 
## Two Tickets to Memphis

By

Harvey Havel

Copyright © 2012 by Harvey Havel

All rights reserved. All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publishers, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a newspaper, magazine or journal.

License Notes. This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with someone else, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

### Books by Harvey Havel:

_Noble McCloud_ (1999)

_The Imam_ (2000)

_Freedom of Association_ (2006)

_From Poets to Protagonist_ s (2009)

_Harvey Havel's Blog, Essays_ (2011)

_Stories from the Fall of the Empire_ (2011)

_Two Tickets to Memphis_ (2012)

_Mother, A Memoir_ (2013)

_Charlie Zero's Last-Ditch Attempt_ (2014)

_The Orphan of Mecca, Book One_ (2016)

_The Orphan of Mecca, Book Two_ (2016)

_The Orphan of Mecca, Book Three_ (2016)

_An Adjunct Down_ (2016)

_The Thruway Killers_ (2017)

For Mustafa Bengali

### Book One

### Chapter One

Of course one has to wonder what a Princeton grad is doing working a ticket counter at a bus terminal, but Simon Sample had graduated from Princeton University indeed. As a top scholar, Simon was tailor-made for Princeton. He went to Exeter too, a top scholar there as well, not a nerd, but one of those well-rounded individuals – smart as hell, a back-up center for the ice hockey team, a member of the drama club, and attractive enough to make the girls swoon.

Prior to Exeter, Simon attended the Dalton School. While there he met the love of his life, the pretty Miss Caitlin Hadley. She studied at Spence nearby. They stayed together as a couple, even through college. The distance between them was tough. Caitlin attended Wellesley in Boston, while he studied at Princeton in New Jersey. He liked that she went to an all-girl's college, as Simon was quite smitten with Caitlin, and it wasn't exactly convenient for her to find another man. The guys visiting from Amherst didn't turn her on the way Simon did. On vacations, they both returned to Manhattan, a middle ground for their long-distance love affair. Simon kept a spacious apartment on the upper West side. After the relationship survived their college years, they moved in together. They were, by Manhattan standards, the perfect couple ever since childhood.

People envied them and for good reason. They made a good team, financially and socially. They went to parties, the elegant kind where social etiquette meant everything. They were of the traditional cloth. Simon wore dark suits and blue woolen blazers. Caitlin liked elegant evening dresses, not too flashy, but more conservative. At most one could see her neck, shoulders, and her long milk-white arms. She belonged to a very traditional family, and reserved her sex appeal for their bedroom.

She donned earrings in front of the bedroom mirror when Simon noticed Caitlin all over again. She looked good in her silk bra, her panties barely covering what Simon could have lived with the rest of his life.

"Honey, do you think these earrings work, or do the other ones work better? I can't decide."

He put his arms around her.

"Simon, what are you doing?"

He kissed her at the nape of her neck. It excited her, but they were getting late.

"We have to go," she giggled.

"Not if I don't want to," he said.

"And what would your father say if we didn't show up?"

"He'd think we ran off to Las Vegas to get married."

He kissed her full lips. Time was running short.

"C'mon, we better get dressed," he said.

"You drive me mad when you do that."

Simon donned his tuxedo. He tied the bow quickly, and it came to a perfect knot. Caitlin slipped into a black, silk dress. She put on the earrings she'd been deliberating over and also a diamond necklace her parents gave for her twenty-third birthday. They looked themselves over. Caitlin brushed lint off of Simon's lapel, and after all was done, they admitted they looked stunning. A good pair they made.

The car service met them downstairs, and they were off to a Park Avenue residence, the home of Dennis Rawlins, a manager for a fund that invested in municipal projects. They passed the Museum of Natural History and the Planetarium. People on the street milled about, some of them tourists, but a lot of them residents who kept close to the park. Simon guessed they had upbringings very similar to his. They were sheltered, protected, and would turn out like their parents. Not such a bad thing, considering most people had a tough time of it, and those that had a tough time were always out to take what they had. People discriminated against the rich too, and if a man didn't protect his wealth and his woman at the same time, some bandit would come out from underneath a rock and steal them from him. He didn't think badly of the bandits, but that's just the way things worked the world over. People stole. People fought for dollars, and if they didn't, they got crushed. The only process that gave them a chance was the political process: a more civilized way of fighting. The poor protest, and that's how they get their way. The rich use politics to defend their wealth, and somehow everything works out – the poor stay poor, and the rich keep their neighborhoods. Everyone belongs in their own places. Like attracts like.

Simon thought he had a flair for political reasoning. He learned it at Princeton. It's no wonder that right out of college Simon took a post as a political fundraiser for one of his Dad's friends.

In the plush of the car Simon's eyes wandered over Caitlin. She was the type of woman only few men could afford. She loved the way she looked – a body like a swan's. Smart too. She attended book clubs and rode horses and engaged herself in charity fundraisers, mostly for Spence, but for other causes as well. Simon had his Bouvier, and one day she would make a great congressman's wife – his wife.

"What are you staring at," she said as they sped through Central Park.

"Just thinking."

"About what?"

"About us."

She put her hand to his cheek. Her eyes were of the deepest blue. She belonged with him. She had his protection from hard realities, and in return she made love to him, took care of him, would bear his children, and run the household. She could work too, but that didn't matter. In the end, he was the man she came running to when insecurity set in.

"You think too much," she said.

"I have a lot to think about."

"Like what?"

"Our future," he smiled.

"Oh, Simon, you're not saying what I think you're saying?"

"Yes, darling. You'll be the prettiest one at the party tonight."

She gave him a poke in the ribs. He liked to tease her about their eventual marriage. They kissed for a spell. Her body had curves where they were supposed to be, her translucent skin perfumed and powdered, her lips like wild strawberries. She was Simon's crowning achievement.

Many financiers were expected at Dennis Rawlin's fundraiser. The incumbent congressman William Briarwood would be there with his entourage of politicos. Simon was his chief fundraiser, and Simon's father a big contributor to the Briarwood reelection campaign.

Pressing palms and getting to know people had always appealed to Simon. As a young college student he was part of a political dinner club, always meeting people and making connections, always the merry host. Dennis Rawlins would take care of most of the meeting and greeting this time, leaving Simon to focus on the big game – the retirees and the ex-chairmen who wanted to keep the same flavor in the district. They were good men and also very powerful men, their sons and daughters following in their footsteps. They needed to keep property values high, crime low, taxes to a minimum, their neighborhoods safe and clean for the new crop of grandchildren. The nouveaux-riche, the immigrants, and liberals as risky as handouts invaded the old money on all sides. Briarwood campaigned to keep these people out. The party's interests matched Simon's. He wanted what they had, enjoyed their company, and in the hazy future he saw himself representing them on Capitol Hill. He did have an understanding of the poor situation, and the best way to take care of them involved charity and faith-based initiatives, not taxation.

He rehearsed these positions in his head in case he wandered into conversation with someone who might help him down the road. It was important to be clear about these things. He constantly prepared and polished his rhetoric, even for a party.

The doorman let them in, and they were surrounded by portraits on the walls, leather club chairs, and a three-tiered stone water fountain. It was delicately quiet in the lobby. It relaxed his mind. The slick marble floor paired with the fountain hinted of the Roman Empire. They could have been in a museum.

The elevator opened to a wide space with women in evening dresses and men in tuxedoes. Dennis Rawlins greeted them near the elevator doors. He looked healthy, fit, and a bit young for his age.

"Well, if it isn't Simon Sample," he said with a gruff. "So glad you could make it, and Caitlin you are as beautiful as ever."

They exchanged handshakes and kisses. Simon and Caitlin moved into the thicket of conversation. Simon looked for Stewart Briarwood, the son of the congressman, the campaign manager, and the soon-to-be chief of staff. He found him talking to a younger girl, probably still in college. Simon couldn't say what the two had in common, only that Stewart often had a string of one-night stands, and he'd land the girl all too easily.

"Well, well, well, look who's here," smiled Stewart, shaking his hand.

Stewart gave Caitlin a peck on the cheek.

