Upstairs, he tossed three suits in a garment bag, overnight clothes, two pairs of gym shorts, running shoes, and the requisite accessories. At the last minute he exchanged one suit for a tuxedo, recalling something about a black-tie event. Then moments later, cursed the decision when he couldn’t find the dry cleaning that contained his tuxedo shirt. With little time to spare, he finally opted to forgo the shirt. If needed, he could always have Rene pick one up for him when in D.C. That’s what she was there for. To assist.
The house felt cold, lonely, and empty. He couldn’t get out of there fast enough, saying his angered good-bye on the telephone answering machine. He pressed the Memo button, it beeped, and he began speaking. “Hi, Connie. It’s me. Had to catch a plane tonight and go back to Washington for a Candidates’ Workshop. I should be home by the weekend. Maybe we can talk about things then…” Mitch paused too long and the machine automatically shut off. He pressed Memo one more time. “Me again. I’ll call when I get in and leave the number where I’ll be staying.”
Once in the car and on the way to the airport, he recalled that he’d forgotten to say the requisite “I love you.” That was how they usually ended messages on the machine or on the phone.
This time Mitch hadn’t even thought to say it.
Connie hadn’t gone out drinking. After Gina had left, she’d spent the entire afternoon phone-soliciting for the Cathedral Children’s Workshop, a nonprofit theater group for disadvantaged kids. For five hours and without a break, she dialed and pleaded, cajoled, asked kindly, gave friendly reminders, and even occasionally sounded like Mitch as she rose upon the soapbox and decried Congress for cutting funding for the National Endowment for the Arts.
The campaign had been harder on her than expected. Where she’d come to regard Mitch as her hearth and home, now she was sharing him with Fitz, the campaign staff, and the better part of South County, it would seem.
Then there was the damned subject of children, which Mitch now jokingly referred to as the Royal Breeding Program, a failed science experiment.
“Hi. This is Connie Dutton and I’m calling from the Cathedral Children’s Workshop. Am I talking to Mrs. Jo Anne Thomas?”
“Didn’t somebody call me about this six months ago?”
“I’m sure they did, ma’am. But with the cutbacks in crucial NEA funding at the Workshop, we’re forced to call our subscribers twice a year now. The lease is up on the theater space, so we’re trying to raise enough funds for a down payment.”
Connie knew the drill by heart, so she barely listened to her own words. All she could think about was the Royal Breeding Program, her guilt over a childless marriage, and Mitch’s reluctance to adopt. She knew Fitz feared adoption and was glad that his candidate was cold on the idea. He’d counseled Mitch that any sudden move into the baby game would appear a cynical attempt to curry favor with the Family Values Crowd.
And Mitch had listened to him!
The theory was that children could wait. And should the couple change their minds, as a part of the House of Representatives, Mitch and Connie would be first in line for their pick of birth mothers seeking adopting parents. She cursed Fitz for making that decision for her.
She dialed another Workshop subscriber. “Hi, this is Connie Dutton and I’m calling from the Cathedral Children’s Workshop. Am I speaking with Mrs. Allison Reyes?”
“Yes?”
“Due to cutbacks in NEA funding—”
“Aren’t you married to Mitch Dutton?”
Connie wanted to say no. She wanted to get on with the call. “Yes, ma’am.”
“He’s a sonofabitch, your husband! After what he did to a good man like Shakespeare McCann.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way. But I’m calling today about the NEA and the Children’s Workshop.”
“Do you believe in God, Mrs. Dutton?”
“I do, yes.”
“Then pray for your husband. He needs to be saved.”
Connie hung up on the woman.
Save Mitch.
Hardly, she told herself. Her hopes for a baby and the marriage it would save had pretty much been left on the back burner to go bad. Their house was now stinking of her arrogant husband and the musty odor of isolation. Mitch was the front-runner. By most accounts, he was going to win. Next he’d be demanding that she pack up her precious home and move east.
“The hell with him,” she said, further soured by the cheap note he’d left Memoed on the answering machine. The time stamp on the machine spoke electronically, marking the moment of Mitch’s message at shortly after six. It was now seven-fifteen. They’d missed each other by barely an hour.
Merle whined that he needed to go out, and Connie released the latch on the rear door. Merle pushed it open and he and Pearl gladly escaped her gloom. Her next stop was the liquor cabinet.
The Cathedral Evening Breeze reported that the sun would set that August evening at exactly 7:52. It was true, although the Breeze remained unread on the Duttons’ front porch, complete with a front-page story carrying an apologetic photo of Shakespeare McCann with his uncuffed hands engaged in an exonerated thumbs-up to the camera. By eight, Connie was drunk on tequila.
Eight-fifteen, the doorbell rang. Connie rose from the darkness of her sitting room and made her way to the foyer. Vanity forced her to regain some sort of balance before she swung the door open, without so much as checking the peephole.
“Look who I found,” giggled Gina, pulling Shakespeare up onto the porch, flush in the face of her girlfriend. In his own self-mocking gesture, McCann held up the Evening Breeze Connie had left on her front doorstep, and gave the same silly grin he’d given the camera.
