S'wanee: A Paranoid Thriller (31 page)

C
ongressman-elect Dean Willing was dead before he reached the podium.

It felt different than he expected. The whole night had. He’d had plenty of time to prepare, since San Francisco was a one-party town, and his election was assured after the primary, which was also assured.

But it was difficult to prepare adequately for the moment of one’s death.

Up in the Presidential Suite, where they awaited his opponent’s concession, his mother had quibbled with his wife over the tie. It would be reddish, of course, but while his wife preferred the Ferragamo, his mother insisted on the less pretentious Brooks Brothers she’d bought the day before. His mother usually--and with acquired restraint--deferred to his wife, but tonight was different, because it was his Big Day and Last Night, and his mother would have the Final Say.

His wife came into the master bedroom where he dressed and flung the Brooks Brothers at him. “It’s not even Golden Fleece.”

In the living room, his father worked the phone wired to the wall. He wasn’t checking returns, which were irrelevant, but the timing. His opponent would concede at 8:43 in the Governor’s Ballroom of the four-star St. Francis on the rim of Union Square. At 9:06 PM, he would walk onstage of the Grand Ballroom at the Fairmont on top of Nob Hill. Both rooms would be full, but the actual numbers would not be comparable.

His father hung up. “We’re on the move!”

His mother in simple navy straightened his straight tie and smoothed his smooth hair. She held his face but didn’t look him in the eye and said, “My handsome boy,” and the local reporter on TV recapped his military service and business resume for the viewers. The camera held steady on the ballroom podium, and to vamp, the reporter ran an interview she had done earlier in the day with his wife.

“Let’s do this.” His wife breezed past in her pink Chanel suit, and they followed his father into the hallway where two aides in suits and earpieces stood ready.

They rode down the service elevator in silence.

The ballroom was loud and festive, and backstage was still and quiet, and at 8:58, his parents walked on stage to cheers. His father spoke and then signaled to his mother, who resisted, and then relented, and the crowd cheered louder as she stepped up. She strained to reach the mike and growled at her husband, and the crowd laughed at her sassy pique they knew and loved.

Backstage, he felt a sudden jolt of stage fright. He took his wife’s hand at the end of her pink sleeve, and she yanked it away reflexively before collecting herself and cupping his with both of hers. She patted it in apology.

His father was back at the podium, winding the crowd up tighter, and as the teleprompter scrolled its final line, the room erupted, and it was time. An aide tapped him on the shoulder. His wife led him into the light.

Unlike the movies, you would never mistake the sound for the popping of a balloon. He went down immediately and after a confused hush heard the panic swell and spread. He felt his wife kneel next to him, and then collapse on top of him, and the ballroom got louder and more bothered.

The networks, which weren’t covering this nonevent on such a busy night, would break in to cover it now. There would be live updates, and soon a hastily put-together memorial package, and possibly even an official investigation, although, from the sounds of returning gunfire, his assassin was unlikely to be of much intel use soon. Police and ambulances were most certainly already screaming up Nob Hill.

But now it was quieter, and it really didn’t hurt much at all, and his wife was still but breathing. He listened to the music from the speakers and watched the white moldings darken around the ceiling. It felt too soon. He was not yet 30.

“B
ring the left corner down an inch.” Claire Willing directed her husband Clay, both 26. “A little more. That’s better. I think.”

“Best is out back in the dumpster,” Clay in paint-marked overalls said as he surveyed the enormous, maybe-straight canvas. “Nonsense,” Claire said. “Never.” It was a perfectly proficient sunset and fit just right over their raw hide sofa. Even cockeyed.

“It makes the room,” she insisted, tilting up at the 20-ft high loft ceiling. Plus, she’d spent hours packing and unpacking it for the move along with the rest of his landscapes. There was plenty of wall here for all of them. Even the orangish adobe which was not her favorite, being a bit too on-the-nose, although she’d never admit that, because it was one of Clay’s first. Fortunately, it was small and would fit best in their bedroom. “Between the windows!”