"You look stunning this evening. You wouldn't mind parting with her, would you buddy?"

"Only if you bring her back the way I found her," said Simon, laughing.

"Hush, you guys," she pouted. "Come with me," she said to the young girl. "These men have no idea how to talk to a lady."

The women walked off and chatted. A waiter served the men a couple of drinks. They clinked glasses.

"She's looking very good, Simon. You've obviously made a happy woman out of her."

"And you must be making plenty of women happy by the look of things."

"It's experience, Simon. One day I'll show you how it's done."

Simon and Stewart were roommates at Princeton. It was hard to separate the two, but as far as differences go, Stewart preferred the fast lane, while Simon veered towards the slow and steady. They liked that about each other. They balanced each other out. Their fathers saw that they stuck together like brothers. Stewart was a couple years older, so he always had the upper hand in the relationship, but besides that, they had the same philosophies. Both wanted careers in Washington, both were very ambitious, handsome, and successful at a mighty early age. Put the two together, and they could one day take over the government, not as outsiders, but as influential insiders, swaying their counterparts on the Hill and safeguarding mutual interests. They did have a rivalry going, a very polite one to see who would be more accomplished than the other. They climbed together, egged each other on, and played it out on the racquetball court at the City Athletic Club. Their games were long, and they both hated to lose.

"You may want to talk to Rawlins tonight," said Stewart, "and also your father. They're ready for another contribution. My Dad's flying to Washington early next week. He's been worried about his attendance record lately. The liberals will probably use it against him."

"What do the numbers look like?"

"I wouldn't be drinking so much if we didn't have a good lead going into this, but one thing we've learned over the years: you never take the numbers too seriously. We're up, but the fat lady has a way of losing her voice right before her high note."

"We're doing pretty well as far as contributions go."

"Yeah, we are, but with all the hoopla on the Hill about finance reform, we have to keep hunting. Luckily the legislation was a compromise, so nothing's really changing. The only difference is that we've got to watch ourselves. My Dad voted against it for good reason, because the bigger the war chest the more of a chance we have of winning the seat."

"But we're way ahead."

"You never take these liberals for granted, Simon. This election is way too important. Concentrate on the soft money. That's our war chest right there."

"We're posting lots of contributions. I don't think there's anyone in New York left."

"Still, press it."

"Okay, sure. You should see how many dollars I've had to turn down."

"Always the law-abiding one, eh?" smiled Stewart.

"Hey, somebody has to keep you in check," he laughed.

Simon's father, Charles Sample, and his young wife soon joined them. Charles Sample still had his hair, his health, and his prosperity, and his blonde wife kept him happy and young at heart. She was decked out in a low-cut, sequined evening dress. She could have been Simon's wife. She was two years younger than he and in great shape. She wore a bronze tan, while the older Charles Sample kept his frozen New England whiteness.

"My son giving you a hard time, Stu?" said Charles with a drink in his hand.

"Charlie Sample, my, my, you look terrific," said Stewart. "It must be your better half. Linda, you get lovelier every time I see you."

He kissed her hand.

"You better watch out, Dad," said Simon. "When Stu compliments a woman it usually means he's hooked."

"And when Simon compliments a woman he doesn't have any other intention in mind," laughed Stewart.

"I know," said Charlie with a wink.

"So tell them," said Linda hugging Charlie's waist.

"Of course, dear, of course. Linda and I are inviting you two and Caitlin out to the Hamptons next weekend."

"Yes, you must come out and take a break from the city," said Linda. "It gets so crowded and hot in Manhattan this time of year. It would be great to have you."

"What's this I hear?" said Caitlin, joining the circle.

"Dad's invited us out to the Hamptons next weekend."

"We'd love to come," she said.

"Sure, Dad, we'd love to join you."

"And what about you, Stu? I'm sure you can find plenty of women in that little black book of yours."

"Sorry guys, but I'm up in Greenwich next weekend. I can't get out with what's going on. I'll be in Washington all next week. Too much traveling I'm afraid."

"Work hard, play hard, eh Stu?" laughed Charlie.

"Yes, but I'd like to take a rain check."

"Anytime. You know you're always welcome," said Linda, her teeth as perfect as pearls.

The chatter got heavier, and soon the din muffled the sounds of the jazz band up front. If everyone held up flash cards with their net worth, the place would have outpaced the budget of a third world nation by now. A couple of gossip columnists from the local press as well as a couple reporters from the big papers covering the Metro scene were in attendance. Cameras flashed every so often, and then the place lit up when Congressman Bill Briarwood arrived. He didn't mingle at all. He gave a speech that motivated the troops against the liberal opponent, an Hispanic guy who had no chance of winning.

After the speech, an inspiring one filled with stuff about America and the founding fathers, and how we're not there yet, et cetera, Charlie Sample pulled his son aside.

"Son, I'm proud of you. You had a major hand in getting Bill so far ahead in the polls. I've always known you'd go on to do great things, and already you've built a solid foundation that will support your career in public service for a long time to come, and that's coming from someone on the outside looking in. I'm just a real estate developer, and that's where it ends. You, on the other hand, will do wonders on the Hill."

"Dad, I have a very long way to go."

"Yeah, but knowing you, you'll get there sooner than you think."

Charles pulled out a check and placed it in Simon's palm.

"I want this to go towards the campaign."

Simon unfolded the check and read the amount. He was speechless.

"Make sure it gets into the right hands, okay?"

"But Dad," he stuttered, "we can't accept this. It's way too much. Even if we wanted to, we couldn't accept it."

"Take it, son. Spend it wisely."

"I can't. There are legal implications."

"Just take it, okay? Stewart will know what to do with it. Make sure you take credit for it. Have Stu spread it around."

"Thanks, Dad, but we can't accept it. We'll get in trouble. Our accounts are regularly monitored."

"How do you suggest we go about it then?"

"You should write out a check for a smaller amount. I know you care a lot about the campaign, but this is way too generous, if you know what I mean."

Simon didn't like refusing his father. Charlie was clearly disappointed. Charlie had always been there for him, always encouraged him to do his best, and Simon sensed that he took it too personally. He always had a need to please his father, but accepting the check not only would have gone against his principles, it would have been downright illegal. The new campaign finance laws regulated the amount of soft money individuals donated to Federal candidates. Apparently Charlie thought his secret donation could go undetected, but Simon wanted the campaign to be run right, all the I's dotted and the T's crossed. He didn't want to tangle with the Federal Election Commission which had a habit of scrutinizing their war chest every few cycles. As the night went on, he didn't tell Stewart about the check and instead grabbed Caitlin and pulled her onto the dance floor, forgetting about his father's disappointment. The night coasted into opulence, but Caitlin was getting a little bored of it. Near the end of the event, she whispered into his ear:

"Let's get out of here."

"Home already?"

"No. I've got something else in mind. Go get Stewart and the virgin he's hitting on."

The four of them, including the college girl, sneaked out of the place without being noticed.

Caitlin had another side to her. One minute she was a debutante, perfect at playing the role of a political socialite, delicate and sweet. The next minute she headed with Simon and Stewart to a late-night club by the West Side Highway. They hurried in Stewart's limousine, equipped with a bar, a phone, a television, and a sound system. She turned it on and quickly got in the mood.

"I'm glad we left," said Caitlin.

"Me too," said Stewart, taking a dark vial out of his breast pocket.

They all had a snort of the white stuff, all of them except for Simon who stuck with the booze.

"It's a good idea you don't do this," said Stewart to Simon. "Wouldn't want to wreck your political career."

"That's my Simon," said Caitlin after a snort. "Always thinking. I do love you, dear."

And she gave him a peck on the cheek.

Even Stewart's young college girl did some. By the time they reached the West Side Highway, they were gabbing away like talking heads on a news channel. They wouldn't stop talking. They boasted about their lives. They were clearly having a good time, and they didn't pay any attention to Simon who stared out the window and sipped his scotch.

