The Race

by Richard North Patterson

  For a long time she simply stared up at him. Then, standing, she touched his sleeve. "Walk me back, okay?"

  They walked three blocks in silence, alone on the empty sidewalks. Only at the hotel did the doorman, trying hard not to stare, remind Corey of what they both could never escape.

  Turning, she looked at him, her gaze direct and steady. "Thanks for dinner," she said. "If I came off too harsh, I'm sorry."

  Once again, Corey felt the cell phone vibrating in his pocket. "Not too harsh. Just someone who doesn't know me.

  "Maybe you never will. But I promise not to see the next dinner as a Tracy-Hepburn film where I help you discover your inner girl--let alone your inner Republican."

  Lexie gave him a last fleeting smile. "No chance of that," she said and then, turning, vanished as the doorman whisked her through the entrance.

  Pondering her meaning, Corey resolved to find a cab.

  It took him five minutes to flag one. Only as they neared his town house did the sight of the Capitol, a glowing dome in the darkness, remind him to check his messages.

  There were three, all from Blake Rustin: Bob Christy, Rustin had it on good authority, was planning an announcement next week. "You flushed him out today," Rustin said with palpable satisfaction. "I'm pretty damn sure he'll run. After that, the only question is how badly he damages Rob Marotta, and what that does for you."

  11

  ON THE FIRST TUESDAY IN OCTOBER, COREY AND BLAKE RUSTIN watched the Reverend Bob Christy make his "special announcement."

  Christy sat in an overstuffed chair on the set of his TV show, speaking without notes as the camera framed his face. "For forty years," Christy said gravely, "I have watched our own government precipitate our nation's moral decline.

  "The day it began still burns in my memory. I was in divinity school, watching the news, when Walter Cronkite told us that the United States Supreme Court--the so-called protector of our liberties--had barred America's children from beginning their school day with a simple prayer to our Creator." Christy's voice thickened. "Tears came to my eyes. And yet I did nothing."

  "He's running," Rustin said.

  Christy leaned forward, his face filling the screen. "Ten years later, that same court told American women they had the right to murder their unborn children. And I realized that these nine judges had become the high priests of our government's new 'religion'--a secular humanism that knew no boundaries and saw no need of God."

  Sipping black coffee, Corey imagined his mother watching. "The man's good," he told Rustin. "You can agree or not, but he has a gift for touching the nerve endings of our social disquiet."

  "I had always disdained politics," Christy went on, "until I realized that our politics disdained our God.

  "How could God, I asked myself, ordain our form of government and then be indifferent to its works?" Christy's voice became low and stern. "But it was we who had become indifferent, heedless of our duty to ensure that America obeys God's laws.

  "Ever since that awful day when the Supreme Court sanctioned murder, millions of ordinary Americans have risen to fight a godless government that asks us to accept rampant divorce, sexual promiscuity, gay marriage, the relentless eradication of God from public life, and a contempt for life itself so profound that we dismember babies in their mothers' wombs." Christy's eyes moistened, and his mobile features appeared to sag with the weight of grief. "The outcome of this great battle remains in doubt. Two weeks ago, in the United States Senate, a group of renegade Republicans joined with Democrats to approve a death sentence for four hundred thousand potential lives who cannot speak in their own defense. Imagine what they would say if we could hear them."

  Christy paused, shaking his head in reproof. "It's all of a piece, whether abortion or stem-cell research. But this much is obvious: everyone who believes in abortion has already been born. Perhaps they do not see that a society that allows them to select which babies will die can also decide which old people will live."

  "This is where I get off the train," Corey observed. "Trying to cure paralysis doesn't lead to euthanasia."

  Briefly, Christy closed his eyes. "For two weeks," he said in a hushed voice, "I have prayed on what to do. In the millions, you have shared with me your hopes and prayers for our beloved, wayward country.

  "I have heard your voices and, I humbly believe, the voice of God Himself. And so the journey I began forty years ago has led me to this awesome day." Slowly, Christy's eyes opened, and he spoke in a husky tremor. "Today, grateful for your blessing, I declare my candidacy for president of the United States ..."

