by S A Shaffer
“Not since I’ve arrived,” Francisco said, never looking up from the paper.
“Well … fancy a cup of tea?”
Another grunt, which David took to mean yes. David walked across the main office to the refreshment station. The only problem was, no tea. Bethany literally only had one job. No matter, Blythe had some in his office. David would pop in and grab some before anyone was the wiser.
David walked to the double doors, paused to knock, and then felt like an idiot. No one was in the office. He slipped through one of the doors and stopped so quickly that he nearly fell on the glass floor. Blythe and Samantha broke apart from something that looked like a kiss. Blythe looked at David with his usual smile, but his eyes burned like smoldering coals.
“I … I … um … just came in to borrow some tea.” The words tumbled out of David like so many stones.
“You really should learn to knock,” Blythe said as he let go of Samantha’s hands. “That will be all, Samantha.”
She turned and walked toward David with an indignant look, hips swaying with every step. David turned to exit as well, but Blythe stopped him.
“A moment, David.”
David groaned inwardly. He was in for it now.
Blythe waited until Samantha closed the door. Then he turned and walked over to his private refreshment station and began making tea.
“My wife and I are married, but for political reasons only. Both of us see the benefits of the union, but we haven’t lived as husband and wife for quite some time. As far as either of us is concerned, we are free to pursue any relationship we choose, as long as we maintain the public appearance of matrimony. Do you understand what I’m saying?” Blythe looked over his shoulder at David.
“I think so, sir.”
“I am like any other man, David. I desire a relationship with a woman as much as any of us. I am lonely, and Samantha is beautiful. Sure, she’s only seeking a relationship with me because of my status as a representative, but such is the way of all relationships, one way or the other. They thrive as long as the benefits remain mutual and consensual. Truthfully I actually think I could love her. She makes me feel young again—young and full of hope. Could you deny that to a man?” Blythe turned away from the station with two steaming cups of tea and looked at David.
David accepted the cup of tea and gazed into it, hoping to find an answer. “No, sir, I couldn’t. I was just a bit surprised. I had no idea you and your wife weren’t, well, cohabitating.”
Blythe laughed as he sat behind his desk. “Cohabitating? That woman hasn’t shown me more than her face in the past ten cycles.” He took a slow sip of tea and let out a satisfied sigh. “The public can’t know of this, David. They wouldn’t understand. They’d think me like all the other representatives who keep secret mistresses behind their wives’ backs. My wife knows full well that I’m seeking love in the arms of other women, just as I know she is doing the same with other men. Can you keep it a secret, David?”
“I will, sir. I find it … strange, but you can count on my silence.”
Blythe gave David a short nod and took another sip of tea. “Very good. By the by, how is your mother?”
“She’s fine. The funds from the nonprofit have really helped, enough to keep Ella on as a nurse. I really can’t thank you enough.”
“Least I could do. Now get out of here. You already ruined my morning; I don’t want you ruining this cup of tea as well.” He gave David an exasperated look, but his eyes were smiling.
David walked out of the office and felt Samantha’s smug stare boring into his back all the way to his desk. Francisco still read his newspaper. How could the prick not have known Blythe was … entertaining a guest? If he had, why hadn’t he warned David?
And why did it bother him anyway that Blythe felt affectionate toward a beautiful young lady? True, she was half his age, and he technically still had a wife, but that was just it: a technicality. All interested parties to the marriage consented to his extramarital activities. It really wasn’t a marriage at all—more like a business arrangement. So why did it bother David?
Bethany walked in, a full hour late, as usual. She sat at her desk, bright-eyed. Like a cat in a window she watched Blythe’s shadow flicker across the seam beneath the double doors. David looked around on his desk, searching for anything to do that would take his mind off his embarrassment and confusion. He settled on the past week’s district financial report and busied himself in the numbers.
At half past nine Mercy walked in with a disposable teapot and a bag of steaming pastries.
“Tea, anyone?” she said.
“Yes please,” David said as he jumped up and walked over to Mercy’s desk.
She smiled as she handed him a pastry—a sweet tuber bun filled with cream and caramelized berries. David took a bite and breathed out in sweet satisfaction. It was so much better than that morning’s Charra gruel.
“Slow down, David. You’re going to choke yourself,” Mercy said, placing a hand on his arm.
“I can’t help it,” David said around a mouthful of bun. “My mom used to make these as a special treat. I haven’t had one in four cycles.”
Mercy chuckled as David stuffed the rest of the bun in his mouth and reached for another. Francisco and Bethany joined them, but Samantha turned her nose up at Mercy’s invitation. That was fine with David. The four of them passed around tea and buns. Bethany nibbled at her pastry like a rodent. Francisco picked up a cup of tea in one hand and two pastries in his other before he returned to his newspaper.
“Any word on what we are doing today?” Mercy asked. “How are we saving the Houselands?”
David shook his head as he took another bite of a pastry. The sweet taste in his mouth almost covered up the bitter embarrassment.
“Mercy? I’d like to meet with you at your earliest convenience,” Blythe said as he poked his head out of his office for an instant.
