Thirteen
The next morning when I slink onto the campaign bus for our departure from St. Louis, I’m surprised to find a mood that’s almost celebratory. All of the campaign staffers are chatting animatedly, and Suzette is actually (gasp!) smiling. I’ve been too afraid to look at any of the news about the debates, but I’d just assumed that it couldn’t be good. Short of General Bennett deciding to go ahead and concede the election to my dad now, I can’t imagine what could have put the campaign staff in such a good mood.
It isn’t until I spot a copy of USA Today that someone has tossed aside that I understand what’s going on. On the cover, there’s a huge picture of my dad from the debate last night, accompanied by the headline, “Think There Are No Honest Politicians? Think Again.” I snatch up the paper and hurry to my seat to read the article.
As it turns out, according to the story, people were so impressed with my father’s forthrightness at the debate last night that his poll numbers have soared. General Bennett has held a slight lead for the entire race, but now my dad’s leading by five points.
I can hardly believe it. I put down the paper and look around me in amazement. I must be the luckiest person in the world. Somehow every slipup I’ve made thus far has managed to make my dad look even better. Perhaps I should try to screw up more often, I think, nodding proudly.
When Suzette walks up, I point to the paper and smile. “Great news, huh?”
“Yes, it is,” she says, allowing herself a momentary smile before returning to the standard expression of seriousness that I know so well. “We had a close call there,” she continues, “which is actually what I wanted to talk to you about.”
Uh-oh, I think as she slides down into the seat across from me. Maybe I’m not off the hook just yet.
“Julia, things worked out well this time,” she says, “but it might not always happen that way. I can’t spend this entire campaign trying to clean up your messes.”
I wince, anticipating what she’s going to say next. I just know she’s going to tell me that I’ve got to go back to my old, generic get-out-the-vote speech. Great, I think. I finally earn the right to talk about politics at my campaign appearances, and now I have to go and do something to mess it up.
But to my surprise, all she says is, “I think we’re going to have to put you back on that intensive study schedule to prepare you for your appearance in Denver. It’s obvious that you’re not as well-educated about this campaign as you should be.”
That last line is complete crap, and she knows it. What happened in St. Louis had nothing to do with me not knowing the issues of the campaign; it had to do with me being taken off guard. She’s just using this whole studying thing as a way to punish me. And it will probably work pretty well, I have to admit. My grueling study schedule had become pretty lax after Iowa, and following the St. Louis event, it was supposed to have been over altogether. I had been looking forward to spending more time with Chris again, so this mandate from Suzette is especially disheartening.
And so, as we drive across Missouri and Kansas, I spend another week trying not to fall asleep as I read plan after detailed plan. All the while, I’m silently cursing Suzette in my head, particularly when it comes time for my daily mock Q-&-A session with her. She fires the same questions at me every day until I have a formulaic answer developed for any question that could possibly arise on the campaign trail.
Around day four of this torture, we’re cruising through the middle of Kansas when I decide to get up and take a break from the foreign-policy report I’m reading. On my way to the bathroom, I run into Chris in the hallway.
I start to say hello, but he claps a hand over my mouth and, after glancing around furtively, pulls me into the bathroom. After locking the door, he grabs me and starts devouring my neck with kisses.
“Chris!” I exclaim in a whisper, trying to push him away, but he’s being quite persistent. “What are you doing? We could get caught!”
“Mmm, but that’s half the fun,” he whispers back.
I finally manage to push him back and regard him sternly. “I’m serious,” I say, but looking into his bewitching green eyes, I wonder just how serious I actually am. It seems like an awful long time ago that we were making out before the debates, and I haven’t seen him at all this week, and…no. I must be strong. “We can’t do this on the bus. It’s too dangerous.”
“Oh, come on,” he cajoles. “Haven’t you always wanted to join the mile-high club?”
I roll my eyes. “First,” I tell him, “that has got to be the cheesiest proposition I’ve ever heard in my life. And second, we’re on a bus, not a plane. At best, we’re what—ten feet off the ground?”
“Fine,” Chris says with a smirk. “Then haven’t you always wanted to join the 10-foot-high club?”
