George Pelecanos (28 page)

"You
could have gotten mugged out there," said Joel as she huddled beside him.
"Or worse."

"So what."

He
sped away from that back door.
Stopped the car at the end of
the alley.
Idled.

"Next
time, get your boss cafe au Viagra."

Crimson
flames roared in Joel's head.

She
said: "Are we going to sit here and stare at the road?"

"Tell
me where to go."

"So much to say, so little time."

"I
need to know--"

"But
you never get to."

"I
know what I'm doing!"

"Congratulations,"
she said. "How do you like it so far?"

"Don't
fuck with me."

"I
wouldn't take your business."

"And
you're all business."

"What's
your label?
Politics?"

"Look,
all I want is..." He stared out the windshield.

"Oh.
I see. It's about what you want." Her hand pulled on the emergency brake. She
drew toward him like a slow falling star.

"What
are you doing?" he said as her face floated closer, closer.

"Guess."

Her
mouth covered his. He tasted lightning. She drew back.
Met
his gaze as he managed to say: "I thought girls like you never kissed on the
mouth."

She
raged at him, both hands slapping.

Joel
shook her. Lena's hair flew wild in the streetlight's glow. She fought free and
he let her. She didn't run or look away, and he saw her. Felt her shiver.

Streets
of fire drove them to his living room.

She
ripped his shirt.
Wore black lingerie.
Her bare legs
clamped around Joel's waist as he laid her down on the living room's maroon
rug.

Two
hours or a lifetime later, they lay naked in the white sheets of his bed.

Her
hand stroked his cheek. "What were your women like yesterday?"

"All
I see are characters in movies."

"How
do they look?" she said.

"Smart.
Funny.
Successful.
Pretty.
Like the kind of woman a man needs."

"Couldn't
fix them, could you?" She said: "Don't save me. And don't make me your personal
Jesus."

Joel
smiled. "Jesus was a man."

"Don't
be so limited."

"Who
knew you were so full of don'ts

"I'm
about out," she said.
"How about you?"

"All
I know is this is going to drive me crazy."

Lena
sealed that with her kiss.

Come
morning, Dick grinned when Joel finally walked past his desk: "Get lost coming
to work?"

"Whatever,"
said
Joel.
"What's happening?"

"Money
wars," said Dick. "We've got three weeks to decide our F-77 vote."

"What's
up with the Aid to Sudan bill?"

"They
should have waited on that over there," said Dick, nodding toward the House
side of the Hill. "Made sure they had a champion over here."

Joel
said nothing about his visits to the key House staffer for the bill's author,
nothing about urging speed on the bill. Now, to Dick, he said, "Polish our
armor."

"The
boss went for that? It's the right thing to do, but he's so freaked about
reelection I can't believe he'll stick his neck out on something for nothing."

"He's
not there yet," said Joel. "But be ready."

Mimi
buzzed Joel: "The boss wants you.

The
Senator sat behind his desk.
Looked up as Joel entered the
private office.

"About last night."
The Senator shrugged. "We
all have our needs."

"Really."
Joel walked out.

The
Senator's eyes burned Joel's neck through the door he shut behind him. At
Mimi's desk, Joel told her, "Call Joyce wherever she is. Get her back in town."

"Home to her husband?
Not likely."

"Mrs.
Senator loves her job as much as he loves his. Reelection on the horizon,
gossip about his solo ways...Joyce knows we all gotta do what we all gotta do."

The
workday wall clock stretched Joel tighter with every sweep of its red second
hand. He left the office for home as soon as he could. She showed up seven
minutes early.
Stood on his stoop holding a pizza box and a
clunky cloth purse.
Hair floating free, she wore no makeup or perfume, a
hooded sweatshirt under a denim jacket, torn blue jeans on slim legs and
black-and-white sneakers.

"This
is nothing but me," said Lena.

He
pulled her inside.

Ninety
minutes later, they ate cold pizza while sitting naked on his bed.

"Your
arms," she said. "How did an indoor guy get such a tan?"

He
told her about Sudan, the refugee camp, the three-day "fact finding" trip that
he blew up to a two-week tour in Hell that the State Department finally
insisted he abandon. "The worst part was seeing the faces of real people fall
away from the helicopter as it lifted me up. I saw their eyes. I saw them
believe my promises."

"You're
exactly who belongs in this town. Get out while you can."

"What
about you?"

"Where
can I go? I started out letting guys be generous to a hot girl who didn't want
a slave-labor job or a soul-sucking career. Then one day you realize that you
added it up all wrong and you're stuck being your score."

Joel
cupped her wet face. "Who you are right now is all you need."

She
shook her head no "Remember Sudan? You've either got power or vultures get you.
Plus, the shit I've done has to be worth it. Has to get me beyond it with
enough nobody can touch me.
Except you.
The best I am
is being who you want."

Thursday
night she only called to say she couldn't see him.

Friday
night her plans were to be not there, but he called her so many times that she
relented. Said she'd see him around midnight.

Lena
rang his doorbell at ten minutes into tomorrow.
Stood on his
doorstep looking like a magazine ad, all hair and lips and sheathed legs in a
black dress that plunged between her teardrop breasts.
Her eyes were
broken windows.

She
stalked upstairs to his bathroom and closed the door.

