It worked. In fact, it worked great. At least for a while. How can a gal keep up a viable suicidal depression when she’s shopping with her best friend?
Carole used a second key to open the carved oak door to the left of the staircase. On the floor were several dribbles of melting snow.
“We’re in the dining room, Carole.”
Mitch’s apartment had never been professionally decorated and yet, it had that marvelously muted elegance Mario Buatta and other chi-chi decorators spent careers perfecting. The living room was painted a hunter green, which provided a dramatic backdrop for Mitch’s collection of early twentieth-century black-and-white photographs of the Colorado landscape and Native American children. Two Texas lounging sofas idled on a plush Aubusson rug. Nothing went together and, precisely for that reason, everything looked perfect.
She dropped her shopping bag and coat on a brown leather club chair and kicked off her pumps. Her toes were freezing.
“What a day,” she declared. But any launching of her tale of woe was cut short.
Mitch was a tall, impressive figure of a man. When he rose from his chair at the double-length dining room table, he gave the impression of someone who had been uncomfortably making do in doll furniture. He wore his hand-tailored suit well, perhaps because he carried neither an extra ounce of fat nor a too-bulky gathering of muscle. He was undeniably handsome, but saved from a life as a Calvin Klein model by a small scar on his chin. He had dark, shiny hair that always looked just a week beyond needing a cut and just moments before having an eager companion run her fingers through it.
When he took her into his arms, Carole completely forgot about Private Bank. In fact, that was the problem with Mitch. He was such a great kisser—oh, now, when he put his lips on hers!—she could have given up her house, her job, her very name to be part of his life. Forever. And the other things he could do, would do, made the very sensible part of her go weak.
A discreet clearing of throat.
“Oh, hi, Todd,” Carole said, pulling out of Mitch’s arms.
“Good evening, Miss Titus,” Mitch’s chief of staff said, bobbing his head. She might tell Sam that he should call her Carole, but it was fun to work this dweeby prep school boy. “I was just leaving.”
“Good,” Mitch said.
Todd shoveled his papers, pencils, calculator, Day Planner and thirty-five other essentials into the briefcase that he couldn’t quite close. He stood up, knocking his head on one of twelve crystal-laden arms of the chandelier. Embarrassed,
Todd’s face turned beet-red, a color that clashed badly with his freckles and Irish setter hair.
“I’ll just be . . . you know, going, I mean . . . out,” he said. He backed out of the dining room. When he slammed the door to the foyer, Carole sighed. A heartbeat later, they heard a grunt, a clattering of a hundred objects on the foyer’s marble floor and an expletive.
“He has such a crush on you,” Mitch observed.
“Is that why he’s such a klutz?”
“Absolutely. You make him nervous. Have you always had this effect on men?”
“Always,” Carole said firmly, with an exaggerated roll of her eyes.
“How ’bout if I try to make you nervous?”
He pulled her to him and seemed ready to kiss her again, but then abruptly unclasped the hook on her skirt and let it drop to the floor.
“Tweed is not conducive to my juvenile desire to cop a feel,” he observed. “No panty hose?”
“Panty hose is so out,” Carole said.
“That works for me. I like when your legs are bare. Because you have the best damn legs in Washington. Smooth as silk and perfectly shaped. A national treasure.”
“Flatterer.”
He kissed her.
“You’re feeling a little better now?”
“This afternoon I was very upset.”
“Now you move on.”
Since taking office, Mitch had learned that holding a grudge, hanging onto a heartache, mulling over a setback—these were not viable options.
“No, wait,” Carole said.
“Oh, boy, I shoulda kept my mouth shut.”
She pulled out of his embrace and led him to the living room. He paused at the pocket doors to watch her—after all, it isn’t every day that a man gets permission to ogle a woman wearing a nothing of a chiffon blouse and a Cosabella silk tap pant. He shrugged off his jacket as Carole turned to face him.
