Up in Smoke (20 page)

Front door. Never make it. Swerving, she dodged into the bathroom and whirled to slam the door just as he raised his arm and slashed down, slicing her throat. Falling back, her face hit the sink. Her hand clutched her neck, got all warm and sticky. Dizzy, she fell forward against the door, pinning his arm.

Intake hiss of pain and a muffled curse. Fumbling behind her on the counter, her grasping hands found soap dish, towel, toothbrush, comb, and—. She clutched the hair spray and, aiming it at his eye peering in, depressed the button.

He yelled, yanked his arm free and the door slammed shut. She fumbled for the lock and turned it. All that hair spray in the small space choked her. She couldn't breathe. He kicked the door and threw himself against it. How long would it hold?

She felt weak, her legs were getting rubbery. Blood covered her shirt and was seeping down into her jeans. She groped for the towel, wrapped it around her neck, and pressed it tight against her throat. Everything seemed wobbly and distant. She couldn't stand up any more, she really really couldn't.

Slowly, she sank to the floor and sat with her back against the door. The kicking and pounding stopped. She thought she might sleep a while. Her head tilted back to rest against the door.

Loud bang. Splintering sound.

Ax. Cutting into the door. He must have found it in the garage. He swung the ax again. She ought to get away from the door. She really really ought to. Another swung and the ax might split her back. Okay, she was going to get up now.

Though her muscles tensed, she could not get her feet under her and pull herself upright. She was sleepy. And cold. Towel around her throat was getting squishy with blood.

If she got up, she could turn on the light. Right. She tried to focus on that thought, but it seemed too much effort. Who needed light? She'd just stay here in the dark and take a little nap.

25

Bernie didn't like it. After taking Cass home, he went back out to the farm, feeling uneasy, dull, lightheaded, and jazzy all at the same time. This was totally nuts. Casilda Storm was a nice lady and he liked her, liked her a lot, if you came down to it. She was obviously struggling with monsters, hadn't got over the death of her husband and child. How could he be part of herding her into election insanity? She wasn't one of them. Far as he could tell, she wasn't even political. How could she carry it off? Nora's right, he thought, mistake. The crows would get suspicious. And that was a bad idea. They had means of retaliating. The pencils chose what they put in print, the cookies chose what they used in their standup television spots. All of them could slant a piece any number of ways.

Just as he came in the door, Molly Garrett came into the living room area from the hallway where the bedrooms were. She was the same age as the governor, forty-six, but looked ten years younger. Petite, five three and slender, short brownish hair with reddish tints where the light caught it, due to some hair person who created that sort of thing, even features a little sharp to be pretty, faint laugh lines around her eyes, blue or green depending on—. Bernie didn't know depending on what. Her mood, maybe. She was attractive without being flashy, elegant without appearing snooty, warm enough to seem within touch and more than what she presented to the world. Quiet-spoken, she kept in the background and fit the slot of politician's wife perfectly, but Bernie had overheard snatches of the fights coming from behind closed doors and knew she had a sharp wit that could be cruel.

He was uneasy about her, too. Sometimes, he got a glimpse of a Molly that was more dedicated to winning than even Jack.

“Tea, Bernie?”

“No thanks, Mrs. Garrett. It's late, I should be going to bed.”

He wasn't sure how she did it, but gently, by pushing and nudging, she got him in the kitchen. He squinted as she flipped on the overhead light. Knotty pine cabinets and table, oak floor. Wallpaper with gold and white stripes, countertops with white tile and every fourth one or so was gold. It made him want to squint. Molly took two mugs from the cabinet, white with a gold rim.

“Losing faith, Bernie?”

“Excuse me?”

“Thinking you can't take care of him?”

“Who?”

“Jack. Aren't you the one who has to see that all's well with Jack?”

Is that what he had to do? It was as good a job description as any, he supposed.

“We're going to win, you know,” she said.

He thought about asking how she knew, what made her so positive, what lengths would she go to make sure? But he was tired, and he figured she probably didn't know the answers anyway, so he just nodded.

She was opening cabinets looking for tea bags and finally found a box of decaf Earl Grey next to a jar of instant coffee.

