“Oh, just a glass of Chardonnay.”
“Bring a bottle of the 2009 Far Niente. And I’ll have a beer, a Stella.”
The waiter left them alone.
“How do you think she looks?” he asked.
“How does anybody look when they’re dying of cancer?”
Jack didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to.
“When I saw her yesterday, she told me she wanted to live long enough to see if Sam won the election,” he said.
Ramona laughed.
“She just told me that if he does win, she wants to live long enough to see him inaugurated.”
“Well, he might make it,” said Jack, thinking of his conversation with Phil Slanetti at the Horizon party about how important Matt Hawkins of Wyoming might be. “I’m having one of the more important votes come down for a visit before Christmas, if it all works out.”
“Let me know—and be sure to tell Sam—that if he needs someone to fill in for Sofia during this time that I’ll be happy to help.”
“Thanks. I will.”
Jack knew there’d been rumors about a liaison between Sam and Ramona after his mother Louise died, but Jack had been only 10 or 12 and away at school, and Sam had never spoken of it, so it had never been discussed. With Sofia ailing and certain to die before too long, people were bound to be interested in what moves Sam might make after she passed.
I don’t really care, Jack thought as the waiter dropped off his beer and her white wine. Whatever his dad wanted was fine with him. If he won the Presidency, he’d have a lot on his plate. One thing was sure: his dad had always been the kind of man that not so much loved female companionship as demanded it.
* * *
At that moment, Governor Sam Houston St. Clair sat in the rear cabin of his Bell 206L-4 LongRanger feeling guilty precisely because he was thinking about “female companionship” after Sofia died.
He was on the chopper with just Chief of Staff Francis Clougherty and two Secret Service agents, having left the others in his party to travel from Opa-locka airport in cars and vans. But the noise in the chopper precluded any chitchat, so Sam was free to look out the window and dwell on his own thoughts.
The conference call that morning with the medical team he’d assembled to treat Sofia had spelled it out in no uncertain terms: his beloved Sofia would die before the New Year. The cancer had metastasized and spread to her liver. It was only a matter of time.
His thoughts naturally drifted to Ramona and Bedelia, the two women with whom he’d had affairs after the death of Jack’s mother, Louise Perkins (from an old Boston Brahmin family) and before he married Sofia, from a prominent Cuban exile family in Miami.
Louise had never really liked Miami and spent as much time in her native Boston as was practical, forcing Sam to maintain a lavish mansion on Beacon Hill. She was wildly against Sam going into politics, and it was only after she died that Sam entertained the idea of running for office.
Sofia supported him fully, but in her heart Sam knew she didn’t want him to go into politics. “Dirty work, politics,” he remembered her saying.
Where Louise spent her time locked up in the vastness of Flagler Hall, shunning Miami as much as she could, Sofia was a vital and energetic part of the community. Being Cuban helped, of course. But they were entirely different women.
Sam didn’t think Sofia knew about Ramona, and the reason he chose Louise over Ramona was Héctor. Louise was devoted to Sam and wouldn’t leave his side (until after they were married, when being in Boston suddenly became more important than being with Sam).
Ramona dated Héctor at the same time she was seeing Sam, who didn’t see that he was probably making a mistake by bringing the dyed-in-the-wool New Englander to live with him in his mansion on the Bay in Miami.
In any case, what was done was done. They shortly had a son, Jack, who grew up to distinguish himself in the Navy, following in Sam’s footsteps as a SEAL.
After Louise died, Ramona was still happily married to Héctor, with three lovely daughters to show for it, and Sam married Sofia, a friend of Ramona’s. A year later, she gave birth to his second son, Rafael, so unlike Jack in so many ways, with his dark olive skin, his black wavy hair, his Cuban exoticism. Jack was still very much the stoic, reticent New Englander and he still reminded Sam of Louise every time he laid eyes on him, with those clear icy blue eyes.
Bedelia was another matter altogether.
Sam had done quite a bit of business with her husband, Toth Vaughan, a real man’s man, with whom Sam had made a fortune in the mining industry in Canada and Africa.
When Bedelia had a son, Jonathan, Toth flew around on Cloud 9. Jonathan was not the son Toth wanted. They fought bitterly as Toth tried to “make a man” out of Jonathan. Sam was sure Toth died not knowing his son was gay. That part of himself Jonathan held in as much as he could until his father died. He’d even married Patricia in an effort to please his dad.
Sam had had an affair with Bedelia while she was still married to Toth. Since he and Toth traveled all over the world together, it was common practice for Sam to stay at Horizon whenever his business took him to Washington, just as Bedelia and Toth stayed at Flagler Hall whenever they passed through Miami.
The first time it happened with Bedelia, Sam just happened to get into Washington a day before Toth, who was coming from Paris. Sam had come
