Chapter 4

If I'd have had friends, I'd have stayed with them for the next week. But I didn't have those kinds of friends. Oh, there were people who would let me bunk in with them for a night or two, but most of them would want to know why, and I couldn't tell them. Actually, if I'd have told the exact truth. It would have gone something like this:

(Friend) "Sure you can sleep in the couch. What's up? Your place getting fumigated?"

(Me) "No, I'm afraid I'm going to be assassinated in my bed for sleeping with Senator Doe's wife."

(Friend, laughing) "Gee, Bob, if you didn't want to say why you need to stay with me all you had to do was say so. Hahahahahahahaha. Senator Doe's wife. That's rich, Bob."

The hardest thing I ever did in my life was drive up to that gate again and announce myself. But this time the guy remembered me from before. He shook his head, but punched the button and I went on in.

Daphne let me in again, and her face was as expressionless, as a good servant's face should always be. This time she led me to the garden, where Jane was wearing gloves and clipping roses.

"THERE you are!" she said, smiling. "I was beginning to wonder if you'd actually come."

"Any sane man wouldn't have," I said, putting my hands in my pockets.

She was wearing slacks and a silk blouse... to do gardening. She also had on sandals. I had never seen her this casual, except for her walking getup, which looked like a thousand others and seemed right in place on the walking trail. She looked vibrant... healthy... delicious.

"Ohhh, you!" she said dismissively. "Everything's fine now. He came home after his meeting and we talked and I told him it was all just something I said to shock him. It's all over now."

"What did he say?" I asked.

"He threw himself on my mercy," she grinned. "He promised never to even look at another woman again."

"And you believed him," I said.

"Bob, don't be catty. It's not like you." She frowned at me.

We talked about other things after that. I ended up sitting on the ground while she pruned things. It was odd to see Daphne serving us drinks and snacks out there in the garden, but she did. She never even looked at me.

I still had a bad feeling about things. We had never done anything, and the last two visits I had with her were at her own house, where surveillance would be especially tight, so I knew there was no smoking gun. But I also didn't believe a U.S. Senator would tuck his tail between his legs like that. Especially not one with aspirations for the White House.

It turned out I was right... in a way. I was also wrong... in a way.

I happened to be standing by the window in my apartment, making a grilled cheese sandwich one afternoon, when I saw one of those black Government cars pull up and a tall man get out. Couldn't mistake that particular tall man. The car drove off, and the Senator turned toward the entrance to my apartment building. Had Geoffrey been with him, I might have used the fire escape. But I didn't think the Senator was the kind of guy to get his own clothing bloody, so I turned off the burner and set the pan on another one. I was in my nap shorts again, so I threw on a tank top and went to the door. I opened it and was standing there, waiting, when the elevator opened and he got out. I stepped into the hallway so he could see me, and stood aside as, without a word, he walked to my door and went in.

I'm not a slob, and my furniture, while old and cast-off was at least clean, but he didn't sully his suit by sitting on any of it. He stood, while I went back to the stove, shoveled my sandwich onto a plate and grabbed my glass of water. I didn't have anything against my furniture, so I just sat down. I didn't say anything. He'd talk when he was ready. I just took a bite.

"We have a problem," he said finally.

I wanted to say "I don't have a problem," but I knew better than to do that. Instead, I took another bite.

"You're still seeing her," he said.

Now I did say something. "Look, she told you she just popped off. We're not having an affair. We never had an affair. I met her doing an interview for a paper I'm writing, and we became friends. All we do is talk."

He stood there, just looking at me for a long time. I couldn't read a thing on his face.

"My staff tells me all you do is talk," he finally said.

"That's right."

"I don't believe you," he said. He said it in the same tone of voice as everything else he had said, like it was just a fact.

"I can't help that," I said, looking him eye to eye.

Well, I was sitting and he was looming over me, but my eyes were locked to his eyes. I felt better since there had been no gunplay. This guy was hard headed, like a lot of Alpha males. He was also guilty as sin of what his wife suspected him of. I knew that now, because he made the kind of assumptions that a guilty man makes.

A cheater looks at a woman and thinks "Hmmmm, nice..." and then goes after it. He rationalizes it however he can think of to rationalize it and, in the process, gets tainted by his own thought processes. He begins to think that he's no different than any other man; Ergo, other men do the same thing he does. Since I was a man, who had been in the frequent company of his wife, he just assumed that I was prodding her like he would have been if he wasn't married to her.

