About Everyone Has a Guy (Added From: Mr. Speech)

Post 1148:

Mr. Speech: A Novel (Added Content)

Entry One: Mr. Speech—Beliefs—Buses

            It was never the plan. I was reading my old fingerprint-stained copy of Samuel Thatcher’s Orders from the Mountain, doing my utmost to shut out the muted but unflagging clamor of the distant crowd outside. Karl Connell charged the tent flaps aside, cumbersome, hands full with Nelson Andrews’ rumpled suit. Nelson was an okay sort. Sort of. I probably wouldn’t say that naturally, if he hadn’t gotten me the job and been a member of the moderately tolerant set back in grad school. I thought to engage the unfolding situation on some level, the bustle occurring just feet away, but it was complicated. The security team was on the other side of the flap, poking their swollen heads in every second or two, cheeks turgid from steroids and wet from the sticky night, ever watchful of their charge, ever vigilant of anyone threatening to challenge one of his threats.

            I was on my back, feet up on an old couch. The air smelled like failing deodorant. The couch smelled something between a damp New Orleans tomb and my Mimi’s house. Oh, to sink through the cushions to the other side of the world. Sadly, the couch wasn’t magic. Probably a donation to the campaign. Matriarchs Against This. Grandma’s for That. He tested well with old ladies for reasons I hoped and planned to never understand. Thinking about old ladies made me sad. Thinking about being old and confused. Sadder still, I’d probably think it again before it was all over.  

            Stay out of it. My lips tightened to prevent any fugitive comments. It seemed an unreasonable time to abandon a lifelong philosophy.

             I drew the old novel closer to my clenched face. Attempts at blending into the scenery were of course ridiculous, but I felt frozen, a child caught out in a game of hide and seek but unwilling to fully admit it. Samuel Thatcher and his wonderful prose couldn’t begin to save me; I thought I’d perfected the art of shutting out my surroundings, hunched over a wobbling desk for a year in a sad flat in Paris that never slept or took breaks. Obviously not. The tent was steaming, full of anger and noise and the pushing and pulling of waning testosterone and waxing frustration. The nerves started to pile on; my toes curled tight inside my 80s-style Adidas as they hung over the end of the couch.

            “You’re fired,” he said, allowing Nelson his inevitable collapse to the floor. His voice caught every rough edge that decades of smoking had carved out. “It’s not good enough by any measure. People want passion. Inspiration. Your approach, whatever you call it, doesn’t make me feel anything. If I don’t feel anything, how can they?”

            A reasonable enough question. Sort of. Having the candidate worry about the feelings of others was double-edged. It meant he cared. That was good. It also meant he was thinking. Probably not so good.

            Little things I was picking up along the way. The man currently getting the sack taught me that one.

            Nelson pulled at his yellow tie, droopy cheeks flushed as he tried to gather one full breath. Another peek away from Mr. Thatcher told me the poor guy was on the verge of tears. I felt bad. He had a reputation to think about.

            I tried not to think about it.

            That I was quitting at the end of the week gave me some comfort. This was no place for a person like me. Me and the couch made sense together. Made for another time. I liked to read Mr. Thatcher and write novels with ideas buried deep down to impossible depths. Soundbites and sociopaths weren’t my scene. This whole thing was simply a paycheck.

            Out of touch narcissists were more my speed; people with too many degrees and love for the world but no one in particular.

            As Nelson’s shaggy head fell at the candidate’s wingtips, I closed my eyes. He was crying now. A lot. It was horrible. Male fragility. A fine thing, but better in theory.  

            “You,” he said, snapping his giant thumb and giant middle finger. I swung my feet around and stood up with a straight back, trying my best not to be Nelson.   

            “Yes, sir.”

            “What’s your name again?”

            “Harold.”

            “Is that your last name?”

            “No. Sorry, sir. Harold Abbot.”

            “Do you want the job?”

            I’d been around enough for the last few months to know that Karl Connell didn’t like to wait for rejoinders. I took one more look at sad, snotty Nelson, and gave the man lording over him as firm an answer as I could. His eyes were bulging and wild but I met them, trying my best not to blink. “Eh. No thank you. I’m actually finishing up at the end of the week. So…”

            He didn’t seem offended or surprised, which I found rather surprising. He smiled mischievously and asked, “I’ve seen you around, looking like you’re someplace else. Where is it you’re going?”

            “Back to England, I think. My first novel did okay. Trying to finish another so my publishers stay—going back to writing and teaching, sir. I live and work in Oxford now.”

            “England. Writing. Teaching. It sounds small and I don’t like it. Small potatoes, while there’s giants to be slain.” He looked up and took in an inhumanly large breath, like he was contemplating the heavens and becoming one with all existence. “You realize that makes you ridiculous?”

            “No,” I laughed modestly. “Well, yes, sir. I suppose it might sound that way to some people.”

            “We’re all stupid in youth,” he said. “But you’re our message guy. We need you. Nelson’s only good idea was bringing you on. Right, Nelson?”

Nelson made noises but nothing like words.

“It’s time to matter,” he continued. “Belgium and novels don’t matter.”

            I should’ve been horrified. Nothing mattered more to me than novels, and though I’d never mentioned Belgium and suspected he was using it to drive home that Oxford was forgettable, that anywhere else was insignificant. It made me a little mad. And I rather liked Belgium. Lots of slender streets. Quaintness. Real romance. Imagined romance.

            And yet.

            Loaded with all that, I still acquiesced. My resolve had flown for the first available exit. As Nelson continued to blubber at our feet, I tentatively accepted his job, shaking Connell’s bulky, hairy hand. The bones felt thick, like they’d been broken and healed without proper setting.

            I thought about Mr. Thatcher as a fresh batch of shame asserted itself.  

            “Let’s go get a beer.”

            I didn’t answer. Though my hands were big and fairly strong from more than a few years in the ring, his grip was herculean.

            “What were you reading?” he asked, manhandling me through the trucks and tents, people I’d tried to ignore and who’d tried to ignore me for the last few months. They were all leering, thinking the same thing I was: What’s the random guy doing at Connell’s side?

            “Orders From the Mountain,” I said, trying not to succumb to the strength that had just crumbled my predecessor. “By Sam Thatcher.”

            “Always liked that one,” he said, loosening his grip on my shoulder as we walked up and into a trailer. Inside was the head of the campaign, Bridget Waterton. She had one of the most beautiful faces I’d ever seen. It was impossibly symmetrical and without blemish. She was well into her forties and somehow looked brand new. Her dark eyes made it hard not stare. Her delicate olive cheekbones made it a fool’s errand.

            I buried my chin against my chest, looking down to my Adidas and their fraying shoelaces. A fitting compliment to sweaty khakis and rolled-up sleeves. My only salvation was a white dress shirt. It was days from a wash, but at least the color hid pools starting to collect underneath each arm. Though the campaign entourage was sitting in the shadow of a massive stadium, my skin was just about cooked from our hurried walk from the tent. “I’m sorry, sir?” I asked, having forgotten his last comment.

            “I said I always liked Orders From the Mountain. A rich commentary on the dissemination of belief.”

            I looked at the candidate and tried my best for a poker face.

            “Or is that wrong?” he prodded. A glance over at Beautiful Bridget told me she was interested in my response.

            I smiled tightly and said he was right.

            “Then what’s so funny?”

            “If I’m being candid, most people know at least that much about the book. It doesn’t mean you’ve actually read it.”

            Beautiful Bridget’s beautiful eyes were as open as hangar doors. She was aghast at my nerve, but it wasn’t insolence for its own sake. I’d been bullied into taking the job and had every intention of asserting my final decision to walk away that week. Letting it get to this point was a problem of inertia. As I said, nothing that happened on the campaign was paced for me.

            I tried to start my retreat but the candidate held out a hand as a signal to take a seat. I buckled at the nonverbal request and gave Beautiful Bridget a look like tell my people where they buried my body.

            Shit. I was screwed. My grandpa was screwed. He was destined to become a person that spent his retirement years hoping through labored breaths, waiting for my return.

            “Ms. Waterton. This is Mr. Abbot. He doesn’t want to work for me. I liked that about him when he said it, but it needs to stop.”

            “Sir,” she answered. I guess it meant yes or that’s great, though you could’ve said it meant this guy’s a complete joke and it wouldn’t have surprised me.

            He sat down next to me. Close. I scooted over. It was one of those L-shaped cushions that half-surrounded a small table. There was very little room. Besides having no upper lip and tiny ears, he was a large man all over. Not fat. Large. The trailer didn’t seem appropriately sized, thought I’d never been in one. I thought of cruel, tiny cages at zoos where they keep magnificent beasts. I imagined them, to be more accurate. Like most people, I didn’t know much about things. Things like zoos and airplanes and political campaigns and talking to one of the most talked-about men in America. I’d just turned thirty. I was a great, obscure artist, and my greatness had just begun. Nascent. A sap. No. A sapling.

            Whatever.

            The candidate crossed his legs and looked away from my perspiring face, staring at the little laminated tabletop. His gray eyes went soft and his posture slackened. He was suddenly professorial—maybe even protective. It was as weird as everything else that was happening. “I love the way Sam Thatcher ended up using Davis’ wife as the agent of his end. You could feel the irony coming all the way, but it didn’t make it any less horrifying.”

            “I agree.” I did agree. His assessment of the novel wasn’t bad, but I was still unconvinced. Maybe the wily bastard had read a synopsis on his phone. Part of prep for selling me on the job. Connell was a political figure now, so it seemed a safe assumption that every word he uttered was contrived. My radar was to be trusted. As a writer, I lived contrivance.

            “‘And with the flood that was their faith, it mattered little. He smiled and wept during his last breaths. The voice that had inspired a few and then millions was forever silenced. If he’d mattered more to a few, it might’ve been better. He slipped off, regarded by those millions, regarding himself no more. She hung over him half-proud, half-remorseful, as he’d been during those last years.’”

            “Not bad, sir.”

            “I’ve read it.”

            I nodded. “The quote aids my credulity.” It did. Still. I was most likely just one more dupe in a long cue.

            There was a tickle in my throat. Catching it was loud enough to change my own thought direction.

            Karl Connell was still looking at the table. His superhero jaw was disengaged. The candidate was holding to his avuncular settings. Beautiful Bridget was still impossible and unknowable with her beauty. I was twitchy and needing a haircut. “What’s going to happen to Nelson Andrews?” I asked, not fully understanding why it was first on my docket.

            “Andrews will be fine,” said the candidate, issuing a dismissive wave of his giant hand. He was five moves down the line from a moment that felt five seconds ago.

            Huh was all I could manage for a rebuttal.   

            “We’ll make sure he lands upright,” said Beautiful Bridget, snapping closed her laptop with an air of accomplishment. I imagined she’d just sent the most important email in the history of the world. “Punitive isn’t our style.”

            “Really? Because the guy looked stooped. For life. That was like watching a time lapse video of a person succumbing to arthritis.”

            “We’re giving him a lot of money to go away quietly. You have no idea.” Bridget Waterton came over and sat down on the bench. It was ridiculous. There were other places to sit. Now I was crumpled between them, feeling like a guy in a Scorsese movie right before he gets whacked, breathed upon by two overly familiar strangers. “We want you crafting the message. We want someone that doesn’t care about the game and doesn’t write the usual political garbage.”

            “But I don’t know anything. That should be a concern. This will never work.”

            “How do you know that if you don’t know anything?” Bridget asked, smiling witchy and applying a hand to my nervous bouncing knee. I looked down and prayed she wouldn’t plunge her blood-red fingernails through my pants. “You’re here for a paycheck, right. You’re smart. We like that. It’s why we hired Nelson in the first place. You were who we wanted.”

            “I don’t understand.”

            “We get it,” she returned. “But Harold, smarts and understanding aren’t the same thing. It’ll start making sense. The world is too strange for the same old tired sentiments. We need someone to do the job new. Someone creative, ready to innovate, and completely dispassionate about politics.”

            “Isn’t that your job?” I asked, wrinkling my eyebrows at Beautiful Bridget. She smelled too good. It was the first time I’d ever been terrified of respiration.

            “It’s all our jobs. But someone needs to put the words together. Do it, and we’ll pay you enough to write novels for the rest of your life. Not yet, but eventually. The money, if you do the job we think you can. Then your little books. People will actually read them. Reputation. Status. It’s a great deal.”

            I had no idea what to say, but I didn’t feel like they were going to let me call timeout. “I’ll do it. Pay me double what you were paying Nelson, and I never get mentioned as the speechwriter. Not until I want. Or if I want. That’s the deal. It’s important. Needs to be in writing. One of those disclosure things.”

            Whatever a lawyer feels like, I felt the opposite.

            “Good enough,” said the candidate, thumping the table with a closed fist. The bus’s hydraulics bellowed and the engine immediately started. It was like a magic trick. A very creepy magic trick. Was the bus driver listening in? Was it wise to have drivers listening in on important strategic decisions?

I was thinking too much.

My eyes were dilating in disbelief as I mentioned that all my stuff was back in the tent.

            “We’ll get you new stuff. New. And no more laying on couches. Actually, check that. Do whatever it is you have to do. I understand process.”

            Karl Connell must’ve said process ten or fifteen more times before it was over. It was like sitting before a more robust Howard Hughes. Suddenly he went quiet and leaned back, falling asleep.

            Part of his process, I assumed.

            A thin man came out from behind a partition wearing a suit and looked at me unflinchingly. I asked if he was on the protection detail and he continued staring until he gave me the courtesy of a microscopic nod. Beautiful Bridget went back to her little table and started whacking her laptop. I could breathe now, but thinking wasn’t coming so easy. Was this how the universe worked? Maybe so. It hadn’t worked according to any of my previous theories. Maybe there’s life and then there’s a bus and you get on.

            Maybe. I found my own nook and went back to reading Orders From the Mountain. It was hard. Suddenly Samuel Thatcher didn’t understand me at all. Joey Bottoms, the main protagonist, had nothing to say about my situation. He was a soldier from the Appalachians who killed his brother after the Civil War. Joey Bottoms was an idiot. Whatever the reasons, they’d made it through a conflict famous for pitting brother against brother. Joey couldn’t just let it go. What an asshole. Samuel Thatcher was a silly man. He didn’t understand being whisked away on a magic bus with a guy running for president. Sam Thatcher was dead. And they didn’t even have buses when he was alive.

            “I’m going insane,” I said, quite loud.

            Beautiful Bridget stopped key pounding and turned to me. “Just do your best to manage it. Try going through a divorce at the same time.”

            It was a normal thing to hear, oddly. Domestic. A thing that happens to normal people. I sat up from my stupor and said, “Sorry to hear about that.”

            “It’s fine. The whole thing with Nelson’s going to make the break a lot cleaner.”

            “How’s that?”

            “I’m married to his brother.”

            “Jesus. You people.” 

            Bridget shrugged her shoulders and put on a giant pair of white headphones, recommencing the destruction of her keyboard.  

            I grabbed for my book and immediately started apologizing to its wrinkled pages. Joey Bottoms wasn’t an asshole. Buses or no buses, he was more real than the surreal storm of shit swirling around me.  

Entry Two: Mattering—Red Hair—Slugger

            It was almost two in the morning. A few weeks into my job as the campaign’s head speechwriter. I was hunched over at the bar of the Hotel America Dryden. It was almost completely dark, making it challenging to work up my notes for the following day’s event. A rally in Milwaukee. I squinted and let out a rudely audible sigh. The sound caused the bartender, an attractive redhead about my age, to pause and pop up from a leaning posture cleaning glasses. “Everything okay over there?” She added an oblique look, unique to service industry folks at the end of a long shift. I’d thrown similar shade at many a customer over the years, pouring drinks to pay for the completion of my PhD. My holy education. A trinity of degrees in little frames, hanging on a wall in a lonely apartment I never saw. They represented honest toil, no doubt, but I couldn’t help thinking they were utterly meaningless. Still in a bar. Late at night. Harboring a sense that something had gone wrong. It didn’t seem possible. I’d been so careful, after all.

“Can I ask you something?” The worst of all questions, but my wits were too fatigued for clever openers.

            “You can ask.”

            “Do you give a crap about politics?”

            “Sort of an odd thing to ask.” She looked up into a glass, checking it for smudges. “Well I guess it’s not too odd, considering the circus.” She leaned on the bar and her face caught more of the low light. She was prettier than my initial assessment; a little thin in the face, but there was kindness to her expression. As if a slight smile and head tilted in interest were part of her factory settings. Her hazel eyes were open and interested. I blinked away a wave of fatigue and tried recapturing my manners.

            “Sorry. It’s been a little one track lately. Not much chance for normal conversation.” I deliberately set down my pen and looked over her head, catching an unflattering reflection of my face over bottles of high-end liquor. “Can’t remember having an actual conversation, actually.”

            “Sounds weird.”

            “Weird for sure. Again. Apologies.”

            “You work for Karl Connell? The guy running for president? That’s the big time, I guess.”

            I hesitated. My attachment to the campaign remained unofficial and had to stay that way. I was a literary man. One couldn’t be known to jump from political hack to purveyor of prose. The two worlds didn’t mix, both full of the most judgmental and exclusionary lunatics anyone would ever have the good sense to flee. “What’s your name?”

            “Gail Frasier.”

            “Can I buy you a drink, Gail Frasier?”

            “Scotch like yours?”

            “Anything you want. Figure it’s fair play after my sitting over here sulking.”

            “You are a kind of a brooder,” she smiled, refilling my glass and pouring herself a double.

            “Ouch.”

            “A handsome brooder.” A small smile formed on her lips before the glass met her mouth. I drank mine dry and did what I could to keep from coughing from the burn.  

            “Kind of you.” The low light saved me. I was blushing like a schoolgirl.

            “Answer to your question, though, I do care. About politics. Concretely. Tonight, it’s sorta ruining my life. That doesn’t make sense. But you know what I mean.”

            “You mean business here is slow.” My eyes were a little fuzzy and my insides fought the sting of the fifteen-year-old whisky.

            “Exactly. Big shot comes to town and completely has the run of the place. We fight for shifts here. Nicest place in town. Friday night. But I’m out a half month’s rent because his people aren’t allowed to drink.”

            “And as a corollary, the press guys find a cheaper spot.”

            “You get it. The Commodore Room. Shithole down on the corner. My girlfriends are cleaning up down there.” Gail Frasier set down her glass and put a hand to her forehead. “Geez. That wasn’t cool.”

            “Don’t worry about it. Seriously. I worked bars for years. Tended. Played music. The door. A pendulous trade.”

            “A pendulous trade. That’s a way of saying it.”

            “Stupid to talk like that. Bad habit.” I knew I shouldn’t, but I held out my glass for another. It was cloudy from my ink-stained fingers. She switched it for a fresh one.

            “Not if it’s the way you normally talk. If that’s the way you are, then screw the rest of us for not speaking the same language.”

            I hid a smirk. It was one of two things. The lovely Gail Frasier was buttering me up, making a final play for a big tip before closing, or, she was interested in taking it upstairs.

            Or maybe she just wanted a few free belts.

            The two or three customers sitting at little tables in the back began closing out. “I’m going to—”

            “Don’t.”

            I stood up and slipped a stack of yellow notepapers into my journal, smiling what I hoped was a disarming smile. It didn’t work. She seemed mad, which meant maybe she did like me. Did like me.

            “There’s three hundred dollars.”

            Gail Frasier nodded with an air of quiet satisfaction. She’d expected more. That I could afford more. I couldn’t, not yet, and the fact that I couldn’t somehow found a sweet spot with her. Women in bars at night, drinks going back and forth. Not exactly rules carved in stone.

            “You headed to your room?” she asked.

            “I am. Long day tomorrow. Can I ask you one more question?”

            “Suppose the three hundred buys you a little leeway.”

            “You ever read Claire Lauren Sees Through?”

            “In high school. Don’t remember much of it. Think it was boring, the way anything you have to do is boring when you’re that age. Why?”

            “You remind me of the main character. Rosaline. Red hair and pretty. Independent but sweet. No suffering fools.”

            “Wasn’t she the one that refused what’s his name? Some rich guy or something?”

            “Yeah. Rosaline found exactly the thing she wanted. Society told her one thing and her own morality told her another. It’s a good story. Classic and good.”

            “Sort of a weird guy. Aren’t you?”

            “Probably… definitely a bit of a brooder.”

            “Never got your name. What do you for the Connell campaign?”

            There was a half finger of scotch calling from the base of my new glass. I breathed it in and set it gently down on the smooth dark wood, close enough to Gail’s hand to just about feel her skin touch mine. “I never said I did. Goodnight, Miss Frasier.”

            A bit abrupt. The thought occurred to me, just walking away like that. Maybe a little bit smooth, but mostly just rude. Still, it seemed the wisest course. I was tipsy and might reveal my position to a girl I knew nothing about. I considered lying. Lying was always a viable option, though it wasn’t the sharpest tool on my belt. A short story, perhaps, though I’d used up the literature angle. Giving out a fake name, regaling her with tales of my burgeoning fake real estate empire on the way up to my limp queen mattress for a roll that would probably be a little bit great and brief and a little more awkward and long.

            I was choosing sleep. Being an adult. It was time to get it together. If she was objecting to my quick exit, I couldn’t hear it. With my journal and notes clutched against my stomach, I just about gained the door to the lobby when Oliver Page Andrews lumbered to a sweaty stop, completely blocking my path. He was holding a porcelain vase meant to look like something from the Ming Dynasty by his side.

            Moving was hampered by sheer surprise. Ollie Andrews was the brother of Nelson Andrews and soon to be ex-husband of Bridget Waterton. He wasn’t a particularly intimidating guy, but there was a chilling sort of desperation written on his jowly face. “Are you screwing her, too?”

            The question didn’t make sense. I hiked up my shoulders and made a noise to signal disbelief. He then hit me in the head. With a vase.

            When I woke, Gail Frasier was holding a rag full of ice against the bridge of my nose. I seethed and bit down and asked where I was. “On the floor,” she told me, face bent and unimpressed. “Pretty much where you fell.”

            “What happened?”

            “Well, like I said, you dropped like a rock. He hit you two or three more times, but it looked like the first one had done the trick.”

            “Noted,” I groaned. There were jagged little pieces of the vase all around. My neck and shirt were wet. “Then what?”

            “I told him I was calling the cops and he bolted. They usually don’t. But he didn’t seem drunk. He was like… something else. That guy was really pissed at you. Seemed like he was crying.”

            The bartender continued to apply the ice as the pain lingered, strangely serving to aid my comprehension. “I probably deserved it.”

            “So you and his woman?”

            “No. But I took his brother’s job. Not sure about the woman thing.” I climbed slowly to my feet. “Sounds like drama and he got the wrong guy.” My tongue was loosening, but I was beyond caring. Deception felt silly. She was looking at my notes. The pages had spilled on the floor, and even a cursory glance would tell her it was a political speech. The papers were populated with nothing but banalities and empty expressions of hope, tailored for a Midwestern audience. Words like better and tomorrow ran rampant. I was still getting the hang of things. “I’m helping Connell. Kind of an outside consultant. It’d be big if you didn’t say anything. Really big.”

            “Outside,” she said, handing over the notes. “Is that why you get to drink in here? Special privileges?”

            I was on a roll with the honesty thing. Figured might as try it with both feet. “Yeah, I feel bad about that. The drinking ban was my suggestion. Thought it might look good. Put a wholesome face to our, his merry band. The press being someplace else didn’t seem so horrible, either. Far as ancillary benefits go.”

            Gail shook her head. I readied for a chiding. “What’s your name, slugger?” she asked. The inquiry was mercifully sparse, considering the circumstances.

            I slipped the notebook back under my arm and held out a hand. “Harold. Abbot.”

            “What you say I close up shop and we take the bottle to your room, Harold Abbot?”

            She was beautiful, of course, and sure, I’d just received a beating. But that’s not why I said yes. It was what we talked about before. How we talked. That we talked. A mostly real conversation. I didn’t realize how isolating this journey had left me. If keeping her company meant a few other things, I guess I’d just have to bear it.

Entry Three: Jackie—Gail—Love

            One thing most people don’t know about Karl Connell—he’s a bit strange in the mornings. There was a guy on the campaign that handled him from six to ten. Everybody felt bad for that guy. His name was Jackie, but most people knew him as Worthless or Disgusting or Infuriating, as these were the most common appellations employed by Candidate Connell. Jackie was around my age, but it was more complicated than that. He was descended from a form of Irish that aged particularly fast and stopped growing particularly early; he was just a whisker over five feet tall. Jackie had the strangest hair; it was balding in one distinct spot on the top, but he did nothing to cover it. The rest was dark brown and thick as a crow’s nest. Surely someone had told him it was an easy fix. Surely Karl Connell had observed it from above during one of his diatribes.

            Yes, Jackie was a nervous little guy and made a mistake here and there, but it wasn’t as if he was inept. One couldn’t last around the candidate if they were incompetent. Just ask the guy whose job I now had.

            Anyway.

            I woke up the next morning to the sound of Jackie rapping his little knuckles on my heavy room door. The Hotel America Dryden was a high-class place and spared no change on things like doors, light fixtures and nonsensical modern art prints. Doors, light fixtures and nonsensical modern art prints keep rich assholes coming back to the Hotel America Drydens of the world. It’s the little things, turns out, even with the wealthy.

            So, Jackie was rapping and starting to shout. It was just after six when I noticed it. Correction. Gail Frasier noticed it. “Someone’s knocking,” she mumbled. The mumble went straight into my ear. We were waking in a position I wasn’t all that familiar with. It was nice. I didn’t want to slip away. My arm was under her body and somehow not uncomfortable. The part of me where my shoulder and chest and arm came together served as her pillow as she breathed gently into my face. A little bit of morning breath, but nothing that would stop me trying my luck again. I sunk my nose into her soft red hair and remembered everything in an instant. It was almost dark, except for a little light sneaking out from the bathroom. “Your job,” she said, adjusting to set her chin on my chest. “It’s calling you.”

            I moaned and snuck another glance at the clock. Something had to be wrong. They’d been pretty good about leaving me alone early. Mornings weren’t my thing. If Karl Connell was a supernova at sunrise, I was a black hole. “Maybe they’ll go away,” I groaned into Gail’s hair. Her shampoo and my boozy tongue combined strange and started making moves on my baser instincts.

            The knocking continued. The struggling voice was getting louder to the point of an unbearable squawk. She ran a finger down the middle of my torso and kept going. Despite the unsuitable hour, all was becoming right with the world. Except for Jackie. “Go find out what it is.”

            “I don’t care. I’ve never cared. Did I mention that last night?”

            “Many times. Go. I’ll be here when you get back.”

            A kiss on the lips and an ardent push confirmed she meant business. And she’s right, I thought. Deal with it. Back in a flash. “I’ll make this quick.”

            “Better.”

            In fewer than ten seconds I was at the door in last night’s pants and nothing else. A herd of wild horses wouldn’t deter me from immersing myself back in that messy, smelly, wonderful bed.

            I looked through the hole and saw nothing but the vacancy atop Jackie’s head. I raised my toes for a stopper and opened the door short and quick. “Little early, isn’t it?”

            He smiled and I closed my eyes long enough to be inadvertently rude. The lines in his face grew deeper as he said, “These are the big leagues, Mr. Abbot.”

            “Don’t do that.”

            “I’m sorry?” Jackie asked. He wasn’t annoyed or flexing. He was truly surprised.

            I opened my eyes as wide as I could to the bracing hallway light and said, “Don’t be like that. I have a… thing.”

            “Not sure I understand.” Jackie was rapping his scrawny knuckles on a thick white binder. He was nervous. Overwrought. Overwhelmed. I didn’t need to make him understand. That would mean explaining how phrases like big leagues and playing for keeps made me sick to my stomach. The self-evidential manner in which everyone involved in politics bandied around those words annoyed me to an illogical degree. I couldn’t tamp down the feeling; it was like we the anointed were in the big leagues and nothing and nobody mattered except our heightened importance. We were the only ones facing stakes. People fleeing machete wars in Africa, homeless veterans dying in the streets—they couldn’t possibly conceive of the mountains we had to scale.  

            I said it was illogical.

            “Don’t worry about it, Jackie. How can I help?”

            “That looks pretty bad,” he grimaced, taking full stock of my face. “I can’t believe he really hit you.”

            “Several times. Once with a piece of décor. The rest, I can’t say.”

            A door slammed down the hall and the singular sound of the candidate rumbling toward us grew loud until he was standing in Jackie’s previous spot. “Let me in,” he said, motioning me back with his massive hand. There was fire in his eyes. Crazy alertness. It was like he’d been awake for hours and was hitting his stride. The oil in his hair had already dried. “This woman thing isn’t going to work, Hemingway.”

            Connell had taken to calling me Hemingway. It was because one night he’d seen me wearing a sweater. I was still trying to figure out the exact connection, though obviously he only pictured the great writer in sweaters. It was annoying, because now I could only picture him in a sweater. A really gray, really comfortable one.  

            “Let me in,” he repeated, adjusting the thick, gleaming knot of his red necktie. “And go away, Worthless,” he barked, waving at poor little Jackie.

            It was a tight spot. “I can’t let you in, sir. Whatever you have to say, it’s going to have to wait.”

            “To hell with that.” He growled about something being his. He might’ve been referring to the campaign, the staff, the strategy, the rules. I honestly couldn’t hear him. My brain had gone ten seconds into the future, where I was being read the riot act for my unchecked libido.

            My foot and shoulder were no match for the candidate’s heft. He was by me, searching for the light switch. I leaned my bare back against the wall and closed my eyes. Gail would be under the covers or caught in the open, naked. There were certain activities frowned upon on the road. One was shacking up with the local help. It was our duty to be as unsexed and wired as little Jackie at all times and in all places. It made sense. The scrutiny was hard to get your head around.

            The lights came on. Connell sat down on the end of the bed. There was no sign of Gail. There was a clear line of sight to the bathroom. Empty. With this new data, I thought it best to defend myself.

            “You need to know what’s going on,” said Connell. He didn’t look very dignified. His pant legs were almost halfway up his calf. For such a thick man, he had slender legs. I hated seeing them.  

            Sir, if I could,” I started. I had a case to make. Lies to tell. Wonderful Gail had been too good to be true. She was a vision that had apparently evaporated.

            “No, let me,” he continued, hunched over and rubbing his forehead. His perfect suit went wrinkly from the lack of posture. “The girl.”

            My eyes jammed closed.

            “I’m really sorry about all this,” he said.

            My eyes shot open. “Excuse me, sir?”

            “That face of yours. Ollie Andrews couldn’t attack me, so he went after you. It’s inexcusable.”

            “I’m not sure I understand.”

            Connell stood up brusquely and shoved his hands into his pockets, frittering with what sounded like a hundred dollars worth of loose change. “Andrews left five drunken voicemails last night. He knows about me and Bridget. He obviously came here last night and hit the first thing he saw.”

            “You and Bridget?”

            “Completely not a thing. And, even if it was, to come and do something like that…”

            Connell charged close and put his hands on the wall next to my head. The openings in his flat nose were dilated. He was expelling sulfur on my scrunched, battered face. He relaxed like defeat and dropped his head. “I’ll quit the race. And don’t worry about writing up the speech. It’ll look more dignified if I speak from the heart, tell the people straight.”

            “This is a lot to process.”

            “I’m very sorry, Hemingway. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

            I was thinking a lot. Clearly, Connell and Beautiful Bridget were a thing. I wasn’t hit out of Ollie’s fraternal duty to his brother’s usurpation. My assault was the result of Ollie’s jealousy toward the candidate. The girl wasn’t Gail. This had nothing to do with me. Except for getting knocked unconscious.

            It was a warm blanket of relief, and yet, I found myself saying the following: “Maybe you should take a minute before you do anything drastic.”

            “It’s no use. My wife will find out. My kids.”

            “Is this a first time thing?”

            “Not really. And my wife bounces between at least three men at any given time.”

            “Wow.”

            “You’ve seen my kids. They’re grown. The only thing they care about is my money and the businesses I’ve had to abandon for this fool’s errand. I’m sure they’ll revel in my failure.”

            “This is a lot to process.”

            “You said that already.”

            “Take it as an indication that I’m being truthful. Sir?”

            “Ask.”

            “Would you mind stepping back a bit?”

            “Sorry, kid.”

            “That’s okay. I’ve seen you in the mornings.” With room to breathe, I let the thousand thoughts swirling in my head collect into manageable pockets. “Do you want to resign?”

            “It’s really not about what I want at this point.”

            “Small.”

            “Speak plain, Hemingway.”

            “This may be small. Something you can work around. Does Oliver have any tangible proof?”

            “He didn’t mention anything concrete. But he suspects. And whatever the case, it’s true. I was lying a minute ago.”

            “So he may not have anything at all. I’m not saying it’s possible to kill this in the crib, but at least find out. If so, it’s small. You move by it, go back to slaying your giants. All that stuff you said to me when we met.”

            Karl Connell turned sideways and started sifting the change in his pockets once more, lost in contemplation. I considered putting on a shirt, but instead leaned back against the wall. What was I doing? I had a clear way out. Torpedoing my clean escape from the world of politics unscathed had been a constant desire since the day Nelson Andrews knocked on my door:

            I’m working on my next novel, I told him. Fifty-thousand words so far. Thereabouts.

            He inquired as to how to when it might be finished.  

            I’m actually going through a bit of a lull, I said.

            He looked at the state of my flat and wondered how I was fixed for money. A question he and most of the people I went to school with never had to ask once in their lives.

            I’m a little lean. The last one didn’t exactly break any records.

            Nelson walked his casual blueblood walk around my living room and with an elevated nose began to describe my history back at me like I hadn’t been there for it. The degrees from Texas, Yale, and Oxford. How I should at the very least be teaching full-time at a distinguished institution. Wondering if I recalled outshining him and most everyone in most every class. That writing novels in the twenty-first century made as much sense as enlisting a horse and buggy for a trip down an expressway. He wounded my pride and sense of direction, but he killed me with money. It’s a paying gig, he added, and all you ever talked about at Yale was the magic of making the rent with words.

            I’ll try it, but no promises.     

            He assented. To him, I was worth the risk.

            I’m serious. No commitments. Nothing I can’t get out of the second it feels unmanageable.

            Two days later I was an anonymous part of the retinue, slumping wherever I walked, finding dark corners, passing Nelson notes; we became schoolgirls in the hallway between classes. Now he was gone. His brother had thrown me a beating. And I was inexplicably talking myself and Connell into keeping the train rolling.

            Light was beginning to poke through the thick curtains. “I have people that can look into these things.”

            “Yes you do. There’s people everywhere around here. They’re all yours.”

            The candidate slapped his time-worn cheeks and reengaged his standard bombast. “If we make it through the day, you’re going to have a check for fifty-thousand dollars waiting at the next stop. A bonus.”

            “Sir, I’m not even sure that’s legal.”

            “Are you the legal guy? I thought you were the word guy?”

            “I’m the word guy.”

            “Don’t worry about the law. This is America, son. Nobody ever got to the top worrying about the law.”

            He shook my hand and offered an expression of gratitude and resolve. “I’m sorry about your face. And do I need to say it?”

            “I can’t talk about this. Ever.”

            “This can’t leave the room. I’ll make you sign something. Something legally binding.”

            Considering what he’d just said, I thought he was joking. He wasn’t.

            “I wouldn’t even entertain it. But the fact that it’s you. That’s why I may go on.”

            “Sir?”

            “Sycophants. That’s all there are. All except you, Hemingway. You don’t give a damn. This is beneath you, and yet you care. There’s something to that. Maybe I’m worth saving. Just maybe. And Harold…”

            “Sir.”

            “Really am sorry about your face. No matter what happens with everything else, I’ll make it up to you. That’s my word.” It was a few seconds of true tenderness, and then once again he was a heaving mass of energy, out the door to sift the fallout of his dalliance with Beautiful Bridget.

            I looked down at my bare feet. The motion of this life was so rapid. It didn’t allow for much more than flash reaction.

            “That was kind of hilarious. And kind of strange.”

