Guilt by Association (41 page)

She slipped the thick folder Randy had provided into her briefcase, coolly shook Robert’s hand, and turned to leave. But at the last moment she turned around and, removing her glasses, produced the definitive
Playboy
smile.

“Well, gentlemen, will I do?”

The senator laughed outright. “You’ll do,” he said, adding to himself—you’ll do just fine.

“Good,” she replied with a toss of her gold mane. “Because I plan to retire on what you’re going to pay me.”

Randy produced a broad grin the moment the door had closed behind her. “With that little ace up our sleeve, how can we lose?”

“Let’s not get too cocky,” Robert suggested.

“By Labor Day, we should have a clear picture of where we stand.”

By Labor Day, the picture was indeed clear. According to every major newspaper, poll, and political pundit in the target areas who could squeeze himself onto the Willmont bandwagon, the senator from California was someone with a legitimate chance of unseating the incumbent.

No one close to the senator was very surprised by his swift climb up the political ladder. He was that rarity of rarities—a man of both image and substance. He had the dashing looks, the persuasive charm, the keen intelligence—and the right message at the right time.

“I believe in a balance of trade with Japan or no trade with Japan,” he assured the auto industry in Detroit.

“Hear, hear,” his audience applauded.

“But I won’t force Japan to buy American automobiles. Hell,
I
won’t even buy American automobiles.”

“So what are you telling us?” bristled a CEO into sudden silence.

“Learn how to make a Toyota.”

“Half of every federal tax dollar is used just to keep up with interest payments on the national debt,” he told a caucus of housewives in Cleveland. “Isn’t it time Washington learned what all of you have known for years—that you can’t spend what you don’t have?”

“I’m four-square behind foreign aid,” he assured a contingent of Third World diplomats in New York, “as long as it comes after American aid.”

“It’s time to take responsibility for your own actions,” he suggested to the NRA. “Either you find a way to get guns out of the hands of children, or I promise you—I will.”

“Contrary to popular doctrine, the meek are not going to inherit the earth,” he assured a group of industrialists in Dallas.
“By the time we get through with this planet, not even the cockroaches will survive.”

He became the king of the sound bite, but even the media sensed there was more to him than one-liners. He made some of the people angry and he made some of the people laugh, but he made enough of the people go home and take a good long look in the mirror. By the end of October, all that was left was the announcement.

Mary Catherine poked her head in the door. She was wearing a new red wool dress, she had a fresh perm in her gray hair and her Bambi eyes sparkled.

“We’re all set,” she said.

“Is Elizabeth here?” Randy asked.

“She and Adam just came in.”

Robert pulled himself out of his chair, reached up to straighten his tie, and stepped out from behind the desk.

“How do I look?” he asked.

“Like a man about to step off a cliff,” replied Randy with a grin.

“Like the next President of the United States,” Mary Catherine told him.

“Okay,” he said. “Then let’s go do it.”

I
don’t think we should do a book on San Francisco,” I Karen told Nancy on October 24.

“Why not?” Nancy queried. “It’s one of the most popular cities in the country.”

“That’s why,” Karen explained. “As far as I can tell, it’s been photographed, lithographed, silk-screened, etched, sketched and painted to death. It’s already so overexposed that I’m not sure we could find anything new to say.”

“Spectrum’s not going to want to hear that.”

“Well, I have an alternative.”

“I’m all ears,” declared Nancy.

“I’d like to do a book on water.”

“Water?” came the blank response.

“Water. When we lived in Tucson, there was always plenty of it. We were in the middle of the desert and we took it for granted.
But here in San Francisco we’re surrounded by water and we literally have to count drops. There’s the ocean and the bay and the delta and rivers and streams and lakes and ponds and, if someone’s been careless, even a puddle. And, all the while, people are taking family showers and trying not to flush their toilets.”

“I didn’t realize it was that bad,” Nancy murmured.

“It’s just the irony of it,” Karen told her. “Besides, it may be the only story left to tell about this place.”

“Water, huh?”

“Well, why don’t you think about it,” Karen suggested, “and run it past Spectrum.”