As I laugh, I feel my resolve melting. And when Chris moves in slowly and gives me a sweet, sensual kiss, it pretty much disappears altogether. As he lifts me up onto the edge of the sink and I wrap my legs around him, I can’t imagine why I was ever trying to put a stop to this in the first place.
A few minutes later, he’s fiddling with the clasp to my bra when I hear a little knock on the door. Chris and I freeze, staring at each other in horror. But nothing can prepare me for the true terror of what I hear next.
“Are you almost finished in there?” Oh, God. It’s my mother.
I’m panicked. This is a million times worse than when my father caught me sitting in the press section of the bus. We could both be in serious, serious trouble if we can’t find a way out of this. My heart is pounding so loudly that I think my mom must be able to hear it on the other side of the door, and all the blood in my body is rushing to my brain, making it impossible for me to think.
Fortunately, Chris seems to be able to perform under pressure a little bit better than I can. After a few seconds, he emits a deep, guttural groan that makes it sound as if he’s being subjected to some form of medieval torture. I’m so shocked to hear this noise coming out of him that I almost laugh out loud. He puts a finger up to my mouth to silence me.
“Are you all right in there?” I hear my mom ask.
“Oh, Mrs. Rowan, is that you?” Chris asks, still sounding like he’s doubled over in pain.
“Yes,” she replies, and then, after a pause, she ventures tentatively, “Chris?”
“It’s me,” he says, following this affirmation with another primal groan. I start to giggle again, and he presses his finger more firmly against my lips.
“Is everything OK, Chris?” my mom asks.
“Not really,” he says. “You didn’t by any chance have the meatloaf at that last place, did you?”
“Nooo,” my mom says slowly.
“Oh, good,” Chris tells her. “But I think I’m going to be in here for awhile. You might want to come back.” He lets out one more groan for good measure.
“I’ll do that,” comes the reply. “I hope you feel better, Chris.”
As soon as I can no longer hear her footsteps in the hallway, I lunge for the door. Chris stops me, holding up his hand. We wait for a few more seconds, staring at each other in silence, afraid to move. My heart is still pounding.
Finally, Chris whispers, “You go out first.”
I nod silently. Part of me is longing to say, “I told you this was a bad idea,” but I’m still afraid to speak.
He gives me a quick kiss on the cheek, then presses himself up against one of the walls of the bathroom and gives me the signal to open the door.
I hold my breath, terrified of what I might find the hallway. We got rid of my mom, but what if someone else is waiting for the bathroom? We’ll be totally screwed. Why did he let me go out first anyway? Didn’t he just see how horrible I am at thinking on my feet in situations like this?
When I finally emerge from the bathroom, I’m immensely relieved to find that the hallway is empty. I breathe a huge sigh of relief, then scurry up to the front of the bus without looking back. Just as I’m about to try to slip back into my seat inconspicuously, I hear Suzette call my name. I look up guiltily.
“Julia, where have you been?” she yells across the bus. Nearly everyone turns to see what’s going on. Wonderful.
“Just taking a study break,” I reply in what I hope is a breezy tone of voice. I’m praying that my vague answer will be enough to satisfy her. Fortunately, it seems that it is.
“I’ve been looking all over for you,” she says as I walk up to the conference table where she’s standing. “We were supposed to start the Q-&-A drill five minutes ago.”
“Sorry,” I say. “I guess I just lost track of time.” As I’m offering my apology, I notice my mother looking at me with a puzzled expression on her face. Is it possible knows there’s something going on between Chris and me? I wonder, starting to panic.
My mom turns back to her conversation with one of the campaign staffers, and Suzette begins firing her usual round of questions at me. Thank God I’ve got my answers pretty much memorized at this point, because I’m barely even listening to the questions. My head is spinning, trying to analyze the look in my mother’s eyes and wondering exactly how much she’s managed to figure out. More importantly, I wonder how she might have figured things out. Did she hear me giggling in the bathroom? Or did she put two and two together when she saw me try to slip back into my seat? Or is it something deeper than that, a sort of mother’s intuition by which she can discern that her daughter is involved in a passionate and illicit affair?
