Her mother frowned. “Ayn Rand? Is that a good idea?”
“It’s about someone who refuses to compromise,” Cass said, conscious that she sounded a bit robotic. “Someone who stands up against mediocrity and compromise and weakness and bullshit.”
“QED,” her mother snorted.
“What’s that? A British cruise ship?”
“You know perfectly well what it means. You got into Yale, didn’t you? I’m sorry, honey, I didn’t…I just don’t see that reading Ayn Rand is helpful at this stage. I had a boyfriend in high school who read Atlas Shrugged. He ended up handing out leaflets on street corners about how we all have to watch out for number one. It’s an unpleasant philosophy.”
“No,” Cass said. “We can’t have me looking out for myself, can we? I mean, how selfish would that be?”
“I was never any good at arguing. It’s why I went into economics. Numbers don’t argue. How long are you planning to inhabit this cave?”
“Until stalactites form. Could I have some more rice cakes?”
“You can get your own rice cakes.”
The next day, her mother came into her room bearing the cordless phone, this time as if it were a trophy. “For you.” She was beaming.
“Who is it?”
“Bertie Wooster Goes to Bosnia.” Cass had confided in her mother the full details of what had happened over there.
“Hello?” Cass said suspiciously.
“Well, there you are,” said Congressman Randy. “You don’t call, you don’t write. I didn’t know how to find you. Are you all right?”
“Depends on your definition of ‘all right.’ I’m alive. I see from TV you are.”
“Cass,” he said, “I don’t know where to begin.”
“Shit happens. Especially in the Balkans.”
“How’s your arm?”
“Itches.”
“The high point of my day is scratching my stump when I take off the prosthesis. As you get older, it’s the little things in life. Look, I’m…I…I was just trying to…”
“Drive across a minefield. It was an accident. We’re alive.”
“Well, I’m sorry. I’ll do anything I can.”
“I saw you on television. At the Capitol. Doves?”
“Don’t tell anyone, but they’re actually pigeons. They dip them in Wite-Out. Cheaper. I have a new PR man. Genius at the photo op. Name’s Tucker. Now look here, I’m sending a plane for you. I want you to come down here. I want to talk to you.”
“Talk? What about?”
“Your future.”
“Do I have one?”
“Those idiots in the army. I told them it was all my fault. Want me to denounce them?”
“No. Leave it. But I could live without the media stuff about how we were having sex in the minefield.”
“That didn’t come from me.”
“Collateral damage, from your reputation.”
“Guilty as charged. All right, I feel guilty. I’m wealthy, and a congressman with political ambitions. You’re in a spectacular position to make me pay through the nose. And I want to.”
“I don’t want your money.”
“I’m offering you a job. And money if you want it. Your mother hates me. She made that perfectly clear on the phone. Put in a good word for me, would you? Can’t stand it when the mothers hate me. Guess it goes back to childhood.”
Cass heard a humming over the phone.
Randy said, “She told me you’re clinically depressed and that you’re going to shoot someone. Please don’t. It would completely ruin my political career. Are you in much pain?”
“The physical kind or the kind where you spend week after week looking at the ceiling?”
“If it’s any consolation, I’m still in pain. I can’t get out of bed in the morning without a couple of Percocets. I sit in hearings and drool, like something out of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. My aides have to wipe off my chin so I won’t glisten on C-SPAN. I’ll probably end up at Betty Ford. I could always announce my Senate run from there. Lock up the rehab vote early.”
Do not laugh, she told herself. This man ruined your life.
“Cass?”
“What?”
“I’m sending a plane. Tomorrow. Will you come?”
“I don’t know. I’m a little agoraphobic right now.”
“I’ll share my Percocets with you. Fifty-fifty.”
“Fine.”
Chapter 7
Congressman Randolph K. Jepperson’s office overlooked a not very impressive slice of Capitol Hill vista. There were the usual unimportant but large trophies, flags, maps, and awards from organizations no one had heard of and the obligatory photographs of him taken during reception line photo opportunities: the standard Washington wallpaper of self-importance. Cass looked for a photo of him with the troops of Camp November. Sure enough, there it was, front and center, signed, “Get well soon.” There was also a photo of him with the Central American ex-wife of the rock star, taken on a beach. He was smiling; she looked upset. Perhaps room service that morning hadn’t been quick enough. Looming behind Randy’s desk chair was a large oil portrait by Rembrandt Peale of the ancestor who’d signed “the Dec.”
He greeted her warmly. She sat. He slid a piece of paper across the desk toward her. A check, made out to “ Yale University ” in the amount of a year’s full tuition ($33,000). He said that he’d write a new one every fall. “But I want good report cards,” he said, smiling widely.
There it was, in her lap, a rectangle of light blue, her ticket to a bright future.
“Well?” he said. “No oohs or ahs?”
“I’m all out of those. Look, I can’t accept this,” Cass said.
“Why on earth not? It’s not going to bankrupt me, I assure you.”
“To be honest, it feels kinda like a bribe.”
Randy looked at her. “Why would I be bribing you? What secret am I trying to protect?”
She put the check on the desk. “I haven’t talked to the media. And I’m not going to talk to the media. So,” she said, nudging the check toward him, “you don’t need to do this.”
“What do you take me for, Cass? Aside from an upper-class imbecile?” He looked hurt.
“Someone who wants to be president?” she said.
Randy smiled. “Well, you have me there. Uch…” He rolled up his pant leg, pulled off his plastic limb, and scratched. “Itches. Itches like sin.”
“Try not to scratch.”
“Thank you, Nurse Ratched. The pills only make it worse when they wear off.”
He’d lost weight. The doctors had him drinking eight-hundred-calorie chocolate milkshakes four times a day. His face was still red in places from bits of Humvee shrapnel. He looked like-someone who’d been blown up.
“I appreciate the gesture, but I can’t take your money,” Cass said. “But I will take a job.”
He looked up from his scratching. “Don’t you want to go to college? Rub it in Dad’s face?”
“I don’t care about him.”
“Wouldn’t blame you if you did.”
She glanced around the wood-paneled office, at the bookshelves. “This looks enough like college. Pay me thirty-three thousand in salary.”
“You’ll have to work your way up, you know.…?What’s so damn funny?” he said, scratching furiously.
“You telling me I’ll have to work my way up. Excuse me, but it’s just totally hilarious.”
“Yes,” Congressman Randy said, scratching, “I suppose it is.”
So several weeks later, Cass arrived in Washington, D.C., to start a new life with a new name: Cassandra Devine. When she went before the judge in Connecticut, she told him about her parents’ divorce and about the episode in Bosnia and said that she just needed to “reboot my hard drive.” He was sympathetic and granted the name change.