The Frankenstein Candidate (10 page)

Right now, though, Gary was smiling at Francesca, an attractive twenty-six-year-old immigrant from Belgium who was studying to be an interior designer.

He had met her a few times. It was he who counseled her to go to design school. He had first run into her at the elementary school when she was dropping her nephews off.

She had come up to him after the tutorials and asked questions. At times, he thought she was coming on to him. Gary’s friend, a former classmate and a medical doctor in whom he confided, said it was just his male ego. Gary loved Olivia and their two little girls. He had cheated on Olivia, but it was only once, six years ago. It had lasted a few months. She had never found out. Back when he was busy, he was hardly home.

Now Gary taught stage and theatre design, a subject he thought was totally redundant in a recession—no new theatres were being built anywhere in the United States. Nevertheless, he enjoyed teaching. Besides, he had nothing else to keep him occupied during school hours.

Francesca Oliviera had originally wanted to be an actress. She had studied drama for several years, working part-time as a waitress before she enrolled in the interior design course.

“Should a concert hall be organic or de-con?” she asked him.

“Organic,” he said. “I don’t like deconstructionist architecture.”

“What is your favorite organic structure?”

“The Fallingwater residence,” he said, referring to one of organic architecture’s most famous residential masterpieces in America.

“Me too…I like Frank Lloyd Wright’s work a lot.”

Gary could tell she liked him. He was good-looking and made time for his students, unlike some of the other tutors they had from the private sector.

“Hello,” she said, “are you still here?”

“Uhh…yes.”

She told him she was not sure if she wanted to study. It was much harder than waiting tables, but she needed money to live on while she persevered at her acting ambitions.

“Anything you want to talk about?” He wanted to read her thoughts—
did she feel that way about him?
“Perhaps you would like to have a chat over a coffee?”

“There is the college cafeteria downstairs,” she said.

He noticed her long, slim legs wrapped in a pair of sheer dark stockings.
Had he just asked her out?
His heart began to beat faster. He was making a mistake. He knew he should stop himself.

“All right,” he said and packed his briefcase. She picked up her thick overcoat.

Gary’s head rationalized all the way down the stairs and into the cafeteria.
It’s just coffee; she’s young; she needs my advice; that’s all there is to it.

The college cafeteria was closing, so they walked across the street to a little bohemian café that stayed open all hours. It could seat sixty, but because it was a U-shaped lounge, one had the cozy, dim atmosphere that epitomized a bohemian way of life. Little murals hung from the walls and nestled into the vines springing from the floor. Soft, upbeat music played in the background, and the waitresses dressed in 1920s Parisian outfits. A fake Picasso hung in the center, together with a large embossment of the artist’s famous phrase, “Everything you can imagine is real.”

He could tell that the atmosphere relaxed her. She opened up and talked about acting school at night and auditions on the weekends. She kept talking, and he kept listening.

“You do have the talent for interior design, but your focus is frittered,” he said, catching her off guard. “The thing to do is find at least one thing that sells, and at the moment, interior redecoration is about the only thing people can afford. And of course, movies. Escapism does better in depressing times.”

He wanted to go on and on, but he looked at his watch. It was time to pick up Georgia and Natasha from school.

She got up to go, her fingers fumbling in her purse.

“That’s all right, the coffee is on me. I’ll wait for the bill.”

“Till next Tuesday then,” she said, smiling and turning away.

“Till next Tuesday. By the way, I have a friend who is a film producer.”

She turned back swiftly.

“Perhaps he needs an assistant. Want me to ask?”

“Sure…thank you, Gary,” she bubbled in her delightful Belgian accent, and left.

He was there only a few minutes after she left, waiting for the bill, when a tall man from the next booth walked past, dropping an envelope on his table.

Gary thought it was accidental until he saw his name written on it. He looked up, but the man was already gone. Gary opened the envelope. A little piece of paper was inside. Words scribbled on the paper read, “Don’t even think about it.”

Who was this man? Why this note? What did it mean?

To be honest, he knew perfectly well what the words meant, but he had no idea who was following him and why he would feel the need to leave such a note.

Gary picked up the tab and left to collect his daughters. He tried to form a picture of the man, but all he could remember was a tall, lean figure in a hat. He could have been any age, any hair color, any ethnicity—Gary hadn’t got a look at him, and why would he, when Francesca and the tall seat behind her completely obscured his view?

Gary wasn’t scared. But he had stopped smiling.