  "That tears it," Rustin said cheerfully. "Marotta's world just stopped spinning on its axis--"

  Corey's cell phone rang. Standing, Corey glanced at the number on his caller ID and wondered whose area code was 310. And then he knew.

  Answering, he said quietly, "This is a surprise."

  Rustin turned to look at him. "I don't exactly know how to say this," she told Corey, "but I've been thinking about you a lot."

  "And I you." Swiftly, he gathered his thoughts. "Where are you?"

  "On Martha's Vineyard. I've rented a place here until next week." She paused, then added, "I was wondering how you'd like the guesthouse."

  Corey hesitated, mentally scanning his calendar as he tried to assess the risks and the rewards of spending a celibate weekend with this particular instantly recognizable woman. In a tentative voice, she said, "I know you're busy ..."

  Abruptly, Corey decided. "Too late to head me off. Just tell me how to get there."

  Her laugh conveyed relief, as though she had feared rejection. "There are airplanes that fly from Boston. Sort of like the one the Wright brothers used--one pilot and a couple of propellers."

  "I've flown worse," Corey answered.

  Hanging up, he found himself smiling at Bob Christy. "Who was that?" Rustin asked. "Here's Christy trying to make you president, and you look like you just had a lobotomy."

  Corey felt his face close. "Unless I run for president, Blake, my private life's my own."

  12

  THREE DAYS LATER, COREY FLEW TO MARTHA'S VINEYARD. HE TOLD NO one of his plans; nor did she meet him at the airport. Whatever else, they'd agreed, it was better to get him on and off the island without creating problems for both of them.

  The place she had rented in Chilmark was an eccentric rambling structure that seemed to have been constructed at different times in clashing architectural styles. Parking his rental car, Corey, as instructed, searched for her out back.

  He found her lounging on a patio facing a grassy field that led to the white-capped waters of the Atlantic Ocean glistening in the midafternoon sun. Dressed in blue jeans and a wool sweater, Lexie held a book on her lap, reading so intently through half-glasses that she reminded him less of a movie star than an unusually attractive doctoral student. "Hi," he said.

  She started visibly and then, almost at once, laughed at herself. "Sorry," she said. "I spook sometimes. Guess I got lost in this story."

  "What is it?"

  "A novel by a young Nigerian woman, based on the death of a writer hanged for exposing his government's dealings with an oil cartel. The author wrote it because no one seemed to remember him." Rising, she briefly touched Corey's arm. "Anyhow, welcome."

  "Thanks." Hands in the pockets of his khaki pants, Corey eyed the house. "What's the history of this place?"

  "Eccentric. It was built by a local artist as a kind of rustic camp. When he began selling paintings, he started adding rooms whenever the whim struck him." She waved an arm toward a sunroom that jutted from the house like a trailer that had been blown there by a hurricane. "As you can see, the man's sense of proportion was confined to his art. But the views are great, and most people don't even know this place is here." Smiling, she added, "Besides, I kind of like the house--it reminds me of this old rag doll I kept patching up until her button eyes were different colors and all her arms and legs were crooked. Somehow, I feel like I can't abandon it.
"

  Something in the story struck him as characteristic--it was easy to envision her as the child who wove fantasies beneath a mossy tree. He was surprised to realize that, whatever the cause, she seemed more accessible than the guarded woman he had met in Washington.

  "Care to show me around?" he asked.

  Leading him from room to room, she pointed out a mishmash of fixtures and furniture as quirky as the house itself. The tour ended on a second-story deck that commanded a panoramic view of the ocean on this Indian summer day. "And here's the ocean," she said appreciatively. "Another reason I come here."

  "How did you find this place?"

  She leaned against the railing, gazing across the sea grass at the water. "I'd always heard of the Vineyard--the town of Oak Bluffs was a center of the abolitionist movement, and it's become a haven for black intellectuals, or just black families looking for a socially comfortable place to vacation. Spike Lee lives there on and off. But years ago, when I first decided to come here, Spike's place was occupied, and I desperately needed to be alone. This," she finished quietly, "was alone."

