No Safe Place (52 page)

It was from a former neighbor, oblique and carefully phrased, as if the woman was afraid of being overheard or, perhaps, of her own conscience. But the essence was clear enough.

A reporter from
Newsworld
had visited, and the woman, disconcerted, had described something that perhaps Lara had never known: a man who resembled a prominent senator, standing in the hallway—upset, anxious, unwilling to leave. He had called Lara’s name through the door.

No, Lara thought, she had never known. She was already gone; there was no one on the other side of the door to hear him.

If only she could have seen their end in their beginning.

Tell me about Meg.

Awakening, Kerry looked into her face with a sense of wonder. They lay together, silent, the lines of their bodies touching; her gaze was so serious that he was afraid the next moments would end them, that he would never see her like this again, or talk to her as he had the night before, holding nothing back.

“I never knew what loneliness was,” he said at last, “until just now.”

Her eyes were grave, questioning. “Do I mean so much to you?”

He hesitated, then realized that his sense of solitude, so familiar that he had come to accept it as his fate, had now, with Lara, become unbearable. “The night of Liam’s funeral,” he told her, “I wanted you to stay there with me. Not Meg, not Clayton—you. You wouldn’t have had to say anything, or do anything. And still I tried to believe that you were just a reporter I liked. Maybe I was afraid to face what I’m facing now.” He caught himself, fearful of scaring her off. “I know you don’t want a politician, any more than Meg did. But I hope to God there’s some part of me you do want.”

She covered his hand with her own. “There’s so much wrong with this,” she finally answered. “Most of it I don’t need to tell you, including that the President’s personal life has only raised the stakes for us. But there’s one thing you should know—it’s not in me to be with you like this and be with anyone else. And someday I would need to, because someday I’ll want a life.” She paused and then said, “That could hurt us both, Kerry. Much more than stopping now.”

Kerry struggled with his own emotions—a sudden swift possessiveness; a fear of loss so searing that now, at their
beginning, he could only imagine it; the fierce desire to be happy. “You’re an honest person,” he said simply. “I’ll trust you to tell me when that is.”

She looked away, long dark lashes cloaking her eyes. “It could be,” she answered, “the day you decide to run for President. Because this would be impossible.”

The mention of politics, the complex calculus that bound him to the Vice President, made Kerry feel bleak. “Lara,” he said gently, “we’ve just made love. We can talk about my career any other day—I’ll even want to. But right now, all I want is to see you again.”

Lara drew a breath. “I don’t know, Kerry. I don’t know what’s best to do.”

The thought of losing her jarred him. He held her close, her face against his chest. For minutes, neither of them spoke, or wanted to speak.

“It’s getting late,” she murmured. “And harder to let go. At least for me.”

He did not answer. She slid back from him, leaving a space between them. Taut, Kerry saw the hesitance in her eyes, all the personal and professional barriers that kept her silent, the warnings of ethics and self-preservation, her own deep fear of hurt. But when she spoke, it was not to mention any of that.

Gently, Lara asked, “Tell me about Meg.”

For the next hour, she listened, trying to comprehend what had brought him to her.

The subject of Meg was difficult, Lara saw. Much was still unclear to him: Meg had let him live his life without protest. But, Lara sensed, he had not quite come to terms with his own hurt and anger, or, perhaps, a deeper truth: that an absent husband, burdened by guilt and obligation, would not demand more than Meg knew she was able to give.

“You’ve been lonely,” she told him. “It’s Meg who made me possible.”

As he looked into her face, his vulnerability was palpable. But it was part of what made him see and feel for others, a quality which touched her so much that, however difficult, it required more from her than wanting him. “It’s hard for me to say this,” she said, “but if you don’t want to be with Meg,
you
should find someone who wants to share the life you’ve chosen to lead, to share
both
your lives with all the other people who may want or need a piece of it. She exists, I know, if you were free to look.”

He gazed at her, silent for a time, and then his hand held hers. “I’ve found her,” he said. “It’s just that I’m not sure she wants me.”

But think of where that leads us,
Lara thought sadly.
We can offer each other only pieces of what we may come to want, each a stepping-stone to the final piece, where the weight of all we’ve tried to ignore comes crashing down on us.
It was just that having found him, she could not bring herself to throw away those moments.