            Gail poked her head from the curtains. Not a magician or a figment, after all. I smiled immediately and then went immediately cold.

            Hopping back into the bed she said, “Don’t worry. I can see that you’re worrying. Don’t.”

            Of course I was worrying. The man who might still be the front runner for president had just unwittingly spilled his guts to my one-night-stand. 

            “Come back to bed. I don’t have class for two more hours, and you may not have a job at all.”

            There wasn’t much in the way of an objection. We made some of the sleepiest, coziest love two strangers had ever made. That’s how it felt, anyway.

            I rolled over and looked at the clock. Eight. No news. No rapping on the door from Jackie. I could infer nothing. In less than two hours I’d made the journey back to caring very little about my job, but I did care for the woman next to me. Though I might never see her again, I couldn’t betray the small time we’d spent together by avoiding what needed addressing.

            “Dammit,” I sighed, staring at the ceiling while she played with the hair over my ear.

            “Tell me.”

            “How are you so relaxed? You sound really relaxed.”

            “Buddy, if that didn’t relax you, nothing will.”

            “I need to say some things.”

            “Okay.”

            “All that stuff you heard. It’s up to you. I mean, you’re a person. Rights and protection and a woman and everything.”

            “A woman and everything,” Gail repeated, barely opening her lips. She was mocking me, but too calm to sting. Half of her face was planted on the bed where the pillows once were. “Are your speeches this eloquent?”

            “It could be serious. I’m not telling you what to do. I’m really not.”

            “I think I believe you. But seriously. Why did you tell him to stick it out?”

            In one night this woman had me figured out perfectly. She was already asking the same questions I was asking myself. It was either a testament to my transparent nature or my shallowness or both. “Not sure. It was like for a minute he was just another guy and I was trying to say it’s not the end of the world. You say things like that to people. Only, he’s not people.”

            “Seemed human to me. As crazy as the next one. Crazier, maybe, but that’s partially because we think he shouldn’t be. Us thinking he’s above being a little crazy because he’s running for office makes us crazier, could be.”

            I was in love. I might not be in an hour, but I was right then. Gail Frasier could make sweet love and talk elegant sense back-to-back. “Can we stay here for a few weeks?” I asked.

            “Don’t trust me,” Gail said, still motionless.

            “Hey.”

            “Seriously. It’s not logical. You can’t trust people. I promise I don’t want any involvement, but the stakes are too high for you to just go take my word for it.”

            She went on to explain that if Connell’s affair was still a secret, it might be wise to remind the guy that hit me that there was a witness. “Say I’ll testify. No way he won’t cut a deal. Or whatever these people do. I think that could work. Everyone’s happy.”

            I was more in love. It scared me that Gail Frasier was so clever and calculating, but not enough to make a mark.

            “Wow,” I said. “That’s really good.”

            “I want to nap.”

            “Thought you had class?”

            “Who cares. Read to me. That book over there.” She closed her eyes and drew closer, waiting for a story. I turned on the bedside lamp and started from where I’d last left off.

            “What is it?” she asked.

            “It’s called Notes on Weather and Roads. By Davidson G. Wright.”

            “Sounds horrible.”

            “Yeah, but it’s not. It’s about a group of people that find all these crazy deep messages in the mundane everyday happenings of existence. Like finding the meaning of life just by living. It’s heartening.”

            Gail’s voice was growing softer. “You’re the opposite. In a cute way.”

            “What?”

            “You’re at the center of everything, and you roll your eyes.”

            She was asleep before I could start reading. And I was still in love.

Entry Four: Magical Places—Grady—Son of a Bitch

            Ten days later, and somehow we’d managed to come through. The situation appeared as if it was healing faster than my face. Campaign staffers buzzed all around as we went from small town to small town. The middle of the country was nothing like I’d been told. While Bridget directed the fold, I snuck away to explore magical places like feed stores and family diners where magical people looked you in the eye and told you what they were thinking. It helped my work. A little bit of Americana was seeping into my speechwriting, a quality sorely lacking in Connell’s perceived persona. He’d always been amiable to crowds, even electric, but the man needed some grounding. Life as a venture capitalist didn’t make him the most relatable figure in America, but most folks didn’t expect a friend. The people inside the magical places weren’t naïve in the ways I was told. They figured on being lied to and realized that was the way things were; they’d vote, if at all, for the man or woman they could trust the most or distrust the least. As I began to lose track of the towns, it became clear that the magical people were far wiser than the people with three degrees and a view of the ocean. They could see us on TV and hear us on the radio, after all. To us, they were mere imaginings to be used for power or political gain.

            In the end, they still were. I was talking to a man named Grady at a barber shop as he swept up my hair when it occurred to me it wasn’t just conversation; I was mining him for information on the plight of the common man. “I just wonder about my grandson. There ain’t much work around here,” he said, shaking his head with a kind of practiced reservation. “Ain’t much work at all.”

            I snuck a glance in the mirror and glanced at my new style. Tight on the sides, with just enough left on top to do something stylish. Grady was pretty good. In New York the same job would’ve cost me a hundred bucks. The back of my neck felt tingly and new; it had been years since I’d gotten a straight-razor shave. “Not bad,” I said, turning back toward Grady.

            “You’re a good-looking kid,” he said, finishing up with clippings. “Need to remember to keep your left up, though.” My hand shot toward the wounds healing around my eyes and nose. “Guess politics is as tough as they say.” He laughed a little, but not enough to be intrusive or rude. I realized that Grady wasn’t just a barber. He actually listened to people as he cut their hair, and he knew how to respond. An occasional jest. A little free advice. A few measures of silence. It was instinct. I realized that I could probably learn a lot from Grady. For a moment I thought about taking him with me. That would really get the worker bees in the campaign talking. What makes Harry Abbot so important? And what’s with the old pocked-faced man that keeps following him around wearing a barber’s apron?

            “How long you been at this gig, Grady?”

            “Forty years, thereabouts.”

            “Same place?”

            “Opened up right here on main street.”

            “You think things have gotten better or worse?”

            Grady leaned his hair mop against the wall and straightened his back. He was a sturdy man with big forearms and head full of gray hair. His appearance was suffering a bit, though it hinted at a time when the young ladies in town might’ve secretly wished for his advances. “Better or worse. Hard answering questions like that. You need a poet or a priest to handle that one.”

            “Poet or a priest?”

            “Something my dad used to say whenever we asked him something tough. ‘Find a poet or a priest and let me know what he makes of it.’ One of his go-to phrases.”

            “Get along with him? Your dad?”

            “I guess so. We probably would’ve had it out by now if things were really raw.”

            “He’s still around?”

            “Ninety-four. He’s lived with me and the wife ever since my mom died. Going on ten years.”

            It was too much magic. I could handle the straight talk and the straight looks, but something about Grady’s uncomplicated face and the way he reeled off his family situation had me crossed up. He asked what was wrong, the way you do when someone in the room turns white and looks like they’ve been kicked in the balls.

            “You ok, kid?”

            I said yes, barely noticing the slick as I resumed my previous post in the barber’s chair.

            Dad talk. I knew better. After my mom slipped out the back door when my brother and I were too young to understand such things, dad was left with the whole show. Maybe he did his best at first. Keane always speculated. Said two boys was a lot to put on a guy in his late twenties.

If the Son of a Bitch tried, it didn’t last long. By the time I hit middle school, he’d given up any earnest attempt at being a father. It was gradual until it wasn’t, the way a lot of descents are, and we dealt with it the best we could. Keane was a few years older and probably took a lot more of the suffering than I knew or was able to understand.

One woman followed another, and drunk became default. Those were the good times. His discovery of cocaine really put that extra bit of excitement in our lives. After a few lines with his friends down at the local, he’d stumble in a state of bliss or madness. He never was much for the middle of the road. Keane got tough from the beatings. It was almost like he was grateful for them. I learned to defend myself, but it never stopped there. The two or three times me and my father really went at it, it took Keane to keep me from trying to kill the Son of a Bitch.

The next day was always the worst part. You couldn’t yell or make him feel regret. The memories were gone. He held his head at the breakfast table and mumbled at the sports page like nothing happened. I asked him how he could look at himself. Told him we’d be better off if he was dead. Said that I prayed each night mom would come back and the devil would take him down for a head start on everlasting damnation. He’d laugh and tell me to go stick my head in another book. Dismissively remark that I didn’t know how good I had it. That my mother was a dirty, useless whore that didn’t give a shit about any of us. He said that until the day we got a call that she had died.

            Barely anyone outside the house knew a thing. The surface of the lake seemed calm. It was amazing, actually. People in the neighborhood would see him driving us drunk to school, looking more or less normal. They’d remark what a strong man he was. To keep a home and raise two smart boys. What a feat. What a guy.

            Maybe it was all part of a plan. Make us tough. Make it so we’d will ourselves to be good at every sport and activity offered at school, if only to keep away from home a little bit longer. We thought of achievements as reprieves. Little vacations away from the asshole pounding beers at home, wishing the world hadn’t been so unfair.

            Just to clarify, it wasn’t part of a plan. He was a nasty Son of a Bitch that did enough to maintain illusions. A nasty Son of a Bitch that happened to have two kids that knew their only chance was getting the hell away from him. When I was just about to head off to undergrad, he met a nice woman named Louisa that got him to kick the drugs and even curb the drinking. She moved in and took his ups and downs as her cross to bear. She even gave me spending money to supplement my scholarship “until I got settled.” The woman was a saint. Her entrance into our lives almost made me hate him more; it seemed like Sons of Bitches were always getting saints and angels. Clarence only showed up in the movie after George became a selfish Son of a Bitch ready to throw himself off a bridge and leave behind a teary brood. Clarence was an asshole. George was a Son of a Bitch, another version of the horrid thing I grew up with.

            “You want me to call somebody, kid?” Grady asked, chewing on that toothpick. I looked at his tattoo and started to gain a little composure.

            “No.” I decided to lie. For the best. “It’s a blood sugar thing. Need to grab something from the deli, is all.”

            Grady seemed relieved to hear that it was only my physical health. “Oh. I’ve heard that can be tricky. Let’s get you of here. Twelve bucks.” He grabbed a hose with a nozzle that sparkled like 1950 and shot air up and down my body. It finished waking me from my stupor.

            I held out a twenty in my left and told the barber to keep the change. He looked down and said it was too much. I insisted. That old routine.

            I walked across treated hardwood toward the door when three black SUVs pulled up in front of Grady’s storefront. Karl Connell stepped out, flanked by his secret service detail. Vera Beros, the hot agent with the bedroom eyes, opened up the door like they were performing a drill. It was pretty comical, really. The candidate gusting in. Agents talking in code into their shirtsleeves. Old Grady standing there, twenty dangling from his fingers. “Hello, Hemingway! Surprised to see me?”
            “A little bit, sir.”

            “I asked for you back at the campaign office. They said he’s one town over, going through his process.”

            “Yeah, but how did you find me here?” A quick look of apology from Vera was all I needed. I mentioned my need for a haircut right before I left. She obviously said something. My frustration lasted about a half second. The young agent was one of the only friends I’d made in the entourage.

            “Everyone out,” he said, walking assertively toward Grady. “I like what you’ve done with the kid. Give me something similar.”

            “Are you sure?” asked the small-town barber. “Don’t you have someone that does your hair the way you like it?”

            “I do, Grady,” Connell said, throwing me his suit jacket and taking to the shiny chair. “But I haven’t exactly blowing away the field, lately. It’s time to go with something new. Lay it on me. I like things done fast, but care is more important than speed.”

            I nodded at the barber to give him some assurance, feeling guilty and a few other things I couldn’t quite name just yet.

            As the candidate sat receiving a trim, he made me stand and watch. “Just delivered that farm subsidies speech.”

            “How’d it go?” I asked.

            “Best damn farm subsidies speech ever given, I’d imagine. They went crazy.” He turned slightly, almost running into Grady’s shears. I winced. So did the barber. “Sorry,” he said. “I was going to do some bragging about you. Tell you what, my friend. If I become president, that kid right there is going to have a lot to do with it.”

            My hands were in my pockets. My eyes were at my toes. Old Grady didn’t deserve this infringement on his day. “I’ll tell you what, Mr. Connell,” he interjected, adding an authority to his tone I hadn’t yet heard. “Seeing how I don’t much care how it goes either way, I’ll promise you my vote.”

            “Is that right?”

            “Yes sir. On one condition.”

            “Hit me.”

            “Make sure the boy doesn’t get overworked. He’s got some health issues. What was it, son?”

            I had to think for a moment. Lies requiring a memory and all. “Blood sugar. No big deal.”

            Karl Connell looked indefatigable and almost angry. “You have my word, Grady. He keeps a lot to himself, the kid. Lives in his head most of the time. I didn’t even know there was a problem.”

            The presidential hopeful ordered me to sit down in one of the chairs by the door. I listened casually to the back and forth between my two elders. It was hard not to smile. Connell was coming across like a car salesman. Grady sounded like a man that couldn’t be bought. I crossed my legs and sifted through the magazines strewn on an old wooden end table. Underneath I found a few old paperbacks. I didn’t recognize the first one I came across, but the second was all too familiar. The Fields Song Easter. One of my favorites. Flipping through the pages, I saw paragraphs almost friendly enough to quote. Quinn Robson’s classic about a few ailing families coming together to plant a crop that will see them through the winter. A few laughs gathered under my breath, thinking how much Keane reminded me of the main character, Dez Wilshire. I bit my lip thinking of times I sought refuge in those very pages, a way to escape the Son of a Bitch.

            They kept trading clipped wisdoms and funny anecdotes as I attempted to give myself over to Davidson’s prose, the way I used to, hiding under the bed. It didn’t work. Grady’s Barber Shop didn’t need escaping. It felt like apple pies and loud, happy families, and there wasn’t a threat coming from anywhere. Closing The Fields Song Easter, my thoughts drifted to Gail Frasier. She was meeting up with the campaign, sometime on the next swing. We’d decided. It had me a little nervous. We’d been talking a little bit every day, enough to stay excited, but not enough to wade far out past the shallow end. There was probably nothing to worry about, but that wouldn’t stop me. I looked to my left and caught a wink from Agent Vera Beros. What would she think if she saw me sneaking around with a grad student? Why did I care all of a sudden?

            Stop it, stupid.

            “You’re a good man, Grady. You chew on things that matter. Really enjoyed talking to you.” They were shaking now, two tough hands with so many miles between.

            “Got to say, it’s been a pleasure,” the barber said, reaching for a little mirror. Connell waved it off, like somehow he knew Grady had given the haircut performance of his life.

            “As far as the pills coming through the area, it’s one of my top priorities. It pisses me off, hand to God. You’ve got my word.”

            “And watch out for the kid. He’s a good tipper.”

            The candidate walked by me and did a thing with his eyes. It took a second to realize that it was a call to pay. I mumbled something like of course and rifled around my pockets. Nothing but a fifty and assorted change.

            “Don’t be ridiculous,” Grady said, backing up from the bill.

            “Do me a favor. No time to argue.”

            I pivoted quickly to follow Connell out to the cars. The sticky floor against my sneakers took me back to high school gym class.

            “Son.”

            Half my body was through the door, into the fresh midwestern air. I turned back to hear the rest.

            “I hope it all works out. Take good care.”

            Agent Beros placed a guiding hand on my back and said something into her cuff.

            We were already riding silently back to campaign headquarters when it occurred to me that I still had the little copy of The Fields Song Easter curled in my hand. I turned to Connell, just about to ask him to reverse the caravan. He was asleep.

            “Shit.”

            “Everything okay?” Beros whispered, rolling down the glass separator just enough for me to see those eyes.

            “The book.”

            “Oh, I used to love that one. The movie sucked. Are you using it for research?”

            “Research?”

            “You know, getting a feel for the heartland, what they go through. If you really want the inside track, just ask me. I grew up in a place just like this.”

            “Actually,” I started, wanting to tell her that I was an accidental book thief and that we needed to interrupt the schedule of one of the world’s most recognized people to right a fifty-cent wrong. “Never mind.”

Entry Five: Caring—Not Caring—45

            I was forming a habit. Watching Connell deliver my speeches, usually from the side stage. It was helpful to see how he delivered my words and how the crowd reacted. The candidate had his own ticks and cadences, and I was trying to fine tune the music for him to sing.

So to speak.

            It was electric. It was strange. Beautiful Bridget Waterton would tell me what was to be served and it was my job to embellish the presentation for maximum efficacy. Connell might push back with varying levels of fervor, but usually he’d acquiesce to my opinion. Bridget was usually on my side. It was her idea to hire me in the first place, apparently. She’d read most of the articles I’d written over the years at whatever college newspaper I was working at. She’d read my novel.

            Maybe she felt a sense of loyalty to me, seeing as how I’d been physically assaulted for her affair with Connell. Also, I’d convinced the great man to stay in the race.

            Maybe she liked having someone raw and easily manipulated. The writing came natural, sure, but I didn’t know the first thing about taxes or markets or health care schemes.

            “You’re starting to understand,” she said, sidling up next to me behind the curtains off stage at a middling college in Kentucky. It was the first time I’d ever been surprised by her presence. It was common for the aroma of heaven or a chorus of angels to precede her visitations.

            “Understand what?” I asked, loud, through an eruption of applause from the student body.

            “The whole thing. It’s in your eyes. In the way you’re standing there, chewing your fingernails.”

            I looked at her and said nothing. Making eye contact would mean game over on account of sensory overload. Traveling with her had provided me with sufficient data. Bridget Waterton was proof; there was such a thing as too much beauty.

            “You’re beginning to give a shit,” she continued, probably aware that I was incapable of speech in her immediate vicinity. “I’m glad he has you,” she added, almost with a smile. “Glad we have you.”

            Another crack of applause. It was strange. Something I wrote was eliciting exuberance from a hall full of previously jaded undergrads.

Could be that. Or could be Karl Connell was just the next thing to get behind, the next in a never-ending line of idols that would ultimately leave them bereft of hope or happiness. He might spit out the same inane drivel as all the other candidates and the people would be as enthralled. More enthralled, maybe. I’d raised my doubts to various people on the staff, but they all seemed to think our message was on point and razor sharp; Karl, Bridget, even Trig (whoever he was) and a woman about my age named Lydney. (Whatever she was doing)

            “Are you going to get that?” asked Beautiful Bridget. I looked around and down until I realized she was talking about my phone. It was in my front shirt pocket, lighting up through the fabric.

            I mumbled for an answer. Walking behind the last set of curtains, I hit talk.

            “Harold Locke Abbot. Are you finally answering?”

            I said hello to Gail Frasier. She sounded playful and maybe a little admonishing, but it was hard to tell. I snuck down into a small walkway where I could better hear. “I’m sorry I haven’t gotten back sooner.”

            “That’s okay, big time. The TV says the race is tightening up. Imagine it’s all pretty intense.”

            “Eh, who cares about all that. Is everything going okay… classes and all that?”

            It was labored stuff between us. The sure feeling that I had was waning. The night in the hotel was almost a month ago. A month that was starting to feel like years.

            “We don’t have to keep doing this, Harry.”

            “Doing what?”

            “Exactly.”

            “Seriously though.”

            I could hear her sigh. “The talking, trying to make this more than it is.”

            “If it wasn’t something, neither of us would’ve persisted this long.”

            “Not necessarily true, pal. I’ve done things that made a lot less sense for a lot longer.”

            That made me laugh. The way she said it, the quickness. Gail fired machine gun tracers of wit when her barrel was warm. “We’re swinging back through town next week. Let’s stick to the plan and get dinner. No reason to change.”

            “Fine,” she said, “but I don’t really think we should talk too much till then. These conversations are sucking the life out of something that was fun. Only call me if it’s something you really want to get off your chest.”

            The moment came and went for me to fire my own winsome burst back. “Sounds good.” Best to button it up.

            She said to get back to work and I said I’ll see you soon. I hung up the phone and started hitting my head against a rail.

            “Didn’t think anyone would be back here.” The voice was male. Sounded like it belonged to a smoker. I pointed my cell phone light and saw the outline of a man in a dark suit pressed against the wall next to an exit.

            “Who are you?” Though I did my best not to take note of individuals in the Connell camp, I was sure he hadn’t been around. “Speaking of not supposed to be back here.”

            “Don’t you tell me,” he said, pulling out a chrome pistol from underneath his jacket. I think it had a wood handle. Either way, he was making his point. “Don’t you tell me.”

            “Yeah,” I said. It was all I had.

            Voice rabid and shaking: “I’ll shoot you right here. I used to work in this theater. Know all the nooks and crannies. I’ll shoot you and get out. Hide and slip away. Whatever I want. Don’t you tell me.”

            The crowd was erupting with more frequency, meaning the speech was drawing close to its conclusion. After that, Connell would take questions from the student body. Questions I vetted beforehand and rewrote so they wouldn’t sound so damn dumb. Young people. Mostly stupid. Not their fault. “What’s your name?”

            “Oh, you want to get to know me? Understand me?”

            I said, “Didn’t mean anything that deep by it. You’ve got the gun. Scary.”

            “Who are you?” he asked. “What do you do for that scumbag?”

            “I’m the speech guy,” I explained, surprised at my own level of calm. It didn’t seem real. The guy wasn’t all that menacing. Sure, the gun, but other than that. He was maybe a little taller than an average girl, early twenties and already balding, craned neck like he’d spent most of his life under a hoodie, trying to avoid the tougher kids. “Oh shit,” I said.

            “What?”

            It was then that I realized, the proper feeling should’ve been terror. I had a pussy on my hands. It’s what all the tough guys at the gym used to call each other in jest. Pussies. Only this was no jest. The actual pussies were the ones that always went around shooting everybody. This guy had all the telltale pussy indicators. “Dude.”

“What?” he repeated, waving the gun with a flagging wrist. “What are you thinking?”

I was thinking he wasn’t a dude. Dudes hardly ever did the real nutty shit. Dudes rarely made manifestos. Dudes got laid and indulged in the normal hijinks associated with societally-accepted sociopathic male behavior. That’s what I always heard in high school, anyway, and why dude was my proclamation in the presence of the armed, limp-wristed pussy.

“Is it okay if I go?”

“Don’t you move.”

With a sigh I said, “I knew I would be punished. This makes sense. God’s hand is all over this one.”

            “What are you babbling about?” asked the young gunman. I couldn’t see much of his face in the dark, but he was close enough to get a strong whiff of halitosis. I thought about Beautiful Bridget and how she smelled five minutes ago. Gail a month ago. Agent Vera Beros the night before last.  

            “Things were going really good for me,” I pleaded as he forced me to sit down. “Getting laid. Respect at work. Kind of an important job. And these paychecks are fat, not going to lie. I was thinking about buying a car when this was all over. Leasing sucks. Don’t lease. What was your name?”

            “Eton Hayle. You’re babbling. Stop.”

            “Eton. I like that. Distinguished. Institutional. Not that you belong in an institution.”

            Eton was right. Babbling.

            “Shut up.” The gun metal was pressing against my forehead for a few seconds, but he couldn’t hold it there. He was too jittery.

            “What’s the plan here? You hide behind the stage and hope Connell walks out this way? What if you can’t get a shot? What do you do with a gun that size? After, I mean? It’s a big gun, by the way.”

            “One more word and I’ll do it.”

            I looked down at my phone in my front pocket. It was facing my chest, but I could tell the light was on. “Can I—just one more thing.”

            “What!”

            “If maybe you’re rethinking this whole episode, you can give me the gun.”

            Eton Hayle began laughing. He had a distinctive laugh, high and clashing. It was the laugh of a ghost that haunts the basements and the belfries of an old middling Kentucky theater. Maybe I was imagining things. No. That halitosis was beyond my imagination. “There are tunnels that run underneath this place. I could get out if I wanted to.”

            “Do you not want to?”

            He was still laughing, but now there were tears mixed in. “It’s never been about my wants. Never, never, never, never.”

            The audience questions were coming now. I heard the smack of the mic as it was passed to the next student. The nervous delivery of some wobbly-kneed kid, so sure of himself just seconds before.

            “Going to be sick,” I said, turning away and bending over. In truth, I was feeling pretty rotten, but not enough to vomit. With my back between myself and Eton, I pulled out my cell phone and hit the second number down before putting it back in my front pocket.

            “Stop that. Turn around.” He had the gun raised up, like he was readying to knock me over the head with it. Not a complete idiot. Didn’t want to give away his position for a nobody like me.

            “Before you hit me, why would you do this? Why hide out in the back of theater to kill Karl Connell?”

            “You’re so stupid. Could never understand. Never, never, never, never.”

            The way he said never, trailing off, it was like something I’d seen or heard. “What is that?”

            “What?” he asked.

            “The never thing.”

            “It’s from a movie. The only we had when I was growing up.”

            “Huh. Yeah, I quote stuff when things get stressed. What movie?”

            “Desert Walrus. Idiot.”

            “Oh yeah. Decent book. Never saw the movie.”

            “Never heard of the book,” Eton said.

            “That happens. More than you might guess, actually.”

            “I have to knock you out now. You can’t get in my way. Speech guy. Be glad I don’t want to kill you.”

            I was glad, but I wasn’t in the mood for traumatic brain injury, either. Playing for time seemed the best option. “Just wait. Answer my question, man. I want to understand. What did Connell do?”           

            My eyes were doing a decent job of handling the darkness, and it was clear that Eton was warring with himself, gnashing his teeth, biting his lower lip. “He doesn’t matter. He’ll never matter. I’ll never matter. Never, never, never, never.”

            “But there is memory.”

            He stopped pulling at his hair. That was it. That was the point of Desert Walrus, too, though it was up for interpretation. No real reason for anything, so you might as well leave an impression. Not that compelling of story when you looked under the hood.

            “People will talk about it. They’ll say my name because right now they’re saying his name.”

            “It won’t last. And you could get killed, man. I get the hopeless bit. Lived it, maybe longer than you. Just don’t go out like this.”

            “Things will get better?” Eton said, trying bad to sound like he didn’t care. Of course he cared. Cared so much he’d driven himself mad with all the caring. He was a vessel that had been emptied by the world and circumstance, abuse or neglect or the other billion things that take from people. Filled back up with up with bad movie lines and failed attempts at relationships and wrong choice after wrong choice until the whole drama of life, all the possibility, became reduced to a little nowhere theater in a nowhere town. The only thing playing starred Eton Hayle and Karl Connell, and the new arrival, me. Eton was where the desperate find themselves all too often, breathing hard, trying to live and adapt in a place they aren’t meant for. Shit, I was thinking too much.

            “Never, never, never, never.”

            “Geez, Hayle. That story got into your blood.”

            “Shut up!”

            I could sense the end coming quick, but I wanted to avoid it. Not for Karl Connell’s sake, or even mine. Not for Eton Hayle’s either, necessarily. It was like I didn’t feel like throwing another wrench in the works. Something along those lines. Like watching over a placid pond, being desperate to keep anyone from throwing in a stone. “Look,” I gasped, straining to ignore the increasing pressure of the gun metal against my head. “You can still get out of this. Jump in one of those tunnels you were talking about and just go.”

            “You know my name.”

            Shit. “Whatever. The whole turnaround starts with you handing me the pistol. We get some people to listen to you for a change, and who knows.”

            “I’ll be in jail.”

            “Maybe not. You’re looking too far ahead. It’s all about right now. I’m asking you, please. Feeling stranded isn’t just a you thing, Eton. Been dealing with it all too long, myself. Trick is keeping it in check, knowing the limits. Usually you can tell a line’s been crossed when you’re holding a gun to someone’s head. Come on, man. I just want a car. And new pants. Two things, whole new person. Change changes things. That’s why there’s a word for it.”

            I thought I heard him laugh. Finally, a semblance of regular humanity. Maybe I want to remember it that way, considering what came after.

            The door underneath the little exit sign burst open and two agents rushed in. I was facing them. The bullets must’ve whisked over my head. Hard to be sure, it was so loud in the little space. They left me alone for the next little while. Thought that was a little cold, actually. One of the agents stood over the body of Eton Hayle while the other went to secure a perimeter that was supposed to already be secure. I mumbled something about the tunnels, the ringing still overwhelming my ears.

            Maybe they asked me if I was okay.

            It’s true what they say about hard situations being hard to remember.

It was a just a little rally in a little Kentucky town, after all. Placid waters. They were. I couldn’t keep them that way. The blood was hard to wash off that night. The extinction of Eton Hayle had me thinking about his story, all the shit that had led him there. A lot of things would be said about me in the coming days, some in the camp even calling Harry Abbot a hero. The story had been suppressed at my demand and Connell had agreed, but a few blogs picked up on rumors of the involvement of an unnamed staffer. Secretly, I wanted to feel like a hero. Agent Vera Beros treated me like one in bed that night and the night after. She was getting a commendation. It was her I had called, second number down, right under Gail Frasier, who still had no idea that it happened. This was something to get off my chest. I’d probably call her.

            The gunfire from the agents caused a panic in the theater, obviously ending the event with a crash. After we’d moved to the next town and the next hotel, Connell came to see me that night. The particulars of the incident had trickled down to Bridget Waterton and now to him.

            I was drinking, sitting on a plush couch in Cincinnati, looking to my left out at the big river moving steady below. They’d given me a better room. I was just a few away from the big man.

            “You getting drunk, Hemingway?” he asked with a knock.

            We were developing a shorthand by then.

            I got up and unlocked the door, bowing as he stepped heavily through. “Nice.”

            “I think the hoteliers call it the Held At Gunpoint package. It’s big with these Ohio River Valley types.”

            “How much have you had?”

            “Not enough,” I said, passing him the bottle. He took a big drink and gasped from the bite. It was good stuff. He nodded his big head in acknowledgment of the quality before passing it back.

            “Sounds like you did a brave thing, kid.”

            “Sounds like you don’t believe what you’re saying, sir.”

            He snapped his fingers for the bottle. “Don’t be an ass. I have a hard time with this stuff. You know that by now; if it was difficult finding time for emotions before, the campaign turns you into a damn robot. We’re all turning a bit. Changing.”

            I nodded and we sat on the couch in silence before he eventually turned on the TV. It was a local reporter, reading a statement prepared by one of the minions I never talked to. A comment on gun violence and mental health in America.

            “Vague,” I said, rubbing my eyes as I turned down the volume.

            “You don’t like it?” he asked.

            “No, it’s perfect. I’m training the minions well. They hate me. It just started that way, so I went with it.”

            “Probably for the best.”

            “What do you actually think?” I asked, motioning at the TV. “About guns and crazy assholes.”

            “I think there’s a lot of guns and a lot of crazy assholes, and one of them almost killed my speech guy tonight. I don’t like it. Anyone with a smattering of humanity doesn’t like it.”

            “You want to do anything? Change things for the better?”

            “I’m not Caesar,” he said, reaching over to apply one of his massive mitts to my shoulder. “Not Caesar, meaning I’m not running for dictator. Guess you could call me Caesar in the way that people want me dead.”

It was funny enough, but all he got from me was a solemn nod.

“Hey, kid. This is the United States. There are limits on leadership.”

I sighed, probably adding a bit too much breath and frustration. It was out of character, but I felt like he was allowing for a drop in decorum, considering the circumstances.

            “Come on, Hemingway. You want me to be anti-gun guy? Pro-gun guy? Whatever the hell those things even mean.”

            “I don’t know policy,” I told him. “Don’t want to know. It’s just messed up. That guy’s dead. He was a loser, but I’m not convince he was all that crazy.”

            “You’re too nice, maybe. Or maybe you don’t see enemies.”

            “What’s that supposed to mean?”

            “Don’t bite my head off, kid. Could be, this guy shouldn’t have threatened you. Shouldn’t have been there at all, being sad and armed.”

            “It’s what led up to that moment.”

            “A series of sad stories. I feel sorry for the kid’s family. Wish it hadn’t happened. Wish he’d never gotten his hands on that gun. Slipped through the cracks.”

            “Another glorious, fix-all platitude.”

            “I don’t know if this qualifies, but tonight, he was my enemy. Almost killed my guy.” Connell’s smile was controlled as he pointed at my chest. “And I think he was there to kill me.”

            “Yeah, he was. To be remembered, mostly.”

            “Is it okay if I call the guy that wants to kill me and my guy an enemy?”

            I took another drink. “Seems logical.”

Entry Six: Writers—Politics—Dark Thoughts

            Meeting Augusta Riser, it would be fair to see that I was woefully unprepared. It was one of those event storms, everyone engaged with something of vital importance. We were on every screen in the States, number one with a bullet, working for the guy that was good enough to kill, just one week after what’s his name’s ill-conceived attempt at Connell’s life. This meant my minions were busy. Hashing things out. Formulating jet-fueled messaging strategies for come what may or may not.

            Boiled down, there was no one to watch my back.

            I was sitting in a restaurant, thinking about Gail Frasier, doing my best not to requisition my phone for some insipid midday text salute. The sun was blasting through the chain restaurant against the cheap polished wood, redirecting hazy light through tacky snowy glass insignias. “Gail,” I mouthed, trying to find some comfort in one of the section’s four booths. Besides a uniformed middle-aged bartender who I couldn’t blame for giving up on life, I was the only one in the seat yourself section. Seventeen televisions. All but two were broadcasting tired video packages of teams that weren’t even in season, going over past seasons, talking about seasons to come and all the unprecedented that might transpire once again.

            Ridiculous programming for ridiculous people, unable to live in the moment, looking behind or ahead.

            A ridiculous observation for someone doing exactly the same thing. Stop with the woeful self-analysis. It was a hard ask. My situation had been compromised. Someone with the power to put me on the front page was threatening to do just that.

            Facing the front door was pointless, sun doing what it was, so my plan to take stock of Ms. Riser was in vain. She was on top of me before I had any chance at sizing her up.

            Whatever that might’ve done. What did I know of sizing people up?

            “Mr. Abbot,” she said. The suddenness gave me a jump too dramatic to play off.

            “Hello,” I said. “Hello.” My legs hit the table as I tried to rise. She had me trapped, blinking against the light and trying not to cry out in pain. My right knee exploding with pain.

            “Are you okay?” she asked, so concerned she couldn’t turn herself away from some invaluable treasure that seemed to be lodged in the bottom of her purse.

            “Old sports injury,” I managed, trying to give her an approximation of the truth with a face ridiculously red.

            “I thought you just took a knock,” she said, English Midlands accent coming to the fore.

            “You nailed it. That’s what happened. Man, it’s a really bright day.”

            “It might not remain that way.” She slipped into the booth opposite me and placed a notebook and recorder on the horrifyingly busy tabletop. It seemed she was big on right angles, making the corporate mess underneath stand all out the more.

            Her resolute manner and the searing in my knee precipitated in my calling over to Lonnie the time-worn bartender, asking for another drink. He went through the motions and brought over a full glass of something murky, asking the lady if she’d like anything.

            “Yeah. Would you?” I followed, awkwardly rubbing myself under the table. Sweat was forming on my brow, a result of holding back tears.

            Things weren’t going so well.

            And then she set down my novel, The Reasons Remaining, the only thing she’d brought that wasn’t lined up straight on the table.

            “Is the lack of alignment supposed to be symbolic?” I asked, making sure she took note of my chagrin.

            “You’re a pretty good writer, Harold. Especially when you know what you want to say. Suppose that’s the way of it, though.” 

            “Huh. Vague. Less than helpful, if I’m honest, though, I’ll take the trade. If you made it to the last page, that’s more than most people who endeavored the same. Coming from an award-winning journalist, maybe I should be flattered.”

            “Don’t be. I was an assessment fueled by politeness, mostly.”

            “Wow.”

            “Don’t get your overeducated knickers in a wad.”

            “Sure. No wadding.”

            “You obviously know what you’re about. The characters are good. Some are wonderful, actually, or something close to wonderful. I went back and forth about the theme.”

            “Debatable and multifaceted, as is most good literature.” The drink felt good in my throat. The idea of my book being the real deal felt good. But that was only an idea. It’s not like there was a litmus test. Some readout that says good literature. A writer has to have others say what a genius or moron he or she is. Or, maybe the writer’s moron enough to not care and get by on their sense of worth. I could choose to be either type, in theory, though my propensity for self-loathing and self-doubt had me firmly stationed in the former camp, awaiting early release by reason of late onset self-esteem.

