No Harm Can Come to a Good Man

by James Smythe

  ‘Thanks for your faith,’ Laurence says, looking around at them all. He makes eye contact with every single one of them; he wants them to know that he’s serious, that their support means something to him. That’s been one of his major arguments the last few years: politics has become about empty words and even emptier eyes, promises made that are made for self-aggrandizing reasons rather than because somebody believes that they are the right thing to do. This is how he’s become popular, a man of the people.

  ‘There’s paperwork, of course, and we have to talk strategy.’

  ‘What sort of strategy?’ Amit asks.

  ‘Well, for one thing, the very reason that you were hired,’ the ex-nominee replies. ‘We’re going to have to talk about ClearVista.’

  The bar is in a hotel that’s full of people who shouldn’t be there at a quarter of four in the afternoon, so nobody bats an eyelid when Laurence and Amit take a table. Laurence orders an Old Fashioned, Amit lemonade. He and Amit don’t talk until the drinks arrive, brought by a waiter, brandishing them on a polished silver tray, like some service from a time long before this. Laurence sips; the drink is sharp enough, and good. The meetings with the higher echelons of the party always terrify him; they bring out the prospects of the future, and the reality of what this all could mean over time. Amit brings out the paperwork and the contracts.

  ‘They’re footing the bills,’ he says.

  ‘But this feels like bullshit,’ Laurence argues.

  ‘Necessary bullshit,’ Amit says. ‘Look, they want this, and everybody’s going to be using it. You know that POTUS’s team have some Here’s what Four More Years will mean stuff prepared, and you know that if they don’t, the press will. Anybody can use these stats; better we’re first out of the gate with them.’

  ‘So I fill this in, and then it tells me if I should be President?’

  ‘In theory.’ Amit flicks through the pages. ‘All this stuff, it’s all designed to use as a jumping-off point, that’s all. You answer this stuff honestly, the data miner verifies it – and then the concept of you as an honest candidate rises. It’s not rocket science, not like people think it is.’

  ‘It’s numbers.’

  ‘It’s math; they’re different things.’ Amit turns to various questions. ‘I have never cheated on my wife. You tick the True box, and you move on.’ He leans in close. ‘That is true, right?’

  ‘Of course it’s true.’

  ‘Just checking. Because this is when there’s no chance for secrets, Laurence. This is when you have to be honest. All those things people hide, they come out. Clinton never inhaled, remember? But Obama did. And that stuff seeps.’ He finds more questions and picks them out. ‘These are easy wins. I have fought in a war. I have been honest about my policies. I have never lied about my sexual preferences. These are so easy, Larry.’

  ‘What’s the deadline? Realistically.’

  ‘No more than a couple of weeks: this is new tech; you get to be the first up to bat with the new, more polished algorithm.’

  ‘How different can it be?’

  Amit smiles and leans forward. ‘When I stopped working for them, what we were doing was small fry. Compared to that … I mean, Jesus, Larry, the software will know you. That’s how it works. It finds out everything about you, and it learns you, and it predicts you. That’s the next wave.’

  ‘It’s ridiculous. So my word means nothing?’

  ‘Of course it does. But this reinforces that. You know their slogan? The Numbers Don’t Lie, Larry. Never have, never will. The public believes math. They believe computers. People? People are harder to believe.’ He looks down at Laurence’s hands, which are shaking, the ice rattling in the bottom of the glass. He raises his hand at the waiter walking by. ‘One more,’ he says, pointing to Laurence’s glass. ‘Listen: you can’t lie, though. Seriously, I know you’re full of integrity and all that stuff, so whatever. But we all lie. You lie on that, you’ll get caught. What I’ve heard about the algorithm now, the data mining? That thing will find out any secrets you’ve got.’ He finishes his own drink. ‘Look, this is fine. It’s totally fine. It’s you and answers and some bullshit video that’s going to run and run because it’s the first of its kind. We do this, we win the election. That’s what you want, right?’

  ‘Yes,’ Laurence says. The drink is put in front of him and he gulps it in the way that you shouldn’t. ‘That’s what I want.’

  Laurence’s hotel room is functional. He lies on the bed, his head slightly swimming, and switches on the news. There’s a picture of him on the screen, between the two anchors: the shining, smiling one that’s on the front page of his website. The hosts are discussing the rumors.

