Chapter 7
She would have nightmares about that night for the rest of her life. As she left the plush penthouse, Anthony Fischer handed her an envelope, which she took without speaking or looking at him. If she tried to talk, she might burst into psychotic laughing that she could never stop. She was certain that if she looked at his body ever again, she would throw up. She delivered the envelope to Mac without opening it. The tough, hardened campaign manager saw that he shouldn't ask how it went.
She saw people, even Derek, as though they were a long way away. She heard them speak, and heard herself answer.
But it was like the roar of the crowds when she was standing next to her smiling, waving husband on the speakers' platform, or at the airport. Nothing touched her, nothing got very close. Her privacy had shrunk to a tiny, hard ball inside her, where no one could see.
Within a couple of days, she had resumed her work in the campaign with renewed vigor. She accompanied the candidate like the perfect courtesan she was raised to be, smiling and chatting with the important people. Her ball of privacy, filled with the most horrible visions, shrank still smaller until she hardly noticed it, and plunged into the public world, her public life, convinced that there was an impenetrable barrier between the two, that there was no chance for the doors of that hell to open and the host of obscene demons charge out.
But she was wrong. One morning as she sat in an office looking over Derek's schedule of appearances, Simmons, the vulgar reporter from the Viewer slinked into a chair beside her and plopped down in front of her a stack of 8x10 photograph's. It took her a minute to recognize the white blob as Anthony Fischer, and still longer to see herself lying flat on the bed, naked, with her legs spread wide to accept his long, drilling penis.
She moaned, the memory of the torture of her body coming back so vividly she could feel the ache in her loins again. But she didn't snatch them up, as Simmons had expected, to keep the other people working and milling around the office from seeing them. Instead she looked at them one at a time. There were pictures of her undressing, dancing, a close-up of her grimacing with lustful pleasure with his unmistakable small, white hand on her breast, and one of him arched above her in orgasmic ecstasy, her small face clearly visible on the bed under him.
"I'm not interested in mementoes, thanks anyway," she said haughtily, shoving the stack of pictures back toward him.
The ugly, scrawny reporter was astonished at her calm reaction. He had no idea how much the experience he had so carefully photographed had changed the shy wife. "I thought I'd show these to your loving husband, Mr. Clean," he sneered.
Becky shrugged. "I don't think he goes in for that sort of thing. You might have more luck with some of these college boys; they're horny all the time." She meant it, she realized: she didn't care who saw those pictures now. Somehow she had the feeling that the whole world had been there anyway, that everyone had seen it happen, so it just didn't matter who knew about it afterwards, or even who saw photographs of her degradation. Only her personal memory, the memory of what it felt like was private. Everything else was public, and, as Linda had said "fair game."
She leaned over and looked at them again. "If he weren't so ugly, you know, they might be worth something, but ... " she shook her head.
The lewd reporter was furious. He'd been hounding her for weeks, determined to get back at her for her snobbish put-down of him. He thought he'd finally gotten hold of the key that would make her squirm. "The people of California might be interested to know what the pure, wholesome wife of their goody-goody Congressman has been up to," he half shouted, forgetting about the other people in the room.
"Keep it down, will ya', " someone shouted. "I'm on the phone." Nobody cared much about anybody else's business.
He leaned his grotesque face close to hers and said more quietly. "And the voters might be interested in how the incorruptible Derek Kohn raises campaign funds."
The candidate's wife pursed her lips and frowned. He had a point, and someone as unscrupulous as this pipsqueak reporter wouldn't have much trouble getting all the evidence his kind of paper needed, if he didn't have it already.
"There's just time for a big spread before the election," he leered, sensing victory in her disconcerted face. "But not time to refute the charges. Of course they couldn't be refuted anyway."
"All right," she said angrily. "What do you want?" She had a fairly good idea. He'd made himself pretty clear ever since that first time they met.
"I want to fuck you up your wiggly little ass," he said quietly, obviously taking pleasure in his obscenity, hoping to shock the tall, beautiful aristocratic politician's wife.
But the sheltered Virginian didn't take him literally, and didn't appear phased. "My room tonight at midnight," she said in a business-like voice. "I'm not taking any chances of more peeping-toms in the woodwork." The little' reporter snickered. "Bring the negatives," she warned him. He nodded with a sneer.
Becky reported the whole thing to Mac. This wasn't a personal matter, but something that involved the campaign. The stodgy manager fumed, puffing his cigar angrily until the room was full of smoke.
"Meet him," Mac said sharply. "I'll be there too, hidden, and recording everything that's said. Get him to spell out exactly what he's doing, exactly what he's offering and what he's asking." He took his red-tipped stogy out of his teeth and looked up into the smoke thoughtfully. "If this story ever gets to the Viewer's readers, they won't be able to fire him fast enough to keep their hands clean. That wormy bastard won't risk his job, even for your sweet ass." He looked embarrassed. "Excuse me, Mrs. Kohn, I didn't ... "
She waved it aside. "Go on."
"And the Viewer won't risk half its readership, even to break Derek Kohn. Once we have the tape, you shouldn't have to go through with ... uh ... the rest of it."
"If you're going to be there anyway," Becky said, "why don't you just get the negatives from him. You could break him in half."
Mac answered carefully, the bitter wisdom of long years in politics in his voice. "Anyone who would stoop to what Simmons is doing, is not going to keep a bargain like this. He'll bring negatives all right, but he'll have at least another set of prints for the future. No, before you can deal with someone like that, you've got to grab 'em by the..." The vulgarity of the subject kept making him forget who he was talking to. "You've got to have a good grip on them."
"What about what you've stooped to," Becky asked, her eyes, no longer so naive, narrowed on the tough back-room politician.
"And you," he countered, meeting her stare unblinking. "It's a hard world."
She shook her pretty head, her long smooth, honey-brown hair flowing behind her face. "Not as hard as you make it, Mac. I don't believe we have to stoop as low as Simmons, or Anthony Fischer."
"Or me?"
"Or you. And I don't think I had to stoop as low as I did."
"You just meet him tonight. This is dirty business we've got to finish up. After that you can believe what you want." She nodded, then turned her back on him and left.