Claire and Clay had arrived earlier in the day in his 1983 purple Mustang. Amazingly, it survived the trip from Santa Fe, thanks in part to her insistence on a last-minute full tune-up, as the heretofore undiagnosed leaky radiator would have stranded them in the desert. Claire had quickly unloaded her hybrid Accord on a fellow teacher, but Clay refused to leave his shiny toy behind, in spite of California’s out-of-state car penalties. It was wholly unsuitable for their new city life, and he promised to park it at his parents’ once they settled in. In her mind, Claire had already circled a blue/grey Ford Escape that would fit in the single parking space that came with their lease. “No minivans!” Clay had decreed to Claire’s taunting giggles.

A Grand Canyon detour added a day to their journey––neither had seen it before––and Clay insisted on a “soul-cleansing” pit stop at Joshua Tree, another half day’s out-of-the-way adventure. He seemed in little hurry to get to San Francisco, and Claire didn’t mind their leisurely pace, after the rather frantic rush of their packing. Clay’s relocation allowance afforded full-service pros, although she’d spent an exhausting week editing––3 1/2 years’ worth!––before they arrived. Nonetheless, her visit to the Hearst Castle would have to wait, since the movers were right on schedule, and the still-under-renovation Townsend Lofts lacked the proper staff to let them in.

“Where you want your Hitler Youth?” Clay held up Claire’s homeroom class photos––rows of seated children, mostly brown, in white polos and navy pants or skirts, Claire proudly to the left. Clay’s stale joke aside, Hitler would have approved the uniforms; the brown wearers, not so much. She herself had long been conflicted about public school uniform policy, especially at that young age. San Francisco, she’d learned, had the same policy. They probably invented it.

Claire took another look at little detached Marisa on the front row and felt a prick of concern, then pushed it away. She’d make it to fourth grade on her own. Hopefully.

“Probably the upstairs hall,” she said. “Just lean them against the wall for now.”

The three-bedroom duplex apartment was freshly painted white, gallery-like, although they thankfully kept the exposed brick on the outward walls. She’d found it online and signed up from the slideshow alone, with Clay’s bemused approval. In addition to the airy spaciousness, she liked the hardwood floors for their Navajo rugs, the Neutra-esque slat staircase, and the Miehle/Viking/Silestone kitchen. The stainless Sub Zero still had its protective plastic film.

Most importantly, the SOMA Warehouse District––technically Mission Bay, if you looked closely at the map––was far removed from the Pacific Heights/Presidio Heights/Seacliffs of Clay’s youth. It didn’t feel so obviously like coming home.

The master bedroom looked out over the China Basin toward the Bay, cinematic in the early February gloom. The guest bedroom would double as Clay’s studio, although it fronted Townsend and would provide less inspiration. The third bedroom sat empty, for now.

The whole place was offensively expensive––part of Claire’s San Francisco acclimation. She considered downsizing to a cramped two-bedroom in the same building, or even the less-offensive Castro, but Clay vetoed both. “Stop pinching,” he encouraged her.

They repositioned their Aztec cane chairs with green serape cushions three times before giving up. They didn’t work anywhere. Neither did the pine and cowhide. At least the rugs fit, Claire tried to convince herself.

“Stop scowling!” Clay laughed, pulling her onto the cowhide, and Claire mock-pouted, “They look so
podunk
here.” “My parents are renovating,” Clay said. “We’ll get their cast-offs.”

“Oh Goody,” Claire mocked on, and Clay retaliated with an octopus-tickle. “Stop! Stop!” Claire shrieked, fighting back. “
Careful
.”

“Not now,” she resisted when his hands stopped tickling and got serious. “She’ll be here any minute.” “For good luck,” Clay pressed, quietly in her ear. “In our new home…”

The door bell rang.

“She hasn’t lost her Sixth Sense,” Clay growled, and Claire giggled, pushing him off.

