“Here,” she said as she took her seat. She held up her camera, scrolling through the most recent images. “Do that.”
Andy had flown up earlier in the day from D.C. to put in an appearance at an afternoon talk-news-entertainment program called Your World, which broadcast in the Boston area at noon. Despite his request that the issue of the vice president’s current “situation” be left out of the discussion (“I’m here to push product,” Andy had joked, waving his book in the air), the bewitching Lebanese-Australian co-host of the show had pressed him nonetheless.
“Seriously, Senator. If you’re not aware that your name is being bandied about as a possible replacement for Vice President Wyeth, then you are seriously out of touch.”
Andy’s reply had been that if in fact he was so out of touch, then what sort of vice president did she really think he would make? The woman had flashed her chocolate eyes mischievously.
“Oh. A very handsome one. We already know that much.”
Andy made a scheduled appearance that afternoon at Booksmith in Brookline, where he spoke briefly about his book to a sizable crowd, then settled in at a table to sign copies. Two local news outfits had sent crews to the store, but this time the publicist was able to act as a firewall and insist that the crews only take footage of the event; there would be no interviewing the senator. Of course, there was nothing to keep the customers who were lined up to get their books signed from expressing their thoughts to Andy about the current uncertainties within the Beltway. Andy fielded the comments with a practiced nonchalance, disarming jokes, declarations of his complete confidence in the system and the American people: his ready arsenal of nonresponse responses.
The evening’s event was at a bookstore in Cambridge, and all of the chairs were filled by the time Andy and his publicist arrived. The standing-room-only crowd extended back from the events area all the way to the magazines section. The publicist was pleased.
Just before the senator was scheduled to begin his talk, a woman with tousled ginger-colored bangs and a terrifically appealing smile materialized in front of him and planted a kiss on his lips. A flash of confusion played over Andy’s face, then he caught hold of the woman’s arms.
“My God. Mrs. Miniver. Is that you?”
Christine poked her fingers into her hair. “Spur of the moment. You like it?”
“You look fantastic.”
She gave him a playful scowl. “And how did I look before?”
Andy laughed. “I’m sorry, lady, but is the word stupid tattooed on my forehead? You could be wearing a gunnysack and be as bald as a cue ball and I’d still see my sweet, loving angel.”
Christine’s eyes rolled. “Oh my God, please. I flew all the way up here for a crock like that?”
Andy introduced Christine to the publicist, and the two chatted while Andy had a word with the bookstore’s point person about his introduction. The publicist told Christine that he had reserved a chair for her in the front row, but Christine said she would prefer to stand.
“I’d like to take some pictures. Will that be a problem?”
She was assured that it wouldn’t be. The bookstore rep introduced Andy to the crowd, and the senator launched into his spiel. The spiel was mainly canned, but Andy was good at making it sound fresh. His eyes traveled across the faces before him, connecting directly with as many as possible. Generally, they laughed where he wanted them to and were rapt where they should be rapt. Andy was a little annoyed when another TV news crew appeared halfway through his presentation and flicked on its glaring lights, but he did his best not to let on.
Considerably more distracting than the camera lights was his own wife. Andy was long accustomed to Christine’s darting about with her camera, but tonight was different. Andy had not merely been playing spouse politics when he’d told Christine that her new hairstyle looked fantastic. It did. Not that she needed any years trimmed off, but the more casual style served that function anyway. On a whim, Andy decided to bypass the several excerpts he usually chose to read from and instead read from the section he had written about his first encounter with the daughter of then-ambassador Hoyt, back in their college days. Christine was standing off to the side of the crowd, some twenty or so rows back, and when she heard what her husband was reading, she stopped taking pictures and lowered her camera. As Andy recounted those golden days of their first getting to know each other, Christine was surprised to realize that tears were rising into her eyes. No less so than when Andy brought the section to a nifty close.
“To this day she has remained the source of light in my life.”
He closed the book and gestured toward the woman with the glistening eyes and the camera slung around her neck.
“I ask you. Am I not right? Is she not absolutely radiant?”
Hours later, Andy and Christine made love for the first time in over a week. The hotel bed was huge and the couple hungrily explored its acreage. As his wife moved slickly beneath him, so perfectly calibrated with his own movements, Andy swore to himself yet again that his silly risky days were behind him. Why in the world would he unnecessarily put his perfect, perfect life in peril?
Was the word stupid tattooed on his forehead?
Andy was resolved. Christine was all the woman he ever needed. Ever. The visceral relief that surged through his system as this determination announced itself to him was palpable. Christine felt it. She squirmed beneath him, trying to accommodate this very evident infusion of energy that was inhabiting her husband.
“Jesus, Andy,” she whispered into his rough cheek. “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus…”
After a late breakfast, the Fosters rented a car and drove up to Marblehead for some beach time. A skittish wind forced them into purchasing a pair of heavy sweatshirts before they headed out onto the sand.
Christine made a point of keeping her camera in the car. She loved the rough ocean here and the massive black boulders scattered about the sand, and she could handily have taken dozens of pictures. But she didn’t. For once, her instinct was to put the camera aside and enjoy the time with her husband unfiltered.
