Fate of the Union

Five

Sometimes Amy Reeder longed for her father’s gift at reading people — spotting and interpreting the tiny behavioral tells of their moods, their inner thoughts, their outright lies. Right now, for instance, she had no fricking idea what her boyfriend, Bobby Landon, might be thinking.

Well, one thing she could read: he was pissed.

Not that that was anything unusual lately.

Sitting on the couch in her Georgetown apartment, still in the gray suit she’d worn to her part-time job as a senatorial intern, Amy inconspicuously brushed away the beginnings of a tear.

She would not dignify Bobby’s belligerence with a single drop.

Slender legs tucked under her, the twenty-one-year-old knew she was wrinkling her slacks, buying herself time with an iron or expense at a dry cleaners, but at this point didn’t really give a damn. Her long brown hair, tucked up in a bun, stayed perfectly in place as she shook her head.

How many times had they had this same damn argument? Once a week? Maybe, for a while. Of late, more like daily.

Bobby tromped back in from the kitchen, brown eyes flaring, fists balled, ponytail swinging. The contrast between him in his ancient Che Guevara T-shirt, ragged jeans, and worn sneakers and her professional attire from Ann Taylor made her feel at once invaded and a stranger in her own apartment.

“I told you the Common Sense douche bags,” he said, not quite yelling, “are holding a big-ass rally on Tuesday. You knew that.”

“And you know,” she said, working to keep her anger in check, “that I cannot go to events like that anymore. We had this talk before I accepted the internship.”

“Which I was in favor of!”

“That’s right, you were. And you were fine with it when I said working for a senator, participating in protests was out for me.”

He stopped pacing. Breathed in and out, slowly, like a man fighting a panic attack. Finally he let out a long period-at-the-end-of-a-sentence sigh.

“You’re right,” he said, holding up surrender hands. “You’re right, you’re right. I’m sorry.”

“... What?”

He came over and sat next to her. “I’m way out of line. I encouraged you to take the damn job.”

“You did,” she said.

“Figured you were in a position to do some good from within. From inside the belly of the beast.”

“But not in a subversive way, Bobby. I’m not a spy. I’m trying to see how the system operates, and see if I can have some small impact... and make that work in favor of what we believe in.”

“I get that,” he said, utterly calm now.

She arched an eyebrow at him. “This is still you, right? You aren’t an alien or anything, and I’m going to find a pod in the kitchen?”

He smiled, embarrassed. “No. It’s me. Hotheaded, frustrated me. I’m starting to feel like I’m on the inside looking out. You know what guys my age who go to protests alone are usually trying to do, don’t you?”

“Get laid?” she asked with a half smile.

“I was trying to think of a more graceful way to say it. But you’re not wrong. We’ve been a team, baby, and it’s hard sitting on the bench. These are important times. We’re on the brink here.”

She patted his leg. “Every generation feels that way. And I trust you not to pick up some latter-day hippie chick at the rally.”

He gave her a kiss. Small, sweet kiss.

“I get carried away sometimes,” he said. “I’ll be better.”

She studied him. “I am a little surprised that you got worked up about these Common Sensers. What’s so bad about standing in the middle of the road? Other than both sides trying to run you over.”

He shrugged. “They’re not as bad as the Spirit jagoffs, I’ll give you that. But the Sensers sure as hell will slow any small progress we might make in this country.”

“The Spirit” was more officially the Spirit of ’76 Movement, a splinter off the old Tea Party that had sprouted into a tree.

Bobby was saying, “And Wilson Blount and his old-school right-wing cronies? You’re right, they are so obviously worse. I mean, those assholes are always up to some damn self-interested thing.”

“Goes without saying,” she said, hoping to cut off what appeared to be a building rant.

No such luck: his eyes were flaring again.

“Did you know that old man Blount got that asshole Cunningham from Montana to sneak a line item into the highway construction bill? Lowering the age for becoming president from thirty-five to thirty?”

“I did know,” she said calmly. “It got some media play. But Blount claims he’s only trying to encourage the youth of America. To show younger people, young voters, that he respects them.”

“That’s blather for the idiots. Blount has his eyes on the presidency for that puke-face kid of his, Nicky.”

“I haven’t heard anything like that,” she said, eyes narrowing. “Where did you get that?”

He raised and shook a “right on” fist. “Inhabit America website. Right now, they’re at the top of a short list of anybody spreading the truth.”

Inhabit America was viewed, at least by the left, as the next logical step after the old Occupy Movement. They espoused sweeping change to nearly every aspect of the country that was still touched by the neocon legacy of President Bennett. Inhabit America was Bobby’s latest hobbyhorse.

Of course, Amy followed Inhabit America online, too; but her experience from her new job had already made her more skeptical of sites like Inhabit and their self-proclaimed “truth.”

“So we have Blount and his bunch going after the White House,” Bobby was saying, getting himself going again, “while these white-bread Common Sensers are preaching their ‘Meet Us in the Middle’ nonsense. They just love to go on talk radio and cable news and present their old-time Americana bull, boasting that they aren’t on either side. Come on! Who isn’t more on one side than the other? They need to get off the goddamn fence!”

When she had first met and started dating Bobby, his save-the-world progressive notions had seemed to her noble, and she had joined in willingly. But the more time she spent on the Hill, the more she realized that Bobby’s simple answers were not reality-based. Governments had budgets, with thousands of programs, each begging for its share from the national coffers, each with defenders on the right or left.

