Party Lines

by Fiona Wilde

  “Well that’s certainly not for everyone,” Lindsay said.

  “Not for everyone?” Clara gave a hard laugh. “This day in age it shouldn’t be for anyone.”

  Lindsay stood and walked over to the bar to refill her drink, hoping that concentrating on the task would give her something to focus on besides Clara Faircloth.

  “People are different,” said Lindsay. “It could be that Ron Sharp’s just an old-fashioned guy. I mean, there are some left, even if they are few and far between.”

  “Thank God for that,” Clara said. “And the sooner they die off entirely the better. It shouldn’t be too far off, given the fact that women no longer want that sort of man.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Lindsay said. She wanted to stop talking about it, but could not. Even though Clara had no clue that she was a submissive Lindsay felt the need to defend herself. “I mean, some women still want a traditional way of life.”

  “You mean where a man calls all the shots? Maybe if they’re stupid. Smart women demand equality, not the likes of a guy like Ron Sharp.”

  Lindsay felt like she’d been slapped across the face. “Well, I’m not prepared to advance that kind of judgment about the personal choices or tastes of others,” she said, and only after the words were out did she realize how angry her tone sounded. When she looked up she saw Clara staring at her with a look of hurt surprise on her face.

  “Good heavens,” Lindsay,” she said softly. “I had no idea you had such strong opinions on the matter, or that you were so quick to defend the likes of Ron Sharp.”

  Lindsay shook her head and waved her hand in front of her, as if trying to wave the whole conversation away.

  “No, I wasn’t trying…look, just forget it,” she said. “I’m sorry if I’m being testy. I’ve just got a lot on my mind.”

  “The campaign?” Clara asked, her eyes fixed on Lindsay.

  “Yeah,” Lindsay replied. “The campaign.”

  ***

  “Maybe this isn’t the best idea.” Lindsay leaned her head against Ron’s shoulder and sighed.

  The two of them were sitting in a townhouse he had rented specifically as a getaway for the two of them. Another article was due out about the campaigns – a piece in The Times that would highlight both the managers – and neither wanted to take a chance on being spotted with their personalities now part of the media focus.

  “Don’t say that.” Ron slipped the sheet down and kissed her shoulder.

  It hadn’t taken long for their relationship to turn physical. Both felt they’d found their ideological – if not political – soulmate.

  “Clara said you have a reputation for being old-fashioned.”

  Ron laughed. “Does she, now? And she bases this on…”

  “The word of her decorator, a friend of your ex-wife’s.”

  Ron sighed. “That would be Andrea. She always hated me and made it her personal mission to help Tina ‘break the bonds of patriarchal oppression.’ And Tina being Tina felt more allegiance to her friends’ opinion than she did to me. Or to Brian.”

  He sighed then and turned to Lindsay. “No, that’s not fair. Regardless of our differences, Tina is a good mother. I can’t fault her for that. But I do fault her for walking away from what I believed she really wanted because she felt bullied by her feminist friends.”

  Ron reached over and caressed Lindsay’s cheek. “I hope you aren’t going to eventually feel that way, because if you do please let me know sooner than later. This ‘patriarchal’ guy has some vulnerabilities of his own.”

  “Ron Sharp has vulnerabilities?” Lindsay laughed.

  “Yes indeed!” He reached down and took her hand, kissing it before looking into her eyes. “Whether you know it or not, young lady, I’ve invested more trust in you than I ever thought I’d invest in anyone again.”

  “I’ve done the same thing,” Lindsay replied. “I mean, I told you about my involvement with that fire when I was a college activist. Only a handful of people know that, and they’re all people I completely trust.” She sighed. “It’s a small list, really. I don’t want people to judge me by my past, you know. I mean, I’ve made mistakes and feel fortunate I didn’t get in more trouble. Since then I’ve learned to temper my social activism with common sense and have worked to make positive change, you know?”

  He nodded. “Yes. And you have. Even if we’re on opposite poles of the political spectrum I admire your commitment to Clara Faircloth’s campaign.”