Simon didn't mind Caitlin's excesses. She was, after all, a Manhattanite who needed constant entertainment. Sure he wanted to experience the same things she did, to remain within her emotional field, but he always avoided drugs as a matter of policy. He didn't think it was wrong, just fake – a synthetic happiness that ends like a car going full speed into a brick wall. Luckily they paid no attention to him. He had other things to think about, like doing his job and a future in politics. He didn't want to be that candidate who admits to the public that he snorted a few lines in the back of a limo. He abstained for Caitlin and their future together.

The bouncer let them into the club as soon as he saw them. Stewart slipped him a fifty-dollar bill, and they passed the velvet rope without a hitch. They ripped off their bow ties and vests. They were with people a little younger -–the college kids and the ones at the end of their teenage years. They walked in on a stage show where three blondes in skimpy dresses lip-synched a top-forty tune. The place was hot, sweaty, crowded, and funky as far as the odor was concerned. Simon felt awkward being a little tight in a place that encouraged stronger medicine. The lights swirled in the middle of darkness, and clear, loud sound drowned out any conversation with Caitlin. He wanted to have her on the dance floor. This other side of her, while a bit unsettling at first, did turn him on.

On the dance floor Stu and the college girl wrapped themselves around each other. Their bodies writhed like slick jackrabbits in the middle of a heat wave. Simon thought himself a little too straight for the crowd. He moved his body like a Dalton kid at a freshman dance. Sure enough, Caitlin noticed it. Out of her bust she took out a cellophane bag. It contained yellow pills.

"Here," she said, "try this."

"What is it?"

"Trust me. Just swallow it."

The loud music and the gyrating bodies weren't exactly conducive to a drawn-out conversation on the matter. He was uncertain about it. Caitlin then grabbed him by the back of the head and gave him a long, slow kiss, tongues entwined. Simon begged for more. He swallowed the pill, and Caitlin swallowed another. Pretty soon he wanted nothing more than her body on top of his. With Stewart and the college girl they went into a back room reserved for the important people.

A different music played in this dark and velvety setting. They landed on the couch. Stu and the girl snorted nose candy off each other's skin, while Simon, feeling all lovey-dovey and sensitive, made out with Caitlin and ran his hands up the sides of her body as though she were a slab of clay on a wheel. Simon had gotten a bit out of himself, but it was fine just as long as Caitlin was with him. They played on the couch for sometime, not giving a damn who peeped in on them, not minding Stu getting a blow job on the next seat. They just dug into each other. The rest of the world didn't exist.

The next morning, after a deep sleep and a return to normal, they both felt a little guilty about it. That's what morning sunshine often does to people who don't use the night for sleeping. It was time for Simon to get straight-laced and level-headed again.

### Chapter Two

A week had gone by, and after an afternoon of making phone calls to key supporters, Simon caught a cab from the office and waited in the apartment for Caitlin to arrive. The Long Island Expressway could be unforgiving during rush hour. He wanted to be in East Hampton by dinner time, and the way the news stations sounded, they probably wouldn't get there until late in the night. Every now and then Simon had a need to discuss things with his father. They never had time anymore. While his father developed the all-too-limited lots of land in Manhattan, Simon had been too busy raking in the money for Briarwood. Their paths hardly crossed any more. While he couldn't tell his father everything that went on, he could always bear his weaker sides to him. Simon worried a lot about his future, not that it was in jeopardy. He was, after all, blessed with his father's prosperity. He worried, because he wanted to accomplish great things in a short amount of time, and the process took too long. He often got impatient with it.

Most people don't ever see a view from the top let alone have the privilege of working with the machinery at such an early age. Sure he felt lucky to have things that most people didn't have, but he still wanted more – to be somebody, for instance, and not to be just another suit who stands on the coattails of someone else. Granted he was a realist as far as politics go, and he was fiercely loyal to the folks he associated with, but it was high time he got a little taste of the higher, more meaningful importance reserved for the select few. Talking with his father often put things in perspective. His father wanted him to enjoy himself a little more, and not be such a responsible tight-ass before his time. Charlie always used Stewart as an example. The guy partook in every pleasure imaginable, and he always came out on top. How a man got away with that Simon couldn't say. Simon undoubtedly wanted the reward of political office for being so noble and responsible. He felt he deserved it.

Caitlin came in with a bunch of shopping bags. She bought a weekend wardrobe for the occasion.

"What do you think of this?" she asked while superimposing each outfit over her body.

"It looks fine."

"Fine?"

"Yes, fine, Caitlin. All of the dresses are equally good."

"How about this one?"

"That looks great. You look fabulous in anything you wear."

"So which one should I wear?"

"Any one of them."

"God, you're such a man. I think you've been hanging around the club a little too much."

By 'club,' she meant the august, members-only social group the Briarwoods and the Samples were a part of in Midtown Manhattan.

She then put on a sundress that made his heart melt. How easily Caitlin moved from one extreme to the other, always finding a dress that fit the situation. Her ease of moving from one environment to the next reminded him of a subtle talent that hid at the center of her. She molded to the cultural jug like expensive mineral water.

The car ride out to East Hampton wasn't too bad. They drove in a Mercedes SUV with the air conditioning on full blast. Caitlin set the stereo to a classical station, the top side of the coin as far as her personality went. Simon wondered if she had a spine she guarded, a part of her that didn't shift from one extreme to the other, just stayed there tucked away within her. He hadn't found the honest part of her yet but went on assuming that her mind was much like a little girl's: always at play, always finding solace in leisure. He got a little nervous, because women who were chameleons were often hard to keep. Their colors change without regard for the colors they had on before. He put his hand on top of hers, messaging her butter-cream skin. Touching her was like talking in another language or trying to get to the honest parts without verbalizing it. Sometimes her touch was far off and distant, a little unresponsive, as though she thought about something else. Her silence lasted the three hours out to East Hampton. Simon asked a couple of times:

"What are you thinking about?"

"Nothing," she said.

"You must be thinking about something. You have to give me credit for knowing you a little better than you think I do."

"If you must know, I'm thinking about Vail this winter. I'm wondering if Jules and Marcia will show up this year."

"Every year it gets tougher to go, Caitlin. They may want me in Washington this winter."

"I wonder what our lives will be like. We'll have to live by Georgetown, which is not so bad. Those fundraisers will make me obese."

"Honey, it won't be that bad. Besides, we can always visit New York, and Vail too. I know all of our friends are here, but we'll have to make the move regardless."

That's how far the conversation went. The rest of the time they listened to the mellow classical stuff. It relaxed their minds so they could ponder the complicated questions without blowing a blood vessel at the same time.

The East Hampton town center stirred with tourists having cocktails and dinner. He always got the butterflies when he entered the center of town. It reminded him of long summers spent on the beach at his father's estate. When they were kids, Stewart would come over from South Hampton, and they'd watch the foamy waves drag back into themselves. They built bonfires at night and invited a couple of Spence girls who summered nearby. They drank the liquor out of his father's study, the bright stars hovering over them like space dust. Then Caitlin walked onto the scene, and since her he never had a reason to be that young again. Ambition took over, almost like a fight to keep her. Maybe she got a little bored of him now and then, as the political life wasn't for everyone. He always watched his back, and sometimes he drove Caitlin nuts.

They drove up to an estate that had been kept in the family for generations. The family originated in England. Simon's ancestors fought in the Revolutionary War as loyalists. How they escaped death, he wasn't sure, but land was dirt cheap back then, and the Samples bought a lot of it. They exported goods to the monarchy across the pond. Somewhere down the line the family moved into real estate, since someone had to manage all their property. And as the wheels spun round, they developed land in future urban areas. The Samples were legacies at Princeton, and they always graduated from the university with business degrees – economics, usually. Simon became the first Sample to choose political science as a major. His father wanted him to be a little more than the family's status quo. Combine his ambition, social skills, and classic good looks, and Simon was a man ready to negotiate and make deals in the political arena. But first he had to pay his dues as a staff member for Bill Briarwood.

