Chapter 2: The Reformer

"Evolution Not Revolution," one of the posters in the downtown storefront proclaimed. "Evan Standish IS The Next Generation," another poster assaulted the young man's eyes. He shuddered at these amateurish attempts to convince people. It was five minutes past noon.

"Amateurs, they're all amateurs. I wrote better copy than this when I was in grade school." He opened the door and entered the "Standish For US Senate" headquarters.

"What do you want," a young woman of indeterminate racial mix asked in a harsh voice. "We got all our permits and even a DBA business license because the last asshole you clowns sent over here tried to shut us down on a technicality."

"Well, let's see, what do I want? Sex is okay, drugs are out and I hate this modern shit brained music." He gave her a smart assed smile and told her, "I'm Frank Martin and I want to see the great man his own great self."

"What do you want to see Evan for? Why would he want to see Mister Ee-stablishment his own glorious white self?"

"Well, for one thing, to save his campaign from brain dead zealots like you. He can win this time, if he puts his heart into it. However, he will lose by twenty points if he has you and the other rah, rah true believers holding him back. He needs to win and the people in this state need him to win."

The young woman became a sepia colored Amazon warrior in an instant. With a shrill cry to propel her, she launched her body into the air, did a flip and kicked Frank Martin in the forehead. He lay still, eyes closed, and didn't move. "Now see what you made me do, you mother fucker."

"What's going on out here?" a man's voice asked.

"This..." a younger man's voice started. "Jesus! Tanya just decked the first white guy to ever come in here without he was lookin' for a handout or had a badge in his hand."

"Oh Jesus, Tanya. What have you done?" Evan Standish's voice was filled with despair."

The unrepentant Tanya Garcia told him, "Well, he dissed you and I dissed him and I dissed him better 'n he dissed us."

Evan Standish sighed, "Dear, I was already well aware that we would probably lose this time around. Our plans were for the next election. However, right now I do believe you just took all the doubt away, as to the outcome." He sighed and went back into his office. Just before the door closed behind him Tanya heard, "With friends like these, I don't need enemies. I grow my own."

Tanya began to cry for the first time since she was nine years old. The reason she cried then was because her father raped her. This time her tears were because she failed the only man to ever give her friendship and respect. "Oh shit, what do I do now?"

"You might start by helping me up from here. Too bad you wear underwear." She looked down and saw his eyes were directed up the leg of her loose fitting tennis shorts.

"You stinkin' no good!" she yelled at him and raised one leg to stomp him.

"Better wait until I talk to Evan before you hurt me further. It's hard to speak clearly when my teeth are missing." Frank Martin smiled and held his hand out toward Tanya for her to help him up.

A flash went off and Tanya was caught on camera as she helped Frank Martin up off the floor. "What the fu__," Tanya started to yell.

"Well, hello," Frank greeted the woman who stood in front of the television camera no one had noticed until then. The newspaper reporter who took the flash picture ran out of the campaign headquarters before his camera could be confiscated and possibly broken.

"Well, well, what do we have here, dissention in the ranks?" The female TV reporter was turned out in a severe pants suit with her hair drawn back in a tight ponytail.

"Oh no," Frank told her. This charming young lady was demonstrating her ability to act as security for the candidate and I ducked when I should have run for the nearest exit." He rubbed the beginnings of a swelled cheek."

"Well, we got a better story than the one we came for. Ciao." She turned and led her cameraman out to their waiting van.

Evan Standish came out of his office and told them in a soft voice, "Well, we might as well pack it up and go home. We're finished. Damn it, I so wanted to be heard this time so I could start anew the next campaign with some name recognition coming into the race."

"Hey wait a second. We have an opportunity here if we use it right." Frank looked at Tanya, then at Evan.

"Opportunity to what?" Evan asked.

"Why, the opportunity to use this incident to springboard you into the winner's circle, to coin a horse racing term."

He laughed and added, "Perception is everything." Frank noticed the newspaper reporter had returned and now stood just inside the front door.

