Black Swan Rising

by Lisa Brackmann

  “It’s not like we didn’t know it was coming,” Jane said, unblinking. “Between their ad buys and Sarah’s source.”

  Lindsey took a quick glance at Sarah. She couldn’t help it.

  It made sense to have senior staff meetings at their house, Lindsey thought, given that they had security here, but she wasn’t crazy about having Sarah in her living room. She knew that wasn’t entirely fair. Sarah had done a great job handling Social under difficult circumstances; she’d shown up in spite of that horrible day in the park two months ago, in spite of the torrent of abuse since she’d been outed as Beth Ryder.

  She’d changed since that happened. Lindsey would have expected her to retreat further into her boxy suit jackets and awkward white blouses, but she hadn’t done that. Instead, she’d bought a new jacket that fit better, was swapping out the stiff blouses for tops that were more relaxed.

  More relaxed. That was it.

  You couldn’t exactly call her relaxed—she was on alert all the time, Lindsey thought, her posture tense and watchful—but compared to the way she was before? She seemed lighter, somehow.

  Maybe it was a relief, not carrying that secret around.

  But the harassment hadn’t let up. It would ebb a bit and then come roaring back. The comments aimed at Matt were horrible. The ones Sarah got?

  They’d finally given her an intern, a young man with a deep voice who said he was willing to screen her calls, that the abuse wouldn’t bother him. But it did bother him, and sometimes the abusers slipped through his screening anyway. And then there were the comments on Social. They’d installed an electronic logger so they could send the overt threats to the FBI, but someone still had to read the posts and tweets and snaps to make that determination.

  Lindsey still wasn’t sure if she’d made the right call when she’d voted for Sarah to stay on the campaign. Would they be dealing with this level of abuse if they’d let her go?

  Be kind to her, Lindsey reminded herself again. She hasn’t done anything wrong.

  Matt curled and clenched the fingers on his injured hand, testing the fist. “Those guys that were ripping us off weren’t in my chain of command. They had nothing to do with me. Why not make me responsible for the fucking war while they’re at it?”

  “I think we’ve played good prevent defense on the whole Anbar thing with the ‘Leadership’ spot,” Presley said. “We’re well positioned to go on offense there.”

  “What do you have in mind?” Jane asked.

  “We focus on the positive things Matt was trying to accomplish, suggesting that if we give him the chance, he’ll be able to do positive things here.”

  Matt let out a snort. “Oh, great. So the message is, ‘Hey, all the shit I tried to do in Iraq got blown up, but trust me, I’ll do a better job here.’ Or is it, ‘This country’s as fucked up as Iraq, and I’ve got the right experience for failed states.’ Jesus Christ, what a shitshow. People don’t want to hear about failure.”

  She could see it building up in him, the storm of anger and self-loathing that was never too far offshore. “You didn’t fail, Matt. You did your job, and you did it well. This is no time to refight the war, okay?”

  How many times had she said it? How many times had Jane said it too? But his anger was what had gotten him into politics in the first place, and they both knew it.

  “Do you have any suggestions, Matt?” Presley asked. If he felt any defensiveness, he didn’t show it. But then he never did. He was a gun for hire, Lindsey knew. He’d work for anyone who’d pay him.

  “Hit back! These are lies. I want to call them what they are.”

  Presley nodded. “We can do that too.”

  “It will be expensive,” Angus said. “We’ll need to increase our ad buys.”

  “Matt’s right,” Jane said abruptly. “We need to hit back hard, right now. This is a swift boat, and we know what happens when we ignore them. Also? I think we ought to revisit that tape Sarah’s contact sent—the one where little Kimmie insults Henry Echeverria and the entire Mexican-American community with her ‘Assland’ joke.” She turned to Sarah. “And see what else your friend’s got. If this is how Tegan’s going to play, we’ll play too.”

  “Okay.” Presley glanced down at his tablet. “So what about Jesse Garcia?”