“You take milk?” She opened the refrigerator packed with cans of Cokes, Diet Cokes, ginger ale, and pop-top fruit juices and snagged a carton of milk.

“Uh—no.”

“Why are you working for us, instead of Senator Roswell?”

Bernie accepted the mug of tea she offered. “Been there, done that.”

“Why didn't you stay with him?”

Why hadn't he? Vague and convoluted reasons he wasn't sure even he understood entirely. “It wasn't the senator. And I learned a lot there, but after a while it was always the same, over and over again. It got old. I got tired of rounding them up.”

“Afraid of losing?”

“No. We always won. But it wasn't
winning,
you know? And then it would come. The deals. The hundred little things we'd have to give away to get this one with us and that one with us. And in the Senate, we'd get gutted. We'd have to settle for a version that nobody wanted, but we'd all have to take it because it was the closest either side could get to what was really important.”

“That's the democratic way.” She was leaning against a cabinet, mug raised in one hand, other hand supporting her elbow.

“Roswell knows how to cast a spell to catch the voters,” Bernie said. “All the good ones can do it. But it got to seem—too much like a game, you know? Their side would bring in something, we'd take it to our side and negotiate the hell out of it, stick in the candy that would look good to our voters and pass the damn thing. Wow. We got ourselves a victory, right? None of it mattered, because, just as we knew he would, the president vetoed it. But we could still claim a victory, a victory for the right side because we had forced a veto.”

“Why do you stay with it?”

Bernie shrugged, a little self-consciously. “I get caught up in the process and I wonder what would happen if someone who really cared about—oh hell, you know, the world and the people. Maybe I'm just jealous Kennedy didn't come along in my time. He talked about sacrifice and what you can do for your country. He was fighting a real fight. It mattered. Everything now is just keeping on keeping on. Treading water, sheltering in place, going with the flow. It's stale and it's beginning to putrefy. It doesn't have any feel to it. There's no sense that any of it is real, or that it's making history.”

“But you're still here.”

“I want to be part of something important, something real—” He took a gulp of tea, embarrassed at his confessional rambling.

“Stick with us,” she said. “Jack's going to win.” She put her mug on the counter. “You need to convince Jack that he doesn't need this Cass woman. She's a liability.” Molly patted Bernie's cheek and left.

He wasn't quite sure what had just happened here, except he'd tossed out words like a newbie, unprofessional, and Molly Garrett wanted him to extract Casilda Storm from the campaign. He felt a headache coming on. It was late, he ought to go to his room and crash.

Leon breezed in, yanked open the refrigerator, selected a Diet Coke and popped the tab. He lowered his head and stared at Bernie. “You don't look so good. She give you TB?”

True Believerism. It separated the tyros from the pros, the sheep from the goats, the wheat from the chaff. You needed to stay clear-eyed and remember the goals. You needed to keep in mind a man was just a man and couldn't leap tall buildings in a single bound. Damn it, Bernie knew all that, but he couldn't help it. He never forgot the first time he'd heard the Governor speak. Hairs rose on his arm. From then on he was true and surely hooked. He had no distance, wasn't sprinkled with clear-seeing perspective. He was one of the sheep with the soul of a political goat.

Leon, with Bernie following, traipsed back into the living room and used the remote to raise the sound on one of the television sets that were always on, always tuned to news with the occasional break for a football game. Leon collapsed into a chair. “Watch out for Lady Macbeth, boy.”

“She says he's going to win.”

Leon gave a low chuckle. “Damn straight, she does. You ever see the look in her eye? Same fanatic look Todd's got. He'd give his left nut to win and she'd slaughter her firstborn. Two of a kind.” He tipped the can and poured about half down his throat. Bernie wasn't even sure he swallowed.

“And that poor Wanderer they dragged in.” Leon gulped the rest of the Coke and crushed the can.

“Cass?”

“I got this feeling if it ever gets to freezing and they ain't got no fuel, they're gonna throw her on the fire.”

Bernie had something of the same feeling.

“She don't like it,” Leon said. “The Missus. She don't like the Wanderer bein' brought in.”

