Lexie fell silent.
THEY ATE DINNER by candlelight, talking quietly. The evening had a faintly elegiac quality; before she went upstairs, Lexie kissed him gently on the lips.
Corey tingled with surprise. "What was that for?" he asked.
"For coming. And for staying when you could have left."
Once again, Corey could not sleep.
Deep in the night, he heard a quiet knock on the door. Then it opened, and moonlight framed her silhouette.
"Don't ask," she said softly. "Just accept that I want to be here."
She stood beside his bed, still for a moment. In the darkness he heard, but could not see, her robe dropping to the floor. Then she slipped beneath cool sheets.
Silent, they lay facing each other, inches apart. Reaching for her hand, Corey felt the pulse beneath Lexie's slender wrist. He leaned forward to kiss her, gently, and then she rested her forehead against his shoulder.
They stayed like that for a time, their bodies not quite touching. Corey traced her spine with his fingertips, aroused by her closeness but knowing there must be no rush. When he kissed the nape of her neck, he felt her quiver. The scent of her hair was sweet.
As she stretched, offering more of her, the tips of her breasts grazed his chest. Corey felt a current of desire. Touch was his means of sight.
His fingers slid to the base of her spine and, palm opening, brought her closer to him. She froze for an instant, then kissed him softly on the mouth. As the length of their bodies met, the tip of her tongue touched his.
Their kiss went deeper. Then Corey's lips slid down her throat, her breasts, the taut flatness of her stomach and, finally, lower still. This new intimacy drew a soft cry from her lips. The cry, repeated, and the rise of her hips signaled her insistence that this not stop. When at last she quivered with release, her fingers entwined his hair.
As Corey entered her, he felt her gazing into his face.
They began moving together, slowly at first, then with greater urgency. At the edges of his consciousness, Corey sensed her detaching from him, as though, even as her body merged with his, some part of her had slipped away. Her cry of fulfillment sounded solitary.
Swept up in his own release, Corey no longer thought at all.
LYING BESIDE HER, he tried to sort out the reason she had come to him; despite the deep mutuality of their desire, the intense closeness had dissipated into a tangible sense of her apartness. "Talk to me," he said.
She slid away, lying on her back beside him, only their fingers touching. In her silence Corey felt the intensity of thought.
"It matters to me, Lexie. I don't want you to hide."
He heard her draw a breath. Still gazing at the ceiling, Lexie began speaking in a monotone.
18
SHE WAS TWENTY-FOUR THEN, A PEACE CORPS VOLUNTEER AT THE END of her tour in rural Colombia. She arrived at a regional airport, the first leg of a trip that would bring her home to Greenville for two weeks with her mother, and then on to the fresh and daunting challenge of Yale Drama School.
As she checked through security, preoccupied with imaginings of her future, two uniformed guards with handguns pulled her aside.
Lexie assumed they were looking for cocaine. She had none: intent on her studies, she had not even smoked dope in college. Only when they led her to a windowless room did she sense her vulnerability.
She looked at the men more closely. One was mustached and cadaverous; the other squat, with the face of an Aztec mask. The first guard motioned Lexie to a chair, questioning her in soft, insistent Spanish--why was she here, why did she seem afraid. At the edge of her vision, the other man, his heavily muscled back turned toward her, rifled her backpack.
She had nothing to hide, Lexie insisted. Her tongue felt thick.
Turning, the squat man held aloft a small plastic bag of white powder, eyebrows arching in his cruelly impassive face.
"Cocaine," he said. "Unless you cooperate, you will spend many years in jail."
Panicking, Lexie began to protest.
The thin man shook his head. When he unzipped his pants, his penis was already hard.
The squat man pushed her head down.
Afterward, as she sobbed, the man she had sated held a revolver to her head.
They permitted her to undress herself. Then they shoved her to a mattress in the corner of the room. She fell to her knees, begging first in English, then in Spanish.