If my mom knows, she’ll tell my dad, I think, my heart sinking. And if my dad knows, judging by past experience, it’ll only be a matter of time before Suzette is informed of the situation as well. And once Suzette knows…well, that’s when things could start to get really messy.
It isn’t until I spot a copy of USA Today that someone has tossed aside that I understand what’s going on. On the cover, there’s a huge picture of my dad from the debate last night, accompanied by the headline, “Think There Are No Honest Politicians? Think Again.” I snatch up the paper and hurry to my seat to read the article.
As it turns out, according to the story, people were so impressed with my father’s forthrightness at the debate last night that his poll numbers have soared. General Bennett has held a slight lead for the entire race, but now my dad’s leading by five points.
I can hardly believe it. I put down the paper and look around me in amazement. I must be the luckiest person in the world. Somehow every slipup I’ve made thus far has managed to make my dad look even better. Perhaps I should try to screw up more often, I think, nodding proudly.
When Suzette walks up, I point to the paper and smile. “Great news, huh?”
“Yes, it is,” she says, allowing herself a momentary smile before returning to the standard expression of seriousness that I know so well. “We had a close call there,” she continues, “which is actually what I wanted to talk to you about.”
Uh-oh, I think as she slides down into the seat across from me. Maybe I’m not off the hook just yet.
“Julia, things worked out well this time,” she says, “but it might not always happen that way. I can’t spend this entire campaign trying to clean up your messes.”
I wince, anticipating what she’s going to say next. I just know she’s going to tell me that I’ve got to go back to my old, generic get-out-the-vote speech. Great, I think. I finally earn the right to talk about politics at my campaign appearances, and now I have to go and do something to mess it up.
But to my surprise, all she says is, “I think we’re going to have to put you back on that intensive study schedule to prepare you for your appearance in Denver. It’s obvious that you’re not as well-educated about this campaign as you should be.”
That last line is complete crap, and she knows it. What happened in St. Louis had nothing to do with me not knowing the issues of the campaign; it had to do with me being taken off guard. She’s just using this whole studying thing as a way to punish me. And it will probably work pretty well, I have to admit. My grueling study schedule had become pretty lax after Iowa, and following the St. Louis event, it was supposed to have been over altogether. I had been looking forward to spending more time with Chris again, so this mandate from Suzette is especially disheartening.
And so, as we drive across Missouri and Kansas, I spend another week trying not to fall asleep as I read plan after detailed plan. All the while, I’m silently cursing Suzette in my head, particularly when it comes time for my daily mock Q-&-A session with her. She fires the same questions at me every day until I have a formulaic answer developed for any question that could possibly arise on the campaign trail.
Around day four of this torture, we’re cruising through the middle of Kansas when I decide to get up and take a break from the foreign-policy report I’m reading. On my way to the bathroom, I run into Chris in the hallway.
I start to say hello, but he claps a hand over my mouth and, after glancing around furtively, pulls me into the bathroom. After locking the door, he grabs me and starts devouring my neck with kisses.
“Chris!” I exclaim in a whisper, trying to push him away, but he’s being quite persistent. “What are you doing? We could get caught!”
“Mmm, but that’s half the fun,” he whispers back.
I finally manage to push him back and regard him sternly. “I’m serious,” I say, but looking into his bewitching green eyes, I wonder just how serious I actually am. It seems like an awful long time ago that we were making out before the debates, and I haven’t seen him at all this week, and…no. I must be strong. “We can’t do this on the bus. It’s too dangerous.”
“Oh, come on,” he cajoles. “Haven’t you always wanted to join the mile-high club?”
I roll my eyes. “First,” I tell him, “that has got to be the cheesiest proposition I’ve ever heard in my life. And second, we’re on a bus, not a plane. At best, we’re what—ten feet off the ground?”
“Fine,” Chris says with a smirk. “Then haven’t you always wanted to join the 10-foot-high club?”
As I laugh, I feel my resolve melting. And when Chris moves in slowly and gives me a sweet, sensual kiss, it pretty much disappears altogether. As he lifts me up onto the edge of the sink and I wrap my legs around him, I can’t imagine why I was ever trying to put a stop to this in the first place.