And Connie laughed.
“That’s the papers. Always catchin’ your best side,” he smirked.
It was funny and hilariously ironic. The hated husband gone. The abandoned wife, rescued from her gloom by her best pal and the charming opposition himself.
“Don’t look like she’s gonna invite us in,” mused Shakespeare. “Maybe she’s too looped to know it’s us on her stoop. Maybe she thinks we’re Jehovah’s Witnesses.”
Gina laughed. “Well, don’t stand there looking dumb and drunk, girl. Invite us inside.”
“That’s if the pretty lady’ll have us,” offered Shakespeare, who withdrew from his coat pocket a Baggie of cannabis. “California-grown. Guaranteed to getcha happy.”
Without further thought, she swung open the door with an inviting “Come on in. Mi casa es su casa.”
“She’s drunk already,” said Gina, entering first and kissing Connie on the cheek.
Shakespeare followed. “Started the party without us? Makes us party crashers, I reckon.”
“No,” said Connie. Shutting the door and automatically latching it. “It just makes you late.”
EIGHT
APART FROM the delay in Houston, the American Flight to D.C. was uneventful. The entire trip, Mitch and Rene were seated side by side in the first-class cabin, enmeshed in work. Fitz had finagled the round-trip seats courtesy of some national party sponsors. The other half of the deal was a Potomac-view suite for the candidate at the Watergate Hotel. Flowers. Fruit basket. Complimentary champagne. Rene’s smaller room was booked three floors down and near the service elevator.
“Very nice,” said Mitch of his suite. “Fitz is obviously trying to get back in my good graces.”
“Is it working?” she said from her room phone.
“Jury’s still out. Now, what about dinner?”
“It’s late. Why don’t I talk to the concierge and get a recommendation.”
“Why don’t I talk to room service and we can eat in?” Mitch hadn’t said, “in my room.” Only because he hadn’t yet decided. She waited for the invitation. “We could eat here.”
“Or my room,” offered Rene.
“My room’s bigger.”
“Shall I bring the laptop?”
“Let’s leave the work for tomorrow.”
“Okay,” s
he said. “Should I order now, or when I get to the room?”
“What do you want? I’ll order from here.”
“Any old pasta will do.”
He thumbed through the room service menu. “Caesar salad?”
“That’ll be nice. And a glass of Merlot?”
“I’ll order a bottle.”
“I’ll be up in a minute.”
“A real minute or a female minute?”
“A woman’s minute.”
Mitch smiled, depressed the switch on the phone, thought of dialing Connie, but hung up instead. She’d cut him up good that morning. Spoken her mind, letting the lion loose and telling him that she didn’t believe in him anymore.
To love, to honor…
His stomach churned. Picking up the phone again, he dialed home. Three rings and he got the machine. She’s still out, he thought. Out bitching with Gina Sweet. “Well, fuck her!” he said. He hung up without leaving so much as the number of the hotel where he was staying.
Next he dialed his father and got another machine. “This is Q. Dutton and you got my machine. So don’t waste my time. Leave a brief message.”
“Hey, Pop. It’s Mitch. Sorry to miss you again. If you want to try me back, I’m in Washington, D.C., at the Watergate of all places.” Had he actually hooked up with his father, Mitch wondered what he would’ve said.
“Hey, Pop. I’m in the seat of government. No, no. Connie’s back at home, hanging out with a sorority sister. They’re probably taking turns going down on a bottle of tequila. Me? Oh, I’ve got this woman on the way up to my room. A real dish. Dinner’s ordered. Bottle of wine. What’s that? Am I gonna screw her? Well, Pop. I actually haven’t decided yet. What do you think I should do? Oh, really. So your philosophy is ‘Do as I say, not as I do’? Is that it? Is that what you told Mom before she died?
Quentin Dutton had never made it a secret, nor had he apologized for his pathological love of the ladies. Not while he Was married. And not after his poor wife died. If she’d lived, Mitch would sometimes try and imagine her. Alive. What she’d look like. What she’d have thought of Connie. Or her later years without grandchildren. It seemed to suit Quentin just fine. Progeny were nothing more than a biological by-product of an active libido.
He called room service, ordered up the meal, then cut the air conditioning and opened all the windows, expecting, maybe, some kind of breeze off the Potomac. There was none. The air was thick, still, and smelling of the city. Dinner arrived thirty minutes later, wheeled in on a service cart by a bright, smiling Jamaican gentleman. Mitch tipped the waiter, shut the door, and checked his watch. It was ten o’clock straight up. Nine o’clock in Cathedral.
“You should lock your door.”
He swiveled from the window. Rene was already in the suite, the door closed behind her. She threw the dead bolt. “You are in the big, bad city, you know.”
“Otherwise known as the seat of democracy.”
“I need an invitation.”
“But you’re already inside.”
“I can always go back to my room.”
“Please, come in.” He crossed from the window and held out his hand. He drew her further into the room. “What do you think?”
“I think Fitz is kissing your rump.”
“And he should.”
“I’m likely to agree.”
