by Mark Gimenez
"Governor, does your wife's absence have anything to do with the rumors that are running rampant around Austin that you're having an affair with your aide, Mandy Morgan. Is that true?"
" Mandy Morgan? She's barely older than my daughter-who's probably watching this press conference on TV. You should be ashamed of yourself for asking that question."
"Which you haven't answered."
He glared at her, which usually worked, but she held her ground. Oh, God, your good buddy Bode is in deep doo-doo here!
"Obviously, my political opponents have fed y'all with a lot of rumors so you'll air this on your shows and print it in your newspapers. Getting me to deny an affair with an aide is almost as good for ratings as me admitting it, right? This is exactly what is wrong with the liberal media in America today. You live for scandal because scandal drives ratings. So even if there's no scandal, you create scandal. And nothing drives ratings higher than a sex scandal involving a political hero, right? But the people of America will see this for what it is, a left-wing media attack. This is exactly what the liberal press does when the people embrace conservative heroes, when the liberal media's power to influence the people is challenged: you launch personal attacks. Tea Partiers are racist, Sarah Palin is dangerous, I'm an adulterer… It's disgusting, and the people hate you for it. But worse than that, it's a cancer on democracy, a cancer that's destroying this country. I'm a tough guy, I played football, I took big hits, I'm used to cheap shots. But only football games were at stake. Our country, our way of life, is at stake now. And the press-so important an institution that it is protected by the First Amendment-goes down into the gutter to report filthy rumors like this. You can't hurt me. But you're hurting my wife and my daughter, and you should be ashamed of yourselves."
But the reporter didn't seem the least bit ashamed.
"So it's all a lie? Your wife hasn't left you, and you're not having an affair?"
Bode jabbed a big finger at the reporter.
"It's a goddamn lie."
Sorry, God, I'm winging it here. Alone.
He walked away from the podium and out the door. Jim Bob caught up with him a few steps down the corridor. Two Texas Rangers shadowed them as they marched down the Capitol corridor and out the east doors and climbed into the waiting Suburban. Bode exhaled.
"What the hell was that all about?"
"That," Jim Bob said, "was the national press. See, Bode, you've played politics only in the friendly waters of Texas, where the press is compliant and we've only got two liberal media outlets in the whole state. Now you're playing politics in the big waters, where all the media are liberal and vicious."
"And who's this Democrat, Jesse Rincon?"
"Your wife's doctor."
"Her gynecologist is a Democrat?"
"No… well, I don't know, he might be… but this isn't about him. Jesse Rincon is her Mexican doctor."
"She goes to a Mexican gynecologist?"
"Not her goddamned gynecologist! The doctor she works with, down on the border. He's a Latino named Jesse Rincon. He's getting a lot of good press for passing up a big-city practice to take care of those poor people in the colonias — "
"Oh, the liberal media love that, don't they?"
— "and Latino leaders around the state are pushing him for governor, they see him as the savior. Like the San Antonio mayor."
"Gutierrez? I gave him state environmental funds to clean up the riverwalk."
" New York Times did a front-page profile on him. Rincon."
"No one in Texas reads the New York Times, and no one in New York can vote in Texas. As long as he's not on Fox, we're okay. You think he's gonna run?"
Jim Bob shrugged. "He hasn't said yes, but he hasn't said no."
"Maybe he doesn't want to be a politician?"
"Everyone wants to be a politician."
"I wanted to be a pro football player."
"I mean, after they grow up."
"Maybe he won't run."
"They put kids in a TV shot with him."
"Damn, he's running. A Latino. You figure the Latino vote will come out for him?"
"Does the Democratic vote come out for a tax increase?"
"Shit."
"He'll sweep the Latino vote."
"Which means he'll win."
"They'll vote for him. And there'll be a Latino in the Governor's Mansion doing more than cooking. On my watch."
The Suburban exited the Capitol grounds and turned right on Eleventh Street.
"How the hell did they find out about Mandy?"
"Jolene, probably."
"Damn. I thought she wanted to screw me."
"She just did."
"Maybe they found out from Mandy. Maybe she told a friend. Or texted someone." He stared out the window. "Jesus, this day can't get any worse."
The Suburban entered the gates to the Mansion and stopped in the rear driveway. Bode bolted out and marched inside the Mansion and down the corridor to Mandy's office. He barged in without knocking on the closed door. Because he was pissed. Excuse me God, but I am pissed. Because his mistress had been talking out of turn.
"Damnit, Mandy, did you-"
A loud gagging noise interrupted him. Mandy was bent over behind her desk. Another gagging sound, and she sat up. She was holding the trash basket. The smell of puke permeated the small room.
"You sick?"
She spit into the basket, put the basket down, wiped her mouth with a tissue, and shook her head.
"I'm pregnant."
TWENTY-NINE
One hundred eleven degrees, and it was only the fifth day of July.
Lindsay Bonner had lived in Texas for almost forty years, so she knew heat; but the heat on the border defined heat. The air felt as if it were on fire. She wiped sweat from her face and drank another bottled water. Three hours she had walked the colonia on her morning rounds. She arrived back at the clinic feeling a bit woozy. She opened the door and stepped inside. Inez greeted her, but her words sounded distant. The girl's pretty face seemed vague.
