by Melody Clark
"You are a battle worth winning, my friend."
"I'm glad you think so. And I'm glad you're my friend."
T.J.’s smile weakened. “I’m more than your friend.”
Jack leaned forward toward his own fencing, tapping nervously at the center post. “I know that. But I need friends these days, so I count you twice. Believe me, I have enough enemies.”
“That’s just your persecution complex.”
“No, these are real, not imagined. They’re your enemies, too.” He emptied his glass and set it aside. “People who want to keep us imprisoned in the dark ages. Those who want to keep freedom for the wealthy and powerful alone. Nevertheless, time is on our side. There's no real conservative belief of fifty years ago that people want to preserve. Crack open the door, then open it a little wider, then a little wider still."
"Just like with abolition and integration and everything else," T.J. said, gesturing expansively toward Washington DC which looked in the distance like a pearly lake of fire.
Jack nodded toward the thickening darkness. "Hell, just like our ancestral grandfathers did with their radical, almost heretical views about God given liberty. They were outrageous assertions at the time. Now they're just accepted. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
"That they are endowed by their Creator,” T.J. said, “with certain inalienable rights -- "
"Unalienable."
"Inalienable."
T.J. shook his head then rubbed the bridge between his eyes. "Not this again."
"It says unalienable in the document."
"It says unalienable because your ancestor intimidated the printer. My ancestor wrote it. It was to say inalienable."
"Then it was to be wrong. My ancestor kept your ancestor from looking like a gigantic jackass. Let's leave it at that," Jack said with a grin to show he'd been joking. "Truth becomes self-evident and we realize we preserve our own rights by extending them to everyone. It takes a long time. Ignorance is a formidable opponent.”
T.J. laughed with a kind of wonder. "Jack, how on earth have you done it? Setback after setback, near election after near election, insults over injury, but you have never lost hope."
"Who says I haven’t?"
"I say. You're still here."
"I don't know where the hell else to go, man." Jack picked up his empty glass from the small wicker chair at his side. He seemed to consider its emptiness. “Somehow, this is who I am. I mean, what in hell are we here for but to be voices for those who can't speak for themselves? Where do you go when there's so much left to be said? See what I mean? Obnoxious pedantry must run in the family.”
T.J. looked at him for the longest time, considering the composition of things that defied his ability to speak of them. He turned his wet eyes toward stars and fought the smile that came too quickly. "You ... are ... truly ... something."
"Yeah. I ... am ... truly too fucking sober. Come on, there's more stuff to get drunk with on the roof bar."
"Lead the way."
They walked into the little trellis-surrounded area, with great wooden boxes of flowers all closed for business for the night. Jack reached over to touch a Sacred Beauty rose, his fingers running over the petal flesh. "Izzy used to love her roof garden."
"She still does, I'm sure," T.J. said.
Jack sighed sadly, sinking onto the futon and patting the space beside him. "I wish I could think so. I really do."
T.J. sat beside him. "I wish you could too. I just know. Like in the assembly room today. I can remember the temperature of the room. The light coming through the windows and how the old glass panes looked like the glass at the bottom of an empty bottle. Where people sat. What people said. Thoughts. Feelings. I remember it all. I know you have to have that in you, too."
"I have nothing in me ... a straight line I will quickly redeem by saying ... speaking of bottles," Jack said, pulling a bottle of some old Chablis from the bar hutch beside the futon. He pulled up the cork, spilling some Chablis into his old glass and then T.J.'s new one. "Probably ... rationally ... you just have a vivid imagination."
"I know the difference between memory and imagination, Jack. I remember all this."
"Okay, okay, whatever. I give up the battle for reason for tonight. Let's just drink a toast to memory," Jack said, lifting his glass. "Which Shakespeare said gives us roses in December. And I'd add, lets us keep the company of the people ... and the dogs ... that we love for as long as we may live."
"And perhaps beyond," T.J. added with a grin, tapping his glass to Jack’s.
"I don’t think so,” Jack said, pulling the gold watch Izzy had given him out of his pocket to look at the time. He turned it over to consider the inscription. “In the words of Robert Frost, then leaf subsides to leaf, as Eden sank to grief.”
“Izzy’s favorite poem,” T.J. said in recognition. “She always told you that you took it too seriously.”
“She said I took everything too seriously.”
T.J. lifted his glass. “She was right. To our Izzy … and to my beloved Jack from whom I hope I am never again parted.”
Jack leaned over and pressed his own stemware against the other man’s glass when a small escaping leaf shook loose from the roof arbor and landed in T.J.'s hair. Jack reached up as if to whisk off the leaf but his fingers encountered skin.
T.J. smiled back at him, with questions and promises.
Jack grabbed out for T.J.'s face and pushed their mouths together.
The other man grasped Jack’s face in his hands, as though Jack might vanish completely. He leaned his head sideways, furthering the kiss, deepening it quickly.