  ‘I think it’s safe to say that they don’t qualify as rumor any more,’ one of them says, ‘because, come on. Look who he’s hired. Look where he’s been. And his answers to questions about it have been—’

  ‘So who’ll run against him?’ the other anchor asks. ‘Because, for my money, there’s only one other viable candidate, unless we’re dredging up one of the failures from last time.’

  ‘Which they won’t do.’

  ‘So, Homme?’

  ‘Makes a lot of sense. Good profile. Family man – I mean, they’re both family men, but still … and maybe more inclined to appeal to the more traditional members of the party.’ Laurence thinks about how little he likes or trusts Homme: they’ve met a few times and their politics do not have many natural points of intersection. His would-be opponent is as red as the Democrats get, he’s wavering on choice, healthcare, war. Everything is structured as a response to the last few governments, a way of suggesting that the soft touch that has been taken hasn’t been enough. His platform is a return to more old-school values. ‘But I don’t think he’s got a chance. Walker’s going to take this. He’s going to take the White House back, and maybe he’s what’s needed. You know, he’s got some real guts.’

  Laurence switches the set off. He thinks about sleep, but instead he takes up his phone and searches for his name on Twitter, on Google, on Facebook. He reads all the comments, and he tries to let the negative ones slide away from him.

  Deanna shouts at the twins to stay quiet and they do. She has a voice that she uses to get the desired effect – total, gently terrified silence – and she engages it only rarely, because otherwise it will lose its effectiveness. But she snaps at them, and she peers out of the windscreen at the streetlamp-lit junction, trying to see Lane coming from one of the directions. She’s already an hour late and she’s not answering her phone or tweets or messages. She said it was a party somewhere around here. Deanna thinks about driving the streets to look for it. She knows what teenagers are like when they’re Lane’s age: they can’t help but turn the music up a little too loud which makes them much easier to find from the sidewalk, at least. There aren’t many streets in this town – Parkslide being only a little bigger than Staunton is – but she worries about Lane coming here to find her and having to wait around on the corner. She knows what it will look like; she saw what Lane was wearing when she left the house, an outfit that Laurence would have freaked out about. She tries to call Lane again, and talks to the twins as she holds the phone to her ear.

  ‘Guys, Mommy needs silence for a little while. This is important, okay?’ It’s an apology for what she said. She wants to scare them, but not that much.

  ‘Okay,’ Sean says. ‘Mom, where’s Lane?’

  ‘I don’t know, sport,’ she says. ‘She’s on her way, I’m sure.’ The cell goes to Lane’s answering service, but Deanna doesn’t leave a message. She sees somebody walking in the distance, a girl – the figure is slim enough to be Lane, certainly – but as they get closer she sees that she is tottering along on heels. Lane wouldn’t be caught dead outside her boots, even at a thing like this. The girl is drunk, swaying and swerving along the sidewalk, stepping into the road every so often, stumbling down the lip between the pavement and the gutter.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she shou
ts at the girl. ‘Hey, excuse me?’ The girl stops and looks up at Deanna from across the road. ‘Have you been to a party?’

  ‘Sure,’ the girl says. She looks Lane’s age – actually, Deanna thinks, she looks younger, because Lane doesn’t wear make-up that looks as if it’s been put on by a child playing dress-up with her mother’s beauty products – and there’s a good chance it’s the same one.

  ‘Could you tell me where?’ Deanna asks.

  ‘Tim’s house. I mean, Tim’s parents’ house,’ she says, seemingly angry, as if there was ever any chance of Tim owning the place, and how could Deanna not know that? ‘They came back early, so … whatever.’

  ‘And where do they live?’

  The girl waves behind her. ‘Just down there,’ she says. She belches under her breath and sits down by a streetlamp, pulling a packet of cigarettes from her bag – Deanna stretches her brain to think when she last saw somebody with this brand – and fumbles to light one.