            “I’ve written six myself.”

            “Books?”

            “Novels, Abbot.”
            “Not sure I’ve seen them in stores.”

            “You know you haven’t. If I publish a bloody novel, my writing career, making lots of money and getting over on big shots… it’ll be flushed down the shitter.”

            “Sounds complicated. I wouldn’t know.”

            “Wouldn’t you?”

            “To be clear, the moment you sat there and started organizing your knickknacks, we’ve been off the record. Is that something to be relied upon? Skip over the judgment about my naivety and lack of training in whatever the hell game you people call this.”

            Augusta showed me her phone to put me at ease that she wasn’t recording, adding a smile laced with mockery. It looked practiced, like mockery was her full-time gig and the writing thing was just something she did for vacation money.

            “Your teeth aren’t perfect,” I said. The moment the words came out, I closed my eyes and readied for a slap. Nothing happened. I lifted my lids to see that same smile.

            “Jesus, Abbot.”

            “I meant it as a compliment. The teeth thing.” It was true, though explaining it might prove difficult. Everyone I worked around had annoyingly perfect teeth. Beautiful Bridget and Connell, of course, but even the lowest of my Ivy League Minions. I’d always had pretty good teeth. Lucky. The Son of a Bitch wasn’t the type to take me to and fro to an orthodontist. The intrepid reporter looked to be rocking the natural look as well, and it didn’t stop with her mouth. Her light brown hair was hastily pulled up, leaving her high-cheekbones and the few lines on her forehead unobscured. Not much in the way of makeup, either. I was instantly a sucker for her eyes. They were almost too big for her face. Another way of saying perfect, like they could take in the whole world with one short gaze.

            “You need to stop staring, Abbot.”

            “Sorry.”

            “Here’s the deal. I know it was you. And I know what you do. How integral you are to the campaign.”

            “You’ll have to be more specific,” I said. I held up an unsteady finger as I went again for Lonnie’s concoction. It smarted. It wasn’t exactly top-shelf. Lonnie’s bar only the one.

            “Don’t fence. You wouldn’t have met if you weren’t already nailed. Dumb not to bring anyone. Whatever it is you’re good at, this isn’t it.”

            It was hard to know what exactly the journalist was referring to. My lack of backup, the fact that I was sweating profusely and drinking nervously—maybe she was referring to the ease in which she’d drawn me out. Two damn text messages and she had me feeling like a criminal.

            “I’m not a criminal,” I gulped.

            “No, you’re not a criminal. Well, maybe obstruction of justice, but that wouldn’t go anywhere. Especially if Connell wins. Do you think he’s going to win?”

            “Obstruction of justice? I’m a novelist.”

            “Harry, you’re a guy that’s been lying about a criminal investigation. Not divulging certain facts. I’m no expert, but that’s in the ballpark. Of course, there’s the affair that you’re covering up between Connell’s and his campaign manager, but there’s nothing criminal there. Just your old pedestrian seediness.”

            “It’s not my seediness. I didn’t do anything.”

            “You look like you did something. Trust me, I’m looking at you.”

            “Are we still off the record?”

            “We are until you say we’re not.”

            “If you want to print something, print this. Harry Abbot resigns from the Connell staff. You got me. No idea where you heard all this, but it won’t matter. I’m going to Europe.”

            “You can’t go to Europe, Harry.” Augusta Riser snapped her fingers in the grimy bartender’s direction, then made a signal with her hand. Apparently, it meant something in the realm of drink-making; Lonnie quickly got about his business.

            “Can go anywhere I damn please.” It wasn’t as defiant as I’d hoped. There was a good amount of trembling in my voice. Something like a kid willing to fight a losing battle with intractable parents. “This was the best damn job I ever had. Made more damn money than I’d ever made.”

            “Do you always get yourself hung up on a word like that?”

            “Sorry,” I said, putting my head down as Lonnie came over with something clear and dry for Ms. Riser. “There’s no doubt I have a gift with words, but writing is more my milieu. Talking is still a work in progress.”

            “Well, don’t worry. It’s nice to meet a man who can unironically praise and humble himself in the same sentence.”

            “Very funny.”

            “It is, actually. And it’s not unique or anything. All I do is meet smart people that hate themselves most of the time.”

            “Ever think you could be the common denominator in the second part?”

            She laughed, but only just. “There you go, Harold. Pretty stiff jab for an amateur pugilist.”

            “I’m not stupid.”

            “So, you’re not stupid. You’re not a criminal. Anything else you’re not? I can start writing things down whenever you give the go.”

            “Why are you doing this?” I asked her about as dry as a person could, the way I imagined a desiccated KGB agent would ask something to a prisoner in a blinding interrogation room somewhere in Siberia. The battle was getting to me, and I couldn’t win. “This is blackmail, right?”

            “No. But if you want me to keep that proper name of yours out of the papers, we’re going to have to open some lines of communication.”

            “So, it’s blackmail.”

            “Not important. Just know, I’m trying to help you. Whether you know or care, there’s something not right about Karl Connell. He’s going to ruin this country.”

            It was my turn for a just-so laugh. “This you come by through years studying politics and economics in journalism school? You read some tweets that didn’t agree with you?”

            “Are you saying you like this bloody buffoon?”

            Nobody had ever asked me before. A quick no was my first and natural instinct, but it didn’t go that way. The truth was, I was teetering toward affection for the man. More than teetering.

            And so I didn’t answer.

Augusta drank her entire glass and wiped her slightly-chapped lips with the sleeve of her blue blouse. “Okay then,” she said. “Either way, I just want to know the odd bit here and there. Nothing a big-brained American writer can’t handle.”

            Maybe I was sinking deeper, even sitting there. At this point, there was no way to know. She was Bobby Fischer and I was Spassky’s brain dead second cousin that no one in the family liked to talk about.

            “If I’m wrong about him, stay in the game. Protect him. You’ll be protecting yourself. Ride this thing out, and maybe you can go back to what you wanted. Be a real writer.”

            She knew too much. My eyes went left and right, trying to recall every face and name in the campaign. It could’ve been anyone.

            “A real writer like you,” I said, sinking even lower.

            She lowered her guard for a minute. “I like to see my thoughts on a screen. On a piece of paper. Something about it. That act of transfer.”

            “I know what you mean. Like that phrase as well. Act of transfer.”

            “Probably pinched it from some nerdy chap like you.”

            “No doubt.”

            “How old are you?” I asked.

            “Thirty-two. Sixteen months older than you, Harry. Is it Harry or Harold?”

            “Either. Friends call me Abbie, actually. The few I have.”

            “A few more than me, Abbie,” she said, lighting up a cigarette, blowing it in Lonnie’s direction as he pointed anemically to a No Smoking sign. “Always found friends to be a hinderance.”

            I felt like a summation, like she was offering me the chance to have a go. Clearing my throat: “We’re both a couple of assholes, too many notions and not enough time on the clock to know if they matter or mattering is even possible. Deciding the fate of the world without all the information, just like all the assholes that came before.”

            “It’s pretty good. Not sure about the asshole bit. But still.”

            “Thanks.”

            “And you already know this, but quoting from your own novel is sort of disgusting.”

            “Afraid I’m clutching in the dark when it’s down to clever. This is my third drink.”

            We sat under her cloud of smoke and tried to ready for an admonishing visit from Lonnie. “To being an asshole,” I said, raising my murky glass, not as high as the first time.

            I didn’t notice at first when she lifted her chin for a look over my shoulder. I turned to see a swaggering frame heading in our direction, dressed in cheap suit pants and a tie made of something other than silk. Figured him for something like sales, making his own hours and taking in a long lunch. Eh.

            “Have I seen you before on TV or something?” he asked, stopping square to our booth. Looking out the side of one eye, it was clear I was a non-entity.

            It was safe to assume she would dispatch the kid sharply, leaving him with a stiff lesson and flagging ego in need of healing and reassessment.

            Then again.

            “You might’ve,” she said, batting her eyes. It was the first time I’d ever noticed a woman batting her eyes. Batting eyes were a myth until that moment. I was buzzed from Lonnie’s pour and starting to get ticked off in a prehistoric sort of way. Sitting there, taking her abuse, then this kid walks over and gets an open door and the four stars. “My name’s Augusta. I’m a writer, but I do a lot of TV.”

            “I knew it,” the kid said, taking a confident pose with crossed arms, one hand raised up to play with his chin hair. “You’re like, a big deal. I should’ve known your name right off.” He followed the comment with a manufactured laugh.

I officially hated him.

  He shot out a hand to Ms. Riser and said his name was Reece Naples like it meant something more than three annoying syllables, still unwilling to acknowledge that she was sitting with another man.

“Hi, Reece.” Rather than meet his hand, she held hers out to be taken. In the span of fifteen seconds I’d seen a predator morph into a fawn. “You should meet my friend Harold.”

            “Hey buddy,” he said, still holding her hand. “Nice to see you.”

            I found myself unable to return the greeting with anything more than a mumble. Nice to see you? He hadn’t seen me at all. Ms. Riser’s Jane Austen routine had him transfixed. The entire exhibition was absurd and done to rile me, though being armed with the knowledge had me playing the role of cannon fodder all the same.

            “Tell him what you do, Harold,” she said.

            There it was. She was using Reece Naples as a living example. A test of my pliability. We sat there on pause until I made the next move. “Reece, we’re in the middle of something. Nice meeting you but get lost.”

            Since leaving the ugly bosom of my broken home, it was the most confrontational thing I’d ever done. The kid was rightly offended and straightened his posture.

            “Whatever’s on your mind to do, leave it alone. Ms. Riser doesn’t want to talk to you. She’s a shit person and you’re nothing in her eyes. Trust me on this.”

            “Pretty sure she’s digging me, bro. How about you be the one to leave?” His toes hit the baseboard below my seat. “Maybe I kick your ass outside. That sound good?”

            It actually entered my mind to take him up on it. Hitting something might be therapeutic, though the exchange would most likely end with me with taking a beating. “Fine, kid. Lead the way.”

            As I started to get up, Ms. Riser grabbed young Mr. Naples by the arm. “You really should piss off, Reece. I don’t have time for this.”

            “I thought…”

            “You’re an attractive lad. Might be good for a five minute shag in the lieu. But I don’t have five minutes. Find a nice farm girl somewhere. Imagine you’re top draw stuff in these parts.”

            “Just let me take care of this guy.” Reece wasn’t getting the message. He’d been listening, but to him the only part worth hearing was the bit about five minutes in the bathroom. A cause worth fighting for, apparently.

            “Please go.” She blew smoke in his face and looked over to Lonnie. The bartender had been watching the scene play out and already had a phone raised to his withered face. “Sir, would you mind calling the police? Our mate here is making threats.”

            “If you put out the cigarette.”

            “Of course. Apologies for the bad form.”

            “Last chance to bugger off,” said the reporter, putting her cigarette in my drink.

            Reece appeared to be well and truly confused. “Get out of here man. Really, I’m asking nicely.”

            “You people are fucked up,” he said, turning away with his hands up. Lonnie held up the phone with his thumb out like a bomber threatening to press the trigger.

            “We’re okay. Thanks so much. Lonnie, isn’t it?” She clasped her hand together an bowed her head at him.

            “Just behave yourselves. I don’t need this shit.”

            “Right you are. We’ll be leaving a healthy tip.”

            I turned around to make sure young Mr. Naples had conceded in earnest, then nodded apologetically at Lonnie. “We’ll get out of your hair, sir. Really sorry.”

            “That was bloody well interesting. Would you have had a proper go if I hadn’t stepped in?”

            “It’s been a few years since Oxford. I’m not sure what you mean by proper go.”

            “Got stuck in. Put your man down.”

            “I was trying to spare the kid from your witchcraft is all.”

            “Good on you, then.” She picked up my book and opened it wide before turning it my direction. The margins were full of notes. Words circled. Underlined passages.

            “Speaking of stuck in,” I said, acknowledging the display.

            “That’s the way I do things, Harold. Abbie.”

            “It’s probably too much to ask for an honest answer, but what else were you trying to get out of that situation?”

            She leaned back and set the novel down, this time square with the rest of her things. “I’ve been in and amongst it, Abbot. Head down in battles. Refugee camps. Seen shite that would pass as over the line in the Middle Ages.”

            “I want to follow what you’re getting at, but…”

            “When things matter, it’s important to know who you’re dealing with, quick and first-hand. To know as much as possible. You’re about a bit of spine, not such a bad sort. Also, you’ll play ball, long as I’m reasonable.”

“Already come to that conclusion?”

“You didn’t want that kid knowing your story. Preferred a fight to it.”

            “Gleaned quite a bit.”

            “That’s right. Keep in mind I know what you did in Kentucky to stop that bloody shooter. And that your ass was kicked shortly before. In a bar. In this very town.”

            “So what?”

            “So, what I heard was accurate. Oliver Andrews didn’t give you a chance, otherwise you would’ve at least defended yourself.”

            A dark thought started growing in my brain, but it wasn’t whole. I started to take a drink for a moment’s respite before she reminded me of the drowned cigarette butt. “I’ll go get us a few more. See if I can’t make nice with Master Lonnie.”

  My heart was racing. Hands shaking. It was hard to pinpoint the cause, but one of three. Either the row with the young Mr. Naples, the fact that I was going behind my candidate’s back, or that dark thought still lodging a place in my mind.

            “It’s not the end of the world,” she said.

            I took the drink and decided the day was officially lost. As long as I wanted to be the great artist, it was a jam with no clear out. Not yet. Time to think. Time to be strategic, and not just with words for someone else’s teleprompter. She saw me like the kid, a tool to be used. I’d have to find a way to use her.

            I had a swallow of fresh murk. The dark thought from before was starting to unpack its luggage upstairs and take up a full-time residency. “So, who’s Gail Frasier?” I asked. “And how long has she been working for you?”

Entry Seven: Keane—Burn—Help

            After the meeting with Augusta Riser, it was clear I needed assistance. I left with a thousand things on my mind and a thousand things that needed doing. There was one obvious choice to supplement my insufficient efforts, and painful as it was, I made the call.

            “Well, look at this guy. No time for your worthless older brother anymore. I’m guessing little Harry-nuts is in trouble.”

            I closed my eyes and allowed the frigid Wisconsin air to attack my senses while he sang the wrong words to the chorus of Billy Joel’s “Big Shot.” There was no point interrupting. It had been a long time and I’d declined more calls from him than I could remember.

            Finally, a lull.

            “So, where are you these days?”

            “WHITE-HOT-SPOTLIGHT-YOU-HAD-TO-SOMETHING-SOMETHING-BIG-SHOT-LAST-NIGHT!”

            “I deserved that.”

            “Ah, my baby brother. What’s going on with you? I’m glad you’re alive, but sort of disappointed. My feelings are complicated, you might say. Though you’d probably say it with bigger words.”

            “Don’t be dramatic.”

            “Seriously. I haven’t heard your voice since that book of yours came out.”

            “Sorry, Keane. Really. Things have been weird. I’m not just saying that.”
            “It’s okay, kid. I’m not hurt.” His tone was too compassionate. I readied for something harsh. “To be honest, after some time passed, figured you killed yourself. They say it’s the coward’s way out, but I wasn’t about to blame you. If it was me who’d written that piece of crap, probably I wouldn’t have seen a way out either.”

            There it was.

            “But it’s great that you’re alive and everything. I’m sure it makes someone out there very happy.”

            “Are you still with Francine?”

            “Ouch. I was just playing around, but if you wanna get rough.”

            “Seriously, Keane. I’m asking because I need your help. Yes, just like you said. And let me save us both some time. I’m a shit little brother, ungrateful, horrible, unloving, soulless, and irredeemable in every way. My perdition is a foregone conclusion.”

            “That’s not bad. Why couldn’t your book have more stuff in it like that? Damn thing was a beating.”

            “So, Francine’s?”

            “She hit me with an iron. Another scar. No big deal, except that it left a big where my beautiful eyebrow can’t grow.”

            “How’d you let that happen?”

            “I was hurt after she burned my ass cheek with it.”

            “She got a lot of mileage out of that thing.”

            “No kidding,” he said, sounding muffled. I could tell he was lighting up a cigarette. “She took it when she left me. Funny thing is, never once do I remember that woman ironing anything.”

            We both started laughing. Francine had gone and come back before, but this time a feeling of permanence seeped through the line. Keane didn’t seem to have the fight to get her back. Hard to blame him. A frigging iron? It was hard to know if he was serious. I could write, but he could tell a tale. We could talk about it later. “Are you on a job?”

            “Just about wrapping. Been in Arizona for two months. Sucks down here.”

            “I really can’t go into it on the phone, but can you be in Milwaukee by tonight? I’ve got work for you. The money’s good.”

            “Wisconsin? Just like that? Unbelievable. You’re an unbelievable little bastard.”

            “Could be several months, steady. And I’ll throw twenty grand a month. I can transfer the first payment right now.”

            “It’s clear you’ve landed yourself in some industrial-weight bullshit.”

            “Nothing illegal or dangerous. Not really.”

            “Twenty grand a month…”

            “I need you, brother. Need you quick, though. Things move fast here.”

            “I’ve heard that about Wisconsin.”

            “What’s your answer?”

            “Send the money, I’m on a plane. This job better not piss me off.”

            “I can’t promise anything.”

            “Aw. Don’t start telling the truth now.”

            “So, you’re on the way?”

            “You’re gonna have to give it until tonight, kid. They don’t run the Flagstaff to Milwaukee shuttle every quarter hour.”

            “I’ve tried to find better ways to say it, but in the end, you’re just an unpleasant person.”

            “Call you when I land, Nutsack.”

                                            ____________________________

            “Harold? Why’s it so dark in here, handsome? Wow. I guess the campaign’s booking suites for you now. Must be moving up in the world.”

            “And you’re moving down. Sit at the table, Ms. Frasier. Move slow, little lady. That’s right. Drape your coat over the chair. No sudden moves. I’m not the kind you want spooked.”

            “Who are you? Where’s Harold? Why are you talking like that?”

            “Harold’s ain’t a face you’re ever going to see again. Hey. Maybe you have a short memory. I told you to sit down.”

            “Why are you sitting in the shadows? It’s scaring me.”

            “You should be scared. The Lord doesn’t like it when you go around lying to people. Harold doesn’t like it. Most important, I don’t like it.”

            “That’s the last question you get to ask. The clock on my sweet disposition just ran out.”

            “Who—”

            “I’m going to stop you right there, because who sounds like the beginning of another question. This will take three minutes or less. Open ears and closed mouth, nothing bad will happen. If I wanted you out of commission permanently, already would’ve happened. Lucky for you, this Harold fella is a soft touch. Go on now. Take that chair.”

            “She ratted me out. Augusta, that bitch.”

            “Easy.”

            “She’s got some balls. Got to give her that.”

            “Are you going to sit?”

            “You got a gun, Bogart? Sorry, a piece?”

            “What’d I say about questions…”

            “Might as well shoot. Because if you don’t, I’ll catch up with you. My next two stops will be Augusta Riser and that pussy Harold Abbot.”

            “That’s enough, Ms. Frasier.”

            “Maybe I go sing a song to the papers. They’ll be some asshole with a laptop out there, some wimp like Harry that’ll want to write what I know about the great Karl Connell, family man. That he gets his talking points refined by a two-bit novelist who couldn’t explain to me what social security was.”

            “You’re cold, lady.”

            “I do what I have to do to survive. Connell was just a gig.”

            “You’re not bad, looking at your history.”

            “What do you mean, my history?”

            “On the table you’ll find your laptop.”

            “You went in my house?”

            “Yeah. You’re a criminal, and now you’ve had your own wares purloined. It ain’t the oldest story ever told, but it’s close.”

            “This was all encrypted.”

            “I’ve got a thumb drive in my pocket that says it wasn’t encrypted too good. Lindsay Perch from Buffalo. Or is it Shayna Rosen from Sacramento? We can go down the list or just agree that you’re completely full of whatever the kids are calling shit these days.”

            “Who are you?”

            “None of your business, cutie pie. Just know that if you don’t disappear and stay quiet about Abbot, a lot of your unsolved crimes get moved over to the closed column. I’ve got friends in every department, from here to wherever you want to take your chances.”

            “I should’ve known Abbot would get nervous. What I get for picking a fag for a mark. I should’ve picked the pollster. The one with the muscles.”

            “Take your computer and go. Go somewhere nice, and hey, maybe change the attitude. Get married, steal from someone the way God intended.”

            “So that’s it?”

            “Unless you want to be on the line when I call your ex-partner. The one serving time for a crime you committed. Sure the rest of the drug-pushers in his happy family would love to know you’re still out there screwing guys for information.”

            “Trust me. That was work.”

            “Go on. Take the burn and walk. Don’t let me catch your act again.”

            As the lights came on, I took sheepish steps into the room. I’d been sitting on a large bed in the dark, suffering through “Gail’s” conversation with my brother.

            Keane stood up from a little circular table by the window, hands in the air like he sort of cared about stopping oncoming traffic. “Look, everybody gets like that when they’re burned.”

            “She was so mean. How about a warning? You knew it was going to get like that.”

            “Well,” Keane said, scratching his dense salt and pepper scruff, “bad people suck. Don’t take it personally.”

            “Why did you insist on my listening in? It was like getting punched in the balls. A lot.”

            “Yeah. Like I said. She wasn’t a very nice person.”

            “But she was.”

            “No, little brother. There are bad people in the world. I’m not talking about some guy that cheated on a test at Stanford.”

“I didn’t go there.”

“Not the point. Bad people is what I’m saying. We called one of them our father. That Gail bitch was a liar and you’re…”

            “A pussy.”

            “I didn’t say that. By the way, all that sex stuff, wouldn’t worry about it. Chalk it up to a woman scorned thing. Maybe you can use it in your next book.”

            “I don’t think so.”

“How come? Aren’t you supposed to use life experiences?”

“It’s about a woman who defies the conventions of her upbringing and loves a man unconditionally, even after he’s diagnosed with a terminal illness.”

            “Gotcha,” Keane said, pouring three little bottles of blended scotch into one of the hotel glasses at the same time. “Might be hard to work this scene in.”

            I landed in the seat across from the one he’d been using during his encounter with “Gail.” He tipped the glass upside down and let out a childlike sound of satisfaction as he finished. “So, this is awesome,” he said. “I’m actually kind of proud of you. Finally got a real job. Writing for money. Never in a million years.”

            It was hard to know what to say to Keane. Always had been. He was smart and strange. Smarter than me in most ways. Perhaps just as strange. My brother wasn’t technically a criminal, but he worked on the fringes. He had a code, but it wasn’t always easy to define from the outside. Hard for me to judge; whenever an admonishing thought tried to nest in my head, I did my best to force it out.

He was my savior. That was the truth of it.

Things went sideways for him when he went a little too far with our father. Keane was just defending me from the Son of a Bitch. It was loud and brutal. The neighbors called the cops. When they showed, he couldn’t calm down in time. Busted an officer’s jaw. Accident. Sad story. He went to juvey, the Son of a Bitch took off for good, and I ended up living in foster care until my grandfather found out. It took some time to track the old guy down. Whole other sad story.

With Keane, anytime I tried to apologize or breech the topic of his teenage struggles, he’d shrug it off or make a joke. When it came to the present, however, he was a ballbreaker of the highest order.  

            “Hey,” he said, standing over me in a way that made me feel like a kid again. “That face.”

            “What face?”

            “Weight of the world. That face. God, it’s depressing.”

            “You didn’t have to sit there listening to that. Depressing, sure. Embarrassing might be a better word for it.”

            “What are you doing here, little brother?”

            “Working for Connell. It was supposed to be one thing, now it’s another. Can’t say for sure.”      

            “Yeah. If only we could kill that artist inside you.”

            “Wish I could, Keane.”

            “Highly unlikely. I read an article. Something about brain wiring. Once a guy hits a certain age, it’s basically impossible to change.”

            I couldn’t help but laugh.

            “What’s so funny, asshole?”

            “A couple things. Mostly, picturing you reading an article on the brain.”

            “Come on, you know I totally made that up.”

            “Figured as much.”

            “Still bummed about the chick?”

            “It’s been five seconds, but sure, I’m getting over it. Any more of that scotch, or did you kill the minibar?”

            “There’s a good lad. Plenty left.”

            “By the way,” I said, watching him rifle through overpriced alcohol, “I had the same question she did.”

            He turned, four little bottles in each hand. “What’s that?”

            “The voice. The whole schtick. It sounded like a dame and a gumshoe in here. Completely ridiculous.”

            He smiled wide. It made me smile. “Remember that wrinkled book the Son of a Bitch used to read us when we were kids? Right before he fell all the way down the bottle.”

            “I didn’t until just now. What was that?”

            “Some shitty detective story. Set in the thirties or forties. I liked the way they talked. Figured I’d have some fun, play this thing like that. Noir. That what they call that dumb shit?”

            “Why not,” I answered, knowing he didn’t care one way or the other. I’m just glad you enjoyed yourself.”

            “Don’t whine. Drink.” He handed me a glass full enough to get lead me down the dark. “What was the name of that stupid book?”

            “The Killer Downriver.”

            “Yes. Good memory. What a title. Here’s to that asshole. Glad they caught him. That book was graphic as all hell.”

            As we toasted, I allowed myself an audible scoff. “We were in elementary school.”

            “Really was a great upbringing.”

            “I’m glad you came, Keano. Not sure what to do. About anything.”

            “Here to help, little brother. Here to help.”  

Entry Eight: Basketball—Beautiful—Note

            The makeshift campaign office was livelier and abuzz with more dissonance than a boiler room full of cocaine-fueled stock traders. The amount of people involved in the Connell circus multiplied daily. Our guy was supposed to be longshot long gone, but there he was. And so… there I was. “What city are we in?” I asked my brother. He was sitting with his feet up, looking through the blinds of my little office, presumably to check out the female staffers just out of college.

            “Come on,” he muttered, still with his nose against the glass. “Just copy and paste. Even I know how to do that.”

            “What city, Keane? And stop checking out tail. You’re a married man, for God’s sake.”

            He pointed to the missing hair over his left eye. A reminder of his ongoing domestic situation. “We’re in Topeka, dumbass.”

            “Think I need new glasses.” I leaned forward and clicked on a spreadsheet Beautiful Bridget had tailored specially for me. It was organized as sort of a guide to help the writing process. When she first sent it, I told her it might come in handy; a fairly vacant thankful that turned out to be a total lie. Without the guide, I’d know nothing.

            “Topeka’s in Kansas,” Keane said, peeling himself from his observation deck and moving to school cafeteria chair in front of my desk.

            “Obviously. Kansas.”

            “The idea is to write it up special for the good people of wherever it is you are?” he asked.

            “That’s the general idea, brother. We have a message that runs through every speech. I like to think of it as a theme. But there’s a lot going on in the story. Side characters. Specific encounters that tie back into the main plot. Similar to writing a novel. That might just be my way, but frankly, I don’t have any other methods. This isn’t wasn’t what I was trained to do.”

            “You’re getting trained up now,” my brother said, leaning back into the suffering plastic seat, “that was more than I wanted to know, by the way.”

            “Farm subsidies,” I mumbled.

            “That should be a rousing addition to the narrative.”

            “It’s a job, Keano. It’s paying for that watch you’re wearing, by the way.”

            He stood up, held out his arm and shook his wrist. “Don’t bust balls. I’ve never been able to afford a Rolex.”

            “Yeah. Rolex’s are sweet, aren’t they?”

            He pulled his arm back and held the timepiece under his chin, looking down on it like Gollum. It was more than enough to send a shiver down my sweaty, tight spine. When he stopped muttering love to his shiny object, he noticed me shaking my head.

            “Ah, shut up, Harry. Jealousy is disgusting.”

            I told him with all possible smugness that he was witnessing my sad face. Not my jealous face.

            “Forget subsidies. Wyatt Earp. Basketball.”

            “What now?”

            “No, forget Wyatt Earp. That guy had sort of a checkered story. Definitely basketball.”

            I held up my hands.

            “You can’t have your boy go out there and not talk about basketball. Just a line or two but trust me. Frigging Kansas. Basketball. It’s religion around here. Just don’t say Jayhawks or Wildcats. Might split the crowd.”

            “This is serious, Keane. I get that all you can see is your little brother typing bullshit, but there are things that actual human people care about. It was surprising to me, too, but as a favor try warming to the concept.”

            “Name all the major pro sports teams in Kansas.” Rare. He was standing straight, looking far too dignified. An obvious precursor to my embarrassment.

            “Don’t know any, and before you try and prove what a moron I am, I’ll say it for you. Sports aren’t my thing.”

            “STD’s aren’t my thing, but I can name many of them.”

            The door burst open and slammed shut. It was uncanny how fast everything in the office became obviously disgusting. Beautiful Bridget. Nothing living or dead had a chance against her glorious, radiating presence. There was one healthy small potted plant on the desk; now it seemed but a desiccating spore.

            Keane shuffled back to the corner, now less satisfied with his watch. She took the cheap seat and crossed her legs. Don’t leave your mouth open. Don’t jiggle the change in your pants. Don’t be an idiot. Don’t be a frigging idiot. You’re an idiot. Don’t be an idiot.

            “You can sit down, Harry.” She smiled. Teeth so white. Don’t be an idiot. “Honestly, we’ve known each other long enough. Stop being so formal.” Another smile. Enough to blind most mortals.

            It was a disturbing trend, this warmth from Beautiful Bridget. Another damn impediment for the list. There was a chalkboard in my mind, one like I used to use during lectures at Oxford. Reasons This Job Is Ridiculous. Obviously, internal objections. Total lack of desire to be in politics. Feeling like an idiot every waking minute. Being lied to and spied upon. Getting blackmailed.

            And now this warmth. It didn’t make sense. It was growing in intensity. It was starting to feel like something more than simple warmth. Don’t be a frigging idiot.

            “How’s it coming?” she asked, clasping her delicate hands together at the knee.

            “It?”

            “Tonight’s speech, Harry.” She laughed slightly. “We can talk about your personal life later, I suppose.” A relaxed glance back at my brother in the corner. God, he looked like such a moron. “Afraid right now I’m talking about the speech.”

            “It’ll get there. It… always seems to.”

            “I know it does.” She did a thing with her hair, curling the end of a wavy strand with her fingers. “And I know what you’re thinking. You’re right.”

            “Really?”

            “Yes.”

            “Okay.”

            “But being in charge, one has to put on appearances.”

            At that point, I was at sea. In a sea that had never been charted. No dragons, no rising sun. Just beguiled, helpless me. Figured it was time to come clean. “Bridget, can I say something?”

            “Of course, Harry.”

            “It’s great that you stopped in,” I started, trying to focus on anything but her face. Another glimpse of my brother. God, he looked like such a moron. “Have to say, I’m a little bit lost. Not that you’re beguiling or confusing or anything like that. Not at all. Maybe it’s the hours. Could be I’m getting older. Maybe I should try vitamins.”

            “You look fine to me, Harry.” She stood up. I did the same. “There you go again, being so polite.”

            “Sorry.”

            “I was saying that these visits aren’t necessary. The pollsters, the fundraisers, they all need watching. The one constant is you. Exceptional work, every time. Just that if I don’t come in once in awhile, it might make people talk. Scuttlebutt of special treatment can be disruptive to the team.”

            “Of course.” One weight had lifted. I understood something. “Makes total sense. Complete and total sense.”

            She did a half turn and stopped, looking at my idiot brother and then back at me. “This is Keane, right?”

            “My brother. He’s been helping me out. One of the smartest people there is.”

            “Of course. And just as cute. The two of you are almost twins.”

            “We’ve met,” Keane said. A simple statement. It came out like he was pleading for his life. 

            Beautiful Bridget pulled down her business suit jacket and made the rest of the way to the door, thousand-dollar heels punching holes in the sad carpet. “By the way,” she said, “maybe throw in a couple lines about basketball. Add to the hometown feel of the message. Only…”

            “Don’t single out the Jayhawks or the Wildcats.” As soon as I said it, whatever pride I had left dissipated.

            “See? You’re the one constant, Harold Abbot.”

            As she walked out, one of the minions came in. He wore a wrinkled shirt and a tie that looked like it doubled as a napkin. Harvard. “Boss, someone left this note for you.”

            “See who it was?”

            “Nope.”

            The minion was out the door before further inquiries could be made. Keane returned to the cafeteria chair. “Wow.”

            “Don’t start.”

            “That whole thing was horrifying. That woman had you—tell me, Thesaurus. I’m looking for some synonyms for pathetic.”

            It must’ve been obvious to Keane that brotherly snipes were off the table for the moment. My eyes were latched to the wrinkled note in my hand. I passed it to him, shaking. “Go get that minion. Whatever he’s doing, bring him back.”

            Keane turned serious when he read the note: We know you’ve been talking to Augusta Riser. End it.

            “Get that kid in here, Keano. Do it quiet, please.”

            “You got it.”

            It was about thirty seconds before my brother returned with the minion. Thirty seconds and a billion fragmented thoughts. Nothing coherent or helpful. We braced the kid for more information on the person who had left the dark missive. If he’d read it. When he said no, there wasn’t any choice but to believe him. For the next hour, Keane weaved his way through the desks, asking vague questions in an attempt to ascertain something concrete about the note’s deliverer.

            “I must’ve said let’s keep this between us about fifty times out there,” he said upon his return. I’d been working on Connell’s speech while he carried out his surreptitious investigation. It was completely unusable. It read like an essay on the advantages of basketball for everyday American working men and women.

            “Nothing?”

            “Pretty much, brother. Nothing at all from the worker bees out there. Tell you another thing. This office has garbage in the way of CCTV.” He held out his phone. “I think this is our guy, though.” Keane played a security video of a man walking in and leaving in the span of fifteen seconds. It was taken from the lone camera pointed down outside the campaign headquarters’ door. “It’s obvious, but I’ll say it anyway. Guy was wearing a nondescript jacket, hood up, dark glasses. The girl at the front doesn’t remember him. I’m guessing she was on the phone or making copies or something. It was left.”

            “Did she read it?”

            “Easy. The kid’s so busy, she didn’t even know it existed until I started asking. You’re good, far as now. They’ve got one of those group cases of tunnel vision out there. I’m pretty sure a bomb could go off and that lot would still be taking money from poor people still holding out hope.”            

            I asked him straight. “What the hell do we do here? It’s a threat.”

            “Not exactly,” he said. “Pretty much, but I’d call more like a warning.”

            “Keane.”

            “It depends on you, little brother.”

            “Meaning what?”

            “I’m gonna say a few things, and I want a promise you won’t freak out. Not at first, anyway.”

            “Fine.”

            “All this, the spotlight and the noise, imagine it feels like you’re smack dab at the center of the world. Everything life and death and that sort of thing.”

            My teeth were grinding. Keane’s preamble was just about enough to make me go back on my word.

            He continued. “But it’s a note, Harry. Doubt it was FSB or Mossad. They’re usually about using a little more encouragement. Probably just some guy. And—before you ask how he could know about you and the reporter, take it easy. I’m going to find out. That’s what I’m here for. In the meantime, take a breath and do me a favor. Tell me why you don’t do one of two things. Can I say the two things?”

            “Go ahead.”

            “Meet with this Riser lady and tell her to screw. Tell her to out you to the world. Oh no. What can she say? You’re writing speeches for some guy. The thing with the gunman in the theater, tell her to print it. Worst thing that happens is you come out looking like a hero. Maybe the rest of the assholes here deny it and fire you, but that’s probably worst case.”

            “Or?”

            “Second option is you go straight to that smoking hot Bridget lady and tell her the truth. You’re getting hit up for information by some jerk reporter. Admit it. The whole nasty truth, which, guess what, ain’t that nasty. You haven’t given her anything that matters.”

            “Those are the two things?” I asked.

