by Melody Clark
“So I guess you're not going home?” Jack asked.
“Not a chance. You’re a danger to yourself enough when you’re sober. Just ask Izzy.”
Remembering, Jack looked up and around to find an empty room beyond them. He felt a familiar jolt of pain at her absence. Her absence again.
“She’s gone?” T.J. said, as if he’d read the vacant sadness on Jack’s face.
“Yes. She’s gone.” Jack pulled T.J. into the crook of his arm. “But you’re still here. Now get some sleep.”
“Thank you. I am exhausted,” T.J. confessed in a small, tired voice. “But I’ll stay up until you’re asleep.”
“I’m an insomniac, Delaney. I’ll be up for hours. It’s a comfort to have you here, though. Asleep or awake.”
“Thanks, Jack,” T.J. said, in an even smaller voice. His lips bent up in a smile as he closed his eyes. “Wake me if you need me.”
“I will,” he said.
Jack lay there for an hour, staring out the big bedroom window that ran the length of the other wall, the window that Izzy had called their stararium. Lights of the block blinked out one by one until there were no more lights to ponder. A huge purple rabbit hopped past the window, but Jack pretty much chalked that up to the hallucinogen.
At the thought that Jack might be in danger, T.J. had left his own party, from which Jack had fled in a jealous snit.
He thought about what T.J. had asked for and the piss-poor assurances he had given him. How could he promise more? If life had taught Jack anything, it was the impermanence of everything. Even love was transitory. Poets had warned of it forever, but no heart wanted to believe it.
Robert Frost had warned of it in the best way.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day ...
Jack murmured softly into the sleeping man’s ginger-brown hair, "Nothing gold can stay."
Chapter Three
"Oh my God!" Taneesha said over the office phone line, looking all around her to make certain the office was still empty. "Lee, you will not believe it! You will just not believe it! Oh my God!"
"Tell me, Tan! I'm dying here! You wouldn't tell me on my cell phone," Lee said over the sound of his bag being dumped under his desk.
She took a steadying breath like a kid waiting on a huge Christmas secret. "Senator Jefferson didn't come home last night, did he?"
"No, he called and told his butler he wouldn’t be home," Lee said, clearly surprised she had known. "In fact, my husband and I had to stay and lock up the place. Do you know where he is? He was supposed to pick me up this morning, but he's not answering on his house or his cell. I was getting worried."
Taneesha stifled a laugh that turned into an excited snort of a sentence that tried to come out all at once. "I called Jack early, as soon as I got in this morning, to read him his monthly quarterlies and guess what half-asleep person answered the phone!"
"Who?"
"Who do you think? Who are we talking about?"
"Oh my God!"
"Like I said!"
"Oh my God! Oh my God! What did he ... was he --"
"Wait for it. Like I said, he had way obviously been all asleep when I called, right? And I'm all bug ass startled comin' out with it, right, but then I calmed down and said could I talk to Jack. And then Senator Jefferson says, in this smoky little bedroom voice, like he was right there next to him, Jackie, phone call."
"Oh, my God! They're back together."
"I know!"
"They're really back together."
"I know!"
"This is fabulous. What do we do now?"
"Let's keep our ears open and report back anything that we see."
"I'm down with that homegirl," Lee said, each word dripping with sarcasm as he turned his head to the side and saw Jefferson about to open his office door. Lee cleared his throat theatrically. "So like I was saying, I got that information you wanted from the Office of Offices which I didn't even know existed."
"Shit, he just walked in, didn't he?" Taneesha said. "That means mine will be here any second, too."
"Mm-hm," Lee said, giving a good morning wave to his employer who was smiling at him knowingly as he walked past him toward his own office. "Okay, here's everything I could find. That building is new construction but they built the damned thing around a heritage protected structure for some reason so I had to go all the way down to Mrs. Tennyson, that old Miz Beasley-looking bitch at Nat Historic.”
“I hate her!”
“Tell me about it, she’s about as friendly as a rotten egg. Anyway, the damned, stupid old structure is top secret. No one has had an office in that room in 200 years. End of story. It's real old but before it got the building put around it, the heritage site was used for storage for like a hundred thousand years. Because it’s all need-to-know, I couldn’t find out more."
"Okay, I had to ask," Taneesha said, sighing audibly. "I knew it wouldn't come to anything. I looked and looked and I cannot find any record of him having an office anywhere near the Banks building.”
"Then you've done all you can do," he said.
"Lee," a voice shot over his shoulder.
The younger man looked around to find Thomas half-smiling at him and half-reading his PDA.
"Sir, yes, sir," Lee said, saluting.