They pushed her onto her back. As the squat man entered her, she tried to detach herself, to force her mind to separate from her body. The tears running down her face felt like someone else's.
The second man, aroused again, thrust into her. When he was done, they rolled her on her stomach for the first man's use. There were several ways, he told her in Spanish, to take pleasure from an American woman. Close to unconscious, Lexie realized through her shock and anguish that they knew at least one word of English.
Nigger, the squat man repeated harshly, and laughed.
WHEN LEXIE LEFT the room at last, each step was that of an automaton. She went to the bathroom and vomited; afterward, still weak-kneed, she tried to wash herself, as though to erase what they had done. Boarding the plane, she felt the dull ache of her body, the residue of violation.
She changed planes twice, speaking only when addressed. Feigning sleep, she curled in her seat, her back to whomever they seated next to her. She barely acknowledged offers of a meal.
Her mother greeted her at the airport, eyes welling with the joy of Lexie's return. Embracing her, she complained, "You look like a zombie, girl."
Lexie kissed her forehead. "It was a long flight, Mama. I'll feel better soon."
LISTENING TO LEXIE'S story, Corey wrapped his fingers around hers. "I didn't tell anyone," she said. "I was female, and black, too often invisible growing up. And Daddy's heart condition had taught me the habit of silence."
"Even about this?"
"When it mattered," she answered wearily, "I couldn't make those two men hear me, or see me as a girl anyone loved. They didn't just violate my body--they took part of my humanity. I'd become invisible again.
"All I wanted was to erase that moment forever."
SHE FOUND A boyfriend at Yale--an acting student who burned so brightly that he seemed to live at the extremity of his nerves.
"Heroin," Lexie told Corey flatly. "The perfect rabbit hole for me to crawl down. I experienced each sensation vividly, and felt nothing at all inside.
"I was company for Peter. That was all he wanted from me." Her tone became flat again. "We snorted heroin every night. I learned to function, get myself through the school year. The day it ended, I flew to Mexico and checked into a seedy hotel near Cancun.
"I called Mama to say we were on vacation, and locked the door. Then I shook and writhed and sweated until I was all dried out." Corey felt her turn to face him. "I've watched you wonder why I don't drink alcohol. In Mexico, I looked in the mirror and saw an addict, with burn holes for eyes. I never want to know that woman again."
"At least you learned something important, Lexie--that you're strong."
Lexie inhaled. "Kicking heroin was the easy part. The rest is harder to fix."
HER SEPARATENESS, AND her silence, became part of who she was.
"Even after I married Ron," she said, "I chose not to tell him. Just like you never told Janice about Clay.
"Maybe I thought Ron was too caught up in his own worries and needs to really see me. And maybe that was what I wanted: a man who, even during sex, was focused on his own desires." She turned on her back again. "In a way, I underrated him. But only in a way."
"How so?"
"After I found out he was cheating, I asked if we could see a therapist. That's when he first described for me how distant I was, as a woman and as a lover--that there was something about me he couldn't touch.
"I forced myself to tell him the story, tears streaming down my face, with a male therapist sitting between us. After I finished, all Ro
n could say was 'My God, Lexie, I didn't rape you.' That's when I knew we were done."
COREY LET MOMENTS pass, trying to absorb all she had told him. Quietly, he asked, "Why did you come to me tonight?"
"I'm not sure yet. Maybe because I think you're going to run."
"And so you decided to sleep with me?"
She turned to face him. "If you do run, that fact will come between us, for all the reasons we understood before I called you. And now you know another reason.
"Nothing that's happened between us gives me the right to even hope that you won't run. And I didn't make love with you to give you second thoughts." Her voice became dismissive. "Maybe accepting your ambitions is a form of self-protection. There's a built-in end to us, and it won't be anyone's fault."
Sifting through his emotions, Corey found that the thought of never seeing her again made him feel far lonelier than before. "Don't be so sure of what I want."
"You should think about that very hard," she answered evenly. "As I will."
