by Amy Faye
Helen was a useful fighter to have in your stable. Anything beyond that was beyond her. She couldn't be nice, no matter how badly she wanted to. She couldn't be a lover. She wasn't capable of that sort of passion. She wasn't someone he loved.
But Paul had moved past love. That was something that he couldn't feel himself any more. The last time he'd felt anything for anyone, she'd disappeared and taken what little hope he had to escape from the prison of his future with her.
So instead he substituted it. Like he was doing right now. He substituted respect for affection and hoped that it would work. Then he stepped up to the door to the plane. A pretty young cocktail waitress smiled at him because she no doubt thought that their time together meant more than it did.
"Are you ready?"
Helen nodded and they stepped out. He wrapped an arm around her shoulder and she wrapped an arm around his waist and for a moment, maybe, they looked affectionate. Paul couldn't wait to get his hands back to himself. Once the campaign was over, she could take a little time to herself, and he could take a little time for himself.
"Senator!" A thousand shouts went up all at once as he walked down the steps and up to a podium set up for him to give a speech. "Senator, what do say about the recent allegations of the President has been working with foreign leaders to undermine American trade?"
Paul took a deep breath and looked across the crowd. It was the same faces that it always was. He could name them all–in spite of that, he didn't like any of them, either. Part of him asked why he was doing this for the hundredth time. Then he repeated the memorized list of reasons why he was doing it.
Someone needed to be President. That much was clear. Someone needed to do it, and he wanted it. He'd wanted it since he was a boy. He was as good as anyone else. Apparently, if the recent allegations were true–the word had been circulating Washington a lot longer than it had been circulating the press corps–then he was better than some. Better than the incumbent.
He knew what he wanted out of it, too. He wanted to get important stuff through. If he could just solve the health care problems, and nothing else, that would be enough. If he could just take care of student debt, that would be enough.
Paul's list of things that needed fixing were as long as the pre-flight checklist that they had to go through, four or five times a day, and if he could just cross one of them off the list then would be an actual improvement.
That was why he was doing it. Because those problems needed solving, and he had solutions. He took a deep breath and repeated the question in his mind before he started speaking. 'What do you say about the allegations…?' His position on the security committee gave him a unique look into those allegations. He knew them to be true. But that wasn't the right answer.
"President Noble has an excellent track-record and of course he only has the best interests of the American people at heart. I'm as surprised by these recent allegations as any of you, but if, by some strange turn of fate, they turn out to be true, then I'm as aghast as any of you, too." He put his hands on the podium. They were shaking from tiredness and his body wanted to stop. But he couldn't afford that. "The American people have the right not to be sold out, as you know. I hope that the FBI will be able to identify and root out the source of this rumor and verify it, or definitively put it to bed."
His heart started beating hard the minute that he saw her. It wasn't certain right away–not entirely. But someone at the edge of the press corps, in the peanut gallery, looked terribly familiar. A memory of ten years ago. Salt Lake City and the last time he'd felt better than 'doing what he had to do.'
As he glanced again, looking harder while trying hard to seem like he wasn't looking… he was sure. Lara Beech had aged well. If anything, she looked better than ever. And she was here to see him.
He took another question, and as they spoke, he formulated an answer in his mind. But he wasn't feeling it. His thoughts were on a petite woman standing off to the side, and the young boy in his arms.
2
Lara Beech pressed a hand against her forehead. She wasn't feeling good this morning. If she'd been smart then she would have just stayed in bed. She had the day off, after all. There was no reason that she needed to go and see Paul after all these years.
Not after the way that things had ended with him. He didn't want to see her and she was more than willing to accept that. But she could have at least spared herself the unpleasantness of going to see him. She could have spared herself that unpleasantness when she was sick.
But she'd already scheduled it so that she could take Tim to go. It was important to be involved in politics, and with the new challenger in town, there was plenty of reason to take him to see a speech. It was just a little one, and the weather was warm enough for her to go without a coat, so there was no special reason to avoid it. No matter how much she wanted to.
She slid down in the couch until she was laying out along the cushions and closed her eyes. Tim was back at school already and she had the day off, so… that was enough. She could nap. Once she had gotten a little sleep, she'd feel better. She had to hope, anyways.
She hadn't quite gotten to sleep–or at least, no more than cat-napping–when something woke her. A noise. Specifically, the noise of someone rapping on the front door of her apartment. She forced herself to her feet and walked across the room.
"Yes?"
"Lara?" The voice on the other side of the door was familiar, and just like it had earlier that day it hurt her chest to hear it.
"You shouldn't have come," she told him. She hadn't expected Paul to see her at all. If he did see her, then she expected him to ignore her, like he had for so many years. In the unlikely event that he didn't ignore her, and he did see her, then she hoped he would have the good sense to stay gone.
"I just wanted to come by."
She let out a breath. "Give me a minute to put a jacket on."
"You're not going to let me in?"
She raised an eyebrow, in spite of knowing he couldn't see it. "No, Paul, I'm not going to let you in. I'll let you take me to coffee if it's that important to you."
