by Faye, Amy
Paul stood. "I'll walk you back."
"There's no need to do that," she said, sourly. "I can get by on my own."
"My car's parked outside your apartment," Paul answered. What had happened that made her so acerbic towards him? It must have been something ten years ago. His politics hadn't changed much in the intervening years, and she'd never had a problem with them before. There hadn't been a word shared between them in all that time, either.
So it was easy to figure that it was something ten years ago. Maybe the reason that she left. He made a mental note to try to figure out what that reason was. But she wasn't likely to tell him if he just asked outright. She was too angry, and any apology for something he clearly didn't remember, after all this time, would mean nothing.
"Fine," she said, slipping her jacket on and grabbing her coffee. She refilled it from the pot by the door. Paul did the same, adding too much sugar. It was bad for his health, but he had always done things that weren't good for him. The girls were bad for his political career; his wife was bad for his health.
Lara had been good for him, but that hadn't gone the way that he had hoped it would, and now he was left wanting to pick up the pieces like a child.
They walked in silence for a while. The walk really wasn't very long. A quarter-mile later, they turned down a road that twisted a little bit. Lara cut across the lawn and at the front of her building was a boy. He was sitting on the stoop and looked frustrated. Then he looked up and saw them approaching.
His expression shifted in jumps. First the boy noticed his mother, and he smiled. Then he noticed, a split second later, that she wasn't alone, and he looked questioning. Then, all at once, he seemed to put the whole picture together and his eyes got wide enough to see whites all around them.
"Mom?"
Lara's voice was kind–nothing like the voice she used when she talked to him, Paul thought. "What's wrong? Did you forget your key again?"
"Is that…"
She looked over at Paul, who shrugged. "Hi," he said finally. "I'm Paul Green, I'm an old friend of your mother's."
The boy's eyes couldn't have gotten any wider, but he almost seemed to give the impression of it.
"I saw you on T.V.! And, and, this morning, I was there in the crowd watching your speech!"
"It was just a press conference, really," Paul said, hoping that he sounded humble to a boy who was too young to be out of elementary school, and probably didn't know the difference anyways. "I'm glad you came to see me, though. I always love it when young people are interested in politics."
"Yeah," he said. It wasn't hard to realize that the boy was starstruck. Paul felt flattered. People being starstruck wasn't uncommon; he'd been in the public eye for a long, long time, and people tended to know his name.
Some of those people showed their appreciation in… different ways. But the innocence in the boy's face was so absolutely different and so absolutely refreshing.
"Paul," Lara said finally, as he smiled at the boy and the boy stared at him as if none of it had caught up to him. "This is my son, Tim. Tim, this is Senator Green. You saw him this morning."
"Yeah, I did," Tim repeated, never taking his eyes off Paul. Paul reached out a hand and Tim shook it. He had a good grip, Paul thought. For such a young boy. A real good grip.
4
Lara looked at the invitation one more time. It was a mistake to go. She didn't feel good enough, but there was something more than that. She didn't want to get involved with politics. It was a racket. She knew plenty about rackets, about how honest politicians really were, and she knew plenty about how honest Paul Green in particular was.
But she didn't get to pretend that she was only deciding for herself. If it was just for her, then she'd have been at home watching movies all evening because that was all she wanted to do and sure as hell all she needed to do.
But she had to think about things from Tim's point of view, too. He'd just met his hero. Well, one of his heroes. Anyone who could be President was his hero, she reminded herself. He preferred Paul because Paul was on TV and talked a little louder and smiled a lot. But if Noble were on TV more, then she was sure he'd like President Noble just as much, if not more.
It was just how boys were. That was what she hoped, anyways, because getting interested in politics at any age, young or old, was a mistake. Getting involved with a man who abandoned you when you were little more than a grape-sized thought in your mother's head was a bigger one.
But how was she supposed to turn down a VIP pass for him? How was she supposed to tell her son that as nice as Paul had seemed, she wasn't going to take him to the rally they'd been invited to?
She wasn't going to. So she was getting dressed up in spite of herself. How was she even supposed to dress? Nice? Casual? Like what? She'd looked up YouTube videos and nobody seemed to be exceptionally well dressed. It wasn't a black tie affair. So business casual would have to do.
"Almost ready?"
Tim came streaking out of his bedroom like a bat out of hell, and only stopped when he realized he'd already run past her. "How's this?"
She looked at his clothes critically for a moment. Nice pants, nice shirt, buttoned right. As she worked her eyes up his body, she finally settled on the problem.
"Go brush your hair."
"But–"
"But, nothing. We're not going to be late."
"Okay," he said, though she could hear in his voice that he wasn't exactly convinced that she'd be there on time. Time seemed like a difficult thing for him–like he thought every trip took about thirty minutes.
But they were only ten from the convention hall, and if she took side streets there really wasn't going to be any problem. If they were just going, then they would have had to be there already. Mingling, waiting for the doors to open, hoping they could find good seats.
But with VIP passes, they'd be in a little box. The worst they could possibly do was to be too close to him, and get themselves on television. She didn't look quite ready for television, not at her age.