David gagged a little on the half bun he had in his mouth.
Mercy laughed, a sweet tinkle of rain on a clear glass window. “I told you not to eat them so fast.” She turned toward her desk to retrieve a pen and notebook, red-and-white-striped dress swishing behind her.
David looked back at the double doors, and then at Samantha, who wore a pout on her face, and finally at Bethany, who at that moment seemed to be daydreaming in Blythe’s general direction.
A thought flitted across David’s mind. He gulped. Not Mercy. Would he enter one morning and find her in Blythe’s office? He wouldn’t. She definitely wouldn’t. But if Blythe made advances toward her and she refused, what would happen then? Blythe was a good man. He’d never send Mercy away. … Would he?
David watched as Mercy walked across the office toward Blythe’s doors, a strange mixture of jealousy, horror, and desire welling up inside him. He looked around the room, frantic for a solution. His eyes fell on Francisco.
“Mercy,” David said just before she reached the double doors.
She turned and acknowledged him with a sweet smile.
“Um,” David said, “maybe you should take Francisco with you to scribe, just in case.”
Mercy’s sweet smile morphed into one of curiosity as her head cocked and an eyebrow rose. She regarded David for a few seconds before giving him a slow nod.
Francisco didn’t need to be told. He jumped up with a pad and pen, grabbed another tuber bun, and slipped into Blythe’s office behind Mercy.
David pondered as he reached for another bun, but Francisco had pinched the last one. He chastised himself as he retook his seat and got back to his financial report. This line of thinking was getting him nowhere. Blythe was the only representative who actually cared about the people.
The rest of the day meandered by. Blythe sent Mercy on a negotiation mission to the mainland houses to propose a trade deal for House Braxton. The mainland houses were the breadbasket for all of Alönia—all of the Fertile Plains for that matter. More food came from those four houses than all of Viörn
itself.
The office hummed along for the next few days, and David was just starting to relax after his awkward interruption of Blythe and Samantha when the storm clouds broke and rained all over his happy little career.
David arrived early as usual and busied himself with different house reports and constituent letters. Francisco arrived next, clutching a newspaper in his hand. David smiled and said hello. Francisco grunted—what a surprise. Next was Bethany, late as usual. Lastly in walked Blythe and Samantha, arm in arm.
David did his best to smile at them, but it was an awkward attempt and not well met. Samantha sneered, and Blythe nodded in a cordial but stern manner.
After depositing Samantha at her desk, Blythe said, “David, in my office.”
It wasn’t the words but something in the way he said them that made David feel he was about to be in big trouble. David scrambled to his feet and followed Blythe into his office.
“Sit,” Blythe said as he paced back and forth across the glass floor like a caged animal. He held his hands behind his back, one of them clutching a section of newspaper. After a few more laps he proffered the paper.
David took it and smoothed it out, then he glanced through the articles. It was the political section of the Voxil Tribunal, a newspaper suspected to be in Speaker Walker’s pocket and, unfortunately, the most widely read in the Houselands. However, despite its partisan reputation, the main article made David’s stomach contract and churn:
WOMANIZER AND ADULTERER
A secret informant closely connected to the Blythe political office reports that William Jefferson Blythe IV is engaged in an extramarital affair with a woman half his age. …
David read on and finally looked up at Blythe, whose mouth was working but with no sound coming out. Blythe regarded him with an unyielding gaze. He scooted a chair across the glass floor with a screech and sat at an uncomfortable distance from David.
“I’m only going to ask you this once, David. Did you issue this report?” His face was stern, and his eyes bored into David’s very soul.
David shook his head. “No, sir! I didn’t do anything of the sort.” David’s voice cracked a little at the end as he poured every bit of honesty he possessed into the words.
“Don’t you think it is at least a little curious that only three days after you discover my situation in marriage, the Voxil Tribunal accuses me of adultery?”
“I find it very curious indeed, sir, but I did not submit that article.”
Blythe pursed his lips for a moment before standing and resuming his pacing. David didn’t know what else to say. The facts were stacked against him, and the only defense he had was his word. He’d never seen Blythe like this before, wild and functioning on full burn.
Finally he stopped and looked at David. “I’d like to believe you David, but you’re going to have to prove it.” Blythe visibly forced his frustration into some dark prison deep within him. “You have three days to find out who did this. After that I have no choice.”
“But, sir—”
“Three days, David. Go. Time is short, and I need to figure out how to get out of this mess.”
David jumped to his feet and walked, head down, toward the door, but before he opened it, he had a thought. He turned back to Blythe. “Sir, not that you want my advice, but if I were going to try to get out of this mess, I wouldn’t deny it. The public is all too eager for sex scandals these days. They assume all people who deny it are guilty. If you accept it and explain that you and your wife have been estranged for the past ten cycles, most people will forgive you, and everyone else will forget about it since it’s not the juicy tabloid fodder they were hoping for. Some might even feel sorry for you.”
Blythe looked at David for a moment before saying, “Thank you, David. That will be all.”