Jack's tongue moved toward T.J.’s, driven by instinctive fire and a buried hunger and a thousand other things.
Then he realized. Remembered.
He broke free and stumbled backward, his hand grabbing hold of the trellis. As if fighting to understand, Jack dragged himself to his feet. "Christ, I'm sorry. T.J., I don't know what the hell came over me --”
T.J. felt balanced on the fault line between joy and tears. "No, damn it! Don't you dare apologize for that, Jack! This is what I was just talking about at the restaurant."
Jack seemed to be grappling with the growing realization as he remembered the glass in his hand and slammed it down like an imminent threat. He dropped his wristwatch which hit the ground with a brittle crack.
“Shit!” Jack said, grabbing it up. His sad eyes studied it in his hand. “Fuck, I shattered the goddamned watch face.”
“I’m sorry, Jack,” T.J. said. “I’m sure we can get it fixed.”
“It’s just a cheap watch. It has more personal meaning than value. I’m really screwing things up tonight. First, I hurt your feelings. Then George dies. And now I break Izzy’s first gift to me.”
“The only way you could have hurt me, Jackie, is to shut me out of your life. That kiss just assured me you haven’t. Izzy's kink might have provided a convenient way to fuck another guy and still tell yourself you were relatively straight but I always thought it was more than just a buddy fuck with us.”
“Of course it was!”
“Earlier, at the restaurant, you strongly implied to the contrary. You were actually trying to tell me there was no emotion behind what happened between you and me --”
"I never said there wasn’t.”
"You never said there was. I heard very clearly what you were trying to tell me, Jackie.” T.J. patted the other man’s face. “But I know differently now. I know it. You said everything you needed to just a moment ago with that kiss. Now we need to help you accept it."
Jack turned away to walk toward the skyline. He looked up as if to see the stars but then buried his face in his hands. "I'm sorry. I don't know what the fuck to do or say half the time anymore. I keep thinking I'm past the worst, I have a leg up and then ..."
"I know," T.J. said, reaching out for both his hands to turn him around again.
"You look exhausted. Let's get
you inside for the night. You need to go beddy bye.”
"Beddy bye? We’re middle-aged, Tommy. Anyway, I never sleep. I’m an incurable insomniac, you know that. I usually just pass out up here on the roof."
"Too cold for that. The bite is in the air. Come on, I'll stay with you as long as you like." T.J. walked toward the roof gate and opened it, once again unveiling the flight of steps down to the balcony. He then took up Jack's hand and drew him along to the stairs.
Chapter Two
At first she wondered if the man outside was a vagrant that had somehow slipped past the long and daunting arm of Senate Security. The questionable person wore a huge man-eating hoodie that draped around him like an oversized monk's robe. She went to the office door to ask after his business when she recognized the face behind the hood and dark glasses.
"Don't breathe," Jack said, flinching. "The air hurts me."
"Somebody tied one on last night," she said, while her sharp giggles collected inside her hand.
"I did not tie one on. I pinioned one around my neck and shoulders," he said, walking gingerly through his office lobby doors to hover in the office center.
"Do you know it's after noon?" she said gently, reaching for the coffee warmer where his morning cup had waited for him. "You missed three appointments but I, being your brilliant if humble secretary, covered for you and rescheduled them. How the heck did you jog to work in this condition?"
"I didn't jog. I took a cab," Jack murmured, taking the coffee from Taneesha into his hands and staring down at it as if it wasn't quite familiar but healing all the same.
"You should've called me. I'd have picked you up,” she said.
"Why should you suffer for my transgressions?" he asked before taking a sip of coffee and trying to grasp at his messages on Taneesha’s desk. His fingers finally encountered paper. He handed the message slips back to Taneesha. "Call these and cancel them. My neurons will be backfiring for at least another hour."
"No can do with the first one. It's Senator Hamilton." She smiled with a big apology. "He said, and I quote, tell Jack to get his wise ass down here and not come up with any piddley diddley excuses."
Jack groaned softly at the whole idea. "What the hell does that gasbag piker want?"
"He says, as he's the ranking Democrat, he wants to discuss policy with you."
"He wants to, as he's ranking Democrat, bully me into voting for something I don't want to vote for,” Jack said. “All right. I’ll let him summon me to the presence. How long do I have before I'm to arrive?"
"Fifteen minutes."
"Wonderful,” Jack said, gulping down hot coffee. “My hell is now complete."
Othel Felix Hamilton was such a relic of the Dixiecrat days that Jack thought his ass might have grown into his chair. He looked sort of like a schnauzer -- and not an especially sweet or friendly one. He'd come into politics with the George Wallace southern Democrats who had tried to swerve the party right by opposing segregation and civil rights legislation. Hamilton had fallen out of favor with them by eschewing extremes and leaning toward the more moderate tones of centrist Democrats. For this reason, Jack actually kind of liked him. For this reason, Hamilton was still the ranking Democrat.