  Matt shook his head. Lindsey could see the anger dissipate, leaving only the self-loathing. The sorrow.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “It was over a decade ago. I’d just come back from my, what was it, my second deployment, and things had gone to hell over there, and I didn’t handle it very well. Neither did Jesse. We were friends for fuck’s sake. He got in some punches too. He was just drunker than I was. We both felt like shit about it after. That’s why it all got dropped and you never heard about it.”

  Lindsey could see the scene still, the rage on Matt’s face, the two men shoving and grappling and punching until Jesse finally went down, falling against a Harley in the piss-stained parking lot.

  That had been a very bad night.

  “What changed?”

  It was a small shock to hear Sarah’s voice. She rarely spoke up in these meetings, and when she did, it was almost always only to clarify requests made of her.

  Matt looked up. “What do you mean?”

  “You said you weren’t handling things well. You went back to Iraq twice after that.” Sarah blushed. “You’ve done a lot of great things since then. How did you get better?”

  Matt smiled at her. It almost hurt Lindsey to see it, that smile. Small. Thoughtful. Real. He looked at Sarah like she was the only other person in the room.

  “I got help,” he said. “Not my choice. The last thing most soldiers want to do is admit they’re having problems because of the job. But the CO told me I wasn’t going on another deployment until I talked to someone. So I did. And it helped.”

  “And that, ladies and gentleman, is our ad,” Presley said, spreading his hands.

  Matt looked up, the smile gone, replaced by a dark irritation. “What?”

  “You. Talking about your experiences, just like this. Intimate. Speaking directly to the viewer. And then how you’ve worked to get help for service members in distress. Because everyone who served our country deserves the chance to get better.”

  For a moment, the room was silent.

  “Yeah,” Jane said. “I think that’s a good play.”

  Matt didn’t like it, Lindsey could tell. But finally, he nodded. “I guess it’s the best one we’ve got with this shitty hand, right?”

  They adjourned shortly after that.

  “I’ll catch Ben up,” Sarah said, as she stood and slung her messenger bag over her head.

  They were in a strange position with Ben. Two months after the shooting, he was better, but not a hundred percent. He couldn’t do the job he’d been hired to do. The campaign still paid his salary. It was the right thing to do, of course, but there were legal questions as well. On the one hand, the campaign couldn’t really afford to keep someone on at Ben’s level who couldn’t do the job. On the other, he was injured while on the job, so they were looking at a worker’s comp case at the least. It was already September. By the time it all got straightened out, the campaign would be over. Thankfully, there was a substantial uptick in donations after the shooting. That helped.

  Ben had only come into the office once. Understandable, Lindsey thought. Between the armed guards, the press gauntlet, and feeling that you had a target on your back every time you walked out the door, it wasn’t surprising that Ben didn’t want to spend time there. She sure didn’t, and she hadn’t even been in the park that day.

  She supposed she should be grateful to Sarah. If she hadn’t been so pissed off at Matt for hanging all over her, she would have been right there too, in the park next to Matt, with a shooter taking aim at them both.

  “Oh? Are you going t
o see him?” Lindsey asked.

  “Yes, I’ll stop by there later,” Sarah said. The hint of a blush.

  That was an interesting development. Good, Lindsey thought. She’d rather have Sarah interested in Ben than Matt. The thing about campaign romances was that their potential for disruption was limited. One way or another, the campaign would end, as this one would.

  Two months to go.

  We’ll make it, Lindsey thought. We’ll probably even win. The numbers still looked good, even with the race tightening in the last couple of weeks. There was plenty of time left for momentum to swing back their way.

  But those ads would leave a mark.

  What worried her most was the mark they’d leave on Matt. They were pushing his buttons in places that hurt. If his self-control faltered, if he lashed out …

  Passion was good—people liked that about him, the polling showed. Unrestrained rage was not.

  Sarah never went directly home after any kind of campaign work. Whether she went to the office, to Matt and Lindsey’s, to the hotel the staff had met in last week, any kind of campaign function, she never went directly home.