They entered a sprawling property through an electric gate. The wheels slipped on gravel as they sped towards a white-pillared mansion. They passed a couple of tennis courts and plush lawns on both sides. The butler took their bags. They walked into a large, ornate lobby with a long staircase at its base. Classical music flowed through the house along with faint sounds of clinking dinnerware, no noise, just a calm silence. Charles Sample and his young wife, Linda, were eating supper by candlelight in the oak-lined dining room. Simon and Caitlin were tardy but were welcomed enthusiastically.

After venison, wine from the family stock, and plenty of conversation, Simon and Charles retreated to the den for brandy and cigars. The den remained the same over the years. Rare books lined the shelves, and portraits of revered Samples as well as the heads of slain animals adorned the walls. Simon admired one of his father's prized possessions: a hand-drawn map of the world from the Colonial period. Amazing how little they knew back then.

"You were a little quiet at dinner," said Charles, dunking the end of his Cuban into brandy.

"It was a long drive."

"You could have flown instead."

"With the traffic around Westchester, I doubt I would have made it until tomorrow."

They sat in French leather club chairs. Their cigars burned a little longer than Simon liked. He was tired.

"I hope everything with the campaign is going well. You should have taken that check I offered you."

"I couldn't accept it. It was way too generous."

"Son, you're allegiance is to me and not to anyone else. When I offer you something, you should take it. I don't spend my money irresponsibly. I wrote that check out, because I support Bill Briarwood's campaign. What I don't support are the laws that prevent us from giving our full support to a good man in the public service."

"Things aren't that simple. Fundraising is a bit trickier."

"Oh, hogwash. I've played this game a little longer than you have, y'know. A man in my position doesn't get here without learning anything along the way."

He took a long puff on his cigar.

"Son, tell me, what's the matter? What happened last week isn't what I'd normally expect from you. Frankly, I'm a little concerned."

"I guess I've been a little worried about Caitlin lately."

"Caitlin? What's the matter with Caitlin?"

"I don't know. I sense a distance between us. I sense that she's not as happy as she was the first time we started dating. She reminds me of Mom for some reason."

Charles put down his snifter.

"You miss your mother?" he asked.

"It gets awkward sometimes, because I'm never getting enough from Caitlin. I always want more from her when I already have her. Maybe it's my longing for Mom all over again."

"Your mother was, and probably still is, a very sick woman. She chose to leave us. Her sickness is something you have to take into account. She got very depressed after the pregnancy for reasons I still don't know. Then she had a nervous breakdown, and after it she never recovered. She fled our lives, Simon, and God knows I tried to find her."

"Where could she be?"

"I don't know. This was twenty five years ago. I remember getting word they committed her, but I don't think she stayed too long. I wanted to get you as far away from her as possible, but son, it's part of your past, not a part of your present. I know you feel a little awkward not having her around. When you were a child you were very attached to her. I realize that. But you have to turn the page. We're grooming you for a very important position, and I'd hate to see the memory of your mother bring you down."

"What did we do that was so wrong?"

"You never stopped blaming yourself, and I really don't know why. You didn't do anything. I didn't do anything. She was very ill, son. How do you think I felt? When she graduated from Barnard, she was a bright, cheerful, elegant lady. A charming woman, and we were in love right from the start. It's tragic. It's one of those tragedies you never quite recover from, but if you don't put her in the past where she belongs, she'll drag you down. I made a decision long ago to separate myself from her memory, and I'm much better off."

"I just wish I could see her again, that's all."

"You have more important things to think about. You have a woman who's fallen in love with you and a big career in Washington in your not-so-distant future. I have nothing but the highest confidence in your abilities. Never forget that. You were born for greatness, and with it comes the responsibility of living a good life, marrying Caitlin one day, fathering my grandchildren, perpetuating the Sample line and making it flourish. That's the most important thing. Breaking away from your past is something you'll have to earn on your own. It's something I can't help you with."

The back of the mansion rested on a quiet beach that sloped into the Atlantic. After their conversation in the den, Simon took a stroll near the water. The waves at his feet tumbled onto his toes and fizzled. The stars above were still the same ever since he could remember. They didn't twinkle like they used to, though. They didn't hover or shoot through the atmosphere anymore. They got old and became fixtures in the midnight sky. How the world changed so much and the stars didn't he couldn't quite say, and maybe he got a little down on himself from time to time, blaming the stars so much for the things he didn't have. Regardless, he never stopped aching for his mother. At the time it was the one thing he didn't have and needed most.

### Chapter Three

It's a funny thing about campaign headquarters for the Briarwood staff: the heads of it where hardly there for the day-to-day operations. They kept offices in a building that Charles Sample was good enough to lend them, but rarely did they all gather there at the same time. Their work was done outside the office – in hotel ballrooms, or in the crowds that flocked to Briarwood's stump speeches, or at the press conferences and meetings with the PTA. That's a lot of what campaigning's about: meeting people and explaining the position of the candidate. The polls favored Briarwood all the way, and the master plan was to run a traditional campaign and not spend on political specialists, media consultants, and air time for attack ads. Just as long as Briarwood had a wide margin of victory, they could do the bare-boned minimum and save money for the next campaign. The bloodier the battle, the more expensive. Better to save for that bloody battle down the road than to spend on an easy win. For now, though, it was a routine day, and the numbers looked good. No one would vote for the liberal Hispanic guy, and that had been the attitude since the start of the campaign.

Simon got in a little earlier than Stewart did. Simon was the fundraiser, and a woman up from Washington named Sarah French dealt with the media. She was one of the best media people in the State. Stewart oversaw everything, from the phone bank and the volunteers, to the consultants, speechwriters, and office staff.

Simon didn't get along too well with Sarah French. She had an attitude problem – always trying to run the show and make herself look good in front of Stewart, who was their boss. She wore black and gray business suits that reminded him of the Wall Street characters he occasionally hung out with. Simon resented her for sleeping with Stewart. He couldn't deny her talent and her good looks – a blue-eyed brunette who would mow down anyone in her path to get what she wanted. She cozied up to Stewart, not only as an ass-kisser, but as a constant promoter of herself. She flaunted her accomplishments like a ticker-tape parade for all the staff to see, and on occasion she even bad-mouthed Simon, because she couldn't get all she wanted for a huge publicity campaign to out do all other New York State publicity campaigns. She was the type of woman Simon disliked. For her, the job was life's epicenter. Having a guyfriend was more for getting further up the ladder. Sure, a bit hypocritical of Simon, since he did the same thing with Caitlin. Caitlin's family had plenty of wealth, and the two of them could do just about anything they wanted, but at least Caitlin didn't bulldoze her way through every achievement. Caitlin was more of a refined woman compared to this monster, although monsters these days tended to look pretty damn good. Plus, Simon hated Harvard grads. They always thought they were better than everyone else.

On that day Simon's email didn't work properly, so Manny, the computer guy, took a look at it. He was a soft-spoken Latino guy about Simon's age. Simon always thought him much younger. He had an innocence about him that manhood should have confiscated by now. Simon was all-thumbs with email and other computer mishaps, more the case that he didn't have the patience to fix computer problems himself. Instead the staff called on Manny, and most people liked him – always kind and sweet to the ladies, always obsequious to the gentlemen.

As Manny sat in Simon's chair trying to fix an email problem, Stewart suddenly barged in as red as a cherry, suspenders and all.

"Manny! What the hell is going on with the fucking email?"

"I'm fixing it now. It should only take a few minutes."

"A few minutes my ass. You said that last week and the week before. What in God's name is wrong with it?"

"I'm checking the default settings on the network now. They must have changed overnight. It's probably a problem with the service provider. It should be fixed momentarily."

"Oh, don't give me that horse-shit. You fix this problem, and fix it for good, or the only thing you'll be fixing is a barrito in Mexico City."

"Okay, Stewart," said Manny, biting his lip.

He took these things personally.

"Mr. Briarwood, when you're in this office!"

Simon didn't say anything, but he wanted to tell Stu to ease up on him a bit. He liked Manny. He always did his job without getting frustrated. He always did what was asked of him, never said no to anyone. But Stu had the kind of temper you wanted to step away from until it cooled off. Simon let this one go. He gave Manny a pat on the back. Manny was on the verge of tears. One needed a thick skin to work with Stu.