  ‘Guys,’ Deanna says to the twins, ‘your sister is in so much trouble.’ The twins laugh at this, a shared secret. They understand: Deanna will use her angry voice on Lane. They drive in the direction that the girl indicated and soon Deanna sees where the party was: a large house, shining white with the lights that are turned on inside it, a flood of teenage bodies outside it, milling around in the front yard. She pulls over and rings Lane’s phone again, winding down the window and hearing it ringing, the tinny echo of a song that Lane loves cutting through the hubbub. Lane cancels the call, so Deanna steps out of the car. She turns back to the twins. ‘I warned her,’ she says.

  She shouts Lane’s name, her full name: Lane Alexandra Walker.

  ‘Oh shit!’ comes Lane’s reply. The crowd seems to part like it’s a trick, and there stands Lane. She drops something as Deanna gets closer; a bottle of some cheap, sweet-smelling liquor. She reeks of pot, that sweet, sweaty smell that Deanna remembers from her own youth.

  ‘Get in the car,’ Deanna says. She isn’t even putting the voice on this time.

  They drive home in silence, even the twins. When they’re parked, Deanna tells Lane to get inside and to take her brother and sister with her. Lane does as she’s told. The car smells of smoke and alcohol and sweat and Lane’s hair products, used to push her hair into something that makes Deanna think of the punk hairstyles that she used to toy with in the nineties. This, she thinks, is cyclical: teenagers do this. I did it, she tells herself. I was exactly like this, living in Staunton and rebelling in my own little ways. She stays in the car while they all go inside and watches the lights flick on throughout the house. The twins are well past their bedtime, which means tomorrow she’s going to have two seven-year-old nightmares on her hands. Better a weekend than a school day, she thinks.

  She gets out and goes to the downstairs bathroom, finding air freshener, and she sprays the inside of the car with it, almost pushing it into the fabric of the seats. She thinks of bug bombs, and filling a space with something to purify. When she’s got a good cloud of the stuff going she shuts the doors and goes into the house. The twins are in the living room, Alyx on the iPad, Sean on the Xbox.

  ‘No,’ Deanna says. ‘Well past bedtime.’

  ‘Mo-o-om …’ Alyx says.

  ‘Come on,’ Sean pleads.

  ‘Don’t screw with me tonight, you guys. Bed!’ They both sigh – the same sound of exhalation, the same exasperation – and they put down their games and march past her. ‘You guys go to sleep, you get to pick what we have for dinner tomorrow.’

  ‘Can we get pizza?’ Sean asks.

  ‘Sure. Pizza. Deal. Clean your teeth and get to bed.’ She stands at the bottom of the stairs and listens to them doing their routine, finely tuned as it is. Always Sean into the bathroom first, then he cleans his teeth in the hallway while Alyx goes in. Then she cleans her teeth and both of them stand at the sink. They spit the toothpaste out at the same time. They get into bed, and she tucks them in, kisses them on their foreheads. ‘Pizza – if I don’t hear a peep from you,’ she says. ‘That’s the deal.’ They both do the same gesture: zipping their mouths shut with invisible zips, and they smile. She doesn’t understand them, not all the time, because there’s something she simply can’t get close to there, that only they share. She worried, when she knew that she was having twins, because she was older than she thought she would be when having another child, and because she thought that they might be too much for her to cope with. But now, eyes shut, they’re what she wants, two perfect halves of a perfect whole. She wonders if they’ll always be like this.

  The sound of music, wafting down the corridor from Lane’s room, stops her daydreaming and reminds her what’s gone on here. She pulls the twins’ door shut and strides down the corridor. All the tricks that they’ve learned over the years about how to make the kids respect them – or, at least slightly, fear them – come into play now. Lane is almost too old for them, but still, they’re worth a shot; and residual feelings of what they used to inspire in her might just swing it in Deanna’s favor.

  She opens the door wide, letting it swing until it hits the stopper. It thuds, and the whole door shakes. Lane is on the bed, lying back, staring at the ceiling of her room. There are still the remnants of the pale stars there that they put up when they moved in, when Lane was the same age as the twins are now. She wanted the stars because she’d had them in the old house. Laurence and Deanna relented, even though she was too old for them, maybe. It was easier.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ Deanna asks. Lane doesn’t look at her. ‘Lane, you know the rules.’ She walks over, stands next to the bed. ‘You know that we don’t want you drinking, and we don’t want you smoking. You know about your father’s career – you get yourself arrested, and God only knows what that does to him, the sort of questions he’ll have to answer about that.’

