Soul's Road: A Fiction Collection (25 page)

I feel bad about peeing on this picture, this once-beautiful-perhaps-even-sacred image that until last night had occupied the bathroom wall undisturbed. But my need to relieve myself is greater than the picture’s need for me not to. I finish my business and flush the toilet, but it doesn’t work. Stinking, festering water bubbles up from the malfunctioning appliance and begins to overflow the lip and dribble onto the bathroom floor, adding even more foulness to the pool already eating its way through to the bathroom below. I decide to go back to bed, but I don’t quite make it. My head is still swimming from whatever chemicals I put in there last night. I do the best I can, and collapse across a threadbare chair that would only be comfortable if my spine bent at right angles.

Who am I? Where am I? Where is here? How did I get here? Was Jesus watching me penetrate this woman who looks like a hooker? Was Elvis? Was the other guy? Did they join in? Part of me wants to see if this is my wife or someone else, but a quick glance reveals her ring does not match the one on my finger, and the rest is a foregone conclusion. As my mind reaches into the well that is my memory, flashes of the previous night come to life. A dinner at Sizzler, finding a lady in a purple dress at a bar. Drinks. Some ecstasy, then a swim in the hotel pool, filled with leaves and teenagers trying to make out with a middle-aged man and woman skinny dipping next to them, presumably us. Not much else.

A knock at the door. “Sir? Senator?” Who the fuck is it, I find myself saying in what sounds like a chamber that echoes a mile and back. My head wants to explode.

“Sir, we have to get you ready, you have a town hall to attend in two hours.”

“I’ll be right out!” I say, reflexively. I don’t know why. Just seems like the right thing to say.

I fumble through the sheets, looking for my underwear. I find them across the room, covering a lampshade. I collect the rest of my things as quickly as I can, before the woman wakes up. She’s beginning to mumble; I don’t have much time. I toss her a twenty for cab fare and hope that she doesn’t remember my name, what I look like or how long I lasted before my muscles tightened and I made that stupid face that men my age make when they climax in a woman they suspect is not their wife.

I crash through the door and into a man wearing an expensive suit. He straightens my jacket and ties my tie while we hustle down the hall. He’s used to this drill. A black limousine waits for me outside, with two lines of more smartly-dressed people and a kid wearing a cheap suit who holds a bag of Burger King out for me. It’s not the expensive people, but for some strange reason, the kid and the Burger King that bring it back for me. I remember now.

My name is Senator Leonard Marks, and I am running for President of the United States.

***

I had about two hours to prepare for the town hall meeting. It was going to be a tough one. My opponent had made a good run of blaming the previous administration for the country’s woes and so far, my strategy of blaming him for being a finger-pointing Nazi-pinko-communist hadn’t worked as well as I had hoped. Ticker-tape parades in New York were of course out, but I had hoped that at least one of the TV pundits would’ve said something in my favor. Nothing. Overt smear campaigns were passé, my team informed me. Bandwagons were a great thing to jump on, so long as I could prove the other guy didn’t deserve to be there by virtue of intelligence or lack thereof, insincerity or honest old bullshitting. In any case, my strategy was clear: blame the guys who came before me, point the finger at my opponent and call him a racist jackass. Easy enough, I thought.

But how could I convince the Middle American voter that I meant it? How could I convince myself that I meant it? Did I mean or intend to stand behind any of the hyperbole and partisan rhetoric I had spouted over the last six months? Yes. Yes, I did. I most certainly meant it when I said that prostitution was a cornerstone of our political system. Sadly, this was off the record and no reporters were around to hear it. In fact, no one was around to hear it except the prostitute I was explaining the intricacies of government to, over several rounds of tequila, half a cheese pizza and the regret from a poorly-performed town hall. This was never going to get me anywhere.

The town hall was like so many of the rinky-dink buildings you find in the Mid-West: fifties Americana, uninspired and the site of many an event which to a coastal dweller seems quaint. Even pointless. Box Socials, child display pageants filled with parents haunted by broken dreams of stardom who live vicariously through their children until they become bitter unwed teenage mothers on Vicodin and the like had graced this hall for over sixty years, and tonight I would befoul it with my shotgun-honest politics, fear mongering and hollow campaign promises.