  “I wouldn’t have taken the job as her manager if I didn’t believe in her platform,” Lindsay said. “I know there are people out there who shill for candidates because it’s a good living. But I couldn’t stand up in front of people in my community and pretend to support someone I knew wasn’t worth the office.”

  Ron smiled. “That’s very noble,” he said. “And rare in this game. It’s so dog-eat-dog in politics. I hope you never change.”

  “I don’t plan to,” she said, smiling at him. “I feel really fortunate, Ron. Really fortunate. I have this great job. I have you. I’d say my life is just about perfect.” She paused. “Except for the sneaking around. I don’t like this at all.”

  “Neither do I,” Ron said, sliding his arm around her shoulders and pulling her to him for a kiss. “But don’t worry. We won’t have to do it forever. When the time is right, everyone will know everything.”

  ***

  Randall Zell, metro editor of The Times, was not having a good day. In the space of just a few hours he’d had to kill a front page story after a source’s credibility had been called in question, been informed of an error in another story that would warrant a correction and had just finished reading what he considered a lackluster rehash of the Faircloth and Hopkins campaigns.

  Sitting back in the chair he glared at reporter Sandra Beckwith.

  “Is this really the best you could do?” he asked. “I mean, come on, Sandra. All this has already been reported.”

  “What is exactly what I tried to tell you when you assigned this to me.” She ran her hand through her frizzy red hair. Unlike some reporters, Beckwith wasn’t afraid to speak her mind, and now she was quick to remind her boss that there was nothing new to report on other than the latest back-and-forth between the two candidates.

  “Everything that can be drudged up has been drudged up by the respective campaigns,” she said. “That leaves little for jackals like us to feed on.”

  Zell shot her a look. “Careful,” he said. “Even if it’s true you shouldn’t say it.”

  Beckwith smirked.

  Zell tapped the printout copy of the article and sighed. “I’d wanted to run this on 1A to replace the story that got bumped, but it’s so goddamned boring.” He looked up at the reporter. “No offense.”

  “None taken,” she said, rolling her eyes.

  “I think maybe…” he began, then excused himself to answer the phone that had begun ringing on his desk.

  “Randy here.”

  Beckwith watched as her boss listened intently to whoever was on the other line. Then he sat forward and got a gleam in his eye that she’d seen before. He had something. Something big.

  “And you’re sure about this?” he asked, scribbling on a piece of paper. “Because we can’t risk a lawsuit over a case of mistaken identity. I’ll need to see some proof.”

  He was quiet for a moment. “You sent it to my email? Well hold on and let me have a look.”

  Zell cradled the phone between his shoulder and ear and began typing on his computer. A moment later he was grinning ear to ear. “Holy shit.” Then to Beckwith: “Look at this.”

  The editor turned the monitor of his computer around so his reporter could see it. On the monitor was a split screen of Lindsay Martin – one a photo of her taken at a rally for Clara Faircloth and the other a mug shot of the campaign manager as a younger woman. Her hair hung in blonde braids and she held a plate in front of her bearing the words Farmer, Lindsay.

  Beckwith shook her
head. “God it sure looks like the same person,” she said. “But the name.”

  Beckwith spoke into the phone. “Hold on.” Then again to his reporter. “She apparently took her mother’s maiden name later, no doubt hoping to escape her past.”

  “Holy shit, Craig. This is big. I mean, really big. Who fed you this tip?”

  Zell put his head back and laughed. “Now why doesn’t that surprise me?” Another pause. “Hell yeah, we’ll use it. It’s not every day you find out the golden girl managing one of the most-watched campaigns in state history turns out to be an arsonist!”

  On the other side of the desk, Beckwith’s eyes widened.

  “You’re kidding,” she said.

  “No, ma’am I’m not,” Zell said, hanging up the phone and tapping the pictures of Lindsay on the screen. “We have our front page campaign story after all.”