January 10 was almost upon them. Sidney Ganon and Casey Rogers had campaigned well, but both had a traditional liberal focus on the unemployed, the homeless, and the uninsured, and neither was an exceptionally eloquent speaker. The net result was that they were drawing crowds away from each other, which played right into Colin Spain’s hands with his distinctive Middle America campaign.

Large corporations sometimes waited until after Super Tuesday before making their campaign contributions, but Katrina Marshella had done a great job of getting into corporate America quite early. Provided Spain won Iowa handsomely, she had another forty million or so lined up to bolster up the New Hampshire and Super Tuesday campaigns, and that pretty much meant a landslide nomination win for Spain.

More importantly for Colin, Katrina had worked without friction with the old fox Larry and had accepted his role as the chief of strategy. She worked tirelessly on all the details and lining up the fundraisers. She was clever and confident. This was her first presidential campaign, and she knew she had a winning horse at least for the nomination, which meant riding that horse all the way to November 3. She also knew perfectly well that her organizational skills would not go unnoticed, win or lose, since Larry would take the fall should anything go wrong. Yet if Spain went all the way to the White House, she could ride that wave into a press secretary or even a communications director position, given Larry’s age. She was on a winner any way this turned out, and she knew it.

It was nine o’clock at night on January 9 when Colin came by Katrina’s desk. The campaigning had finished and the staff had all gone home for a well-deserved rest, but here she was, still plugging away at the schedules and the numbers.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hello, Colin.”

“You should go back to the hotel, get some rest.”

“I should. But we need to plan for New Hampshire.”

“What happens if we lose in Iowa?”

“You won’t.”

“I’m not just talking about beating Ganon and Rogers.”

She looked at him with a blank stare.

“I’m already thinking ahead. We need huge turnouts. What can we do to generate that extra spark?”

“What does Larry think?” Katrina knew her place was number two.

“He agrees that we need to do something out of the ordinary.”

“What about Allen?” Katrina could tell she had surprised him.

“Olivia? What about her?”

“Vice president. I am just thinking aloud here.”

“She has limited experience at this stage. But one never anoints a VP until after the nomination is certain. It’s way too early.”

“I agree. But she is fresh and young, untainted. There must be a reason you brought her into this campaign.”

“There is. It’s because she is fresh and untainted. The party needs to cultivate new talent. For the future.”

“The future is now, Colin.”

He reflected on that for awhile.

“You are so damn right, Katrina. I’ll check with Larry. Ganon, Rogers…they are part of the old and the tired and have voted every which way on various issues. Untainted, wholesome, American mom…I like it.”

Katrina smiled. He couldn’t help but notice how beautiful she looked even when she was tired and disheveled.

“Let me drive you back to the hotel. You really need some rest before tomorrow,” he said.

“So do you. By the way, I’ve lined up CNN tomorrow after the exit polls.”

“And what are they saying?”

“Right now, you are twenty points clear of Ganon. Rogers is not even in the picture. The message is working.”

He smiled. They got in the car. Colin was driving.

“What do you think of Stein?” he asked.

“One theory is that he’s doing this to get what he wants from Kirby.”

“You think he’ll carve a dent in the Republicans and then agree to back Kirby if he gets some bits thrown his way?”

“It looks that way. There is just no way a Jewish-born, atheist billionaire who hates antitrust legislation can win even ten points, no matter how much money he pours in. But let’s say he gets four or five points…that’s four or five off Kirby, so they have to make a deal with him.”

“Pity. When was the last time we had a loony candidate?”

“In 2012,” she said. “But he was unelectable.”

The GPS in his car told him he had arrived at their hotel.

Back in his hotel room, Colin was restless. There was plenty on his mind. He had to win Iowa. Katrina’s idea was scary but, hey, maybe worth it. He couldn’t wait for the morning. Larry was always up till midnight. He decided to call Larry and gauge his reaction. Larry, as usual, was reflective and calm. He said he would think about it.

Still restless, Colin switched the television on and surfed the channels. Then he saw it. The loony candidate. Colin hadn’t even known what he looked like. Frank Stein had a calm, handsome face and a professorial demeanor. Colin had expected a belligerent, in-your-face personality. Stein was being interviewed by ABC. The interviewer asked, “Surely, Mr. Stein, you don’t mean not having any fiscal or monetary policy, do you?”

“That’s exactly what I mean.”

“But…but…but that would be completely irresponsible, would it not?”

“On the contrary, it is irresponsible and arrogant on the part of government to even think that it can correct the economy. And it is destructive.”

“But then who will save us? Who will save the people?”

“It is tinkering from which the people need to be saved—”

Why do they even let such extremists run for office?
Colin switched the channel. The 49ers were playing the Seahawks. The football put him to sleep.