by Melody Clark
"An item ... in love ... friends of Dorothy’s," Jack said. "To quote a friend of mine, work with me here."
"You mean lovers? Good heavens no! Where'd you get that idea?"
"I don't know. Because we're involved and your theory is ...”
"My theory doesn’t include that, believe me.” T.J. recoiled a little, somewhat aghast. “I'd never even considered it. For one thing, John was hopelessly in love with Abigail. Thomas was hopelessly in love with the better part of the women of Virginia to say nothing of various regions of France.”
“To one of those women, we can personally attest,” Jack said.
T.J. chuckled. “From the little I understand of reincarnation, we may well have lived together in all kinds of different relationships in different times. Why? Would it be so bad if they had been ... friends of Dorothy’s, who wasn’t even born at the time, mind you?"
"Of course not. I'd just have to rethink history. A lot."
"Tell me about it. Of course by today's standards, the lot of them were practically flippin' cross-dressers. And yes, Mr. Champion of the People, I know most male cross-dressers aren't gay. It was a joke." T.J. moved up to lie on his side next o Jack. He grinned down into his face. "Now, for the real question of the evening. Did you really have to bribe Ms. Franklin to get me into the Founders Committee?"
Jack laughed out loud at the question itself then scrunched up his face. Finally, he looked away. "Of course not."
"You're certain about that?"
"Hey, who're you gonna believe, me or that walking human pustule?"
T.J. tilted an inquisitive eyebrow then sent him down another taunting grin. "And if, in this instance, I opted for the pustule’s account?"
"Then I'd say you showed appalling disloyalty," Jack replied, obviously fighting to hide his own smile and failing badly. "And pretty good judgment."
T.J. shook his head in wonder. "Taneesha's right, you know. You are about the sweetest man in the world."
"Taneesha said that?"
"Yes. You see, I'm not the only one who's onto you. But that does bring me about to my final question." He lowered his face so that his smile hovered just above Jack's. "Namely, how I can kiss you as hard and as hot and as long as I'm going to without breaking the bed. Frankly, I don't think that's physically possible."
"I'm almost afraid to find out," Jack murmured. "Almost. However, if we get that party started, neither one of us will have the willpower to keep from seeing it through till the end. And Agent 86 needs us first thing in the morning."
“Who cares?” T.J. asked. “We are in a relationship, no?”
“We are in a relationship, yes,” Jack said.
Thomas leaned over and brushed his lips gently over Jack's then nestled himself against his chest where he whispered, “I do have another question, though."
"Don't you always?"
T.J. poked him in the ribs. "Before ... when comparing them to us, you asked if our ancestors were in love. Do you see us that way? Do you view us as in love?"
A narrow moment of wary silence slipped through on Jack's end. "Do you?"
"Give me a break, Jackie. I've already stripped my heart bare before you. I'm asking you to come clean too.”
Jack laughed softly, almost like a lost sound in the night. "Yeah, I guess I really do."
"See, I knew you were playing hide-and-seek at the restaurant. If you had told me forty-eight hours ago that we'd be here tonight, right now, with your saying that to me, I'd have called you one crazy bastard."
"C'mon, you'd have called me that anyway."
"Well, yes, I guess that’s true, too,” T.J. said, before he finally pressed his lips against Jack’s.
Chapter Four
Jack lowered his voice as they were directly in the path of their new security fellow. Security Fellow was looking at his smart phone and silently sipping at coffee. "You really think we have no other option than to approach them individually?" Jack asked.
"You don't need to lower your voice. Nothing makes security more suspicious than when you whisper." T.J. glanced over at their preposterously not-intimidating company.
"Something tells me Senate Security didn't take our threat very seriously."
Jack considered the security guy yet again. "Gee, what makes you think that? The fact Taneesha could put him in a hammerlock without breaking a sweat?"
"Among other things. And yes to your first question as well, I do think that's our only option. We're only going to the most staunch No-Homos. If Mohammad won't come to the mountain ...”
"Then the mountain becomes a molehill,” Jack said. “Okay but we have to go according to plan."
"Agreed."
At that point, their security officer answered his cell phone, spoke a few words into it and hung up. He glowered in their direction. "There's some ruckus in chamber. Don't deviate from your security advisory and I'll meet you back at your destination. Where are you headed now?"
"Senator Pilsner's office," Jack said for what must have been the fifteenth time. Max's métier was clearly not his memory. "Is there a problem in the House? Is Boehner crying again?"
"No, it’s the Senate. Kucinich is singing some nineteenth century spiritual."
Jack shook his head for all manner of reasons. "God knows that's bound to get ugly."