  ***

  Lindsay had not meant to fall asleep at the townhouse, and was roused awake at 3 a.m. by the sounds of a siren in the distance. Glancing at the bedside clock, she was awake in an instant, quickly pulling her clothes on and jotting a note to Ron apologizing for her sudden departure.

  “I’m sure you’ll understand,” she wrote, punctuating the words with a smiley face.

  Cross-town traffic was light in the wee hours, and the doorman of her building was nodding off when she went past. Although it was technically still the middle of the night, she found it difficult to get to sleep once she was back in her own bed. It felt lonely, and she missed Ron very much – missed the feel of his strong arms around her, the smell of his cologne, the confident touch that left her a gasping, throbbing mass of nerve endings.

  In the morning she and Clara were scheduled to go over a proposal by the Hopkins campaign to jointly attend a town hall meeting in one of the state’s many struggling blue-collar communities. It was an unusual suggestion for the Hopkins campaign, and Lindsay had been tempted to ask Ron about the idea in advance. But she’d honored their mutual agreement not to discuss work when they were together and pushed the subject from her mind while they’d been together. The community was deeply religious, and very right wing; perhaps that was why Hopkins felt he’d have a friendlier reception there. But with the economy as it was, Lindsay wasn’t so sure.

  She rolled over in bed and looked at the bedside table. Her cell phone was there and she realized that she’d gone to Ron’s without taking it. Now she picked it up and looked at the little outside screen. “Eight missed calls,” it read.

  Rolling over onto her back, she began to open the phone and then slammed it shut. It was probably nothing important, or at least nothing that couldn’t wait until the morning. She was suddenly sleepy, and grateful for it. Tomorrow would be a busy day; it wouldn’t do for her to show up at Clara’s office all bleary-eyed. So putting the phone down, Lindsay snuggled under her covers and fell asleep.

  ***

  Lindsay overslept a bit the next morning and set a speed record getting herself ready to go. Pulling on a white blouse and grey skirt, she stepped into a pair of black heels and ignored the ringing phone as she grabbed her briefcase. The message light, she noticed, was blinking on her machine but she had no time to check them if she wanted to get to the office on time.

  She rushed back to the bedroom to get her cell phone so she could check her messages on the way to work, only to find it dead.

  “Great,” she said, jamming it in her bag. She could always just charge it at the office.

  The sky was overcast as she exited her building. The morning doorman, Stew, gave her an odd look as she went past and she almost stopped to ask him if everything was alright before decided there wasn’t time.

  In the car Lindsay rushed through traffic, pleased to hit only two red lights on the way to her destination. Her stomach growled when she got in the elevator, and she regretted not having had the time to grab a bagel at the food car next to the newsstand where she usually picked up the morning papers.

  The elevator gave a muffled ding as the doors slid open. Lindsay jogged down the hall, determined to start her day chipper and focused to make up for being preoccupied the day before.

  Opening the door she saw Clara standing there and instantly began to apologize for being a few minutes late, but stopped when she noticed the older woman’s expression.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, a knot suddenly forming in her stomach.

  “My god. You really don’t know?” Clara walked over, looking quizzically at her campaign manager. “I’ve been trying to reach you since late yesterday afternoon when that awful reporter from The Times started calling me.” She held out her hand, offering Lindsay a folded newspaper.

  Lindsay looked at Clara, puzzled, and then opened the paper to view the front page. Her head swam as she took in the mug shot of herself under a headline that screamed, “FAIRCLOTH CAMPAIGN MANAGER HAS CRIMINAL PAST.” And underneath that a smaller subhead that declared “Hiring of arsonist calls candidate’s judgment into question.”

  “No,” said Lindsay, walking over to the couch. She could not take her eyes off he headline. “No. It can’t be.”

  She scanned the article as numbness spread through her with each line. “Faircloth admits knowing about Martin’s past….After the conviction on lesser charges, the former activist adopted her mother’s maiden name, repeated attempts to reach Ms. Martin were unsuccessful.”