As Jack made his careful way through Hamilton's office door, he tried not to look like he was hung-over. He was certain he had failed miserably.
"Where's the cat?" Hamilton asked, poised beside his office tee to putt a golf ball into a sideways foam cup.
"What cat?" Jack asked.
"The one that coughed you up this morning, partner. You look like you got righteously shitfaced last night. Better have a seat over there before you fall over and nobody can get you up."
"Thank you," Jack said, nodding and sinking with only a hint of grace and ceremony into one of the big purple velvet chairs that had been au courant like, oh, when Edward the Fifth was King.
"It's that cheap mass-produced Yankee liquor you pasty northern boys suck down all the time. Try fine southern bourbon. It has history, it has manners. Goes down easy. Doesn't come down hard. I'll send you a bottle over, compliments of my brother-in-law's fine distillery."
Jack nodded as if he gave a flying fuck. "Thanks. There was something you wanted to discuss?"
"Right to business, as always. You need to be more social, son," he said, putting the ball into the cup. He hung up his nine-iron on a wall rack. "But then look who I'm sayin' that, too. No offense."
"Not offended," he muttered while sinking back, swatting away the topic. "Now about what you wanted to discuss ...”
Hamilton retired to his desk chair with a heavy thump. He leaned back into it. "There is coming up a defense appropriations bill that I'm particularly fond of --”
"Edison-Sobo," Jack said, fighting mental murk for the memory.
"Edison-Sobo, exactly,” Hamilton said. “Now you know I network extensively. Some have called me a champion schmoozer, and I am. I don’t mind that appellation at all. I have seen a general trend among my fellow moderate Democrats toward positive movement in regards to your friend's domestic partnership measure.”
“You have? Among your Stone Age cronies? Have they also discovered fire?”
Hamilton cackled at the reply. “Now, they’re not all ass backward. Personally, I don't give a good goddamn what sausage jousters and kitty bumpers do with their lives. Marry, adopt kids, rent a womb, have little David Crosby babies, I don't pay it any mind. Why should straight people alone suffer the travails of marriage? All due respects paid to your late wife, however."
Jack nodded slowly, fighting a wince again. "Thank you."
Hamilton unpeeled a nicotine patch and slapped it onto his arm below one rolled-up sleeve. "Now you know yourself that we Senators do not represent ourselves. We are there as the voices of our state and constituents. My constituents, God love 'em, don't know what the hell a domestic partnership is. Sounds to them like some kinda housekeepers union or something. And that’s a good thing.”
“How on earth is ignorance a good thing?”
“It gets it past ‘em, son. Give the gays all the partnership benefits without the word marriage, is all I ever asked. That's what your boy Jefferson has done with his stunning piece of legislation based, I realize, on your good work."
Jack squeezed at his eyes, inhaling to subdue the acid wrath building up in his throat. "Okay," he said.
Hamilton pointed at the Stealth airplane model mounted on the wall. "Now I realize you're not a big fan of huge defense appropriations. I believe you called it blood money to a murderous pimp, with your peculiar gift for graphic metaphor. But there's a lot of jobs gonna come out of all that spending. Working people earning their daily bread. In my state, the surrounding states, and in the manufacturing base in your own state of Massachusetts, as it happens. So I'm thinking this presents a nice, multilevel side benefit for you --”
"And a nice kickback for you from the defense industry?"
Hamilton exploded in a loud, bouncing laugh. "Well, hell, yes. A very nice kickback indeed. So everybody goes away fat and happy."
"Except for the poor and disabled," Jack said, still fighting to compose himself, “or our crumbling infrastructure or our woefully under-funded educational system, to name only three hideously neglected public programs that could use the funds instead. The way I see it, the US doesn’t need another intercontinental ballistic missile.”
"Yes, I know all that. Sure, we got more weapons than any of our enemies and the enemies we got now, we can’t use ‘em again. But we make it through the battle, Jack, and we live to fight another day ... and wage another battle. Right now, the run-of-the-mill joe is more worried about the Republican White House lunatic President Walker than they are the gay bar down the street. President Horse Thief hates the domestic partnership bill and everybody but everybody hates the Horse Thief. This is the ideal time for the measure to really make some headway."
"Ham," Jack said quietly, trying to keep his mental facts in a row, “you honestly expe
ct me to believe we might pass the dom part bill if you help?"
"Pass?” Ham said, frowning as he popped in some nicotine gum. “Possibly not ... this time. But you never, ever will pass it without me. It's how we play the game, son. You get a little closer to the goal every time."
"But even if we get the votes to pass it, President Walker is going to veto the thing out of the gate."
"Yes and then all you need is 2/3rds of the votes to override his Presidential veto. That's not a whole lot of people. With a chief executive as uniquely despised as the aforementioned horse thief, I dare say that would be doable among our cadre."