Piper Pilsner was one of those apple-cheeked, smiling uber-moms that made glad the heart of Christendom and made Jack absolutely want to puke. She had a 500 rating from the Fight for the Family Heritage Council, the literal top of the scale. All of which only confirmed to Jack that water seeks its own level. Which is why it didn't surprise Jack at all to see her name on the list. Strike a right-wing religious zealot, find a rampaging, out of control, smut-sucking pervo, Jack had always said.
"Please, Jack, do not ask about the otter costume," T.J. said as they checked in with building security. “And no otter jokes either.”
"Like I had any intention of doing that?"
"Just making sure. And ask how her children are."
"Her mini-master race of Secaucus, New Jersey? Why?"
"Because it's polite. We have to be polite, remember, Mr. Attorney?"
"You have to be polite. In this I'm strictly Satan's little helper."
"Well, at least attempt it. For me."
He had never quite got past the surprise of walking into an administrative office and seeing exercise equipment. It was kind of like finding an entertainment center in the middle of a football field. But for people who lived with one foot in their home state and one foot in the district, you were bound to find all manner of weirdness in Senator offices ... and not just the governmental kind of weirdness. He'd heard tales of tanning beds ... pinball machines ... ice cream fountains ... flotation tanks ...
Piper was running on her treadmill at full gallop. She was puffing out and sucking in with some kind of syncopated breathing routine that probably had as much to do with her mindset as the workout. She was a puffing and blowing kind of person. A lot of huffing and puffing. And considerable blowing and sucking for that matter, Jack had heard.
As she looked over at them, she was gradually slowing her pace to a stop. She pressed her fingers to a throat pulse point while she was reading off some gauge. She switched off the machine.
She pulled a bright red hand towel from around her neck and dabbed it across her face. "Thomas, Jack, punctual as always," she said then, as Jack took notice, her hand touched each of the gauge's edges as well as the wall, and then and only then did she step off the belt. She gestured toward her inner office. "Can I offer you coffee, tea, a soda or something?"
"Nothing, thank you," T.J. said. "Just a few moments of your time."
Jack observed Piper touch the left and right edges of the doorjamb as she opened the door to allow them in and then once again when she walked through it herself.
She touched each edge of her desk and then aligned her telephone with her wireless laptop mouse as she lowered with clean precision into her office c
hair. A toucher and an orderer, Jack concluded. He imagined there had to be a checker and obsessive somewhere in the Pilsner world of frenetic high anxiety.
And as usual, Piper's office smelled to Jack like the funeral parlor of a cheap whore house ... unleashing a veritable carpet-bomb of ersatz floral fragrances against his nasal and paranasal passages. This classy degree of moderation was further complimented by a glowing three-dimensional bleeding heart of Jesus setting up on a pillar mount. Above it hung a diorama of Her Lord and Savior suffering on the cross. Jack gathered this was where Piper came to relax.
"So," Jack said, trying his best to sound like he gave a flying fuck, "How's the family?"
She gestured toward the visitor chairs. "Quite well, thanks. Please, make yourselves comfortable."
She touched each corner of a large framed portrait at the edge of her desk. It held a photograph of Piper smiling smarmily beside a balding, middle-aged man in a bold blue suit. Behind them, a boy and girl loomed like two bored and bemused-looking potted plants. Everyone on the hill knew that David Pilsner was a malicious drunk who cheated on his wife and that their son had already tumbled twice through the juvenile justice tank. It was the sort of situation that would normally make Jack sympathize. But Piper's was no normal situation.
Jack as quickly as possible shuffled adroitly aside to one of the indicated chairs while T.J. did the same. Jack happily let T.J. take the floor from there.
"I'm afraid," T.J. said, "We are here with troubling news."
She nodded. "So you implied on the phone. From your request for an urgent personal meeting it seemed even more serious than you'd say."
T.J. folded his hands properly in his lap. "It's the sort of sensitive information one should impart in person."
"I see," she said, and the artificially-flavored smile never wavered. "By all means, let's hear it."
T.J. removed his PDA from his suit coat pocket. He handed it over, the screen displaying the name-censored list with only her name peeking through. She pulled eyeglasses from a desk drawer and peered down at it through her glasses, as if locating the bottom line on some incidental office budget in need of her signature.
Jack watched as all the color had drained from her face when she saw her name beside the ... details.
"Utter fiction, of course," she said, recovering quickly to zealously return the hand-held.
“Otter fiction, did you say?” Jack said, with an innocent tilt to his voice.
T.J. gave him an excoriating stare and then continued on with Piper. "But you can see why we were concerned."
"Well, of course. I mean, I doubt I've even been to that hotel and certainly never with the individuals described. It's an obvious production of my political enemies. I would like to know your source so that I may at least confront my libeler and accuser."
