Sex Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 6)

by T'Gracie Reese

  And that was the end of the incorrect answer.

  Except that it wasn’t.

  Fallout did not come immediately.

  The evening following Nina’s interview was, on the other hand, extremely pleasant. She was invited out to dinner with Laurencia Dalrymple, who took her to the Belga Café. She had never experienced Euro-fusion, which hinted vaguely at nuclear war, but she was game for anything (if, she sometimes found herself thinking, she were not game for anything, she would hardly be in Washington), and she went.

  What a marvelous place!

  A sleek café, done up with dark wood, exposed brick walls, and spotted with creamy chairs, elegant linen.

  An endive salad with a sabayon made from Hoegaarden beer.

  And so, for an hour or so, they simply sat, and munched, and sipped, and watched the Capitol Dome grow brighter as the sky beyond the restaurant’s huge windows darkened.

  Over a three shellfish gumbo, they traded tales of their childhood.

  Over a fluffy taramosalata (salmon roe dip) with a touch of citrus, they traded tales of their husbands.

  Over salty halloumi cheese topped with mint, they traded tales of scandal and intrigue involving various legislators and their mistresses, and, since gender equity was in fact becoming a reality, their misters.

  And over apple pie and coffee (one could take eclecticism only so far), they simply digested, and talked of nothing at all.

  Nina slept like a rock.

  Astonishingly, she was hungry the next morning when she woke at six-thirty.

  She ate her accustomed bagel with cream cheese (Where was she putting all this food?), dressed, walked to the office, greeted her staffers as they came smiling in, and had answered forty-three letters when the messenger came for her at nine-fifteen.

  Later on, she could remember the time, because she had just glanced at the Ole Miss clock with the rebel flag hanging down from it, when the man arrived.

  He looked out of place among her own staffers: a bit older, a bit less blond, a bit crooked, and a bit too well dressed for basement offices or basement people.

  “Could I see Congresswoman Bannister?”

  “She’s in the coffee room.”

  She was not in the coffee room, however. She was, in fact, standing flush in the doorway between the entrance room and the coffee room.

  “I’m Congresswoman Bannister.”

  “Good morning. I’m Tim Sandler, aid to Jeb Maxwell.”

  Jeb Maxwell.

  The House Whip.

  Second in line, at least in terms of the power structure, to the Minority Leader.

  “Ah! And how may I help Congressman Maxwell?”

  A slight blush.

  A deferential bow.

  Then:

  “Well, he hates to interrupt your morning. He knows you probably have a million things on your plate.”

  “That’s true. Right now I’m ending nuclear war and in a minute or so I’m going to set about eliminating disease and poverty.”

  Ha ha ha.

  Ha ha ha.

  “No, seriously…”

  Be quiet, Nina.

  Stop acting like an idiot.

  “Seriously, I’m always at the Congressman’s service.”

  “Wonderful. Do you think you could spare a few minutes now?”

  “Sure.”

  So she got her jacket and followed Tim Sandler up and out of the Rayburn Building, across South Capitol Street, through the Longworth House Building, across New Jersey Avenue, and into the Cannon House Office Building, where senior-level House administrators (and the Whip was certainly one of those) had their offices.

  Along the way, he chatted pleasantly with her.

  The talked about the weather.

  Beautiful day. Beautiful day.

  Certainly is. Certainly is.

  The Gulf Coast.

  Wonderful country down there.

  Certainly is. Certainly is.

  The fast pace of life in Washington D.C.

  Are you getting used to it?

  Little by little.

  Ha ha ha.

  Ha ha ha.

  Then they took the elevator up to the third floor, walked along a corridor for eight or nine miles, and stopped before a massive oaken door.

  “Have you been in Congressman Maxwell’s office before, Congresswoman Bannister?”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “And you haven’t yet met the Congressman?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I’ll introduce you!”

  He opened the door.

  The room flashed and glittered and laughed and sun-sparkled and was just completely happy about everything in the whole damned world.

  It was a massive room, surrounded with massive windows, which let in wondrous amounts of morning sunlight.

  In the room were perhaps a dozen people, all chatting, all friendly to each other.

  They all waved at her and greeted her as she stepped into the room.

  She filtered through them and below them (for they were all taller than she was—even the furniture was taller than she was), and she shook as many hands as possible.

  Finally, she came to rest standing before a man taller than anyone else. A man with white thinning hair, and a deeply chiseled face. He looked down at her with bright sparkling eyes and smiled:

  “Tim, have you brought us Congresswoman Bannister?”

  “Yes, sir, I have.”

  “Wonderful! May I call you Nina?”

  “Of course!”

  “Nina, I’m Jeb Maxwell.”

  “I know. I recognize you from TV!”

  “And I have to apologize.”

  “For what, sir?”

  “Why, for not coming round to your office much earlier, and making it my business to meet you. It’s inexcusable on my part that it’s taken this long!”