Simon visited Stu in his office.

"Well, I see we got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning."

"With what we pay him, you bet I did."

Stewart had the largest office on the floor. The pictures on the walls were of him shaking hands with all sorts of politicians – city councilmen, mayors past and present, state assemblymen, lobbyists, U.S. senators and House reps, bureaucrats, and even an entertainer or two. He kept his office neat and clean. Simon liked the cigar- and-bourbon feel of it.

Soon Sarah French walked in, followed by a couple of pollsters, the campaign lawyer, a treasurer, and a speechwriter. They sat at a long table and picked on lox and bagels left out by Stu's assistant.

Sarah French, by the look of her, was anxious to speak. Stu usually picked her first.

"We've been contacted by the White House Press Secretary," she said.

"And?"

"And, the President has decided to visit New York on his next fundraising swing."

"And this happens before the elections?"

"It's a bit of a surprise, but it happens two weeks before. Stewart, if I may, this is an important opportunity here. We can't just go as guests."

"What can you arrange?"

"Well, if we front the costs with help from the National, Briarwood can get a lot of time, and when I mean a lot of time, I mean every news organization in this city and a spot or two at the national level. It would bring in a lot of publicity. It would mean a lot of name recognition for the undecideds, which is what the campaign needs."

"And now the bad news."

"We'd have to split it with the National. Thirty-seventy."

The rest of the table groaned.

"Look," said Sarah, "I know that's a lot, but I think we can take the risk."

"And who gets the dough at the end of the night?"

"That we don't know. The flak wouldn't say."

"Well, that's a very important detail," said Simon, adding his two cents.

"Actually it's not a very important detail at all. For thirty percent we buy into expensive airtime at a fraction of the cost. Think about it: the morning nationals, front page of the Times, every local station, radio and television both."

"How far ahead are we?" asked Stu.

"If the numbers don't change," said the pollster, "we're looking at an easy victory, but that's if the numbers don't change."

"How much money are we talking about?" asked the treasurer.

"The National is doing all the grunt work on this," said Sarah, "so we don't know the exact figure. But we're talking a ballroom at the Waldorf, catering, transportation, hotel rooms, and plenty of champagne. It won't go lightly, but what we get in return outweighs the costs, I'm certain of that."

"I can go either way," said the treasurer, "although it would be nice to save it. The National always sticks us with the bill and takes most of the basket anyway."

"I don't think it's a good idea at all," said Simon. "We'll get plenty of press anyway, maybe not at the national level, but we don't need to spend when the election isn't close. Let the upstate reps take it. We'll be on the invitation list anyway. Besides, it's not like we're benefiting from it. If anything, the President benefits. The National sees an opportunity to kick around a few mules."

"If we had a little more help from fundraising," said Sarah French, "this wouldn't be a risk at all."

The table went dead silent. Even Stewart raised his eyebrows. Simon's blood turned hot. It was the type of statement he hoped an independent mind or two would disagree with, but everyone at the table kept silent, trying to make sense out of their immediate reactions.

At the head of the table Stewart calculated for a minute or two and said finally:

"Let's go with it."

"What?" protested Simon, all flustered.

Sarah French folded her leather portfolio, let out a smile, and said:

"If you guys don't mind, I have a lot of work to do."

She breezed out of the office, her hair bouncing self-assuredly like a shampoo commercial. Women certainly had their way these days.

The rest of them continued the meeting a bit surprised by Stewart's decision.

"We'll argue about it on the way," said Stewart, putting on his jacket after the meeting ended and everyone left. "I need a partner for a one o'clock tee-off. Interested?"

"I'm more speechless than interested," said Simon, still sitting at the table.

"The day is too nice to be hanging around this place. We're meeting a couple of guys from downtown. It'll take your mind off things."

Before leaving, Stewart cornered Manny who still worked on the email problem.

"You get that problem fixed, or you'll be working for the Hernandez campaign fixing Nintendoes."

Manny nodded, stared into his terminal, and tapped on the keyboard, pretending it didn't bother him.

They got into a limo and headed for Greenwich.

"Are you nuts!?" barked Simon about Stu's decision-making, slamming the door. "Are you thinking straight today? You know it's a bad idea. This is not the last time the President's stopping by. You know that. We can't be spending our reserves every time the committee asks us to. We'll be sucking wind when the liberals actually have a good candidate."

"I thought about it enough, and the decision is final."

"Yeah. You thought about it for three whole minutes. Did you tell your father about this?"

"He doesn't need to know until a couple of weeks before."

"Great. That's just great. You thought about it for two seconds, and you come up with that? What the hell has gotten into you?"

"Settle down, okay," said Stewart, patting him on the knee and smiling. "Man, you certainly had your cup of coffee this morning."

"And you had a tab of acid. This is not Hollywood, Stu. We're running a conservative political campaign. There's a reason we're playing it safe. I urge you to reconsider."

"The decision is final, okay? End of discussion."

"I don't believe it. That Sarah French has got you doing things that are really dangerous for the campaign."

"You don't like her very much, do you."

"Disliking her personally has nothing to do with it."

"Oh yes it does. She intimidates you."

"It's her attitude. She's not a team player like the rest of us. This is a collaborative process. She has no right bringing a proposal to you without getting input from the rest of us first."

"I think you're intimidated by her, that's what I think. She has those eyes that never stop challenging you."

Simon looked at him askance.

"You're kidding me, right?"

Stewart grinned.

"Tell me you're kidding."

"Simon, you just don't get how this game is played. Someday I'll sit down and explain it to you."

"So how many times have you slept with her? Once? Twice? Or are you guys a couple now?"

"Listen, don't get pissed, okay? You sound like one of my ex-girlfriends."

"Well, whatever you're doing with her, it's seriously affecting your judgment when it comes to running a good campaign. We are not entertainers, even though Sarah French likes to play it that way."

"You're just a little uptight right now."

"It's not a personal issue. Your father is a respected congressman. He's not running for a seat on the board of Studio 54, and either are you. You're playing with fire."

"I've always liked Crimson tail, y'know. Oh, c'mon, Simon, loosen up a bit, will ya. This is good for the campaign. Trust me."

Simon sat in silence as the city gave way to the Westchester suburbs. He poured himself a drink from the bar, even though it was barely ten thirty. Stewart didn't say anything, just empathized with the blow to Simon's ego. Simon wanted to talk to Caitlin. She would nurse him on this much more than Stewart would. He couldn't blame Stewart but quietly blamed the system of things, the lustful trades that men and women made in important situations. He didn't want to pick a fight with Sarah French.

Women can be more damaging than prize fighters, especially women who fight below the belt. He chose to trust Stewart on the matter. That was the last time he brought it up. He readied himself for hard work on the Presidential visit, even though he wanted nothing to do with it. An efficient campaign had been reduced to a gimmick.

### Chapter Four

The limo drove up the Merritt Parkway, and after an exit they soon rode through the center of Greenwich. Simon drank a little more than usual, and Stewart rolled a joint and smoked it in the back seat. Stewart wore a pair of dark aviator sunglasses, and the sunshine and scenes of the quaint town reflected off of them. Stewart had a place not far from the center of town, and Simon thought he must have felt at home in Greenwich, considering he had family living in the area and also old friends from Princeton doing nothing else but lounging around their pools and traveling from place to place when the seasons changed. Stewart remained contemplative on the ride up. The pot made him that way. Simon didn't want to interrupt whatever turned in his head.

A narrow, curving road from the center of town led to a country club with magnificent, verdant lawns and stately club houses. The limousine pulled into a guarded gate and proceeded along a driveway lined with thickly-knotted trees yellowing with end-of-season foliage. Inside the clubhouse they met a couple of traders who worked with a prominent securities firm in Manhattan. Simon had never met these people before, but Stewart had known them well, judging by the jovial way he hugged them. Apparently, they too were Princeton grads, just a little younger, a class after them. They all shook hands, and Stewart did most of the talking on the course.