“This Senate stuff is driving me up the wall,” she said. She sat on one of the loungers, glancing back to the bay window facing the street to be sure the voile sheers were closed. “Even aside from the issue of your running with a disreputable crowd.”
“Senators, representatives, Cabinet members . . .”
“And lobbyists. Don’t forget lobbyists.”
“They have their own section of hell reserved for them.”
“And reporters.”
He sat down beside her. He ran his fingers through his hair, a gesture that normally reduced her to gawking.
“I’m hoping to be part of a new trend—Okay Guys in Washington,” he said.
“Not a bad slogan. Take your hand off my thigh, I’m trying to have a serious conversation with you.”
He held his hands up as if she were a bandit and he her helpless victim.
“Mitch, are you going to run in the upcoming election?”
All the playfulness went out of his face.
“My seat opens in just a year and a half. I might have to.”
“Have to?”
“When you called me this afternoon, I was in a meeting about this with the chairman of the party. The Very Reverend Jesse Carver is planning to oppose me for the nomination.”
“He can’t get elected. He’s a right-wing loony. Did you know he wants to pass laws requiring people to carry handguns? Says that it’ll stop crime if old ladies learn to shoot.”
Mitch nodded. He tugged at his tie.
“He might be crazy, but he has a tremendously loyal following. And he’s got money.”
“NRA money. Right-to-life money. Religious right money.”
“Money’s money. And he could win.”
“You’re more popular,” she said, before remembering that this conversation was supposed to be about not running. “I mean, anybody’s more popular.”
He didn’t hear the second part.
“Among Republicans, Democrats, and Independents combined. In the primary, I’d be running only for Republican votes.”
“So, fine, the Republicans nominate Carver. The Democrats nominate a middle-of-the-road kind of guy and the state would be better off in the end. You’re just upset because there’d be a Democrat in the seat.”
With a fifty-fifty split in the Senate, every seat counted.
“I wouldn’t mind. I get along great with our other senator and he’s a Democrat. And Breaux likes me.”
“Louisiana Breaux?”
“Yeah. His position, and mine, is that with the two extreme sides of each party nearly equal in influence, it’s the moderates in the middle who must form bonds. I told him at the meeting today that I supported him on that.”
“Why would the chairman of the Republican party and the Democratic senator from Louisiana consent to being in the same room?”
Relations in Washington were as frosty as the steam rising up off the Potomac. All that talk of working together in a bipartisan manner—Puh-leeeeeze!, that was just for the network news and the New York Times.
“They both are pledging their support. They both want me to run.”
“The chairman I can understand. But you’d get the support of a Democrat?”
“His endorsement. Because the only name on the Democratic ballot is going to be Maurice Smith.”
“He’s an ecoterrorist. Nobody takes him seriously.”
“Except the Justice Department. Torching suburban homes outside Denver is ecoterrorism, Mitch.”
“You’re right, you’re right. He’s so
far to the left, I can’t tell if he’s more or less dangerous than Carver.”
“Oh. But you’re not going to run just because two very deranged people are. Or are you?”
He didn’t answer.
“Mitch, I’m beginning to think you like politics.”
“I like public service.”
“Oh, get out, politics is politics.”
“I don’t like the campaigning, it’s true. Seems to me it’s beauty contests for people who aren’t pretty enough for beauty contests.”
He stood up, pacing across the soft rug.
“I went into this because of a favor to a friend,” he said. Mitch had worked as Senator Snyder’s senior aide. He got a big promotion by the governor of Colorado when Senator Snyder’s wife developed pancreatic cancer and brought that popular senator’s career to a close. Mitch was appointed senator to fill the vacancy. “It started off as a favor to a friend, but now it’s something more. It’s about service. It’s about the public good. It’s about something a lot bigger than ego. Even mine.”
The average thirty-seven-year-old woman has heard, as a matter of scientific certainty, a gazillion politicians yakking away on a gazillion newscasts, campaign ads, talk shows, debates, town hall meetings. The words public and service are peppered throughout these yakfests. But when Mitch said it, boy, Carole actually believed him. It was the eyes, Carole thought—so pure, so innocent, so clear, so intense. She didn’t want to lose him, didn’t want to waste their time in conflict. And besides, who can have a rational discussion wearing just a nothing blouse and silk scanties?
