America the Beautiful

by Laura Hayden

  Two hours lapsed before there was a sharp rap on Kate’s door. When Kate opened it, Emily stood there with an opened bottle of champagne.

  “Hey, K.”

  “Hey, M.” Kate pointed to the champagne. “What’s the occasion?”

  “You tell me. You’re the one who showed up unexpectedly. I thought you were doing the nose-to-the-grindstone stuff back at M Central.”

  Emily stepped back and Kate followed her into the living room area. Kate gestured to the couch. “There’s been a . . . complication.”

  “Hang on.” Emily kicked off her shoes, unbuttoned her jacket, and dropped onto the couch, propping her feet on the coffee table. She uncorked the half-filled bottle and took a healthy swig.

  “That’s better. Dom Pérignon . . . take me away!” She giggled. At least Kate assumed it was a giggle; Emily so seldom did that. Then she shushed herself. “No, no, seriously . . . it’s high time you told me what’s wrong. The next three weeks will pretty much be me, Loretta, and Maia in the rock-star bus, going from pillar to post, and I need to know what’s wrong now.”

  “Oh yeah . . . Maia.” Kate tried not to sound defensive. “When did she become part of all this?”

  Emily made a dismissive gesture. “Since I met her and realized how much she can help me. You’re changing the subject. Maia’s not the problem. What is?” A sharp look in Emily’s eyes suggested that the earlier air of frivolity had been more theatrics than real inebriation.

  No matter, Emily did have a right to know that her family’s involvement in the highway project was no longer a secret from everyone. She needed to know that the news had essentially fallen into the hands of the enemy. But that didn’t mean Kate had to tell Emily exactly what information she’d used to stop Charles Talbot.

  “C’mon, K. Spill it.”

  Kate sat down in the chair facing Emily and laced her fingers together in her lap to keep her hands from shaking. “You heard about the barge that hit the toll road bridge near Morgantown, right?”

  “Sure.”

  “You know that raised some questions about the bridge’s construction.”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “It appears that the company who built it used inferior quality materials.”

  Emily clucked sympathetically, but Kate put up her hand. “Spare me.”

  Her friend’s eyes opened in rare surprise at her retort.

  Kate continued. “Your unworthy opponent started looking into the firms involved, and after a lot of digging and more than a couple bribes, he uncovered enough information to strongly suggest, if not outright prove, that members of your family have a majority ownership in more than just a few of the companies involved.”

  “That’s ridiculous. You can’t believe—”

  “He knows too much, Emily. Then again, you really didn’t cover your tracks very well if someone knows what to look for. Gablonski International?” Kate sighed and shook her head. “You named the company after your horse?”

  Emily didn’t respond for nearly a minute as if weighing another lie over admitting the truth. Finally she shrugged. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  “Then you don’t deny it?”

  “I don’t deny that I am on the board of directors of a company called Gablonski International, but you can’t believe anything Upchuck Talbot says about the company.”

  Kate’s anger flared. “Do you think I’m a complete moron? I didn’t take anything on face value, not from the likes of him. I had my investigators—”

  “Our investigators,” Emily corrected.

  “They’re my investigators when they’re doing work for me. They’ve substantiated most of what Talbot claimed. You or someone in your family had a piece of almost every company that won a construction bid for that project.”

  Emily took another swig from the champagne bottle. “Is it any wonder? I come from an extraordinarily large family, and those who aren’t politicians are extremely shrewd business owners. Sure we own construction firms. And we also own banks, hotel conglomerates, and a host of other companies. You can’t shake a stick in Virginia without hitting a Benton and their works.”

  “You violated the law.”

  “Just a little. But I wanted that job done right. We built an incredible highway.”

  “Really? What about the problems with the bridge?”

  Emily sighed. “See what happens when you hire a subcontractor outside of the family? We subbed out to a smaller firm and they’re the ones who substituted cheaper materials and pocketed the difference. It was them, not us, because had we known, we would have taken it over ourselves. We would have gladly lost money rather than build an unsafe bridge, especially on Virginia soil.”

