Are Snakes Necessary?

by Brian De Palma

  Brock is impatient. “Look, Lee, our media people are not going to—”

  Fanny beats him to the end of the sentence. “What?” she says. “Your media people are not going to like the real Lee Rogers?”

  Brock wonders if he should push Fanny aside, take the senator’s arm, and just head out for dinner. Or should he leave Fanny enough rope and let her hang herself?

  Fanny plows ahead. “Are you happy with the image you’ve got?” she asks Rogers. “The candidate who says he represents working men and women and then goes out and gets a five hundred dollar haircut? Are you happy with people seeing that Lee Rogers?”

  Somehow Brock gets roped into debate. “Look, lady, that was an unfortunate—isolated—incident. A video the opposition research people leaked to the press. That’s it.” He leaves out the fact that he was himself the opposition research person who’d leaked it.

  “Right,” says Fanny, “and you need my video to answer that video—and others that may come. Video I can shoot. Video that can be on Facebook instantly. I know how to do it, last summer I worked with PETA.”

  “People for the Ethical—?” Brock is mocking as much as he is asking.

  “Treatment of Animals, that’s right. I shot video that documented animal abuse, got it on Facebook, and it led to two slaughterhouses closing down. They said that themselves, that it was because of PETA’s video. My video. Now I look at what the media is doing to Senator Rogers and it sickens me. It’s so unfair. He’s devoted his life to supporting American workers and those Tea Party nuts make him look like a slick ambulance-chasing shyster who spends all day posturing to get votes and then goes home to his thirty-thousand-square-foot mansion. My videos can correct that image.”

  Brock is more interested than he’d like to be. “Really,” he says, “and how are you going to do that?”

  Fanny stares deep into Rogers’ eyes.

  “Just by talking with him openly and honestly.” Fanny keeps her eyes on the senator. “Asking him questions, letting him respond. That’s all. And this lens,” she taps the camera, “this mirror of the soul, will reveal Senator Rogers and his true character, the one that lives and breathes beyond the spin, beyond opposition research and all the rest.”

  Rogers has an odd and unexpected feeling of self-consciousness. It’s uncomfortable, in an interesting way. Self-doubt is exciting new terrain for him. Fanny doesn’t take her eyes off of him as she extols his integrity.

  “Well,” he stutters, slightly off his game, “I’m hardly a saint.”

  Fanny quickens to the feel of genuine, palpable interest she’s aroused. A surge of confidence follows.

  “Close enough,” she says. She sways back from the senator. “Please. Let me show the world what I see.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Elizabeth wants to disappear. From Bruce, from Nick, from the endless days of shopping and yoga classes, from all of it.

  And now she can. Mike was a prince about the painting. Yanked it right off the wall and replaced it with the reproduction the gallery had used during the interregnum when the original was living in her shoe closet.

  Who would know the difference? Not the slot machine players wandering through the gallery at 2am, who can barely see straight after hours of spinning cherries and lemons.

  Mike’s whole body implied Routine touch-up is all as he marched out of the gallery with the Basquiat tucked under his arm and loaded the canvas into Elizabeth’s rented SUV. She knew a dealer she could offload it to for cash, even if only a fraction of what it was worth. And then?

  Goodbye Basquiat, goodbye Lost Fucking Vegas, goodbye Bruce Diamond jerk-off money-mad control-freak prick, goodbye Nick Sculley head-in-the-clouds wannabe photographer. Good fucking bye to all of you.

  Turns out Elizabeth Diamond was more sick of the sorry state of her life as a blonde playtoy than even she knew.

  Yeah, yeah, there were things about Nick that Elizabeth would miss: his long arms, his lean form, the muscled mass in the back of his thighs which had an animal power Elizabeth liked.

  But she could and would do nicely without the dirty apartment and low-rent ambitions. “The pictures, the pictures, I’m going to make a best-selling book, cash in and take you away from all this.”

  Yawn. How many times did Nick say this? It tired Elizabeth to remember.

  And, of course, Nick only had to say it once in order to make clear what a wobbly grasp on reality he had. To be charged up with great artistic ambition at a time like this! And in a place like Vegas.