Convoluted thinking, huh? But they all do it that way. It's kind of a defense mechanism against having to admit that you're an alley cat with no control, and little or no redeeming value to society... or your wife. The funny thing is that his convoluted thinking caused him to hear my comment, "I can't help that", as me saying: "Tough shit, Senator. She likes what I'm doing and I'm going to keep doing it."

I know this because he asked me a question.

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Sure," I said around a mouthful of bread and cheese.

"What does she see in you?"

He was the magnificent stallion, looking at the runty range mustang that had mounted his mare, trying to figure out why in the hell she had raised her tail.

I bit off a retort. Instead I asked HIM a question. "You really want to know?"

He actually thought about it. I expected him to get up, make some dire threat and leave. But he sat down instead.

"Yeah, I do."

I got this kind of chill down my spine. It wasn't a bad chill, just a premonition that something important was happening. Here was a big important politician, with a dozen important things to do, and he was sitting in my non-matching recliner, spending more than two minutes with nobody.

So I told him.

I told him most of what she had told me, about how they met, and what that meant to her, and how she was so madly in love with him that she hadn't ever been tempted to stray, and how he'd trashed her in her own mind, choosing younger women over her and not paying her any attention. I reminded him of their eighth wedding anniversary, when he had his staff send flowers, and then bedded some bimbo in Washington that night. I told him how busy he was, and how lonely she was, and how she missed their son and didn't want to be paraded as proof of his virility in a Presidential campaign. I told him he was a fucking jerk, and that I wasn't, and that was what made me attractive to her.

I did not tell him I made her panties wet.

He tried to get a word in edgewise a couple of times, but I just held up my hand and told him he asked, and now he was going to hear it.

The guy was good. I'll tell you that. By that I mean his face didn't betray what was going on underneath. When I finally let him talk, though, his voice was a little shaky.

"You know a hell of a lot about my life."

"I told you we talked," I said. I should have known he'd assume it was pillow talk.

"What are you going to do with all that knowledge?" he asked. He fiddled with his tie, but didn't go for a shoulder holster.

"Nothing," I said. "She's my friend. Why would I want to mess up her life?"

"You fuck my wife, and then say that's NOT messing up her life?" he tried.

"That's what a jerk would say," I came back. "All I did was treat her the way you should have been treating her. If you would have she'd never have given me the time of day."

He stood up. Either he'd had enough, or he had somewhere to be. It could have been either.

"This isn't over," he said.

"You may be an important man, but you're also incredibly stupid," I said, standing up myself. "You had everything any man could want... money... a gorgeous wife... probably a fine son... and you threw it all away for power. You used to do good things. You used to make the world a better place. Now people own you and you're miserable. If you ask me it's YOUR life that's fucked up, and YOU'RE the one who made it that way. And you're dragging her down with you."

He was actually agitated now, closing and opening his fists.

"I want you to stop... seeing her," he insisted.

I had had it by now. This guy just could not get past his own bias and assumptions.

"Senator, the last time I checked, this was a free country. You, yourself, serve in it's highest echelons, supposedly passing laws to protect that freedom. I'll do what every American is constitutionally entitled to do - mutually choose my associates for whatever purpose we see fit. If you want to try to bully someone, try bullying your wife."

He looked shocked. I don't think he had ever contemplated the first and fourteenth amendments to the constitution he was sworn to uphold in quite the light that it meant another man could associate with his own wife any damned time they pleased.

I did actually call a couple of people to see if they had a free couch that night. Wouldn't you know they'd all be out, or at least not answering their phones.

It's actually good, I think, that I was home though, because Jane called me about nine-thirty.

"Bob, what did you DO?" she whispered. I knew it was her.

"Your husband and I had a little talk today," I said. I expected her to be ticked off at me.

"I am going to have to hear about that little talk some day, Bob. Don't come see me for a while, OK? Things are happening around here."

She hung up and I had visions of her being locked in her bedroom, or guarded by dogs or something. I even got a newspaper the next day to see if there was some breaking news about any important people I was much too familiar with. But there wasn't.

I didn't get any more visitors for three weeks. During that time Jane called me probably every other day, or maybe three days apart. Almost always it was just to chat about something she was interested in, or some inconsequential thing. It was the kind of talk that friends do, about nothing much in particular, and everything in general. She didn't talk about her husband, though, and I didn't ask any questions. She didn't say she was being abused or held captive, and I thought she would if it was happening that way. She never suggested I come see her, and I didn't ask to, of course. I figured that whatever had happened had been really upsetting, and she was taking the road that a lot of women take. They mollify the Alpha male, because life is usually a lot easier when he doesn't snarl so much. A lot of women live with a lot of crap because of that.

On the third Wednesday after Senator Doe graced my grubby little apartment, I got a call from Jane.

