Parties in Congress (12 page)

“Please don’t be nice to me,” Bijal implored. “It only makes this more mortifying.”

“Well, maybe if you’re lucky I’ll kick you in the chest later. Now take my hand.”

*

“Here,” Colleen said, offering a steaming mug of something to Bijal before taking a seat beside her on the sofa.

Bijal sniffed it. “What’s this?”

“Hot tea—to take the chill off.”

Bijal grabbed one side of the terry-cloth robe she was wearing and pulled it tighter around her. She couldn’t recall a time when she felt quite as guilty or out of place as she did at this moment—now that she was naked underneath a borrowed polka-dot robe, sitting in the living room of her boss’s campaign opponent, whom she had been caught spying on while cowering in a mud-filled ditch. If she was ever to stumble across the definition of the word “disgraced,” she was certain that a picture of her, dejected in polka dots, would be right next to it.

“You’re being exceptionally nice,” Bijal said softly.

Colleen showed no hint of a smile. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, it’s requiring a monumental amount of effort.”

“Nope, that doesn’t make me feel better.”

“Get comfortable. Your clothes are in the washer.”

“Thanks,” Bijal mumbled. As though Colleen’s dog could sense both the tension in the air and the utter sadness in Bijal, she approached her and nudged Bijal’s hand with her head. Bijal complied and scratched the dog between the ears. “You look a little like Lassie,” she told her as she stroked the animal’s ears.

“She should,” Colleen said. “She’s a collie.”

“But she’s not all fluffy like a collie.”

“Callisto’s what they call a smooth-coated collie. She can still rescue a little boy from a well. She just sheds less when she does it.”

Bijal sipped her tea. “She sounds handy. So her name, is that Greek?”

“Uh, yeah. My late girlfriend and I were fans of
Xena: Warrior Princess
. Callisto was a character on that show.” Colleen looked a little sheepish.

“Really?”

“That’s how we met, actually, on a Xena message board. You know, back in the dark ages before Facebook and Twitter.”

“Wow, I thought lesbians only met in women’s bars, or through their exes.”

Colleen smiled. “Nope, that’s a myth. Don’t underestimate the drawing power of a spirited debate about which character’s development was more critical to the arc of the story—Xena or Gabrielle.”

“And you think it was…?”

“Gabrielle, of course,” Colleen explained calmly, with a wave of her hand. “She evolved from a meek victim to a fierce warrior wielding multiple weapons with fluid dexterity. You can’t stack her progression beside a flicker of personal redemption that took seven seasons and think they’re even remotely comparable.”

Bijal stared back at her.

Colleen laughed self-consciously. “You don’t have the foggiest notion what I’m talking about, do you?”

“Well, no. But I think they’re both hot. Does that count for anything?”

“It might, in a different argument. I guess you didn’t watch it.”

Bijal shook her head slowly. “No, sorry. But had I known I could meet women through it, I would have.”

“Wow.”

“What?”

Colleen leaned back and put her feet on the coffee table. “You know how they say dogs are food-motivated? You’re apparently snatch-motivated.”

“I know it may seem that way, but I’m not really. Now, my roommate Fran is a different story.”

“The dry-humping Democrat?”

“Um, yeah. Can we forget that happened?” Bijal asked with a wince.

“Which part?”

Bijal mulled the question over for a moment. “You know, every time I meet up with you, something humiliating happens. Can we rewind all the way back to the beginning and start over?”

“But then how would I explain you naked in my living room?”

The only sound audible for nearly a minute was the loud ticking of the clock on the wall.

“This is really good tea,” Bijal finally said.

“I’m glad you like it.”

“What brand is it?”

“I think it’s called subject-changer tea.”

Bijal chuckled as she swept her hair behind her ear. “I could have used this years ago. So, look. You’re remarkably gracious and nice, Colleen. Most folks would have shot someone crawling through their yard toting a video camera in the middle of the night.”

“Luckily for you, I support gun control.”

“Of course you do. May I assume that I’m safe from being executed by lethal injection while I’m here as well?”

“You may.”

“That’s a relief.”

Colleen crossed her arms. “So, let’s get right down to it, now that you know that all you’re potentially at risk of is my refusal to use fabric softener on your clothes.”

“Okay, I really have no excuse. I was clearly violating your privacy—”

“As well as trespassing.”

“Right,” Bijal said. “But I bet you’ll be surprised when you find out why.”

“Because you work for my political opponent and she wanted you to get dirt on me?”

“Well…yeah. But surprisingly, I was the catalyst for that.”

Colleen scowled. “So this was your idea?”

“No, not like that. Someone saw you and me leaving the bar together the other night and called it in to the mayor’s office.”

“That I was socializing with a member of her staff?”

“No one knew who I was, apparently. But it was enough to spark the rumor that you’re seeing someone.” Colleen seemed transfixed as Bijal spoke. “Our idiot campaign manager decided we should stake you out and try to get video of you…in a romantic situation, shall we say.”

Colleen held her hand up. “Wait, I want to make sure I get all the layers here.”

“There’s a lot,” Bijal said. “It’s like baklava.”

“Baklava made of spite and shit, perhaps.”

Bijal’s voice became a near whisper. “I’ve never had that particular kind,” she murmured.

“So even though you knew I wasn’t seeing anyone, and even though you realized that the person they suspected was my ‘date’ was actually you, you went along with their idea of spying to get some R-rated video of me in the privacy of my own home?”

“Boy, it sounds a lot worse when you say it. Look, I didn’t want some stranger peering through your windows.”

“Because having someone I’ve flirted with peer through my windows is somehow better? A gentler violation?”