  All that gobbledygook she told Nick across a pillow? She meant some of it. But now she can’t even remember what it was she said. And she has other things on her mind anyway.

  Elizabeth is thinking that Bruce will probably spend a fortune on private detectives trying to run her, Nick and the painting down. Unless she does something to make him think there’s no point. Which is why she leaves the SUV a smoking wreck on the side of the highway, a stretched canvas (courtesy of the dealer she sold the Basquiat to) burned to cinders in the back seat. With luck, that’ll take care of Bruce going after her and the painting.

  She hopes Bruce doesn’t badger Nick too much. The kid’s probably tearing himself up over my disappearing like that. But so what. Sometimes you fuck, sometimes you’re fucked. That’s how it goes.

  One of the men Elizabeth knew in Vegas (in a special, every-other-Monday kind of way) told her that a good body is like money in the bank. Now Elizabeth has cashed out.

  Two days later, after ditching the painting and depositing the money, Elizabeth is on a Trailways Bus, headed east towards… actually she’s not sure exactly where and she doesn’t care much either. Like Nick said, she’s just headed away.

  Neither Nick nor Bruce nor the guy in the Diamond Hotel on Monday afternoons, nor any of the other guys Elizabeth has known in Vegas or Pennsylvania, would recognize her. She doesn’t look at all like the old Elizabeth—any of the old Elizabeths. Her blonde hair is black now, and it’s short in a dykey kind of cut. She’s dressed in such bad taste she hardly recognizes herself: jeans, turtleneck sweater, cheap, barely leather bomber jacket.

  New skin, baby.

  She’s still a hot ticket and she knows it. Which probably increases her temperature at least another ten degrees. She has a wild, ready-for-anything feeling she hasn’t had since she was 16.

  CHAPTER 14

  Fanny sits across from Rogers. He’s at the desk, outfitted as all hotel rooms now are with an iPad charging station, stationery no one will ever use and a list of hotel services bound in a leather cover.

  Fanny, on a fluffy upholstered chair with palm tree fabric, holds the camcorder in front of her, looks through the viewfinder and zooms in on Rogers.

  Her authority is tenuous. She looks like she’s filming scenes of a toddler’s birthday party.

  “It must be very difficult for you to campaign while your wife suffers with Parkinson’s,” Fanny prompts Rogers in an unthreatening, vaguely singsong voice.

  Rogers responds with the same self-seriousness he deploys in interviews with policy experts or Senate colleagues.

  “It’s okay,” he says. “And what I’m going through is nothing compared to Connie. The drugs she takes just exhaust her. But she is determined we fight this out.”

  “How does that make you feel?” Fanny puts a comforting hand on the senator’s arm.

  Rogers regards Fanny with great gentleness. “Sometimes,” he says, “it is too much. The uncertainty. Connie could be paralyzed, completely, in ten years. Or in a year. We just don’t know. Her one wish is for me to get re-elected. And I’m doing everything in my power to make that happen for her. It has nothing to do with personal ambition. I just don’t want to disappoint her.”

  Is Rogers for real? His eyes well with tears. He wipes them away. Then he regains composure.

  “Enough of me tonight,” he says. “Let’s get some sleep. The plane waits for no one tomorrow.”

  Fanny trots across the street to her motel
room. The campaign is exhausting, but cool. The access is heady. There are other young people on the campaign team but no one has as much up-close-and-personal contact with the senator as she does.

  On the morning flight, Fanny sits right across the aisle from Rogers. Even if she weren’t pointing a camera at the senator and commanding a fair share of his attention, Fanny would be the correct answer if someone asked “Which thing on this plane is not like all the others?”

  Most of the senator’s staff is male. Young brash policy wonks and fast-talking wannabe back-room boys. Most are at least a little older than Fanny.

  She’s wearing a cute Agnès B cabbage rose print blouse, smart black skirt and short black boots. And holding a camcorder.

  Brock is sitting next to the senator in seat 1B. The croissants on the campaign jet aren’t French bakery quality or anything but they’re not bad. Rogers has a nibble and turns to Brock.

  “I’ve come to the conclusion that I actually want the people in Pennsylvania, the voters, to see who I am, who I really am. I don’t know what the result will be. But, for me personally, I’d rather succeed or fail based on who I really am.”