Simon never liked golf much. He found it too frustrating a game. He never had formal instruction but tried learning it on his own. Unfortunately, he lacked the talent to get the damned ball onto the green. Golf for him was a lot like billiards – some people were just better at it, even though he knew how to play. Although he enjoyed some of the social aspects of the game, he never really liked the game itself. The ball always sliced or landed in the sand pits or in one of the many man-made ponds that they stocked with fish every spring.

Stewart, on the other hand, loved the game, and he partnered with Simon against the two Wall Street traders. It seemed a bit odd that Stu didn't talk much about his father's campaign. Even though they were coming up on a major Presidential fundraiser, Stewart didn't mention it. Simon did some of the talking, even though he didn't agree with Stewart, but when the conversation veered into personal financial matters, Simon kept his mouth shut, and Stewart became enthusiastic. They walked towards the next hole, four caddies following them.

"That stock shot through the roof," exclaimed Stewart, getting a beer from one of them.

The two traders laughed.

"We told you so," they said.

"I don't know where you guys are getting your information, but whatever you're doing is working."

"Hey, anything for our investment," said one of them.

"What investment?" asked Simon.

"The three of us are going into a real estate deal."

"Oh, yeah? Where?"

"Midtown Manhattan."

"Really?"

"These guys are trading securities to finance the deal."

"Where's the property?" asked Simon.

"A shitty building on 39thstreet."

"Slumtown," said one of the traders.

"I would have gone in on it with you," said Simon.

"This isn't for you. You've never been the one for risky investment anyway."

Simon wanted to know more, but didn't want Stewart to think he was clinging to him. Simon often clung to Stewart, because he worried a lot, a chronic worrier when it came to his future, whereas Stewart didn't have these worries and handled insecurities lurking in the distance with confidence. He attacked problems with a stiff upper lip and ran through life without any pressing intellectual concerns, never worrying where he'd be ten years down the line. He'd always remain standing, always hustling for a fatter deal or a better position without trying so hard. Stewart could afford failure. Simon, on the other hand, ran and hid from it.

"What do you mean? I take risks."

The three of them laughed, because this was far from the truth. Simon sat on the periphery of the conversation for the rest of the game, while Stewart and the traders talked about strategy for raising the funds to purchase the building. From what Simon heard, they only had enough money for a quarter of the property. They didn't say where they'd get the rest of it.

"What kind of building is it?" asked Simon.

"A residential property," said Stewart.

"Residential is too nice of a word," said one of the traders.

The three of them laughed.

"Let's just say that it's a property that needs a little renovation."

"A little TLC," echoed one the traders.

"How many tenants?"

"At least six hundred," said Stewart, "and half of them don't pay a dime to stay there."

"Have you thought about where you're going to relocate them?"

"That's my buddy Simon: always thinking."

"It's a concern," said Simon.

"Simon, unless you're ready to invest, I'd pay attention to your golf game. We're getting spanked by these two."

Part of Stewart's magnetism involved his philosophy. There were certain things that one shouldn't worry about, and apparently the tenants in the building didn't matter as much as buying the property, turning it around, and selling it off to the highest bidder. He was American capitalism personified without all of the do-goody crap that indicated a serious commitment to traditional, conservative values. People loved him for it, and Simon couldn't understand why they did, but his good looks, his charm, and his easy manner of giving people what they wanted made him magnetic enough. He had the same effect on everyone, and while Simon wasn't exactly jealous of Stewart, he sure hated it when he disrespected him in front of others or knew about stuff he didn't know about. The two never debated before, but just to save face, Simon wanted to say anything that would include him. He wouldn't commit any money to the venture, because Stewart took big risks and knowing him, he'd lose the money and a great divide would challenge their friendship. Simon liked to keep things on a pure level with him, a friendship that didn't require investing in some farfetched venture but did involve furthering a mutual good or interest, like the campaign or a dedication to conservative causes.

In college it was easy, but the real world and real circumstances mandated some kind of separation that Simon wasn't ready for despite their working together. He liked things the way they were, their movement into the political sphere like a steady drill or a routine. Change became the fear and continuity the goal. Simon never once considered that they're roads would have to part sooner or later. These roads were already parting. He thought of marrying Caitlin. Stewart, on the other hand, lived on the wild side, partying with people he hardly knew, spending a lot of money on a bevy of women, buying the most fashionable clothes, darting from club to club, snorting the sugar and getting laid, and even though he had little sense of responsibility, he thrived and continued to make new friends along the way, like the two traders who filled their fists with cold cans of beer and watched Stewart take a swing down the fairway.

Simon wondered what would end up on top – his socially responsible approach or Stewart's Randian ethic, if one could call it that. But one thing was for sure: he made a damn good campaign manager for his father after only three years on his reelection committee. Stewart replaced an already legendary campaign manager who retired to Rhode Island. Since then he had worked his staff like dogs. His work life was completely different from his personal life. Stewart made sure one life didn't invade the other, and Simon reasoned that most people handled work this way, a competency that one learned early on, a two-faced scheme whereby two entirely different personalities submerge and resurface. He had gotten used to it, because at work Stewart did do things that were admirable. But lately his personal concerns interfered with a good campaign, and this wasn't the first time.

He knew also that Stewart slept around with Sarah French. Actually, it made Simon a little jealous. Sarah was a bulldog but an attractive one. She functioned with unruly business men and media people, and she probably used sex to her advantage. A no-brainer that Stewart chased her. She was Stewart's type, or at least he used her for something, what exactly he couldn't say. It was often hard to tell what Stewart's motivations were. Even though he ran the campaign, he didn't care much for politics. He had enough money and his share of women. The more Simon thought about it, the less he felt he knew Stewart. He was a good friend, but a friend who got more mysterious as the campaign marched on.

### Chapter Five

He arrived at the apartment exhausted. He had a farmer's tan from a full day of taking swings, drinking lukewarm beer, and chatting it up with two traders he never met before. Chalk it up to one of Stewart's lazy days.

He crawled into bed and snuggled close to Caitlin who breathed calmly in a deep sleep. He wrapped himself around her body, hugging it like it was the only thing that mattered. She was the only person who understood him. She woke up when he put all of his weight on her. He turned into a child when something bothered him. Stewart rarely got personal with staff members. He got personal with Simon on a few occasions, but never one of the other staff.

The unfairness of Sara French's and Stewart's relationship didn't anger him as much as it reduced him down to size. He wasn't as important as he used to be.

"Okay, Simon, what's wrong?" mumbled Caitlin, half asleep.

"Nothing."

She rolled on top of him and buried the side of her face in his collar.

"What's wrong, sweetie? I know you want to tell me."

"I don't feel like it."

"Oh, poor baby. A rough day?"

"Yeah."

She kissed his lips and then ran his tongue down his body. Nothing healed him as well as Caitlin's warm mouth in the middle of the night.

He arrived the next day at campaign headquarters a little on the late side. He planned to make a few phone calls and tell his fundraising staff the big news – that they'd be hosting this glamorous fundraiser before election time. Although he was still a little miffed about the whole idea, he couldn't help but feel excited about meeting the President again. He met him before in Washington for a brief minute or two at an earlier fundraiser, a thousand dollars a plate no less, and there were only too many people willing to fork out that kind of dough for the President's ear.

He called in his fundraising staff, three of the hardest workers he'd ever been around. They were young and just as ambitious. If he weren't in love with Caitlin, he'd definitely be seeing the girl who took charge. Kimberly was much like Sarah French, only younger, sexier, and very loyal to him. She'd do anything Simon asked, including running his personal errands every now and then. He once asked her to escort a philanthropist to a fundraising dinner. This was a couple of weeks back. The guy's wife died a few weeks earlier, and he needed a date. Kimberly filled in without comment. She didn't ask any questions or put up a fight, just did the job and flirted with the guy until he pulled out his checkbook. She made sure he had a good time and connected the guy with others of similar interests. The guy was looking to sell something, and she hooked him up with another guy interested in buying it. And for the trouble he donated heavily to the Briarwood campaign. He didn't have to believe in the Briarwood platform at all. He only needed access to a buyer and to rub elbows with people who could buy other things from him. If he didn't get what he was looking for, the campaign went without a donation and instead sent him junk mail, an occasional cold call, an invitation to another gathering, or maybe a personal note from Simon urging him to attend.

