming,” he called, walking quickly out to head her off.

“What are you doing in here?” she asked like she’d found him trying on his mother’s clothes.

“You know I’m not up for all that.”

“You’re just like my father,” she scolded with familiarity—flirtatiousness.  I couldn’t not peek.  A shiny brown ponytail, a dress in the vein of Cricket’s.  She straightened his couch-ruffled bangs and then reached up on her pumps to give him a kiss. 

He swerved awkwardly and then coughed to cover.  “Are you heading out?”

“Pym and I are going to hit a few balls.  See you at the club at seven?”

“Great.”

“Don’t forget to bring your tie this time.”  She gave him a pointed peck and walked out.  He turned to me, but I was sure to speak first. 

“She seems like the type who’d insist on a blanket.”

His eyes dropped to the floor, his frown reminiscent of Taggart’s.  “Allison insists on a lot of things.”

“Well, good for you,” I said as graciously as I could muster.

“I didn’t think I was ever going to see you again.”

“And now you have.  I’ll find my way out.”

My cheeks were still beating as John pulled into the Davis’ hotel on the inter-coastal.  I hated showing my hand. 
Hated
it.  At least he knew I’d gotten myself out of Tallyville.  So I could, you know, cower in his house like an idiot. 

Allison
.  I mentally sneered her name, picturing her hitting her balls, her short polish-free nails perfectly aligned on the racquet.  If that’s what he wanted then whatever.  They could sit and discuss where they’d “summer” until they drooled.  It’s just—he seemed to detest that scene—and then there
she
was, the scene’s sorority president.  Whatever she meant to him it was enough to keep him from kissing me—the girl who washed her hair in the same sink as her underwear. 
The volunteer.
  “At the moment.”  Why had I told him that?!

I was so caught up that I didn’t take in where I was until the elevator deposited me on the highest floor and I stepped out onto the landing.  The door opened just as I lifted my fingers to knock.  Lindsay, wearing an Oxford of Tom’s over a bathing suit, was backlit by the sun flooding in from the floor to ceiling windows lining the vast room behind her.  “You got it?” she asked eagerly.

“Yes.” 

I handed the program to her and she waved it over her head like a winning ticket.  “Lesson learned.”  She ceremoniously ripped it in half and dropped it on the front hall table.  “Those women bring out the worst in me.”

“Me, too,” I admitted.

“Phew!”  She did a little shudder.  “Can I get you some iced tea for the ride back?”

“Maybe a bottle of water?”

“You got it.  Come on in.”  I followed her over to the open kitchen.  The patio doors were slid to the side and the breeze swept around us lushly.  Gauzy curtains lifted up like flicking sails. 

“God, this view is amazing.  The campaign really set you guys up.”

“We got this,” she corrected me, handing me a chilled bottle.  “Since this is really where the fundraising is happening—we needed a base.  Our home is in Jacksonville.  But we’re thinking about selling it—starting fresh.”  She gave me a sad smile that conjured the opposite. 

“Has Tom always wanted to do this?” I changed the subject to what I assumed was well-trodden ground.

“He’s always been passionate about these issues, but I don’t know that we imagined it would lead
here
.  Not that you can know where anything’s leading.”  She took a breath that looked like it hurt.  “Let’s just say the phrase ‘now or never’ suddenly took on a visceral meaning last year.  And change has actually been the thing getting me through.”

“They certainly have you booked up,” I tried again.

“Oh, I wouldn’t have it any other way.  I know booked.  I worked eighty-hour weeks while walking a tight-wire to make dance recitals.  After—I tried to keep working, but sitting at that desk the one thought at the back of my mind all those years was,
I have to get home to Ashleigh
.  Sometimes I still space out and accidentally turn into her school parking lot.”  She made a heartbreaking attempt to smile for my comfort.  “So being down here, doing something so wholly
new
feels great.  And being a Senator’s wife—wow, that would be something else entirely.  Good, important work to do, snow, seasons.  A literal change of scenery.”

“Of course.”  I got it. 

Her gaze shifted past me to the water outside.  “But yes, this view is amazing,” she reminded herself.  “Okay!”  She pulled her hair up into a ponytail.  “Now that the crises box is checked I’m going to squeeze in a swim before I meet Tom.  I’ll ride to the lobby with you, just let me grab my cap.”   She went into the bedroom and I returned to the front door.  As I waited I glanced down at the torn luncheon program, realizing the notes were in two different people’s handwriting. 

