by James Dobson
Julia hesitated before deciding to say more. “Actually, he hasn’t told Kevin yet. I insisted he do so.”
Another look of apprehension from Angie.
“I think the business is struggling, Angie. Troy has been doing everything he knows to do without bothering Kevin with the details.”
“Sam Gamgee,” Angie mused aloud.
“Sorry?”
“From The Lord of the Rings,” Angie added.
Julia recalled Troy’s description of his relationship to Kevin. Sam Gamgee was the loyal companion of Frodo Baggins, bearer of the Ring. Kevin had been called to play a part Troy gladly supported, as Sam Gamgee eased the Ring-bearer’s burden.
“That’s right,” Julia said. “Troy seems reluctant to saddle Kevin with bad news. He’s trying to handle it himself.”
Angie seemed reflective. “Did he say how bad it is?”
“You know how they are. Always putting the best spin on the situation.”
Angie nodded silently.
“I didn’t get a sense of imminent doom or anything like that. Just some tough decisions.”
“Good.” Angie seemed relieved. “I’m sure they’ll sort it out together.”
“I hope so,” Julia said. “I think the whole mess has been wearing Troy down.”
“Into a lesser man?”
Julia smiled at the reminder. “I suppose.”
“Which means?” Angie directed.
“He needs a cheerleader?” Julia asked.
“I think you’re catching on, girl!”
* * *
“My turn!” Tommy shouted from across the room. Protesting whimpers followed from three-year-old Joy. Both women watched in amusement as Kevin tried prying his daughter loose from Troy’s lap.
“I’d better intervene,” Angie said, moving toward the commotion.
Thirty seconds later Julia joined her husband on a tour of Tommy’s bedroom, where he was eager to show “Uncle Troy” his collection of dead bugs and pricelessly worthless rocks. She then dismissed herself at Tommy’s not-so-subtle insistence. He said it would be a violation of a soldier’s honor to open his secret stash of battle supplies hidden in a box under the bed in the presence of “the fair maiden.”
Troy knelt down before crossing his legs to mimic his mini comrade. Pausing at the bedroom door, Julia turned to enjoy one last look at her husband’s face. The stress lines around his eyes so evident only hours earlier had vanished, like wrinkles on a crumpled shirt freshly ironed flat. Troy relished time with Kevin’s kids. He would probably make a wonderful father.
The thought formed a knot in the pit of Julia’s stomach.
Chapter Twelve
It was nearly midnight when Julia and Troy stepped onto the hotel elevator. As the doors slid closed he pressed the top button, then took a step backward.
She noticed the illumined number. “Aren’t we on floor seventeen?”
He nodded silently.
“Then why thirty-five?”
He turned and slipped his hands around her waist. “Twice as much time for mischief,” he said, moving in for a kiss.
Julia put both hands against her husband’s chest and gave a weak shove while punching the correct button. “Troy Simmons! I’m a respectable woman.”
“You’re also a beautiful woman,” he said, drawing her body closer.
The kiss began about floor three and continued until briefly interrupted by a voice announcing their arrival.
She grabbed his hand and led him into the hallway, where they tiptoed quickly toward a door both yearned to enter and lock behind them.
Moments later, Julia sensed what little tension remained ebbing out of Troy’s body as she removed his shirt. Then she heard a sound that halted their advance. Troy’s sigh of pleasure and anticipation triggered the memory of another moment, another man. A wave of guilt slowed her throbbing pulse. It was not the first time Troy’s touch had resurfaced old passions. She pulled back, then tried to resume. But a bewildered look told her he had noticed.
“Is something wrong?” Troy asked between winded breaths.
She pressed her lips to his, hoping the present reality could overpower the intruder from her past. No good. The taste of Troy’s kiss only fueled the memory of the nameless encounter her body refused to forget. She pulled back again.
“I’m sorry.” She sighed.
He placed his hand on hers, joining her on the edge of the bed. The two sat silently while Julia considered what to say.
“I forgot to bring protection.” A lie. Claiming forgetfulness seemed better than admitting memories.
The comment clearly bothered him more than the interruption.
“Don’t worry,” Julia added. “I’m sure you can run down to the lobby to buy some. I’ll shower and slip into—”
“I don’t want to buy protection,” he interrupted. “I just want to make love to my wife.”
The comment startled Julia. “You know I’m not on the pill right now. And we don’t like using—”
“I don’t mean it like that.”
“What then?” she asked, hugging a pillow to defend her body from the chilly air of an overhead vent.
Deep lines of stress reappeared on Troy’s face. She knew he wanted to say something that he couldn’t put into words.
Then it struck her. “You don’t mean…”
She paused.
He nodded.
She swallowed back a sense of panic. “Troy. Be sensible.”
“I’m tired of being sensible.”
“We’ve only been married for six months,” she reminded him. “We agreed we would consider kids after a few years.”