  “Don’t think anything of it.”

  “I think a great deal of it. That campaign you ran down there—absolutely marvelous work!”

  “Well—most of it was Jackson Bennett’s work.”

  “I know; I know Jackson. He’s highly thought of up here. Good man, good man. But you more than did your part in that campaign. And to have had so little experience—the stuff dreams are made of. Dreams and movies. No, you’re to be congratulated, no ifs ands or buts about it!”

  “Thank you!”

  “And now—look, you have to excuse me for just a second; we’re finishing up a press conference. Want you to meet a few of these people. Here’s Connie Hightower from NBC News…

  “Hi!”

  “Hi!”

  “Peter van Armstead, Reuters…”

  “Hi!”

  “Hi!”

  “This is Senator Danielson from the House Armed Services Committee. Tom’s come to give these press types an update on the P-345; you familiar with it?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I’ll send over some info on it. Interesting piece of equipment. Oh, and here’s Dan Remmington, Ways and Means.”

  “Nice to meet you, Congresswoman Bannister!”

  “Pleasure’s mine.”

  “Helluva campaign. We all followed it. We loved Jarrod Thornbloom you understand…”

  “Of course.”

  “But if there has to be a replacement—well, the state of Mississippi couldn’t have done any better!”

  “You’re kind to say so.”

  “He’s not just being kind,” Jeb Maxwell interrupted. “It’s the undeniable truth. Oh, and here you need to meet…”

  So, for five minutes—it seemed much longer—she was herded through the room, given a chance to shake hand with this luminary or that lawmaker, this writer or that analyst, this TV talk show host or that retired general.

  And always the talk of her wonderful campaign.

  She was flattered, of course.

  It was a remarkable thing.

  She, little Nina Bannister.

  Being fawned over by some of the most in
fluential people in the world.

  How many lunches of fish sticks and tater tots had she eaten in her life?

  Now she was caviar lady.

  Finally, the crowd oozed out into the room, and she was alone with Jeb Maxwell and his aide.

  “Tim, I’m gonna go in the conference room back here with Congresswoman Bannister. See that we’re not disturbed, will you?”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “Now, Nina. If you’ll come in here, maybe we can finally be alone.”

  “Sure.”

  And, so saying, he led her into his office and closed the door behind her.

  “Sit down.”

  “All right.”

  The massive desk, of course.

  And, damned if it wasn’t true…

  ...the couch was uncomfortable.

  “So, how are you finding Washington?”

  “A bit fast pace, but I’m learning.”

  “Hear you’re rooming with Laurencia Dalrymple.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Remarkable lady.”

  “I think so.”

  “She may run for president, you know.”

  “I’ve heard that.”

  “And yet she’s so down home; charming, but so easy to talk to.”

  “I know.”

  “So what the hell is this?”

  A pause.

  “I’m sorry…”

  “I would think you’re sorry. You damned well ought to be sorry!”

  “I just…I don’t…”

  “You don’t, huh! Well, look!”

  He slid open a drawer of the desk, reached inside, and pulled out a newspaper.

  The Washington Post.

  He held up the front page.

  There she was, lower right quarter of the page.

  A picture of Nina Bannister.

  And the headline:

  “Dem. Lawmaker Advocates Blanket Welcome for Refugees!”

  “I…I…”

  “You haven’t read this yet, Nina?”

  “No. I didn’t see the paper this morning. I’ve been answering mail.”

  “Read it.”

  He threw it at her.

  She caught it and read:

  “In a sharp break from party policy…”

  She looked up.

  “A sharp break from party policy is not good, is it?”

  The face across from her, now brutally cold, glared back.

  She forced herself to go on reading.

  “In a sharp break from party policy, a junior member of the Democratic Party told a reporter yesterday that she favors allowing admission into the United States of all Honduran refugee children. ‘There are only about fifty thousand of them,’ said Congresswoman Nina Bannister, newly-elected representative from the state of Mississippi. ‘And there are three-hundred million Americans. That means only one American out of every fifty-thousand would have to take in a child. Surely we can do as much!”

  She put down the newspaper.

  “I didn’t give this story,” she said quietly, “to The Washington Post.”

  “If you give it to one paper, you give it to all of them. Surely you’re not so stupid that you didn’t know that.”

  The word stung, but there was nothing to do but sit and take it.

  “And surely you also know that we are feverishly trying to work out a deal with the other side to fix this mess before it gets any worse. The President has asked for thirty-billion dollars so that we can process these people and get them back home to where they came from. The Republicans are holding tough. All they can do is say, ‘Why didn’t you build the wall when you had the chance?’ Right. A Berlin Wall right on our own border, built to keep people out and not in. Most ridiculous thing I ever heard of in my life. No. No, the most ridiculous thing I ever heard of in my life is you shooting off your damned mouth to the national media. And doing it without consulting a single member of your own party.”

  A horrible silence for a time.