They did not make love again. At length, quiet, she fell asleep in his arms. Sleepless, he listened to the rhythm of her breathing.
In the morning, Corey drove to the airport alone.
19
ON WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, COREY DROVE WITH JACK WALTERS TO the horse country of Virginia, where his media adviser, Brian Lacey, owned a farm, a place for them to assess, without being seen or heard, Corey's chances of winning the presidency.
Blake Rustin was already there. The four men sat on Lacey's brick patio around a table covered with printouts and charts, the bones of Corey's prospective candidacy. Despite all of Rustin's prior successes, Corey knew, this was his chief adviser's chance to leave an indelible mark by placing an insurgent candidate in the White House, and his sense of urgency was matched by his preparation.
"We've done blind polling," he told the others, "describing Corey, Marotta, and Christy only by their attributes. For Corey, the key phrases are 'war hero,' 'independent,' 'defies his party on money in politics,' and 'not captive to the Christian Right.'" Facing Corey, he said, "You beat Christy by thirteen points, and Marotta by eleven--"
Corey looked at him quizzically. "Just how did you describe Marotta, Blake?"
A keen look crossed Brian Lacey's diplomat's face. "Marotta," Rustin answered, "is a professional politician with a cherubic-looking wife. His calling card is 'father of five' and 'stands up for family values.'
"You're a genuine hero, Corey. People trust you to clean up corruption, make your own decisions, and straighten out this fucked-up 'war on terror.'" Rustin placed his fingers on a sheet of data. "You risked your life to shoot down that Iraqi general, and then withstood torture at the hands of Arab enemies. That's invaluable."
Not if you saw Joe Fitts's severed head, Corey wanted to say. Instead he turned, gazing at three dappled horses cantering in a field. Briefly detached from the others, he wondered what Lexie might think of this meeting, or the truth about Joe's death.
"Blake's right," Lacey interposed. "I know you don't like to cash in on your medals, Corey. But ads with pictures of you and your navigator would have a real impact."
Corey did not respond. Turning to Rustin, he asked, "Did you run any polls with real names attached?"
"Of course. Among likely Republican primary voters, you're neck and neck with Christy, and only seven points behind Marotta--"
"In other words," Corey interrupted, "my fellow Republicans like my biography until they know it's me. To Magnus Price, the real me comes with attributes like 'soft on gays,' 'callous toward stem cells,' 'panders to blacks,' and 'indifferent to the moral concerns of Christians.' Along with charming personal qualities like 'arrogant,' 'crummy father,' and, worst of all, 'unmarried,' which leaves open the question of which sex I might be having extramarital sex with. In the fever swamp of the Republican right, I'm as appealing as Chairman Mao."
As Rustin scrutinized him, Corey could read his anxious, unspoken question: Where were you last weekend, and with whom? "I grant your problems with our party, Corey. And, yes, I wish you'd beaten Marotta to Mary Rose. But if we can get you to the general election, Americans will make you the next president of the United States."
Even in this jaded company, Corey saw the talismanic power of those words. And he felt sympathy for Rustin, whose ambitions could only be realized through his surrogate, and who could only fret as Corey decided. "Chances are I never get to the general election," Corey argued. "Why do you think Marotta and Christy are fighting for the title of God's second-born child? In primaries like South Carolina, where turnout is low, the predominant voters are conservatives galvanized by their church, Christian talk radio, and even the hit men at Rohr News."
"Not this year," Lacey countered. "This may be the year that Marotta and Bob Christy tear Price's grand design apart--a year, by the way, in which Americans are more frightened and confused than ever about how we combat terror. And they've moved the primaries up in states like New York and California, where you figure to do well!
"Who knows what happens if there's another 9/11? By the time they get through with each other, Marotta and Christy may look like pygmies compared to Osama bin Laden. That leaves you." Lacey's speech became ever more insistent. "Only you can get to all the young people who don't vote. Only you can offer hope instead of rancor and division. Only you have the charisma to go over the head of the donor classes, and bail this party out of the mess it's in. And this year may be the only year that you can change our party for good. So I ask you, Corey: do you have the right not to run?"