"Hey!" Tanya yelled as Frank grabbed her into his arms and planted a big kiss on her lips. She was too startled to respond and Frank slipped his tongue into her mouth. She felt a thrill run through her belly and lower and moaned. Then she drew back to slap this white asshole who thought he could just...

The camera flashed again and yet again. Frank blocked her slap with his wrist. He stuck his tongue out and licked her lips. The flash went off again. Tanya felt his erection pressed hard against her crotch. A sweet, warm feeling coursed through her body. He bent his head forward. She pulled her head back. The camera's next flash caught the tip of Frank's tongue as it stretched out its limit to lick her lips again.

Tanya shoved Frank back and turned to go after the cameraman. He ran to the safety of his late model sedan and got in to beat a hasty retreat. His right arm pumped in the air in a signal of victory.

"What just happened? What was that all about?" Evan Standish looked at Tanya, then at Frank. He looked back at Tanya and yelled, "Tanya, stop!" He saw her shift her balance prior to a lethal kick. "You are not a female Chuckette Norris. Stop your violence now."

Two volunteers to the Elect Evan Standish campaign came back into the room from their lunch. "What happened?" the nerdish male asked.

"Miss Violence just proved once again nobody needs no stinkin' brains if they can kick ass." The female nerdette stared hard at Tanya.

Frank laughed aloud and told the four, Tanya, Evan and the two volunteers, "I came here to help Mister Standish get elected. Before I could unveil my great plan, this charming young lady just handed us the election as a surefire shoo in. She and I just kissed our way to the election night win."

"What are you talking about?" Tanya looked at her demented sparring partner.

"Turn on the TV," Frank told them.

"We don't have one," Evan said. "We can't afford one." He looked embarrassed at what he saw as a weakness. "Hell, I've even been sleeping here to save on rent."

"Move in with me," Frank answered. "I got plenty of room."

He turned away from Evan and said to the other three, "Let's go next door and see if we can get a deal on a used TV, preferably a large screen HDTV. I'll bring my spare Compaq down in the morning and we can use the wireless setup from next door to get online."

"Just who died and made you king?" Tanya demanded.

"The other two candidates passed away in their complacent sleep. They're just not aware of it yet. Requiem In Pax, or however that Chinese saying goes." He waved them to follow him next door.

The shop owner came from behind the counter to greet the five people. "Man, you people are devastating, to say the least which I won't."

"Which you won't what?" asked Evan, puzzled by the shop owner's greeting."

"Say the least, man. You two are all over the news already," he told Tanya and Frank. "Look at the TV."

They looked and Evan gasped. Tanya yelled, "Oh fuck!"

Frank laughed and told her, "No, we save the sex for later when we're alone. Right now when we romance, it's to win the election. I bet right now the whole Hatch family is busy keeping Orrin's Pampers changed. He'll know what this means."

What what means?" the nerds asked in unison.

Evan started to agree with the two nerds, "Yes, I don't see..." His voice trailed off as the passionate kissed showed up on screen as a number of stills. "Good god, there's no way I could buy this kind of coverage. How did you plan this?" he asked Frank.

Frank laughed from deep in his belly. "I couldn't plan anything like this; it just happened. I did take advantage of the situation though." You might call this a random moment of opportunity.

They watched in silence as the television showed Tanya do a leaping kick worthy of any of Bruce Lee's old movies. Tanya sighed as she watched the kisses replay on screen. She felt the thrills again and she remembered how those kisses affected her when she first received them.

Frank came up behind her and ground a fresh erection into her shorts covered butt. "Turn around and kiss me," he whispered. "There's another camera trained on us. Let's make it a sizzler this time."

She turned, he kissed, she swooned and they fell on the floor in a tangled heap. Frank tried to stand, Tanya tried to jump up and their heads collided. Frank fell sidewise and banged his forehead and face against the counter and fell to the floor unconscious. "Damn! I just messed things up up again." Tears streamed from Tanya's eyes and she started to walk toward the door.