  Alarm grew in Emily’s eyes as if she was finally seeing past the gauzy curtain caused by the champagne. “If Talbot knows about our involvement, we’ve got to act fast before he releases anything.”

  Emily stood, the empty bottle hitting the carpet with a loud thud. Swaying slightly, she made a failed attempt to pick it up, then waved away the effort. “Forget it. That’s why we have maids.” She shoved the bottle under the couch with her foot.

  Belatedly Kate realized that this wasn’t Emily’s first bottle of champagne that evening.

  “You’ve been awfully closemouthed about what you actually found on Talbot, and I respected that. But I think it’s high time we uncrated whatever secret weapon you found and use it. I sure hope it’ll be enough to shut him up.”

  “About that, I—”

  Emily kept talking as if she hadn’t even heard Kate. “You brought all the gory details with you, right? And you’re ready to stay up all night strategizing? If we plan to stop him, we have to hit him hard and hit him fast.”

  “Emily . . .”

  She ignored Kate and began to slam her fist into her opposite palm in a classic pugilistic gesture. “We need to keep pounding him hard so that he doesn’t have time to breathe. We need to—”

  “Emily, stop!”

  She rolled her eyes. “Don’t start that sanctimonious stuff with me, Rosen. This is serious. If you don’t want to be a part of it, fine.” She pointed at herself. “If I don’t strike first, then I—”

  “If you’d just shut up you’d learn that I did it already,” Kate shouted.

  Emily’s mouth gaped open. “Huh?”

  Kate turned away, no longer able to look her friend in the eye. “I struck first. I stopped him.”

  “Really?” Emily’s shock disintegrated into something much too close to utter delight. “You really did it? On your own?” Emily reached over and tried to hug Kate, but Kate inched away, not wanting to be touched.

  “C’mon, don’t be like that, K. Admit it. You loved telling off that smarmy meat puppet for the special interest groups, didn’t you?”

  God help her, but Kate had entertained the briefest moments of . . . destiny. Not when telling him but when realizing her gambit had worked. She’d told herself it was relief. But she worried that it had been pride. And everybody knew what pride preceded. . . .

  “See?” Emily wagged a finger precariously close to Kate’s nose. “I’m right. I can read it in your face. It felt wonderful telling off that self-righteous sanctimonious scumbag. Don’t ever tell me you didn’t like it. You’ve been trying to play Little Miss Perfect Priss lately, but admit it. You’re no better than I . . .”

  Emily’s voice trailed off and a look of surprise creased her face. “Oh, well. I think I must be drunk.” She dropped carefully onto the couch and even reached down to retrieve the empty bottle and place it on the table.

  “Here I am, screaming like a banshee. And why? Am I mad that you did what you did? No way. I appreciate it. More than that, I’m honestly grateful. Proud, even. You had my back when the bad guys came.” She plowed her hand through her carefully arranged hairdo. “I’m a real piece of work, aren’t I?”

  The Emily Benton who looked up at Kate was the old friend she remembered, the old friend she hadn’t seen
in quite some time. “It was the Henderson thing,” Emily said with a sense of finality and a hint of dejection. “That’s where I went wrong. And that’s when you decided not to trust me.”

  Kate said nothing.

  Emily stood and walked with very carefully controlled steps over to the window, pushing the curtain back to reveal the city lights below. “I can’t say that I blame you. If it’s any consolation, I realized soon after it happened that I really should have listened to you.” She stared outside as if she couldn’t look Kate in the eye while making her confession. “You were right about Henderson. I suspect you’ve been right about Talbot too.”

  “That’s the problem. I’m still not sure I made the correct decision,” Kate admitted.

  “Nonsense. You stopped him, right?”

  “For now.”

  “For pete’s sake, don’t start doubting yourself. If he gets wind of your hesitation, he may decide to call your bluff.”

  “But I wasn’t bluffing.”