  Lindsay put the paper down and put her head in her hands, wondering how she could have been so stupid. All this time he’d been using her, and she’d allowed herself to be blinded by her own feelings, by her own submissive tendencies. What had Clara called the kind of woman who’d fall for a guy like Ron? Stupid? Lindsay suddenly recalled how angry that had made her. But Clara had been right. A tear rolled down her face. She looked up at Clara, but the candidate was looking out the window, her back facing Lindsay.

  Lindsay could tell by her posture that she was angry, not because Lindsay had lied to her. Clara was aware of her past. No, she was angry because she couldn’t reach her when she’d needed her most. If she’d been accessible –as she was supposed to be – Lindsay could have had a heads up, could have explained the situation to the reporter in her own diplomatic way that would have diffused the situation and softened the blow. But she had not. She’d been unreachable, and even now she knew she could not tell Clara why.

  Lindsay wiped the tear away. Now was not a time for tears. Even if she wanted to cry, she didn’t deserve the indulgence. She’d been betrayed through her own stupidity. Now she was reaping what she’d sown.

  Chapter Seven

  Her legs felt as if they were made of wood when she finally raised herself from the couch.

  “I have to take care of this, Clara,” Lindsay mumbled as she reached for her purse.

  Clara shook her head. “I don’t know what you can do,” she said. “But if it’s any consolation I don’t regret hiring you. I regret that they – the Hopkins campaign – is using you to hurt me. But I still believe in you. I just wish….”

  She stopped and looked away.

  Lindsay pulled the strap of her handbag over her and turned to face the older woman. “You wish what?”

  Clara sighed. “The past few days you’ve been so secretive,” she said. “I’ve sensed a difference in you, Lindsay. You seem worried, distracted and I have a strong feeling there’s something going on with you that I may have a right to know – something you’re not telling me.”

  Lindsay felt tears come to her eyes. “There is,” she said, forcing herself to swallow the lump in her throat. “Clara, I’m afraid I’ve done something stupid. Something really, really stupid.”

  “What?” Clara Faircloth’s blue eyes grew wide.

  Lindsay ran her hand nervously through her hair. “God, Clara. I wish I could tell you. I really do. Not now. Not until I undo it.”

  She turned and walked towards the door, with Clara in pursuit.

  “Undo it? Undo what? What is it, Lindsay? Maybe I can help!”
/>   But it was too late. Lindsay was gone, leaving Clara standing there steeped in feelings of confusion and concern.

  ***

  He couldn’t believe it. Even standing there, paper in hand, he couldn’t believe it.

  Unlike Lindsay, Ron Sharp had been made aware of the Times article before he reached work. He’d been in his car, flipping through the radio stations when he heard a talk radio host mention her name. Quickly he scrolled back through the stations, expecting to hear another glowing assessment of her political acumen. But what he heard was a discussion of the scandal, and mockery by one host being unsuccessfully balanced by genuine concern by another.

  He’d accelerated through traffic, ignoring the one-fingered salutes from other drivers he cut off in his haste to get to Bradford Hopkins’ huge Georgian-style house. Ron wanted to reach his boss before the morning press did. He didn’t want Hopkins gloating about Lindsay’s misfortune to the media. He didn’t know how the Times had gotten the news about her past, but he was sure she was thinking it had come from him. He didn’t want this mistaken notion to be compounded by Hopkins’ on-air crowing about her character.

  But he knew he had to be careful; he didn’t want to tip Hopkins off to his relationship with Lindsay, not because he was ashamed of it but because he’d promised to keep the matter private.

  His mind drifted back to the night before and his heart twisted at the memory of how she’d confided in him, how she’d told him how natural it felt to put her trust in him. It had been a wonderful night, and were his mood not so agitated he would have thought with fondness about the spanking he’d give her.

  It had been her first introduction to a “good girl” spanking.

  “Do you trust me?” he’d asked her, and she’d looked up at him with her wide, beautiful eyes and said ‘yes.’ But there was still an edge of apprehension in her voice. When he’d floated the idea of spanking her for their mutual pleasure she’d been hesitant.