My esteemed opponent, Senator Howard Smith, was waiting for me when I arrived. My manager tried to shoo me away from a photo op, but the paparazzi caught me before I could refuse. My opponent’s skull was gleaming in the morning heat, his brain seeming to show through his skin, making him look like a skeleton that doubles as a prop in an old slapstick film. Where’s Costello, I wondered. He’s late for his shtick.

The man was so out of touch that he was waving without moving to the video cameras as if they were taking static pictures of him.

“Wave to the you tubes,” he said between tight, smiling teeth. “Let’s not turn this into a pissing contest, eh Lenny?”

“Don’t call me Lenny, you pig-fucker,” I retorted, also between teeth while smiling. “And YouTube is a website where people post home movies in the hopes of getting millions of hits, even though there is no appreciable benefit for doing so. The things they’re flashing at us are called cameras. They’re not that new.”

“Eat my ass, Marks.”

“Not even if you paid me, Smith.”

His wife came up and gave him a kiss. I could swear I saw her lips pucker from the salt coming off his head, but it lasted only a moment. This woman could’ve taught Shakespeare a thing or two about acting. My wife came to my side a minute later, looking like a dressed-up and prettier version of the woman I just left in the motel room. She smelled better though, like she’d actually bathed and bothered to use the bottles that came with the hotel shower.

“You smell of cheap cologne, Leonard,” she said.

“I know,” I said. “It can’t be helped.”

“It better be helped, it’s fucking disastrous for the campaign. Remember the other guy, nobody wants a philandering president.”

“You keep your trap shut, I’ll keep my trap shut. Just make sure the payoff goes to the National Inquisitor and we should be fine.”

“Already done.”

I kissed her and made a big show of it for the cameras. For a newlywed man, this would’ve been quite the loving moment. For a cynic like me, it was the worst kind of hypocrisy.

“I love ya baby,” I said, not really believing it. I know she didn’t believe it. She had stopped believing it years ago. Right about the time she caught me in bed with the housekeeper, and I caught her in bed with the same housekeeper a day later. But that was the past, when I was just a state senator and image didn’t matter quite so much. Now we were the big time, and it mattered.

There were two hundred people crowded into the hall. I began perspiring under the assault of the house lights, and began to regret letting The Sweating Skull push me into his stupid Town Hall Debate series. His blatant masturbatory affair with public relations contests had seriously drained my campaign’s financial and political resources. It was getting harder and harder to keep up, despite the donations we continued to raise in each city. It seemed no matter how well our funding drives did, his did slightly better.

I’d given it a long thought, and come to the disturbingly nihilistic conclusion that in this election, the people didn’t really matter. Maybe they hadn’t really mattered for a long time, beginning with the guy who traded smoking for jelly beans a few decades ago. What really mattered was money; money to buy the people that mattered. All that archaic bullshit about the Electoral College, voting districts and gerrymandering: useless. A slew of rules, no longer relevant, that only made any difference to the academics and commentators who made up an absurdly small portion of the population, many of whom didn’t vote. So what did it matter?

The debate began in earnest after some idiot in a bolo tie introduced us both. It was obvious where his loyalties lay, even though he was supposed to be moderating this farce. “Ovah here, we have the hon’rable sena-tor from Nebraska, How’ud Smith. And over in the other corner, we have some fansa-prance yank from Cah-lee-for-nee-cate.” I could almost hear the words, dripping with that drawl that told you where he was from without asking, before they left his mouth. If he had spit out half a tumor’s worth of chewing tobacco with his introduction, I wouldn’t have looked twice.

I decided to put Smith on the defensive. Come out swinging. Give him a blast his bony old ass couldn’t recover from, maybe score me some points with young voters who get their news from Jewish comedians toting a combination of fake news and comedy, laced with the tragedy of reality and cut with a healthy dose of sarcasm and contempt for it all. And just pray they got off their asses to vote.

“Thank you, kahnd sir, for your fair and just introduction,” began Smith. “Ah thank you from the bottom of mah heart for letting us use yuh beautiful town hall f’ this here evening of politics and talk.”