  “There’s only one way to make sure.” Emily pivoted sharply. “Tell me what you have on him.”

  Kate had expected this, and she stuck to her guns. “No.”

  “Now hear me out.” Emily returned to the couch and sat primly on the edge of the cushion, her hands folded in her lap. “Charles Talbot is the type to act first and then second-guess himself. I’ve seen him do it in the debates. So when you played your hand, he backed down. Fast. But now he’s had time to think about the situation. He’s thinking, ‘Maybe I acted too rashly. Maybe she wouldn’t follow through.’”

  She lowered her voice as if afraid of being overheard. “You have to admit that you don’t have a reputation as a real cutthroat. He might decide to take the chance that you’re all talk and no action. But the one thing that will stop him is if he thinks I know everything. He knows that I won’t hesitate to use what we know.”

  A sudden chill enveloped Kate and she wrapped her arms around herself. Emily was making sense in a perverse sort of way. In essence, Kate would merely be handing her friend and colleague an empty gun, its ammunition already spent. What would be the harm in that? She’d even brought the file, which was stowed in her briefcase.

  Emily read her indecision as easily as a billboard. “This isn’t like with Henderson, K. The damage has already been done.”

  Damage.

  That one word cinched her decision.

  “No.”

  Resolution began to build inside Kate like the rosy glow of sunrise on a darkened horizon. “We’re going to take our chances. He played his hand. I played ours. Now we just sit back.”

  “By we you mean me.”

  “No, I mean we. We’re in this together, remember?”

  Emily stooped to pick up her discarded shoes, disappointment rolling off her in waves. “I don’t like this,” she admitted. “I want to do something . . . proactive.”

  “I know you do, M. But you also know that will quite possibly blow up in your face. This time, you have to trust me. The only way any good can come out of this is if you and Talbot both believe you’ve reached a stalemate.”

  “With no one caught in the cross fire.” Emily’s eyes clouded slightly and she held her shoes close to her chest. “Like my family.”

  Kate grabbed the subject thread and pulled as hard as she could. “Exactly. Talbot didn’t just threaten you. He threatened everyone in your family who’s involved in any aspect of the construction project. We don’t want collateral damage.”

  Emily stood unmoving, lost in thought. After a few moments, her unfocused stare sharpened. “Okay. We play it your way. But there’s one thing I need to know.”

  “What?”

  “How bad was it? You don’t have to tell me any specifics, but this thing Talbot did. Was it bad?”

  Kate nodded.

  “How bad?”

  “Someone died.”

  For one infinitesimal moment, Kate thought she saw a smile of triumph play on Emily’s lips. But it was gone as quickly as it started.

  “Too bad.” Emily nodded toward her bedroom. “Well, I gotta hit the sack. Tomorrow morning I get to cram myself in that sardine can we call a tour bus so I can meet and greet Ma and Pa Kettle and show them that I’m just a good ol’ girl. G’night.”

  BY NOVEMBER 4, Kate calculated that they’d raised and spent almost a half billion dollars on Emily’s presidential bid. The candidate herself had traveled nearly that many miles in planes, trains, and automobiles and on foot through crowds of constituents, thrilling the faithful and winning over the undecided. All told, Emily had spent less than forty nights in her own home in the two years since announcing her bid for office.

  Excited and exhausted, Kate accompanied Emily in the media procession as she went to her home precinct and cast her vote. Kate had done so earlier by absentee ballot so she wouldn’t have to work in a trip to her own polling place along the rest of her responsibilities.

  The press hounded them all day, in the car, at the campaign headquarters, by phone, by e-mail, and by ambush. Reporters acted more like paparazzi than respectable mainstream media representatives as the press trailed them that afternoon. Even when they were on the road, reporters followed them as they drove to the Marriott Wardman Park, where the election night party would be held. Emily had a suite on the top floor, where she could wait in relative privacy for the results to come in. Relative was the key word because besides the inner circle from the campaign, a steady stream of Benton kinfolk came and went during the day, paying homage, delivering good wishes, and showing the type of solidarity that Kate had learned to appreciate during the course of the campaign.