Christine and Andy had still barely broached the subject of the Chris Wyeth mess. Andy had flown back to D.C. first thing the Monday morning after Easter, and their several phone conversations over the week had drifted in other directions. Besides which, Christine told herself, Chris made his play to the nation on television the other night, professing his innocence of all alleged charges. He was going to fight this thing. The whole question could well be moot.
An elderly couple walking the opposite direction on the beach recognized Senator Andy. They were solid New England Yankees with lined, weathered faces and cotton-white hair, their worn and faded casual garb the slightly shabbier cousins of what nowadays fills the pages of the L.L.Bean and Lands’ End catalogs. The man immediately engaged Andy on the subject of the vice presidency mess. The couple bookended Andy, giving him little space to escape. Christine was able to wander off without objection. She stepped down to the flat sand, bracing herself against the first rush of water as it rushed up to her ankles.
Gazing on the turbulent water, Christine allowed herself to admit how much anger had been crashing about within her of late. It seemed so plainly evident now that her husband had been moving in and out of a sort of fugue state over the past week. Or at least as fugue as someone such as Andy was likely to get. Naturally, the Chris Wyeth issue was weighing on his mind. Not only was there hanging in the air the surreal possibility of Andy’s being asked by President Hyland to consider stepping into the potential void, but for goodness’ sake, Chris Wyeth was such an old acquaintance of Andy’s! There was a lot of history there. It was only natural that Andy would be preoccupied with his friend’s troubles. Those moments of drift that Christine could now identify in her husband over the past six or seven days were perfectly natural. In one way of looking at it, it was insensitive of Christine not to draw Andy out on the matter. At least to the point of finding out if he wanted to discuss
it.
Andy stepped up behind her. The Yankee septuagenarians had finished with their grilling and were continuing down the coast. He wrapped his arms around Christine, and the two stood in a long silence, watching the waves of the ocean do what waves of the ocean do.
Christine bit down gently on her lip. Not now, she said to herself. Not yet.
They made love again back at the hotel, then fell into a pair of heavy naps. Christine rose more groggily from hers, and even after her shower she still felt a little as if she had been drugged. She towel-dried her hair and swept it into place with her fingers.
Nice.
Andy was to be interviewed that evening onstage at the JFK School of Government, in front of a paying audience. There would be a reception afterward, then a late dinner at the Beacon Hill home of Andy’s Massachusetts counterpart in the Senate.
While the two were getting dressed, Jim Fergus called. Andy took the call in his black socks and boxers, his white oxford shirt halfway buttoned. The conversation was short, though still long enough to irritate him. Christine, over by the dresser putting on her earrings, watched him in the mirror.
“Well, Jim,” Andy said testily. “How much nicer if you could just be up onstage and do all the damn talking for me. How about that? I’ll just sit off to the side looking cute.”
He flipped the phone closed and tossed it onto the bed. “I should have been a fucking Yorkshire sheep farmer,” he muttered. The comment was a standing joke between Andy and Christine. Its intention was for levity, but Andy’s mood seeped through completely.
“Yorkshire farmers have troubles, too,” Christine said.
“They don’t have Jim Fergus.”
“Honey, you love Jim.”
Andy didn’t want to hear it. “Well, I guess if I pay the man to do my worrying for me, he’s doing a bang-up job.” He gestured at the phone on the bed. “In the event that the topic comes up tonight, which it will, he doesn’t want me to say one single word in Chris’s defense. He just used the phrase ‘Don’t align with a loser.’ Isn’t that sweet? Jim is positive that Chris is going down. He has these mice he listens to.”
“Mice?”
Andy waved a hand. “Never mind. The point is, he feels it’s time to start putting a clear distance between Chris and myself.”
He reached for his pants and put them on. He tugged his belt tight. “Essentially, Jim wants me to moralize. I’m to talk about transparency and honesty and all that good stuff. All in the abstract, of course. For Christ’s sake, I couldn’t be specific about what Chris is supposed to have done if I wanted to. I’m totally in the dark about it.”
Christine was running dark lines around her eyes. “Probably a good place to be.”
“I suppose. Jim wants me to use the word integrity. At least four times, he said. He was serious. That’s my word: integrity. Four times at a minimum. He’s got this down to a science. He probably looked it up in the focus-group manual. Jim’s been pulling strings with Mitch Cutler’s and Barry Jefferson’s people. They’re both scheduled to hit the talk shows tomorrow. Would you care for a preview of what they’re going to say?”
Christine paused with her lipstick and addressed her husband in the mirror. “Let me guess. ‘Senator Andrew Foster is a fine man. A man of real integrity.’”
“Exactly. I’m now wearing the scarlet I, thank you very much.”
“Well, it could be worse.”
Andy stepped up behind his wife. His scowling face hovered over her shoulder. He started in on his tie, but he was all knuckles. Christine swiveled around and took over the job for him.
“Here. You’re getting yourself all worked up. Hands off.”