I felt the bile rise at the back of my throat. Take a glass of water. Calm down. Let him ham it up some more so he looks all the more like the awful jackass he is once you get your chance. Wait. Bide your time.

“Ahm sure mah esteemed opponent and ah can keep it civil,” he continued. “And stick to the issues at hand, so’s we can get you folks back to your lives quick and clean-like.”

“Sweet Jesus Smith,” I began, going for the throat. “You kiss any more ass in here and we won’t know where the crowd ends and you begin.”

A few laughs. Off to a good start. He was dripping even more, beginning to turn the red of the stripes on the flag behind us. That was good news; make the fucker feel like he’s about to die, like he’s got nowhere to go.

“What separates you from me, Smith? I’ll stand in front of a man and talk to him. He might not like what I have to hear, but I’ll talk to him. You? You’ll stand behind the man, fuck him in the ass, then tell him about your campaign for moral decency without bothering for a reach around.”

More laughs. The crowd began to divide, as I’d seen them do for months. Those who were laughing would keep on laughing, would laugh all the way to the ballot boxes. Those that wouldn’t laugh weren’t going to vote for me anyway, so the hell with them.

“Folks ah assure yew, ah won’t stand for this kahnd of sass! Senatuh Marks, if you would please-“

“-No Smithy, I won’t. I won’t lay down for you or anybody who looks like you. This country needs a leader, not an ass-kisser. How much ground do you think you can give on the international scene before someone gets the idea that you’re just a pushover; a mook who’s too goddamn scared to run his own country?”

The Sweating Skull was steaming by now, little tufts of the sweat on his head turning to vapor under the pressure of both his brain heating up and the house lights. I had him on the run, with nowhere to turn. But I had to reel it back a little. The public knew me, knew I was a brutally honest and terrifically vulgar man. They knew I swore at debates, cursed out hecklers and that on more than one occasion, had taken to throwing shoes back at the crowd. But even with a reputation like that, one can push things too far. Push it as far as you can, but no further. The public, the press and above all, the sponsors, would eventually grow tired of my antics and turn against me.

“But let’s get serious here people,” I said, bringing it down. “This election comes at a crucial time in the world. The environment is on the way out. Forget trying to save it, we’ve already lost it. Five oil spills in two years, a nuclear meltdown, four volcanic eruptions and a fresh war in Asia. This is no time to dick around with partisan politics and empty promises. Something needs to be done now. America needs action, now. You need a leader with the balls to put the country back on track. Take a look at my economic, social and foreign policies. They’re all online for you to read, free of charge. Senator Smith’s?” I went for the gold. “You have to pay to see his agenda. As if you don’t pay enough in taxes already, am I right?”

Cheers from the crowd this time, even those who didn’t laugh at my jokes. I knew that bit about taxes would get them. Midlanders spend their lives hating a lot of things, and chiefly among them are taxes and government. I knew I’d have to be and impose both upon them, but for the moment, as far as they were concerned, if I appeared to favor lower taxes and smaller government, I’d get more votes. Even if neither was true.

The rest of the debate went well. The usual deal; question, response, rebuttal. Five minutes of angry rhetoric in the span of a thirty-second time slot. The debate ultimately left nothing resolved, but that was irrelevant. With six months left before the election, the last thing we wanted to do was court fence-sitters. If people hadn’t made up their minds by now, they weren’t going to. Sure, I might have lost a few votes with my antics and irreverent language; I always did after a public appearance. But my exuberance was proving amusing to both the ornery elderly and rebellious youth. Two of the best demographics in recent elections. Smith really only appealed to middle-age, middle-America voters, and recently, had begun losing ground to a third party candidate. And apparently, so was I.

“What do you mean,” I asked. “How can we lose ground to some tree-hugging hippie?”

“She’s not a tree hugger,” my campaign manager said as we left the town hall. “She’s the candidate for the Eco-Friendly Party, and she’s gaining momentum. Still doesn’t have a chance in hell of getting elected, but she is taking votes away from you, and in big enough numbers to worry about.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But she’s also taking votes away from Smitty.”