  He has the same earnest look he had the previous day when he teared up talking about Connie and her determination. “Not some plastic Ken doll that you put up in front of audiences. That’s not me.”

  And so begins Fanny’s series of webisodes. In short order Fanny tapes, collects and catalogs more than a dozen video clips. These are posted on the senator’s Facebook page, with short, matter-of-fact titles: 3:55PM: Arrive at Town Hall, Pittsburgh; 6:30PM: Wheels Up, En Route, Allentown; 8:30PM: Law and Order Society Reception, Philadelphia.

  Day Two of videography sees the senator and his entourage boarding another campaign plane. Rogers has a seat next to Michael Weldman, his speechwriter. They’ve got important work to do. But Rogers’ mind is not on the finishing touch he’s supposed to put on the speech he’ll deliver shortly after the plane lands in Harrisburg. He pays Weldman little attention, and instead grins at Fanny and the camera she has trained on him.

  “If any of these guys aren’t nice to you, you just let me know.”

  Ha ha ha. Laughs issue forth from the seats around the senator. But not from Barton Brock, who barely manages a tight smile. He’s focused on business, been around the bend with duplicitous sirens before, and neither Fanny nor her flowery blouse make any difference to him.

  Rogers holds a yellow legal pad up to Fanny’s camera.

  “I just finished my foreign policy speech. It’s sure to ruffle a few feathers. Can you read it?”

  “Yes, I can read it,” says Fanny moving the camera from Senator Rogers’ smile to the yellow pad in his hand. “ ‘Into.’ Into?” she says, trying to comprehend.

  “No, it says ‘Intro,’ ” Rogers explains. “I don’t know what that’s going to be yet. I’ll make it up when we get there.”

  Into. Intro. Fanny is embarrassed to have confused the two. She makes a mental note to focus a little more carefully.

  Inside the Pennsylvania State Education Association, she stands just to the left of the podium where Rogers will deliver his foreign policy speech. Five minutes before showtime, he pulls a Mont Blanc fountain pen from his jacket pocket and scratches a few final thoughts on his legal pad.

  He’s up and running a few moments later.

  “Enough,” he says. “Our time has come. Let’s focus on building our own infrastructure, our own economy, our own education resources. Let’s end our policy of intervention, occupation and nation building on far shores. Instead let us strengthen America’s values, America’s resources, America’s future. Ladies and gentlemen, there is work to be done. Real work. Right here at home, in the land we love.”

  The nuances of the start of Rogers’ speech may have been lost on Fanny and perhaps the rest of the assembled State Education Association members in the room. But the applause is no less thunderous for that. It’s red ball time again! Rogers and team are satisfied with their efforts and revel in their reception.

  Back on board the campaign plane that evening, Rogers takes a quiet moment out to consider his success. He is distracted, however, by Michael Weldman’s shoes. And the sudden memory that Fanny’s camera is, as it has now been for days, probably rolling.

  Rogers barely misses a beat. He looks up at Fanny and her camera and says in a cool-as-a-cucumber, of-course-you’re-there-watching-me kind of way, “Are those shoes cool? I have no idea what’s cool.”

  Rogers smiles at the lens. Will Fanny help set him straight? What is cool? What shoes does she like? Then he’s back on his senatorial track.

  “Do you think most people have any idea what we are doing when we’re off stage? I mean, really, 24/7 we’re programmed to stay on message, to say what’s safe and political,” Rogers continues. “It’s hard to shed all that. I think it helps to have you filming all the time—like now when I’m thinking, like real people do, about things like shoes—instead of just when I’m standing in front of a crowd. I absolutely believe this videotaping has the potential to change how we campaign, in a very good way. I mean it’s like having the eyes of T.J. Eckleburg upon you all the time.”

  Fanny gets the reference to The Great Gatsby, which she read in her eleventh-grade English class, and is temporarily distracted. But she is intent on not losing focus.

  So much so that she doesn’t think to respond when the senator says, “Are those shoes cool, Fanny? What do you think?”

  The camera is rolling again later that evening, after the senator’s staff dinner. Rogers retires to his room in the Radisson Hotel. (Why are hotel drapes always made out of heavier cloth than drapes anywhere else? It definitely adds to the cocoon-like feel of the generic hotel room and contributes to the idea that a hotel is a separate universe, entire unto itself.)