"What are you doing tonight?" she asked.

"I was going to start trying to quantify data on the project," I said. "But I'd be happy to do something else instead."

"No, I just wanted to know if you'd be there tonight," she said.

"Oh," I said back.

"OK, bye!" came her cheery voice.

What the heck was THAT all about? Was she working for the enemy now? Setting me up for the coup de gras? She had been acting almost giddy on the phone lately, and I was beginning to worry that she was under a lot of stress.

Which was why, about eight in the evening, when there came a tapping at my door, I was most surprised to find it was Jane who was tapping. I looked past her for her escort, but there wasn't one.

"Well, do I get to come in or not?" she said, using an obviously false gruff voice.

I stood back and she came in. I winced a little. This woman was used to nice things, and those kind of things didn't accumulate in my apartment.

"I'm just surprised to see you here," I said.

"Nobody is more surprised about me being here than I am," she said.

"You CAME here," I pointed out. "That means you knew you were coming here. How could you possibly be surprised?" I looked at her.

She was... fidgety. That's the best word for it. She kept moving her feet around, and her hands were moving too, in little useless jerks. She kept looking around, but I suspected she wasn't actually seeing anything.

"I know THAT," she said, finally looking at me. "It's just that I'm surprised because of WHY I'm here."

It occurred to me that I had never told her where I lived. I asked her how she found my place.

"I told Geoffrey to bring me here," she said, looking around distractedly again.

"You're kidding!" I groaned.

"No I'm not," she said, looking at me again. "I couldn't tell him I didn't even know where you lived. That would have blown the whole thing!"

"What 'thing' is that? Where is old Geoffrey now?" I asked.

"I'm supposed to call him when I'm ready to leave," she said. Her eyes cleared and she actually looked at my apartment. "So this is how a starving college student lives."

I didn't understand most of this, so I went with that part I did understand.

"Yup, this is pretty much it. I get by OK, I guess."

"It's quaint," she pronounced.

"You want to tell me what's going on?" I asked finally.

Wolf eyes pinned on me.

"No. Not yet."

"Come on Jane, this is crazy," I moaned.

"I know," she sighed. "I can't believe it myself."

"You want tell me what it is you can't believe?" I asked.

"Not yet. Ohhh, I have SO much to tell you! Let's call out for pizza and I'll fill you in while we're waiting, OK?"

So we called for a pizza to be delivered. I lived in an area that had a heavy student population, so pizza places were all over the place. I knew we'd have our pizza in fifteen minutes or so. I dusted off the recliner where the last Doe to visit my apartment had sat and gave it to her.

She sat down, took a breath, and, instead of telling me anything, asked a dozen questions about what had happened when John had come to visit me three weeks before. I filled her in as much as I could remember. She wanted to know exactly what he'd said, and exactly what I'd said. I pulled out the journal that I started way back in the beginning of the project, when Tanya and Ralph had so changed my life. I had put my notes in it. I'm ashamed to say that I figured if I ended up dead, at least somebody might find out why if they read the journal. So I had been pretty precise on recording what I had said to him, if a little less precise on his words. I did write down "This is not over" though. I had to translate it for her, though. It was just a jumble of quotes and didn't make nearly as much sense as I had intended it to make. I cut myself some slack because I had been REALLY nervous that night. Still, it wouldn't have solved any crimes the way it was.

The pizza came and we took a few minutes to eat.

"That explains a lot," she said between bites. "I knew something momentous had happened, but I couldn't imagine what it was. I think I understand now, though."

Would you PLEASE tell me what's going on?" I begged.

"This is the last time we'll see each other," she said by way of answering my question.

Isn't it great when a woman does that? You ask one question and she tells you the answer to another. I sat there, resolved not to say another word until she explained. It worked too. She got all antsy again and uncomfortable with the silence and finally started talking.

"When he got home that day he told the servants to leave, to take the night off and not come back until the next day. I didn't know what was happening until he said he'd been to see you. At first I was frightened. I'm ashamed to say I thought he didn't want any witnesses. He was beside himself."

I was itching to ask questions, but kept my mouth shut.

"He broke down, Bob. It was AWFUL! He cried and begged me to forgive him. I couldn't imagine what was going on - what you'd said to him - but he was pitiful. He confessed everything. He said he couldn't touch me any more after his first affair because he felt dirty and unclean, like a leper. He used that as an excuse to have the next affair. I think the pressure got to him. People kept telling him he was being groomed for the Presidency, and doing favors for him, and asking for things from him, and he just got in too deep. We talked until two in the morning, Bob. The phone rang four or five times and he just sat there ignoring it."