Thomas shone back a truly unusual smile while he read the data in his hand with a gradually wrinkling brow. He distracted himself long enough to tell his secretary, "First, I apologize for not picking you up. I was … detained. Secondly, please ask Taneesha to have Jack come over here in a half an hour. Tell her it's important." He gave him a final teasing smile. "I mean, if you're all done catching up with the Cap Hill gossip."
Lee tilted a guilty smile in his direction. "Sir, yes, sir. Tan, gotta run."
"I heard, I heard. Later, tater."
Taneesha set the phone down and looked up to see out the glass doors as a familiar figure opened one of them.
"Well, well, well, well, well," she said brightly, folding her arms together then broadcasting a generous smile.
Jack grinned a little in return. "Well, well, well, well, well what?
"Just my way of asking if you had a pleasant evening?"
Jack smirked. "Not nearly as much fun as you’re thinking."
"You don't pay me to think, Jack."
"Yeah, right," he said, laughing and nodding. "So what absolutely pressing message can't I possibly ignore this morning?"
"It's a nice one this morning," she said, grinning widely. "Senator Thomas Jefferson requests the honor of your presence at his office as soon as possible. He says it's important."
Jack tried to suppress a chuckle. "With Tommy, it always is.”
Taneesha’s lips stretched into a knowing smile. “Oh, so it’s Tommy now.”
“It’s always been Tommy. Or T.J. or Thomas. Or various other things, when we’re not around the office. Speaking of offices – ”
She groaned a little before she drew a deep breath and ventured on. "Jack, I love you, like my own weird brother, but honestly, you never had an office there. That’s all the hell southwest, on Morton Street. You never even had an office near there. Why would you even have one there?”
"Then how come I remember it so clearly?"
"Do I know? Maybe you dreamed it or saw it in a picture or a movie and just projected that onto a room that looks like it. The damned thing is as old as the oldest buildings around here. I mean, I could swear I'd been all over England from all those Merchant and Ivory movies my auntie made me watch when I was a kid."
"Maybe." He thought it through, shrugging with no certainty at all. "Or maybe it was before you."
"Nothing is before me, Jack!" she said with a sigh of real despair. "I came to work for Isabel when you were still part of the Barber First Amendment practice after you passed the bar exam. I had my orthodontic braces off the week before I started. I got married. I have a baby. I even got some gr
ay in my hair. You know how old I am?"
"But I have a distinct memory of that room. Of that wall. And there’s even something important about it … something about it I can’t remember. Like it’s so important that it bugs me that I don’t remember. Ya know?"
"Well, I am fresh out of ideas. I am merely the world's best secretary. I am not omniscient, no matter how perfect you may think I am."
Jack thought for a moment then finally gave a gesture of conditional surrender. "Okay, well, keep digging for me anyway, will you?" he asked, pulling open the door again, pausing before going.
"I will, Jack, I will," Taneesha said. She then shifted into full teasing mode before Paulson had passed through the door. "Feel free to take a long, hot lunch with Senator Jefferson. I mean, if you feel so inclined."
Jack grinned and laughed a little awkwardly as he opened the door to go out. "Ms. Taneesha --"
"I know, I know, ain't none of my business."
"No," he said, smiling. "I was just going to say thank you ... I just might do that."
Lee was typing on something as Jack walked into Jefferson's office. Jack nodded to the closed office door. "Is T.J. in -- "
"Yes, he's waiting for --"
The door to the inner office swept open. "Get in here! You've got to see this!"
"See what?" Jack asked, following the other man into the office, closing the door quickly behind them.
He handed Jack his PDA. "I got an email with the list from that fellow I was prick-teasing last night. It's astonishing."
"Do we know what the damned list is in the first place?”
"You know what they always call the Hotel Hines-Windsor?"
"The In Flagrante Delicto, of course."
T.J. nodded. "The list contains the reserve suite listing. Room assignments, names, special requests for, well, let's say particular supplies. They have scans of everything. Credit cards, identification, signatures, everything.”
Jack's jaw dropped open in shock. He quickly scanned the screen. "Gee,” he said wryly. “Any big names?"
"Huge names. Gay, straight and everything in between participating in a truly mind-numbing array of fetishes and kinks and bizarre costumes. Some I didn't even know existed and truly would have preferred to remain ignorant about. I mean, doesn't an otter have claws?"
Jack squinted harder. "I don't think I want to know why you're asking that question."
"Page down. See for yourself. There is another part we don't have yet and it's reportedly the biggie. My source said he'd have it tomorrow. I suspect he's holding out for money.”
"Oh, my God." Jack continued scanning. "You're not kidding. Half the No-Homos voting block is on here. And shit, here's Deke Mendelsohn. No wonder the kid was sweating bullets."
"I know."
"Where is your source getting it from?"