He
sat on the bed.
Listened to the shower run for twenty
minutes.
The hot water tank must be empty.

He
found her huddled on the floor of the tub, naked, icy liquid bullets spraying
down on her as she looked at him, sobbed, "Not enough soap in the whole damn
world."

He
stepped into the shower and pulled her up, held her in that cold, cold rain.

By
the next afternoon, smiles softened her jaggedness. They walked past Saturday
shoppers who'd come from the Eastern Market food stands where J. Edgar Hoover
sacked groceries as a boy. Joel tried to show her the secret grotto tucked into
the Senate side of the Capitol grounds, but Homeland Security had kicked the
terrorist alert level up to YELLOW. Even his Senate staff ID wasn't enough to
get her past SWAT-geared Capitol Hill cops swarming around America's democracy
factory.

"It's
okay." She squeezed his hand. "Take me home."

And
he knew she meant to his house.

Sunday,
she urged him to do one thing she'd never sold and they did.

Monday,
he went to work.

"Getting
down, Dick said, as he opened the Washington Post on Joel's desk. "Here on A20,
a full-page ad from United Tech salutes their planes with 'American-built
technology.' Then on Page A24, a quarter-page ad where Z-Systems proudly
announces
their F-77A 'simulator' performed flight tests
with 'superlative success.'

"And," continued Dick, "here's an 'According to government sources' news
story about a General Accountability Office 'investigation' into cost-overruns
by Z-Systems on their flying tanker.
Of
course, no mention of which Congressman or Senator ordered GAO to kick
Z-Systems' butt or why the story got leaked."

"Seen
it before," said Joel.

"Yeah,"
said Dick. "Our boss ambushed me this morning at the coffee pot. Told me that
he doesn't care which company he votes for."

Joel
said: "Did he go off again on reelection?"

"Naw,
but speaking of running that Sudan relief bill ain't got
no
legs."

"They'll
show up any day now. Trust me."

"Always,"
said Dick.

That
night, as Joel's kitchen echoed with laughter, Lena's cell phone buzzed. She
said, "Excuse me."
Walked as far away as she could.
Came back in ten minutes.
Said, "I've got to go."
Left him alone with his nightmares.

Tuesday
evening she was sitting on his front stoop with a smile that lit her face.

Wednesday
her restlessness woke him with the dawn. She wore only his tattered high school
football jersey.
Told him: "I can't do this anymore."

Joel
felt his ceiling fly away.

"I
can't leave you," said Lena. "I can't go back and do what I do. And I won't let
my whole life until now add up to worse than nothing."

"If
it's about money--"

"No!
If it's your money, then you're just like all the rest. I can't let you be
that!"

"What
about me? You say you protect yourself against psycho killers and getting...and I
have to believe you. But you fuck other men and it's like you let them rape
you! Can't you--"

"Start
all over?" He heard the tremor in her voice. "Baby, I ain't got the time. All
I've done is like a long black cloud swelling up behind me. I'm running out of
sky."

He
held her and she sobbed. The sun came up and she lay awake on his heart.

Victory
at work that day meant he and Dick brokered a deal to give air polluters a six
percent rollback of fines instead of the seventeen percent proposed by his
Senator's opponents. Joel linked a freelance cameraman he'd cajoled into
filming the refugee camp to a network news producer who owed Joel. As he and
Dick walked their boss to a Roll Call, the Senator told Joel: "Nobody wants
your Sudan relief bill. I can't put my brand on a dead horse." Joel pleaded:
"You can make it work." Senator Ness looked at Joel, shrugged.

Later,
Dick told Joel: "Least he left you with hope."

"Hope
isn't enough on the Hill."

"I
know. Up here, the bottom line never changes: It's what you can get done." Dick
added: "Still, working on the Hill is the right thing for guys like us to do.
The last best place where we can get paid to fight the good fight."

"Yeah,"
said Joel, who'd preached that gospel to Dick once upon a time.

After
work Joel found Lena on his couch, her hands wrapped around a bottle of Jack
Daniel's.

"I
got a phone call today," she said.
"From your Senator.
Didn't take it."

Joel
took a swig of bourbon.

"I
stared at my cell phone screen and realized something: I have his number."

"Leave
him out of this. Leave him alone."

"No,
he's in this with us. He's got my number, but I've got his.
And
the number of the guy who hooked up me and the Senator."

"What
guy?" said
Joel.

"This guy, this lobbyist.
He's gay, so...No business between us. Don't know how, but he hooked up with your
Senator."

"I
can't be with him all the time," said Joel. "What's the guy's name?"

"Frank
Greene."

A
bulldog who wears Wall Street suits. Joel said: "I didn't know Frank was gay."

"It's
not who he is," said Lena, "it's what he offered me."

She
leaned closer. "Frank told me that if I could get the Senator to tell me who he
was going to vote for on a military planes contract--"

"The F-77 authorization bill."

"Yeah.
Frank offered me $5,000 if I got your
boss to say who he was voting for."

Joel
took a swig from the bottle.

"My
idea," she said, "is that if five grand is a fee for just knowing about a deal,
what would it be worth to a guy like Frank to be able to broker that deal?"

Joel's
stomach churned sour acid.

"You
told me all about it!" said Lena. "It's not like this vote makes any
difference. It's not about America or national defense or fighting evil."