‘You were a cheerleader once too, Celeste,’ Elaine noted. ‘Just because you’re “way cool” now that you’re going off to college doesn’t mean you should spoil your sister’s fun.’
‘That’s right!’ Janet shouted, again shaking the pom-pom in her older sister’s face as she headed out. Celeste slapped it away and followed, an argument breaking out ‘The victim,’ the local news anchorwoman read, ‘age eleven, had a record of minor criminal activity and school suspensions. Eyewitnesses said that the boy pulled a knife in the stairwell of the school and was shot to death by the accused, also age eleven. School officials deny there is a security problem in the building’s stairwells although students claim assaults are common in the cramped and windowless space, where lights are repeatedly broken by gangs seeking to cloak their planned attacks in the darkness.’
‘My God,’ Elaine said, stroking her eyelashes delicately with her mascara brush. ‘I don’t know what I’d do if the girls had to go to public school. I’d never get a moment’s rest I’d be so worried.’
‘It’s horrible,’ Gordon agreed. The story of yet another murder played on their television, complete with a bloody sheet covering the corpse being loaded into an ambulance. The crowd gathering in the lights around the crime scene was entirely black, as was, Gordon felt sure, the victim. This crime was simply a garden variety drug killing, not one of the more sensational reports.
‘What are you going to talk about tonight?’ Elaine asked.
Gordon straightened the top edge of his crisply starched collar. ‘Take a wild guess.’
‘Oh, Gordon!’ Elaine said, turning to look at him. ‘Not at your daughter’s pep rally, for goodness’ sake!’
‘Well, crime and violence is what’s on everybody’s mind!’ he said, holding his hand out to the television. ‘Somebody’s got to talk about it. We’ve got to get those people off the streets. I don’t care how many cops, how many courts, how many prisons, how many electric chairs it takes, or whatever the cost. This country is in a major state of decline, and it’s primarily due to crime and violence.’
‘Just who are “those people”, Gordon?’
‘Jesus Christ, Elaine!’ he snapped, and she shushed him — looking at the door where the girls had been. ‘You and I both know who I’m talking about,’ he said in a lowered but still urgent voice. ‘People are leaving this country, Elaine! Native-born citizens just up and checking out of Hotel America. You saw that Newsweek article about Vancouver and Toronto. If the trends continue, half the damn urban population of Canada will be former Americans by the middle of the next century.’
‘I thought you said we’d all just have to get used to things. What can you possibly say? What can anybody do about the problem?’ Gordon slumped and frowned ‘Plus, I don’t think now’s the time to launch any bold new initiatives,’ Elaine said, nodding at the news coverage of the Republican Convention. The Republican National Committee had asked that Gordon delay his arrival at the convention until the last day. The entire Davis family was scheduled to catch a flight for Atlanta at six o’clock in the morning. ‘And,’ Elaine continued, ‘are you so sure that it’s crime and violence that are the problem? Maybe they’re just symptoms of something else that’s wrong.’
‘Oh, now you sound like Daryl! It’s just “the situation”?’ Gordon said sarcastically. They both let the subject drop, and Gordon checked his watch. ‘Let’s not stay too late tonight, okay?’
‘Did you give them the school’s telephone number?’ Elaine asked, clearly trying to act nonchalant.
‘Yeah,’ Gordon replied, not needing to ask who ‘they’ were. ‘And Daryl has it too. He promised to call if he heard anything — even rumors — from the convention hall.’
Elaine stood, and Gordon wrapped his arms around her. He could see her smile in the bathroom mirrors. ‘Just relax,’ he said. ‘We’ll know soon enough.’
‘You know, what if…’ she began, and Gordon’s mind bolted ahead. He felt a rush of excitement at the wild speculation he had denied himself, ‘What if nobody calls?’ she finished. His mood crashed. ‘We’ve really built this up, and if…’
‘They’re going to call,’ Gordon said with more certainty than he felt and a note of irritation in his voice. The signs were all there. They’d done a full-blown background check. Gordon had had good talks with all the right people.
‘You know what I think?’ Elaine said — pulling back and smiling up at him. ‘I think there’s a cabinet post with your name on it.’ Elaine shook him playfully from side to side.
‘Sh-h-h! Don’t jinx it,’ he shot back, kissing her to hide the grin that forced its way onto his face. ‘Besides, the President is still way up in the polls. Bristol has a lot of ground to make up by November before he can offer me anything.’
‘There’s plenty of time for something to happen,’ Elaine said, sinking to Gordon’s chest. ‘Life’s a funny thing. I mean really, sweetie. Who ever thought you’d be a Senator? You never know what’s going to happen next. You just never know.’
‘We all think we’re safe behind these walls,’ Senator Gordon Davis said, spreading his hands to encompass the ivy-covered gymnasium of his daughter’s private school. The bleary-eyed parents sat impassively, waiting, Gordon imagined, for the blow-hard politician to finish his spiel. ‘But we’re not. We fool ourselves into thinking we can insulate. Isolate. Escape the violence out there that is eating away at the fabric of our country.’
The silence was deafening. ‘It is a delusion. Like a cancer, anarchy is a disease attacking the cells of America — its citizens. Most of us here, the parents whose children attend this fine school, think ourselves immune from the disease. But let me remind you, ladies and gentlemen, that we live in a society. A collection of citizens. A nation. And if that host nation grows sick, then all the cells that make that nation up are at risk, the healthy as well as the diseased. Thank you.’
Polite applause filled the gym. Gordon was an appointee who’d filled an unexpired term of a Senator who had been driven from office in disgrace. He’d never been an inspiring speaker. He left the podium to rejoin Elaine. It was the prep school’s first gathering of the year — a pep rally to introduce the athletes and cheerleaders. Elaine cast her husband a forced and, he knew, disapproving smile. Worse yet was the scowl Janet aimed at him from the front rank of the cheerleading squad.
‘Senator Davis, you have a telephone call,’ a school administrator whispered to him as the headmaster stepped up to the microphone to introduce the football team.
Maybe this is it, Elaine said through her smile and gentle squeeze of his arm. The band struck up a march — the sounds of their blaring and discordant instruments painfully loud in the enclosed space. Gordon followed the woman off the stage to a tunnel leading through the bleachers. Only Daryl Shavers, the chief of his Senate staff, and the Republican National Committee staffers knew of his plans to be at the school that night. Only they had been given the phone number.
His heart began to pound. He tried for the hundredth time to deflate his expectations, not wanting to be disappointed. The Republicans were trailing President Marshall’s Democratic ticket by eighteen points in the pre-convention polls. The economy was humming along. Governor Bristol, the Republican nominee, was making no headway with his neo-conservative, social activist platform. NED, Gordon thought to calm himself — using one of Janet’s many acronyms. ‘No Big Deal!’