•   •   •

“My God, you could dock the Space Shuttle in here,” Martha announced instantly, before hugs––quick to Clay, tight to Claire. She put the chilled Veuve on the kitchen counter and paced, inspector-like. She wore blue scrubs and had dark circles and needed a root touchup. She’d put on weight. Medical residency was a shock to the system, and Martha was still adjusting. She smelled and sounded like she’d just had a cigarette.

“Lotta room for
two people
,” she declared, making a point of peering upward and side-to-side. “You keeping the wigwam furniture?”

“It’s southwestern,” Claire said, relishing Martha’s digs. Thank God she hadn’t changed.

Martha sized up Claire’s chambray shirt and turquoise necklace and said, “Well, Tigerlily, you could’ve sent up smoke signals. I cannot believe I had to read about Clay’s new job in the
Chronicle
. Is that our new normal?”

Claire made hurried excuses/explanations––”It happened so quickly,” “I was going to call earlier,”––while Clay’s hospitality morphed into familiar tolerance. His and Martha’s uneasy co-presence had held static since freshman year at Yale. She’d never quite excused him for snapping up her roommate so quickly.

Martha nodded––”Uh huh,” “Yeah yeah OK,” “Glad you got here safely,”––and commented on the neighborhood and then pivoted the conversation craftily. “You know, they tow on Townsend at four.”

“Hurry!” Claire said, and Clay,
released
, said, “Gotta do a drugstore run anyway. Where’s your list?” He pushed into his clogs and raced out.

“Pull that main door behind you!” Martha ordered. “I waltzed right in off the street.” She turned back, unsmiling.

“What the Hell is going on here?”

•   •   •

Claire was cornered. Hoisted on her own petards.

Yes
, she’d shrugged off Corporate America, even before it was fashionable, or necessary.
Guilty
––after the latest financial collapse, when GoldmanMorganCitiBankofAmerica descended on Yale to skim the best/brightest––of championing, quietly at first, then louder, a bolder, more socially responsible path. Not-for-profits, Peace Corps, volunteerism, even startups were preferable to being a tool––
gear
, really––in the Wall Street Brain-Drain Machine. She was hardly alone.

Teach for America sent her to Lansing for two years––”
Where?
” Clay had griped––after which they settled in Clay’s choice (she preferred Jackson Hole but didn’t push it). She taught, he painted, they made friends and stayed thrifty.

That was then.

“Dean’s death changed a lot,” Claire explained. “Well, everything.” Abruptly. Clay talked to his parents in a flurry of calls, even went on a never-before-happened father/son getaway for a long, post-Christmas weekend, and came back to announce––and shock––that he was joining his father’s firm.

Welcome to San Francisco.

“Welcome to the New World Order,” Martha quipped.

And goodbye to her third graders, midyear. Devilish Teresa, Nose-Bleed Ernesto, and fingers-crossed-godspeed to Marisa, whose mother never did come to a parent-teacher meeting.

Claire didn’t get to say goodbye, so jerked was her departure.

“You hear me?” Martha said. “Ignoring you,” Claire said.

Martha’s ribbing had started gently enough. Just email links to the Forbes 400 after Claire/Clay first met in college. Then, as they became inseparable, news articles about Clay’s father on White House economic councils, international corporate boards, sightings to/fro the Council on Foreign Relations “headquarters” (“Yep. Holding the door for Kissinger. Yep, yep.”). By the time they were very much in love, Martha’s obsession with Mr. Willing had turned almost stalker-like: a Sun Valley Retreat (“Gates, Buffett,
Oprah.
”), The Bohemian Grove (“Camping with Cheney!”), and a super-secret––i.e. “shadowy”––conference called The Bilderberg Group (“God
knows
who else is there.”) outside Bilbao, Spain. Martha had his annual itinerary down cold.

She crossed the line a bit, an ill-advised Hail Mary, as their marriage became inevitable. She’d discovered some crackpot New World Order conspiracy theorist––Claire forgot his no-name––on the internet who accused The Willings and their
ilk
of ruinous financial crimes, gross human rights violations, and a wild parade of horribles that would have been funny at a distance. But Claire was no longer at a distance.