“Taggart might be the most boring person we have ever met,”
Tom kicked off in his scrawl.

“Yep,”
Lindsay responded in her graceful script.

“She’s such a spitfire.” 

“You think she messes around?” Lindsay asked him.

“Who’d want her—no meat—it’d be like fucking a broom handle.”

“Amanda.”

“Yes!” I straightened as she approached, tucking a dangling dark blond wisp under the white rubber.  I wouldn’t have wanted Cricket to find those speaking points either.

She stood in front of me, hands on her hips.  For a second I wondered if I was in trouble.  “Consider yourself officially employed.”

“Really?” I asked, stunned.

“You’ve more than proven yourself at this point.” 

“Wow.”  It took me a second to follow her into the wood paneled elevator.  “I mean, thank you so much.  You don’t have to clear it with Arthur or Tom or someone?”

She gave me a funny look as she leaned over to hit the button for the lobby.  “I’ve cleared it with me.” 

I nodded, not breaking into tears of gratitude as we dropped down.  Not throwing my arms around her as we parted.  And not calling Pax the second I was alone to say that any urge I’d had to find out what we could be had officially passed.

Part II

Chapter Four

Just eighteen months later my life looked very different.  I drove a brand new Ford Focus to Senator Tom Davis’ downtown Jacksonville office every day.  I had a federal job, the kind I was supposed to wear pantyhose for, with my own cubicle, a row of bobble-head dolls and—health insurance.

I woke every day in my one-bedroom rental wondering when the trappings of my new life would become as mundanely invisible as the trailer’s threadbare sofa bed had once been.  When rolling over on a real bed of my own would stop feeling luxurious?  Or showering in a bathroom so big it had a vinyl-covered double sink?  Every detail was dream-vivid, from the four-burner stove to the shower-curtain liner I could afford to replace whenever it got moldy.  But it wasn’t just dizzy appreciation that made each loop on my Target towels stand out, there was also an anxious compulsion to memorize every detail for when it disappeared and I tumbled back to Delilah, a fear I couldn’t seem to shake.

It had come so close to that in the days after Tom won the election.  Most of the staff had peeled off to look for law jobs while the two with the strongest credentials were plucked to move to Washington and run his operation on the hill.  I’d spent the final hours dismantling campaign headquarters—piling the unused lawn signs into bags for recycling, untangling and disassembling the phone system we’d rented—wondering how many nights I could survive in my car before I had to turn it toward Tallyville—when Lindsay noticed me taking my clothes and toiletries to my sagging trunk.  “Tom!” she’d called out, eyes on mine.  “Have we finished staffing Jacksonville yet?” 

Those are things you don’t forget. 

“Mornin’, ‘Manda,” my colleague, Charlene, said.  I used my full name, thinking the extra syllable gave it authority, only to find that up here people had a slight Southern accent that cut it back down to two. 

              Charlene had been at the office through three senators and she knew which days you did not want the lunch at the commissary downstairs and how to get the ladies’ room serviced when the plumbing failed.  With her soft face and size sixteen drip-dry pink suits, she looked like someone who wanted to get back to her nails, but she was ruthless when it came to getting anything done for a constituent.  Which could not be said for our colleague, Rufus. 

              “Senator Davis’ office, how may I direct your call?” I heard him answer droopily, his hands pushing the pockets of his cardigan past his knees.  He was ostensibly my age, but acted like someone’s miserable grandfather, like he’d come to Florida just to get a jump-start on his cranky golden years. 

              “A-man-da,” Clive said my name like he was breaking into song, the same way he always did, sliding like Justin Timberlake past my desk, the same way he always slid.  “A bunch of us are going for drinks after work—want to come?” 

              “Oh, I’d love to, but I have plans.”  The same excuse I gave every Friday.  Clive, with his chin dimple, and sapphire eyes, could not understand it.  Only a few months out of Yale he had been talked into taking the position by his father, who considered Tom Davis as a good a rung as any to start Clive’s own political climb.  But Clive was unfortunately a little hampered in the impression-making department by the fact that he thought pretty much the entire state of Florida was beneath him, with the exception of me, who he was determined to get beneath him.  For some reason he behaved as if the office were a desert island and he and I were therefore obligated to perpetuate the species.  I’m sure I was the first girl to shrug off his offer.