Rene was wearing a long prairie dress, casual and very cool. Sleeveless and backless. Mitch followed her as she eased over to the dinner cart, leaning at the waist to lift the covers off the entrees and give them her nose.
“Hmmm,” she said. “Smells okay for room service.”
Moving in behind her, he placed his hand on the bare small of her back, then slowly, with just two knuckles, traced her spine, all the way up to her neck. Her hair was still wet from a shower. Her makeup, slight and fresh, as she turned an eye toward her candidate.
“That felt nice,” she said, holding the pose. She locked herself at the elbows and gripped the cart.
With his left hand he found himself lifting her dress. Not by any direction or intent, but by instinct. The subconscious doors were open, and desire was bubbling up to a surface temperature of ninety-eight point six. The right hand moved from the easy curve of her neck, back under her arm and inside the loose dress. Once there, he found a small breast that was moist from her sweat, the nipple sharpened by the wandering fingers.
“That’s nice, too,” she said.
“Stop me,” Mitch found himself saying.
“Oh, I don’t think so.”
It was his game and she was the willing contestant. She arched her back and swayed subtly up against him. He carried her dress higher until she was exposed. A glistening ass. No panties. It shocked him. And he took a step back.
“Oh. You stopped,” sighed Rene, failing to hide her disappointment.
“You wouldn’t. So I guess I will.”
“Before you do something you’ll regret?”
“You were expecting me to make some kind of move, weren’t you?”
“Expecting? No. But optimistic? Yes,” she said. “A girl can pray for only so much.”
“And if I didn’t?” he asked.
“If you didn’t what? Wanna fuck me?”
“If I didn’t want to.”
“Then I’d continue to play the fantasy in my head,” she answered, moving barely a muscle. “Then I’d just finish myself off later.”
Mitch backed off even further. The magic plane was shattered. Reality had returned. “So you fantasize about me?”
“Sure. What about you? Any fantasies, Mitch?”
“About what?”
“Do you fantasize about me?”
“From time to time. Yeah.”
“How’s this, then,” she offered. “You watch me having a fantasy about you.” She was still bent over the cart. Stock-still. Arched back. Facing away from him. And now she slipped her own hand up between her legs. She caressed herself.
“No,” he said.
“Do it, then.”
“Wait.”
“Don’t wait! Just do it!”
“Is that what you want?”
“Forget about what I want Jesus. I want what you want. Don’t you know that?” She shuddered with frustration. Stuck. She’d taken it too far. If his answer was no, she didn’t want to see him again. She’d lower her dress, turn and walk out the door. It would be over. The ill-fated affair. The campaign. All of it. She begged, “Please, just tell me.”
“What I want,” he finished.
“Yes!”
“I want you to turn around and look at me.”
A long moment passed before she reluctantly released herself from the dinner cart, straightened up, brushed the hair from her face, then turned. Her eyes were red and full of rejection.
“Now. I want you to walk over here and kiss me,” he said.
A nod from Rene. She kept her eyes on the floor as she walked the five short steps over to Mitch. When she got there, she looked up. “Kiss you how?”
“Like you love me,” he said. “Like you believe in me.”
It wasn’t a hard part to play. She pushed off from her toes, inching up to his lips. She gave her mouth to him, and with it, all of the heart and heat she could muster.
“How was that?” she asked, her lips parted, ready to give more.
The kiss stirred the candidate, filling him with a brief reserve. It was enough for the moment and the night. He looked at her, regretting every word he was about to utter, and every dirty idea that he was about to unleash.
“That’ll do,” he said. “That’ll do for now.”
By nine the impromptu party up on Flower Hill was in full tilt. The stately Victorian already had the wafting smell of marijuana applied to the antique upholstery, and the sound of the seventies thumping in a bad disco eight-track flashback. Actually, with a little urging from Gina, they’d forgone the compact discs and had dug in for the long-lost needle-in-the-groove taste of vinyl.
“Do the Bump!” And the girls would try.
“Okay, now. The Hustle. Y’all remember the Hustle!” The girls remembered the Hustle the best they could.
“Now the Grind.”
“Aw, hell. That one’s for strippers,” said Gina.
“I think it goes like this.” And Connie was grinding away with her best simulation of what a dance called “the Grind” implied. She’d never seen a stripper, though somewhere in the deep recesses of her worst mind she remembered an episode of “Charlie’s Angels” in which Farrah Fawcett and Jaclyn Smith went undercover in a strip club to bag some pockmarked bad guy.
So there she was. Connie Dutton. In her own living room fearlessly doing her “Charlie’s Angels” Grind for Shakespeare McCann. Eyes closed with the music thumping:
That’s the way, uh-huh, uh-huh. I like it, uh-huh, uh-huh…
“Whoooee. You’re givin’ me a hard-on, Mrs. D.”
“Excuse me?” Connie stopped and opened her eyes, locking looks with Shakespeare. Stretched out on the couch with his arms splayed left and right, he tried to defuse her with that charming-assed grin of his. Steeled by the cannabis, she stayed locked in the gaze, then coyly tilted her view down a notch to see if she could actually detect a rise in his pants.
“Oh, don’t look. That’s what he wants.”
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