“Don’t have to,” Nancy said. “I think it’s a terrific idea. Let’s do it.”

b>“Really?” asked Karen.

“Really.”

“My sister-in-law is coming out in the beginning of December,” Karen told Natalie. “We’re starting another book.”

“About San Francisco?” the psychiatrist asked.

“About water.”

Natalie threw back her head and roared.

“I’ll want an autographed copy of that one,” she said.

“I’d like you to meet Nancy, if you have time.”

“I’ll make time,” Natalie asserted with more than a hint of sarcasm. “That is, if I can tear myself away from the Willie Smith rape trial.”

“Oh … that.” Karen stiffened imperceptibly, but good psychiatrists were trained to see imperceptibles, and Natalie Shaffer was very good.

“Not planning to watch, eh?” she said.

“No,” came the short reply. Then a shrug. “He’ll be acquitted.”

“Why do you say that? Do you think he’s innocent?”

“I think he’s guilty,” Karen replied. “But he’ll be acquitted anyway. The jury will say it was her fault because it was three o’clock in the morning and she went with him.”

“Come on,” Natalie argued. “This is the 1990s and rapists are getting convicted every day.”

“Acquaintance-rapists?”

“All kinds, although admittedly acquaintance rape is a lot

harder to prove.”

“He’ll be acquitted,” repeated Karen.

* * *

“Nancy’s coming out in December,” Karen told Ted when he came home that evening.

Her husband grinned. “The new book?”

“She liked my idea about water.”

“So do I.”

“Would you like a glass of wine?” she asked.

“Sure,” he replied, heading toward the study.

Since coming to California, the Donigers had been making a conscientious effort to switch from Scotch to wine. On evenings when Amy was in her room doing her homework, Ted would drink a glass with the national news, and Karen would sip at hers as she fixed dinner.

It was just past seven and the newscast was in full swing. As usual, Karen was not paying attention. She inserted a corkscrew into a chilled bottle of chardonnay.

“…
surprise move, an unexpected hat has been thrown into the Presidential race,”
the anchor was saying.

With a practiced jerk, Karen pulled the cork free.

“Robert Drayton Willmont, the charismatic senator from California, made his announcement at a press conference held in Washington
late this afternoon.”

She half-filled two glasses.

“Ladies and gentlemen,”
another voice said. “
My wife Elizabeth and my son Adam have set their hearts on being the next residents of sixteen hundred Pennsylvania Avenue.”

The voice paused for a titter of appreciative laughter. Karen took Ted’s glass and started down the hallway that ran from the kitchen to the study.

“Since I have always made every effort to give these two very special people in my life everything they ask for, I am today
declaring my candidacy for President of the United States.”

She reached the door of the study and, for some reason, an icy shiver slid down her spine.

“It should come as no surprise to anyone that this country is in very serious trouble,”
the candidate continued. “
To be more specific, we are standing on the brink of moral, intellectual, and economic bankruptcy. I believe that America de
serves a leader who will first recognize that, second, admit to it, and third, do something about it.”

It was something about the voice, something familiar. She was sure she had heard it before, and the memory pushing its way into her consciousness was not a pleasant one.

“I saw a bumper sticker the other day,” the voice went on. “
It read: ‘New World Order—Same Old Lies. ‘ Now if that’s what you want for four more years, then turn off your television
sets and put aside your newspapers for the next twelve months, because I’m not interested in anyone’s megalomani-acal new
world order at the cost of those who are suffering in America now.”

She took three steps into the study and stopped. The television set was behind her, so that the voice seemed to come through her rather than toward her.

“I say you’ve been lied to enough. I say you’ve been deceived enough. I say you have the right to know what’s going on. After all, it’s your country. And it’s in trouble. But I think we can keep it viable. Yes, even after twelve long years of trickle-down leadership, even after decades of neglect, I’m not ready to give up on America yet. But I can’t do it without you. So I’m going to take advantage of every opportunity the media will give me to tell you the very unpleasant but necessary truth about what has been done to you and what is still being done to you, and exactly what we have to do to fix it.”