  If they were watching her, that’s how they’d find out where she lived.

  She’d changed her hair again, wore a baseball cap and sunglasses when she went out, and she wasn’t sure if people even recognized her. But she wasn’t taking any chances.

  Tonight she went to Trader Joe’s to pick up a few things for Ben, easy and convenient food to have around the house. He still wasn’t feeling well. Or at least he had a hard time leaving his apartment. She got that. And he worried about having things delivered, like she did.

  He’ll get used to it, she thought, grabbing a bag of cheddar cheese popcorn off the shelf.

  At the last minute, she decided to stop at Crooked Arrow Brewery for a small growler fill. She wasn’t sure how much Ben could drink, with the kidney damage. She’d read conflicting things when she researched it on the internet, with some studies even showing that beer was good for your kidneys. In any case, she knew how much he loved Crooked Arrow beers. Maybe he could at least have a glass.

  They’d made a small garden in one of the parking spaces in front of the brewery, out of wooden half-barrels. There was a sculpture too, a brightly colored figure spackled with pieces of colored glass and mirror—a leaping dolphin. On the tallest barrel was a plaque made out of wood and stamped metal that said In Memory of Our Fallen Friends, with a list of seven names. The victims of the Morena shooter.

  It was weird to think about it. All those people had died. Casey Cheng had been shot right around here. She wondered if you could see any evidence, any bloodstains, or had those been hosed away, ground into the grease and oil and asphalt?

  Aside from the garden, it looked completely normal: just another brewery in a small industrial park, at eight p.m. on a weeknight, three-quarters full with people drinking flights of beer on wooden paddles.

  She went up to the end of the bar where there were the fewest people and waited for one of the beertenders to spot her.

  “Hey.”

  Sarah jumped and turned. Matt sat at the bar. She hadn’t noticed him; his back had been to her. He wore a Padres cap, a faded T-shirt, and shorts, transformed from the candidate she’d spoken to just over an hour ago.

  “Hi,” she said.

  Matt indicated the seat next to him. “Can I buy you a beer?”

  “I … ” Not a good idea, she thought. She wasn’t even sure why she thought it.

  “No worries, if you’re with someone … ” he said.

  “No, I’m not. I mean … I just stopped in to pick up a growler.”

  “Well, I don’t want to keep you.”

  Stupid, you’re being stupid, she thought. She was still waiting for the beertender to come and take her order; standing here was just dumb. She slid into the empty stool next to him.

  “I have some time,” she said.

  Matt bought her a flight. “Don’t feel like you have to finish it,” he said.

  “I probably shouldn’t. I have to drive.”

  “Over to Ben’s?”

  “Yes. To brief him.”

  “And bring him some beer.” Matt grinned. “An essential part of any campaign briefing.”

  Sarah felt her cheeks flush. “He just really likes this beer, and he’s still not getting out much.”

  Matt nodded, the grin relaxing into the hint of a smile. The way he’d looked at her in his living room. “Yeah. Sometimes I feel like I just want to find a cabin on a mountain someplace and stay there. Or maybe a hut on some Mexican beach somewhere.”

  It was funny, but she didn’t feel that way. Everyone knew the worst about her now. What was the point in hiding? She wanted to make a mark. To change things. That’s what she wanted.

  “You were really kind today,” he said.

  She was blushing again. “I wasn’t … I mean … it was the truth.”

  “Maybe. But you know, no one’s ever asked me that question, what changed.” He sipped his beer, the double IPA, she guessed. “Maybe because I never wanted to talk about any of it. I was such a dick back then. It’s not a time I like talking about.”

  “Sometimes you have to,” she heard herself say. “It’s not as bad as you think. Sometimes you feel better after you just … unburden yourself.”

  Matt laughed and drank his beer. “Sounds very Catholic.”

  She felt that almost physical sensation of being slapped; she’d said something stupid, something wrong, and he was laughing at her.

