“Yes.” I try not to hiss, but that is what she needs. “You should say that at your next press conference.”
“Oh, sure,” she says, laughing now. “I can see that going over well. ‘Mayor Threatens Predecessor, News at 5.’”
“You think most of the city doesn’t want to strangle him too? I think you should brace yourself for a standing ovation if you say that.” I cross my arms, leaning back against the desk and staring at her, trying to figure out what buttons to push. “They thought they were voting for the no-bullshit guy who’d clean up City Hall and tell the truth. They got another snake oil salesman who kept power out of the hands of anyone who could use it to expose corruption to the light of day. People feel like they were conned and they voted for you because they want you to be what he was supposed to be.”
“Fuck that. I’m nobody’s cheap substitute.”
Yup. She’s angry now. Excellent. I can work with that.
“No. That’s not it.” I slow down, take a breath, and put my hands up to form a canvas in the air. Paint her a picture. She’ll get that. “They don’t want you to be him. They want you to be what they’d hoped he would be. They want you to be better than him. They want you to deliver on all the hopes and dreams they feel foolish for having had about the last guy. You’ve got a chance to rally this entire city behind you, but they’ve been burned, hard, and they’re gun shy. Everything you do, everything you say, that feels like spin—like politics as usual—is going to set their teeth on edge.”
“So you’re going to give me the spin that feels like the real thing and then everyone will love me?” she asks with an epically arched brow.
“Like I said, I’m going to take your people—and you—off the leash. If you let me. And give them the real thing.”
“The truth? No one’s going to love me for that. It’s nothing but bad news as far as the horizon.”
“Your job is to find a way out. My job is to make people believe you when you do.”
“I’ll think about it.”
And with that, she strides out of the room and every muscle in my body sags with the sudden release of tension. I am very, very good at what I do. I don’t lack confidence in my skills. But there’s always a very touchy moment when you come into an established organization and tell them they need to change. Especially when you’re telling them to change something as core as the very way they communicate with the public.
Anna and her people have done an amazing job getting her as far as they have in the cutthroat world of this city’s politics. They have plenty to be proud of.
But now she’s mayor of a major Midwest city, a platform that could launch her to the governorship, and then. . . ? Except inherited corruption scandals had dragged down her first year, bombshell after bombshell from the previous administration coming to light and buying the ex-mayor a nice, long stay in prison. Anna had doubled down on her campaign commitments of transparency and ethics, but the entrenched political players in the city aren’t playing nice as they battle to protect the existing power structures. Her administration fumbled in their efforts to disassociate themselves from deals made before their time.
Thank god when this past winter’s Snowmageddon had blanketed the city, the salt stocks were high and the city plows fully staffed. This city never forgives a mayor who can’t handle a winter crisis, and Anna’s team had rolled out a flawless response.
Still, polling numbers are lower than anyone would be comfortable with, and Anna has yet to shore up her connection with the city’s voters after cleaning up the scandals. And every time she takes the mic at a press conference—a weekly occurrence at least—tension stiffens her body and chills her voice. Her delivery is forceful and commanding, which had worked well during the crisis months when arrests were snowballing through City Hall, but now . . . now our city needs a mayor they can love and relate to, not just one who scythes through corruption with a flaming sword of righteousness (no, I am not picturing her in the metal bikini armor she’d worn in that medieval action film back in the day, I’m not). A city of mostly polite, rarely subtle hard workers, with a low tolerance for bullshit in any arena except the political, where our fatalism has kept legions of corrupt politicians ticking over from one generation to the next, what we need is a Midwest rock star to remind us that we are better than this.
We’ve taken a kick in the teeth. We need someone to remind us of how we can shine.
And I know Anna Fowler can get us there.
Anna
“They’re going to make papier mâché models of my head and set me on fire in front of the Picasso.” The giant, black steel Cubist sculpture that anchored the plaza in front of the Daley Center next door was a popular spot for protesters to gather before marching through the Loop. I cross my arms on the desk, lay down my head, and let loose a wail I’d never unleash in front of anyone but Di.
Strong hands rub my upper arms briskly. “Suck it up, cupcake.”
“Seriously, Di,” I rant into my sleeve. “If you saw these numbers—I mean the real ones, not the bullshit ones that bastard was snowing everyone with—it’s a fucking disaster.”
“So show me the numbers.”
I should. I mean, after talking to a slew of lawyers who could tell me if it was an ethics violation to show my financially brilliant ex-girlfriend the intimate guts of the city’s balance sheets, I should definitely show her the numbers and beg for help. No one knows how to make money work, but cautiously, like Di. Her investment company’s icon is a tortoise, because they aren’t in it for the quick buck, but for the long haul.
Fuck it. I’m never bad. I never so much as bend the rules, not once. None of my family members are on the city payroll, or bidding for city contracts, or lobbying city departments for permits. I’d put all my own investments into a blind trust that would have sufficed for a presidential run—not that the current guy squatting in the White House had done any such thing—so I could never be accused of making a single decision in order to deliver a financial benefit to myself. I pay for my own subscriptions to all the city newspapers, for Christ’s sake, rather than let City Hall pick up the tab for them. I have always been a scrupulous rule follower, ever since I’d first run for office. And even though rising to the level of mayor of a major city doesn’t exactly come with any security clearance issues, I always watch my mouth, hyperaware that inappropriate conversations in a city where bribery and insider connections had been a way of life can tarnish my reputation in an instant.