"Doctor!"
Lindsay opened her eyes to Jesse and Inez hovering over her. She was lying on the examining table. Jesse checked her pulse; Inez dabbed her forehead with a cold wet towel.
"What happened?"
"You fainted."
"The heat."
"You are sure you are not pregnant?"
His question made her laugh.
"Only if I'm the Virgin Mary."
They had tried to have a baby for four years, he and Lindsay. But she couldn't get pregnant. Not his fault. His sperm production was stupendous, the doctor had said. Her plumbing was fine. Just relax, it'll happen. It did. Bode would never forget that hot summer day nineteen years before when he had ridden in from the herd and found Lindsay waiting for him by the barn. Crying. He had dismounted and gone to her. He took off his gloves and wiped the tears from her face, sure she was about to tell him she had breast cancer. Instead, she smiled and said, "We're going to have a baby."
That day he had said, "Thanks, God."
Today he said, "Why, God?"
That was still the happiest day of his life. This was not the second happiest day of his life. Bode Bonner's love child. It wasn't fair. Movie stars can have a dozen kids out of wedlock, and no one cares. In fact, they ooh and ahh over their baby bumps at the Academy Awards, as if they're the first women in the whole fucking world to have a baby. But let the leading presidential candidate sire one child- one! — with a woman who wasn't his wife, and you'd think the whole fucking world was ending.
And not just his political career.
Bode Bonner would be laughed out of the presidential race just as John Edwards had been, another cheating politician with good hair. And like all men who had ascribed their sudden success to divine intervention, Bode Bonner's thoughts now focused on one disturbing question: Why would God let this happen to him? To His chosen candidate? He stepped into Jim Bob's office, shut the door, and said, "She's pregnant."
"Not Lindsay. Mandy."
The news knocked Jim Bob back in his chair as forcefully as a two-by-four across his pasty face-which seemed even pastier now. He didn't speak for a long moment. When he caught his breath and regained his voice, he said, "For Christ's sake, Bode, you never heard of condoms?"
"It was just once."
"You been screwing her for more than a year."
"Once without a condom."
That one time was a problem.
"Why wasn't she on the fucking pill?"
"She said she went off because she was gaining weight, didn't want me to think she was fat."
"And pregnant is better?"
"What are we gonna do?"
He could see the Professor's mind working through the five stages of political grief: anger, acceptance, recovery, strategy, polls.
"Treat it like the deficit: deny, deny, deny."
"That didn't work so well for Clinton, Schwarzenegger, Edwards, Sanford, Weiner…"
"It buys time."
"For what?"
"A mass murder, a war in the Mideast, a plane crash, that Lohan gal to do something stupid… for something else to come along and dominate the news."
"Then what?"
The Professor shrugged. "Standard political sex scandal procedure: confess, cry, seek treatment, promise to be a better man, vote for a liberal spending program."
"I'm not crying on national TV."
"No choice. It's in the playbook."
While Bode considered that spectacle, Jim Bob put his elbows on his desk and his face in his hands. He exhaled like a dying man taking his last breath of life.
"The governor and the governor's wife, both having affairs. That's not in the fucking playbook."
" Both? What are you talking about?"
Jim Bob looked up, as if surprised that Bode had heard his words. But he couldn't maintain eye contact. His gaze dropped to a large envelope on his otherwise bare desk. He reached over as if the act pained him and picked up the envelope. He hesitated, then held it out to Bode. He still did not look Bode in the eye.
Bode now hesitated.
He took a deep breath and the envelope. He opened the flap and reached inside. He removed a stack of photos. Jim Bob's eyes remained down. Bode looked at the top photo then sat down hard in a chair. He thumbed through the photos and saw his wife… with another man… a Latino man… a young, handsome man… sitting on a porch drinking wine
… smiling… laughing… now standing and… dancing. His wife in another man's arms.
"Jesse Rincon," Jim Bob said. "I sent Eddie down there, to check him out."
"Thought he was a gopher."
"He is. He gets what he goes for."
Bode fought not to look at the photos again, but he lost the fight. He now stared long and hard at the images of his wife with another man, but his mind conjured up images of his wife with another man, and he felt a hurt so deep that the images threatened to do what no opposing football player, political opponent, disappointing poll, nasty reporter, or scathing letter to the editor could do: make him cry. But Bode Bonner had become such a consummate politician that he never considered that his own affair might have hurt his wife just as deeply. And made her cry herself to sleep many lonely nights.
"So she's…? He's…? They're…?"
Jim Bob turned his palms up. "He didn't catch them in the act, but you can see for yourself, they've got more than a doctor-nurse relationship. She's living with him… in his guesthouse on his land outside Laredo."
"Jesus. Another man screwing my wife."
"She's a good looking gal, someone ought to be."
"Never figured my wife for that."
"No man does."
Bode again looked at his wife's image in the photos. His smiling wife. He hadn't seen that smile since early in his first term. It was a real smile, not the smile of a politician's spouse. She hadn't been happy as the governor's wife in Austin, but she had found happiness as a nurse in the colonias on the border. With Jesse Rincon. The man who had his wife and now wanted his job. The Professor spoke in a solemn voice.