"Call 911," Evan told the storeowner. He sighed as two cameras from two different television stations were aimed at the unconscious man on the floor.

The paramedics came and took Frank with them.

"Please go mind the store," Evan told the two nerds. He half ran to his old Nissan and drove hard to get to the hospital before Frank.

By the time Evan arrived at the emergency room, Frank was awake and thinking hard. "They are going to challenge your qualifications to start with," he greeted Evan.

"To hell with the campaign, how do you feel?"

"Like hell," Frank told him. I have a bad headache."

He continued his original thought from when Evan first came into the examining cubicle. "The first challenge will be because they will claim you do not meet the residency qualifications. You spent last year out of country on a North Sea oil platform. They might or might not succeed."

"How do you know about that?" Evan asked. There was something about this man he did not trust. Everything about him was ... He seemed too well put together to be real.

"How do I know about your stint on an oil rig? Easy, I ran a bio search on you. How do I know the other two parties will use this tactic? I don't. However it would be the first thing I'd try if I saw you as a viable candidate. Believe me, after that television reporter caught the young lady and me on camera, everything else just fell into place. In this district's election, we have two fat old party hacks that make Orrin Hatch look like a progressive by comparison.

"Then there is you, a man who jumped out of nowhere, spent no money and in one day became a threat. They're of the notion they had better slap you down right now before you do get too big."

"All this from a kiss?" Evan wasn't about to permit himself to fall into the trap of blind faith. His degree in political science said otherwise and life among oil crews reinforced it.

"No, there's also the race angle to consider, the violence and the fact that this is a slow news day all come into play." In the up and coming interview, you might let it slip my great grandmother was a full-blooded Chinese. She was a minor member of the Chang family. Her parents came to America to escape religious persecution. They were Christians. It makes a nice side note."

Frank took a deep breath and let it out. "Sun Tsu dedicated much of his "Art Of War" to the proposition that your enemy will defeat himself through his own errors if you let him. Today is the first day in our search to find out if this is true."

"Hey wait, I haven't even hired you yet."

"Yes you have," Frank told him. "You just weren't aware of it until now."

He grinned, then winced as his headache worsened for a moment, "Here comes the doctor. We'll work out my wages later. In twelve years we'll put you into the White House. I plan to be your vice president."

"You'll have to leave now," a man in green scrubs told Evan.

"Stay in the waiting room, Evan. I'll be right out." Evan sighed and wondered for the first time what he had gotten himself into? It seemed so simple at first. He planned to run this time to gain name recognition this time, then make a serious run for the Senate two more times. If he failed both times, he planned to return to the North Sea oilrigs and forget about politics...

Frank Martin walked out into the waiting area and said, "Let's go. We have a lot to discuss."

"Just who are you?" Evan asked him as soon as they were seated. "What's your angle in all this? You came up out of nowhere and took my going nowhere campaign and got us a million dollars worth of free publicity and never spent a single dollar of anyone's money that I can tell." He stared hard into Frank's eyes and waited for an answer.

"Part of me you're going to have to take on trust," Frank told him. Evan snorted and Frank continued. "Here are a few facts that are readily available. My sister committed suicide last year after Arnold Clymer destroyed her and her husband. Her sin? She laughed at Clymer when he exposed himself to her and told him her husband had more foreskin than he, Clymer, had peter."

Frank choked back a sob and continued, "My brother in law, Billy was arrested on a drug charge and shot in the back while running from the police. None of the cops fired a shot. That same night my sister was gang raped, pictures were taken and she was left naked and unconscious on her father in law's front lawn. No one was ever arrested. A week later, she got a phone call that said her husband died because she laughed at the wrong man."

"Jesus, I remember reading about that in the papers." Evan shook his head. "Congressman Arnold Clymer swore he would leave no stone unturned to get the guilty party, that your sister was a valued member of his staff on leave at the time the whole deplorable event transpired. He cried real tears over that incident."