            “Maybe they lack elegance, but enough is enough. You’re all wound up. Even before the note. I’ve been witness to some hardcore hand jitters. At some point you’re going to have to get to deciding.”

            “Deciding?”

            “Who you want to be, little brother.”

            “Maybe we could wait a little. I’ll try to avoid Augusta, duck her calls. In the meantime, see if you can track down this guy or whoever he’s with.”

            Keane sighed. “Or, we could do that. For the record, it’s probably a bad idea. Mostly, because it wasn’t either of my two ideas.”

            “Any thoughts on where to start looking?” I asked.

            “Where are we?”

            “Topeka.”

            “Really. We’re still in Kansas? Thought that was earlier.”

            “Kansas.”

            “I can call some people. Lucky for you, I know degenerates in every part of our fair land.” He put the note in his jacket pocket and came around the desk to give me a brotherly smack on the shoulder. “Guess I’ll get to it,” he grunted, glancing at my computer screen before walking toward the door. “Looks like you’ve got a way to go with that speech.”

            When the door closed, I felt lonely in a way I couldn’t remember. A lot, coming from me. It was mostly white on the screen in front of me. The cursor blinked steady, taunting the idiot sitting in the chair to do his stupid job. I deleted everything I’d written so far. Nothing but try-hard twaddle. 

            Frigging basketball.

Entry Nine: Debates—Greta—Dead

            Two weeks later. I was still rolled up in the inertia along with everyone else, watching one candidate after the other drop out of the race. Our success was primarily down to the recent debates. Connell was turning out to be quite deft on stage, fighting off flinty questions from moderators with dubious expressions, contending admirably with personal jabs from the other politicians. Me and my crew of minions were proving our mettle, I have to concede. Beautiful Bridget would hand us a list of possible questions that might be thrown his way, and we’d take him through what to say and how to say it. There was growing acrimony between myself and the underlings; as the weeks rolled on, it became ever more obvious that they all were far more qualified to be on the staff. Every single one had fat political resumes degrees in law or government or both. Only Connell and I were lacking the standard pelts on the wall, so when arguments erupted on how to frame an answer or rebuttal, it drove them crazy when his seismic gesticulations slowed and he eventually settled at last on my opinion. Most of the time I was just changing a word or two or offering a slightly different take on the aggressiveness or passivity of his delivery.

            Like I said, it drove people crazy. All save Greta Fielding, one of the later editions to our communications staff. She seemed to have a genuinely decent attitude and an honest, forthright approach. I noticed her lack of sycophancy when I came back into the room after a prolonged and unsuccessful bathroom break. My stomach was still in knots and the atmosphere was boiling over with inflated egos and overwrought intellects. The question had something to do with taxes, an area Connell wasn’t polling particularly well in. I’d previously suggested more nuanced language when faced with the all-important but completely boring subject matter. Greta rose to her feet and decided to throw in with me, noting that we’d won the previous debate with my so-called pedestrian approach.  Her phrasing hurt my feelings a bit, sure, but it wounded the pride of two Yale grads named Hale the Fourth and Hunter the Second even more.

            That was the first time I really took note of Greta, besides a fleeting look up from my notepad or a terse mumbled hello as I passed her through the hall. We were beginning to find a real rapport as one day followed another. While we sat prepping for a speech in Colorado in which Connell would roll out his infrastructure plan in more detail, I found myself more exhausted than usual, guard down. She started asking questions that everyone on staff had been told not ask.

            “Why don’t you want the spotlight?” Her query came in the middle of a three-hour writing session, like she could sense I was aching for a break. “It’s kind of a weird non-disclosure to sign. ‘I shall not divulge the name of the man running around with the uncombed hair.’”

            I looked up from my rock: Beautiful Bridget’s binder. We had taken over a middle school classroom, using a teacher’s desk named Mrs. Reyna to lay out all the relevant materials. “You’re very blunt,” I said, smiling wryly as I set down my sweaty glasses. I still needed new ones.

            “I try to be.”

            “Give me a little of your story, and I’ll give you some of mine.” The second it came off my lips, I knew it sounded a tad flirty. Hard to blame myself. After plodding over infrastructure, almost any comment was bound to have a taste of come-hither.

            Greta tugged her thick-rimmed turtle shell glasses tight to her petite heart-shaped face and set her pen down deliberately, like she was using the time and some secret power to slow down our little corner of the world. “Fair enough.” With the loud public-school heater laboring in the background, I got to hear some of the Greta Fielding story. Born to wealthy parents and lofty expectations, she put her head down and made the grades, through prep schools right through undergrad and law school. She was Law Review at Harvard, but the way she said it gave me the impression that it wasn’t something she took a great deal of pride in. The fact that she’d met with success at every point along her journey wasn’t surprising; Greta was smarter than I could ever be, and she worked harder than any two of the Hales or Hunters running around.

            “Am I sensing some resentment?” I couldn’t help but ask. With someone else, it might’ve soured the mood. She took it in stride, almost as if she’d been setting me up for it.

            “Nobody with my trust fund should ever be resentful,” she said, “though I’m not inoculated from the normal human stuff. There’s whining that could be done.”

“Really? I have a hard time thinking you ever a whiner. Figure you exited the womb with a firm-set jaw.”

“That’s because you don’t know me well enough. There’s the wanting another path whine. The feeling like I was hatched in a laboratory solely to succeed and carry on the Fielding legacy and empire whine.” After a little more banter, the conversation moved back toward real things. I found out that she’d been married for a year while finishing law school, that the guy had turned out to be violent.

            “You didn’t take time off after all that? I’m so sorry. It sounds horrible.”

            “It was, but the finish line was right there. And to hell with him. He doesn’t get to throw me off course. Any diversions will be my choosing.”

            “So, how’d you end up here?” I asked, leaning back in Mrs. Reyna’s creaky wooden chair, hoping to steer things away from the checkered and the tragic. Not that I didn’t care, but it was late in an endless train of long days. Eyes slumping was no way to hear someone when they were dishing out unadulterated history. She was happy enough to take the hint.

            “My mom and dad have always been thick with Mr. Connell. Friends and business partners. I’ve known him since I was a little kid. I was working with one of the other candidates until he dropped out. Figured why not come over here and see what the magic formula was.” As she finished her sentence, she pointed playfully at me with her pinky.

            “There’s obviously nothing magic about me,” I laughed. “Spending any amount of time on all this policy stuff should have you well and truly disabused of that notion.”

            “You like him more than you thought,” she followed. “It bothers you, but you do. He probably knew you’d fall for him.”

            “What now?”

            “You know what I’m saying. He’s got an enamoring aspect. No sense denying it. Hell, he could win this whole thing. Nobody wants to vote for the other party, and the polls are holding firm. I’ve gone through this before. Sometimes you get all the right people with all the right pedigrees, and in the end, nothing. Dead before it starts. Not the case with this show.”

            “Exciting, is it?”

            “Not if he doesn’t keep going.”

            I rubbed my floating eyes, not bothering to hide a sigh of frustration. Somehow, the idea of disappointing all the people that had held fast to Karl Connell had never really concerned me. It was different though, sitting across wrinkled charts and esoteric paragraphs of research from Greta. I didn’t want to disappoint her. “It wasn’t supposed to last this long,” I said. “And there’s a few reasons for keeping my profile low. Our dad was a pretty bad guy…”

            “Feels like that’s an understatement. Must be, considering the hard left turn you took to mention him.”

            “Good. I’m transparent as ever. Anyway, I used to walk around the house with a book all the time. There was a nice librarian at the little school we went to. She let me stay late and check out as many books as I could.”

            “Was it always fiction?”

            I sat up a bit, appreciating the question. “For the most part, though I liked the occasional book about the stars.”

            “Other worlds all the same.”

            “Suppose so. Anyway, I’d read by the metric ton. Had a hiding spot in the wall my brother built for me.”

            “I don’t get it.”

            “My dad would get drunk and start riding me. Not a man, you see. Men didn’t sit around reading stories with their heads in the clouds. I needed to learn something useful. Most of time I’d shrink away from his fists, but there were occasions where I stepped up. Sounds ridiculous. Taking black eyes in the name of some barely formed dream. Getting punched to be this certain thing. Getting punched, saying I’d make money at it. More money than he ever could in his life.”

            “So, this isn’t the sort of writing you want to do, basically.” The statement was free of any ornaments. Essential.

            “It’s not going to make sense. My brother Keane…”

            “I’ve seen him around. He’s up to no good. I like him.”

            “He thinks I’m hanging onto the past.”

            “You got your dreams, pal. We’re both around thirty and single. That’s too young and unencumbered to give up on your dreams. Provided…”

            “Go on.”

            “Provided you’re the same person that came into all this. My thinking, you probably are. Doubts are just doubts, sometimes. If that’s what’s going on.”

            I nodded and smiled in relief. If she was telling me what I wanted to hear, I didn’t care. “Thanks, Greta. You’re a hell of a lot cooler than most of the douchebags running around here.”

            She pursed her full lips and said, “Not a great compliment, actually.”

            “Funny. I meant it to be. Better with a pen in my hands.”

            “No kidding, ace.” She hardly finished. I wasn’t aware, but my brother had entered the room. He was with a very unlikely companion.

            It was my old boss. The now unemployed Nelson Andrews, looking unusually upright and resolved.

            I turned and immediately started to chastise Keane. “He can’t be in here. What were you thinking?”

            “You might want to give Country Club here a brief audience. He’s got some shit I estimate requires a hearing.”

            Greta was already saying hello to Nelson before I could think what to do. Of course, they knew each other. Trust funds and high society. All that crap.

            I gently asked her to step out. My next ask was more assertive; that she keep Nelson’s arrival to herself for the time being. She agreed. I believed her.

            My temper was redlining when she closed the door. “What?” I asked, leaning against the chalkboard.

            Keane was standing just behind Andrews and gave him a little bump with his chest. “Augusta Riser’s missing,” said Nelson.

            Keane put a hand on the blue blood’s shoulder. “Harry, by the things your buddy’s been telling me, I’m thinking she might be dead.”

Chapter 10: Solomon—Mea Culpa—Prodigal

            It was late Saturday night in Arizona when I knocked on Karl Connell’s hotel door. I knew he stayed up late. Later and later, the longer things dragged on. Every day survived on the campaign trail meant the next would be busier and more strenuous. Agent Vera Beros was standing sentinel outside his room. She unclasped her hands and used one to touch the bottom of my fingers. We hadn’t been together in a few nights. Not since hearing about Augusta Riser. It had been something of a mad scramble since then, and despite our best efforts, my brother and I had come up with nothing. She wasn’t technically missing because the nature of her work caused her to go off the grid at times, but Keane and his scuzzy network hadn’t come up with any solid leads. Between speeches and meetings and strategy sessions, my body was beginning to give way. I almost didn’t have time to care about the fact that my life could be in danger. Enough was enough.

            Hearing Connell’s unmistakable lumbering footsteps as he approached the door, I mouthed I’ll text you to Vera and faced directly forward, taking in her smell. It was so understated and still so feminine. She was a beautiful woman. Initially the gun and badge and the hardened bearing put me off a bit, but I was well and truly over that nonsense. That was her job. A part of her, yes, but not her.  

            “Hemingway! Come on in, you old-soul son of a bitch.” He was wearing an Ohio State sweatshirt and jeans. It was always a little off-putting to see him dressed like a regular person. He is a regular person. But he’s not a regular person. But in the end aren’t we all regular and irregular? Shut up, you moron. This is no time for internal monologues. He clapped his hands together and waved me through. “I’m having a drink,” he said cheerfully. “Do you want a drink? They’re doing this thing on the late-night deal. They’ve got some sketch, me in a wrestling match with Pavlick. Not college wrestling. The other kind. I guess it’s supposed to be pretty funny.”

            As he came up behind me and went to make himself a drink, I started to say what had been on my mind in some form or fashion since the day he first put his arm on my shoulder and walked me to the bus. Before I could get into my windup, however, he asked again, “How about a drink, soldier?”

            “Sure.” I was standing in the center of the common room of his penthouse suite, staring at the silk curtains covering the windows. The television was blasting commercials. Connell was talking rapidly as ice hit glass. Time was moving slower. Faster. I was couldn’t quite tell what the hell was going on.

            “Hemingway. Take your drink, son.”

            “Sorry, sir. I was somewhere else.”

            “Yeah,” he said, shaking his big square head and grinning after handing me a large glass of bourbon. “Imagine that’s one of those things with creative types.”

            “Maybe.”

            “I hope you didn’t come over here to act punch drunk. If I wanted lousy company, I’d call in one of the other stooges working for me.”

            “Sir, I have some things I need to say. Rather important things.”    

            “Yeah, everything’s important. Important is all we do these days, right Hemingway? Good in a way I suppose, but then again, when important becomes mundane, it all takes on a sort of Ecclesiastical color.”

            “Ecclesiastical?”

            “Talking about the actual book. They say King Solomon wrote it. They used to, anyway. Ask ten scholars they’ll tell you ten different things—no matter. Everything he did was important. The wisest, the wealthiest. All the big decisions. And in the end, he called it vanity.”

            “Chasing after the wind.”

            “That’s my boy,” Connell said, his big body overwhelming the hotel sofa. “Had a feeling you’d catch on.” He turned down the television sound as another commercial played, looking over at me to come and join him. “Saddle up. Chair by the coffee table’s not half bad. Little lumpy.”

            As I walked behind the beige filigreed sofa, Connell kept the questions coming. The man loved to beat a subject into the ground. “When you read it, did you do it with your nose up or down?”

            A month ago, the phrasing might’ve confused me. Now I was more or less up to speed. Connell certainly was a strange communicator in private, but there was method in it. Like he wanted to speak enigmatically enough so that only the people really listening could understand.

            “Nose up sometimes, down others.”

            “Ah. A repeat customer.”

            “Sure. It’s beautiful stuff.”

            “And true.”

            I didn’t answer, deciding to reservedly toast his statement and take a drink.

            “You know, Hemingway, I’m out there saying so much bullshit, I can’t remember a fraction.”

            “No one could.”

            “But the bits about the Bible, those are real. I’ve actually read it front to back more than twenty times.”

            I believed him, but I didn’t understand why he was wandering down this road. Maybe he was feeling guilty. Perhaps he just wanted to say something true and have someone accept it at face value. The more I got to know the man, the more interesting he became to me. But I was getting sidetracked from my task. “Sir, I can see you’re pretty fired up tonight. I’m needing to get a word in.”

            “Go ahead. Sorry for rattling on.”

            “I’m resigning.”

            “Is that so?”

            I took another drink, eyes pinned wide, stunned how relaxed his response was. Perhaps I was just that disposable. “And there’s something else. You’ve heard of Augusta Riser?”

            “Great rack. That one crooked tooth up front always bothered me though.”

            “She came to me when we were up in Wisconsin. Said she’d out me if I didn’t give her inside information about the campaign.”

            “This thing about your identity as a writer; it’s getting ridiculous. You can be more than one thing in one way, kid. Solomon, for instance. You’ll never outsell him, and he built a temple and ran a kingdom. You sure you don’t want to help me run this kingdom? I like you, old soul and all. Gives me a morsel of hope.”

            It was hard to know what to say next. Like he’d heard me talking over a bad connection and taken in just a bit here and there.

            “I’m done caring about the stupid writing thing. My identity is what it is.” I wasn’t even sure what that meant. “But sir, Augusta Riser is missing. We think someone might’ve gotten to her.”

            “Dead, you mean?” He turned off the television. I think I actually thanked God for the small mercy.

            “And maybe I’m in danger, too. I got this note a few days ago. We haven’t been able to track down who left it.”

            Connell reached over and took the little piece of paper, staring at the simple command as he returned to his position on the couch.

            “You should’ve come to me. Or Bridget. She likes you, Hemingway. Really likes you.”

            There was no way I was equipped to respond to the latter part, but I felt duty bound to tackle the former. Rising to my feet, I walked over to the window and let out a sigh, the clichéd way I’d seen in movies, just before the character begins his big speech. “She had me cornered, Mr. Connell. There was a girl I met. Turned out she was bad news. I won’t bore you, but she got close. Found out things about me, and in turn, you. Riser got ahold of the real story of the shooter, along with your…”

            “Finish your speech. The rhythm is right there, got to ride it. Isn’t that what you like saying to me?”

            I moved to open the curtains and have a look down at the desert and city lights.

            “Wouldn’t do that. They’ve got guns aimed at the room. If it’s not my face, could be they take a shot. I forget the rules.”

            I snatched my outstretched hand back and engaged my other to finish off the bourbon. “They knew about you and Bridget. Ms. Waterton. She said she’d keep it a secret if I gave her information. It was a tough spot. I was out of my depth. Whatever my intentions, in the end it probably boiled down to a case of covering my own ass.”

            “Thought to figure a way out of it, did you?”

            “Maybe. My brother helped with the girl. The one that first got to me. She won’t be a problem anymore.”          

            “Sounds ominous.”

            “Nothing like that, sir. I’m very sorry. The whole thing is completely embarrassing.”

            The candidate lifted himself with a grunt from the couch and stood close, looking into my eyes like he was checking for imperfections in a gemstone. “Quitting doesn’t seem like the best course, my boy. Look at you. Too young to make a home of defeat. It’s small and I don’t like it.”

            The words rang familiar, but it was hard to believe this was Connell’s response. A punch in the face, maybe, but not acceptance. If not for the big hand on my shoulder, I might’ve fallen back against the window in disbelief. “But we can’t work together, sir. I betrayed you.”

            He took the glass from my hand and did an about-face back to the bar. My hands were shaking while I remained in place, so I stuffed them into my pockets.

            “Pick that head up and take a seat,” he said, bringing me back a fresh drink. In his other hand he was carrying a large manila envelope.

            “What’s this?”

            “Open it up, youngster.”

            I set down my glass and tore the top off. It contained a packet of black and white photographs. After only a few seconds it became clear that the one constant face throughout was mine. “You knew about all this?”

            “Yep, we’ve had a guy following you. Hard to let one of my most important people go around without anyone watching his back. Especially after you almost got yourself killed on my behalf.”

            I came to a picture of my meeting with Augusta Riser. My face must’ve signaled my thoughts as I stared at it.

            “Let me ask you a question, and don’t try to be clever. Do you feel betrayed?”

            “Makes me a hypocrite to say it, but yeah. A little. More than a little.”

            “Okay, then. Let’s call the whole thing square and move on. Dragons that need slaying, Hemingway.”

            “Hold on. What about Ms. Riser? What about the note?”

            Connell went on to tell me that he was aware of everything, save Gail Frasier’s involvement in jamming me up.

            Before I could lodge any more questions, he launched into a complete explanation. Apparently, I wasn’t the first person Ms. Riser had drafted into service. Connell told me that he met with her and promised her an exclusive, but that she wouldn’t be writing a thing about my involvement in the campaign or any elicit love affairs. “I made it clear that her journalistic career would be over,” he said, setting his feet back on the coffee table. “Extortion and threats don’t make for a sterling reputation. Some of her methods might even be considered illegal. She didn’t seem partial to the idea of leaving it in the hands of the law.”

            “I don’t understand.”

            “That’s pretty clear, son. It’s simple. The woman can’t stand me. She wanted to be the one to take me down. That’s fine. To be expected. Half the journalists in the country hate my guts. I just expect an even playing field.”

            “So where is she?”

            “Africa, I think. Another bloody territorial dispute just sparked off. She left the day after our little sit down, if I’m not mistaken. Now that Ms. Riser’s got her exclusive interview coming in a few weeks, it freed her up. Everybody wins.”

            There was too much to process. I felt like I was five years old trying to learn college calculus halfway through the semester. “And the note?”

            “I’m sorry to say it, but that’s the one loose thread. My people haven’t been able to track down who dropped it or why. We’re working on it. In the meantime, the best thing for you to do is stay here with beefed-up protection.”

            “Considering the contents of the message, one might say you had the biggest motive to keep me from talking to Riser.”

            “Obviously. But I wouldn’t do anything that obvious. Besides, I’d already made my deal with her by the time you got the damn thing. No point.”

            I sat back in my chair, doing my best to sort out the numbers and figures. “So when Nelson came to me saying Augusta was missing, he was just trying to make you look bad. He was probably one of the first people she came to when she decided to bring you down.”

            “Now you’re thinking past your nose. The guy’s a disgruntled idiot. He got fired, if you recall.”

            “And if I quit or have it out with you, making accusations, he gets to have a little revenge.”

            “You took his job, if you recall.”

            “I’m going to finish this drink.”

            “That’s my boy.”

            “One last thing. You had that envelope collecting dust. Why didn’t you tell me about this sooner? I could’ve gone off the reservation. Quit. Whatever. I’ve been twisting in the wind.”

            “Well…”

            “You’ve had people watching me. Watching over me. However you like to characterize it.”

            He didn’t respond. I took it for acknowledgment.

            “The point was to make me come to you. Mea culpa mea culpa and all the rest.”

            He drank his glass of bourbon like a shot, and I followed in kind.

            “There’s a book,” he said, voice reeling from the whisky. “Read it in college. It was about this old man who was trying to figure out who to put in his will before he croaked. Your basic Shakespeare knockoff. Anyway, he chooses the son who screwed him over. He didn’t want to pass it off to some suck up. The crap son apologized, is the point. And he’d gone away. No idea that the old man was about to croak. Think it was called Bill White’s Last Will. Something like that.”

            “How much have you had to drink?”

            “Why?”

            “Because I’m fairly certain that’s not a book. More like a bad telling of the Prodigal Son. Maybe you need to read that Bible again.”

            “Maybe I do, Prodigal.”

            I stood up and walked past Connell as he jammed his thumb into the remote control. “Don’t you want to shake my hand, Hemingway?”

            “I’m tired.” It was true. And there were two other truths overwhelming all the others. Connell, if he was to be believed, saw me as the son he never had. As for myself, there was no denying it; a big piece of me still longed for a father. Oh God.

“Dragons, Hemingway!”

“I’ll see you tomorrow, sir.”

Chapter 11: Notes—Siblings—Remember

            Two weeks later, and only five candidates remained. The only one polling even with Connell was Senator Ryan Pavlick. I’d seen enough by now to know that defeating him was far from certain. The senator was younger and had more experience in government, which is to say, he had experience in government. Completing the package was a nice-looking family and a genial manner that seemed to play well with the common folk. “Do you like this guy?” The question was for Greta Fielding. She was riding with me and Keane in the back of an SUV, destined for a rally in West Virginia. The future of coal and renewable energy was the subject of the day. Another barn-burning topic to get the juices flowing.

            “I like him,” my brother yawned. “His speeches mainly. Maybe you guys should take a few pointers.”

            “He’s okay,” Greta said, poring over the draft I’d finished up earlier that morning. “You’ve got a lot of empty space here, Abbie.”

            “I know, but it’s like I said. Connell wants more room to wing it at the smaller events. It could be a good thing.”

            “She’s calling you Abbie,” Keane interjected. “That’s interesting.”

            The comment took me away from my book. “I shouldn’t even indulge you.”

            “You really shouldn’t,” Greta said, only slightly paying attention.

            Keane made a scoffing sound too loud to ignore. “What? Can’t a guy make an observation? You guys are too tense. It’s just politics.”

            “What was your keen observation?” I asked, unable to return to my reading. “That she called me by my nickname?”

            “Fine. It’s not like it matters to me. Greta, no offense, but I was never going to ask you out.”

            As she circled something with a highlighter, she said, “Can you have them roll down a window? I’d like to throw myself from the car and end it all if I can’t be your full-time lover.”

            “Wow,” he said, sitting back in his bucket seat. “I think I do like you. Please discard my previous comments.”

            “Enough, Keano. She’s working.”

            “Greta, I don’t mean anything by it. Just trying to lighten the mood.”

            “Your special brand of charm has already been catalogued. I get it.”

            As I returned to my novel, he continued, “It’s just that none of this really matters.”

            “Brother, not today.”

            “Even though you agree with me? Hell, you taught me half the stuff I know. How this is all just a game. Not that learning was required. Like any person with a functioning brain doesn’t already understand it’s a big show.”

            Greta was to my left, sharing a bench seat. She removed her glasses and handed me back the speech, now adorned with her notes and suggestions. The dialogue Keane seemed intent to spur along didn’t seem to have the slightest effect on her. I imagined an overtaxed mother who had given up on trying to make the kids behave. I had to imagine, because our mother left before getting a chance to be overtaxed.

            I looked through the pages of the speech. Greta’s work was steady and solid. She always had a reason, and it was always about the work. It was why she’d become indispensable to me over the last few weeks.

            Keane was sitting across from us in a single bucket seat, facing the rear of the vehicle. Though a general pain in the ass, he always knew when to leave me to my job when it mattered. Greta and I went through the usual. You’re right about this. I’m not sure about that. No nonsense give and take.

            We worked quickly. In less than five minutes the speech was what it was and better than it had been. Greta leaned back and closed her eyes. It seemed like a good idea, but I was always too jittery before an event. Lack of experience, probably. I decided to return to my book.

            No such luck.

            “What’s that you’re reading?” Keane asked. “Any good?”

            “Come on, man.”

            “All right. I leave you be.”

            He looked hurt. Like a lot of tough guys full of bluster, my brother could turn strangely sensitive on a dime. He unfastened his seatbelt and crossed his arms, sinking into the leather. Painful as it was to admit, I felt for him. The estrangement from his wife. The fact that he hadn’t made much headway on the author of the note. Keane was a lot of things, but useless wasn’t one of them. I imagined that’s exactly how he was feeling at the moment. “The Seasons We Went Wild.”

            “Are you talking to me?” he asked.

            “You wanted to know.”

            He sat up with a new expression, less anemic. “Tay Thomas. Now that’s a guy who could write a frigging book.”

            I couldn’t help but smile when Greta opened her eyes in surprise.

            “Probably won’t believe it, but that’s one of my favorites,” Keane added with a smile of his own.”

            “Of course I believe it, dumbass. You suggested it. Remember?”

            “That was years ago.”

            “Well, I decided to finally heed your learned advice.”

            Now everyone was smiling. Greta seemed interested in the changing air between brothers.

            “What do you think?” he asked. “Still not fancy enough, I bet.”

            “Not at all. Have to say, it’s damn good. I’m getting a lot out of it. Actually, it’s helping my own thing.”

            “Get out of here.”

            I wasn’t lying. Though Thomas’ work was lurid and a little pulpy for my taste writing, but there was no denying the writer’s skill. I’d always been told that this story of a criminal’s botched robbery and his subsequent attempt to hide away with a sadistic lover was trash. I couldn’t agree. There was a certain masked sensitivity in the prose, underneath the horror and the violence. Hard to call it artful, admittedly, considering the last chapter included a rape and a decapitation. Probably why most critics never bothered to look hard at the dynamics between the characters. Maybe one needed a microscope, but it was there. Just like every other serious storyteller, Tay Thomas possessed skills I lacked and wanted to acquire. Artistic jealous lived loud inside me. There were no exceptions. None that I’d heard of, anyhow.

            “Seriously, Keano. You may have had a point all these years. I should be more entertaining. Doesn’t mean I have to sell out.”

            He leaned forward, not bothering to address me. “Greta, what has happened to my brother?”

            She shrugged her delicate shoulders, still smiling.

            “Cards on the table, I’m not a big reader. That said, when the scholar here goes all the way high-and-mighty years back, I tell him fine. Do your thing. But don’t be so boring. People don’t want to work when they’re trying to escape work. Give them a good story.”

            “He did say that.”

            “I totally said that. And now, here we are. This is why you should always listen to your big brother. Ignore The Godfather. Doesn’t count.”

            Though the need to specify that I appreciated certain aspects of the book was pressing on my brain, I decided to let it go. The moment was enough. My brother was feeling vindicated. For the most part, he deserved to.

            “I think I might cry,” Greta said, casting a playful look my way. “This is the first time I’ve actually seen you two agreeing. Even a little bit. About anything.”

            Whatever else I might’ve been thinking or feeling, it was a nice moment. And then it was over. The driver of the SUV yelling HOLD ON! Our bodies shifting violently from side to side, playthings of physics, but it didn’t go on long. The last thing I remember before the car tumbled over was the sight of Keane’s helpless body crashing against the door. He’d taken off his seatbelt, you see.

Chapter 12: Beeping—No—No

            There was no one in the hospital room when I woke up. That was probably the worst part. Definitely the worst part. There should be a damn law against it. A scary thing, hurting, somewhere without a clue how you arrived. The crash hadn’t come back to me. All I had for company was pain and lights that were too bright and screens with indiscernible numbers next to my bed. I called out, but even if a person had been standing in the room, they wouldn’t have heard. My mouth wasn’t moving the way it had every other day of my life. My throat was too dry to produce noise above a wretched wheeze.

            On and on for what seemed like forever, trying for clues, completely isolated and unable to move. The beeping from the machines was going to be the death of me. If I wasn’t dead already. The notion of Hell became real. Not just the notion. As the beeps carried on, quiet and torturously unyielding, Hell was no longer a notion. It was a place. I’d arrived. It sounds ridiculous, of course. I must be exaggerating.

            Not even a little. In fact, I lack the ability to describe the terror of resigned fate. There was a lot of crying, though my eyes were as desiccated as my throat. In Hell, you can’t even sob properly. I’m sure of it, even to this day. Sobbing is release, and release goes against the fundamental tenants of any kind of proper Hell.

            Maybe it’s becoming clear that I’m not exaggerating. Frankly, I don’t give a shit if you believe me.

            Even when I managed to slow down my breathing and convince myself that it wasn’t Hell, things didn’t improve for some time. I say some time, because no one could be bothered to put a simple clock in the room. My eyes were the only things that seemed to be working, but they were rendered useless by the award-winning starkness of my accommodations.

            I knew who I was, only because I could remember another time, reading a story about a pretty young woman who awoke to similarly confusing isolation. She’d spent her whole life unencumbered, living with her father and siblings in some pastoral setting at the foot of the Alps. One day, while tending to the land, the idyllic was snatched away. The young woman had never seen violence. Didn’t understand the idea of alone. She’d never even gone past the village at the bottom of the hill, but she’d always had her family and neighbors and the sheep and cattle and dogs. Now, a prisoner of war, she was forced to learn life anew, confined and confused. I always hated that book. It scared the shit out of me, frankly. Odd. The recollection of reading something so horrible was the only thing that gave me hope.

            Finally, Greta Fielding walked in. She said hello, uncharacteristically formal and hushed. It was euphoric, an ushering back to the vale, but the sensation was fleeting as it was powerful. Her walk was noticeably hampered, no longer light and fluid. Something was causing her to limp, but I couldn’t collect sense or memory enough to understand. Nor could I figure out why she had a cast on her right wrist. The questions flowed from my brain to my tongue, but that’s as far as they traveled. What followed was only a grotesque mixture of gasping and wheezing. She struggled to the bathroom and filled a cup of water. I was new again, though my mouth was still ailing.   

            “Greta, thank God. Why are you hurt? What happened? How—why are you hurt?”

            “I’m fine.” Her head was low. I wanted to lift my head and find some understanding in her expression. Hell was coming back.

“Don’t try to move. You’re banged up pretty bad. They’ve got you on a lot of medication, so just take it easy.”

“Where?”

            “We’re in a small hospital in West Virginia. Do you remember anything?”

            “Nope. Nothing besides scary stories.”

            “We were in a car accident on the way to the rally. Most of the convoy crashed. Connell’s car went over, several of the others. We flipped. There was glass everywhere. People—”

            It was the first time I’d seen Greta cry. She was one of the most solid people I’d ever met. Unassailable to an almost strange degree. It made the display harder to watch.

            “Connell?”

            “He’s okay. They had to do surgery to take out some stuff from his leg, but he’ll be fine, all things considered.”

            “You?”

            She held up her cast. “Stupid. Just a sprain. And I bruised my leg when I slammed into you. Guess you don’t remember holding me?”

            Flashes were starting to pierce the fog, but nothing was whole. Time wasn’t cohesive. Alone in that hospital, insane with narcotics, I’m fairly sure I’d forgotten large chunks of the previous months. Even years. Hard to say exactly. I can’t remember what I couldn’t remember with anything resembling scientific exactitude. One part, though, stands out.

            “Harry,” she started, wrapping the bottom of my fat thumb with her little hand. “Keane didn’t survive the crash. He was thrown from the vehicle.”

            “My brother.”

            “I’m so sorry.”

            Yeah, that part I remember completely and wish I could forget. Greta was stifling sobs to no effect, about to rip my thumb from its socket. Visions of the moments leading up to the crash started taking more pronounced forms. A useless argument about something useless, so typical. A cessation of hostilities, also typical. And then the violence. Thrashing, screaming, and skidding. The end of the reel; Keane flying across the car, colliding with a door with enough force to crush his skull. That was all there was. I clenched my eyes to search for what happened next, but there was nothing. And never would be. I watched my brother’s death and then the dark swallowed all and held me in its mouth before spitting me back out in a sadistic, mockingly bright West Virginia hospital bed. I said predictable things to Greta. Things the heartsick say. Keane was only there because of me and my inability to be a stand-alone man. None of it would’ve happened if I hadn’t taken this stupid job. I should’ve said this or that, should’ve loved my brother like a real brother. He’d saved me. I’d gotten him killed.

            That sort of thing.

            Greta found a portion of my face not wrapped with gauze and kissed it gently. She didn’t argue or offer verbal consolation. I was grateful. There are certain moments when self-hatred armor only stiffens by others’ attempts to pierce it.

            “What did you tell him, Ms. Fielding?”

            I closed one eye and looked passed Greta. It was Beautiful Bridget. She rushed to the other side of the bed and grabbed my other hand. “It’s so awful, Harold.”

            “Are you okay?” I asked. She always rode with Connell, after all.

            “Nothing. A tiny scratch on my knee.”

            “Wow. That’s good.”

            “I just spoke to the doctor. They say you’re going to be fine. Bruised ribs, a concussion, some swelling in your shoulders and your legs, but no breaks.”

            “Basically I got a really bad ass-kicking.”

            “We’re going to get through this,” Bridget said. “All the work and sacrifice that we’ve all put in. It won’t be for nothing. You have my word on that, Harold.”

            It was too hard to look at Bridget as she said this and that about my dead brother and how terrible it was and how sorry it made her feel. She’d almost become ordinary, except her unflagging ability to be a cheerleader even at a time like this. Maybe it was love for Connell or belief in this thing or that. I didn’t care. “Is the candidate sorry?” I asked. “You said it won’t be for nothing. What’s that mean, exactly?”

The convulsive tone must’ve made my ire obvious enough. Greta squeezed my thumb a little harder. An obvious signal to ease off.

            “It means we’ll… carry on. And why wouldn’t he be sorry?”

            “You’ve talked to him, Bridget? What did he say, exactly?”

            “I haven’t spoken to him directly. He’s in recovery.”

            “Do me a favor. Go slip yourself back in there to recovery and find out exactly how sorry he is. Report back to me.”

            I was lashing out, grievances ascending. I’d already begun to hate myself for setting this trauma in motion. Connell was next on the hierarchy. The plan was to go all the way to the top, saints and angels and all the rest. A pathetic homage to Keane, though I imagined he’d get a kick out of the childishness of it.

            “I can’t go in,” Bridget whispered, cowed by my heat. “He won’t see anyone. Not even family.”

            “What the hell’s his problem?” I asked.

            “He’ll only talk to you.”

            I looked at Greta, then Bridget, then back at Greta. “For shit?”

Chapter 13: Screw—Family—Shit

            “For shit?” I repeated. An enormous orderly wheeled my bed next to the candidate’s and left as gingerly as a three-hundred man had ever left anything. “Why’d they roll me in here, Karrl?” My throat was properly lubricated by now, though my mouth was still off kilter. Pronunciations weren’t quite right. I probably sounded something like a fully functioning weirdo.

            “You’ve never called me that before.”

            “Before was a lifetime ago. Just say whatever it is you need to say, let me the hell out of here. For shit. Do they need everything to be so bright?”

