“We’ll raise enough for reelection,” replied Joel.
“Nobody ever has enough cash.” The Senator frowned. “You look… shaky.”
“Did you call out to the state today and talk to Joyce?”
“She had that school award thing over in Personville. I’ll call her after you drop me off tonight. Maybe she’ll even pick up the phone.”
No comment thought Joel, who knew all about wives, having never had one. Then he said, “We’re facing two issues. First is the Committee vote on the F-77 fighter program. It’s down to which firm wins, United Tech or Z-Systems, no real differences between either company’s bird.”
The Senator shook his head. “We got zero enemies with an Air Force so powerful that we need a new war bird.”
Spring it now, thought Joel. He said: “Second, you’ve got to be Senate sponsor for an aid package, only $8 million and change, for refugee camps in Sudan—”
The Senator sighed.
“—only $8 million, but it’ll save 10,000 starving people.”
“Foreigners. Hell, African foreigners. Not our constituents.”
“Our folks are still lucky.”
“High as back-home unemployment is, never call them lucky. Our opposition is drooling to smear me as a ‘big spender’. A ‘tax-and-spend’ guy ain’t who we can reelect.” Ice clinked in the Senator’s glass. “That trip got to you, didn’t it?”
Joel remembered wails from raped women now “safe” inside a barbed-wire desert refugee camp. Life fading from the face of a skeletal eight-year-old boy. Buzzing flies.
The Senator said: “You didn’t need to bring me that white canvas sack. Like a flour sack, only it’s a body bag for dead kids. Didn’t need to give me that sack.”
“I wanted you to remember.”
“I already wake up every morning with too much to forget.” The Senator sipped his drink. “You gotta drive tonight.”
“I know. I’ll hit the bathroom before we—”
“It’s not just me who you got to drive.”
Joel sank back into the leather chair. “I thought we were through with all that. What if there’s a problem?”
“Won’t be. Out-of-town Joyce won’t know. Would probably feel relieved.”
“Bullshit.”
“Yeah, but it’s bullshit that works.” The Senator looked away. “Tonight isn’t… personal.”
“Oh, great
“Who do you want to pick her up? Me when every cell phone in town is a camera? Some mailroom geek who’s got nothing invested in us except a job that pays him less than he could make bartending? A taxi with logbooks?”
“I didn’t sign on for this.”
“It’s gonna happen. All you get to do is choose how.”
So after driving the Senator home, Joel played chauffeur.
His passenger said: “Aren’t you going to ask?”
“I got no questions for your answers.”
“Bullshit. You’re all questions. Probably been getting away with that for years.”
“Why are you a whore?”
“I’m good at it. What’s your excuse?”
“I don’t need one. I’ve got a great job.”
“So I see.” She looked out the car window. “You’re driving me.”
He sped past the Senator’s huge town house. Drove into a courtyard of two-story dwellings created as stables and slave quarters. Now most of those boxes were homes for the thin slice of Congress’ 20,000-plus employees who lived on Capitol Hill.
Joel stopped at the Senator’s back door. Slapped a key onto the dashboard.
She scooped up the key. “Don’t catch cold out here.”
Long and lean and not looking back, she disappeared into that town house rehabbed years after the city-gutting King-assassination riots.
Joel sped to his own house five blocks away. He lived alone. Stood on the maroon rug in his living room with its Smithsonian art prints and National Park Service black-and-white poster of a mustang in a blizzard. He charged upstairs, wrestled off his tie.
The cell phone filled his shirt pocket like a stone.
Joel looked out his bedroom window to the night.
Capitol Hill is a geography of mind, will, and luck. Gang turf carved by the blades of Congress. What matters on the Hill might not count in Chicago or Paris, not in the mile-away White House or at the Supreme Court, where Joel said the motto etched on that law cathedral should read: “Equal justice under the five-to-four decision.” Yet, what happens on Capitol Hill might change the world. As Joel had told his protégé Dick: “Up here, the bottom line never changes.”
Joel’s cell phone rang after 112 minutes. He said: “I’ll be right there.”
She stood alone in the night alley.
“You could have gotten mugged out there,” said Joel as she huddled beside him. “Or worse.”
“So what.”
He sped away from that back door. Stopped the car at the end of the alley. Idled.
“Next time, get your boss café au Viagra.”
Crimson flames roared in Joel’s head.
She said: “Are we going to sit here and stare at the road?”
“Tell me where to go.”
“So much to say, so little time.”
“I need to know—”
“But you never get to.”
“I know what I’m doing!”
“Congratulations,” she said. “How do you like it so far?”
“Don’t fuck with me.”
“I wouldn’t take your business.”
“And you’re all business.”
“What’s your label? Politics?”
“Look, all I want is…” He stared out the windshield.
“Oh. I see. It’s about what you want.” Her hand pulled on the emergency brake. She drew toward him like a slow falling star.
“What are you doing?” he said as her face floated closer, closer.
“Guess.”
Her mouth covered his. He tasted lightning. She drew back. Met his gaze as he managed to say: “I thought girls like you never kissed on the mouth.”
She raged at him, both hands slapping.
Joel shook her. Lena’s hair flew wild in the streetlight’s glow. She fought free and he let her. She didn’t run or look away, and he saw her. Felt her shiver.
Streets of fire drove them to his living room.
She ripped his shirt. Wore black lingerie. Her bare legs clamped around Joel’s waist as he laid her down on the living room’s maroon rug.
Two hours or a lifetime later, they lay naked in the white sheets of his bed.
Her hand stroked his cheek. “What were your women like yesterday?”
“All I see are characters in movies.”
“How do they look?” she said.
“Smart. Funny. Successful. Pretty. Like the kind of woman a man needs.”
“Couldn’t fix them, could you?” She said: “Don’t save me. And don’t make me your personal Jesus.”
Joel smiled. “Jesus was a man.”
“Don’t be so limited.”
“Who knew you were so full of don’ts?”
“I’m about out,” she said. “How about you?”
“All I know is this is going to drive me crazy.”
Lena sealed that with her kiss.
Come morning, Dick grinned when Joel finally walked past his desk: “Get lost coming to work?”
“Whatever,” said Joel. “What’s happening?”
“Money wars,” said Dick. “We’ve got three weeks to decide our F-77 vote.”
“What’s up with the Aid to Sudan bill?”
“They should have waited on that over there,” said Dick, nodding toward the House side of the Hill. “Made sure they had a champion over here.”