A few minutes later, he’s fiddling with the clasp to my bra when I hear a little knock on the door. Chris and I freeze, staring at each other in horror. But nothing can prepare me for the true terror of what I hear next.
“Are you almost finished in there?” Oh, God. It’s my mother.
I’m panicked. This is a million times worse than when my father caught me sitting in the press section of the bus. We could both be in serious, serious trouble if we can’t find a way out of this. My heart is pounding so loudly that I think my mom must be able to hear it on the other side of the door, and all the blood in my body is rushing to my brain, making it impossible for me to think.
Fortunately, Chris seems to be able to perform under pressure a little bit better than I can. After a few seconds, he emits a deep, guttural groan that makes it sound as if he’s being subjected to some form of medieval torture. I’m so shocked to hear this noise coming out of him that I almost laugh out loud. He puts a finger up to my mouth to silence me.
“Are you all right in there?” I hear my mom ask.
“Oh, Mrs. Rowan, is that you?” Chris asks, still sounding like he’s doubled over in pain.
“Yes,” she replies, and then, after a pause, she ventures tentatively, “Chris?”
“It’s me,” he says, following this affirmation with another primal groan. I start to giggle again, and he presses his finger more firmly against my lips.
“Is everything OK, Chris?” my mom asks.
“Not really,” he says. “You didn’t by any chance have the meatloaf at that last place, did you?”
“Nooo,” my mom says slowly.
“Oh, good,” Chris tells her. “But I think I’m going to be in here for awhile. You might want to come back.” He lets out one more groan for good measure.
“I’ll do that,” comes the reply. “I hope you feel better, Chris.”
As soon as I can no longer hear her footsteps in the hallway, I lunge for the door. Chris stops me, holding up his hand. We wait for a few more seconds, staring at each other in silence, afraid to move. My heart is still pounding.
Finally, Chris whispers, “You go out first.”
I nod silently. Part of me is longing to say, “I told you this was a bad idea,” but I’m still afraid to speak.
He gives me a quick kiss on the cheek, then presses himself up against one of the walls of the bathroom and gives me the signal to open the door.
I hold my breath, terrified of what I might find the hallway. We got rid of my mom, but what if someone else is waiting for the bathroom? We’ll be totally screwed. Why did he let me go out first anyway? Didn’t he just see how horrible I am at thinking on my feet in situations like this?
When I finally emerge from the bathroom, I’m immensely relieved to find that the hallway is empty. I breathe a huge sigh of relief, then scurry up to the front of the bus without looking back. Just as I’m about to try to slip back into my seat inconspicuously, I hear Suzette call my name. I look up guiltily.
“Julia, where have you been?” she yells across the bus. Nearly everyone turns to see what’s going on. Wonderful.
“Just taking a study break,” I reply in what I hope is a breezy tone of voice. I’m praying that my vague answer will be enough to satisfy her. Fortunately, it seems that it is.
“I’ve been looking all over for you,” she says as I walk up to the conference table where she’s standing. “We were supposed to start the Q-&-A drill five minutes ago.”
“Sorry,” I say. “I guess I just lost track of time.” As I’m offering my apology, I notice my mother looking at me with a puzzled expression on her face. Is it possible knows there’s something going on between Chris and me? I wonder, starting to panic.
My mom turns back to her conversation with one of the campaign staffers, and Suzette begins firing her usual round of questions at me. Thank God I’ve got my answers pretty much memorized at this point, because I’m barely even listening to the questions. My head is spinning, trying to analyze the look in my mother’s eyes and wondering exactly how much she’s managed to figure out. More importantly, I wonder how she might have figured things out. Did she hear me giggling in the bathroom? Or did she put two and two together when she saw me try to slip back into my seat? Or is it something deeper than that, a sort of mother’s intuition by which she can discern that her daughter is involved in a passionate and illicit affair?
If my mom knows, she’ll tell my dad, I think, my heart sinking. And if my dad knows, judging by past experience, it’ll only be a matter of time before Suzette is informed of the situation as well. And once Suzette knows…well, that’s when things could start to get really messy.
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