Once more, Corey was silent; Lacey was deeply experienced, and his instincts were as sharp as his skill at crafting a message. Watching Corey's face, Jack Walters suggested, "Let's go over the issues--gay rights, for an opener. What do you think, Blake?"
Rustin eyed Corey with a wary expression. "We have to finesse that. Corey doesn't want to be for a constitutional ban on gay marriage. The classically conservative thing to say is that we're against it but we don't need to tamper with the Constitution."
"What about civil unions?" Lacey asked. "That's trickier."
"We should be against them, at least for now. But quietly." Turning to Corey, Rustin elaborated, "In the short term, we have to pacify suburban moderates without making religious conservatives irate. The subtle message to suburbanites is 'Keep having gay cousin Arnie and his partner to Thanksgiving, and eventually we'll work things out.' I know you don't want us to be the 'mean party,' Corey."
"So you can live with my vote on stem cells?"
"Under these circumstances, yes. With Christy and Marotta splitting Christian voters, that vote on stem cells enhances your appeal to centrists." He paused, then added, "Still, you might start going to church. Some plain-vanilla denomination, like Methodist or Presbyterian--Episcopalians are turning gay men into bishops, so they're out. It could help to put out that your mom's an evangelical--"
"Mom," Corey said succinctly, "is staying where she is. If God supports my candidacy, He isn't telling her. Pray that Christy and Marotta leave her out of this."
Walters kept his eyes on Corey. "There's also affirmative action."
"Oh," Corey said quickly, "I'm against that."
Brian Lacey raised his eyebrows. "Really?"
"For white people," Corey amended with a smile. "From my own experience, being a privileged white guy is the biggest affirmative action program in America--anyone who doesn't get that isn't paying attention. So I'm absolutely against more privileges for guys like us."
Lacey's own smile was a wispy ghost. "I hope you're not planning to say that."
"Not as I just put it, Brian. But we both know that there's still a racial problem, and our party's response is slickly packaged condescension." Scanning the others, Corey said, "Look at our last convention. There were more black entertainers on the stage than black delegates in the hall--Rohr News interviewed all nine of them, I think.
"Our outreach to minorities is a joke. Someday we'll realize that s
ticking symbolic black folks in the cabinet doesn't cut it anymore." Standing, Corey asked, "So is everyone interested in how the world looks to me?"
"Of course," Rustin answered. "We all are."
"Our military is degraded from fighting the wrong war. Our political dialogue is bankrupt. Our party vamps on global warming while our kids wonder if their kids will still be able to breathe. And, assuming they can breathe, we'll have helped to put them as deep in debt as they are dependent on foreign oil. And what's our solution? Sticking oil wells next to caribou and reindeer." Corey began pacing. "If I ran for president, I'd have a very hard time not mentioning some of that. Which, in this party, is a good reason not to run.
"My compelling reason to run is to change our party, our politics, and this whole corrupt system, which is strangling us all. I'd run as if politics is an honorable adventure, in the belief that Americans deserve more from us than narcotic babble punctuated by demagoguery and slander." Folding his arms, Corey finished evenly: "All of you will go on, regardless of what I do. But I only get one chance, and I'm not sure that this is it."
Rustin placed curled fingers to his lips. "There are things you can do, Corey, short of jumping off the cliff."
"Such as?"
"Assembling a campaign staff. Telling potential supporters to stay loose. Acknowledging that Christy's changed the political landscape. Redoubling your appearances in early primary states like New Hampshire, South Carolina, Michigan, and California."
"What about Iowa?" Walters asked.
"A waste of time, packed with evangelicals." Pointedly, Rustin added, "That part's good for Christy, though. By winning Iowa he could take a piece out of Marotta."
Lacey looked at the others and then stood to face Corey. "We've all drawn straws," he said quietly, "and I get to ask the inevitable question."
The Race Page 13