“Let’s talk about this later,” she said, tugging at his sleeve. She wasn’t going to change his mind tonight so another course of action suggested itself.
He grumbled.
“Please?” she purred, trying very hard to recapture the good mood that ordinarily existed between them. “We’ll talk later, if you want. But not now.”
He looked at her. Tried to maintain a suitably stern and remote expression.
“I thought women were the ones who wanted to talk about things.”
“Not this one. I’ve got other things on my mind. And they don’t require much conversation. Come here.”
He sat down. Leaned back. Spread his arms out. Growled contentedly when she straddled him and pulled off his tie.
“Are all men as easy to wrangle?”
“Absolutely.”
She kissed him.
“I’m yours, baby, I’m yours,” he said.
When Carole was younger, getting excited—nipples-aching, leg-shaking, heartbreaking excited—only happened after a long bout of kissing and caressing. One difference in her sexuality—or maybe it was just in having a relationship with a bona fide hotboy—was that she could go from zero to sixty in one kiss.
“Do you have your ‘device’?” she asked. Referring to a condom as a birth control “device” had appealed to their strange sense of humor. Using a condom wasn’t Carole’s idea—she would have happily gone back on the pill. But Mitch was convinced that soon, very soon, they would want to try to make a baby—and then, he argued, they wouldn’t want to wait months to conceive.
“I thought you might be interested,” he said, pulling a plastic packet out of his shirt pocket.
“Such a Boy Scout,” she quipped. She undid the buttons on his shirt and yanked the tails out. When she pushed up his T-shirt, she thrilled at his smooth, muscular chest. Even though it was January, and Washington besides, his skin was like toasted caramel.
She unbuckled his belt. He sighed sharply and pushed her blouse up so that he could unclasp her bra.
“Oh, God, I could do this forever,” he groaned a few minutes later when she guided him into herself. “Forget being a senator. Just keep me as your love slave.”
“Mitch, please, look at me.”
He stared at her with an expression both vulnerable and confident. She liked his eyes, brown like cappuccino, and could measure his excitement, as it goaded her own, by the way his eyes met hers, turned wide and then seemed almost—but not quite—to fill with tears.
And then she felt the urgent rhythm of her orgasm, brought on by his gaze. As a moan escaped her lips, he bucked sharply. For what seemed like a place beyond time, but was really just the ordinary tick-tock of a minute . . .
Then they were quiet and Carole leaned forward, resting her head on his shoulder.
They startled when the doorbell rang.
“Shit,” Carole said. “That’s gotta be Todd.”
“Mr. Senator!” the aide called from the front porch. “Mr. Senator, we need to get you there by seven-thirty.”
“Does he always call you Mr. Senator?” Carole asked.
“He picked it up from Sam. I keep telling Todd to call me Mitch or Mr. Evans, if that makes him happy. But he insists. And Sam’s having the time of his life being a senator’s chauffeur. Which is good because he’s getting too old to do much at the ranch.”
The doorbell again. Todd’s muffled voice.
“Mr. Senator, I radioed ahead and the traffic is heavy on K Street, so if you would, I’d like to . . .”
“Cover your ears,” Mitch said, putting his palm over Carole’s hands and guiding both to her ears. “Todd! I’ll! Be! Just! A! Moment!”
“Where’d you learn to shout like that?”
“The Army. Right along with opening C rations with a Bic pen and keeping warm with a bicycle tire.”
“I don’t even want to know what you can do with a tire,” Carole said. She stood up and stretched a kink out of her knees. “I call dibs on the shower first.”
“Why don’t we share?”
“Because I have to shave my legs.”
“I’m a very experienced shaver. I do it every day, and sometimes, if I don’t want to look like Nixon, I do it twice.”