  ‘Fuck that,’ Lane says.

  Deanna steps back. ‘Okay, you’re done. Lockdown for the next week.’

  ‘You can’t do that!’ Lane retorts.

  ‘Can and will. Watch me.’ She leaves the room, slamming the door shut behind her, and she goes to the bedroom and takes her cellphone from her pocket. She starts writing a text to Laurence, explaining what has happened, telling him that he’s going to need to talk to Lane when he gets home; that she always listens to him, or pretends to. Something about the father-daughter relationship works while Deanna and Lane have always had this wall between them when it comes to basic levels of respect. She writes all of that out, and then thinks. She doesn’t press Send. Instead, she goes downstairs and she brings up the calendars on the screen embedded in the door of the refrigerator, and looks at Laurence’s. The next few weeks are brutal for him: back tomorrow morning, Sunday working in DC on policy, then leaving first thing Monday for the announcement, then on to LA, Seattle, back to DC, home for three days, then NYC for a week. She taps through the following weeks and months, looking for a break, but there’s nothing. He’s barely hers, barely part of the family with his schedule the way that it is.

  She clears the text. This is hers to deal with.

  2

  Laurence sits up in bed holding the tablet. He scrolls through the questions while Deanna reads, and he sighs exaggeratedly at them. She puts her book down and laughs at his face, a mock-grimace at the task ahead of him.

  ‘These fucking questions,’ he says.

  ‘How many are there?’

  ‘A thousand; a thousand questions. Which is, what, nine hundred and fifty more than for a citizen ID?’ Deanna puts the coffee down on the table at his side of the bed and leans in. She pulls the laptop away from him and turns it around to face her.

  ‘Aged eighteen, where did you see yourself aged thirty?’ she reads. ‘You’ve only made it to eighteen years old?’

  ‘Which is about a third of the way through. Because, apparently, they can tell if I would be a good president based on whether I ever gave some kid a wedgie when I was in high school.’

  ‘It’s not a
science,’ Deanna says.

  ‘Probably not,’ Laurence tells her, ‘but ClearVista sure as hell acts as if it is.’ He collapses backwards in mock anguish. ‘It’s fine. I have to do it.’

  ‘Says who?’ Deanna touches his chest. He’s so warm, she thinks.

  ‘They do. Shadowy they. The would-be Illuminati of America. And Amit.’

  ‘Of course Amit does. He probably still has shares in the company.’

  ‘He says that it’s the future of politics.’

  She leans in and kisses him. ‘And there was me thinking that the future of politics would be you,’ she says. ‘You ready for today?’

  ‘Barely.’

  ‘Did you sleep?’

  ‘Barely.’

  ‘Barely?’

  ‘Barely.’ He smiles. ‘It’ll be fine.’

  ‘All you have to do is dance, monkey.’ She leans in to kiss him, and he pushes his tongue behind his lip, imitating the animal. She grins as she feels it, and he pulls her towards him, onto the bed. She rests her head in the nook between his chin and his shoulder. ‘You’ll be fine.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I’m going to the house, to try and make a start on stuff. Cleaning it.’

  ‘I’ll come and join you when I’m done.’

  ‘There’s no party?’

  ‘Don’t care if there is.’ He thinks about what happens after this, and how busy he suddenly becomes. He’s seen the effect that it’s had, his slight withdrawal from them all in the wake of his career. This is, he thinks, important.

  ‘I’ll wake the kids,’ she tells him, and then he hears her go down the corridor and into the twins’ room. He hears them giggling. They’ve been waiting for her. Laurence gets out of bed and goes to the bathroom. He looks at his face. He thinks about how old he looks and wonders how old he will look at the end of this, what sort of effect even running for the role will have on him. He pulls at gray hairs, and he examines the lines on his mouth and eyes, the slight jowl underneath his chin. He rubs at his temples, and the spots on his head where the hair will start to go. It’s in his family, or it was; and it feels like an inevitability to him. He’ll turn forty and his stress levels will be off the charts, and then he’ll just be clinging to whatever aspects of youth feel like letting him off the hook for the longest.