"We're not free to disclose the name due to confidentiality issues. We're sure you understand," T.J. said. "However, it's not our intention for anyone to find out about the list, whether it is or isn't real. Merely to inform those mentioned of its existence. Forewarned is forearmed is our feeling."
She nodded, not smiling as casually now. She sat back in her chair. "You don't have intentions of this reaching the public? What do you intend to do with it?"
"We're hoping to initiate dialog among people in Congress."
"Dialog? What kind of dialog?"
T.J. smiled confidently, gesturing with Jeffersonian grace. "A dialog as a means of mutually stipulating that we all live adult private lives. That all lifestyles are alternative ones."
"But I have just informed you that this is fiction," she said.
"In your case, yes. In other instances, that is not the situation. With those people who may wish to interact with us in earnest, we can open that dialog."
Suddenly her smile darkened into a smirk. "Thomas ... Jack ... how can I know there are any other supposed cases at all? Maybe you've made this up to strong arm me. Someone sends something around to claim and control the news cycle. I'm not saying it's your work necessarily, but you may be an unwitting dupe. You won't even disclose your source. Has one case on it been proven to be true?"
Jack’s gaze moved toward T.J. for the other man’s reply and could see only uncertainty flashing through his eyes. T.J. looked anxiously toward Jack then turned to Piper and said, "Deke Mendelsohn. He's confided in us that his ... situation ... is true. That must go no farther."
The muscles in Jack's throat all gathered in the middle of his larynx. He bit back each word, looked down and continued to listen.
"Of course," she said, looking a bit more sober, but she hid it well. "Representative Mendelsohn from Massachusetts, I take it. That's a different matter then. There is more than one of us involved."
"Many more," T.J. said. "But we might see this as a healthy means for inspiring discussion between the two wings of our party and also Jack's party. These topics are sure to come up, for instance, in the vote on my proposed legislation in the Senate. This dialog I propose may help us connect with our more right-leaning colleagues through our shared ... non-mainstream sexuality and help them see the benefit of our sticking together on these issues. And thereby reach a greater understanding among all of us."
"I see," she said again, this time loading the smile with a little formality. "I'm certainly in favor of dialog. I will ask around myself about this matter and see if I can find any information regarding it. Until such time, I trust you're taking steps to make certain this doesn't reach anyone else."
"We've uploaded it to very many, very safe places," T.J. said. "No one will get to it but us."
"Then I can only thank you gentlemen for bringing it to my attention," she said, standing and extending her claw yet again. "I promise you I will speak of the dialog initiative with people in my circle."
T.J. stood. "Always happy to be of service."
So Jack and T.J. reversed the entry process, dutifully shaking her cloven hoof and then walking to her door. Just when they reached the door, Senator Pilsner cleared her voice to speak.
"Jack, tell me something."
Jack stopped in his tracks and glanced over at T.J. who was regarding him with nervous eyes. Jack then looked across to Piper.
"Tell you what?" he asked, trying to drag a smile out of somewhere.
"Well, you've scarcely spoken a word during our whole meeting. You're not letting Thomas do all your talking for you now, are you?"
Jack visually checked with T.J. who continued to scold him gently with his stare.
Jack tried to seem as though he hadn't heard her right. "Senator, I'm surprised at you. You otter know me better than that."
Paulson felt himself pushed out the office door then around to the elevators and into the first one that opened.
When the doors slid closed, T.J. buckled in unstoppable laughter against the elevator wall. "You just couldn't help yourself, could you?" he managed to cough out through added giggling torrents.
Jack hit the button for the parking level. "She made me do it. Anyway, why should I be polite? She's the devil."
T.J. grinned and shook his head. "And you're incorrigible."
"I know, you’ve told me. Repeatedly. You really think it was a smart idea to drop Mendelsohn's name that way?"
"Why not? The information is safer in her hands than anyone's. She's not about to let that get out for fear the dike won't hold, so to speak. And it gave it some veracity." He reached over, pinched gently at Jack's face then kissed the other side. "I've got meetings. Where are you off to?"
The elevator doors parted to reveal the parking level. "The Banks building. We're having a Break Fast strategy meeting. Where are you off to?"
T.J. shrugged casually. “Just a meeting around the corner here.”
“Is it a secret or something?”
“No, just a meeting. With a member, you know,” T.J. said, gesturing as if to dismiss any importance.
Jack checked his watch. "All right, but Max will be back any moment now. Hey, if we
move fast, we can lose him completely."
"I'm going through that door. Security is right up there. You have a considerable distance to walk. Therefore, you will be taking Max with you."
"Why? We mentioned to Senator Cruella de Vil that we have numerous copies other places."
"They'll still be after the source of the document."
"We don’t know the real source of the document. I still would rather take my chances. I don't want the responsibility. Max could get broken or something and 99 would be pissed. I'll meet you back at your place before dinner."