“Amazing!” Daniel commented. “You’d think people would have eventually seen him for what he really is, self-serving and personally power hungry, and voted him out. Why do you think the party hasn’t teamed up against him if he’s bucked them on key issues?”
“He’s just too powerful,” Stephanie said. “He’s a fund-raising powerhouse with interlocking political action committees, foundations, and even corporations run on behalf of his various populist issues. Other senators are frankly afraid of him with the kind of PR money he can wield. He’s not afraid or shy about using his deep pockets against anyone who’s crossed him when they come up for reelection.”
“This is sounding worse and worse,” Daniel murmured.
“I did learn something curious,” Stephanie added. “It’s rather a coincidence, but you and he have a few things in common.”
“Oh, please!” Daniel complained.
“For one thing, you’re both from large families,” Stephanie said. “In fact, you’re both from families with nine children, and you both are third in line with two older brothers.”
“That is a coincidence! What are the chances of that?”
“Pretty small. One would have to assume you two are more alike than you think.”
Daniel’s face clouded over. “Are you serious?”
Stephanie laughed. “No, of course not! I’m teasing! Loosen up!” She reached across the table, picked up Daniel’s wine, and handed it to him. Then she lifted her own glass. “Enough about Senator Butler! Let’s toast to our health and our relationship, because whatever happens tomorrow, at least we have that, and what’s more important?”
“You’re right,” Daniel said. “To us!” He smiled, but inside he felt his stomach ball up into a knot. Try as he might, he could not dismiss the specter of failure that was looming like a dark cloud.
They clicked glasses and drank, eyeing each other over the rims.
“You really are alluring,” Daniel said, trying to regain the moment back in the bathroom at the hotel when Stephanie had stepped out of the shower. “Beautiful, smart, and very sexy.”
“That’s more like it,” Stephanie responded. “So are you.”
“You’re also a teaser,” Daniel added. “But I still love you.”
“I love you, too,” Stephanie said.
Once the dinner was over, Stephanie was eager to get back to the hotel. They walked quickly. After the warmth of the restaurant, the night chill penetrated their coats. In the hotel’s empty elevator, Stephanie kissed Daniel passionately, backed him into a corner, and pressed against him erotically.
“Hold on!” Daniel said with a nervous laugh. “There’s probably a security video in here.”
“Oh, my gosh!” Stephanie murmured, as she quickly straightened up and smoothed her coat. Her eyes scanned the elevator’s ceiling. “I never thought of that.”
When the elevator opened on their floor, Stephanie took Daniel’s hand and encouraged him to walk quickly down the hall to their door. She smiled as she opened it with her room card. Once inside, she made a production out of locating the DO NOT DISTURB sign and hanging it outside the door. With that accomplished, she took Daniel’s hand and pulled him from the small foyer into the bedroom.
“Coats off!” she ordered, throwing hers onto a side chair. She then pushed him backward onto the bed. Climbing on top of him with her knees on either side of his chest, she started to loosen his tie. Suddenly, she stopped. She noticed his forehead was glistening with perspiration.
“Are you okay?” she questioned with concern.
“I’m having a hot flash,” Daniel confessed.
Stephanie slid off to the side and pulled Daniel up to a sitting position. He wiped his forehead and looked at the moisture in his hand.
“You’re also pale.”
“I can imagine,” Daniel said. “I think I’m having an autonomic nervous system mini-crisis.”
“That sounds like medical doctor-speak. Can you explain that in normal English?”
“I’m just overwrought. I’m afraid I’ve had some sort of sympathetic adrenaline rush. I’m sorry, but I don’t think sex is in the picture.”
“You don’t have to apologize.”
“I think I do,” Daniel said. “I know you are expecting it, but as we were walking back, I had a feeling it just wasn’t in the cards.”
“It’s all right,” Stephanie insisted. “It’s not going to make or break the evening. I’m more interested in making sure you’re going to be all right.”
Daniel sighed. “I’ll be all right after tomorrow, when I know what’s going to happen. Uncertainty and I have never gotten along particularly well, especially when it involves something bad.”
Stephanie put her arms around him and hugged him. She could feel his heart pounding in his chest.
Later, after Stephanie had been motionless long enough for her breathing to deepen in sleep, Daniel pulled back the covers and slipped out of bed. He’d not been able to fall asleep with his mind and pulse racing. He put on a hotel robe and wandered out into the sitting room. At the window, he looked out at the view.
What kept coming back to his mind was Heinrich Wortheim’s prophecy of disaster and the fact that it seemed to be coming to pass. The problem was that Daniel had burned bridges when he left Harvard. Wortheim would never take him back and might even try to blackball him at other institutions. On top of that, Daniel had also burned some bridges when he left Merck in ’85 to go back to academia when he’d accepted the Harvard post.
The champagne bottle nestled in its cooler caught Daniel’s attention. He pulled it out of the water; its ice had long ago melted. He held it up to the light coming from outside the window. There was still almost a half bottle left. He poured himself a glass and tasted it. It was somewhat flat but still reasonably cold. He took a few sips as he redirected his attention out the window.
He knew his fear of having to return to Revere Beach, Massachusetts, was irrational, but it didn’t make it any less real. Revere Beach was where he’d grown up in a family headed by a small-time businessman who’d blamed his series of failures on his wife and progeny, particularly those who embarrassed him. Unfortunately, that was mostly Daniel, who had the misfortune of following two older brothers who’d been high school superstar athletes, a fact that had provided a modicum of solace for their father’s fragile ego. In contrast, Daniel had been a spindly kid more interested in playing chess and producing hydrogen from water, Drano, and aluminum foil in the cellar. The fact that Daniel had gotten himself into Boston Latin, where he excelled academically, had had no effect on his father, who continued to use him mercilessly as a scapegoat. Even Daniel’s scholarships to Wesleyan University and then to Columbia Medical School had changed little other than to estrange him from his siblings for a time.
Daniel finished the champagne in his glass and helped himself to more. As he continued to sip the wine, his mind wandered to Senator Ashley Butler, his current bête noire. Stephanie had said she was teasing when she’d suggested that he and the senator were more alike than he’d assumed. He wondered if she really felt that way, since it was indeed such a coincidence that he and the senator had similar types of families. Way in the back of Daniel’s mind, there was a thought that maybe there was some truth to the idea. After all, Daniel had to admit that he envied the power the man could wield in putting Daniel’s career in jeopardy.
Daniel put his glass down on the coffee table and turned back toward the bedroom. He moved slowly in the darkness of the unfamiliar surroundings. He was far from confident that he could fall asleep while his intuition was so actively telling him that disaster was coming, yet he didn’t want to stay up all night. He thought he’d get back in bed and try to relax, and if he couldn’t sleep, at least he’d rest.