Tim came back in with a comb still in his hands, looking better. It wasn't like she had impossibly high standards, Lara thought to herself–she just wasn't going to have him going out with his hair looking like a rat's nest.
"Okay. Come on, let's go."
She avoided looking in the mirror on the way out. She looked fine, and there was no standard she was supposed to meet. It didn't matter what anyone thought of what she looked like. There was nobody to impress anyways. It wasn't like she was trying to look good for her lover any more. And yet, even after ten years, she found that she hadn't been able to flip the switch off. Paul said jump, and here she was trying to guess how high so she didn't have to ask him.
The back streets weren't as empty as she was used to–that was to be expected. But again, she reminded herself, they weren't late. They were early. They were just less early than she'd accounted for. She checked her watch to ensure. The doors were supposed to open at 7, and it was still 6:55. So there was no problem.
The crowd was massive. Absurdly massive. Like, she hadn't really given it much thought, massive. Could this many people even fit inside? She felt in her pocket for the passes. Did these people have to pay to get in? Or was it free, first-come-first-serve? Or what?
She didn't know, and she wasn't sure she wanted to know. But the one thing that she was sure of, uncomfortably so, was that the guy coming through the crowd was coming straight for them. He had a long face and the sour expression she'd gotten used to with bodyguards a long time ago. It had been years since she'd seen someone with that expression, though.
"Ma'am?"
Tim rested his head on her side. He was tired already, and they hadn't even gotten through the speech yet. "Yes?"
"I'm just coming to take you to your seat. This way please."
She let herself be led through the crowd, her hand gripping Tim's tight. The crowd didn't want to part for any of them, but the man with the military-looking haircut and t
he stiff back moved easily through them without much trouble. They were seated within five minutes of the doors opening, and Paul came across the stage to talk for a moment. Talk to Tim, she saw.
He smiled at her son. Tim was small for his age, she knew. If she was lucky, then she wouldn't have to answer any uncomfortable questions. If she did, then she wasn't sure what was going to happen, and she only knew one thing–she didn't exactly have the money to give back, after all these years.
She wasn't sure what the alternative to paying him back for her staying quiet would be, but if the threats from way back when had been any indicator, none of those alternatives were options that she could live with. Indeed, in some cases, quite literally.
Paul smiled at her son and shook his hand again. "Wish me luck, Tim," he said, mussing up the boy's hair, after she'd specifically made him comb it.
Tim beamed at the Senator, not knowing how hard and cruel the real world could be. Not knowing that if that same Senator had his way, Tim wouldn't even be there.
Not knowing that it was that same Senator who was responsible for him in the first place, for that matter.
5
Paul's energy felt rejuvenated for the first time in… God, in forever. Had he ever felt this good? He should have slept, but then again, he would have only woken from the sleep feeling worse than this. He was dangerously manic, and yet, he was in control. In the driver's seat. If this was what cocaine felt like, then he could imagine why people did it.
He stepped away from the microphone solemnly and smiled out at the crowd. Waved. Turned to the VIP box. He waved there, too, though he had to admit that it wasn't so much at the booth as it was at Lara. Lara and her son, who seemed as excited by the entire process as Paul had been when he was that age. What had taken that excitement away?
He didn't know, but he had a few guesses. He turned just in time for one of those guesses to come strolling over.
"You're looking pleased with yourself," she said, too softly to hear.
"Maybe I'm having a good day," he answered. He wasn't going to let her get him down, regardless of what she said. He didn't have to answer to her, as long as he didn't do anything to screw up her precious political marriage; that meant that when she decided to try to sting him, all he had to do was pretend she hadn't done it and as if by magic, it didn't hurt.
"What, you decided to go fuck your old whore?"
That did sting, he found. More than it should have. Much more. But he still insisted to himself that he wasn't going to let her do any more damage than possible. So he kept the smile on, as much for the cameras as for himself. As much to spite his wife as for anything.
"Have a good night," he said, his face stuck in a smile, his lips barely moving like a ventriloquist. "But if you're going to act like this–"
"Like what?"
She knew precisely like what. She took a certain sick, unpleasant pride in acting like a viper. In taking every ounce of pleasure out of other people's lives. In making herself the victim of everything. At least with Paul she didn't bother to hide it. They had an understanding with each other, which was more than he could say for most people when it came to Helen.
"Go home, Helen. I'll see you later."
"What are you planning on doing?"
"I'm not planning on anything. I'm going to go to a McDonald's and hang out with the stoners and the drug dealers. The same thing I always do until 3 in the morning."
"When you're not screwing, you mean," she reminded him.
"Of course, how could I have forgotten?"
He let out a long breath and stepped back away from her, raising his hand and waving to the crowd again. They ate it up. There was something seedy about the entire thing. About how he could have them eating out of the palm of his hand, and they just… they just believed him.
Paul meant everything he said. He'd always meant every word of it, since the beginning. There were plenty of people who went to Washington full of idiot ideas, full of the belief that they could change things. Full of themselves.
Paul wasn't full of himself. He couldn't change much. But that wasn't his goal. He wasn't going to cause a revolution. Yet, these people… they hadn't gotten disillusioned at all by the liars, the scumbags. They hadn't been remotely disillusioned by him, and the way that he'd traded away his life, traded away his integrity, for the chance to piss into the ocean and hope it changed the whole thing yellow.