  No, she told herself. There’s nothing wrong with what I said. It’s him, not me.

  Maybe I should just fill the growler and get out of here, Sarah thought.

  “Hey,” he said abruptly, “that’s just me being a dick again. I’m sorry. I really admire you. The way you’ve kept going through all this … it’s amazing. And I really appreciate it.”

  There it was, that look of his, the high beams on, all his attention focused on her. Her heartbeat quickened. She felt a rush of pleasure, enough that she thought she might have made a small sound when she breathed out.

  That’s why you can’t be here, she thought. You can’t feel that. Not about him.

  She was just so tired of not feeling it.

  “Thanks,” she said. “You don’t need to apologize. I’m doing what I want to do. I’m glad I’m able to help.”

  He rested his hand on the bar. Very close to hers. He wants me, she thought. All I’d have to do is stretch out my fingers.

  She reached for one of her tasters and raised it to her lips and took a deep sip. “What happened to Jesse?” she asked.

  Matt looked away and picked up his glass. “Jesse? He died. Motorcycle accident about … I think it was four months after we got into that fight.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she said.

  He shrugged. “Yeah. That’s the thing. Not everybody gets the chance to get better.”

  This was the third time she’d gone to Ben’s home. He lived in a tiny bungalow behind a larger house in Normal Heights, which he claimed he paid too much for every month.

  It took him a minute to answer the door; he was still using two walking sticks to get up and down when Sarah had seen him a week ago. She heard the sound of a deadbolt sliding back, the rattle of a door chain.

  “Hey,” he said, opening the door. He wore a faded T-shirt and thin pajama pants. It had been a hot day and was still a warm night, the breezes still. She could hear the helicopter buzz of the overhead fan.

  She stepped inside. The living room was dark, dominated by a wall of books and a desk with an expensive laptop and big flat-screen monitor. “I game sometimes,” he’d told her on her first visit, seeming embarrassed by it. Sarah wasn’t sure why. “I like some games,” she’d said, which was true enough, though she’d quit playing halfway thr
ough high school.

  “Should I put this in the kitchen?” she asked now, indicating the Trader Joe’s bag.

  “What’s that? You didn’t have to bring that.”

  Was he grateful or irritated? Sarah couldn’t tell. “Just a few snacks.” She held up the growler. “Plus I stopped at Crooked Arrow and got that Belgium tripel. I wasn’t sure if you could have it, but … ”

  At that, he smiled broadly. “Oh, wow, thanks. Yeah, I can have it.”

  “Shit.”

  They’d sat on the couch and watched the hit ads on Ben’s gaming laptop, setting it on the little coffee table there.

  “How did Matt react to this?” Ben asked.

  “Okay. I guess. I mean … ” She thought about it. “He wasn’t happy. At first he was mad, and then I think he got depressed. I ran into him at Crooked Arrow, when I was picking up the beer.” She felt herself flush, thinking about the way Matt had looked at her, of his hand so close to hers.

  “Oh yeah?”

  There it was, that note in his voice that came up when she talked about Matt, that slight edge. Was Ben jealous?

  She worked with Ben; she’d tried not to think of him that way, and it hadn’t been hard. She’d closed that part of herself off, mostly, when she’d become Sarah Price. She hadn’t felt much of anything the few times she’d tried to date, the times she’d told herself she should be more open, give them a chance. Not until Matt. And there was no way anything could ever happen with Matt.

  She poured Ben some more beer. He’d lost weight since the shooting, his cheekbones sharpened, the soft curve of his belly hollowed out. It was wrong to think this way, but he looked handsome.

  I just want to feel something, she thought. The way she’d felt in the brewery, like she was caught up in an electric current, still lingered, and she thought, maybe I could feel that again.

  “How are you doing?” she asked.

  “Better. The leg’s better. The doctor says I got lucky there, believe it or not. Wound’s healing up, I’m not going to need another surgery or anything like that.”

  “That’s great,” she said.