I hear Oscar’s voice in my head, slyly provoking me. “I want to let you off the leash.”
Di had been as close as you can get without a marriage license to being my wife. If I’m not allowed to talk to intimate friends, how am I supposed to keep my head on straight?
I grab my government issue phone, the only one I ever use for any calls or texts or emails involving city business, so all my communications will be part of the public record after I leave office, and call Madison.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Bring me a copy of that summary report that gave me a heart attack, will you please? And the breakdowns of the pension fund obligations, the most recent CTU contract, and the TIF districts. Hell, bring me anything you’ve got on that gaping maw of red on our books. I’m going to go over some stuff with Di.”
“Really?” I can hear the surprise in Madison’s voice. Even when Di and I were engaged, I never involved her in city business.
“Really. Your friend Oscar’s really fucking with my head. I’m having all kinds of outrageous ideas now.” I have to work hard to squash the innuendo in my voice as I wrap up that sentence, because I tell Madison a lot of personal stuff, but that my pulse skitters the first time I see Oscar every morning is not something I need to share.
With a laugh and a promise, Madison ends the call. Without even asking, I dial my favorite Thai place and order an orgy of dishes for delivery. We’re going to need fuel.
By the time I hang up, Di has moved to the couch and
is leaning back into the corner, so elegant and powerful I can’t look away. We might not work together as a permanent couple, but that doesn’t mean I’ve ever stopped appreciating how stunning she is.
It does not escape me that the first person I’ve been interested in since Di is equally handsome, intelligent, and prone to able to focus on me intensely when I need it. Yes, I have a type.
Her voice is throaty when she waves me over and pats the seat next to her. “So tell me about this Oscar, the one who’s giving you crazy ideas.”
I fling myself onto the couch and just crash out full-length next to her, groaning.
“Oh, Di. I thought I was screwed when it came to the teachers’ contract.”
2
Anna
“Education is the silver bullet.”
Oscar jerks next to me, eyes flashing behind heavy-framed glasses as he turns his head. I don’t know why, but I really, really like those glasses. He waited a month to break them out at the office, but he’s been wearing them constantly for the past week, probably because he’s been working so many hours I’ve broken his vision. They make him look like such a nerd. A stupidly cute nerd.
Six hours into an all-nighter rewriting the speech I’m going to give next week about our plan to save the teachers’ pension fund and patch the budget long enough for our tax base to recover as we untangle the city’s TIF districts, I am maybe more vulnerable to stupidly cute nerdiness than I ought to be. I’m flushed with energy and hope, stemming from this weird mix of my ex’s financial brilliance, a new entity to refinance the city’s debt structure, and the speech Oscar is writing for me before he leaves for DC.
My stomach does this weird flip thing it’s started engaging in every time I think of Oscar’s departure date. His last day is next week after my big speech, and he mentioned leaving for DC shortly after that. I’ve known from the beginning that his time with us was temporary—and the new hires he’s recommended to Madison have been excellent so far at implementing his plan to change my communication style—but it’s still weird to think one day very soon, I won’t see him every time I look up.
The man’s practically made himself at home in the corner of my office for weeks now. His absence will be noticed.
“Did you just quote The West Wing at me?” he asks, one corner of his mouth quirked back.
Guilty heat flushes my face. Shit. I’d done it again. Talk about nerdy. God damn Aaron Sorkin for getting so deep in my head I don’t even realize when I steal his words for my own. My staff already roll their eyes every time I wrap up a meeting agenda item with a sharp, “What’s next?”
I nod and raise my hands in surrender. “Guilty.”
His grin dawns like light streaking the horizon. Even his eyebrows—thick, black, previously scrunched in tension—relax. “I totally love you.”
And I thought my face was hot. My whole body flushes and I turn back to the fancy coffee maker to stare at it until I will my body into submission, because my brain is losing its grip on command functions to the rabble-rousing clamor of less appropriate parts. Jesus Christ. He’s half my age. It is totally inappropriate to wonder if the heavy, dark hair on his arms is duplicated on his chest.
But he’s a grown man. A brilliant, frustrating, extremely attractive man. I just keep telling myself he’s off limits, because otherwise I have to face the idea that I’m dying to flirt with a man who’s twenty years younger than I am.
Oh, hell. Who am I kidding? I want to fuck his brains out, and then make out with him for hours while we take breaks to read each other articles from the Washington Post and the Guardian. Which is a problem. My stupid, stupid body revs a little every time Oscar walks in the room and keeps reminding me I hadn’t actually meant to trade my sex life in exchange for this job.