He walked over to the side of the stage, where twenty or so VIPs sat. He started on the right. The furthest away from Lara and her son. That way, things could only be looking up from here.
The small talk was revolting. It always was. There weren't many exceptions. You meet with mayors, with aldermen, with elders and with governors. People hoping to make a name for themselves. People hoping to be him, one day. Day in, day out, people who had long-since decided that they had a price and they were going to keep going up the ladder until someone came along offering to pay it.
How long ago had it been since he'd realized that was all that politics really was? How long since he'd lost that starry-eyed vision of the world as an open place? He frowned and looked over at Tim, who leaned forward to watch him talking. A smile infected Paul's face in spite of himself, and he skipped over a District Attorney who had taken over for him and never managed to make it any further up the ladder.
"Did you like that, Tim?"
Tim's smile widened. "Yeah!"
Paul could feel that infectious energy, the energy that had seen him through the speech, starting to seep back into his bones.
"You should ask your mother–"
"Ask me what?" Lara cut in and had her eyebrow raised. God, she was just as beautiful as the day she'd left. Her face was different, but now she looked more… mature. More in control. She'd shifted from 'hot young thing' to 'hot mom' apparently without any effort.
"… If she'll let you stay out a little longer. Do you like McDonald's, Tim?"
He looked at his mother with those same wide eyes he'd fixed on Paul earlier. "I'm not supposed to–"
Lara let out a long sigh. "You're not serious, are you?"
"Of course I'm serious," Paul answered. He was always serious about bad food. It was about the only thing that he actually enjoyed. Everything else just got him out of bed, and it was less and less proving to be worth it. Even the bad food wasn't enough these days. But if it was bad food, with a boy so excited about everything that he was tired of…
Well, what could possibly be more worth it?
He took the boy's hand and they walked backstage. A black SUV waited for him. Helen was nowhere to be seen. She'd probably taken a separate car, which was better, because as much as Helen was more than willing to deal with the presence of his indiscretions, Paul didn't want her around Tim. He didn't want her infecting him, ruining that smile.
"Sir?"
"We're going to McDonalds," Paul answered. "If that's not too much trouble."
"No trouble at all," the man answered. They started driving just in time to be clipped hard in the side of the nose and go spinning out into traffic, tires squealing. Paul reached out before he knew what he was doing–his arms wrapped around the most important thing in the car, and Tim yelled into his chest until they'd finally come to a stop.
A crowd of men in suits swarmed the car, all of them seeming to panic over Paul. He pushed them back, relaxed his grip around the boy.
"You okay?"
Tim looked up at him with a deep pout, tears welling up and threatening to fall down his face. "I didn't like that," he said.
Paul flattened his hair and tried to still his pounding heartbeat. "No, I didn't like it either."
6
Lara looked at the pair of them. Looked at all the people wrapped around them, trying to make sure that the Senator was all right. But he didn't seem hurt at all. Something in the back of her mind registered with Lara that she was probably in shock herself, that she should use her eyes to make sure that she wasn't hurt herself.
Her left arm was okay. Her right was okay. Her arms were fine. She patted her body over. No blood came away on her hands. She was alright, except that there was an unpleasant sensation as she patted her chest, where the seat belt fell. A sensation she realized a moment later, dimly, was probably a bruise.
Paul spoke first. "Are you okay?" He said it to the little boy buried in his arms. The little boy who he didn't know his own relation to. As far as Paul knew, Tim was just a little boy that she'd had after she'd 'dealt with' his child.
Tim looked up at him. Not at her, and part of her felt that tugging at her heart strings. Another part felt something about the way that he looked up at the man who he didn't know was his father, and the way that Paul had reacted, something warm and hot at the bottom of her stomach.
"I didn't like that," Tim said. She could hear the tears in his voice. She wanted to cry herself, now, as the adrenaline started slowly to wear away and left her knowing that if they'd been just a little bit faster, she could be dead. If things had gone just a little bit worse–
"I didn't like it either," Paul responded. He pressed the boy's head into his chest and looked up at her, examining her for a long time.
"Lara–you're not hurt, are you?"
"No," she said finally. "I'm alright. I think."
"Nothing hurts? I'll get you to a hospital if anything happened, or–"
"No," she said, shaking her head. "Nothing. Just scary."
"Yeah," he said. Lara watched the Senator try to put on a smile, but it was forced. Too forced. He looked like he was going to throw up. "I don't think your son liked it much either."
Tim was crying, she realized. He was being quiet about it, but his shoulders shook when he took a breath and he pressed himself harder into Paul. Paul's hand moved down awkwardly, stroking the boy's back. He gave her a smile that was full of every bit of stress and uncertainty that Lara herself was feeling.
"I don't know if you just want to go home, or–"
Lara didn't know what she was supposed to say to that. Her mind blanked as he said the words. She was afraid, now. Afraid of driving. Afraid of being in a car at all. But it was too far to walk, particularly this late at night. Once he'd calmed down, she knew that Tim would be in no shape for walking, either.