  Corey joined her at the railing. "Was there some crisis?"

  She seemed to ponder the question. "A mini-crisis of the soul, I guess. Ron and I had broken up the year before, and I was drifting, still hurt, still not knowing what had happened to us. So I did about the dumbest thing I could have done--I had an affair with a costar."

  "Dumb?" Corey asked. "Or human?"

  "Dumb," she said emphatically. "And potentially hurtful to people other than me. Specifically, his nice blond wife and three blond kids."

  "Maybe so," Corey allowed. "But I know a little about this subject. It was his marriage, after all."

  "So I told myself. But I knew better than that, just like I knew what was happening to us both." Her tone filled with regret. "We spent two months filming in Corsica--no role you can play is as unreal as the atmosphere on a movie set. You don't take out the garbage anymore. Everything you say is funny. And you're intensely involved with people who, like you, are totally removed from any reality except the story that's become your common obsession. In this case, a love story.

  "If you want a completely romantic, affair-spawning environment, that's about the best there is. And the problems are so obvious." She turned to him. "What makes sense on location makes no sense in life. I turned to this man for reassurance--that I was a desirable woman whose sexuality was merely dormant. And I could have ruined the perfectly okay marriage of a guy I was using to try to make me whole.

  "So I broke it off, and came here to reflect. By the time I left, two weeks later, I'd regained some semblance of balance. I've worked to hold on to that ever since."

  The story, Corey sensed, was one of the puzzle pieces that made up Lexie Hart. But it was only one piece, and he was certain he had much more to learn. As she studied him, a trace of doubt surfacing in her eyes, Corey wondered if she had somehow read his thoughts.

  "Now that you're here," she said. "I'm not quite sure what to do with you."

  "Easy," he answered. "Feed me."

  THEY SET OUT for the fishing village of Menemsha, where, Lexie promised, they could grab the best cooked lobster on the island. "Speaking of unreal," Corey remarked, "you know you're living right when lobster's your idea of takeout."

  Smiling, Lexie focused on the two-lane road that wound past the stone walls and grassy fields that, for Corey, typified New England. "You'll be back in your own unreal world soon enough," she said. "Was it hard to get away?"

  "From my staff, for sure. Also from presidential politics--I'm afraid I'll be devoting some of our time to figuring out what I should do. I guess you saw that Christy's running."

  "And I guess you're not surprised," she answered wryly. "Not since I persuaded you to go after all those embryos Christy's sworn to protect."

  Corey turned to her. "What do you make of him?"

  "Christy?" The shoulders beneath her wool sweater briefly twitched. "Maybe the man's sincere. But I listen to him, and just can't help but think back on all the preachers in my childhood who knew, absolutely knew, that the Bible forbade our races to mix, and whose fundamentalist God hated me and mine.

  "When I was maybe seven, my mama looked after a white boy about my age. I had this baby crush on him. One day Mama told me, 'Don't be so attached to Stevie. Someday that boy may grow up to call you "nigger."'

  "He more or less did. He also grew up to be a preacher." Pulling down the sun visor, she said, "Christy fights for the unborn like there's no tomorrow. But once black kids get born, he doesn't have much to say about how they're housed or fed or educated--just a bunch of pious stuff about 'our common pathway to eternity.' Between birth and death, I think he sees us not at all."

  When they got to Menemsha, Corey went to the fish market, and Lexie stayed in the car. He wondered if that made her feel as strange as it did him.

  THE PLACE SHE took him was accessible only by a dirt road so uneven that it caused Lexie's Jeep to vibrate with each jolt. But once they reached the sandy trail leading through sea grass to the rise from which the beach descended, he understood why they had come.

  Blessed with a western exposure, miles of white sand and half-buried rocks stretched toward the red-clay promontory on which the Gay Head lighthouse stood, a distant shape against the cobalt blue of early evening. Across the sparkling water that swept to the Elizabeth Islands, a lowering sun backlit a skein of clouds, filtering the light that caught the whitecaps and tinted the varying colors--green sea grass, aqua water, gray rocks, brown sand--with a filmic sepia tone.