David sank into the chair at his desk with a solid thump. By now the rest of the office had read the article, and a somber mood hung over them. Three days … David had three days to fix this or else he’d lose his job. He’d probably lose his apartment and Ella too, and then what? Where would he go? What would happen to his mother? David stopped himself from sinking into despair. He had three days. Best make the most of them. Whatever happened would happen. If he wanted to control that, then he’d better stop worrying and start thinking.
He looked around the room. Someone in their office was a spy—Francisco, Bethany, Samantha. David replayed every moment of the past three days in his mind. The only day that really mattered was the day he had stumbled into Blythe’s office and made a fool of himself. Something had happened that day, and if it was that day he was examining, he had to include Mercy in his list of spies. He shuddered, not wanting to think ill of her. She was wonderful, and if he was being honest with himself, he liked her very much. However, that was all the more reason to include her. Look where no one else is. She had been gone that morning and so she had a perfect alibi, but it was still possible.
David took out a sheet of paper and wrote the names down. He marked Mercy as number four, not because he liked her, but because she’d been absent on the morning in question.
Bethany was next of the least likely culprits. Her head was full of a bunch of cabbages. True, that could be a perfect cover, and she did have a motivation. Even now she gazed with longing eyes toward Blythe’s door. If she had discovered Blythe and Samantha’s little secret, how would she react? She had the motivation, but did she have the intellect?
Next was Francisco. He seemed perfectly content in his situation. Competent and diligent at every assigned task, yet zero ambition to pursue life any further. He’d been there the morning David interrupted Blythe. Had he known the whole time Samantha and Blythe were in there? Had he known what they were doing, or had he just suspected? The opportunity and knowledge were there, but not the motivation. Francisco didn’t seem to care. He had his job, and he did it well. He had also come on a personal recommendation from one of Blythe’s close friends. Of course, money could be a powerful motivator. And besides, that eye was really creepy. How could someone ever trust a person who could look two places at once? David wrote a number two next to Francisco.
Lastly was Samantha. David really didn’t like her. She was the only person in the office who had come without a recommendation from either a known associate or personal friend of Blythe. It was also clear from day one that she had seductive intentions toward Blythe. She had personal knowledge, plenty of opportunity, and motivation. Seduction was a favorite political tool. Send in an attractive, well-endowed assistant, eager to please either in public or behind closed doors, catch the politician in an affair, and then blow the whistle. It happened every single day. Blythe was more vulnerable than most, easy prey for such a move. If this was true, that meant this was only the beginning. They would wait for Blythe to deny the affair, and then they would present the evidence. Moreover the position Samantha now filled had been conveniently vacated at the time of her application. Paula’s torturous death and the close proximity of her secretarial position with Blythe created simple, scandalous stepping-stones for any seductress. David put a number one next to Samantha’s name.
He looked at his notes. What now? Questioning them wouldn’t do any good. They’d already fooled him once; they could just do it again. He had to lay a trap and hope it caught a traitor within three days. David winced.
He tapped his pen against the side of his head. It stood to reason that if Blythe survived this first attack, there would be another. However, it would take quite a bit for a spy to strike twice within one week. They needed an extra little push.
David looked down at the mess of financial documents he’d been perusing the past few days and had a thought. He pulled a document from the file cabinet and filled in some of the requisite blanks. Once done, he slipped a vial of fine powder out of his satchel and sprinkled it across the document, brushing the excess into the wastebasket. Lastly he penned an affidavit and autographed it. David reviewed his work and took a deep breath. This would eith
er work or he would be homeless. He got up, pocketed the affidavit, and took the other document into Blythe’s office.
Thirty minutes later he walked out of the office in shame. He’d been fired.
◆◆◆
Three days … three days of anxiety and terror. That’s what he had to wait through. He should have enjoyed the time with his mother, and the extra rest, but he spent the days and nights pacing his apartment floor. He could see the new transportation facility from his window, scaffolding and steel girders poking at intricate angles like a giant briar patch. Another month and Public Pharmaceuticals would be finished, fully operational with a full three weeks to spare before the census. It was all going so smoothly, until now. They had a rat in the office; a rat that somehow had placed the blame on David. A rat who, in David’s opinion, worked for a bigger rat. David only accomplished one productive activity throughout the entire time he paced his apartment: he’d added a person of interest to his wall. He didn’t have much, only a blank sheet with a question mark and, after some consideration, a title: the man in the shadows. Someone was pulling the strings.
Blythe had released an article the same day he fired David. It described his situation in life and marriage in such eloquent terms that David even found himself feeling sorry for the man—alone, in love, and looking for someone to share the rest of his life with. Mrs. Blythe wrote a supporting article admitting that she and her husband had separated over ten cycles ago for irreconcilable differences, but had kept up the pretense of marriage for political reasons. The whole episode blew over the public’s head like an early-morning breeze. However, it wasn’t over yet.
On the morning of the third day, the last day of Blythe’s ultimatum, the public gasped as the front page of every Alönian newspaper—not just the Voxil—presented the same article:
PUBLIC FUNDS USED FOR PROVOCATIVE ACTIVITY
New evidence presented against the Blythe administration that proves the representative used public funds to pay for dance clubs and courtesans.