“No, because I wasn’t planning on actually invading your privacy. I just intended to go through the motions because I genuinely feel like you deserve better than that.”

Colleen’s expression was inscrutable. “Then what changed between your initial intentions and when Callisto found you slinking through my ditch like a water moccasin?”

“You had someone over.” Bijal looked evasively at the floor.

“My campaign manager, Max.”

“Well, I couldn’t tell it was a man from my car. And I suppose I wanted to make sure you’d been completely honest with me the other night.”

“When I told you I was single?”

“You two hugged right in front of the window,” Bijal explained. “I became…mildly curious. I wasn’t actually filming you.”

“I know,” Colleen said, the edge no longer in her voice.

“You looked at the DVD?”

“Uh-huh, while you were changing. The last thing you successfully recorded was a menu board at a Taco Rojo drive-thru.”

“I stopped and got a quesadilla.”

“You’re a terrible undercover operative.”

Bijal nodded and held her mug in both hands. “You’re not the first to tell me that tonight. This wasn’t exactly how I pictured my future in politics, you know? I envisioned being in energetic strategy sessions, traveling to candidate appearances, writing press statements.”

Colleen rubbed her lower lip lightly with her thumb. “And instead you’re shimmying up drain pipes for a quick peek at someone on the toilet.”

“Just to be clear, there was absolutely
no
toilet surveillance,” Bijal replied adamantly. “Or anything of you in the shower.”

“How long have you been spending your work shift watching me?”

“Just a few days.”

“Did it, at any point, occur to you to decline this particular assignment?”

“I’m not sure where you think I fall within the hierarchy of the campaign team, but it’s slightly below a houseplant. I don’t really have that kind of relationship with my boss. It’s more like she barks at me and threatens my job, and then I thank her.”

“That sounds really fulfilling.”

“Yeah. Can I ask you something?”

Colleen seemed to think about it before finally nodding. “Okay.”

“Is professional politics this utterly shitty all the time? I mean, will it always involve people lying and cheating and treating everyone else like crap? Is it nothing more than a gaggle of strutting, competitive, cannibalistic bastards? Does it at any point get better?”

“It does. There are brief bursts of time that don’t suck, surrounded by long periods of partisanship, shouting, deception, and shameless self-aggrandizement.”

“But that sounds horrible.” Bijal felt tired.

“There’s that potential, sure. But in those fleeting moments where you do something substantial and really think you make a difference, you suddenly remember why you ran for office. It feels good.”

“I guess this just isn’t what I’d envisioned.”

Colleen nodded quickly. “Unfortunately most politicians aren’t as interested in effecting change or contributing, as much as they are in gaining power and notoriety. Those types will always be the lowest common denominator.”

“Lowest common denominator?”

“Sure, those people—the ones who grandstand the loudest and point fingers at the opposition for everything that’s wrong in the world—they bring down the caliber of the rhetoric. They go negative, and then everyone feels like they’re forced to. They stop talking about the measurable merits of a piece of legislation and spew out a few buzzwords like ‘socialism’ or ‘tax increase,’ and it drags everything constructive to a screeching halt. It’s like trying to have a discussion about tax reform with a rabid wolverine.”

Bijal wondered if Donna was one of those rabid wolverines. She’d certainly seemed on occasion to froth a bit at the mouth—particularly when she was shouting. Perhaps her presence in the campaign was infecting everyone else with hydrophobia.

Colleen seemed now to be studying Bijal close enough to make her feel even more uncomfortable. “Colleen, look, I’m really sorry.”

“So how’s your jaw?”

Bijal’s hand flew to her face reflexively. “Christ, did you see that on TV?”

Colleen chuckled softly. “I may have DVR’d it.”

“Shit.” Bijal put her face in her hands.

“It seems to be healing nicely.”

Bijal wouldn’t open her eyes as she tried to somehow will herself into a different reality. Would there be no end to this humiliation? “Can I do anything else to make you think any less of me? Tuck my skirt into the back of my pantyhose and then visit the children’s ward at a hospital? Or maybe I could push your grandmother down a flight of stairs after I shit my pants?”

“Wow, you really think big. No wonder you went into politics.”

Colleen’s lighthearted tone made Bijal curious enough to steal a glance at her, and sure enough, she looked amused. “You don’t sound like someone who hates me.”

“That’s because I don’t.”

“Is this more of that monumental effort you mentioned earlier? Are you secretly fantasizing about exacting some kind of revenge on me?”

“No. Sorry, Bijal. I don’t hate you yet.”

“No?”

“If I did, I would’ve called the cops and made sure the press got the story that a member of Mayor Denton’s campaign was arrested outside my dining-room window filming me. I don’t think that’d look too good for y’all.”

“No, that would very likely damage us…irreparably.”

“Instead, I’m washing your clothes, letting you use my shower, making you tea, and inviting you to join me in watching an old movie on TV.”

Bijal decided to drop the talk of revenge and hate and embrace the offer of the olive branch before Colleen recanted for some reason. “Any old movie in particular?”

“One of my favorites.” Colleen picked up the remote and turned on the TV. “It’s
September Moon
, starring Violet London and Wil Skoog.”

“I’ve never heard of it—or either of them, for that matter.”

“Well, when I said ‘old,’ I wasn’t kidding. It’s from the early thirties—not long after the advent of sound.” She changed the channel and raised the volume slightly. “Violet London was a lesbian pioneer.”

“Really?”

“Yup, she was a Hollywood gay long before it was trendy. Back before the public found it titillating.”

“Before women made out with each other on reality shows because men found it arousing?”