Dating while being a politician is a minefield, period. Dating while being an openly bisexual politician is even more fraught with potential media gossip. And let’s not pretend the headlines about Oscar and I wouldn’t all be referencing rampaging female mountain lions, because older women aren’t allowed to be sexual beings. Aren’t allowed to look at any man, much less one so much younger, and want.
As soon as the skin on the backs of your hands starts to look a little crumpled and the crow’s-feet don’t go away when you stop smiling, everyone thinks your pussy dries up and closes up shop. Women who age and fuck must be dangerous, the way we insist on rendering them invisible.
Shit. I need to stop arguing with myself, before I convince my own brain it’s my moral duty as a feminist to hit on a younger man.
No one ever said I was a slouch in a debate.
“Listen, I get it,” Oscar says. “I agree with you. My grandma was part of the committee that pushed to create Benito Juarez high school in Pilsen back in the seventies.”
I knew that, actually. Because, of the two of us, I’m the actor while Madison actually is the Joan of Arc of information, and sending her after research—oppo or internal—always gives me the advantage on the political battlefield. She’d known to send me the deep debrief on Oscar before bringing him on board for this temporary experiment.
That’s what I keep telling myself it is: an experiment. Instead of a last ditch effort to save my mayorship.
It shouldn’t be possible to lose all political effectiveness less than two years into a term, but I can feel it. If we can’t deliver some kind of good news along with the bad, and do it in a way that reassures the city we’re going to make it through this crisis, I’m finished.
“Our public school kids are actually testing better than kids in the suburbs and downstate, when you compare apples to apples,” I say, complaining about something Oscar already knows, since I’ve been ranting about the latest report since it came out. “But we’re underserving them, especially on the south and west sides, and kids with special needs, because we’ve siphoned money away to give tax breaks to condo developers for millionaires.”
I know this. He knows this. And our job—no big deal, piece of cake—is to convince the people of the city that we’re doing great. That we’re going to be just fine as a community, all current evidence to the contrary.
“The Board of Ed has failed communities of color forever. As has City Hall. No argument from me there.” Oscar shrugs, then leans back in his chair and crosses his arms. “But I think playing politics as usual with this is the wrong call.”
I lift an eyebrow at him. Loudly.
“Yeah, I know,” he says, with a sharp grin. “I’m the first one to target how we can sway people to our side by presenting the story we want to tell. I’m not changing my mind on that. But part of what we do when we do that is grounded in not trusting people. In not believing that people will see the rightness of our cause if we don’t carefully craft a persuasive message. But there’s a time to use a scalpel and there’s a time for the hammer. This is the time for the hammer.”
“How so?”
“People have been lied to by this city. For decades. And not in ‘oh, that’s just politics’ ways. Flat out lying about our funding, our budgets, our mistakes, our ability to honor agreements we’ve entered into. You need to tell them that.”
“I can’t.” My stomach pitches at the very thought. “If I tell them the truth, you know what my opponents will say? Carefully, oh so elegantly, without ever using the words, it will be suggested that the female officeholder, the actress, is incompetent. Can’t manage money. Can’t be trusted with the reins of a major metropolitan area. Do you know the last time this city had a woman mayor? It was the early fucking eighties. And it’s not because there are no capable women in politics here.”
“I know. And I agree with you. But I think you have the opportunity right now to change the way this city sees women. Not just because it’s you and I think you’re smart and committed and passionate, but because now—this specific moment right now—I think you can call out our collective history of sexism and racism and ableism in city politics and our educational system. People are, for o
nce and for who knows how long, listening to women. You should take advantage of the moment. And you can, because you’re fucking amazing.”
I don’t know if it was that whole throwaway I love you thing earlier, but Oscar’s compliments hit me with breathtaking force. Like when I used to fuck up my fight choreography back on set and take a blunt sword punch to the sternum, leaving me unable to breath for a moment. I know what admiring staff sounds like, and his words ring with a whole other level of appreciation.
“Okay,” I say, weakly. I try to recover with a joke. “But I thought a great political speech only tried to make two main points?”
Oscar, like every speechwriter I’d ever known, lives by that truism.
“Two or three,” he says, mouth twitching as he bends back over his laptop. I do my best not to stare at his ass, which looks amazing while he does that, but apparently I suck at that.
“So we’re definitely going for three then?” I’m lightheaded with some kind of hyper-awareness of the late hour and the deserted office and the interest of this very appealing man.
Who is definitely not thinking of me that way at the moment. Even if he was, it’s moot. It’s bad enough to be looking at him, wanting. No way am I going to bump the inappropriateness up to the next level.
“Please to be shutting up now.”
I laugh and stop verbally poking at him. “Okay. Let’s try it. You finish that draft the way you’d write it if I gave you free rein, and we’ll see if you can sell me on it.”
Two hours later, the takeout boxes are strewn on the conference room table, I've undone the top two buttons of my blouse, and Oscar's loosened his tie because apparently the HVAC in this building doesn't keep campaign hours, and it's sweltering.
I've given up trying to be productive and instead of sneaking covert glances at his work, I'm just full on staring over his shoulder and watching his mind work, words appear and disappear on the screen until he's gotten them perfect. It's mesmerizing.
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