“Oh,” Lara answered, “she wants you. And it would be so much better if she didn’t.”

Month by month, a year passed.

They came to need each other’s company, each other’s thoughts. Sometimes days went by without her seeing him, sometimes—when Kerry traveled—a week or more. But every day they would talk on the phone with the frustration of thwarted lovers, the directness of good friends. “I can’t imagine not wanting you,” she told him once. “But the idea of never
talking
to you …”

Lara had never felt this close to anyone.

Whenever she needed him to listen, he did, whether it was about her career or her family or the harsh demands of their affair. “When you’re away,” she told him after a few months, “I think about you with Meg. Even though you say you never sleep with her.”

Kerry’s look was gentle, querying. “Would you
be
Meg, Lara, if you could be?”

She took his hand. “I’ve wondered,” she acknowledged. “In spite of everything—my career, the fact that we’d be a scandal. But who you are, the person I want so much, is inseparable from everything I don’t want.” Her voice became quiet. “You’ve been a senator since you were thirty. I can’t imagine you as anything else, can you? Unless, perhaps, as President.”

He looked down. “If that’s true, Lara, then I’ve become what I’m afraid of being. Someone with no other life.”

“Maybe you’ve just become what you are. I don’t want you to lose that, Kerry.” She kissed him. “I think you know how I feel, or I couldn’t be here. But if I’m ever married, I’d want a career, a husband who’s got time to be an equal partner, and children who see both of us. That’s not a senator, or a President. Either you’d lose those things by being with me, or I’d lose you to
them
.” She turned away. “And knowing that is so painful that sometimes I hate what we both do …”

By unspoken consent, their days were spent in the present, and, in the present, there was little they didn’t share. But often they just made each other smile. One night, at the height of their lovemaking, the sound of a clattering garbage truck beneath Kerry’s window turned passion into a race between fulfillment and complete distraction, until the shudder of their climax dissolved into mirth, two lovers holding each other, laughing helplessly.

“Timing,” Kerry said at last, “is everything. Two seconds more, and we’d have missed out.”

Lara kissed him. “And it was
so
romantic,” she said dryly. “Like we had a panel of judges with stopwatches.”

Rolling on his back, Kerry grinned. “I can’t imagine making love in the quiet of nature. Where’s the challenge?”

Lara turned to him. “Maybe,” she said to her own surprise, “we should try.”

Leaning on his elbow, Kerry stroked her hair. “An escape?” he asked. “No lovemaking in the urban cocoon, to the mellow sound of boom boxes and the hum of traffic on East Capitol?”

He was smiling. But in their life, lived hour by hour, the idea of a few days alone seemed precious to her. “If you can,” she said simply.

His smile vanished, and he looked into her face. “I’ll try.”

For over a year, Lara had escaped discovery.

If anything, her reporting on Kerry Kilcannon was more penetrating, analytical, alert to the prospect that his growing conflict with Mason over Kerry’s causes—campaign reform, health insurance for children—might lead him to seek the presidency. Sometimes Kerry would joke about this, in passing. But he knew better than to complain; the edge to her coverage
was
more than protective coloration. In Lara’s mind, it preserved her integrity, at least enough to make them possible.

“I think you’re right,” Nate Cutler told her at lunch one day. “He’s going for it. The positions he’s taking are like a blueprint for running against Mason.”

Lara finished her bite of seared tuna. “Maybe he believes in them. I’m sure he does, actually.”

Nate nodded. “Then he’s that much more likely to do it, and save us all from boredom. Races in both parties—a reporter’s dream.”

Lara looked down, appetite lost.

Watching her, Nate hesitated; misinterpreting his silence, she was certain that he somehow knew about her affair with Kerry. “Listen,” he said, “I was wondering if you’d like to have dinner this Friday.”

He was fidgety, she realized, uncomfortable as she was, but for different reasons. “The two of us?” she asked lightly. “You mean, like people who go out together?”

He tried a smile. “Something like that. Unless you think there’s an incest taboo.”