  Relieved not to have to concentrate on policy issues, Fanny returns to issues closer to the senator’s emotional bone.

  “You’ve had a lot of experience with suffering. You’ve spent much of your life as a lawyer representing people who have suffered as a result of corporate irresponsibility or oversights. What has this taught you?”

  The senator shows no sign of the exhaustion that might slow a lesser man who spent an entire day racing around the state, pumping hands, exchanging views, making promises, refining promises, pumping more hands.

  “All the pain I’ve witnessed has been part of my own personal faith journey. Because I’ve done what I think a lot of Americans have done, which is…I was raised in a very Christian home. But when I went to college, I drifted from my faith. Even after my brother, sister and mother died in a car accident, I drifted. After Connie and I got married, I drifted still. We went to church, of course, but I did not have the kind of day-to-day living faith I have today. But in 2000, on a day I will never forget, when Connie was diagnosed, my faith came roaring back.”

  Fanny switches off the camcorder. She is moved. Rogers is moved. They stare blankly at one another, tears in their eyes. Fanny makes a barely audible, but affecting, gulping noise.

  “I’m so sorry,” she tells Rogers, “I’m so unprofessional! It’s just that…all that death. And illness. Overwhelming. So much loss…”

  Rogers reaches for her forehead. “Fanny,” he says, “you’re burning up. Take that jacket off.”

  Fanny stands up and unzips her leather jacket and lays it on the chair, on top of the camcorder.

  Rogers takes Fanny’s hand, steadies her, leads her over to the bed and sits her down.

  “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry,” Fanny says.

  “Stop apologizing. You’re working too hard.” Rogers sounds sincere.

  “I so want my videos to be good. To show everyone what a truly good man you are.” Fanny straightens herself up on the bed.

  Rogers is sheer reassurance. “They’ve been great. I hear we’re getting a lot more traffic on my Facebook page.”

  “Really?”

  “Absolutely.” Rogers is happy to supp
ly whatever medicine Fanny requires. “Yes, yes. Let me tell you, they’ve won over a lot of skeptics.”

  “Not Brock,” says Fanny.

  “He’s old school. He’ll come around.”

  “He doesn’t like me very much.”

  “No. No. He’s just overprotective.”

  “I’m just doing my job,” says Fanny. Again, that endearing earnestness.

  “I know that,” says Rogers. “And I’m really the only one whose opinion matters.”

  “You are such a good man,” says Fanny. She lays her head on Rogers’ shoulder.

  “Miss Cours. Miss Cours. What am I going to do with you?”

  The conversation is taking a new direction.

  “As my grandmother would say,” Fanny offers, “the proof is in the pudding.” They both laugh. Fanny looks into the senator’s eyes.

  “Why are you so good to me?” The words slip out of Fanny’s mouth. She isn’t thinking about what she’s saying. Everything is so natural, easy.

  Rogers is having an easy time too. “Because I believe in you, Fanny, and I believe in what you’re doing. What we’re doing.”

  “What are we doing?”

  Rogers pulls Fanny into his arms and kisses her hard on the mouth. They fall back onto the bed in a tangle of limbs.

  The senator pulls away, but just for a moment. He holds Fanny’s face in his hands. Then, beginning with her nose and moving then to her eyes—first the left, then the right—and back to the corner of her mouth, he covers her with kisses.

  Have you ever looked at someone and thought: Take me, nothing on earth matters but that you kiss me hard and have me whole and crush me with your body? This is what Fanny is thinking.

  Rogers thinks, How can I get her clothes off?

  The senator slides his hand between Fanny’s legs. He feels her heat. He’s looking for a go-ahead. And it looks like he has it. Bravo! he thinks.

  Fanny thinks, Lee Rogers, you are the love of my life.

  Lee Rogers unbuttons Fanny Cours’ blouse. He looks into her eyes to see how emphatically they are saying “Yes.” Satisfied with what he sees, he slips his thumb behind the band of her Le Mystère bralette which, in one quick move (a practiced slide of thumb and forefinger), he removes. The senator takes in the young girl and her fetching half nakedness.