People like Bobby never worried about the economics of a problem — just doing what they thought was right, damn the cost, practicality be damned.

“People like Bobby” — my God, was that how she was thinking now, about the man she wanted to spend her life with?

Whenever she tried to explain her revised, insider’s views to him, he only called her naive. Now the roles had reversed — he seemed the naive one.

“What’s so bad about a centrist movement?” she asked. “It’s where most people in this country really stand. The people in the middle just get shouted down by the extremes. And maybe the Common Sense Movement is ‘white-bread,’ but their demographics go across ethnic and even religious divides.”

He gave her that condescending smile she knew too well. “You’re cute when you mimic your dad. Such a good little girl.”

“Cute” was his code word for naive. And he had just crossed the line with this “good little girl.” Not a pod in the kitchen at all, just a condescending prick lying momentarily low.

She flew to her feet and glared down at him. “Go screw yourself, Bobby, because trust me — that’s your only option tonight!”

“Honey... sweetie...”

“Don’t honey/sweetie me, you smug bastard. First you talk me into that intern position, then you treat me like shit for taking it! Who is it again that ought to get off the goddamn fence?”

He shrugged with open hands, and made his case — lamely: “I just thought you could do some good on the inside, and that we’d have the ear of a US senator.”

“And by we,” she said, still towering over him, “you mean you... pulling my strings?”

“No... that’s not it. Not at all...”

Amy folded her arms, her anger shifting from hot to cold. “Senator Hackbarth isn’t progressive enough for you, I suppose.”

“She’s a good person, sure, means well but—”

“What would satisfy you, Bobby? An anarchist maybe? Somebody who’d toss a bomb in the Senate and run away cackling?”

Senator Diane T. Hackbarth, Democrat from Wisconsin, was rated by the National Journal as among the most left-leaning members of Congress. That was about all Amy had known when she’d been assigned to the senator, but she’d quickly done her homework to get up to speed.

Since Day One as an intern in Hackbarth’s office, the hours had been longer, the work harder, and the rewards greater than anything the young woman had ever done. All this was on top of her college workload.

Bobby had quickly gone from being her support system to a genuine pain in the ass. Like tonight — riding her about a protest at a political rally, which he knew damn well she couldn’t attend; it was finally just too much.

He showed her the surrender hands again. “You’re right, baby. I’ve been a real dick.”

“Finally,” she said, voice dripping venom, “we agree.”

Bobby looked up at her like she’d slapped him. He just sat there, eyes wide and welling, mouth hanging slackly open.

She’d seen that look on her father’s face when she watched secretly from the stairs that time, back when she was in junior high, when her mother had said much the same thing to him. Was she channeling her mother now? The woman she’d resented for being so tough on Daddy?

She sat next to Bobby. “See what happens,” she said gently, “when worlds collide?” Then jokingly, “Card-carrying pod person like you should know that.”

He said nothing, wearing the hurt like a drink she’d tossed in his face, dripping there.

“Baby,” she said, “that came out really nasty. I’m sorry.”

She kissed his cheek. At least he didn’t pull away.

Then he said, “No apologies, sweetheart. Got what I deserved. I started in on you and it was unfair and I was a prick.”

“Like I said,” she said, no venom in her voice at all now, quite the opposite, “finally we agree...”

She kissed him on the mouth and it was sweet and then some urgency came in. Then they were in each other’s arms, making out like the overage immature kids that they were, the blowup over as quickly as it began.

Bobby’s hands starting roving, then tugging at her clothes, and her cell phone vibrated on the nearby coffee table, hopping around for attention like a child in its crib, wondering what strangeness its parents were up to.

“Shit,” she said.

He was unbuttoning her blouse. “Ignore it.”

“Could be work,” she said, already pulling away.

“They’ll leave a message,” he tried. “It can wait a few minutes...”

She said, not sharply, “Is that all the time you figure you need?”

He smiled, laughed a little, took the pressure off and she reached for the phone, getting it just before voice mail kicked in.

“Senator Hackbarth,” she said, having seen the caller ID. “What can I do for you, ma’am?”

The familiar businesslike alto: “Meet me tomorrow, breakfast. Seven a.m., Capitol restaurant.”

“I, uh, thought the restaurant didn’t open till eight thirty.”

“It doesn’t.”

That was all the explanation Amy’s boss gave — after all, rank has its privileges, and so does being a senator.

Hackbarth was saying, “Have you read the background material on the college-loan reform bill?”

“Yes,” Amy said, not adding, Some of it. So not technically a lie.

The senator continued: “And since this law could affect you and a good number of your friends, I’ll be eager to hear your opinion.”

“Yes, ma’am. Thank you, Senator.”

“Informed opinion, Ms. Reeder.”

“Absolutely, yes, ma’am.”

The line clicked dead in her ear.

She turned slowly toward Bobby. He was already sitting up, and when he saw her face, he rose.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“No more sorries tonight,” he said pleasantly, but there was just the faintest strain in it. “I’m gonna catch some TV. Check in when you get a chance.”

He went off toward the bedroom.

Allowing herself a plight-of-the-working-class sigh, she trudged to the dining room table, grabbed her new briefcase — a gift from Dad — and shambled back to the couch. In the bed where Bobby waited, it was doubtful the two would be able to get to their make-up sex, just as the notion of her getting any sleep at all was similarly unlikely.

Chances were, she’d be reading till dawn. Withdrawing the fat folder of material on the bill the senator wanted to be briefed on, Amy settled back into the couch.

Already it felt like a long night.