            “It’s what I thought, then.” He spoke slow and deep, but it wasn’t calm. It was more like resignation. “You’re going for good.”

            I didn’t answer. Screw him and his need to be right about everything every moment. Screw him and all the morons that believed in him. Screw the grandmothers who came out to the rallies with their visors and their disgusting hope for the future so their stupid grandkids might have better lives. Screw the grandkids for adding to the problem of mass-whatever, and screw them for being unwitting about it. Screw people for being too cowardly to have kids of their own and raise them right so we might have some decent people to cancel out the all the screwed and screwing. Screw the other party for being so feckless and arrogant. Screw the good for their goodness and the shitheels for their bullshit and the voters thinking they matter and the protestors the same. And screw the whole damn United States of America. Place where my acidic father reared me into the great big pile of shit toxic waste that I’d become.

            “I’m sorry about your brother.”

            The words served like a stop sign. If he hadn’t said them, I would’ve gone on and on screwing the rest of existence until the meds bested me and I slumped over into awkward, drooling, hospital sleep.

            “Are you that desperate to keep me around?” I asked.

            He picked himself up just enough to lean on his elbow and have a sad look at me. After some moans and a few deep breaths, he asked, “What are you getting at, Hemingway?”

            “I heard you didn’t want to talk to anyone until you’d seen me.”

            “So what?”

            “You’re one of the most important people in the county, Karl. There are people that need to talk to you. Federal agents, news organizations, local law enforcement. They told me you put off seeing your wife and kids? The hell’s the matter with you?”

            “You must be on more drugs than me, talking like that.”

            “I’m on all the drugs, Karl. All the drugs. There’s not a part of me that isn’t cut, battered or bruised, but they tell me everything’s going to be fine and dandy. No permanent damage. Funny, the way things are. How things work out.”

            “I’m sorry about your brother. Sorry I didn’t get a chance to know him.”

            “Ah, shit.” I turned my head all the way to the side and started crying harder than ever before or since, heaving, breathless. The tears made the bandages on my face heavy and warm until I wiped the wet against the hard hospital pillow, causing the cotton to break up into pieces. It was a stand-out moment of defeat in a day filled with nothing but losses, slings and arrows.

            A minute or two went by, though it was hard to tell. I’d almost forgotten about Connell by the time my deluge ran its course.

            “Going to say a few things,” I heard Connell say. “You can listen or not. After that, well, who knows.”

            I put a hand over my eyes, hoping the bandage would blunt the searing light of the fluorescents.

            “He was the only one that died, your brother Keane. That’s just bad luck, Hemingway. I want you to know that anyone he might’ve been providing for won’t be wanting. Ah. It’s just damn bad luck, but that’s not all there is to it.”

            “You’re not making a lot of sense, boss.” Calling him boss was an artifact of history. Connell was always something of a cipher; in learning how to untangle his thoughts, I’d gotten into the habit of calling him boss. It was quicker than Mr. Connell.

            He looked down at his right leg and said something under his breath. “Damn piece of metal went all the way through just about, shredded me good. Cut the femoral.”

            “Shouldn’t you be dead? That’s a pretty important artery.”

            “That’s what they said. Agent on the scene tied me off in time though. Felt like I was in a bathtub of my own blood. She saved me sure. The pretty one. Beros. On the spot. Seems to have the gods on her side.”

            “Or you do.”

            “You say that like I shouldn’t.” He stopped looking at his leg. “More specific, you say it like I shouldn’t and your brother should.”

            If he wasn’t in the bull’s eye, he was pretty damn close. “I’m messed up. It’s messed up.”

            “I know, kid.” He leaned back into his bed, content to look up at the acoustic tiles as he spoke. “You’re pissed and you’re going to be for a long time. Maybe forever. I had a brother.”

            “What?” Connell never talked about his family, but that didn’t mean I didn’t know about them. Nothing about a brother had ever come up.

            “He died when we were very young. He was just a year older, but he looked out for me. We were, you know, buddies. That type of thing.”

            “Sorry. Was he sick?”

            “Yeah, but they could’ve maybe done something. The hospitals back then. The family tries to keep it under wraps. A chapter you don’t open.”

            “Okay. You realize we’re in a hospital, right?”

            “Exactly. I’m leaving the second we wrap this up. These places will kill you.”

            “Awesome. Hopefully you end up president. You’ve got the words of comfort thing down cold. The country will weather any storm.”

            “It was important that you be the first one I talk to. You lost someone, and that matters to me. Believe it or not. God knows you’ll bounce it around in your head for days before coming to a fragile conclusion.”

            “So, you needed to see me first? It’s still hard to understand.”

            “I’ve warmed to you kid. Maybe the drugs have you too dense for this, but hell, it’ll sink in eventually. For now, just know you were my priority.”

            “Is that supposed to make me feel grateful?” I might’ve sounded like an upset teenager, but it was more complicated than run of the mill frustration and petulance. In a way, it did make me feel better. Almost like I’d lost a brother but appropriated an uncle. Maybe even a father. Motives mattered, though, and pinning down Karl Connell on anything as abstract as motives was a feat too mean for me to undertake then and there.

            “I’m the one that’s grateful, Hemingway. Simple as that, from my end.”

            It wasn’t simple, and he was right. I’d be chewing on it for days. I decided to switch gears. “Now that you’ve gotten this out of the way, what’s next?”

            “Probably say hello to the wife and kids. Imagine they’re not over the moon about having to wait. Then it’s out of here. Some mending. The interview with Augusta Riser, I’d imagine. It won’t be easy, especially with this damn leg sending flashes of pain up my ass.”

            “Still gonna do the Riser interview, after all this?”

            “More importantly, I’m going to find out who tried to kill me today.”

            “Wait, what?”

            “This wasn’t an accident, kid.”

            “You have proof.”

            “I’ve been threatened enough, haven’t I?”

            “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean anything. Candidates get threats. That’s the way this thing works. You signed up for threats.”

            “Well, motorcades don’t just go tumbling out of the blue. I can’t think of a single time in history something like this just happened.”

            I tried to think of an example and realized I knew less than nothing about motorcades. “Shit.”

            “Exactly. If I’m right, your brother didn’t just die. He was murdered.”

            “Shit.”

Chapter 14: Dirt—Jacob—Tents

            It wasn’t the funeral Keane would’ve wanted. Actually, I’m pretty sure he didn’t want a funeral at all. He left no will, and he would’ve scoffed at the idea of a bunch of idiots standing around a hole in the ground. Nonetheless, there we were. The rain poured down on the coffin and soaked my stupid shoes and sagged the brim of Keane’s widow’s hat, a hat made exclusively for widows.

Rain in Arizona.

Why not.

Of course.

It would.

Yes, my spite levels were at a record highs.

It was the new widow, me and Greta. She insisted. She stood next to me, helping me stay standing. My injuries were far from healed. Keane’s wife walked around the hole while men in overalls started shoveling dirt so perfunctorily the lack of heart seemed like it had to be on purpose. People delivering mail or throwing trash into the back of a truck were wrapped up completely with their jobs by comparison—they straddled and closed their eyes to their professions, squeezing them tight between their legs.

Funeral imagery. It’s a little all over the map.

            I don’t know what I expected. It was their job. Since that day, I’ve tried to imagine a graceful way of burying someone. There isn’t one. There isn’t a graceful way to stand or pretend or not pretend. Everything you do at a funeral is complete bullshit and completely necessary, because if you’re any kind of person, all you want is to be genuine and that’s the hardest thing to be, even under the best of circumstances. Though it’s every day and inevitable, death isn’t normal. A billion better minds have touched on it but never really got deep down to my satisfaction. Not but for the religious, and my religion was in moth balls. I wished I believed, but it seemed desperate and unlikely that reaching out would produce results in that moment. Like God would know I was just going through a particularly needy time and would dump Him again once He got me through this one. I felt like garbage, and I didn’t feel the need to add an extra sheen of hypocrisy to whatever the heck I was under the eyes of the Almighty.

            Sindy, Keane’s widow, took my arm as I held an umbrella over our slumped heads. “I hated his guts,” she said. “The drinking and gambling. Never getting a real job.”

            “Everyone that knew him felt the same way,” I said. “But deep down we were all big fans. He was good to me when I allowed it. Wish I’d done that more.”

            “Damned infuriating,” she almost laughed, nodding in agreement. She was small and slight but still pretty underneath the puffy eyes and mascara-stained cheeks. We’d known each other over half our lives but probably hadn’t spoken more than a dozen times. The result of me always studying my way up the ladder and Keane moving her around to whatever job he had cooked up. “There should be a thousand people here.”

            “None of his friends are the types that show up to a place where their pictures might be taken.”

            “Exactly. Infuriating. I don’t know if I would’ve divorced him, Harold.”

            “Did you want to?”

            “God yes. Every single day. But there were those big little moments.”

            “I get it, trust me. Between beating me up on a daily occasion, he’d occasionally save my life with an act of naked altruism.” It was hard not to smile at the contradiction. Sindy’s somber visage finally cracked. It was clear I’d struck a resonant chord.

            “That’s our boy,” she said, wiping her red little nose with an overworked handkerchief. “He went on about you all the time,” she added, following the statement with a pause, as if she knew it would take a minute for me to believe what I’d heard.

            “Come on with that. You don’t have to lie to make me feel better.”

            “I’ve never in my life wanted to make you feel better. Seriously. ‘Harry’s a scholar. Harry’s a doctor. My little brother’s teaching foreigners about their own damn writers.’ He particularly loved that. And he loved your book.”

            “Come on.”

            “Believe what you want. I read it myself.”

            “Oh boy.”

            “Figured you’d be used to criticism by now.”

            “It’s the never-healing wound, Sindy.”

            “Well, don’t mind me. I’m just a lonely old widow. You’re playing ball in the majors, far as wounds go.”

            There was a lot behind her words. She was holding a great deal of resentment toward me for getting Keane involved in the campaign in the first place. Fair enough. She was also still tingling from the shock and suffering under the thought that there was a huge new hole in her life, annoying and irascible as the hole might’ve been. It seemed appropriate to step around whatever contempt there might be for me and try to say something helpful. I had every intention of helping her financially. Emotionally. All the things I’d never cared enough to do the many years I spent head buried in stories I deemed more important even though they’d never happened.

            There was a hug. At first it was tight and tense, but eventually Sindy let herself over. I became a cocoon and we both cried while Greta watched from a slight remove and cried herself. Sindy was all the family I had. While her fingers dug deeper into my skin, I thought of Connell. It felt like he was missing. Maybe it was down to simple reality, that I’d grown used to seeing him every day. I suspected there was more to it, but with every bit of my heart and head I set it aside and got back to mourning Keane.

            “‘And the older will serve the younger…’”

            The words came from a pale man in a dark trench coat who had been walking up the cemetery hill to what I’d assumed was someone loved and lost.

            “‘And Esau became a skillful hunter, a man of the open country, while Jacob was content to stay at home among the tents.’”

            The pale man was about ten yards away now, standing straight with girlish little hands clasped by his belt, looking at me like I was the only thing in the world. I nodded at Greta and she took over the role of comforter. Sindy didn’t seem to mind the transfer.

            “Hello Mr. Abbot,” he said as I cautiously approached.

            “Who the hell are you?” My tone was hot, but I managed to keep the volume low for Sindy’s sake and in deference to the place we were standing. There was at least enough religion in me not to mess with sacred ground.

            “I want to help you. This didn’t need to happen to Keane.”

            “What’s with the Jacob and Esau routine?”  

            “It sort of fits,” he said. “You’re the younger one, but you get the blessings. Besides, you have spent most of your life inside. Keane wasn’t like that. Who knows? Frankly, it’s a weird story. I just know you like stories and thought it’d be a good way to break the ice.”

            “Icebreakers at my dead brother’s funeral? I’ll ask one more time for some answers or you can be on your way.”

            “Here’s my card. I used to work for the government. Now I’m more or less out on my own, though it’s more complicated than a few sentences can cover. Sorry to barge in on the festivities. Give me a call when you’re ready to talk.”

            “Festivities? What the hell is the matter with you?”

            “Apologies, Mr. Abbot. I practice effective communication before most encounters, but sometimes overthinking disrupts my wiring. I’ll say the wrong thing or say the right thing the wrong way. Face-to-face interaction really is such a waste of energy.”

            I read the card and looked back up at his pale face admonishingly. He had a long nose that flattened out and flared dramatically at the nostrils, high cheekbones and gray eyes that seemed to be perfect circles, fully open at all times. “Lawrence Rook. Weird name. Not that the rest of you rings normal.”

            “That’s not my real name. But I figured you’d be more comfortable if I gave you something besides a number or call sign.”

            I thought of tossing it at his feet but stopped just as my fingers were about to flick it toward his black rain boots. They appeared brand new and two or three sizes too big for the odd little stranger.

            The man called Rook said that I might change my mind. There were things I should know, should I choose to come out from the tent.

            “No thanks, pal. And if the goal is to get closer to Connell, forget about it. It’s over. My part of the story, anyway.”

            “That’s too bad. Probably. Interesting. Too bad, though, most likely.”

            “From where I’m standing, the tent is looking pretty good.”

            He nodded at the card getting wet at the end of my fingers. “If you change your mind, Mr. Abbot.”

            “Sorry, Paleface. If I’m you, wouldn’t sit by the phone.”

Chapter 15: Inventory—Phone—Dirt

            A week had come and gone since Keane’s funeral. I’d changed clothes once or twice in all that time. Showered zero. Eaten four dodgy meals from room service. Thrown up two of them. Maybe five waking hours in a hundred had been spent semi-sober; every minute of those five hours, all I could think about was getting back to drunk. My hair was matted and there was nagging rash developing on one of my butt cheeks. I was a country song. A real country song. Johnny Cash or Merle Haggard. Not the crap currently passing itself off as broken and lonely.

            Even reading wasn’t helping. After checking in I’d bought a best-seller from the hotel gift shop. It was an ordinary story of a woman trying to get back on her feet after some horrible tragedy. The author told it with a tinge of ridiculous whimsy, as if her perils were something to be grateful for. I threw it across the room when she met a new man in a coffee shop and things started getting better. Self-actualizing drivel. No doubt it would win the National Book Award.

  My right knee was bruised, my big left toe broken, and there was a fist-sized hole in one wall. It was hard to say if the injuries from the accident had healed. The Scandinavian-Modern hotel suite was covered with empty whiskey bottles. They covered every flat surface and decorated the entirety of one sofa. Rye whiskey. I didn’t even like rye; apparently now it was my only drink.

            All part of making changes.

            I was watching women’s college basketball from the floor in front of the messy king-sized bed, burping to clear my insides for another dousing of brown stingy assistance. The phone next to my leg was buzzing. I hadn’t answered it since checking in after Keane’s funeral; hadn’t turned it off, either. Perhaps down some mind shaft of my brain I wanted a reminder that the world was still turning outside that biohazard of an Arizona hotel room.

            Not recognizing the number, I answered gruffly, channeling an overweight bad guy smoking a cigar in suspenders from an old movie.

            “Harold, I’m downstairs.” My first move was to look at the floor between my legs, the way people do stupid things at the beginning of phone calls. Like there weren’t fifteen floors between my carpet-burned ass and downstairs. “Let me up, Harold.”

            “Yeah, I don’t know. I’m not really taking calls right now.”

            “Stop being an asshole. I’m coming up. Don’t leave me banging on the door like a crazy woman. That wouldn’t be good for your privacy or mine.”

            “Yeah, I don’t know. There’s not a lot to say.” I reached behind under the bed and found another full bottle. After peeling the top off and taking four full seconds of gulps, a shred of memory came back, me putting my booze stash under the bed like a POW. The timeline was murky, things came and went in no particular order.

            “This is a difficult time, but life goes on. Imploding, self-sabotage—whatever you want to call it—it’s just kicking the can down the road. You have to get on with it at some point.”

            “Wow,” I said, whiskey dripping down the whiskers of my stubble. “There were a lot of banalities in that one little blurb. Ten out of ten for triteness.”

            “You’re an asshole.”

            “I’m not wearing pants. Don’t come up here. Ever. I’m alone. I want to be alone. Wait, who is this?” I honestly couldn’t say. There had been a lot of women coming and going from my life.

            The line went dead and I drank some more, going over the possibilities slower than someone of average intelligence. It was funny, being so out of order. There was Greta and her supportive cuteness. Maybe it was Agent Beros with her assertive hotness. Could it be Beautiful Bridget with her perfect perfectness?

            Three sharp knocks on the door. A complete look around the room was enough to discourage any attempt to get things in order. This was me and she was going to see it. Whoever she was.

            She was not who I expected. The intrepid reporter, Augusta Riser. She said something mean about my boxer brief and undershirt combination and slipped inside past my slumping body. I’d forgotten how appealing she was, naturally fit and shapely. Ms. Riser was right at that age where people start trying too hard, but she’d wisely fought the urge. As disgusting as I was, she was the opposite, dressed smartly in a notch collar blazer that hugged her waist and stopped halfway down her hips. Her sleeves were rolled up in a way that signaled both style and an eagerness to get to work. I liked the way she looked.

            Then again, I hadn’t seen another person in seven or eight days.

            “I’m sorry about your brother,” she said, walking past the mess and clearing the empties off the couch next to the window. “It’s a bad deal, Abbot.”

            “What are you doing here?” I asked, truly perplexed. I grabbed some covers and sat on the little bench at the end of the bed.

            “Looking for you.”

            “I don’t understand.”

            “I’m not sure I do, either. But I was wondering if you’d seen this man.” Augusta brought over some photos of the pale stranger that showed up at Keane’s funeral.

            As that black and white day came back like a sledgehammer, I said something caustic under my breath and finished the rest of the bottle with a wince and a bend from pain to the side.

            “What’d you say?” she asked. “I didn’t get that.”

            “I said thanks.”

            “Obviously you want to be left to yourself—”

            “If it’s that obvious, why won’t you do it?”

            “I’m a reporter, Harold. Just can’t help it. I have to know what’s going on.”

            The bottle dropped from my fingers. I had a good hard squint at Ms. Riser, trying unsuccessfully to block the image of those men throwing dirt on Keane. Whatever she wanted, to hell with it.

This was mourning. Sacred. Inviolate. On my terms for however long I needed, as low as I needed to go.

She walked over and handed me a tissue. I snatched it out of her hands with petulance, a child unwilling to admit his tears. The sonic memories of those little mounds of dirt hitting the top of his coffin were overwhelming. It was so loud in my brain, like a valley of cracking bones and a forest of splintering trees. Turned up.

            I had no means of playing detached. Whatever defenses that might’ve existed were rendered inconsequential by the booze and the prolonged lack of sleep. The sounds wouldn’t go away. “It’s pathetic.”

            “It’s not pathetic,” Augusta said, standing by the television with her back to me, presumably to allow me some dignity. It only made things worse.

            “It is,” I said, just beginning to settle back to a default state of misery. “A grown man realizing he’s all alone. That it took my brother dying to really understand he was the only one that gave a damn.”

            Augusta turned and knelt down to eye level. “What did the man in the photographs say?”

            “He was a creep. The way he talked gave an impression that he knew things about me. About Connell.”

            “What else?” the reporter pressed.

            “He gave me a card and I told him to take a hike. Hard to say exactly what he wanted. Things were vague. He was vague.” As she thought over my answer, I couldn’t help but think of Dr. Ramm. Would my loss be a good way of ingratiating myself back into his good graces? Perhaps the pain might act as a catalyst for the creativity that was supposed to come so easy to a man of my skill. I hated myself for the thought. The burial sounds started coming back like just punishment.

Pathetic indeed.

Chapter 16: Arrive—Interview—Bed

            When I walked through backdoor security of the Celebrate Florida Convention Center on the heels of Augusta Riser, Vera Beros was standing away from the metal detector with her hands on her hips, like there was no place besides hips for hands. Her eyes moved a little when she saw me; it was as if being in charge meant moving any other part of her body was out of the question. I was a little surprised by the imperiousness of her stance; Vera had always seemed like good people. Save a famous guy’s life and things go to your head, I remember thinking. I remember thinking something else, shitty and honest; that she could’ve gone ahead and saved my brother’s life as well while she was at it.  

            One of the staffers must’ve sent word up the Ivy League chain that Augusta had arrived and that I was in tow because Greta was making herself known in the corridor before I could get my watch back on and stop thinking about how much Vera had changed.

            “Harry,” Greta called, schoolgirl giddy as she skipped forward on the stiff carpeted floors. I saw Vera move her eyes and shift her feet a fraction of an inch and guessed that was the current amount of jealousy she was manifesting. My mood was strange and a lot of judgments were crawling around my head; I fully expected to be free from the circus for the rest of my life. Augusta’s visit the day before had forced me to reconsider my position. She had a way with persuasion.

            A few staffers ambled up acting happy to see but me clearly acting, asking if I planned on sticking around. I asked them if they were worried my return meant their being relegated back down to the positions they held prior to my resignation. They said they weren’t worried. With a smile I called them liars. Then they apologized for lying.

            “How’s the candidate?” I asked Greta, cutting her off from whatever she planned on saying. Drama was on the tip of her tongue and I didn’t want it loosed. Despite her pep, there was a presence around her eyes as they went back and forth between me and Augusta.

            “He’ll be happy to see you,” she said. The presence was intensifying.

            “Surprised,” I answered, nodding at the last Harvard kid with rolled up sleeves to come out for a greeting. “Definitely surprised, Greta. We’ll have to see about him being happy.”

            I thought I’d shed the feeling of the campaign, but I’d done no such thing. It came back like a freight train, what I had earlier scribbled down on some piece of paper as the power orbit. There were too many people, same as always, same strange contrived excitement in the air. A couple guys with hangdog faces with oversize cameras waiting for something to justify their existence. Frumpy folks fixed up to look their disappointing best, hands clasped and nervous. Big (mostly) men in bad discount suits with decent enough tailoring to get by, playing the part of the Pretorian Guard. This is what power amounted to when one surveyed it close. The opposite of glamorous. Gross. Sweat mixed with cologne mixed with perfume mixed with thick breath from sycophants and mortal enemies, comingling to create a semi-sulfuric atmosphere conjuring thoughts of Dante or ancient sacrifices or low-register chanting with drums made of tanned animal hides.

            “There’s no reason for me to be here,” I told Augusta in a moment when Greta had turned away to answer one of the sycophants, a short woman with a bad black hair dye job dressed in teal from neck to knees.

            “You said you wanted to be here,” Augusta said, looking ahead toward the hallway while the Pretorians separated the herd for us to go meet the might-be Emperor.

            “I say a lot of things.”

            The three of us walked quickly to meet the man. He was in a large room with bright lights propped up at cross angles and a nervous camera crew. Augusta seemed to recognize most of the faces with little nods before Connell started to speak. “You came, Hemingway.”

            Bridget emerged from an anteroom and walked over to offer a hug. I obliged with a soldierly squeeze and tried not to smell her like a creep as the top of her head nestled under my chin for a wondrous moment. She then shook Augusta’s hand politely and asked the usual set of questions—how was the trip, how was Africa…

            Connell hadn’t gotten to his feet. His bad leg was stretched out straight in a brace and covered with a blanket. “Ms. Riser,” he said, imploring us over with one big hand while the other gripped the top of a pearl-topped cane that he was using to steady himself. The chair was ridiculous. It didn’t have arms. He looked like he could fall over at any moment.

            “Can we get him a seat that isn’t completely worthless?” I asked, showing my angry side at tall Hispanic guy with a perfect beard and a clipboard I assumed was the producer.

            “It’s good to have you back, son.”

            I came close to smiling. Despite his injuries, the man appeared genuinely lifted by my presence. “Yeah, well. You know Augusta.”

            “I’ve always enjoyed your work,” he said. “I’m looking forward to the interview.”

            Another person with a clipboard snapped their fingers fairly close to my head and said that they needed to get things moving.

            As politely as I could muster, I said the following: “This is not a live interview. Mr. Connell can take as long as he wants. Everyone out while I talk to the candidate.” I looked around and could see eyes full of incredulity at my ability to make such a demand.         “You heard him,” Connell ordered, though the issuance didn’t have as much fire attached. He was still recovering. He was sad. Or worried. I needed to know exactly where his mind was before they started rolling tape.

            When the last door closed and we were alone, I sat down in the seat where Augusta would be asking her questions.

            “Is the interview before the interview?” he asked.

            “How about you don’t do this. She’s wanting to ask about the threats to your life. About the accident. Questions you can’t answer because we don’t have the facts.”

            “I have to do this,” he said. “Riser has information she could blackmail me with. Did you forget that?”

            “She won’t use it. She wants the bigger story, the people that are trying to kill you.”

            “What if we tape the thing now and make them hold it. I don’t want to piss her off, Hemingway. Could be that if she has something to show for the trip already in the can, that’ll be enough to placate her. We can talk about airdates and negotiate something.”

            I rubbed my chin and leaned back in the uncomfortable chair. “That’s not bad.”

            “Call her back in. Let’s make a deal with the lovely lady.” He winked. It made me feel awkward. “Seems like you’ve gotten to know her very well. I could feel it in the air. Better be careful with all these women.”

            “Thanks for the tip.” The statement was leaden with sarcasm but I added a mocking face to make sure he got the gist.

            “Are you saying I’m the wrong man to give relationship advice?”

            I stood up and took off the gray sport coat I was wearing. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. Are you staying out of trouble?” I looked to the door, wondering if Beautiful Bridget had an ear flush to the other side, attempting to listen in.

            “She’s not interested, Hemingway. It was one of those things of convenience, anyway. Whatever they call it.”

            “They call it an affair.”

            He waved his big hand and dismissed my last, like we were a pair of bulls misappropriating our place in the food chain to clack like two old hens.

            I went and cracked the door. There was an army waiting outside waiting to be let back into the inner sanctum, but I asked only for Augusta. As she slipped through the little opening I informed the rest that it would only be a few more minutes. The producer with the perfect beard said something underneath his breath and I asked him to speak louder, shutting him down to stew in shame, clutching his clipboard.

            “Thanks,” I said, doing my best not to enjoy myself. Whatever this was, it had nothing to do with good fiction or becoming a better artist. This was all strange loyalties and messy relationships, the very enemy of the myopic hermetic genius that I desperately wanted to be.

            I listened to the verbal parries and thrusts exchanged between politician and reporter. She said they had a deal, that she could air the interview when she was damn good and ready. He said something about lawyers and injunctions and gag orders and blackmail and that he could put her behind a wall of legal trouble so thick and terrifying it would make an Edgar Allan Poe nightmare seem like a fluffy baby bedtime story. I lost interest after about two minutes and thought of the night before, the way Augusta turned from hating me to shoving me down on the dirty bed. After that it was hazy memories. Nice and hazy. I remembered hiding my face between her breasts and I remembered that I forgot about my problems for a couple of good hours. She was the kind of woman men followed and loved at the same time, a goddess warrior woman with an unapologetically womanly figure and that one slightly crooked tooth that I actually grew to love as we steered into a slide that was the perfect kind of out of control.

            My reverie was cut short when Connell poked me in the hip with his cane. I almost fell. It was the site of one my crash injuries. The noise I made was a mixture of ahhh and nooo, the kind of hybrid feminine sound you can only magically make in the presence of other people where dignity and respect or required. “We’re going ahead with the interview,” said Augusta.

            “Really? You guys sounded like you’d never agree to anything.”

            “You were standing right there, Hemingway.” Connell looked ready to poke me again with his cane. He had no idea how far away I’d been. “She can ask any question, but none of her minions can be in here for the taping.”

            “That’s smart.”

            “And nothing goes to air until we find out more about the pale guy,” Augusta said.

            “Use the card he gave you. Call him,” Connell commanded, rubbing his huge hands like his old self. “I think I’ve got a pretty good idea who he is, but we need more information. And write me a public statement. I’m doing a general press conference tonight.”

            I hadn’t even agreed to come back to work. And yet, I nodded.

            Augusta looked at me softly. I didn’t want to go back to work. I wanted to go back to bed.

Chapter 17: Reunion—Little—Choice

            In a way, the hotel attached to the Celebrate Florida Convention Center had my spirits up. In the short time away from politics I’d gotten reacclimated to the mildew-riddled accommodations of an artist once again. Now, another about-face. This was a place dedicated to the money chasers. Commodity traders. Currency exchangers. The types that wouldn’t waste one second on an artistic thought; the kinds of people who lacked the creativity to waste anything at all. The sorts that creatives and politicians don’t understand in the least but love to judge, critique and lambast as the servants of darkness.

It was great.

The bedspread wasn’t cheap and shiny and there were no stains. Although it was a hotel room and therefore strange in the fact that it functioned as a temporary roost for strangers and all their attendant particulars, I couldn’t help feeling at home and subsequently guilty for feeling at home.

            As the silent and subtle air conditioner caressed my skin with non-aggressive cool wisps, the business of typing up a speech for Connell’s comeback press conference was set before me.

            I never thought it’d go this far… But now we’re here and we don’t FEEL like backing down… My opponent has stepped up his game while WE were forced to convalesce and good for him… The heartfelt concern from others has been as life changing as the accident itself…

            It wasn’t my best stuff. The fairly obvious fact that I was inserting myself into Connell’s speech was weighing heavy but not heavy enough to outweigh my desire to let things be. The large white pain pills were making my resumption into the fold worse. Or Better. Hard to say. The climate control. It was so perfect. The drapes weren’t dystopian dirty and they were loaded subtly at the bottom so nary a scintilla of that new world Florida sun was getting in. So what if the writing wasn’t the best? Connell was lucky to have me back in the fold. My brother died for his stupid crusade for accomplishment. The blame had to land and rest somewhere and all I knew was that I wasn’t comfortable living with it. Not man enough. Keane hadn’t had enough time with me to make me salty in a way that could handle his demise.

It was irony—or something like karma maybe—I convinced myself that somewhere out there existed an Eastern type of pendulous infinity mirror circular multi-terraced esoteric tradition that probably covered exactly what I was thinking.

Anyway.

The hotel.

The least I could get for myself was a room that didn’t smell as if it had been hosed down with third-world sadness and liberal pharmaceutical usage. There was nothing Eastern about feasting on all the accoutrements that came with position. It was as crony and capitalist and modern-soulless-faithless-Western as my mind could conjure.

            Just as I was about to keel over onto my laptop I was thrust back into a state of semi-consciousness. A constant rapping on the door was just loud enough to draw notice. I got up and walked raggedly toward the adolescent woodpecker trying to crash my moderate mental opioid party.

            It was shocking when I flung open the door to the sight of Dr. Percival Ramm, though the large white pain pills attenuated my reaction. Instead of speaking, my mouth opened slightly, allowing a rivulet of drool down my chin and to the floor. My hands went up to grasp my temples. I looked at him and then back at the room, as if there was somewhere to escape.

            “Attire yourself, Dr. Abbot.”

            He tiptoed around me as one avoided a leper. I slowly came to realize that I’d only been wearing the bedspread, though it was made more obvious by three old crones passing by. One screamed. One lingered. The last suggested nicely that perhaps I was a “retarded person” in need of help. My blinded countenance combined with the hanging mucus didn’t help.

            “Clothes, Dr. Abbot. And close the door, if you please. If it’s all the same I’d prefer we converse without having to suffer the sight of your Lilliputian manhood. You smell of urine, in case you think you’re getting away with something.”

As the geriatric musketeers shuffled toward the elevators full of the type of excitement and anger and wonder they didn’t usually get back home up North, I did as was commanded and turned to meet my maker, clutching the recovered bedspread like a disaster survivor in the back of an open ambulance just before the closing credits.   

Sniffing the air brought more bad news. The drugs and rampant prophylactic hydration had become a one-two punch; I’d pissed myself. Not a lot or all at once, but the wet became obvious as the bedspread tightened against my body. Dignity suddenly became the Mt. Everest of concepts. I could still understand that it was there, but reaching it was no longer a thing for me.

            Dr. Ramm took a standing position between the giant television and a smart, minimalist Scandinavian chaise lounge, as if the two items made him genuinely more than a little ashamed to be alive. I hunkered on the corner of the bed, in every way a defeated model opposite of the refined Englishman. He looked exactly as he did the day I met him at Oxford many years ago. His skin was a unique hue, something just lighter than copper, the result of Irish, Welsh, and Indian heritage. He wore a dark mustache that stopped perfectly past the edges of his mouth. As always, he modeled a scientifically tailored brown plaid suit and a simple but classy tie and matching handkerchief. He would never be the largest man in the room, but size and physical power were shaded out by the scholar’s sheer dignity and attention to every facet of his appearance.

            I felt like a complete asshole, head to toe. The awkwardness had me itchy on my shins and the back of my neck but I let myself suffer. It was the least I could do.

            “Would you like some light?” asked Western literature’s top mind. He was otherworldly in his retention, able by memory to recite every line of The Iliad or Shakespeare or whatever you had need to know. He knew the differences in novels depending on the edition, Ulysses by the parts he thought were genius and the parts that were simply showing off. I was certain there had to be a name for his “eccentric” condition; he could roll off Don Quixote (in English or 1600s Spanish) chapter and verse but if you asked him to recite the times tables to a hundred you received a blank stare and a modest shrug of his tailored shoulders. Ramm was by the far the least practical person to ever exist. I’d never heard of him driving, making tea, watching television, or reading a newspaper. He had loved once, he told me, but after her attempts to adjust to his intractable genius, she abandoned all hope and married an engineer or something like that, a man who could “do things.” I never heard the story of her leaving, though I imagined he let was weakened by it; enough to devolve into an old scotch while reading something “trashy and American.” Scott Fitzgerald, perhaps, who he considered a “muted sensationalist but a decent colonial craftsman.”

            Whatever that meant.

            “If it’s all the same,” I answered dry-mouthed, still cowering in general embarrassment, “I’d like to keep it dark.”

            “You’ve made that unsparingly obvious.”

            “I’m surprised to see you.”

            “I did not leave Tranquility (his estate outside Oxford) to visit. I came to take you home and to disabuse you of all… this.”

            It was no small thing for him to be standing there. I tried thinking of anything more brazenly incongruous than a genteel English peer in the Celebrate Florida Convention Center and of course lacked the requisite otherworldly acid-aided imagination of some of my writing heroes to do so. I was slack, on the brink of becoming dependent on booze or pills or both. The yoke wasn’t feeling as negotiable as it had in the past. I’m home, boys. It was harder to see the Son of a Bitch through my shit-faced memory stomping his way through the broken house and therefore harder to be whatever the Son of a Bitch wasn’t. This was a common trap, I told myself, a cliff so common it was pathetic to even have to remind myself of its existence.

            “I thought you were in Solitude,” I said, still trying to map out my emotions. It was scary to be found out in the act of prostitution, hotel room and all, letting the gift of language be used. That wasn’t all of it, though. Part of me felt good. Dr. Ramm cared enough to come to Florida. Frigging Florida.

            “I was.”

            My ego swelled. Everest seemed hill-like. I’d never heard of him breaking from Solitude, Dr. Ramm’s self-imposed cancellation of the world and anything in it. For six weeks a year his smallish castle and the surrounding grounds were all he stayed connected to while he wrote. No phones, no mail, no news, no people. He was fed and looked after by a dutiful cook named Coleridge and a lovely middle-aged maid named Elizabeth Mary, both holdovers from the scholar’s staff. During Solitude, Ramm would not allow them to speak or be in his presence for more than a few moments a day. He would not order them to do anything. They knew his rhythms enough to understand what he needed and when he needed it. For this strange six-week exercise, Coleridge and Elizabeth Mary, a married couple, were paid fifty-thousand pounds each on top of their normal salaries. When I first heard of the famous Dr. Ramm and his Solitude, it sounded demeaning and heartless, some crank eccentric getting off on his power. NO, Elizabeth Mary later told me. Dr. Ramm treated them as family; he just needed to live when he should’ve, when things were quieter and a person could be truly devoted. Solitude was how he memorized all those lines, and where he chased the perfect story, the perfect paragraph, even the perfect sentence. He was an excellent writer, but not on the level of those he admired. That was his opinion, anyway, depending on the day you asked.