Kimberly had a lot to do with Simon's success. She worked around the clock renting out hotel rooms, hiring caterers, and taking care of invitations. The other two suits with her handled the telephones and grassroots initiatives to prey on volunteers who telemarketed Briarwood to registered voters in the district – mostly the undecided and the people who normally didn't care about the political process. He thought of Kimberly as a refined customer service representative. She lubricated the fundraising machine by assisting the contributors, tailoring her work to their needs.

Kimberly also had a crush on Simon. Besides doing anything he asked, she occasionally asked him out. Having power over Kimberly came in handy, and he took advantage of it all the time. She became his personal assistant. What Sarah French was to Stewart, Kimberly was to Simon. Of course Simon never slept with Kimberly, but once in a while the thought did cross his mind. She tempted him, especially one night when they stayed in Houston for the 2000 Convention. He loved Caitlin too much, even though Kimberly made eyes at him, not only on that trip, but also at a few other functions in and around Washington.

Simon sat them down and told them about the President's visit and the fundraisers to be held. They gasped at the idea. They were shocked how little time they had to prepare for it.

"I know it's short notice, but we have to get things going. Don't worry about cold-calling for now. I want all of you working on the President's visit. I want you two guys to report to Kimberly, and Kimberly will report directly to me.

"Are we using the Waldorf again?" asked the bright-eyed Kimberly.

"Yes, we always use the Waldorf. Call them right away."

In the middle of the meeting, one of Stewart's assistants knocked on the door. She was a young, blonde intern out of Columbia University.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Sample, but Mr. Briarwood would like to see you."

"Can it wait? I'm a little tied up right now."

"He says it's important."

The intern seemed a little nervous. Stewart probably wanted to go to the club and have a game of racquetball, or maybe he needed a partner for golf again, something along those lines. He dismissed his staff and visited Stewart down the hall.

Stewart looked out the window, the suspenders on his back running up him like a vine. He had the most original collection of suspenders he'd ever seen. His slicked-back hair and his reluctance to say something right off the bat told Simon that something serious was on his mind.

"Have a seat," he said.

Simon sat down, but Stewart stayed quiet, pondering something. Stewart often got like this when he calculated and strategized.

"I'm kind of busy today, Stu. Y'know we have the big fundraiser coming up."

"Yeah, we do."

Stewart picked up a newspaper and slapped it down in front of him.

"Do you have anything to say about this?"

The front cover of a weekly, liberal tabloid showed a cartoon of a smiling congressman Briarwood and Charlie Sample shaking hands and exchanging a bag of money for an oversized I.R.S. credit card.

"Oh, Stewart," said Simon nonchalantly, "they do a story like this every year. Last year it was the congressman fathering an illegitimate child. C'mon, no one's going to believe this."

"You haven't read the article yet."

"Why bother? They're only trying to generate scandal before the President arrives."

"They don't know the President's coming. No one does. The article is part of a month-long series on my father's campaign and his campaign financing practices."

Stewart was visibly upset. He paced the room. He didn't look at him, just kept pacing while Simon read the article.

Besides campaign fundraising violations, the article accused congressman Briarwood of taking bribes from the wealthy real estate developer Charles Sample, Simon's father. It was one of those long investigative reports that made him cringe in his seat.

Charlie Sample did develop land in New York City. Sure there was never enough land to go around, but whatever was available, you could bet that the Samples had a hand in developing it. That's how tight the relationship was between Charlie Sample and the city council, also the State Assembly, and even the incumbent mayor. But most New Yorkers didn't know about Charlie Sample's business deals outside the State – in places like New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Florida, and even in California. Charlie Sample had his finger in a lot of pies. He owned slices of property all over the nation.

Simon knew very little of what his father did. Charlie kept him out of it, now that his son was in the national political game. Sample Real Estate usually developed luxury apartment buildings and commercial centers for publicly held corporations.

'So what?' thought Simon. 'My Dad is successful at what he does. They're always trying to bring him down.'

But the article went on to say that Sample owned and developed low income housing in other states. This nifty statement took Simon by surprise, because the only way Charlie Sample would develop low-income housing was if he got an incentive from the federal government to build it, hence the motivation to bribe Briarwood.

Most people loathe the tax system. Most people loathe the I.R.S., but tax policy can actually work for you if you're a big time developer like Charlie Sample. The article said that Sample Real Estate owned a low-income apartment complex near the Bus Terminal. This property was one of many, not only in the state, but throughout the nation. Sample built low-income housing all over the place. In return, Sample received the low-income housing credit, or LIHC. The tax credits he received from the feds offset the taxes he owed for the upscale units he built. In order to receive the tax credits, good ol' Charlie had to make a commitment to let low-income residents stay in these buildings for a period of thirty years.

Sample knew about the LIHC long before the rest of the industry caught on. Congress voted in the LIHC in 1986, and that's when Sample went into action, buying up low-valued land and making cheap buildings that now house thousands of low-income tenants. The LIHC made this possible. His relationship with Briarwood alerted him to the tax credit. Hell, Briarwood was the one who proposed the damn thing. But now the big expansion ended, and the economy couldn't decide on which way to go, and congressman Briarwood, when elected, would win the chairmanship of the House Ways and Means Committee. Briarwood, with Sample's money as an incentive, would vote to reform the LIHC guidelines.

No longer would developers have to wait thirty years to convert their units to the market rate. Briarwood would introduce legislation to make the limit fifteen years, not thirty, and apply the fifteen-year limit retroactively to those developers who owned more than their fair share of low-income buildings. Should this law go into effect during the next Briarwood term, Charlie Sample stood to make millions. He could convert his low-income buildings to luxurious condominiums and charge market rates for them. Of course in the big cities there were rent stabilization laws to deal with, but at least he could raise the rents somewhat and still profit from the reform. If Sample received the LIHC in 1986, the time had already passed. Charlie Sample would convert those units meant for poor folk and offer them to the middle class, maybe even the upper class. Not bad for fifteen years' work. Not bad for Charlie Sample's image over the years – a developer that had heart enough to build housing for the poor, until, of course, Briarwood raises the credit cap and shortens the limit.

"This is ridiculous!" yelled Simon. "No one's going to believe this. First of all, your father would never approve of a fifteen-year reduction in the limit, and second of all, this is just a smear campaign by the opposition who has no chance of winning. The distribution of this trash paper is so low that they have to invent something to get people to buy it. No one's going to believe this, and no one's going to read this either. Have Sarah French put a spin on it, she'll know what to do. No one's going to buy this. It's too scandalous to be true."

"Sarah's got other things to worry about. Taking her away from the President's visit to deal with this shit is not happening."

"Then don't use her, because by this time tomorrow, no one will care. This is a shitty paper, Stu. These accusations are not only false, they're outrageous. We just deny it if any of the big league papers get interested. This is nothing to be worried about."

"They're running a story on the campaign for four weeks. Don't you think the dailies will get a whiff of it by then?"

"Not if you pull Sarah for a few minutes just to make a statement. That's all we need."

"I'm not using Sarah on this."

"Then let's not worry about it. This is an easy victory. Let's not waste another minute on it."

"But I am worried about it. Sarah says we have lots of reasons to worry. She thinks that this will snowball before election day."

"You talked to her about it?"

"Yeah I did."

"Before you talked to me?"

"Yeah. I had to. We had to move quickly on it."

"But you just said she has more important things to do."

"She does," he sighed. "Simon, we already made a decision on it."

The slack of Stu's face gave Simon goose-bumps and then a strange release of pressure at his temples. He knew what was coming, and it would alter his universe.

"Stewart, this is a ridiculous charge. Why the hell should I bow out when nothing has happened yet? No one cares about this story."

"Not _yet_. No one cares about it _yet_."

"It's a trashy weekly tabloid for Chrissakes! No one's going to give a shit. No one will pay attention to it."

"With the President coming, it's a potential risk."