“Why doesn't Molly like Cass?”

Leon gave him a pitying look. “Don't you use your eyes, boy? Any fool can see she's jealous.”

“Why?”

“Probably 'cause they fucked like mink way back when.”

“Why do you call her the Wanderer?”

“Cause that's what she is. Clear as glass she's got demons, boy, and she's visitin' them. Goin' from one to the next and the next and the next. Poor thing. And it'd probably be a good idea to never leave 'em alone together. Lady Macbeth would chew her into little pieces.”

Leon didn't like Molly Garrett and Bernie didn't know why. She was a great asset and worked as hard, or harder, than anyone on the staff. Even the crows liked her, and that took something. She was respectful of them. Bernie wasn't sure the governor loved her, but that didn't have squat to do with the campaign and none of his business anyway.

“D'you ever see an owl catch a prey?” Leon slouched farther down in the chair.

Bernie looked at him. “What?”

“They don't make a sound, owls. Big motherfuckers with these huge wings.” Leon held out both arms and tilted them up and down. “And they just glide right at some poor son-of-a-bitchin' li'l mouse just going about his business and
snatch!
they have him.
Scream!
Sharp old talons. Struggle all he wants, no way that mouse's gonna get loose.”

“You been working too hard, Leon? You're starting to creep me out.”

Leon grinned. “I got this premonition, boy, this feeling there's gonna be trouble.” He shook his head. “I don't like it.”

Leon had a bit of the carnival charlatan, a showman who played up this premonition business and, even though Bernie didn't believe that nonsense, every time Leon started lowering his voice and intoning about premonitions chaos broke out.

Bernie said good-night and went to his room. He brushed his teeth, virtuously flossed, and went to bed where he dreamed of owls on tree branches silhouetted against a full moon. There was music in the background, singing so soft he couldn't understand the words. He strained to hear. “When you hear them hoot owls hollerin', when you hear them hoot owls hollerin', somebody's dyin', lord, somebody's dyin'.”

26

Bernie had just gotten to sleep when Todd shook him awake and told him to get his ass in the living room. As he splashed water on his face and pulled on jeans, Bernie wondered if it was too late to ditch politics altogether and the Garrett campaign in particular and do something else with his life. He wandered in to find the whole gang there and Todd, standing in front of the fireplace, going over last-minute changes in the schedule for Illinois. The latest polls showed Jack weak with the minority vote in that state and Todd was juggling stops, putting in visits with leaders in heavily African-American and Hispanic areas. Nobody'd had enough sleep and they were all tired enough to go for each other's throats. Bernie glanced at his watch. Two
A.M.
In three hours they'd board the plane.

Nora kept interrupting and Todd was ready to strangle her. She was an irritating woman to begin with and being Molly's personal secretary seemed to give her permission to be an even bigger pain in the butt. Bernie rubbed his aching head, poured a mug of coffee from the ever-ready pot and wondered if he had the strength to track down some aspirin. A handful would go really good with the coffee.

Jack, seated on the couch with Molly, argued that nothing should be dropped, he could visit all the scheduled places, plus the added ones. Molly said, “Jack, just shut up, for once, and let Todd do his job.”

Leon came in with a box of pizza and plopped it on an end table. Leave it to Leon to let no opportunity for food go unpassed.

“How long has this been going on?” Bernie said.

“About an hour.” Leon dropped to the easy chair which sagged pitifully under his weight and opened the box. Leaning forward, he breathed in the aroma, then peeled out a slice.

“Did I miss anything?” Bernie grabbed a slice, sat in the wingchair by the fireplace and bit off the pointed end.

Carter Mercado, the pollster, was slouched in the second wingchair on the other side of the fireplace. Leon offered him some pizza. Carter waved it away. Todd took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. Hadley Cane, the press secretary, pulled up a straight-backed chair next to Bernie. She looked tired, too, and Bernie thought they should all just go to bed because, pretty soon, they were going to start sniping at each other and then there'd be a fight that would take days to dissipate. When Leon clicked the remote to show them the latest TV spot, Bernie knew it was going to be a long night.