            “You are wondering how I found out about this diversion of yours,” he said, holding a crimson handkerchief over his mouth and nose. “My God, Harry, if money was such a problem.”

            “That’s not it. Not all of it.”

            “Have you lost the gift? Was it fleeting?” He removed the handkerchief and waited with eyes as needy as a kid on Christmas Eve.

            I thought about it for a moment. My mentor had come all this way and deserved as good of an answer as I could give. “It’s not the gift. I’m a little lost, though.”

            “Harry,” he said, lightly clapping his hands in my face four times fast. “You’ve been lost since I found you. It doesn’t necessitate descending into stump speeches. It doesn’t necessitate writing actual lies.”

            I lifted the comforter to cover my head. Though my conventional brain registered the comments as insult and advice, they somehow landed like a compliment. Dr. Ramm had his own definitions for things, and they changed. Lost meant something like not of this world or in touch with the muse or some such. The man believed in me. Enough to get my first book published. Enough to demand another, and another after that. I was the one he’d been waiting for. There was a time when that meant everything. He was my father, my teacher, consolation. Now, I wasn’t so sure.

            “You’ve much to sort. I’m at an estate of an Oxford grad. A place called Palm Beach for three days. It sounds dreadful but I suppose I’ll try for some tennis.”

            “Tennis?” Maybe the drugs were more powerful than I thought.

            “While you deliberate. Come back or abandon your destiny.”

Entry 18: Oakley—767—Greg

            The story of Oakley Randolph was exceptional compared to the story of the average person. He came from the poorest part of St. Louis, the part that seemed encased in haze no matter the weather, the son of an African American postman and a Guatemalan mother, he did amazingly well in a school that made success almost impossible, then went on to get a prestigious degree from a place in New England that wouldn’t know how to care about places like St. Louis but did a wonderful job of pretending to.

            Oakley wanted to be a doctor to help people with his hands, but he found early that he lacked the stomach for dissection. He might’ve willed himself to tolerate the blood and guts; fortunately, politics came along. Oakley received two Ivy League degrees, one in journalism and another in American Studies. He got a job as a political reporter with one of the most famous newspapers in the world and was occasionally on television, sharing his informed and educated view with the people back home in St. Louis and others like them. It was a noble duty, and unlike something simple and direct like a doctor, the job came with a little bit of profile with people that could really afford to dress well and said words that even he with his two degrees had to sometimes look up.

            Oakley Randolph was an exceptionally gifted individual, and exceptionally tenacious. Getting the truth from politicians, opening them up was a matter of will. That’s why he was blackmailing one of Connell’s assistants with pictures that would ruin her marriage. The reporter was still fairly young and couldn’t afford anyone higher up, but today his methods were bearing fruit.

            The assistant, a twenty-six-year old named Lisa, somehow managed to find a method for smuggling Oakley through the Celebrate Florida parking garage, up two barren echoey stairwells that opened via service door behind two bushes the size of monster trucks, part of Celebrate Florida rainforest aesthetic. When he approached me by the pool the first smart thing to do would’ve been to scream for security. There was the wreck and my dead brother, the weird guy at the funeral, hot lady seductresses sleeping with me for money and information, and the sad nut that showed up at the rally that just about shot me.

            “I’ve never seen you,” I said, deciding to let a mini avalanche of a Celebrate Florida margarita slide down my throat while I waited for an answer to stir me into respecting the situation.

            “Please, Mr. Abbot, let me explain.”

            His words were tense. His approach was tense.

            “You’re not very intrepid for a guy who just snuck in here. For an incongruity it’s barely interesting. That’s the real tragedy.”

            He stopped and held up his hands. He was wearing a shirt that was just cream enough to give away the fact that sweat had won the battle of his upper body.

            “Sir?”

            I didn’t really know what I was talking about but I gave it a try, certain only that I couldn’t come across more ridiculous than I already was. Alone at a pool the size of a football field wearing an unbuttoned shirt and wayfarers in a chaise lounge, like some prostrate redneck version of a Kennedy who’d traded day-sailing and Sinatra for inboards and Jimmy Buffett.

            “Come closer.”

            He did as I asked, still tentative and fragile as a deer.

            “Look buddy, it’s your shoes.”

            “Excuse me?”

            “You don’t belong here.”

            “I didn’t mean to disturb your pool time, sir.”

            The idea of something being called pool time made me giggle for a good twenty seconds, increasing the awkwardness in the thick, watery air. “Your shoes look too comfortable. That’s how I know. The young ones around here only pretend to hustle. They don’t know sweat and bad shoes with give. You do.”

            “My name is Oakley Randolph. I write for The Daily M—”

            “Why not go through the proper channels? That’s a big paper?”

            “I wanted more access.”

            “So you decided, like the intrepid sneak you are, to sneak into the Celebrate Florida Convention Center Hotel using the pool area for ingress.”

            “Yes, sir.”

            “Do you like your job, Oak?”

            “It’s Oakley.”

            “I’ll call you Oak. Or I could call security.”

            “Oak works.”

            He was sweating through his pants now. I felt sorry for him, even though I now knew he was reporter for one of the worst and most popular news sources in the world. “Have you written anything that wasn’t dry reporting?”

            I didn’t let him answer. My bare feet burned on the concrete and I patted him on the back, urging him toward eight double doors the good people of the Celebrate Florida Convention Center could use to enter or exit the pool area when the entire place wasn’t appropriated through some mutation of eminent domain for important people that mattered like Karl Connell and myself.

            Oak told me he knew who I was and that he liked my book but thought it was a little slow. I didn’t ask him anything specific about the plot or characters, figuring he was lying to me like everyone else. Experience taught me that it was a pretty safe bet, and guys that worked hard and hid in bushes tended not to run take timeouts for literary fiction.

            We were alone in a corridor as wide as an interstate when we came upon the whirring laundry room. Poking my head in I saw no one. “Grab a cart and as many towels as you can.”

            “Why?”

            “Do it, Oak. We don’t have much time.”

            He asked no more questions. I figured he was excited by my energy or the air conditioning, one or the other, and decided to simply go with it. We stacked towels on towels and grabbed a universal key that happened to be sitting there for the taking. “Room 767,” I said.

            We went to the service elevator and entered room 767. I instructed Oak to throw the towels onto the floor. He asked why. I told him anywhere will do, thanks.

            We repeated this operation over twenty times. The towel count was impressive after all was said and done. We’d also swiped towels from most of the unoccupied rooms on the seventh floor and tossed them into 767 as well. Oak laughed some, sighed once or twice in frustration, but mostly kept silent.

            “Whose room is this?” he finally asked. We were forced to the door, having filled 767 to the ceiling with machine-friendly purloined fabric.

            “This is Greg’s room. One of the Ivy Leaguers. I’ve decided he’s fired.”

            “I’m an Ivy Leaguer,” said Oak.

            “Yeah. Me too. Anyway, do you want his job? You’d have to quit working for the Daily M—”

            “What’s the job?”

            “You seem up for anything,” I answered, nodding at 767. “But the job will mostly involve writing, when we’re not doing more important tasks. Like this.”

            “The money?”

            “Triple what you make now. I hate that it matters too. What do you think of Connell?”

            “Not so much.”

            “But you’re a mercenary. Up for anything. Ready for anything.”

            “I wouldn’t say that.”

            Again, I nodded at 767. “Don’t bullshit me, Oak. Save it for the page.”

            He smiled. We leaned against the door, like two kids trying to close an overstuffed closet.

Sorry about your room, Greg. Raise up that chin. You’ll be just fine.

Entry 19: Connell—Dads—Asia Minor

            I was peeling a little and too red in the neck. I’d never learned to shave properly as some reaction to never having been taught by the one that should’ve. That was my theory, or enough of a theory to stick to it. Certain times, though, called for a shave. Interviews, dissertations, the large rarified moments when it mattered to those watching and listening that the spectated was willing to bloody himself.

            The things spectators take as sacrosanct.

            Otherwise I looked pretty good, said Greta. She was a five-minute feather, floating in my room to say nice things and lightly kiss me and say that whatever was going on between the two of us was okay with her.

            This was in direct contrast to Agent Vera Beros; she’d visited earlier, hammer-heavy steps and crossed arms, shoulders high and meaty as she spoke. I’d made her look bad with the towel incident. Stealing hotel cards and helping sneaky journalists with their sneaking were things frowned upon in the security world. Her touch wasn’t airy like Greta, but a slap on the bottom that hurt more than it needed to because of the thin and expensive suit pants that went along with the rest of my clothes. Three-piece, pinstripe and blue that seemed nearly black to my eyes. Sent by order of the boss.

            On my way down to the Celebrate Florida Convention Center Bar, I tried not to itch my neck and looking down at the ornate elevator carpet I thought about the other things I was stupid about as the result of the Son of a Bitch and the gap where paternal tutelage was supposed to go.  

            There was an old-fashioned ding when I felt that ground floor compression and an old-fashioned prop of a man with a broad face and white gloves and an outfit made for a guy carrying a trunk for someone in 1930s Chicago. He smiled like it was his calling and one of the white gloves pointed the way to the bar. Connell was waiting for me and he called out Hemingway with a voice that carried fifty yards at least and a hundred feet high. There were modern shiny escalators crisscrossing over and behind, framing him brokenly. Everything else was anachronistic like the candidate as he stood up with his ivory-tipped cane and smiled so that his one gold tooth glimmered from the random dashes of sun in the strange castle of a room.

            “You look good in a grown man’s suit,” he said, more desperate to sit back down than he wanted to give away. His huge sweaty head betrayed the strain. I couldn’t help but be flattered by the effort. He was, after all, leading the race to be the most powerful man in the world. “We’ve gotten by, Hemingway.”

            “We’re here, existing. In that sense, we’ve gotten by.”

            “Number one with a week until the first debate. Number one.”

            “The sympathy will wear off,” I said, unable to help myself. It really was a problem. “Maybe you should play up the limp more. What does research have on it? There’s got to be a pro-injury camp saying that the voters will better identify with something as broken and perishable as they are. Grandmas with broken hips and sick kids with no hair all hand-in-hand while you promise you’re just like them, an overcomer, an everyman, a busted-but-not-beaten soldier still willing to crawl up that last hill with the American flag gripped in your bloody hands.”

            “There is that camp,” declared Connell, enduring me with an adjustment in his seat.

            “And there’s the camp that says you should lose the cane, inject whatever you need to weather the pain and for God’s sake stop being a pussy. Use the stem cells of babies for enhanced healing or the DNA from a freshly-clubbed baby seal factory. Just don’t look weak. This, Candidate Connell, is not the era of radio, and, you sir, are no FDR. Grow some balls. America wants someone with balls, right or wrong. A guy with a limp might slip and fall on the way to ordering some village blown to smithereens somewhere some people might’ve done a thing that no one knows or cares about. Do you want to be the slip and fall president? Those villagers might still be alive, and by God, no one needs that. Did you stop to think what that living village might do? They’ll contribute to climate change, possibly hunt endangered species, spawn splinter cells, by their mere existence add to overpopulation and mass starvation—that’s what they’ll do. Why did we even go to the trouble of building the biggest murder machine ever if the Head of Murder needs something to help him walk?”

            He had both hands on top of the cane with his meaty fingers interlaced. I could hear him squeezing the ivory and almost expected to see it explode from the pressure. “You’re a droll mutt, Hemingway. Trim the smug. Still.” He cleared his throat with a heave. I thought of a bear, not knowing if bears were as tactless when clearing their throats. “Despite the barbs I’ll never abandon you.”

            It was a comment that needed brushing off. Things were already weird. Between the suit and the cane and the ghost town bar and the man in the bellhop outfit, I felt at least ten percent sure I’d stumbled onto something surreal. I wanted to look for David Lynch in a director’s chair so I might ask him what was really going on.

            I crossed my legs and let a brown wingtip dangle, sinking into my role for a second. Life was fun in snippets, peace between the raindrops. It would be silly not to say I occasionally enjoyed Connell. The nights with Greta. The time with Augusta. Vera. Sitting in a hotel bar made me even think back on the night with the treacherous Gail Frasier with something nearing fondness.

            “It’s time for your best, Hemingway. Since the accident, you’ve come nowhere close. Not to say you didn’t have your reasons, but—”

            I felt Dr. Ramm’s presence before I saw him. Maybe I smelled him, not that he smelled. That would imply odor and would be a terrible way to characterize a being absent the ability to be conventionally offensive.

            Connell didn’t stand up but he called out to my mentor like they were old friends. I imagined the Oxford man’s tightening orifices reacting to the candidate’s total lack of subtlety. They were different men, of course, but put them in a room together and my God the contrast…

            “What’s he doing here?” I mumbled like an inept ventriloquist. He was getting closer and no answer.

            “Dr. Ramm,” I said aloud and pathetically, “It’s surprising to see you. I thought you were playing tennis on some estate.”

            Apparently, Connell figured he’d jump right in. He roared for three drinks to be brought then roared again when he changed his mind, demanding instead for a mobile bar to be wheeled in.

            “So we can make our own,” he said, winking in a way that showed he wasn’t generally the winking type. Then a handshake with the Englishman.

            I was still catching up to being in the presence of two people I very much wished would never meet.

            In the giant haze of the Celebrate Florida Lounge and Bar, a drink cart from the Gilded Age appeared by the hustle of some staffer. The Ivy Leaguers were getting more dutiful and undignified as they got nearer to power. Graspers and clingers did better at their jobs than the regular entitled simply going through the motions to check off a box. Being rich and elitist was a mirage, I realized. The Ivy League boys knew that the Ivy League girls weren’t that pretty and graceful, just made and manufactured, sculpted by machines to look pretty and graceful. The Ivy League girls knew the Ivy League boys weren’t that smart and athletic, just well-tutored and offered competition derived only from their homogeneous stock.

            I made a mental note, one former Ivy Leaguer to all the others.

            Watching Dr. Ramm’s hand be engulfed by Connell’s, I felt between two worlds and inappropriate. A bit like the place where Turkey meets Greece. They used to call Turkey Asia Minor, I think. Sort of racist. At the very least, a bit insulting.

And constellational. Anyway, I felt like Asia Minor.

Entry 21: Muirfield—My Guy—What?

            I sat there while they talked about me, the professor and the politician. The three of us had moved to the far end of the giant room, along with the mobile bar. Connell’s people had set up one of those indoor golf games with a video screen projecting ball flight trajectory and all the rest. It seemed safe. We were surrounded by nets. I imagined what Dr. Ramm was thinking. No way it was good. The man was British to the marrow, a regular at St. Andrews, Carnoustie, and anywhere else claiming to be golf’s ground zero. A video game in the Celebrate Florida Convention Center Bar and Lounge had to be  close to the least dignified thing he could imagine, and Dr. Ramm had a decent imagination.

            And yet, things seemed to be going okay. The academic was playing pretty well, according to the video game. After hole three, Connell was two over and Dr. Ramm was one under par.

            “I don’t know if this thing works. Seems like it’s got it out for me.”

            “What’s that?” I asked. Connell was near my face, asking me to hand him his drink. I told him he shouldn’t be swinging a golf club on a leg that was nearly lost.

            “You really shouldn’t, Mr. Connell,” suggested Ramm, hitting his tee shot.

            “What did I say, Percy?” the candidate asked, wheeling around awkwardly. I checked for more people under the netting. I’d never heard Percy in my life. “Call me Karl.”

            “Please, Karl. At least let’s have a sit.”

            “Okay. Percy.”

            I brought Connell another drink and a folding chair. Dr. Ramm got one for himself and another for me. His suit jacket was off and his sleeves were rolled up, but he still wore a vest. He looked like 1921. We sat silent for a minute, watching fake wind blow the fake grass on the fake fourth hole of Muirfield.

            “You’ve got a hell of a nice swing, Percy. Borrowed clubs and still kicking my ass. Don’t say something polite. That’s the tendency with you folks, but don’t you do it.”

            Words were coming out of Connell like machine gun fire. Dr. Ramm didn’t seemed to be daunted.

            I was. “Are you okay, sir?”

            “I’m fine, Hemingway.” Another drink. “Besides the fact that my family is nearing ruin and I’m in the middle of…” He sat back and gave his bad outstretched leg a look of contempt. “Apologies, Percy. Hemingway knows my nature, one direction to another and that sort of thing.”

            “It’s quite all right. I’ve rather enjoyed the afternoon, if we’re being perfectly honest.”

            “Honest. That’s what I’m going to do, and it’s almost like I needed permission. Like a little boy, or something silly like that.” He was heaving. The biochemical mechanisms that allowed him to go on living had to be setting new records for strain. “I’ve been beating around it, but I need Harry. It’s getting close to the end. He’s the best I’ve got. I know he’s your guy, but he’s my guy too.”

            Dr. Ramm’s quiescence was enough to make me think the world had been placed on pause. His didn’t breathe for over a minute. He didn’t blink. Connell was blinking like a man in possession of drinking and amphetamine addictions and a whole lot of worldly pressure.

            I watched the fake British grass with a heavy heart. I knew what Dr. Ramm was going to say. Only, he didn’t say it. “Karl, the boy’s life is his own. It’s up to him. Perhaps it would be a good idea to see a fight through. Many great artists needed a great battle to color their language and perspective.” He paused and improved his posture, which didn’t seem possible. “Would it be okay if I stayed along and observed?”

            “By God! That’d be great!” Connell stood up so fast he fell down. The excitement and level change, the bad leg and the drugs and alcohol weren’t a boon to his equilibrium. His weight almost collapsed us all as we got him to his feet, each of us wearing an arm around our shoulders.

            We resumed our seats and I took a moment to consider the curious turn. Years of indoctrination from Dr. Ramm had just been thrown by the wayside. There was more to the story, surely, but maybe that was for later. Maybe, in that moment, I needed to be thankful that these two strange and unlikely humans both wanted me around, no fight necessary. What? was the question playing like background music in my brain, just about but not quiet enough to ignore.

            “Then we’ll see how it goes,” said I.

            “We’re going to pull this goddamn thing off, by God,” said Connell.

            “This should be interesting indeed,” said Dr. Percival Ramm.

Entry 21: Up—My Ass—Honesty

            The Celebrate Florida Convention Center was one of the longest buildings I’d ever seen, but it wasn’t tall. The new Matrix International Hotel in Atlanta wasn’t long. Just tall. That’s why I was nervous going to the roof, prompted from a strange text from Beautiful Bridget.

            You should join me on the roof…

            Though I’d been making out with Greta at the time, I half-reluctantly extricated myself to do whatever errand Beautiful Bridget would have of me. My spirits were good and I figured I could talk my way back into Greta’s graces as soon as I was back down. Things were looking up. Over a week without a lecture from Dr. Ramm or Connell. Their improbable relationship only seemed to be improving.

            Funny old world.

            “Bridget?!” I called out, immediately clutching the lapels of my sport coat as the wind tried to carry it from my body. It was a different climate, more than a mile higher than where it started.

            It seemed like a strange spot for a meeting. Other than a helipad, the only thing on the roof were large box-shaped objects and piping that served mundane mysterious purposes that made me feel a little unworthy as a man for knowing nothing about.

            I kept calling out her name. There was no answer until I expanded my search grid. My mistake was thinking that she wouldn’t want to be really close to the edge, being over a mile up and all.

            The air was dry and almost cool. Incredible, these buildings. The wind died down just enough for me to hear her calling back.

            “Over here, Harry,” she said, waving me over to a raised portion of concrete that looked like it had to be near the edge. I approached thinking a million thoughts. None were particularly clever. Reason was being trumped by sensation, brought on by altitudinal circumstances.

            “I can’t come up there,” I said, stuffing my hands in the insufficient little front pockets of my suit coat.

            “Why not?”

            “I’m afraid of heights, Bridget. It seems like you missed something in your research.”

            “I don’t miss anything.”

            “Ever heard of rapid-onset phobias?”

            “That’s just being scared.”

            “Then you have my diagnosis.”

            She turned around and looked over her perfect shoulder, down at the little man she helped bring to new heights. “I want you to be here when I fall.”

            I stopped smiling, unaware as usual that I’d been smiling. It was a Bridget thing. For the uninitiated, you’ll just have to trust me.

            “There was something I needed to tell you.”

            The way she said it didn’t give me a warm feeling in my tummy. She said it too lightly. It more or less died right off her lips. It was spoken the way a girl says there’s something to tell you at the end of a TV episode, right before she falls off a giant building to her death.

            The idea of Beautiful Bridget splattered on the hot Atlanta concrete below with her component parts sizzling to no purpose breached the ramparts of my mind, overwhelming the fear of heights and all the other crap that seemed important a few seconds previous. I never thought of myself as very macabre, but the idea of her eyeless head on the hood of someone’s Chevy Impala compelled me up onto the concrete platform. There was nothing heroic in it. Just an endemic hatred of wasted talent. Women being one of the greatest things in the world, and Bridget being the greatest exemplar of their greatness, I couldn’t have her getting disassembled.

            I sat next to her carefully, like coming up on something skittish in the wild or, and perhaps more accurately, I felt, something abused by the hard hands of civilization. And of course, I looked down. “Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy frigging shit.” My symptoms were flaring up.

            “It’s one of the tallest buildings in the world,” she said, dangling her wonderful legs over the edge to horrify me all the more. I thought maybe Alfred Hitchcock wasn’t all that smart after all. Put an incredible woman in peril and you’ve certainly got everyone’s attention. No plot twists necessary, AL.

            Sitting down was hard, considering all the shaking in my bones. The building was swaying. And not just a little. “I know,” I said, having to shout gently as the wind picked up. I did know. I knew the Matrix International was the now the tallest building in the United States. Where once I thought it was a neat novelty and sort of interesting that it was built in Atlanta, now I just hated everything about it. What a stupid idea.

            “The bald man. I know him. He approached me and I was angry.”

            I thought back to Keane’s funeral. Wet shoes. The weirdo with the business card. “What does he want?”

            “He wants his man to win. The people he works for. That’s what they do.”

            “Who does he work for?”

            “Does it matter?”

            I thought about it for a second. It didn’t matter. Not on the drifty ledge of the Matrix International. “We’ll figure it out, Bridget. Just come back inside with me. I don’t want to lose you. It can’t be bad enough for this.”

            She looked at me with clear eyes. I expected them to be full of crazy. Full of pre-plunge suicidal nutbar regret and unexpiated guilt dilations.

            Nothing of the sort. Beautiful Bridget.

            “I’ve lied.”

            It had to be the elevation and my frayed nerves, but I laughed. “Bridget, this is a political campaign. It’s sort of your job. Nothing but liars. Only you’re on the top of a building feeling sorry for it.”

            “I loved him. Connell.”

            I scratched my forehead. “Well, he’s got a way of drawing a person in.”

            “Will you make love to me?”

            Now here is where I got really confused. Two of the big instincts in the pantheon of instincts were making grand appearances—fear and sex. Add to that, two titans in the world of morality—chivalry and honesty.

            Something was going to have to give.

            I asked her to take my hand. She put her perfect head on my shoulder and let me lead her back to my room. I waited for her to fall asleep and kept watch for the rest of the night, all the time promising to do what she previously asked.

            So. Honesty got the shaft. Funny old world.

Chapter 22: Philandering—Debate—Ten Minutes

            “You disgust me!” Greta thundered out of the room, leaving Connell in his makeup chair looking at my red-faced reflection as I stood behind him faintly whistling. Picture a guy trying to avoid detection from the cops post-crime and you’ll get the gist.

            “Where did that come from?” he asked, poking his chin out and sharpening his eyes, scanning for new imperfections.

            “She was talking to me, sir.”

            He snatched the paper collar cover from his neck and made like he was about to face me down. Then he remembered his leg. It was on the mend, not mended. And the crutches were across the room. “I know she was talking to you, Hemingway,” he said, surrendering his bulk back to the chair. “Goes without saying. What have I ever done to disgust that young woman?”

            I met his eyes via the mirror, trying to think of something. “You didn’t do anything.”

            “Did you sleep with someone else?” he asked. “Because you’ve developed quite a reputation.”

            Now was not the time for an in-depth discussion about my philandering. Besides, it was hardly philandering. A few entanglements, perhaps, but nothing untoward. Besides, I’d spent an entire night and gritted my way into the morning with Beautiful Bridget in a curtained hotel room and treated her like a proper gentleman. Not many could say that. None, probably. Certainly not the guy sitting in the chair. Philanderer. More like a paragon of chastity and moral fortitude, thank you very much.

            “She thinks I did,” I answered, realizing I’d been staring at a cheap wall clock while I was mentally justifying my previous moral profligacies.

            “Thinks?”

            “Something happened last night with Bri—” I stopped, because I’d made a solemn vow to Beautiful Bridget. Also, raising the subject would upset Connell, and according to the cheap wall clock, he had ten minutes until the first debate commenced. Senator Ryan Pavlick was in some other room like this one, going over all the bills he’d passed, sponsored, authored, etc. He was surrounded by all the top people in the world of politics, all firing questions at him, some with degrees from schools where they actually had to earn their way in. The most practiced and proficient liars the most powerful country in the history of the world had ever produced. Our room—just me and Connell, one guy who sort of regretted sleeping with Bridget, one guy who sort of regretted not sleeping her. And no bills to talk about. No record at all. Not to mention, both of us middling liars at best.

            He was on to me. My mouth hadn’t collapsed quick enough. “What about Bridget?”

            I returned with, “Bridges. There’s an infrastructure plan that some of the underlings wanted me to look at.”

            Connell reached out for crutches he couldn’t possibly reach, clear signal for me to jump to his aid. “We already have a plan for that. What the hell are they bothering you for the night of the debate?”

            I helped him and then watched as he laid his weight down through his armpits. It looked terrible, rumpling his suit. They were “normal hospital crutches,” or “whatever the hell they give normal people” crutches, but looking at him hung there so unnaturally, so much heft precariously propped up, they seemed a bad idea. Physics seemed unable to sustain the situation.

            Greta entered the room after a quick knock, ignoring me and offering Connell an apology. He waved it away and asked her how he looked. She said he looked wonderful and it sounded ridiculous considering the truth, but she was trapped. Saying okay or acceptable would’ve sounded just as ridiculous. “Eight minutes,” she added, shielding her eyes from me like the faintest glimpse would turn her to stone. I was an ancient evil now, something to be avoided at all costs by children and mariners.

            Checking my watch and the cheap wall clock after she left, I said, “She’s at least thirty seconds fast.”

            “I’m nervous,” Connell said. The naked honesty combined with his ridiculous attempt to maintain a semblance of balance almost put me on the ground.

            “I’m nervous too,” I said. It was weird and silent for at least thirty seconds before Beautiful Bridget came in and said that there was seven minutes left. I wondered if she’d seen Greta in the hall, wondered if there might’ve been some dust up. Probably not. Not a hair out of place. And only hours from just about being the first suicide from the brand-new tallest building in North America. What a woman.

            Unlike Greta, Beautiful Bridget had love in her heart for yours truly. It was obvious, and even the worried and distracted Connell knew now that I had been ineptly obfuscating with the bridges bit from two or three minutes ago. “Do you need anything else?” he asked her, completely convinced that there was a torrid love affair going on between everyone in the world but him.

            “I need a word with Harold,” she said. “Outside.”

            “Why not?” he asked, sarcasm at full bluster, pointing to that irrepressible cheap clock on the wall with one of his crutches and almost falling over. We watched him regain his balance using the bad leg, one feeble crutch, and good old-fashioned American grit and determination. It was uncanny, and though ultimately a desperate and pitiable action, I was inspired. “What are you staring at? Go ahead and take some personal time. It’s not as if the whole damn edifice is about to crumble.”

            “Sir,” I tried, manufacturing a soft, understanding baritone.

            “Better hurry. Six minutes. Lots of feelings to talk about!”

            The volume of his commentary was enough to push us from the room. “Look Bridget,” I tried, sticking with the baritone.  

            We leaned against the off-white wall and crossed our arms to make ourselves as small as possible as people went back and forth through the corridor. Apparently all had something incredibly important to do, though it was a frenetic mystery. You could smell the perfume and the aftershave smothering sweat and bad breath.

            “This isn’t about last night, Harold.”

            “It’s not.” I didn’t know if it came out as question or declaration. I didn’t know if I was relieved or upset. All the people in the hall were really starting to get on my nerves. I checked my watch. Four minutes now. Maybe three, maybe five.

            “We can talk about that later.”

            “Later sounds good.” I could feel the sweat forming underneath my hair. Soon it would start collecting on my brow, falling into my eyes. The hall was extremely crowded, you see.

            She grabbed my arm as I started back for the room. “The bald man contacted me.”

            I wasn’t intrigued as I should’ve been, I suppose. “Is that right?”

            “The debate is rigged tonight. They got to the moderator. Applied pressure.”

            “How do you know about this?” I asked.

            “He contacted me today when he found out I was still alive. They’re going to make Connell look like a fool.”

            I crossed my arms and tried to sound delicate. “So, this is sort of about last night.”

            The ideal tan of her cheeks went white from shame or embarrassment or some combination of the two. I hadn’t been delicate, turns out. “It’s about everything, Harold.”

            One of the Harvard kids bumped into me on his way down the hall while staring at a tablet. I saw Greta coming from the other direction. One minute. No minutes. It was time. National television. All the major networks and some of the minor ones. The never-ending internet. SHIT. “Bridget.”

            “Yes?”

            “No offense, but I really wish you hadn’t conned me into this gig.”

Chapter 23: Heroes—Victory—Alone

            It was hard to breathe. What had once been only a mercenary’s term was now something different. Not that I could define it. Only that I cared, or my physiology did. A tight chest. Tingling fingers. My right foot was falling asleep even though I was standing up. That was a new one.

            Somehow Connell managed to shake hands with his younger opponent and look only slightly pathetic on the crutches. Now he was sitting on the stool. One less thing to worry about, leaving everything else. Greta was on my right and Bridget on my left as we watched from the side of the stage.

            As the first question went the way of Senator Pavlick, I relaxed and checked out a bit. It was about war. On this subject he was perfectly predictable. Whatever his vague underlying message, he’d bite his lip and mention the brave men and women he’d served with. They were heroes. The moderator wouldn’t follow up with the obvious, that if everyone serving was a hero, he too was hero. Moderators never fucked with heroes. Something Greta said it a few weeks back. She was right. I’d gone back and checked the tape just to be sure. No hero-fucking had taken place whatsoever. This was still America, after all.

            Behind us I saw Dr. Ramm. He was talking excitedly to Augusta Riser about God knows. They seemed an unlikely pair. Both writers but in wildly different ways. It made me too curious. I waved them up.

            And just to finish, I want to say that it’s our job as a country to support the heroic men and women serving in the armed forces of the United States of America, the greatest country in the history of the world.

            “What are you two talking about?” I asked.

            “Many things, my boy. Ms. Riser is an excellent journalist.”

            “He was complimenting on my work.”

            I nodded incredulously and listened for the question from the moderator, a lumpy old man with fake black hair who had been around since the advent of the television signal. It was about his lack of experience in government and politics and why the people should ever consider voting for someone like that. He used the term absurdly unaware to characterize Connell.

            “If I didn’t believe you before, I think I do now,” I said to Bridget. She had her head in her hands.

            Dr. Ramm looked up and down our little row at the women. They were all crestfallen. I don’t know what I looked like—however one looks when they want to run out of the building and never turn back. “My friends,” said the professor, “don’t fall so easily to despair. This might make for a moment triumphant.”

            “What are you up to?” I asked, trying to hold up Bridget. She couldn’t help but take it all so personally. Such was her mode and I suspected it would be until a dramatic turn of one type or another.

            There was a light in Dr. Ramm’s eye. He was waiting for something, clearly on a different page from the rest of us. I recognized the look but couldn’t source it.

            Slowly the heads of Augusta, Bridget, and Greta rose. Connell used the negativity of the question as a reason to humble himself before the audience and the rest of the voting public. He did not run from his deficiencies but highlighted them. It was close to off-putting considering the novelty, though ultimately any honest observer would have to be moved. It also matched the awkward way he was sitting and the pain he was trying to hide on his face.

            The crowd applauded.

            “What in shit was that?” It was all I was good for.

            Dr. Ramm was nodding his head slightly with the tiniest of smiles. Everyone else was bursting with excitement, completely new. I walked over to my tutor realizing where I’d seen that look in his eye. It was something paternal. He was a teacher, first and foremost, always searching out talents to unlock. “You’ve been working against me,” I said, confused as to how I should feel.

            “Karl wanted some suggestions on how to communicate. We’ve become unexpectedly close these last few days.”

            “I noticed. Not enough, apparently. What exactly did you tell him?”

            “That his story has changed, and that he might consider changing with it. The boorish American chugging down the lane doesn’t work at present. Give them a nadir they can sink their teeth into.”

            “You want him playing the plucky underdog?”

            Dr. Ramm grabbed my arm lightly and sighed. “I don’t want him doing anything. We were just talking.”

            “This isn’t art,” I said, trying to figure out how I’d let this go unnoticed. “And it’s not as neat as fiction. I hope you didn’t blow this whole thing for him.”

            “Harry—”

            “You said you were going to let me do my job. We’ll talk later.”

            It was hard to listen to the rest of debate. To say I was a complex of emotions would be an understatement.

            Despite whatever slights to my own pride and the desiccated frustration strangling my throat, it would’ve been hard to miss the overarching theme of the evening. The heretofore sanguine Senator Pavlick was losing big. The softballs he fielded became obvious and naked to the spectators. His preplanned answers had no punch or gravitas; just the same sort of rhetoric we’d all heard a million times. Coming from an estimable statesman, the future sounded boring. The future sounded lame. The present was verbal Ambien.

            We’ve got to look after the people that don’t have the means to look after themselves.

            Yawn.

            The people of this great nation have triumphed before and will continue to do so under my administration.

            Crickets.

            Connell, on the other hand, was seizing hearts and minds. The man was hunched over, grappling with himself. Each answer had the tenor of a personal testament. The crowd was rapt. By the time he was back on his crutches and shaking Pavlick’s hand, the fossil of a moderator was apoplectic. It was a backfire of historical proportions.

            Beautiful Bridget was crying. Dr. Ramm had the subtle air of a satisfied guru. My mind was spinning. Greta came up and gave me a wet kiss on the cheek, like she hadn’t spent the day hating my guts.

            I decided to let Connell have his moment, leaving them all for the dreary dressing room. The corridor overrun with activity just ninety minutes ago was now empty save one other person. The bald man was staring at me from the far end, arms crossed with a face fixed for murder or something close to it. The effect was unnerving, for sure, but I decided not to engage him. For the moment he’d have to get in line. There was a laundry list of things for me to be unnerved by. I closed the door and drank three large glasses of scotch before falling into a chair with only the clunky ticking of the old clock on the wall for company.

Chapter 24: Host—Squire—Opposite

            “But it is a bit more exciting than the usual, to characterize the situation leanly. Drudgery, our normal pursuits, compared to the air around here. It’s like dashing through one charged atmosphere and then another. Where are we, exactly?”

            Dr. Ramm was sitting on the edge of a sofa, flipping channels and paying me very little attention. I sighed for several reasons I was aware of and probably a host more lurking deep in my subconscious. Being mostly ignored didn’t upset me much at all—it was the state of my mentor that had me fitful. Though consistently irritating, demanding, and selectively obtuse since the day I met him, those characteristics were a comfort in that they were to be expected. The man before me was a wholesale change. I had serious doubts that he’d ever sat on a sofa or watched a television at any point in his life. His estate back in England had a theater that he used for the occasional screening, but flipping back and forth between news channels was so incongruous with his general nature that I wanted to smash the screen to end the entire exercise.

            “We’re at Phillip David Ross’ house. He’s one of Connell’s old friends.” I stood in front of the TV to see if Dr. Ramm would look around me. He did. Like a pleb before TiVo not wanting to miss a plot change of his favorite story, he contorted until his rear slipped its seat on the sofa and crashed onto the floor.

            “Would you please move, Harold?” he asked from his knees, apparently completely severed from the idea of dignity.