"So let me sum up the situation for you, Bode: You and Jesse Rincon are now rivals for both the Governor's Mansion and the governor's wife. You're the top Republican contender for the White House, you're being hunted by hit men working for a Mexican drug lord, and your wife is working in a colonia with the man who wants your job and just across the Rio Grande from the man who wants you dead. And if that's not enough, your fucking twenty-seven-year-old mistress is pregnant."
Bode looked up from the photos of his wife to his ace political strategist.
"Jesus, Jim Bob-you can't make this shit up."
"Bode's Babe"… "Bawdy Bode"… "Bonner's Blonde Bombshell." All three network evening news shows led off with the press conference-what, you don't have real news to report? And then the cable talk shows had a field day. They splashed photos of Mandy… Mandy and Bode… Mandy and the Mexican kids… more Mandy. They reported rumors- they had no proof! — about sex in the Governor's Mansion when the governor's wife was out of town. About a possible love child. And where was the governor's wife? Had she left the governor? Is the happily-married-man image just an image? Is Bode Bonner just another two-timing politician not worthy of his wife's trust? Or the American people's trust? How could Bode Bonner be president, a man who had hidden a twenty-seven-year-old mistress from his wife and a twenty-seven-billion-dollar deficit from the voters? On and on they went for hours and hours, until Bode couldn't bear to watch anymore, like watching a train wreck or Romney at a tea party rally. He forced himself to change the channel, but it was even worse. Leno and Letterman both made him the butt of their monologue jokes. He was no longer an American hero. He was the biggest punch line in America.
And his wife was having an affair.
THIRTY
Jesse Rincon put on the coffee then dressed in his running shorts and shoes. He and Pancho were almost outside for their morning run along the river when the phone rang. He debated whether to answer, then relented.
"Hello."
"Jesse, this is Jorge Gutierrez again, from San Antonio. I am sorry to call at this time of the morning, but I wanted to catch you before you left for the colonia."
"Mayor, you have been busy with your Mexican Mafia."
"Have you received more checks for the colonias? "
"Many more."
"Excellent. Did you see the news last night? The governor is now embroiled in scandal and the worst kind-a sex scandal."
"What does that mean to me?"
"That means he is vulnerable. He can be beaten. By you."
"I am not a candidate."
"Not yet. Jesse, you have gotten very favorable press-"
"Thanks to you."
"I do what I can. And you are rising fast in the polls. Jesse, you are now a household name in Texas and in most of the nation. You have gotten for free what most politicians can only dream of: name recognition."
"But I am not a politician. I am a doctor."
"You will be the governor, if you will only run."
"I do not want to be governor."
"All the better. People hate ambitious politicians, I know this for a fact. It is best to be begged, and we are begging you, Jesse."
"Mayor, I-"
"Jesse, will you at least meet with us? Allow us to make our case?"
"Us who?"
"Me, the chairman of the national Democratic Party, donors, Democratic senators, the entire Hispanic caucus in Congress, many of my mafia, perhaps even the vice-president… Jesse, they care about our people."
"They are all going to come down to Laredo just to meet me?"
"Uh… well, no. They are coming to San Antonio."
"Why not Laredo?"
"I am too old and too tired to travel to the border-the sun, the heat… and the Anglos, they are too afraid of the drug violence. You know how they are."
Jesse
laughed. "No, I do not. They are too afraid to come to the border? Here is where our people are, Jorge. Here is where help is needed. If they want to help our people, they need to come see our people. Where they live. How they live."
"Jesse… I am seventy-six years old. I have lived in Texas my entire life. I have suffered as a Hispanic, and I have seen the suffering of other Hispanics. Texas once belonged to us, but it was stolen from us. We can reclaim Texas for ourselves. This is our chance to take back what is ours. We can win. You can win. You can bring respect to our people. To us."
The Governor's Mansion felt like a morgue the next morning, and with good reason: the governor's political career had died. Bode Bonner was a dead politician walking. The staff averted their eyes when he walked down the hall. Even Lupe could not make eye contact at breakfast. He was now slumped in his chair in his office.
" 'Bode's Babe.' It's not even a good photo of her. You'd think if they're gonna blame me for having an affair with a woman half my age, they'd at least use a photo that shows how gorgeous she is. I mean, it's not like I'm cheating with trailer trash."
"That's what you're worried about? Whether you're getting enough credit for the quality of your mistress? You'd better worry about the fucking poll numbers."
"How bad?"
"You're going down faster than a drunk college coed at a frat party. The overnight flash polls-your numbers took a dive, nationally and in Texas, and your Twitter followers are dumping you in droves. You're below Eminem."
"The candy?"
"The rapper. And Rincon's numbers shot up."
"Great-he wants my job and my wife."
"Which one do you want?"
He didn't answer because he didn't have an answer. Now that his wife had someone else, he found himself wanting her more than ever. But… he was so close to the Oval Office. So close. Why did he have to choose between his wife and his adventure?