"Okay, then I'll wait."
She went and fetched a jacket. She wasn't sure that he was serious about any of this. In fact, she wasn't sure what the hell kind of game that he was playing. He'd left her hanging.
Left her pregnant, for that matter, with a big check and specific instructions on how he thought she was supposed to take care of it. Paul Green's attitude was and always would be easygoing in person, but it was what he did when he didn't have to look you in the eyes that told everything about his character, and he would do anything to get himself ahead.
She opened the door and let out a breath. He looked good. He looked tired, but the years hadn't been hard on him. Every day she was finding new gray hairs and her boobs seemed to sink lower every year like clockwork, but he looked as if he had barely aged a day, though he hadn't slept in the intervening period either.
"What's this about?"
Lara dropped her keys into her pocket.
"About? I saw you at that little speech earlier."
"So, what? You thought you'd just come by and remember how good old times were?"
Paul smiled at her. He had such a warm smile, such a winning smile. He'd always been a charmer with a smile like that, and it was that charming nature of his that had talked her panties off. It was that charming nature of his that had her practically living at his beck and call and convinced that any day now he was going to leave his wife and come to her.
Cheating wasn't exactly a proper Mormon thing to do. But then, she wasn't sure what cheating was in a political marriage. She'd met Helen, and she'd been pretty clear about the complete lack of misunderstanding about what she and Paul were up to.
It was only after things started to develop that she'd been told to take care of the baby inside her if she wanted to keep herself alive.
"Well, where are you taking me?"
"It's been a few year
s since I've been around the Salt Lake. You know any good places?"
It had been a few years. He'd stuck around; she hadn't. When it was clear that he'd moved his entire life to Washington, she'd made the mistake of coming back. But now, they might be in trouble again, and all because she'd let Tim know that someone running for President was within a twenty minute drive of them.
He was very interested in the President. Of course, he was nine years old. They're interested in all kinds of things, at that age, but the meanings behind things like policies and political parties were lost on him. He liked Paul because he was on TV. The boy liked Rob Noble as well. Same reason. So it wasn't like there was something special about Paul Green coming along. He just happened to be in the area, and she'd taken Tim to see him because there wasn't any harm in that.
She did know a good coffee shop, in spite of the fact that she wasn't sure she wanted to go to one. "Just down the street."
"Too far to walk?"
She looked at him hard. What was his problem? Was he trying to rub it in her face or something? "No, not too far."
"Then do you mind? I've been sitting all day, except when I'm leaning on a podium, and I'd just like to… you know, stretch my legs a bit."
She searched his eyes fro some indication that he was teasing her. Some indication that he wasn't serious, because he couldn't possibly be serious. Was he just going to ignore their history together, or…
Well, either way didn't matter. He was doing what he was doing and she would either have to accept it or walk away, and she'd never been good at walking away from things that were bad at her.
"Yeah, we can walk," she said, starting off. He kept up with her easily in spite of her head start. His legs were longer than hers, after all.
Paul smiled down at her, and her heart fluttered, and if she didn't know any better, she'd almost think he'd forgotten about sending her away.
3
There was something distant about Lara, Paul thought. Something distant that he didn't like one bit, because she'd never been distant with him before. Well, not until she high-tailed it out of town, while divorce papers sat in his damn glove box. He almost regretted not signing them anyways, now. But Helen had been useful in her own way, through the years. He couldn't have gotten as far as he did, as fast as he did, without a pit bull like her in his corner.
Sharing a last name was the only thing that was particularly important to her, and it was a small price to pay for the success that he'd had. But if he had it all to do again, Paul thought, he wouldn't make the same mistake again.
He knew that he shouldn't have come, because it wasn't going to look good. The schedule was a busy one, and this was the only time he was going to have to get quality sleep for days. There would be little snippets, a couple hours here and there, but no eight-hour block until Friday. Four days running on the tiniest possible amount of sleep wasn't something he was hoping for.
"So how have you been?"
She looked at him with an expression he couldn't understand. There were a lot of things he knew about Lara. He thought he knew everything about her, everything that mattered, but he was having trouble understanding what she was thinking all of a sudden, as if she were a different person now than she'd been a decade ago. Well, with the boy at her side, he guessed she was.
"I've been fine, I guess." There were a thousand contradictions in her attitude, contradictions that he couldn't understand. Her tone was impatient, as if she wanted to be gone. Yet, she nursed her coffee as if she didn't want to have to face the reality of an empty cup in her hands.
"I'm glad."
"How's Helen?"
Paul's face pinched up. He hadn't come here to talk about her. He wasn't sure what he'd come for. Lara seemed to think that somewhere he'd had some fantasies of coming by for a quickie. That couldn't have been further from the truth. What he wanted, what he craved, was some reminder that there was something in the world that wasn't all a bunch of God damned lies.
"Helen's… Helen," he said. He took a drink. "I don't really want to talk about her."
"Why don't you tell me why you're really here, then?"