            “The state of you,” I said, trying for as much disgust as I could manage. “You came over here to help me. Rescue me. Why do I feel like the only grown up left in this outfit?”

            It didn’t make a dent. “Who is Phillip David Ross?”

For anyone else, it would’ve been ridiculous question. “He’s our host. And one of the richest and most famous people on the planet. His name is on everything. He owns everything.”

“Imagine that. See?”

            “See what?”

            “It isn’t drudgery.”

            I let out another sigh. “It gets old.”

            “What gets old?”

            “All of this. The fanfare. Carnival. Circus. Crowds. Connections.”

            “You’ve tired of it.”

            “I’ve tired of it. Nothing real about it. Not one little thing.” I had been speaking hyperbolically for effect, but in my mind I tested my own words, trying to sift out something really real from my recent memories. The whole thing was a con. “Carnival. Circus.”

            He finally turned off the television, silencing a man that wore makeup every day for work and said what he needed to say because things needed saying so he could say more things and continue wearing makeup. I was grateful for the momentary silence.

            Dr. Ramm stood up and slid his hands into his vest except for his thumbs. They moved about playfully as he started pacing the room professorially. I was back at Oxford in an instant, happy as he looked down at deep brown dress shoes stitched by ancient experts and talked to me with searching, melodic British cadences. “Do you truly think the matter has escaped me, young Dr. Abbot?”

            I took his former spot on the sofa and answered promptly. “Could you be more specific, what we’re speaking of?”

            “Specifically, that I’ve fallen victim to the same snake oil trance that I came to wrest you from, and therefore am a most sad and feeble example of irony?”

            “I didn’t think it had escaped you.”

            “But…”

            “Well, perhaps it’s a matter of you letting it escape. I’m not sure that technically is escape. Selective self-enforcement, maybe. I’m not quite sure how to put it.”

            He looked up from his shoes and stopped to smile. “That’s not too bad, young Dr. Abbot.”

            “Wait a minute,” I said, catching a new light in his eyes. The old keenness was back. The universe hadn’t totally abandoned me after all. “You never fell for any of this, did you?”

            “Not even a little bit. Perhaps I wanted to for half an hour or so, but when I gave Connell the winning advice at the debate the other night and felt absolutely nothing, I realized that this was the vacuous, insipid world I presumed it to be.”

            My head was heavy. The shame had weight.

            “Don’t, my boy. Don’t punish yourself. I’m older and shut away from the world. Books are my refuge. Are they still yours?”

            “Of course.”

            “Because that’s the real point. Is one type of fakery better than another? Is political persuasion bad and fiction good?”

            It was the big question. There were so many ways to go about the answer. One came to mind more than any other. “Yes.”

            “Yes what?”

            “Accounting for the fact that nothing is completely unadulterated or pure, on the whole, politics is bad and fiction is good.”

            Dr. Ramm smiled wider. “Good fiction, you mean.”

            “I do. Though I don’t know what I mean when I say mean it.”

            Now we were both smiling. Old rhythms. The knight and his squire. “Then make something good yourself, Dr. Abbot.”

            “How will I know?”

            “For a moment or two you won’t hate yourself, and those moments will sustain you when you fall into your deepest dark.”

            “I’ll know? That sounds metaphysical.”

            “Let’s keep spirituality out of it. You just can’t help being an American. I can’t imagine the puritanical echoes. Such a burden.”

            “It’s probably hard to for a man of your station to imagine any burdens at all, Dr. Ramm.”

            “Careful, squire.”

            “Sorry, sir.”

            That he’d been playacting the entire time should have bothered me, however, my initial feelings were gratitude and hope. An ally. I felt a little like my old self again, and it turns out I missed me a little bit.

            “We must extricate you from this place. Truly, I don’t even know what state we’re in.”

            I laughed at my teacher’s eccentricity, then realized I myself had to take a few seconds to remember. “We’re in Virginia.”

            The professor went to the window. “I see nothing but hills and trees. I thought this colony was settled by—colonials. Your lot.”

            “The guy owns half the state. It’s his own personal nature preserve.”

            “Seems a bit excessive.”

            I put my hands in my pockets and tried to run back the moments since Dr. Ramm had arrived. “You got close with Connell on purpose, didn’t you?”

            “Yes, I did. To make it easier to convince him of your need to go back to your real work. I knew you had formed a bond of sorts, shared foxholes and all that. For him to send you off with a blessing was the ticket I was searching for. Helping at the debate was another part of my little scheme. Everyone can now go their separate ways feeling squarely dealt with if not wholly satisfied.”

            “Quite something, Dr. Ramm. Frankly, I’m flattered.”

            “Reserve your gratitude for after we’ve taken flight. It’s time we said goodbye.”

            I’d be lying if I said my feelings weren’t complicated. I would worry about Beautiful Bridget and miss Greta. I was already a little nostalgic for Connell’s overreactions and inhuman capability to charge ahead. Still. Enough already. I’d sold enough lies as truth. It was time to go back to making things up the honest way.  

            I held out my hand to Dr. Ramm and nodded as we shook.

            “This is quite a relationship,” said a voice from across the room.

            We turned to the room’s gothic stone entranceway. I saw Phillip David Ross. Dr. Ramm saw a pale, short little man whose bony frame didn’t look like it had or could’ve ever supported muscle. I was surprised at his face. On television they managed to cover up the white bags under his eyes and the adult acne. He was barely in his fifties but looked at least ten years older and sick.

            “Hi,” I said. It was an awkward moment. And I got the feeling the business tycoon wanted it that way.

            “Cheers,” said Dr. Ramm, walking toward our host until he was addressed.

            “An interesting tactic,” Ross said. His voice was almost as unpleasant as his appearance, from the nose and free of bass. I wondered quietly how he ever got to be successful. Usually power required charisma and I found him completely wanting.

            “Interesting?” I asked, knowing the answer was going to be unpleasant. The whole thing had one of those bad feeling vibes people are built to recognize.

            “Yes, I was listening and watching. The entire estate is wired for video and sound.”

            “That seems like a strange thing to do to your own home.”

            “I don’t live here. Not really. I don’t really live anywhere. They don’t let me. I don’t let me.”

            The man was weird all the way through. Everything about him was offensive. I just wanted to get away.

            Dr. Ramm hadn’t given up on his English manners. “Are things quite all right? We’ve never met. I’m Percival—”

            Ross waved a petulant hand and sneezed. Dr. Ramm put his hands in his pockets and stepped back. “I know who you are. Who your father and mother was, their fathers and mothers and so on and so on. There isn’t anything important or unimportant I don’t know about either of you. Quite a little team. And you’re staying.”

            “No, I think we should go.” I started for the door. To hell with Ross.

            “You can leave after the election. He likes the both of you and for now you stay.”

            “What happens if I say I don’t like you, sir, or that I don’t find this western land of Virginia to be to my liking?”

            “Don’t test my resolve. And don’t tell him we’ve had this conversation. That would be bad.”

            “Define bad.”

            “Ask Dr. Abbot about his brother.”

            “Okay,” I said, grabbing Dr. Ramm’s arm. “We’ll stay. What’s another month or two.”

            “Press the help button on the wall if you need anything. I believe the candidate wanted to rest here another day before continuing the campaign. It was nice to meet you.”

            After he slid the doors closed, I could tell Dr. Ramm was about to speak. I held up my finger as a reminder that we were being watched and listened to. “Well what’s the difference,” he said, casually kicking the sofa with his shiny wingtip. “It’s not as if I’ll be the first to say that man is a proper twat.”

Chapter 25: Parcel—Horses—The Dark

            We were stationed at a makeshift campaign office in Fort Worth, Texas. It was somewhere in the orderly grid of the downtown area, still a working office for some supporter’s business. Maybe a law firm or oil company. It was amazing to me that people opened up their services for we locusts like to swarm over, misuse, abuse and move on. Perhaps they didn’t need the offices. Or perhaps they were looking for political favors down the line, not knowing that you needed a lot more than the offer of office space and a bank of telephones to make any difference in the graft and bribe business.

            Then again, you never know with people. Maybe they were just trying to be nice.

            One of the Ivy Leaguers knocked on “my” office and held up a thin parcel. I held out my hand and waited for it to be delivered while Dr. Ramm sat across “my” desk. The deliverer was in and out, red cheeks abloom through his tenth-generation waspy complexion.

            The professor paused once the kid was out the door and rubbed his subtly-managed eyebrows, seemingly ensconced in one thought too many. “It’s astonishing.”

            “I know,” I said, tearing the parcel for a look. There didn’t seem to be anything in it.

            “No, not the post. I’m referring to the speed of these—underlings. Where is that one off to? He looks as if he’s been running all day.”

            I smacked the open end of the parcel on “my” desk until finally a small note fell out. It was clumsily written in a man’s hand but legible enough. There wasn’t much to it.

            “Something interesting?” Dr. Ramm asked.

            “Not really,” I answered. “And as far as the workers around here, I can only tell you a few things.”

            “Such as?”

            “First, I don’t know any of their names and never want to. As far as the hustle, this is United States of America. We’re hustlers. Our existence is based on an alacrity to hustle and the British Empire’s antipathy toward the same. Your people call it gentility. We call it snobbish and elitist.”

            “I think I might believe you. It’s unseemly, all this work. For the life of me I can’t imagine what it’s all about.”

            “Nor can I. They aren’t acting on my orders or any orders that I know of. People doing things, though, whether they need doing or not. It’s part of our rich cultural heritage.”

“America is remarkable. Truly it is a thing that takes time to understand.”

“Mighty respectful, coming from someone who still honors royalty.”

            Dr. Ramm crossed his legs and took a moment. “I’m half colonizer and half colonized. Admitting that I like cricket and Her Majesty should be harder, but it’s not.”

            “Gentility, as said.”

            “I see. Says present imperialist to past imperialist.”

            He smiled and said something about walking around trying to find something resembling a proper cup of tea. I told him to get out and walk around. It’s not like our lives were in danger.

            If only they weren’t. But that’s what the jokes were about. That’s what walks around town without security were about. Denial. Nature’s way of allowing humans to get through the day.

            I insisted the professor be accompanied by one of the minions. He refused until I found one sufficiently female and attractive. “I’m off, then.”

            My attention was where it had been since the reading of the note, only now there was no need to hide it. Meet me at the basement bar near Exchange and Main. 4:00. RP.

            Twenty minutes later I was in a borrowed car, listening as Greta complained about finding a parking space. The location was in a place called the Stockyards. Apparently it held some significance for the locals, but all I saw was a place perhaps holding a little too tight to the whole Texas bit. Creaky wooden buildings from the 1800s. The smell of livestock coming from somewhere. Greta finally found a spot and said something about how cute she found the area. Every now and then she would surprise me, stepping out of her blue-blood suit to come down with the plebs. In this case, I found myself playing the snob. Cowboy culture was never my thing. Horses. Dr. Ramm made me ride on a hunt one time over in England. It had to be the most pointless thing I’d ever done. They didn’t give us guns. The absurd dog-infested scene from Tom Jones wasn’t far off from the actual bit. Ah, England.

            “There’s the place,” Greta said. She seemed happy to come along. Happy ever since Connell’s triumphant debate. Apparently we were okay. A light tone in her voice and a few light touches on my knee during the drive over signaled as much.

            We walked down some cracked steps and left the sun behind. Our eyes gave way to darkness and our ears to the predictable sound of something with steel guitars. There was nobody in the place besides RP and a leathery lady bartender. The ceiling was low and the smell of the previous night hadn’t even begun to escape, though the front and back doors were open. “Holy shit,” Greta said. “Holy shit. That’s Senator Pavlick.”

            Yeah, I hadn’t told her the real reason for our visit to the Stockyards.

            He was dressed like a normal guy, jeans and button-down. His idea of incognito. Greta said angry words to me while I gently guided us toward his booth. A neon beer sign over his head gave his hair an extra shine.

            “I didn’t say to bring anyone else along,” he said. They were the first words he’d ever spoken to me and they weren’t exactly cordial. It rubbed me raw.

            “Your note didn’t say much at all. Greta’s good people, better than anyone you’ve got in your stable.”

            He sunk into the vinyl booth and motioned at the bartender to bring him another whisky. “There are no good people.”

            As we sat down opposite Pavlick, I did some mental calculations based on the present data. He was obviously in bad shape, guilt-ridden, talking metaphysically. Probably a little drunk, and it wasn’t exactly late in the day.

            “We shouldn’t be doing this,” Greta said. I heard her say something about ethics or improper form while I studied the senator further. The golden boy on his comedown. It wasn’t that I felt sorry for him. Maybe a little. A good thing. That this brutal world hadn’t completely taken my soul.

            He pulled a picture from his back pocket and slid it across the table. It was worn and folded. I recognized the faces of his family. They were an idyllic bunch, wearing light colors and smiling under a perfectly American sun. “You have a nice family,” I said.

            “There isn’t one of them who wouldn’t love to kill me.”

            “That’s… pretty awful.” I stopped looking at the picture. “But I’m sure you’re kidding.”

            He laughed as he paid cash for his next drink. Greta grabbed my thigh under the booth. His behavior was strange. The whole thing was strange. “What do you mean?” she asked him.

            “Ms. Fielding. You come from a long line of American—is it royalty—well, not technically. Aristocracy? The wealthy. The plutocracy. It’s all the same. All the same. Why get into this business?” He held up a hand and finished his drink. “Of course. It’s the family business. Mostly likely you don’t have a choice. Even if you think you do. Shouldn’t have brought her here, Harry.”

            “Why?”

            “It’s dangerous. Come on. You made a choice to leave your fantasy world and court the darkness.”

            “I’ve made mistakes. But I’m going to climb out of the darkness. If it kills me, I will.”

            There was a pause. Pavlick and Greta were staring at me, equal intensities. My face didn’t crack. “They say you’re good with words so I’ll assume you chose those carefully. Even the ‘if it kills me’ part.”

            “I chose the words.”

            “Ms. Fielding, your friend here needs to understand. Make him understand. Get Connell out of the race. Figure it out. Make it look good. Or not. I don’t think they care.”

            “I might just walk away.”

            “The sun doesn’t rise by your leave, son. The dark has you.”

            “You’ve been around liars for too long, Senator. Weird liars, apparently. The kind that talk like cartoon villains. It’s wearing off.”

            “No argument here. Just do what I say. Connell’s never going to go the distance. They took your friend Dr. Ramm.”

I found myself grabbing Pavlick rough by the shirt. There was no logic to the action; through all his fakery, he was a war hero and could probably kick the shit out of me. I looked over my shoulder and realized the bartender was most likely one of his personal protectors. Hands on Pavlick made no sense, but I wasn’t thinking of myself. Dr. Ramm was being threatened. Hell, Connell was being threatened. The point is, you do stupid things when you feel your people threatened.

“So you don’t think this is some game…” Pavlick mused. “That’s why they took him. The book on you is that you tend to make light of things. I wouldn’t. His life depends on it.”

He gripped my wrists and pulled down. I yanked free and held up the picture of his family. Don’t you ever want to be decent? Set an example for them?”

            “That’s what it is,” Pavlick said, face awash with that singular politician-type smugness. “Family is what you lack. You’re in need of a daddy.”

            “We should go,” Greta said. The way she said it made me feel like she was trying to protect me from the truth. It made me madder.

            “I couldn’t figure out why this pussy writer would want to be around, but now it make sense. Connell gets a fresh talent. You get to have a father for a little while. That’s truly precious.”

            When I hit Pavlick, I’m pretty sure it hurt me worse than him. The bartender, turns out, was an agent. My face was slammed down and forced onto the table from behind while the senator shook out his jaw. “I get it,” he said.

            I squeezed out a couple syllables: “Do you, asshole?”

            The man who I’d half-admired for the last few months bit on his teeth to make sure they were all still firmly rooted. He would be fine. I still knew how to throw a punch from my boxing days—I’d given him something just a little harder than a love tap. Me on the other hand, not so good. I was beginning to see stars from the cyborg-like grip being applied by Pavlick’s protection agent.

            “Let him up, Roger. He’s one of the necessaries. For the moment.”

            “This is ridiculous,” Greta said, slapping Roger’s arm ineffectually, relentlessly.

            “It is ridiculous, Ms. Fielding,” Pavlick said, manifestly oblivious. “That the election is even close. But you people just won’t let allow that jackass go away.”

            Greta was crying and her hands hurt from her war with Roger’s claw. I was doing my best to see clearly and get a proper breath. Pavlick offered her a handkerchief while yawning. A dirty man doing dirty business, apparently he’d still retained some sideways social graces. “You’re not used to violence, Ms. Fielding. I understand that. But your father and ancestors knew it well. That’s why your precious family name has weight. It was built on the suffering of others, just like everyone else who has power.”

            I rubbed my neck and spit on the floor next to the table. “Greta, ignore the good senator. He took one class on Hegel and Marx at Princeton and now he thinks he’s the foremost on class and influence. We all know the truth, that he doesn’t say anything or hold an opinion that hasn’t been fed to him. A sad surrogate. Guy makes The Manchurian Candidate seem like Mr. Smith.”

            “Oh, very good, Mr. Abbot.” He seemed to be enjoying the pain of taking a smack and the conviction of my words. Yes, indeed. The senator was a real fucked up piece of work. “All right then. Dr. Ramm will be safe, but only for a little while. Do whatever you have to do.”

            Pavlick stood up and smiled. I figured that was it and looked over to Greta to peremptorily tell her it was going to be okay. Before that could happen, Pavlick hit me with a parting shot over the temple. It was more surprising than painful. “We’ll see you soon,” he said with a supercilious laugh.

            For the next few minutes, Greta proceeded to ask me what seemed like a thousand questions. I put a gentle arm around her. It seemed to have a calming effect, allowing me a little silence, a little time to daydream of being alone in a locked room with Senator Pavlick. It was natural. I was angry like I hadn’t been since the days of the Son of a Bitch, when pure cruelty and evil were everyday realities to be tolerated. A couple more breaths. Dr. Ramm’s life was now in danger. That’s all that mattered.

            “That’s why Phillip David Ross wanted us to stay around,” I said aloud, pounding the table. “Of course. We’re just pawns. Just leverage.”

            “What are you talking about?” Greta asked. “Ross is Connell’s friend. He wants Connell to win.”

            “I don’t think that’s how it works.”

            Though a member of the cynical privileged class, Greta still believed there were rules. She believed people made alliances and friendships, that handshakes were magic spells that bound two parties together. She believed that right and wrong were concepts everyone besides “crazy people” still abided by.

            Not me. Not anymore. “I need to talk to Augusta Riser.”

Chapter 26: Boat—Worst—Fine

            Yeah, that Augusta Riser. The one that was supposed to do a story way back, the one who’d been around but sort of wasn’t around. Suspiciously absent and present all at the same time.

            Suspiciously.

            One person free from suspicion was Oakley Randolph, the reporter who’d I’d gone on a towel-stealing bender back in Florida with. He was proving to be a useful addition to the campaign, far more skilled and intelligent than Greg from room 767, falsely-accused and subsequently terminated as a suspected hoarder of hotel linens.

            Remember that old bit?

            Oakley was about the most capable man I had to work with, so I was straightforward and polite when asking him to spy on Augusta Riser.

            “Man, do you ever want me to do something normal?” he asked.

            “I don’t know what you mean,” I said.

            “Look around.”

            “Okay.”

            “Are you serious? We’re in a rented fishing boat. In the middle of lake Who-Gives-A-Shit.”

            Perhaps it was a bit paranoid, though with all the threats and abductions, I wasn’t taking chances. Randolph was going to have to adjust. Adapt. That’s what I had done, after all, and look how well it was working out.

            “Did you ever read The Art of War?” I asked.

            “I guess.”

            For the next few minutes we talked about how disgustingly clichéd it was to refer to the Art of War. How it was on the shelf of every business tycoon, every entrepreneur selling anything from bombs to baby oil, every slimy politician. Football coaches quoted it in whispered tones inside steamy locker rooms. Unattractive softball coaches referred to it in dugouts. It was used a nauseating amount in Hollywood movies, right up there and maybe even more common than Occam’s Razor.

            After that was settled, Oakley reemphasized how strange everything was. I asked him to be more specific and so he was. He had no problem with my request. Oakley was quite adept with specifics. “Setting. The middle of a lake. In a boat the size of shoe box. Situation. We’re talking about ruining a man’s possible run at the presidency. Though we’re not sure why, only that we might have to do it. Augusta Riser. The woman is one of the only people in my line of work with a shred of dignity. As a journalist I’m fully aware that journalists are some of the worst people on the planet, photo finishing with lawyers, politicians and people that test lady shampoo on animals. The point is, she’s not corrupt—or whatever you’re thinking. What are you thinking, by the way?”

            Oakley sat back in the boat with enough force to make the vessel rock, waiting for me to answer. I watched with folded arms while he grabbed the sides and nervously attempted to steady us against the tiny waves lapping against the glittery fiberglass hull.

            It took me awhile to respond. Randolph Oakley was right on the money. This was strange, and the fact that I was almost oblivious to it spoke to the surreal bend my life had taken. From the very definition of honorable obscurity to the heights of terrible and awesome power, from ideals and ideas, settings to mere stops, chasing to being chased. A crappy boat in a crappy lake seemed as plausible as anything else. I’d encountered fledgling assassins in the shadows. I had punched a senator in a bar. Talked the most beautiful woman in the world down from the tallest building in America. Survived a fatal car crash more or less unharmed. Reality didn’t seem to grip me the way it did most people. I was a loose entity, perhaps drifting or perhaps being sent along by some unseen force.

            The mighty grip could seize me deadly still at any moment, of course. I knew that. Expected it, though things just seemed to go on. “Sometimes this is just how it works,” I said loud against a gust of wind.

            “What is that supposed to mean?” asked Oak. He was sweating. Clearly, not a boating enthusiast.

            “They just go on,” I said louder, “until one day you’re in a fishing boat just so you can get a little privacy.”

            I looked down and let a series of gusts have their way with my hair. I’d noticed it was starting to turn gray the other day. To hell with it then, I thought. If you don’t take care of me, I won’t take of you.

            “Got to say, I’ve been weirded out all day,” Oak said, returning his grip on the boat after cinching up the best of the rotting undersized life vests that came with the boat package. “This isn’t going to be one of those murder-suicide deals, is it?”

            “What?”

            “You take me out here and kill me. Then off yourself.”

            “Why would I come out here to do that?”

            “I’m asking why anything right now.”

            “Yeah, I went through that phase. Not that I’m completely free of it. Maybe just numb.”

            “So…”

            “No, I’m not going to kill you. Us. Though the boat is starting to take on water.”

            He gasped and looked down at the water sloshing at his feet. “That’s not good.”

            “It’s not great.” I wondered for a moment if our slowly sinking boat might used as metaphor, a visual to drive the point home. I thought no. Too on the nose. But then again. “Are you with me, Mr. Oakley? Or do you want to jump ship?”

            I could tell the sweat was stinging his eyes now. He yelled, “Are you seriously using real world examples? We could die out here, Abbot! I don’t want to die. Not like this! Not like this!”

            His plea bordered on pathetic, even cowardly, but in the end it stirred my soul. Here was someone showing true desire. Naked emotion. A human being, being real. Ambitious, yes. Cunning and crafty and flawed, of course. But not a robot. It did my heart more good than it should’ve, but I was going to take what I could get.

            “I’m going to start the motor. We’ll be fine. I just needed surety I can count on you.”

            “Yes. Please start the motor. I’ll do anything.”

            “And don’t trust anyone but me.”     

            “Says the guy who might actually be killing us.”

            I laughed. “It’s a slow leak. But that would be quirky. If we died accidently after you thought this was a murder/suicide.”

            “Please, Abbot.”

            I was satisfied. Randolph Oakley had some truth left in his heart. I’d been around enough empty vessels to know by now. “Let’s get back onshore and figure this thing out.” I turned and pulled the ripcord to start the little outboard motor screwed to the back of the boat. After it didn’t fire up, I pulled harder. The ripcord came out and snapped my face. “Oh shit.”

            “Can you fix it?” he asked.

            I tried to gauge the distance to the nearest shore. We would be fine. Probably. It wasn’t the frigging English Channel and the water was bathtub warm. “Can you swim, Randolph?”

            His answer was something a perfect mixture of pathetic and angry. He called me crazy. The campaign was crazy. Everything was crazy. He told me he should’ve been a lawyer like his mother wanted or a lawyer like his father wanted. I couldn’t argue with any of it, so I didn’t. Instead I looked under the seat cushions and found a few paddles and some more old life jackets. We held onto them and paddled back like it was the last scene in Jaws. As the shore got closer and Oak started to relax, a feeling nearing fun came over me. This was the kind of stupid that Keane would’ve reveled in; I missed my brother and felt like maybe I was finding another one in Randolph Oakley.

            When we got close enough to stand up in the water, he said, “You’re a fucking prick.”

            I nodded and tried not to smile. It was the kind of thing I would’ve said to Keane, real anger that wouldn’t last, no matter the effort.

            “Okay then,” I said. “We better get back to it.”

Chapter 27: School—Speeches—Club

            We were touring a high school the next day. One of those photo ops where the candidate listens to the principal and maybe one or two teachers talk about the perils of steering unruly adolescents away from the ditches and down roads to greener pastures. She talked a lot and her theme seemed to be road-related, no matter the turn of phrase. Connell listened, or at least seemed to be listening. He was walking a little better but still relying on a cane, smiling at kids forced to stand at attention against lockers on either side of the hallway. Photographers were everywhere. I was right behind him, at his request. Oakley was next to me, at my request. A kid in a wheelchair came toward us and stopped just before he slammed into Connell’s oxfords. The security that would’ve usually prevented someone from approaching unencumbered were rooted to their spots. This was by edict of the candidate. He had a real problem looking like an “asshole around ‘messed up people’.”

            Ironically, he was incredibly awkward around the handicappers, another one of his titles. He’d had a disabled little brother who died very young and it did something to him, he once told me. It was a very sad story. They didn’t know how to treat or help the lad who suffered and died as little Karl Connell watched on helplessly, clutching his sweaty hand, day after terrible day. It was a story worth telling, really. An easy public relations win. Also, incredibly bad taste. He wanted nothing to do with it. Exploiting his dead brother for political gain was a level Connell wouldn’t go to.

            And though he had some scruples, he had no answer for how to act around anyone developmentally disabled or physically challenged. I looked at the kid who was holding out a half-formed hand with only a thumb and forefinger and held my breath. Connell bent down and shook the crooked digits gingerly, doing his best not to rattle the kid right out of the chair with his wild and usually thoughtless strength.

            “He’s light as a feather,” whispered the candidate in my ear.

            “Get out of this,” I whispered back, knowing that nothing good could come from the situation.

            Before we could move on, the principal, a pale woman with a face as flat a frying pan said, “This is Kenneth.”

            “Hi, Kenneth,” Connell said, speaking slower and more deliberately than I’d ever seen anyone speak to anyone. It was awful. Condescending. The fact that I knew he didn’t mean anything by it didn’t matter. And it certainly wouldn’t matter to the morons in the press or the kids with their cell phone cameras. “You look like you’re doing very well for yourself. Got your own chair and everything. Getting around like a champ. Pretty neat.”

            Kenneth wheeled back a few feet. He had a mostly expressionless face, except for judgmental eyes. Pretty much like every other kid’s face I’d only half looked at in that school. “There’s nothing wrong with me,” he said with a pronounced speech impediment.

            “Kenneth is on track to be our valedictorian,” the principal said. “And he was the homecoming king. And class president.”

            I moved to get a look at Connell’s face, praying it wasn’t one of shock and disbelief.

            My prayers were unanswered.

            He was flummoxed. Beside himself. Bewildered and bemused. Wheelchair Kenneth might’ve just punched him directly in the balls. I smiled at the now sneering principal and put a hand on Connell’s shoulder. Oak had his hand on mine. It was like we were all about to go off a cliff in a movie, a team holding onto to each other, fighting gravity and gritting our teeth except to say don’t let go!

            “What are you staring at?” Kenneth asked.

            I gave the candidate’s shoulder a harsh squeeze. It seemed to have a rousing effect. Sort of.

            “You know,” he said, still bent over with his giant hands on his thighs, “I had a brother who was crippled.”

            “I’m not crippled,” Kenneth said. It was more like an announcement. He wanted his classmates still posted at the lockers to hear it. I didn’t know what to do but I knew I had to do something. Connell was trying to relate to this kid and actually going a long way to do it, talking about something very personal and deeply traumatic. He was also being incredibly offensive. And then there was Kenneth. Oakley whispered in my ear that the kid was kind of a grandstanding dick.

            I nodded gently in agreement and wondered if Oak had used that term because the kid couldn’t stand and because his dick might not work. I put those questions out of my mind. Again, I said to myself, I must do something. 

            “Sorry,” Connell said. “Didn’t mean crippled. Anyway, that’s great about being class president and valedictorian. Believe it or not, we’ve got those things in common you and I.”

            “I was homecoming king, too.”

            “Well done. I bet your date was a pretty young lady.”

            “My date wasn’t a young lady. And I’m not crippled.” Oh shit. Kenneth was making speeches again. If ever there was a time to hit the metaphorical pressure release valve, now was it.

            Oakley stepped toward the principal while I said a quick thanks to Kenneth, tersely explaining that we had to be moving along.

            “Does he take orders from you?”

            I barely heard the question. We were moving down the hall and into the empty room of Mrs. Saunders. After closing the door and taping a piece of construction paper to the little rectangle of glass that allowed a view in, I took a few quick breaths. The boss would be upon me any second now; I cleared my throat and prepared for both barrels.

            “I can’t be in here,” he said, scowling first at me. Then his leg. Then me again.

            “Let’s take a second.”

            He held the cane in both hands, the way you hold a cane to make it a club. There was noise and pushing on the door from outside, though it all went away as I watched his grip tighten. There was nothing else that in the world that could overtake those big hands and that piece of wood. That’s what I once believed.

            “You won’t be doing anything with that,” I said, stepping forward. “And if you do, I’ll knock you to the floor. You’ll never see me again.”

            “What is it with you?”

            “I won’t be threatened.”

            “You told me you were threatened by Pavlick. Threatened by this mystery man.”

            “That’s different.” I thought to explain it more but stopped short. He understood what I meant and lowered the cane, wincing again at his pain.

            “I’m sorry. Abbot, I’m under a lot of pressure.”

            “But that’s not good enough, because it’s all self-induced. My son-of-a-bitch father used to say the same shit, just before he put a belt or fists on me and Keane. Pressure because he’d made the wrong decisions and thought that life was a game, that when you mess up just lash out and hurt people and that’s fine because it’s not all that real.

            “You want me to say I’m sorry again?”

            I didn’t. He hadn’t hit me, after all. Connell was nothing like the SonOfABitch. Even when he wanted to be. Even when I wanted him to be. My candidate was flawed but approaching normal. At least not diabolical. Probably the type of guy people that vote would want to vote for.

Admittedly, politics calls for some low bars.

But they were going to stop him.

            That didn’t sit well.

            And then it came to me.

            “I’ve got a plan. If you want to win this thing, you need to listen to me.”

            “That’s more like it,” he said, cheeks puffing with steam and testosterone. “Let’s run it by Bridget—whatever it is!”

            My thinking was that Beautiful Bridget was trustworthy on the whole, but she might’ve been compromised. The wanting to jump off the tallest building in America thing had me a little worried. That wasn’t very long ago.

            Getting out clean was still a longing I carried with me, though something told me I’d been lugging around a fantasy. The kid in the wheelchair made me realize it. They had used someone physically handicapped against my candidate. The kind of people that would do that would do anything. Things like threaten me. Things like kill my brother. Clean was a pipedream. It all went dirty the day I joined the sordid circus.

            The air conditioner switched on and made a terrible knocking noise that interrupted my heavy thinking. Connell tapped me on the shoulder and made a comment about the terrible state of the building, how nobody could be expected to learn in such a place. He felt for the kids, he said, even if he wasn’t great with them or care all that much.

            “I know, sir.”

            “So what are we going to do? I’m busting to know the details.”

            “We’re going to use Augusta Riser and finally do that interview. She’s going to try and sabotage your run, but we’re going to turn it around. Make it live. Throw her and Pavlick and the whole nasty machine into the grinder.”

            “I don’t know,” he said, wincing at the sound cluttering a/c unit as he tried one of the desktops to see if could hold at least some of his weight. “I like that Augusta. And what machine? Are you saying there’s corruption? Hell, that’s like one of those water is wet type revelations! Not exactly John the Revelator!”

            The desk wouldn’t hold. The people outside were bumping against the door. The clattering air conditioner duct. Connell’s heavy breathing. I was starting to sweat. “Will you give me a day to sort through it?”

            “Hemingway…”

            “One day, sir. And I know this is going to be hard. You can’t talk to anyone except me and Oakley. That’s imperative.”

            He leaned heavy on the cane, heavy in thought. I thought it might break. Or he might.

Chapter 28: Pooches—Before—Permanent

            There were dogs barking everywhere. It was relentless and awful, the unease of animals before a volcano or earthquake. I asked Oak what was transpiring outside. “Volcano or earthquake?”

            “Maybe both.” He tried for a smile but fell short of the mark. The young man was just about overcome with nerves and frankly had every right to be. People I didn’t know or only knew slightly were coming up to me to ask questions about this or that, making the small space of Karl Connell’s childhood family home seem even smaller. Except for Randolph Oakley, I passed all askers on to Greta.

            Thanks be to God for Greta.

            They have no imagination. It wasn’t the first time I’d whispered the phrase under my breath. It was steady on my lips, one of the only truths taken from my time on the campaign. The politicians, the staffers, the press—the entire circus—it was comprised almost entirely of people with absolutely no imagination. Sure, there were a few clever folks here and there, but they were more Mack Truck than Machiavelli. Nuance wasn’t a thing. Maybe it was at one time. Maybe it all used to be an intricate chess game. Not the case anymore. It was all recycled thoughts and recycled polling questions and recycled energy, a host of people living off the fumes of the previous cycle, just like the ones that had come before. I looked around and felt the opposite of Oak, the opposite of nervous. There wasn’t a person in here that could know what was coming. I wasn’t sure where the best and brightest might be, but except for Oak and Greta, I knew it was nowhere close to the campaign.

            Then again, I was an author and a lecturer. This was the game of Power. The game of Control. What in the hell did I know?

            Connell came charging up to me. I told everyone to give us what little room there was. “This is freaking me out, Hemingway.”

            “What is? You’re going to have to be a little more specific today than usual.”

            He looked around from floor to ceiling, left and right. “They made it look exactly the way it used to. How is that even possible?”

            I wasn’t sure of all the details, but I knew Bridget called a guy who found the Connell family photos and did a tediously job at crafting a replica. His name was Claude and apparently he was really good. Talk about specialized. “Claude did it.”

            “Who the hell is Claude?” Connell said, adjusting his belt. It seemed like his private manners were actually devolving, a feat at one point I thought impossible.

            I didn’t want him thinking about Claude or getting psyched out by his immersion into a ye ol’ good days simulation, throwing out insufferable anecdotes about mom’s cooking being the best or that time or dad did whatever thing it was that made him the man he became.

There were more important matters at hand.

            The TV lights erupted in the living room in front of a tiny brick fireplace and Augusta Riser sat down in a winged back chair that was positioned opposite one just like it, the place Connell would soon be taking. She looked good. It was hard not to think about the time we tumbled around a hotel bedroom and tumbled one more time again, though I’d like to say I did my best not to linger on it.

            There were more important matters at hand.

            Connell had me check him out—suit, tie, and hair—after that he took a big breath and moved into his chair. The lights dimmed a bit and a couple cameras went active.

            The room was quiet because it had to be. It was as quiet Augusta Riser after she asked her first and only complete question before going to break. They had good reason. Connell sidestepped her and answered like this, taking time. Maybe it lasted longer than it should’ve. Still, not bad at all. I felt triumph in my chest:

            “I’d love to answer that question, Augusta. First I’d like to address something that’s been on my mind. It’s nooooo big deal in the grand scheme and yet you and the good people may think it newsworthy. It’ll just take a second.”