  There was no sound in the room, nor outside of it.

  The Capitol Dome gleamed white through a huge window to her right.

  It seemed to be grinning at her.

  “The President is livid.”

  “The President knows about this story?”

  Jeb Maxwell shook his head:

  “No, of course not. The President never reads any newspapers. He especially doesn’t read stories about his own party members making policies he’s never heard of. But don’t worry about him. He’s heading off to Geneva later this morning for talks concerning the Ukraine. Oh, and by the way, I don’t suppose you’ve thought of a way to solve that crisis too? Maybe just invite all the Ukrainians to come and stay at your place for a while? Maybe just a few years, until the Russians stop shooting at them?”

  “Sir, I…”

  “Lady, what in the hell were you thinking?”

  More silence.

  Deeper silence. Purple silence.

  Then black silence.

  She could only shake her head and whisper:

  “I guess I wasn’t thinking.”

  The black silence darkened.

  She felt like a badly-behaved freshman who had been summoned to the principal’s office.

  Only that would have been for some minor offense such as fighting or breaking a window.

  She had humiliated herself before the President of the United States.

  And the question continued to lie there on the table like a dead seagull:

  What had she been thinking about?

  Well..

  Olivia Ramirez for one.

  But Olivia Ramirez was half a continent away right now.

  Olivia Ramirez did not have to deal with the stark realities of Washington life.

  “No, Ms. Bannister, the President is the least of your worries right now. The House Minority Leader is fuming. I’ve had calls from about twenty people, congressmen, senators…they’re all asking me what drugs you’re taking. By the way, you’re not on drugs are you?”

  She shook her head.

  “No. I’m not on drugs.”

  “Damn. That would be an easy explanation. Then all we would have to do is get you into a rehab program and we could forget the whole thing. But there’s no rehab program for stupid.”

  That word again.

  Still, nothing to do about it.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  He shook his head:

  “The best thing you can do is not to have given this story. No one on Capitol Hill—no one—favors simply opening up our border to any child who wants to wander up to it, and saying ‘We’ll find you a nice American family to spend ten years or so with, until we can get you into Harvard Law School.’ Do you understand that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Most of the people calling me want your head. The problem is, there are more than twenty of them—by nine thirty, that is—and you’ve only got one head. So that’s out.”

  She said nothing.

  “There are various things we can do when congressmen—or women—speak out of turn.”

  “What are they?”

  “Shoot them. Drown them. Send them off on a fact-finding tour somewhere. Make them Ambassador to France.”

  Nothing to say to that.

  “But the truth is, we can’t punish you.”

  “Why not?”

  ‘You’re too little. And you’re a woman. And you’re new. And you’re from Mississippi, which means you’ve got three strikes against you right there when it comes to human intelligence. No, whatever we did—at least in public—it would look like we were bullying you. The National Society for the Protection and Preservation of Small, Inexperienced Southern Women would be up in arms.”

  She found this amusing, but she did not speak.

  She had decided, actually, never to speak again.

  Nor ever to leave her apartment again.

  That would be the ticket!

  A little boring, but much better t
han this.

  “No, there is one thing you can do, and you have to do it, and you have to do it quick.”

  “And that would be?”

  “Apologize. You have to hold a press conference. This afternoon.”

  “How do I…”

  ‘Don’t worry about it; it’s all set up. It will be here in my office. There will be about fifteen reporters, all the usual crowd. Some of them you just met. Associated Press, Reuters, CNN. Anyway, you’ll start the press conference by reading a statement that is already being prepared for you. Then you’ll leave.”

  “But if they have questions…”

  “They will have questions and you won’t answer them. You’ll just dammit leave. And that will be the last that anyone hears from the esteemed REPLACEMENT representative from the great state of Mississippi for the rest of your stay in Washington. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “All right. Now. You need to go with Tim. He’ll take you somewhere private where you can have lunch and be certain not to be seen. He’ll bring you back here at two. You’ll have a chance to read over the statement you’ve going to make. Understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right. Now please leave.”

  He rose, walked around his desk, and showed her out the door.

  Certain moments are so wretched that they cannot be lived away from. Certain moments are so bleak and rotten that they do not serve as jumping off points for the future.

  There is nothing to do after them.

  Her conversation with the House Minority Whip constituted such a moment for Nina Bannister.

  Looking back months and even years later, she could not remember doing anything from ten in the morning—when she had been called ‘stupid’ two or three times—until two in the afternoon, when her press conference was to take place.

  Certainly, Tim Sandler was a part of her existence in this vacuum/vortex of non-being of having anything to live for except humiliation.

  He must have taken her somewhere; then he must have bought her lunch.

  Which she must have either eaten or left on the plate.

  He must have chatted with her.

  He was very good at chatting.

  She, when one actually thought about it, was getting pretty good at chatting herself.

  And he must have taken her back to Jeb Maxwell’s office.

  For that was where she found herself at two o’clock.