“I know what we agreed. I was just hoping…”
He didn’t need to finish. Julia recalled the look on her husband’s face when Angie let him hold the new baby before dinner. He stared at little Ricky for at least five minutes, marveling at his fingers, earlobes, and toes. Then he volunteered to sit next to Leah to help her eat. Leah had held a special place in Troy’s heart ever since Kevin told him about her genetic disorder. Tiny signs of fragile X syndrome had begun to appear, nearly indiscernible previews of her coming life filled with limitations and stares. They were nothing that would mark her as particularly unusual to the uninformed eye, but enough to cause Troy to hold her more tightly than he had the others.
Julia had said she was open to becoming a mom someday. She even had started to believe it. But she knew that Troy wanted to be a daddy now.
“Listen, babe,” she said softly. “I think I’ll be ready to talk about having kids soon, OK?”
“Why not talk about it now?”
“While in a romantic hotel room?” she asked playfully. “Not a good idea.”
“Some people would call it the perfect time.”
Julia felt her anxiety rise. Was Troy suggesting a blind conception? Did he honestly think she would consider such a risky option?
“Be serious.” A nervous laugh.
He didn’t respond.
“People don’t do that anymore, Troy.”
“Kevin and Angie do that,” he retorted. “And they have four great kids.”
Julia felt momentarily ashamed of her gut reaction, words that might have appeared in one of her columns a year or two earlier: They have too many kids. Their irresponsibility brought an unproductive debit into the world.
But Angie rejected the sensible approach to impregnation. She viewed kids as a gift to receive rather than a product to design. So she refused the common practice of screening out genetically defective embryos and letting a doctor implant the best and brightest. While Julia would no longer think of calling Angie a breeder, her friend fit the label.
“Listen, Troy, I want to give you children. I really do. But I can’t imagine myself going that route. Making love is making love. We can do that here or anywhere you like. But making babies belongs in the clinic. I know you admire Kevin and Angie, but the thought of a blind conception scares me.”
His shoulders slumped at another lost negotiation.
“I tell you what,” she said with forced enthusiasm. “I’ll make an appointment with the in vitro selection clinic as soon as we get home. We can start exploring options. OK?”
Troy seemed somewhat heartened by the suggestion as he moved slowly toward the minibar. He looked inside for a moment before retrieving a bottle of water.
“Do you want something?” he asked.
She removed the pillow from her body and spread her arms toward her husband. “Yes I do.”
He looked away and opened his bottle to take a sip, suddenly immune to her advance.
“So, do you want to go to the lobby while I—”
“We have a big day tomorrow,” he interrupted, passing two fingers across her cheek. “What do you say we get some sleep?”
Julia swallowed back the sting of rejection, trying to own the blame. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.” He offered an affectionate smile.
She reached for the pillow to cover herself again.
Chapter Thirteen
Troy settled into the chair located immediately behind Kevin Tolbert’s seat at the conference table. He felt at home, as if he had never left his role as intelligence officer and adviser to his friend. It was from this very location that he had fed Kevin talking points and supporting statistics on the day the congressman first introduced the concept of bright spots into the congressional vocabulary.
He leaned toward Julia, sitting nervously in the adjoining seat. “All’s well,” he said with a slight squeeze of her hand.
“So he doesn’t mind?”
“Not at all. Kevin explained the situation. Anderson knows you no longer work with RAP Syndicate. You’re attending as my wife rather than as journalist Julia Davidson.”
“Julia Davidson Simmons,” she corrected with a smile.
“Who were you talking to in the hall?” Troy asked.
Julia pointed toward an elegant fortysomething woman seated at the other end of the long conference table. “Trisha Sayers recognized me and made a fuss,” she explained. “Wanted to catch up.”
“Does she know you’ve gone over to the dark side?”
Julia laughed. “We only had a few seconds. The topic of marriage didn’t come up.”
Troy looked toward the clock on the wall: a few minutes before ten. If he knew anything about the host of this meeting, the discussion would start right on time. Brent Anderson, Senator Joshua Franklin’s right-hand man, was a stickler for both punctuality and productivity. Troy had come to admire Anderson’s efficiency back when he led the austerity coalition toward consensus. They debated and decided on a package of proposals in a matter of weeks, a monumental task that should have taken months. But they had been racing against time. Franklin knew that revised budget projections from the census would create panic in the markets. He wanted to strike quickly to position himself as a proactive leader in the midst of crisis. And while his timing did little to ease the economic collapse, it did propel him even higher in national polls.
Troy sensed that a similar urgency would likely characterize this discussion. Why else would Franklin have insisted that Anderson chair the meeting?
Kevin leaned back in his chair toward Troy, who leaped forward in response to a summoning motion.
“What’s up?” Troy asked in a hushed voice.
“Look here.” Kevin pointed to a page on the screen embedded in the conference table. “You were right.”
Troy read quickly, trying to beat the countdown to meeting launch.
Comeback Coalition
August 2043 Agenda
ITEM A: NEXT Appeal Update (Anderson)
ITEM B: Youth Initiative Expansion Strategies (Florea)
ITEM C: Bright Spots Relaunch Proposal (Tolbert)
ITEM D: Projection Adjustments (Journeyman)
ITEM E: Press Relations Strategy (Sayers)
ITEM F: Broad Policy Framework (Anderson)
“Prime placement on the agenda,” Kevin said with enthusiasm. “Who’d have thought?”
