Classy.
He did have his reasons, but the curious thing is these don’t seem quite so urgent anymore, or relevant. Also, the anxiety and paranoia have receded. Somewhat. Because Dave Conway was probably right, the truth is they weren’t actually involved. So why get all worked up about it?
What hasn’t receded, though, is this seemingly permanent fog of insecurity he’s been living with, insecurity about his legacy, about his future – and, OK, getting drunk and leaving inappropriate messages on people’s machines may not be the optimum solution here, but what is?
What it’s always been, work.
It’s just that as an unemployable ex-premier the only job opportunity he has right now is this stupid book he’s supposed to be writing.
And isn’t.
Which sparks something… a vague…
Does he remember sitting down at his desk earlier on? All fired up and ready to get started? Possibly. Yes. But didn’t he then go off straightaway to do something else?
His usual m.o.
He walks over and looks through the door of the study, for confirmation – and indeed there it is, his cluttered desk, un-touched, exactly as it has been for days, weeks.
He could sit down now and get started. If he didn’t feel nauseous, that is. If he didn’t have to devote whatever shred of energy he might be able to muster over the next few minutes to mollifying, or attempting to mollify, his wife. If he knew how to string two coherent sentences together.
He turns around and heads over to the kitchen. No point in delaying the inevitable.
He stands in the doorway. Mary has her back to him. She’s at the counter and appears to be busy, chopping or peeling something. After a moment, she turns around. The look she gives him is withering.
‘How dare -’
And then the phone rings. It’s beside her on the counter.
‘Jesus.’
She picks it up. Incapable of not.
‘Hello?’
This is a reprieve for Bolger, but not one that lasts.
‘Yes.’ Tight-lipped. ‘Hello, Dave.’
When she looks away for a split second, Bolger rolls his eyes. This micro movement sends a shockwave of nausea through his system. He puts one hand on his stomach and holds the other one out in front of him, flaps it frantically, indicating to Mary that he’s not here.
‘Yes, Dave, he’s here. Sure. I’ll put him on.’
She approaches quickly, holding the phone up. It looks like she’s about to strike him with it. He recoils, but still ends up taking it in his hand, Mary gliding past him out of the room, mouthing something he doesn’t catch.
Clark Rundle gazes down at Madison Avenue from the window of his tenth-floor suite in the Wilson Hotel. It is just after two in the afternoon. That’s eight in the evening in Paris, which means it’ll be nine by the time Nora is leaving, so if he hasn’t heard from J.J. by then he’ll have to call someone at the hospital and demand that they put him on.
Below, traffic flows silently along Madison, only the occasional honking of a horn or wail of a siren making it through the thick glass of the hotel windows. It is a beautiful spring day in Manhattan, cold, crisp and sunny, but inside here it is warm and the atmosphere, along with every nerve ending in Rundle’s body, tingles with expectancy.
There is a gentle rap at the door.
He turns and crosses the room, which is a refuge of elegance, with its embroidered drapes and silk wall coverings, its mahogany furnishings and marble floors.
He opens the door and in she glides.
Nora is twenty-four years old and very beautiful – extraordinarily so, in fact – with exotic colouring, perfect bone structure and eyes so dark and mysterious they could bring down an empire. She is from Haiti, so her name probably isn’t actually Nora, but Rundle has never got around to asking her about this, or about a whole lot else for that matter. When he’s with her he tends to talk about himself. He was going to say that it’s cheaper than therapy, but actually it isn’t. Nora is very expensive. He’s had an account with Regal Select for over five years now but has spent more in the last eighteen months since Nora showed up than in all of the time prior to that put together. He doesn’t feel guilty about this, nor is he stupid enough to have fallen in love with her, but he does regard their time together as essential, each appointment as a sort of pit stop, something entirely related to the rhythms and requirements of his working life.
It’s not just that he’s paying for her to leave, as the conventional wisdom runs. It’s a bit more complex than that. He’s paying for what sociologists have recently taken to calling ‘relief from the burden of reciprocity’.
In other words, he already has a wife.
Nora removes her coat. She places it on the back of a chair. She then does a half turn and glances at Rundle, coquettishly, her lips glistening, her tongue just visible.
Hard-on in place, check.
She can do this every time. Just walk into the room. What wife can do that?
More than once J.J. has begged Clark to hook him up with Regal, but of course that’s never going to happen.
J.J. doesn’t get to do this.
Especially since he’s on the brink of submitting to the most rigorous vetting process known to man. Even before the media get involved, he’ll have to offer himself up on a platter to the party handlers: his education and employment histories, every tax return he’s ever filed, every investment made, every gift received… his medical records, and all of them, copies of lab results, bloods, electrocardiograms, even down to such stuff as the size of his prostate and how much Pepto-Bismol he uses.
So no room for peccadilloes.
‘How are you, Nora?’
‘I’m good.’
She walks over to the window, though it’s more like sashays. He follows. Puts his hands on her shoulders, applies pressure, breathes in her scent – nose in her hair, hard-on nuzzling against her ass.
Rhythm starting.
She’s wearing that silky dress he likes, it’s a -
Look, forget it.
They have their habits, like any couple, stuff they do and say – but only in some alternative universe could the details of this be any of your fucking business. Set up a sting operation and nab J.J., fine, you’d get to justify that on the grounds of public interest, so-called. But not here, not in this case.
Say hello to the private sector.
So, between one thing and another, a little time passes.
Nora then takes off to the bathroom for a shower and Rundle lies back recalling what it was like in his younger days, at this juncture, to smoke a cigarette.
Just after half past his cell phone rings.
This could be anyone, but he has a feeling about it. He sits up and reaches over to the bedside table for his phone.
He’s right.
‘J.J.? Shit, how are you?’
‘I’m fine, fucking traumatised, but fine. And it’s not like there isn’t plenty going on over here to distract me, or going on over there, I should say with all this stuff being generated.’
‘I’m sorry?’ Rundle slides off the bed. ‘Stuff? What stuff?’ He goes over to the window.
‘You haven’t been following it? Seriously?’
‘No. What?’
‘You’re the one who kicked this whole thing off, man. Stroke of genius.’
‘Kicked what off?’
‘It’s all over the internet. I’m all over the internet. Senator saves motorcyclist. Senator in Parisian rescue drama. I’ve been getting calls all day, interview requests. I’m telling you, Clark, you couldn’t pay for this kind of exposure.’
Rundle thinks back. He was busy for most of the morning, paperwork, meetings, this and that. He skipped lunch and came directly here. He doesn’t have time for Twitter or any of that shit, so it’s not like he’s been monitoring developments.