Lara smiled in return. “Haven’t you read the data on office romances? Tragic, and the woman always pays. Just like the President’s chief economic adviser, out of her marriage
and
her job.” When he grimaced, she touched his arm, voice softening. “It’s not just that, Nate. And it’s certainly not you. There’s someone else.”

He looked up from the table. “You never said anything. Is this relationship some sort of mystery?”

Lara summoned another smile. “Completely,” she answered. “Even to me. Someday I may need a friend like you.”

When she went to Kerry’s apartment that evening—fearful, as always, that someone might be following—the conversation was still on her mind.

Kerry was late. She went to his kitchen nook, slid the wine she had brought into the refrigerator, next to the marmalade she reserved for predawn breakfasts, before she had to leave.

His apartment was barren—a couch and a television, a few magazines and pictures—and felt empty without him. As empty as Lara might feel after he was gone.

He’s going for it.

Nate thought so too. And for the right reasons—the more Kerry’s beliefs widened his fissure with Mason, the more impelled he would feel to run. And then it would all close around him: the need for Meg, the Secret Service, the heightened scrutiny of Nate and all their peers. There would be no place left for her.

The door opened. Kerry walked in, tie askew, a look of disgust graven on his face.

Quickly, he kissed her. “Sorry,” he said. “I was at the old EOB, discussing our nation’s future with America’s greatest almost-living Vice President. A man truly worthy of the office.”

Lara handed him the glass of chardonnay she had poured to share with him. “No help coming?” she asked.

He sat next to her on the couch. “It was ridiculous, Lara. The man’s so pleasant that the depth of his cynicism takes your fucking breath away.” His voice held quiet anger. “He’s everything that’s wrong with politics in the nineties—cowardice masked as cleverness, leadership by poll, symbolic gestures, careful attention to special interests. What’s so depressing is how little Dick Mason matters to anyone but
them
. And himself, of course.”

It was happening, Lara thought. Mason was mishandling Kerry—perhaps because he still could not imagine that Kerry’s motives were any different from his own.

“Tell me about it,” she asked.

The old Executive Office Building was all wood and marble and filigree, beautifully restored. Mason’s decor reflected a certain need for borrowed gravitas: a desk that once belonged to Henry Clay, royal-blue curtains trimmed with gold, a delicate vase from a recent trip to China, a pen set used by John F. Kennedy. Dick Mason, Kerry thought sardonically, had already entered history.

With gracious authority, Mason waved Kerry to a chair. But Kerry was in no mood for anything but business.

“We need to pass campaign reform,” he said bluntly. “You know why, morally and politically. The system’s so corrupt that it’s breaking down entirely, and the Republicans are killing us with pictures of you and Arab arms dealers.”

Mason gave him an indulgent smile, though his eyes were keen. “I didn’t know
who
they were, Kerry, and I regret it. But these things fade.”

“Maybe by the next presidential campaign,” Kerry said. “And maybe not. But we’ve got off-year elections in six months.” Pausing, he softened his voice. “I’m not here to lecture you …”

Mason raised his eyebrows. “Not even to threaten me?” he asked in a jocular tone.

Kerry stared at him. “I
do
threaten you,” he answered. “Even when I’m not trying. And it’s getting in the way.”

Mason touched his chin with tented fingers and then smiled again. “If I’m still the problem, Kerry, tell me how I can fix this.”

Kerry leaned forward. “Support my bill in the Senate. I don’t mean lip service. I mean getting out front, asking my colleagues for help—putting yourself, the party, and the administration on the line for this.” Kerry’s voice grew urgent, imploring. “You can do so much, Dick. Help me, and all the shady contributions won’t make a damn. You’ll be a born-again reformer, whose own innocent experience with the way things are have proved to him that it’s unacceptable.” He paused, and then finished bluntly. “The President’s in trouble, Dick—this thing about him breaking up Beth Slater’s marriage isn’t going away. You need more to set you apart from him than Jeannie and the kids. And campaign reform is ‘moral’ with a capital M.”

Mason’s smile was that of a tutor for a slightly dull pupil—kind, patient, and somewhat condescending—tainted by suspicion. “Have you thought about the politics, Kerry? Not enough Republicans will support you; they raise even more money than we do. For some of them, corporate bribery helps offset the parlous effects of letting ordinary people vote—”