            Well sir…

            “That’s great, Augusta.”

            If I could…

            “The truth is, Augusta, we live in strange times. There are people trying to sabotage this entire process. Making threats. Making attempts on my life and the lives of the people that work for me.”

            If we could go to break…

            “I’m not going to say any names besides one. My opponent, Senator Pavlick. Despite his record and despite that admittedly charming smile, he’s one of the worst people out there. The only people worse might be the ones who have propped him up his entire career.”

            Honestly, Mr. Connell…

            “You look very nice tonight, by the way. Augusta, if I could just say a few more things. I’m asking any journalists, hell anyone, to find out who this man is.”

            He held up a picture but faced it toward his chest so the camera couldn’t catch the image.  

            “I don’t get the point in showing it. It’s a picture of an ugly bald guy. He’s always kind of around. Find out who he is and I’m sure it’ll lead back to Senator Pavlick. If it doesn’t, it’ll lead back to the people the good senator calls friends. I think that’s the least we can do.”

            Wow. This is so strange.

            “Tell me about it, Augusta. Then again, the entire process has been strange. Politics is not for the faint of heart. One dang thing after another. Oh. I almost forgot. A doctor friend of ours. We need to see him.”

            Doctor?

            “Of sorts. Lovely fella. Yeah, we’d like him around. If all that goes from idea to reality, we can talk about making things right. In fact, he should come around today. Okay, that’s all. Thanks so much, Augusta.”

            He stood up and walked away from the chair. The lights went down. Augusta Riser was suddenly white and still, like she’d been cryogenically frozen for a long trip to nowhere fast.

            Randolph Oakley was a good-looking young man, smooth-skinned and streamlined in muscle and form. Presently he appeared haggard and anemic, like an athlete at the end of one of those absurdly long races. I put an arm around him and we walked out into the backyard in our roles as commanding officer and shell-shocked fledgling taking pause from the trenches. It was the place for a semblance of peace. The press and staff were going predictably nuts. We’d just lit the entire thing on fire.

            Had to be done.

            “Did it have to be done?” Oakley asked. He took out a cigarette and lit the end uneven with a shaky hand. I noticed the dogs barking again and couldn’t believe I’d forgotten them. Maybe it was an asteroid. They could probably sense those alien bastards, too. Anything bad. I’d seen enough movies to know that much.

            “If for no other reason than getting Dr. Ramm back, yes.”

            Oakley exhaled into the sky above and nodded, like he’d let go of his misgivings and reacquired his senses. “Had to be done.”

            It felt good to hear him say it. He wasn’t the type to settle easily on a conclusion. Randolph had as much trust in himself and institutions as I did, which is to say, not a whole hell of a lot.

            “I just hope it works,” I said, trying to stay grounded. There were so many unknowns. There’d be a pushback. The champions of politics and industry would fire for effect if they couldn’t target anything specific. If they found something we hadn’t thought of—that would probably be the end for all of us. Politically. Professionally. Personally. Pulmonarily. Permanently.

Chapter 29: Relax—Gump—Permanent

            When working a national campaign, one has to find time to relax. Some of the staffers played chess. The Harvard people bet on anything and everything to unwind. Some of the wiser minions devoted themselves to exercise, which was no small feat. It was hard to find an hour or even thirty minutes a day to take care of your corporeal self.

            I tried to read a little, to write a little. It was getting hard though. I felt alienated from myself, doing things I’d never imagined doing. My thoughts weren’t water. They were stiff and sharp-edged. It was almost over. Almost over. Almost.

            The idea that Nelson Andrews’ little job offer would’ve landed me here. Crazy. Don’t make me say stranger than fiction. Geez, the tripe coming out of me and my pen. Total garbage. Everything was happening with such speed and intensity it was hard to bring salient and stylish prose into the real world. The real world and writing needed to have separate and distinct spaces, perhaps. Perhaps I’d always known that. But now I really understood, now that I was neither real person nor artist person and almost but not quite both.

            My mentor was foremost on my mind. When Beautiful Bridget walked over on the bus and handed me a phone whispering, “It’s about Dr. Ramm,” I got nervous as hell. Would our little game work? They couldn’t kill him, could they? He was a renowned scholar and member of the British aristocracy or gentry or whatever the hell they called it. Surely he was safe from the clutches of some political evildoers. Right. Just like JFK…RFK…MLK…Malcolm X…Honest Abe…Julius Damn Caesar…Frigging Phillip II of Macedon…

            Anyway, nervous. Bridget rubbed her hand through my hair as I said hello like I was someone not to be trifled with. I couldn’t help but go soft at her touch. She’d been following me around like a puppy since the night she didn’t kill herself, thinking maybe it was me that had to do with her still being alive. I didn’t think she would’ve done the mortal deed in the end, but either way it was nice to be appreciated by the most attractive woman on the face of the earth. I didn’t fight it a whole lot.

            “Tell us how to get my friend back,” I said after exiting the bus. The sun was bright and oppressive and added to the pressure of the moment. “Better yet, let me talk to him.”

            Silence followed. It was unbearable. Looking back at the bus, I saw Greta and Bridget’s faces next to the glass, watching me for any indications of relief or horror. I waved and gave them a thumbs up. Probably not the correct protocol, though hostage transfer and negotiation weren’t prerequisites at Oxford. A little more silence and pacing the lot.

            Finally, Dr. Ramm. “Is that you, young Harold?”    

            “Oh thank God.”

            “Are they treating you okay?” I was near tears. He sounded fine. Better than fine, actually.

            During the next few minutes I learned the reason for his good cheer. Dr. Ramm was being treated to the finest golf courses, conversation, meals and massages. He had no idea he was a captive. On the contrary, he believed himself to be on a sort of spontaneous jaunt around the country with prominent members of “colonial” society. Leaders of industry and the arts were his companions. He was wanting for nothing and apparently no expense was being spared.

            “I must admit, it has been a rather nice time. How goes it in your world, my boy?”

            That he wasn’t aware of his status as a hostage was baffling. Perhaps he was being drugged. Perhaps he was performing for the people listening on the other end of the line. No. Ramm didn’t perform. It would be beneath him. This was part of their game. The best way to deny a kidnapping—make the kidnapping positively and utterly pleasant in every way possible. No threats. The simple genius of it made me want to throw the phone across the parking lot and just start running, sort of like Forrest Gump but with a better IQ and more complicated problems.

            Then came the sound of multiple young women cackling in the background. “Must be off, my boy. Do check in later if you can.”

            “Dr. Ramm!” I tried.

            The voice that answered wasn’t his but it wasn’t unfamiliar. I knew it from somewhere. At the moment though, I had more pressing concerns. “What have you done to him? Is he being drugged?”

            “That really shouldn’t be your concern,” said the voice.

            “Is that right? Kind of seems like a big deal. I’d go as far as to say it’s downright a matter of interest.”

            “Assessments have been made and it’s been decided that Connell has to step down. We considered letting him go on. Frankly, we’ve been surprised by your tenacity and his ability to curry favor with the unwashed.”

            I sat down on the parking lot pavement and let it heat my rear to a point near burning, kind of caring about the pain but mostly focused on the voice and the message. It was coercive, threatening and evil, and yet the voice was calm as a cup of room temperature water. There was a lot to unpack. I started talking as if I knew the right thing to say. It’s what I’d been doing this entire time, anyway.

            It finally dawned on me. “How you been, bald guy? I forget your name.”

            “Think. Talk to your candidate. This has to happen soon. Otherwise Dr. Ramm’s vacation turns into something longer and far less pleasant.”

Chapter 30: Squeeze—Achilles—Didn’t

            We were in the candidate’s trailer. Just me and him, not really next to each other and not really across, sitting at the same little table where we first talked and I agreed to join the circus. Another kind of life ago. I explained that it was time to get out. This was a dark world. More darkness was coming and it couldn’t be kept back. We didn’t have the numbers and probably lacked the lack of scruples.

            He offered out his hands like he wanted me to take them. I was reluctant, knowing he had the tendency to squeeze the hell out of things when he got wound up. I put my hands firmly in my pockets and told him to think about Dr. Ramm.

            “Do you really think they would do anything to him, Hemingway? I don’t like you coming at me from a place of fear. You started this journey in fear and I’d thought you’d left that behind. Fear is no place to live from.”

            One of my hands banged the table after escaping a pocket without my brain’s permission. Connell jumped and swore under his breath, wiping breathy wet from his big bottom lip. “It’s becoming tedious that I have to remind you. They tried to kill us all. They killed my brother.”

            My throat caught at that last word. Rain or shine the two most loyal people throughout my life were Keane and Dr. Ramm. One was already gone. Now the other in the cue. No, I couldn’t have Connell thinking like a politician or a businessman, even if he was good and principled (as one could be) at both.

            He leaned back against the window thoughtfully. Him slowing things down to gentle motions meant he was chewing something to the bone, pensive. The brother thing got to him. I’d hit his Achilles heel, not intentionally but grateful for the fortune all the same.

            Greta was knocking on the door. She might’ve been knocking for a minute or five. Everything was so intense, pressurized and dense. The interruption was annoying and didn’t seem to be going away. “What is it, Greta?”

            She came in crying and slumped to the floor. Connell slid out from his seat and picked her up gently. “What is it, young lady? You tell us and we’ll figure it out.”

“The police are on their way.”

            I pulled back her hair as Connell held her. “Greta, what’s going on? Please just say it slowly so we can understand.”

            “It’s Bridget. I stepped out for a few minutes to have a smoke and when I got back. She’s dead.”

            “No,” Connell said with a sad half-laugh, the reaction one has to a particularly sick joke.

            “I think—I think she must’ve killed herself or something. There was blood everywhere.”

            Connell slumped back down and I caught Greta. Either Bridget was dead because she was suicidal or Bridget was dead from the people that had made her suicidal. I kept my mouth shut and listened to Greta cry, listened to the candidate say No over and over again.

            Beautiful Bridget was dead. I thought back to that night on top of the building in Atlanta. So proud I’d been of talking her out of it. I was a savior. And I didn’t even take advantage of her vulnerability. I was a gentleman.

            Sure. Of course I was.

            The local cops were swarming with blustery intent, setting up a perimeter. The press stood behind barricades and snapped pictures of inconsequential things and consequential things with equal enthusiasm, the way they always do.

            Shock. That was the feeling. I staggered near the door of her trailer before being told to stop by a burly young man with a hairless, determined face.

            “I need to see,” I said, trying to push by. There was a compelling desire to see the horrible thing, to let the image burn onto to my eyes so I might understand better or be someone who understands. Or something like that.

            “Sir, we can’t let you go in there,” said the young cop. His jaw was tightening. I barely looked but I couldn’t help noticing two big moles on his sweaty forehead that were clearly in need of removal. “You could disturb the evidence,” he said, looking up. He’d obviously noticed me paying special to the flaws on his face.

            Once more I tried to make a move. All I did was bang my hand against something hard he was wearing. “Dammit,” I seethed, shaking out my fingers as more cop cars sped heedless toward the scene and skidded with abandon just before the barricades. The whole thing was ridiculous. It was like they were coming up on a robbery in progress. I hated all of them, though of course the only person I really hated was myself for not doing more. Beautiful Bridget was dead. The mysterious genius, the fascinating anomaly, the most captivating entity I’d ever shared time and space with. To hold her. Even in her blood, morbid as it might be. That’s what I wanted. And some kid barely out of high school was telling me I couldn’t do the only thing in my mind. Fuck him, thinking he was an immovable object.

            “It’s funny, I was thinking.”

            The cop didn’t respond. He held out a veiny arm for distance. The other I watched drifting down to his side.

            “Are you seriously reaching for your pistol?” I asked, only getting hotter despite the utter lack of sense in it.

            “Sir, back down the steps. Do it now.”

            “But you didn’t let me finish—telling you how I did the cops’ job not too long ago. Some guy wanted to kill the Karl Connell. None of your kind were there to stop it, worthless pieces of shit you are. Come here,” I said, holding out my hand to condescendingly pat his fresh face. This time he gave a push that was a hair’s length from sending me stumbling down the mobile metal stairs.  

            “Sir, I understand this is an emotional time. Please, back away.”

            But he hadn’t knocked me down. And as long as I still had the pulpit: “What are you protecting her from? She’s dead. Killed herself. But we all know. She might’ve finished the job, but this and they and them, that’s who really killed her. Of course, I’m crazy. Nothing else is crazy. Not you for valiantly standing this strange post. Not me for caring so much about a person that might’ve cared nothing about me. Look out there, kid. All the cops and the cameras. You ever ask why anyone gives a shit? No. No. No. No. Nobody asks that question anymore. That would be crazy, after all.”

            I’m not sure I wanted to die, though in that moment I’m sure depression had taken hold of my bones. There was no real plan. Some bad ones flashed through my mind. Maybe knock the kid off his feet and get to Bridget in time to hold her before he shot me in the back. I’d die in her dead arms. Not exactly the way they draw it up in romance novels, but close enough.

            My chance for high drama was thwarted. Oakley came out of nowhere and put a chokehold on me, lifting me off my feet and down the stairs feet as I struggled intensely for air. Holy shit he was strong. “Calm the fuck down, Harry.”

            “Let me go goddammit.”

            “I’m not going to—so—stop squirming—you insane son a bitch, you’re not strong enough.”

            That last part. Truer words never spoken.

            “I want to kill myself,” I told Oakley after he calmed me down and got us far enough away from the clustering chaos.

            “Because Bridget did?” he asked.

            “I don’t know.” I had reached peak petulance. Yes, there was an insane amount of tragedy and pressure on us. Frankly, “man up already,” the thing Oakley kept saying, was a sentiment without steel. “Give me a cigarette,” I squeaked. “That stupid face of yours.”

            We both lit up and stood there quietly for ten seconds or so, breathing in chemical poison like it was the antidote, the great unappreciated panacea.

            “You don’t want to go killing yourself, Harry. At least not yet.”

            I exhaled harder than normal, still heaving like a child without reason or understanding. “Why’s that, Oakley?”

            “Because Bridget didn’t.”

Chapter 31: Songs—Personal—Resolved

            Connell resigned from the race the next day. The eruption from the press was volcanic. If volcanoes were incredibly annoying and foamed at the mouth and on each other for the chance to report on more interesting volcanoes. It was overexuberant in a charmless way, childish as always, with less dignity than children, as always.

            We stood by and watched him do what he had to do. It was more or less unprecedented in the history of presidential politics. The leading candidate bowing out with a commanding lead going into the final stretch of voting season. They asked him if he was sick. He told them he wasn’t sick, no, shipshape, unless you were to count this bum leg. They asked him if there were troubles at home. No, he said, no more than anyone else. But it hasn’t always been easy, he said, and he looked forward to mend some of the fraying corners of his personal life.

            He hated doing it. I mean he really hated it. Giving in was not the Karl Connell way. One of the truly admirable things about the man.

And I couldn’t help but be impressed with the way he was going about it. We were at the Old Bavarian Tennis Club in some Santa Barbara-ish place on the coast of California, right in the middle of a match. I wasn’t a great player, “Decent enough for a Yank” according to my Oxford comrades, but that day I was completely outmatched. Connell’s bad leg didn’t seem to matter anymore. His backhand was ferocious. He wasn’t striking the ball as much as he was bludgeoning it like some mythical racket-wielding Greco-Roman nightmare monster. Not artsy but effective, and no doubt a supercharged  byproduct of the way things had turned out. To whiff a dream and not taste it.  

One of the saddest songs ever sung.  

            They were all standing there, snapping pictures and gossiping about the next stop, watching me get my ass thoroughly kicked by a man twenty years my elder. Just before he tossed the ball up to serve for the set, he turned sharply toward them. I called out, “Sir, where are you going?” with one hand holding a stitch that was tormenting my side. “You’re not doing it now are you?”

            He was indeed. Standing at attention in front of the crowd at the edge of the court, sweating and hairy in white shorts that the 80s would’ve considered tiny, he held that racket over his head breathing deeply and announced his withdrawal as candidate for President of the United States of America.

            I watched all this from the net and smiled the longer it went on. Connell was insulted and wanted his exit to look as absurd as possible. The assholes on the other side of the game were going to win, sure, just not exactly the way they wanted. In being completely undignified, my candidate was doing the most dignified thing he could possibly do.

            My laughter was hard to obscure as I slowly approached, keeping off to the side. I heard a question about what he really thought about Senator Pavlick. He told them that that Pavlick was a true hero. He told them that Pavlick was right up there with George Washington and Galileo and all the martyrs and saints. It was hard to even categorize him, Connell said, seeing as how the senator was such an anomalous piece of instant Americana, a fully formed folk hero that needed neither time nor embellishment to solidify his place in the pantheon of great warrior-statesmen.

Oakley had been busy with a phone call on the opposite side of the court and now was running over to ask, “What the hell is he doing?”

            “He’s doing what he’s supposed to,” I said.

            “But that outfit. My God, those shorts and the sweat.”

            “I know. And even though it’s a word I generally despise, I have to say that everything about this is awesome.”

            Oakley stood there with his hands on his hips waiting for me to elaborate. My posture remained steady and focused on Connell, indicating I had very little if anything left to say on the matter.

            While he took questions from the rabid dogs, we heard his warm retorts. All thanks and gratitude. He even mentioned me specifically. Said I was the real mind behind the campaign’s success. That I was family to him.

            I suspected it would make me feel good for at least a day. Instead, it pissed me off within an hour. My dreams and future didn’t matter. Connell was sacrificing his on the altar. I resolved to do the same.

Chapter 32: Singular—Plane—Shitload

            As far as Dr. Percival Ramm, he must have been the first of his kind in history. The well-mannered writer and scholar was literally the central piece of blackmail that changed the course of the world’s greatest superpower. What put him over the top of Singular Mountain was the fact that he had no idea it happened.

            “But young Harold, I’m in proper good nick. Don’t you think it would’ve occurred to me that something was awry?”

            He talked about all the great golf he played, how he’d gotten the chance to meet and attend dinner parties with Hollywood elites and business tycoons. He wouldn’t believe me that it was all just a distraction, that throughout the course of his excursion the Sword of Damocles was hanging over his neck. 

            “So I’m supposed to countenance this as all just some sort of performance?”

            I put my feet up on a shiny oval coffee table in Dr. Ramm’s suite, letting my body sink into the couch cushions. With my eyes closed and a growing headache, I said, “Has any of what you’ve seen been something other than a performance?”

            He stood up and put his thumbs in the pockets of the shiny checkered vest he was wearing. “I owe a debt, it would seem.”

            My eyes opened though I felt the need to stay silent. My mentor was embarrassed. His honor had been besmirched and he’d been threatened and used. It was a lot to take on.

            “Why did you come here?” I asked.

            “For you.”

            “But why?”

            “To get you out of here, lad. Away from all this and back on your proper course.”

            “Seems you fell victim to sticking around. Just as much as I did.”

            If he’d ever been in the mood to go after someone, it was right now. His hands were out from his vest and clenched, knuckles going white. It was the bitterness in my voice as much as the words themselves that had him boiling over. I wanted to take it back immediately.

And yet, I wasn’t wrong.

            The entrance of Connell broke the tension but only with a different brand. He was pacing so hard the glasses over the bar were clinging together. It seemed his heavy steps would put holes in the floor as he went back and forth between me and Dr. Ramm, never quite making eye contact and rubbing his forehead raw, grunting from his throat, mumbling from his lips, breathing through his nose.      

            Before I could decide on a proper way to react, he grabbed me by the shirt collar and told Dr. Ramm to pull up the latest political news on the computer. “Read it,” he commanded, eyes wide and wild and totally fixed on mine. “Whatever you see first.”

            I stole a glance at my teacher and nodded. He began: The sudden withdrawal from the presidential race by Karl Connell was certainly an unexpected shock. Considering the latest, however, the move starts to make more sense. After an investigation by local and federal law enforcement, it seems that Bridget Waterton, one of Connell’s top aides, might’ve taken her life following a nasty turn in a romantic relationship with Connell. A source from inside the investigation says she left a note on her computer saying she could not go on without the one-time presidential front runner…

            “That’s enough, Professor,” he said. His grip tightened on my shirt. I was close enough to be overwhelmed by his whisky breath. His thick eyebrows were wilder and grayer than they were when I met him. “My wife says she’s through with me. My kids too. Bridget’s father called me and told me that he was either going to sue or have me killed or kill me himself and he was still deciding.”

            “I’m sorry, sir.”

            “I thought it would be over once I quit. You told me that they’d leave me alone.”

            “They’ll eventually leave you alone,” I answered, still at the mercy of his strength, engulfed in a vaporous brew of sweat and aftershave.

            “No they won’t,” he said, giving up his grip to lean on me. I hugged him to keep him upright and then hugged him while he sobbed. He managed a pitiable why? somewhere inside all that emotion.

            “Is your private plane nearby?” I asked.

            Connell looked up. “What does that have to do with anything?”

            An adolescent thought had been forming in the back of my brain; I realized now that it was just about fully grown. “We’re going to England.”

            “We are?” asked Dr. Ramm.

            “Yes. Right now. We’ll be staying at one of your estates, away from everybody. Pick your favorite.”

            “Indeed. I’ll have to ring ahead and make sure the staff has everything ready and shipshape.”

            After helping Connell to a chair, I told the professor that only his most trusted people could know where we were. I told him that I needed to find Greta and Oakley and that once I had a chance to give them the rundown, we were off.

            “What the devil is going on, Harold? You appear ready to bounce off the bloody walls.”

            “I’m going to write a book.”

            Connell mumbled and slumped down in his chair, clearly underwhelmed. That’s okay, I said. He’d start to understand.

            “Whatever you need,” said my mentor. I could tell he was ready to make amends for being hoodwinked by the social graces of the American upper crust, apparent from an extra bounce in his step.

            “There’s no tender way to put it, Professor. I’m going to need a shitload.”

Chapter 33: Twins—Stable—What?

            I heard an interesting story about a pair of twins that were separated at birth. One of the twins grew up in a stable home basking in love and encouragement. He went onwards and upwards to become incredibly successful. His brother wasn’t so lucky. Despite having the same looks and just about the same inherent intelligence and abilities, he never got a break. A rough childhood under a creaky leaking roof was all he ever saw. Getting by was all he ever wished for.

            Oh, that’s not the interesting part.

            The interesting part was that at this point in the story the brothers were old men. Turns out they discovered each other late in life and lived in the same house, seeing out their twilight years together. One was happy. One was not.

            Maybe it’s an obvious twist—the happy twin was the one who had lived a pretty terrible life. It made sense as I read on. This dude had gotten his ass kicked by the cosmic lottery and now at long last he had someone to chill with on the porch, no less than a blood relative, one he’d never been aware of.

            While the other twin was fairly happy to have a brother, that was just about where his happiness stopped. They lived in an ordinary neighborhood in an ordinary flyover town, far removed in space and time from the bustle of his former life of high-class travel, big business and beautiful women. He’d lost it all in one crash or another, and with money went the women. There was enough left over to get by and get from one day to the next, and that’s just about it. No more pictures in magazines or lofty profiles in journals. He was irrelevant. Nothing could be worse than anonymity, than ordinary. That he mattered to his newfound brother on a profound level was something he could conceptualize but not internalize.

            “I think that’s what he’s going through more than anything. A feeling of irrelevance.”      

            “Harold, your guess is as good as mine. The man hasn’t said a word since we arrived. He doesn’t come out of the room and the staff says he’s barely eating. My scotch collection certainly has been run through. That’s a great deal of scotch, you don’t need me to tell you.”

            We were at Dr. Ramm’s northern estate, specifically the stable, looking at two new horses purchased recently for racing. They were beautiful, one jet black and the other wilder and brown with hints of red. The professor had no great love for the sport though he felt obligated to keep himself in the game. It was family tradition. It would break his mother’s heart if the Ramm’s stopped owning horses, and that’s something his conscience couldn’t abide.

            “Whatever it is, this is the place for him to deal with it. The peace and quiet can’t be anything but helpful in the long run.” I wasn’t completely convinced by my own words but they felt right. The man hadn’t known anything but the tornadic pace of politics for over a year.

As for me, I was writing twenty hours a day to get the real story of the Connell Campaign to press. Dr. Ramm had pulled every favor he could to secure a publishing deal while Greta and Oakley were doing research back home. It was a race, something I’d never done before, substance over style and facts over flourishes. Frankly, I had no idea if it was worth a damn. The professor read over my progress each night and assured me that it was cutting and clear. I had my doubts about his objectivity, knowing he wanted most of all to get back at the people who orchestrated his soft kidnapping and used him to force Connell into quitting.

            As we exited the barn we were hit by a new smell. “Do you have people burning crops or something?” I asked.

            “No, Harold,” Dr. Ramm answered, grabbing my arm and pulling me up a slippery emerald hill to the manor. “The bloody house is bloody on fire.”

            As we ran across the soccer pitch-sized front lawn I could see flames bursting through two of the leaded glass front windows on the first floor.

            “Should we wait to go in? I said, pulling back on Dr. Ramm’s shoulder before he could put a hand to the front door.

            “People could be inside. My staff. Our Mr. Connell.”

            He was right. And it was strange that nobody was outside on the lawn or screaming from a high window for help. There were no signs of life whatsoever. I told him to call the fire brigade and that I would follow him in. We had to. Being a country estate, it would take them twenty minutes at the minimum to get anyone there. By then it might be too late, if it wasn’t already.

With our dress shirts covering our faces we plunged into the foyer to find the two male servants and the three lady servants arranged in a sort of semi-circle around the front hearth. They were all shouting Connell. He was holding shotgun awkwardly under one arm while pouring pages of my draft into the fire, half-wadded bits at a time. Several had obviously scattered and set aflame one of Ramm’s ancient rugs. Like many old things, the rug was desiccated and not much up for a fight with nature. It had spread to the even more ancient tapestries on the wall and then to the curtains and so forth. The stone walls were scorched in places and the room was becoming unbearably hot.

            “What the bloody hell, Tom?” Ramm asked his head servant.

            “Is he forcing you to stay with that shotgun?” I asked, loud over the sound of the flames. They were licking all the way up to the vaulted ceiling. I started worrying about the integrity of the structure, worries made worse by a complete lack of knowledge of structural integrity.

            Again, I posed the question about the shotgun. Tom, a tall man who was spry despite being around since the Norman Invasion, said no. They were simply trying to help Mr. Connell, Tom said. To convince him that sticking around meant certain death. The flames seemed to be closing in from every side. Our one exit was getting smaller and smaller.

            I took it upon my myself to order Tom and the maids outside. Dr. Ramm echoed me and stayed put, despite my protestations. Everything had to be said louder still. The flames felt like they were on top of us. Breathing was painful and mostly ineffective. “Karl,” I called out, stepping closer in. “We’ve got to get the hell out of here! What are you doing!?”

            He dropped the remaining pages and turned to me. The shotgun was in both hands in a firing position. “You made me run and hide. To quit. We’re small out here. There’s nothing. And you want to write about it?”

            Sure, it was confusing. I looked at Dr. Ramm and did a barely detectable shoulder shrug. We’d gotten permission to write the book from Connell. And it wasn’t like me or anybody else had ever made a decision for him.

            But that didn’t matter. We were facing death. Either from the smoke or the flames or from an angry man with a shotgun.

            I preferred none of the above.

            Even in all the chaos I noticed his massive hands gripping the wood and metal of the weapon, squeezing so hard it might crack in pieces. “It’s not going to happen now. Your little book is gone. Just like all of us. Three peasants. Three peasants that could’ve slayed dragons.”

            I remembered the first day I’d met Connell. How he said something about slaying dragons. I should’ve been more scared, but there I was, wincing, reminiscing. It dawned on me how much this had changed me. I was used to the unexpected. Unsurprised by the shocking. Living life was incredibly different than writing about it. Especially living this one.

            “Harold,” Dr. Ramm said, coughing hard into his sleeve and pulling at mine. “Harold, we must go. Karl, be reasonable and put that down.”

            He was right. Waiting wasn’t an option. I walked straight into the barrel so that it pressed hard into my chest. “We’re all walking out of here. Or you can shoot me.”

            In the firelight I could see his eyes. They weren’t full of purpose. Only defeat. I took a stifled breath and grabbed the barrel. It left his hands without resistance.

            “Come now,” Dr. Ramm said, helping me usher Connell through the narrow slit that remained.

            Outside in the cool air, we stood on the grass and waited for the fire brigade to arrive, seething from baked skin and coughing out the smoke.

            Connell sat on the ground crying. The heat and the smoke hadn’t done much damage, unsurprisingly. He was still the same ox-strong man I’d met so many months ago. I wanted to tell him—something. He meant something to me. More than that. He was like Dr. Ramm.

            I tried not to think about my father. The son of a bitch.

            As the fire trucks pulled up Dr. Ramm came over. We watched them at work, trying to combat the flames. They made quick work out of it, actually.

            “It can be salvaged,” he said. “Nothing that can’t be salvaged.”

            I nodded because that’s what you do in traumatic situations. “Was there anything in that room that was irreplaceable?” I asked.

            “Indeed,” he said quickly and politely. It was the most English thing I’d ever from the quintessential Englishman. “A great many things.” He crossed his arms and looked up at the clouds. “Though nothing is irreplaceable. And everything is irreplaceable.”

            He walked over to talk to the head of the fire brigade, no doubt to thank him for tending so well to such a dreadful accident.

            Connell looked lost. Punch drunk, maybe. I couldn’t come up with the words, deciding to say nothing. I couldn’t tell him how I felt. I especially couldn’t tell him that his stunt hadn’t accomplished anything. The book was good and saved on backup drives, memory sticks, the cloud…

            I’d tell him later.

Chapter 34: Reunited—Old—Guy

            I have to admit that seeing Greta and Randolph Oakley the following day gave me much needed heart. Dr. Ramm was acting strange, pretending that the partial burning of one of his family homes didn’t bother him. It was the first time I’d ever seen his perfectly-parted hair the least bit out of place. Connell was back to the bottle calling various family members over and over despite never getting an answer. He was like a melting robot refusing to abandon its one programmed task.

We met at one of the Ramm family’s private airfields, fairly near one of his other estates. I’d left them alone to sleep and was worried enough to feel an urge to get back. The professor’s “main” servant told me he was keeping a close watch on both men to make sure they didn’t get into any trouble—how much to trust a servant, however, I had no earthly idea. More than family? Less? In the end I settled tentatively on trust. These were the kind of people that were raised and schooled by servants, after all. I remembered Dr. Ramm saying his staff were like family.

Or maybe I’d heard it said by a soft-skinned character on one of those BBC shows with deceptively good writing.

Ascending the mobile staircase, I was met with a firm handshake from Oak and a tight hug from Greta. They asked me to come inside and check out the plane. I found myself unenthusiastically agreeing, aware that private jets were becoming normal to me and that one day soon they would be normal no longer.

The moment I stepped in, I could feel something was off. Oakley looked over my shoulder at Greta—they were sharing some telepathy I couldn’t quite decode. They must’ve known I’d noticed the strangeness in the air, because they began to tumble warning words in my direction, things like just relax and everything is going to be fine and don’t freak out when they put a bag on your head.

            The last one was particularly off-putting. When my colleagues sat down fore and aft and two men large enough to jostle the fuselage with their steps stood up, it was all very clear. Great. Another thing I couldn’t have expected. By now I should’ve been expecting things.

            So anyway, one brute held my arms behind my back while another put a bag on my head. They ushered me out of the and lifted me up to expedite the tedium of guiding a struggling blind man down the six or seven steps.

            I can say from the safety of now, it wasn’t a particularly scary abduction. The two men were as gentle as they could be and answered more than a few questions, even dealing serenely with prickly invective from my direction as we shifted left and right in the bucket seats of an almost silent running luxury vehicle.

            It was made easier by the fact that Oakley and Greta were wearing bags of their own, imploring me not to soil myself when I said I might, pleading with me that I was too young to have a heart attack when I insisted my heart was attacking.

            It was only a half hour, give or take. First they took the bindings off our hands and then they sat us down in firm velvet cushioned chairs. When the bags were removed, we blinked away the unpleasantness of the fabric and looked at each other.

            Well, they looked at me. I scowled at them.

            “I’m going to need a minute.” It was true. Walking away, taking inventory of the large room provided me with time to gather my thoughts and subdue feelings, far as they could be. It wasn’t easy. A happy reunion turned sour into more bullshit. “Whatever,” I said, loud enough to carry across the parquet floors. “Just, whatever. You know, let me look around.”

            The walls were adorned with huge paintings, hung in no particular order, like they were smushed together over the years because whoever owned the place had so many damn paintings and smushing was all he or she could do about it. They were all different sizes but all bigger than something you’d find in a normal house in a normal place.

            “I don’t care where we are,” I said, loud enough to make sure Oak and Greta could hear. The hollow sound of doors closing echoed around the room as our stout escorts wordlessly excused themselves.

            It was true. I didn’t care. Maybe we were in some castle or chalet or chateau and perhaps it was significant for being the site of a royal birth or the perhaps it sat on land that once belonged to the Caesars and maybe the portrait of the pale wigged man I was starting at was the most overrated and priceless portrait ever, up there with the Mona Lisa and that ubiquitous image of Che Guevara. “This is a busy time,” I said, stomping a bit like a child. “Not a time for being whisked away. There’s a book to finish. People out there need to know what’s going on. Otherwise, none of it meant anything.”

            Oakley didn’t speak. He shook his head and sat on his thoughts while Greta came over and pulled my bunched fists apart so she could gently hold my fingers. “Just hear what they have to say,” she pleaded, resting her head sideways on my chest. “And then do whatever you want.”

            And then they came in. A group of ten old men, some hunched over more than other but all hunched. The oldest wore cardigans. A few wore suits. The one I didn’t recognize wore a cravat and still had a little bit of hair.

            There were two former presidents, six senators, and two business tycoons. I only recognized the presidents. The rest had to tell me who they were. Even if at one time I was able to recognize them, not anymore. They were all so old. The spring chicken of the group looked to be in his late 80s.

            As they sat down I watched. Each looked relieved to be giving his feet respite, but the relief went beyond that. Strangely hopeful eyes looked at me as I stood in the middle of the room, arms crossed.

            “Should I relay the extent of my confusion or is it obvious?” My question was sharp. Formalities and niceties needed to be avoided. There wasn’t time for this. Whatever this was.

            “We hear you’re writing a book,” said the youngest president, a man in his early 90s with earlobes that nearly drooped to his shivering shoulders.

            “And we want to give you our help,” said a former senator. “We’ve all decided. You can quote us and everything.” This offering seemed to sap the offeror of all strength. The coughing that proceeded it was intolerably hacky, sounds of the dying. How could it not be, the number of years in the room.

            Greta touched me on the arm and guided me to a corner of the room. “They all want to talk about how they got elected or didn’t get elected. How they were chosen or not, like Pavlick is being chosen and Connell wasn’t. The threats. Blackmail. Murders. Harry, this could really help with credibility. Bridget would kill you if I didn’t get you to use these men. It’s historic.”

            Maybe she was right. And it knew it wasn’t easy for her to say. Especially the part about Bridget. Jealousy wasn’t gone.

            “How’d you round them up?” I asked, leaning my tired forehead down to touch hers.

            “My family connections. And Oakley. He’s really good. We tried to get others. These are the ones that are old enough not to care.”

            “We’ll leave that part out of their interviews.”

            “So you’ll do it?”

            “Thanks, Greta.”

            I talked to them as a group for a few minutes and then individually. Oakley filmed it all with his cell phone. It wasn’t all coherent, but surprisingly, most of it was. Coherent and familiar. A lot of their stories sounded like what we had gone through on the campaign. And everyone had something in common.

            A mysterious bald man. Each had one to talk about. Not all of them were bald. Just—a guy. The one in the shadows, representing the powers that be or the darkness below.

            Every single one conveyed their tale through fake or time-ravaged teeth.

Everyone had a guy.