With those dark lines etched around them, her beautiful green eyes had an almost Egyptian quality. As Andy looked down at her deftly working the tie, his sense of shame welled up. Shame and cowardice. His beautiful wife deserved better than he was giving. In all their years together, she had rarely complained about the bifurcation in their marriage brought on by his career, his workweek spent largely down in D.C. Theirs was already a relationship with unavoidable gaps; the last thing Christine deserved was to have her husband digging outright chasms. What she deserved was nothing less than complete honesty on Andy’s part. The short weekend was going so nicely for the two of them; they were being reminded of their potential as a couple. Everything could be perfect.
But it wasn’t. Andy watched his wife flipping the ends of his tie and his heart seized. Christine was loving a fraud. The man standing there was a facsimile of the husband she thought she had. For Christ’s sake, Andy thought, She doesn’t even know who I am.
He wanted to tell her. But that would be suicide. She would be justified in running the knot of his tie right up to his windpipe and squeezing it with all her might until the empty man toppled over dead. If he were in his right mind, he would welcome it.
Christine finished up the tie for him and patted him lightly on the chest.
“Time to buck up, Senator Big Shot. People aren’t paying good money tonight to listen to an old sourpuss.”
Christine stepped past him and over to the closet. Andy remained a moment, looking at his reflection in the mirror. He massaged his jaw and presented himself with the demeanor that was expected of him. She was right, of course. People were expecting certain things of him. But even as he practiced his winning smile, his heart dropped deep into the abyss.
Someone did know.
This message is for the coward. You know who you are, and I know who you are. That is what is important. I know you…
The interview went well. Andy’s interlocutor was Scot Lehigh, the Globe columnist, and Lehigh opened the interview speaking of cracking open Andy’s book first thing in the morning in his hammock up at his cottage in Maine and how he had missed an entire day of windsurfing as a result of his being unable to put the book down.
“You owe me, Senator,” Lehigh joked.
Andy graced the anecdote. “Next time I’ll write a dud, Scot. I promise.”
For the bulk of the interview Lehigh held to matters relating to Andy’s book. Only near the conclusion of the event did the columnist signal the shift of the discussion with both his body language and a palpable eagerness in his voice.
“Senator, I’d be tossed out of the fraternity if I weren’t to ask you. You know what’s coming. Chris Wyeth.”
Andy leaned forward in his chair and leveled the columnist with a deadpan stare of intensity.
“Scot, could you maybe put that in the form of a question?”
The audience laughed, as did Lehigh. Andy continued on, speaking eloquently about the vice president. He did not distance himself from the embattled executive. At the same time, he certainly didn’t take the man into any figurative bear hugs. Mainly Andy stuck with an appreciative recitation of Chris Wyeth’s impressive résumé and his list of quantifiable achievements as a husband, a father, and a public servant. Christine noted, if no one else did, that “as a friend” did not make the cut.
Overall, the senator was affable and witty. He’d peppered the interview with several lengthy anecdotes. Before wrapping up, Andy spoke movingly on the role of public service and of his passion for seeking solutions for those who had little voice in matters that profoundly affect their own lives. In all, it was vintage Andy Foster. Even from her seat in the front row, Christine could sense that the crowd was eating out of her husband’s hand. As she knew all too well, he was a hard person not to like.
And he had delivered the word integrity seven times.
Okay, Christine thought as she rose to join the standing ovation. We’ve got that clear now.
Dimitri Bulakov spent most of the weekend drinking and smoking and watching television and yelling at his wife. The only times the television was not on were when Dimitri nodded off into a deep enough sleep that Irena could dare shut it off. Those infrequent periods of silence — Irena had long since trained herself to deafness with regard to Dimitri’s raspy snoring — were b
lessings. Irena hated the television, and she hated the hours of her husband’s life lost to the insipid garbage that Dimitri watched. Hours adding up to days, days adding up to months. It was such a waste, and it left her so lonely.
Dimitri was too nervous about being recognized by one of Aleksey Titov’s goons to dare venture outside the room. Dimitri’s brother had called him on his cell phone on Friday in a state of despair, telling Dimitri what Titov and his soulless employee had done to him. Dimitri had barely been able to recognize his own brother’s voice.
“Dimitri. Whatever this is, you must stop. Our business is destroyed, Dimitri. I… I have been mutilated. Why is this, Dimitri? Whatever you are doing, you must stop. Aleksey will kill you, Dimitri. You and Irena both. This is a fact.”
Dimitri had instructed his brother to leave Brighton Beach immediately. “Go away, Leonard. In a week, I promise, I will make Titov happy and I will make you happy. You must trust me. I will make everything good.”
He also told his brother not to bother calling him again.
“This is for your safety, Leonard. I will call Titov and tell him myself. You will have no more contact with me. He has no reason to hurt you again. I will not be using this phone again. You see? His threats to you will be no use. It is now me who is calling all of the shots, Leonard. Trust me.”
Dimitri had given Irena money to go out and purchase a disposable cell phone. Irena almost called Leonard while she was on the errand, but she had gotten scared that if she did so, she might inadvertently cause more trouble for her brother-in-law.
With her new blond hair and large sunglasses, Irena was the one who could move safely around the streets of Coney Island, though Dimitri insisted that she spend as little time as necessary away from the room. Mainly she fetched cigarettes and beer and food, mostly fried chicken and potatoes.
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