Chapter 13

The sudden return to normalcy – as much normalcy as a Vice President can ever have, came with an overwhelming need for a woman. My condition went way beyond wanting and well into needing. To get past it, I concentrated on work.

Rick and I followed up on our campaign to make the national security apparatus more of a fraternity, than a set of opposing forces. The reports I delivered to Charles began to look like annual reports that department heads put together to insure more funding. We were having some success, and those successes were leading to greater success. As the directors discovered how much of what they needed was already in the hands of another department, sharing became commonplace.

Now that I was not getting shot, or screamed at by disaffected veterans, and since the task was going well, I found myself seriously horny. My options were – in the following order – slim and none. When you are Vice President there are always women around. They all work for the federal government, and the risk is far too great for the reward. So, unless you're Bill Clinton, and can not only get away with it, but become a folk hero by doing so, you are a fool to dip your wick in your own backyard.

That left women I came into contact with at political events, industry meetings, speeches, and the like, all of which had a very special brand of risk involved. With time on my hands – some time – not lots of time, I began to fantasize about getting horizontal with a willing, discreet, and nubile, female.

My approach was like my approach to everything else. I treated fantasy like any other mission. As I moved through my days and nights, I created a catalog of attractive, available, and desirable women that were not employed by the US Government, liked men, and seemed to like me.

Married women I crossed off the list, along with those engaged, living with a long term lover, or involved in a monogamous relationship. There was no sense breaking up someone's good thing just to get laid, even in my imagination.

One candidate was a strikingly beautiful and rich daughter of an oil magnate, who headed up a lobbying group that promoted clean, safe, and cost efficient fracking. She had long brown hair that flowed around her face, soft, white skin, and a playfulness about her expression that attracted me. Her face had that healthy glow of womanhood that hits you right in the gut, and makes you want to have a baby with her.

Speaking of baby making, she had a set of hips designed to deliver a child and sufficient breasts to feed twins.

More importantly ... Every time we made eye contact, she lit up like a child on Christmas morning. My initial thought was that she was the antithesis of Desdemona, my Russian, short-term, girlfriend. Everything that you noticed about Desdemona, was opposite with this Barbara. Where Desi was honey colored, with sultry, dark, flashing eyes, the women in front of me was fair, with bright, blue, eyes full of fun and merriment. Where Desi was slender to the point of skinny, I was looking at a woman whose curves were all where they should be. I'm not inferring anything here. However, Barbara had a mouth made for ... Ok, I'll let that one go. I still need to protect Charles from my overactive libido.

When Jason noticed her attraction, he made discreet inquiries into her background and resume. Steve could be very helpful to him that way. "Mr. Vice President. You are a healthy, single, attractive man. If you didn't want a women, I'd think there was something wrong with you," he said bluntly.

It turns out that Barbara Fiorino was the oldest daughter of Charlene and Eduardo Fiorino, of Waxahachie, Texas. He owned thousands of oil wells and was a pioneer in moving fracking from a curiosity to a fact. His wife came from old, New England, banking money, and when they joined fortunes, it created a formidable force in the oil world.

Barbara was her daddy's angel. He doted on her every accomplishment, looked after her every need, and placed her on a pedestal that she still occupied well into her thirty-second year. Daddy Fiorino was so taken with his oldest child's business acumen that he put her in charge of Governmental Relations, and the lobbying effort, which meant she split her time between Texas and D.C.

Steve and his team delivered me to a gathering at the Hay Adams, celebrating the precipitous drop in oil prices, and what it was doing to those nations that fought hard as our oil competitors, and unwisely spent outrageously, struggling to balance the books against oil revenues they weren't collecting. The sudden cash crisis caused them to find themselves badly limited as a result. It was a good time to be an American oil producer with a long view of the marketplace.

Barbara and her parents almost always attended these receptions. Jason briefed me on their intention to attend this one, which helped me choose to accept the invitation, when I could easily have sent my regrets.