  "Beautiful," he said.

  Lexie nodded. "For me, the real draw's the ocean. I can watch the water for hours and never know where the time has gone."

  They spread her blanket between two rocks that provided shelter from the breeze. While Lexie arranged their meal--lobster, French bread, a fresh salad--Corey opened a bottle of mineral water, feeling both the strangeness and the stimulation of being alone with her. Filling her paper cup, he inquired, "What should we drink to?"

  "I don't really know," Lexie said, covering her hesitancy with a smile. "Confusion, maybe. Or ambiguity."

  "Oh," Corey said lightly, "those I live with every day."

  They sat quietly for a time, eating lobster coated with butter and lemon. "I did wonder, though," Corey said at last, "what moved you to invite me."

  "I wasn't going to," she answered with a slight laugh. "First I had to check your voting record and read a few of your speeches."

  Corey studied her more closely. "You're serious, aren't you? That wasn't a joke."

  The complex look she gave him was a mix of amusement, embarrassment, and defiance. "I told you how I felt about Republicans. But there's not much about your record that I could quarrel with. I especially liked the speech in which you called opposition to the Voting Rights Act 'genteel racism disguised as the pious belief that equality has arrived.'" She smiled briefly. "Though you've still got a ways to go, seeing how you belong to a party financed by rich white guys like Alex Rohr, whose basic premise is that we should make them even more entitled than they are. Sure you don't want to just ditch these people?"

  "Ditch them?" Corey answered with a smile. "I'm their salvation. They just don't know it yet."

  She shot him a look of skepticism. "We really do need to talk about that. But maybe I should have patience enough to let you eat."

  They finished their meal in amiable silence. Learning back against a rock, Corey watched the sun light the clouds bright orange as it slipped beneath the water. "This film project of yours," he asked, "would you mind telling me about it?"

  Lexie frowned. "Describing it makes me feel superstitious. Like if I talk about the story, it will never become a movie--that somehow it'll be taken from me. Paranoid, I guess."

  "No, I think I understand."

  Darkness began to envelop them. Then, to Corey's surprise, she said quietly, "It's a normal coming-of-age story, in a sense. Except that the boy invo
lved is black, and sixteen, and caught between his brother's gang life and all the potential he has to grab hold of a different future. It's not an uplifting story--I want people to see the truth. And here the truth means tragedy.

  "We've lost three generations of young black men, and all politicians can think to do is jack up the penalties for crack cocaine." Her voice remained quiet. "There's surely more 'white America' can do, but much more we need to be doing for ourselves. That's what I'm trying to say."

  Moments passed, their silence seeming more intimate than before. Behind them, Corey noticed, a quarter moon had materialized above the sea grass. "If you were running for president," Lexie finally asked, "would you have come?"

  In the darkness, he could not read her expression. "I don't know," he said. "There's more in that question than I can easily answer."

  "Well," she responded softly, "at least that's honest."

  They fell silent again. When Corey reached for her hand, she did not try to remove it. Her skin felt warm to the touch.

  13

  THEY SPENT THE WEEKEND HIKING, KAYAKING, RUNNING ON THE beach, and talking about whatever struck them, whether trivial or serious. The only time they parted was at night, the long stretches when Corey found himself awake--conscious of her closeness, wondering if she, too, was thinking of him.

  On Sunday afternoon, they climbed the winding trail to Waskosims Rock. Sitting atop the hill, they took in a sweeping vista of woods and fields; the leaves were turning, and the oak trees were burnished with red-orange as far as Corey could see. The woods had once been farmland, Lexie told him, until the farmers had moved on and nature had reclaimed the land; the old stone walls that threaded the woodland were the last signs of that agrarian past. "All through New England," Lexie said, "there's this feeling of abandonment, of people who simply vanished. To me it feels almost druidical, like I'm visiting Stonehenge--walls slowly crumbling, markers in untended graveyards leaning at odd angles, with the names half-erased by wind and weather. I'll stop at one of those places and think, Who were these people? What were they like?"