“That would be different,” drawled Ted.

As though the whole world were now running in slow motion, Karen turned to face the face on the television screen. The once-dark hair was almost buried in silver, and the crevices of middle age etched his face. After twenty-nine years, she might not have remembered the set of the jaw or the shape of the mouth or the angle of the nose or even the little black mole on his right cheek—but she would never ever forget those eyes.

The wineglass shattered against the hardwood floor.

It was ten o’clock the following evening when Karen crossed the street and pressed the Shaffers’ doorbell. It was
the dream that drove her there—the dream about being chased through the fog that she hadn’t had in years, but which had come back last night.

She had stayed indoors all day, drinking cup after cup of tea laced with brandy, not even bothering to dress until just before Amy came home from school. Dinner was a scramble of leftovers.

It was the unbelievability of it that she couldn’t seem to grasp, that after all these years she should have to come across him again—and the unfairness that he had not only escaped retribution of any kind but had become so successful.

“I’m sorry to bother you so late,” she apologized when Natalie answered the door in her bathrobe, “but you said—if I ever needed to talk…”

“Come on inside,” the psychiatrist replied instantly, leading Karen to the back of the house and the room they had turned into a cozy office.

“I don’t know what to do,” Karen whispered. “I thought it was all over and done with long ago, part of the past—and now it’s all back, just like before, and I don’t know what to do.”

Natalie closed the door behind them. “Sit down,” she invited and watched Karen squirrel into a deep leather chair. “Now, what don’t you know what to do about?”

Shadowed eyes peered out of the chair. “I want to kill him,” Karen said.

“Kill who?”

“I didn’t want to tell Ted. I thought
he
might kill him and I couldn’t let him do that. I couldn’t let him ruin his life. But my life is already ruined—he ruined it,
so what difference would it make if
I
did it… if I killed him?”

“Ruined what?” Natalie asked. “Kill who?”

Karen suddenly giggled, a high, shrill, scary sound.

“Here he is, after all this time, and he’s running for President, can you believe that? He’s running for President! I could have gone the rest of my life never having to see him again, and what happens? I end up in California, and he’s running for President.” The giggle turned to a groan and she began to
shiver. When she spoke again, her words stumbled over chattering teeth. “He doesn’t deserve to be President. He doesn’t even deserve to be alive.”

Natalie hustled over to a tray on a sideboard and poured a glass of brandy.

“Here,” the psychiatrist ordered. “Drink this down.” She had to hold the glass herself to keep it from spilling.

“I never thought I’d see him again,” Karen went on. “I thought I was done with it all. The nightmares had gone away. Ted and I were starting to put our marriage together. Sometimes, days went by and I didn’t even think about it. And then there he was, big as life, coming right through the television screen, talking about truth, for God’s sake—truth!”

With a gasp, Natalie sank into the opposite chair. “Are you talking about Robert Willmont?” she asked in disbelief. “You want to kill Robert Wilmont?”

“Why not?” Karen flared. “He almost killed
me.”

The words hung in the air for a moment, until Natalie was able to absorb them.

“Why don’t you tell me about it,” she suggested calmly, although she felt anything but calm.

“I never knew who he was—that is, his whole name,” Karen began. “No one had a last name back then. So he was just Bob when I met him. Bob from Harvard Law School.”

Natalie knew the California senator had gone to Harvard Law School.

“Do you remember,” Karen asked, “when I told you I’d had an accident and because of it I could never have any children of my own?”

“I remember.”

“Well,
he
was the accident.”

The psychiatrist listened in silence to the story that Karen had to tell, and Karen told it all, beginning with the party at Jill Hartman’s, describing the assault in Central Park, detailing her months in the hospital and the biased police investigation,
moving on to her parents and their incredible reaction, and ending with Peter Bauer.

She told it as she had never been allowed to tell it, not just
chronicling the bare facts, but clothing them in her deepest-buried feelings, exposing her fears, revealing her humiliation and degradation. Even though she was recounting something that had taken place more than half her life ago, she could recall every detail as vividly as though it had happened yesterday.