Troy cleared his throat in mock offense. “A certain former chief of staff would have thought,” he jabbed. “I owe you a head-rub for questioning my instinct.”
Kevin patted his head protectively as Troy retreated back to his chair.
“I nailed it,” he whispered to Julia. “They’re taking the bright spot approach much more seriously this round.”
“They would have taken it seriously last year if I hadn’t written the Breeders story,” Julia said with regret.
“If you hadn’t been assigned to that story you wouldn’t be Mrs. Troy Simmons,” Troy reminded her. “Besides, the timing is better now.”
“How’s that?”
“Everyone’s nervous about how the NEXT appeal will land. They can’t bank on growth in transitions to fund a recovery. A loss for NEXT could turn Kevin into Churchill.”
“Winston Churchill? The chubby Brit?”
“The chubby Brit who everyone considered a nagging crackpot until his warnings became their reality.”
“Got it. Kevin is the nagging crackpot warning them about trends they don’t want to face.”
“They’ll have no choice but to face them when the transition industry takes a hit.”
“If it takes a hit,” Julia corrected.
“My gut tells me it already has. That’s got to be the reason Franklin formed this coalition.”
The sound of opening doors drew their eyes to the far end of the conference room, where Brent Anderson entered with an entourage of aides. He took the chair at the head of the table as the others settled into seven of the nine empty chairs that lined the walls.
The assembly complete, Troy looked at each face gathered, to identify potential allies and opponents. He recognized nearly every attendee. Several had served with Kevin on the austerity coalition in 2042. Others had participated in a long series of floor debates defending specific cuts that had been pieced together for a larger proposal. No one had liked the details he or she was defending. But they had no real choice. It was considered political suicide to oppose the only viable plan for preventing an economic free fall. In the end even liberals joined the fiscal conservatives, holding their noses while voting for what became commonly labeled the Franklin Austerity Plan. With his eye on the White House, Franklin now hoped to make another strategic move.
“Franklin’s Comeback Plan,” Troy whispered.
Julia eyed him inquisitively.
“That’s what they’ll call it,” he continued. “They’ll call whatever comes out of this dialogue Franklin’s Comeback Plan. Ten to one says he’ll use it as his calling card for the 2044 campaign. No politician wants to be known for cuts. He wants to offer a positive plan to rebuild the economy.”
Troy hushed himself as Brent Anderson launched the meeting.
“I’d like to begin by thanking everyone for accepting Senator Franklin’s invitation to participate on the comeback coalition,” Anderson began. “As you no doubt read in the advance briefing I sent last Thursday, we’ve been asked to craft a viable strategy our party can rally around to restore this nation’s economy back toward some semblance of health.”
Troy typed and sent a note to Kevin’s screen.
RESTORE HEALTH? MORE LIKE RAISE THE DEAD!
Kevin nodded slightly in inconspicuous agreement.
“The few of you who served on the austerity coalition last year,” Troy heard Anderson continue, “will be familiar with the process I intend to use for this assignment that, I hope, will help us move quickly through what could otherwise become a daunting agenda. We must discuss very important and complicated matters in short order. Not an easy task. But it can be done if you will allow me to enforce a few simple rules of order.”
Troy remembered the process well. Each agenda item would begin with a fifteen-minute fast-fire presentation followed by another fifteen for questions to clarify or enhance rather than debate. Anderson would have already le
veraged his tough-minded tenacity to cull through the clutter of a million possible options to find the most promising ideas. He was the master of keeping committees focused on productive ends rather than wasting time on grandstanding or speculation about what might or even should be done. Under Anderson’s direction this coalition would discuss only those items that met three simple criteria.
Was easy to explain in a sound bite.
Had solid data showing it would work.
Served Franklin’s political agenda.
Kevin’s backstage efforts to sell the idea of resurrecting the Bright Spots proposal must have convinced Anderson it satisfied all three.
“As the first item on the agenda suggests, we’ll explore comeback options in anticipation of the decision scheduled to come out of the Tenth Circuit a few weeks from now. Senator Franklin has asked that we craft a proposal that can play well regardless of where things land on the NEXT appeal.”
“Early indications?” asked Trisha Sayers, seated to Anderson’s immediate right.
“Could go either way. Judge Coates leans for and Judge Howatch against. That makes Santiago the deciding vote. He has no track record of similar cases so we have no idea where he’ll come down.”
“Who appointed him?” came a question from the other side of the table.
“Obama.”
“Must be an old bugger,” someone said.
“Over thirty years on the bench,” Anderson replied.
“Not good,” added Sayers. “The older demographic leans against the Youth Initiative.”
“By a two percent margin,” Anderson responded. “A practically even split. Like I said, we have no idea where he’ll land. That’s why we need a plan that assumes either possibility. Remember, even if NEXT wins the appeal the case could go higher.”
“The Supreme Court?” someone said. “They’ll never accept the case.”
Troy moved his head to get a better look at who had made the comment. Congresswoman Nicole Florea of Nevada.
“Why do you say that?” Kevin asked.
