They glanced at each other, still not happy that I was keeping information from them. But they were pros and acted like it.
‘They said two o’clock to three o’clock,’ Lucy said.
‘It’s a good venue,’ Kathy said. ‘Great acoustics. Jeff has had three debates there over the years. He’s comfortable there.’
‘You have any video of Burkhart debating, Kathy?’
Two minutes later Kathy handed me a DVD marked Burkhart vs. Steinem. The date was three years ago. ‘This was from the primary when he was running for governor. Some amazing stuff in there.’
I went over to the video rig and set things in motion. I punched play. The forty-inch plasma TV bloomed. The first image told me that I was looking at a home video. Not a bad home video but a home video nonetheless.
Whoever had shot it must have come late because the first audio belonged to then-Congressman Norm Steinem and he was already in the middle of a sentence.
‘-at California. Look at the trouble they’re having with all their anti-tax legislation. The state government is paralyzed. It’s virtually impossible to raise taxes when it’s necessary. And sometimes it is necessary. We need government services and sometimes that means taxes.’
The camera panned over to Burkhart while Steinem was talking. He looked uncomfortable in a suit and tie. His toupee was cartoon red. The way he gripped the podium suggested he might crush it sometime soon. He knew how to steal a scene. As Steinem spoke Burkhart winked at his supporters, rolled his eyes once and then put a finger gun to his head at the mention of taxes and pulled the trigger. The laughter from his side of the auditorium was loud. The moderator who sat between the two podiums appeared most unhappy.
‘Mr Burkhart, I thought we agreed that you wouldn’t pull any of the stunts you did in the first debate.’
Burkhart loved it. He pointed to himself, grinned to his people and said, ‘I’m a bad boy.’ Then: ‘I apologize to you and I apologize to Mr Steinem. I just enjoy having some fun. But I can see that this isn’t the time or place for it.’
Everybody in the house was waiting for the punch line but it never came. The debate settled into sonorous titting and tatting.
It was eighteen minutes and thirty-six seconds before Burkhart let Burkhart become Burkhart, when it was his turn to respond to a question on prayer in school. Then he riffed, then he wailed, a born-again jazz man sending his lumpen messages out to true believers everywhere.
‘You know why I wear this little American flag pin? You know what it symbolizes to me? It symbolizes the America I grew up in. Hard work and family church and belief in the finest country God ever created. And no matter how much they try to dirty and pervert this land of ours, this pin right here is my shield. It protects me and my family from the atheists and the degenerates and the global-warmers and the gay-pushers and the liberals who mock those of us who love our country and mean to save it. And prayer in school is one of those issues where I’m using my shield — and picking up my sword — to make sure that it’s still allowed in schools everywhere. I pray to God every morning at my desk and I don’t see anything wrong with our children doing the same thing. All we’re asking is that we have the right to keep America the way it was — and the way it should still be!’
Maybe he wasn’t Reagan but he was just close enough to make a solid impression. The physical heft, the hard face, the rich voice… he was corny but effective.
I watched the entire debate. I judged Burkhart the winner by a few points. What had cost him the election were all the stories about the lawsuits at the various companies he owned. Age discrimination, sex discrimination, unsafe working conditions, sexual harassment, and some video clips of him at a Chamber of Commerce meeting railing against the minimum wage. ‘This is destroying the opportunity to offer Americans what they really want — more jobs.’ Yes, at $1.25 an hour.
But all of this had failed to seriously damage Burkhart this time around. His flag pin speech was packing them in. He was still the odds-on winner of this campaign.
I walked the DVD down the hall to Kathy’s desk.
‘I’d vote for him,’ I said.
‘He’s good on the stump. And he’s not a moron. He’s just a country-club bully who picked the right year to trot out all his bullshit again.’
‘Other than that you’re nuts about him.’
‘I’m secretly in love with him.’ She pointed to a chair. I sat. She planted her nice elbows on her desk and her face in the V of her hands and said, ‘You really going to keep us in the dark?’
‘I’m going to try to.’
‘You don’t trust us.’
‘This really bother you or are you just having fun?’
She shrugged and sat back in her chair. ‘A little of both, probably. Lucy and I have been with Jeff since the beginning. It kind of hurts our feelings that you come along and keep us out of the loop.’
‘So it’s me you’re pissed at?’
‘Pretty much.’
‘Anything I could do to change that?’
She put a finger to her cheek and pretended to be pondering the question. ‘How about buying me a drink and not putting the moves on me?’
EIGHTEEN
‘ The first congressman I worked for was in the late nineties. I was just out of college. I wrote his speeches and did the scheduling, even though I didn’t have a clue about what I was doing. I really liked him for taking a chance on me until I found out he was doing all this so he could get me in bed. You know when you hear all these actresses complaining about how being beautiful is really a pain sometimes? Well, it really is. I’m pretty but I’m hardly beautiful. But just being pretty — and God, there are millions and millions of girls prettier than I am — even then it gets in the way. He wanted me to go back to Washington with him. Yeah, right.
‘The second congressman was straight-ahead but he had this insanely jealous wife. She called me out at this party one night. Made this big scene about how I was destroying her marriage. This was in their home. One of their teenage daughters was on the stairs listening to it all. The story got into the press. I quit. Even the tabloids picked it up. There was the photo of the congressman and me on the front page right in the checkout lane. My poor parents. My dad’s a doctor in a small town. It was humiliating for him. I kind’ve liked the congressman I’d been working for. I always felt that maybe we should have slept together after all. At least we would’ve gotten something out of it. He lost, of course. The scandal did him in. He’s still married to that hysterical bitch and I’ll never know why.
‘The third congressman was straight-ahead, too. Good, bright family man who practiced what he preached. But the other side planted a spy in our camp. He started leaking stories to the media about the congressman and I having an affair. If I was a reporter I’d have believed him, too. He looked legitimate. He was a driver and he worked with the volunteers. By the time we figured out he was a plant he’d done some damage. The media had played with some hints and the hints had started to have an effect on the voters. Fortunately, we were able to win, anyway.
‘Then Lucy called me about Jeff Ward. Everybody always thinks that I was a sorority girl or something in college. Actually, I was very shy. In high school I’d been fat and had a bad complexion. By sophomore year in college I’d sort of bloomed outwardly but inwardly I was still the same high school girl so I didn’t hang around with any of the cliques. Lucy and I had two poly sci classes together and we became friends. I thought it’d be great to work with her so I joined the Ward campaign just under three years ago.’
She was as pleasant to listen to as she was to look at. The late hour and the drinks that brought on a melancholy kind of sexuality made me feel comfortable for the first time since I’d arrived in town. I could close my eyes and imagine myself back in Chicago in similar circumstances.
‘I’m just afraid of what I’ll turn into.’
‘And what would that be?’
‘Oh, one of those older women you see on the Sunday talk shows. Kind of coarsened by all the years of