  Emily’s uncle Bill held court on one side of the room, telling anecdotes about his own presidential election day. To Kate’s amazement, Emily didn’t seem perturbed by his usurping of the limelight, and instead, she listened with rapt attention along with everyone else as if she hadn’t already heard all those stories a thousand times.

  Once five o’clock rolled around, they began to get more information—exit poll reports, updates from CNN, or some other bits of news. The whole group would chew over the numbers, analyze the trends, and somehow manage to find a positive meaning in the resulting calculations or speculations.

  Kate sat back and watched, not necessarily amazed but still impressed at the collected political knowledge represented in the room. The Bentons were truly America’s political family, and they supported and protected their own without hesitation. Kate had seen that on the road and now she saw it here again.

  But the tenor of the room changed when the first polls started closing. The family realized that being supportive meant giving Emily room to wait for the results in private. They excused themselves to the ballroom downstairs, where people were awaiting state election results.

  During a lull in the reporting, Kate went downstairs to take a peek at the arrangements. A balcony overlooking the stage had been sectioned off for their use and she stood in the modified press box, surveying an enthusiastic crowd who cheered and booed depending on the state election return being shown on the huge television screens at the front of the large room.

  As Kate turned to leave, she felt her cell phone vibrate. She answered with a “Just a minute” and headed for the door, waiting until it closed behind her, choking off the worst of the noise, before she spoke again.

  “Hello?”

  “Kate? It’s Nick.”

  “Hi. How are things going? You still in Louisiana?”

  “Yeah. I’m fine. No assassins on my tail. So how’s the wait?”

  “Killing us.”

  “I can imagine. Emily’s never been what I’d call a patient person. I just wanted to call and wish you good luck.”

  “Me? Don’t you mean Emily?”

  “No. Emily can take care of herself. If she wins, I wish you good luck with your new position as chief of staff. If she loses, I wish you good luck dealing with her.”

  “Funny.”

  “Honest.” There was an a
wkward pause; then he spoke again. “Well . . . I don’t want to keep you on the phone, Kate. You might have to explain who you’re talking to and even I don’t want to antagonize Emily today of all days. So in any case, good luck. To you both.”

  “Thanks. Bye.”

  Odd call, Kate thought. But it was kind of him and not necessarily out of character for the “new” him, she decided. She took the elevator upstairs and, once she entered the suite, noticed that the crowd had thinned out to only a handful of people. Dozier Marsh and Dave Dickens sat in the corner, drinks in hand. Chip McWilliamson sat at the desk, huddled over his laptop, typing furiously, with Burl Bochner hanging over his shoulder. But Emily was nowhere to be seen.

  “Where’s Her Majesty?”

  Dozier thumbed over his shoulder toward the bedroom door. “Playing clotheshorse. Maia brought her some things to try on.”

  “Today?” Kate crossed the room and knocked on the bedroom door. “It’s me. Can I come in?”

  She heard several rustling sounds, and then someone said, “Come in.”

  When Kate entered, she saw several dress bags laid across the bed and a couple of shopping bags on the floor. Melissa Bonner-Bochner sat in the chair.

  “Emily,” she called out. “Kate’s here. Come out here and show her the outfit before you take it off.” Melissa turned to Kate. “You’re going to love it. Maia is a genius.”

  Emily stepped out of the bathroom, decked out in a stunning teal suit—tailored enough to look professional but with enough draping in the skirt to be feminine. “So? What do you think?” She preened, turning in a circle for Kate’s inspection.

  “Beautiful,” Kate said, meaning it. “So is this suit going to replace the one we picked out earlier as the acceptance outfit?”

  “From your mouth to God’s ear,” Maia responded automatically. She colored slightly. “I mean about the acceptance, not the clothing choice.” She busied herself by zipping the next dress bag. “Mrs. Redding simply asked me to pick up a few things for Emily’s consideration.”