In ten minutes flat, Carole and Mitch stepped out of the town house. Carole wore her new dress, a knockoff of the Prada yellow poppies gown with ruffles cascading down the neckline, with a matching cashmere shawl. Unlike the original, this dress had a cotton lining, more appropriate for Washington. Sam whistled.
“Mighty nice,” he said, helping Carole into the car. “But I hope you’re going to be warm enough.”
“We’re getting in and getting out of a car. Forget the weather.”
Todd stammered a bit and jumped into the shotgun seat.
“Mr. Senator, I wanted to brief you on a few of the guests you’ll be seeing tonight. Secretary of the Interior . . .”
The black tinted privacy screen rolled up.
“Poor Todd,” Carole said.
Washington women had never given up their pastel suits for black and now that the editors of Vogue and W were coming around to color, the women in the Mayflower Hotel ballroom looked absolutely au courante. Lilac Dupioni suits with portrait collars. Kittenish pink structured numbers with matching jackets. Belted patterned wrap dresses by von Furstenberg. Never red, as that is the stump color, and after election day, women are more than happy to put it in the back of the closet.
Men were easy—gray, black or navy blue suits being the norm—but the last presidential election had provoked a fad for solid red ties with white shirts. And cowboy boots were back—ugh. The occasional dress uniform glittered with an array of medals over the officer’s heart.
Carole had attended enough of these events that she was able to match names and faces even when the people in question weren’t regulars on Sunday’s Meet the Press.
“What can I get you?” Mitch asked.
“White wine,” Carole said. “No, make it a club soda.”
He did a double take and then shrugged. Carole had been finding out what every woman knows—a relationship with a man puts five pounds on a woman. There weren’t many Lean Cuisine nights with Mitch and who could resist a bite—make that two—when your man orders a sinfully tempting dessert? On her frame—five seven and a tad muscular—it wasn’t yet noticeable. But if she didn’t watch herself and all those
empty calories . . .
“I’m so glad you could make it!”
Carole startled.
“Oh, Pepper, good to see you.”
The voice was familiar to Americans as the NBC White House correspondent and a Washington insider. Pepper January was a robustly proportioned woman with a brash, easy-going style, which proved that not every television viewer wanted a blonde, made-up, stick-thin woman delivering the news.
“Kiss, kiss,” Pepper said.
“Kiss, kiss.”
“You’ve been a busy girl,” Pepper teased. “All over town with Mitch. When do you get some time alone?”
“Not as often as I’d like.”
“Well, I’m happy that you gave up a Friday night for the Wildlife Foundation. I’ve been on the board forever. And Mitch, as usual, made a substantial contribution but refused to be listed in the program. He said all his best friends call him Anonymous.”
“Is his contribution substantial enough that I can make him leave before the afterdinner speeches?”
“Honey, he gave enough you could go home right now and I’d send you off with a doggie bag and a thank-you note. Now let’s talk about you—you look wonderful.”
“Thanks, I—”
“—and now that the personal stuff is out of the way, let’s move on to the market. What the hell’s going on? Nasdaq unloaded another couple of percentage points today. The Dow’s looking dangerous. And the earnings reports are enough to make me throw my Gateway out the window.”
“I know,” Carole said. “Everybody’s getting hurt. The money’s dried up, profits are not living up to expectations and some people are bailing out. I have a friend who was a multimillionaire up until a week ago. On paper. And now the paper’s worthless.”
“Is your company publicly traded?”
“No, so we’re insulated from the market a little, but when some of our investors lose money we feel it. I just have to do my job more and better—selling Allheart.com to advertisers. We have to make our money the old-fashioned way.”
Pepper laughed.
“Carole, you could succeed anywhere you found yourself.”
“I’m a good saleswoman,” Carole admitted. She was old enough, and experienced enough, that she didn’t have to be falsely modest. Likewise, she didn’t have to brag or boast. “But I like what I do now. Except . . .” She glanced toward the bar where men gathered to get drinks for themselves and their women.
More Lipstick Chronicles Page 13