Paul pressed himself into the seat and adjusted the glasses on his face. They felt odd and uncomfortable and out of place, but that was only because he never wore them.
"I'm here to talk to an old friend," he said, sighing. "Why, should I have some other reason?"
She looked at him with that strange expression again. Probing, questioning, and yet he had never been anything but honest with her. She was the only person he'd ever actually been honest with in the first place. The only one he could think of who wasn't using him to get ahead, anyways.
Then that questioning look turned into a frown. "You know what? I have to get back home. My son's going to be back from school any time."
Paul stood. "I'll walk you back."
"There's no need to do that," she said, sourly. "I can get by on my own."
"My car's parked outside your apartment," Paul answered. What had happened that made her so acerbic towards him? It must have been something ten years ago. His politics hadn't changed much in the intervening years, and she'd never had a problem with them before. There hadn't been a word shared between them in all that time, either.
So it was easy to figure that it was something ten years ago. Maybe the reason that she left. He made a mental note to try to figure out what that reason was. But she wasn't likely to tell him if he just asked outright. She was too angry, and any apology for something he clearly didn't remember, after all this time, would mean nothing.
"Fine," she said, slipping her jacket on and grabbing her coffee. She refilled it from the pot by the door. Paul did the same, adding too much sugar. It was bad for his health, but he had always done things that weren't good for him. The girls were bad for his political career; his wife was bad for his health.
Lara had been good for him, but that hadn't gone the way that he had hoped it would, and now he was left wanting to pick up the pieces like a child.
They walked in silence for a while. The walk really wasn't very long. A quarter-mile later, they turned down a road that twisted a little bit. Lara cut across the lawn and at the front of her building was a boy. He was sitting on the stoop and looked frustrated. Then he looked up and saw them approaching.
His expression shifted in jumps. First the boy noticed his mother, and he smiled. Then he noticed, a split second later, that she wasn't alone, and he looked questioning. Then, all at once, he seemed to put the whole picture together and his eyes got wide enough to see whites all around them.
"Mom?"
Lara's voice was kind–nothing like the voice she used when she talked to him, Paul thought. "What's wrong? Did you forget your key again?"
"Is that…"
She looked over at Paul, who shrugged. "Hi," he said finally. "I'm Paul Green, I'm an old friend of your mother's."
The boy's eyes couldn't have gotten any wider, but he almost seemed to give the impression of it.
"I saw you on T.V.! And, and, this morning, I was there in the crowd watching your speech!"
"It was just a press conference, really," Paul said, hoping that he sounded humble to a boy who was too young to be out of elementary school, and probably didn't know the difference anyways. "I'm glad you came to see me, though. I always love it when young people are interested in politics."
"Yeah," he said. It wasn't hard to realize that the boy was starstruck. Paul felt flattered. People being starstruck wasn't uncommon; he'd been in the public eye for a long, long time, and people tended to know his name.
Some of those people showed their appreciation in… different ways. But the innocence in the boy's face was so absolutely different and so absolutely refreshing.
"Paul," Lara said finally, as he smiled at the boy and the boy stared at him as if none of it had caught up to him. "This is my son, Tim. Tim, this is Senator Green. You saw him this morning."
"Yeah, I did," Tim repeated, never taking
his eyes off Paul. Paul reached out a hand and Tim shook it. He had a good grip, Paul thought. For such a young boy. A real good grip.
4
Lara looked at the invitation one more time. It was a mistake to go. She didn't feel good enough, but there was something more than that. She didn't want to get involved with politics. It was a racket. She knew plenty about rackets, about how honest politicians really were, and she knew plenty about how honest Paul Green in particular was.
But she didn't get to pretend that she was only deciding for herself. If it was just for her, then she'd have been at home watching movies all evening because that was all she wanted to do and sure as hell all she needed to do.
But she had to think about things from Tim's point of view, too. He'd just met his hero. Well, one of his heroes. Anyone who could be President was his hero, she reminded herself. He preferred Paul because Paul was on TV and talked a little louder and smiled a lot. But if Noble were on TV more, then she was sure he'd like President Noble just as much, if not more.
It was just how boys were. That was what she hoped, anyways, because getting interested in politics at any age, young or old, was a mistake. Getting involved with a man who abandoned you when you were little more than a grape-sized thought in your mother's head was a bigger one.
But how was she supposed to turn down a VIP pass for him? How was she supposed to tell her son that as nice as Paul had seemed, she wasn't going to take him to the rally they'd been invited to?
She wasn't going to. So she was getting dressed up in spite of herself. How was she even supposed to dress? Nice? Casual? Like what? She'd looked up YouTube videos and nobody seemed to be exceptionally well dressed. It wasn't a black tie affair. So business casual would have to do.
"Almost ready?"
Tim came streaking out of his bedroom like a bat out of hell, and only stopped when he realized he'd already run past her. "How's this?"
She looked at his clothes critically for a moment. Nice pants, nice shirt, buttoned right. As she worked her eyes up his body, she finally settled on the problem.