"Someone who works on staff at the hotel,” T.J. said. “He has all of the substantiating evidence. Because of the anti-gay political orientation of the No-Homos block and the obvious fact they are hotel patrons, the supposed aim was to shame them in public. Not the best of intentions but then again if their guests weren't hypocrites, they wouldn't be ashamed. More likely, the staff members were going to blackmail people.”
Jack focused harder on the screen. "What in the hell could you use an ice cream maker for? Sexually, I mean."
"I think that, too, is a secret best kept by the ages."
Jefferson's interoffice line buzzed. Lee’s voice interrupted, "Senator Hamilton on line two."
"Thank you, Lee," T.J. replied, pressing the indicated line. "Want me to put it on speaker? It's probably about this. I swear to Christ the big bastard has the office bugged."
Jack shook his head. "Of that, I have no doubt. Go ahead and put him on speaker. He's probably looking for me anyway. He always is."
T.J. pressed a button. "Ham, you old scoundrel," he said, dropping into a chair while he motioned Jack toward one. "Where have you been keeping yourself?"
"In the potty trying to piss most of the morning, like many men my age. Right now, I'm about to tee off. Is my party paisan, Jack, there with you?"
"Hello, Ham," Jack added tiredly.
"Hello backatcha. I hear you boys got a digital copy of the big list everyone is talking about."
T.J. shot an amazed look at Jack. Jack shrugged wildly. "Yes, yes, we do as a matter of fact. How on earth did you know that?"
"We all got our sources. It appears you gay boys got quite a network goin' for ya," Hamilton said. "I got just the way to use that list. I thought you boys might want to join me in a few rounds. You know where the Big Green T is?"
"Big Green T?" T.J. said uncertainly, looking over at Jack who was shrugging again. "Not off hand, but we'll find it."
"When you said teeing off, somehow I had a different image," T.J. said, grinning over at the multi-colored octopus smiling at them from the pink front gate.
"Any candy ass pansy ... no offense ... can play the regular kind. It takes a real man to play miniature golf, boys," Hamilton said, as he stepped up to the little pink castle with the moonbeams shooting out of the front that came together and became a hopeful hole in one atop the balcony wall. "Real golf takes too damn long plus I need a little green time for my soul. And we need to get away from dangerous ears, so here we are. I must say though, you do make a pretty piss poor caddy, Jack."
"I wasn't aware you needed a caddy for miniature golf," Jack said, in the throes of abject boredom.
"Oh, you don't. But you’re too big of a pissy-pants to play and we needed to involve you in the game somehow. Plus it builds character to carry around lavender golf balls and clubs. It's a test of your level of comfort with your sexuality. I ought to tell you that it ain't passing just now." Hamilton walked up to the tee and poised his lavender club. He sliced the putt -- the ball hopped across the moonbeams and flew straight into the big frog's mouth. "God dang it!"
"Nice shot," Jack said uncertainly.
"No, it wasn't. I was aiming for the goddamned parapet. That's the next hole over. Your turn, Thomas."
T.J. grinned over at Jack who was squeezing at his eyes and making a low frustrated groaning sound.
"Very well. It has been awhile but I think I can do this,” T.J said. Teeing his ball and aiming his club, Thomas swung and then connected with a straight shot right into the parapet.
"Now, that's a nice shot," Hamilton observed.
"I have nieces and nephews," T.J. explained.
"Do you now? It's good to be around family," Hamilton said, as the three men walked up the dragon back bridge to the fiery snout where the big frog sat with Hamilton's ball still stuck in its gaping mouth. Hamilton returned the ball to the right position. He wielded his mini-club again then eyed the shot. He paused before putting and looked around at the other men. "Either of you boys notice the sad state of chocolate candy bars in this country?"
"No, but we can launch a discovery committee," Jack shot back, still bored.
Hamilton cackled in reply. "Jack, my boy, you slay me. No need for discovery, I already know all there is to know.”
“Why do I sense a southern oration coming on?” Jack asked.
“Because one is,” Hamilton said, grinning. “I have a pack of grandsons, mostly good boys, mind you. And I have noticed that those one-dollar chocolate bars I buy 'em aren’t nearly half as good as the ones I used to get when I was a puppy for two to a quarter at the neighborhood five-and-dime. Don't believe this happy horseshit about low food inflation, fellas. Instead of raising the whole price much, they baffle us with bullshit and lower the quality too. It’s the old toad in the hot water trick. So don't you boys baffle me with any more bullshit. I got about all I can handle. Comprende?"
T.J. nodded. "Understood."
"This list. How much of it do you boys have?"
"Three pages," T.J. said simply, succinctly.
Hamilton nodded. "I'm given to understand there are four and a half pages in total, aside from the scanned documents
."
T.J. glanced over at Jack. "We'd heard four."
"No, it's four and a half. I know that to a certainty."
T.J. squinted in growing concern. "How could you know at all?"