"Stu, buddy, look at the date on this. Look at the fucking date. This was first released ten years ago, and none of the dailies moved on it. You're making a big deal out of nothing."

Simon's hands grew warm and clammy. He breathed heavy. His heart palpitated like a jackrabbit's.

"Listen, and I hate to do this, but why don't you take some time off from the campaign, okay? Only a couple of weeks while this thing blows over, okay?"

"A couple of weeks? Stu, we're at the beginning of a Presidential fundraiser. Who the hell else is qualified to handle this? You're overreacting. These are false charges, totally false. They have no proof of this."

"I know you're upset, but this is much too serious to have you working on the President's visit and having this rumor blow up into something much bigger."

"I can't believe you're saying this. What's gotten into you?"

"Nothing. Just take a break for a couple of weeks until we deny these allegations, okay?"

"But the story's running for a month. Why not take me off the campaign for a month instead of two lousy weeks?"

"We were considering that, but right now it's wait and see."

"Who's we?"

"We, Simon, we! The campaign staff."

"So you discussed this with the others?"

"Simon, please."

"By 'we' you mean Sarah French, don't you."

"It has nothing to do with Sarah. No one would do anything to hurt the campaign, especially with a major event ahead of us."

Simon sighed and threw up his hands.

"Don't make this more than it is," said Stewart. "It's a vacation, that's all, until we can get a handle on this thing. I can't ignore what this may do to the campaign."

He poured him a drink from a closet bar. Simon loosened his tie and unbuttoned his collar. The article hit him by surprise, but Stewart's handling of the situation surprised him even more. One minute Simon's telling Kimberly to rent out the Waldorf, and the next he's suspended from his job amidst allegations that no one in their right mind would ever believe, especially with the numbers way ahead of the Hispanic guy.

"How would it look, Simon? You're the head of fundraising. If they mentioned you, we'd be on the cover of every newspaper and magazine in the city. You're the missing link they need."

"It's bullshit, and you know it."

He sucked up his drink and slammed it down on Stewart's desk.

"Simon, this doesn't reflect the incredible work you've done so far. This is not a personal attack on you, it's just the way the game is played."

"Well sorry for taking my job and my life so personally. I just can't believe you'd cut me loose because of this thing."

"My decision is final."

"This is bullshit."

He slammed the door on his way out.

"Call me this weekend, alright?" yelled Stewart.

Kimberly stopped him before he left the building.

"Simon, we're still in a meeting."

"Not anymore. Go see Stewart. He'll tell you what to do. I'll be back in a couple weeks."

"Is everything alright?"

"No, but I'll be back in a couple of weeks."

"Is there anything I can do?"

"There's nothing you can do. Just keep an eye on things until I get back."

He exited the office with the weekly tabloid rolled in his fist. He felt like beating the reporter who wrote the story with it. He could have gone to the club, but the club was probably the worst place to go after being ordered out. He would only go there to get drunk and bend the bartender's ear, telling him how unfair things could be and how bad things always happen to good people.

In the elevator he banged the newspaper on the wall, and then he remembered to keep his cool and not to get overly emotional. He wanted to take the paper and beat Sarah French's head with it. He sat himself down at an Irish pub a couple blocks away.

Getting drunk had always been a futile attempt. It lifted him for about five minutes, and in an effort to feel high like those first five minutes, he drank even more - a woman bartender, no less, at a bar that he had no excuse for being in. Sure, the high felt nice. So did the self-pity, and Simon did that a lot when he was down and out. Yes, one hell of a day, and he had nothing better to do than mope. Damn liberals in the press always hell bent on destroying the vision he had of a perfect world, albeit a conservative world, but Simon had plans of making that world a reality. Not that everything was laid to waste exactly. He still had his job after all, and he still was a wealthy man to some extent. This was just a leave of absence until things cooled off.

Politics can get dirty awfully fast, and he still had his suspicions about Sarah French. Maybe she leaked the story to the liberal press to get him out of the picture. He'd always been such a tight-ass with money. He had raised big bucks on the last campaign, but money just wasn't needed this time around. Simon was struck by the awful position of working for a cause he believed in while the others around him, Stewart in particular, cared very little about the conservative platform. It was supposed to be a conservative campaign about conservative issues. Politics and conviction, however, didn't go very well together this time around. No one really cared what the hell you believed just so long as you won the election with the same logic that had been used in past campaigns. The collaborative process in Washington narrowed it down to a few key issues and events. The media narrowed it down as well, so in the end a candidate won on ideology more than his promises. The candidate's character was only a by-product of an overall ideology that was packaged and resold to an apathetic public. Just a fact of life, Simon thought. That's how Briarwood appealed to the public – by saying the same things, behaving in the same way, yet being brought up to date by media professionals and coaches if only to look shiny and new.

Of course most of the deal making took place in the back rooms, the trading and negotiating. Simon had very little to do with this. He just brought interested parties to the table if only to get them spending. Stewart did the rest, and God knows what he did with the money Simon raked in. It troubled him that such a loyal friend would let him go like that. Or maybe Simon had a little growing up to do.

In politics one doesn't really have any friends. It used to be a lot different. The both of them were young, enthusiastic, and committed. But all that idealism eroded when Briarwood's lead over the Hispanic guy grew so large that there was really no need for an ideal, just the bare-boned reality of getting the most bang for the buck, like Stu sleeping with Sarah French and this stupid Presidential fundraiser that wasn't even necessary. No, a lot of things didn't make sense to Simon Sample just then, drinking his scotch, looking to the bartender for some comfort.

And what about his dreams of succeeding Briarwood someday? It all seemed a little hazy, his ultimate dream a little less pronounced, as though he didn't really have any control over the outcome of his life but was instead hindered by hidden forces and people he thought he knew but knew no longer.

Saddened by these events but determined to get back on the campaign, Simon left the bar with the newspaper in his hand. He raced up Amsterdam Avenue, the afternoon sky dripping into dusk, the clouds a little runny with a light shower. The farther uptown he walked, the angrier he got, the liquor and the newspaper helping his anger along like a horsewhip.

As soon as he got home he called Stewart.

"I feel like shit," said Stewart on the other end, "but if you were in my position, what would you do?"

"I'd stop sleeping with Sarah French."

"What do you have against her anyway? A little intimidated by her?"

"She's clouding your judgment. For all I know she leaked the story."

"So we've turned to conspiracy theories now?"

"Who the hell else would do it? The paper didn't get the story on its own. Half of their reporters don't even know how to write a grammatical sentence let alone prove what they wrote."

"I understand your position, Simon, but what's done is done. This is nothing personal. We can't put the President's visit in jeopardy."

"And that's another thing that pisses the hell out of me."

"Simon, you're on vacation, okay?"

"How long?"

"Indefinitely."

"By that time your father will be in Washington. What am I supposed to do in the meantime?"

"Why don't you take Caitlin out to dinner?"

"I don't mean just tonight. There aren't too many positions open in the city for political fundraisers. Y'know, Stu, I feel betrayed here, if you want me to be honest. I've worked hard, and this is the thanks I get?"

"There's no need to be bitter about this."

"I have a right to be bitter. What do you expect me to do right now? For all I know Sarah French will take my job by the time I'm back. I can't believe you go for her nouveau schemes on how to win elections, because we're not doing it the right way."

"Oh, that's right – Simon Sample always has to do things the right way, the squeaky-clean traditional way. You sound like my fucking grandmother for Chrissakes. You think I want it this way? Do you think I wanted the commie paper to print that garbage?"

"I guess not, no. But you have no right throwing me off the campaign."

"Listen, Simon, I can't get into this, alright? But you're out. Wait a couple of months, and I'll call you."

"At least tell me Washington's a possibility."

"Once this thing blows over, everything's possible."

"Do you actually believe my father is bribing your father?" asked Stu. "Do you expect people to believe that?"

"No, of course not."

"Well, that's a relief."

"It doesn't change anything. This is a business of perception. The dailies get a whiff of this, and all of us are screwed."

"I still don't agree with it – why I have to be forced out. It's not fair."

"Life isn't fair, Simon, but I tell you what, and I'm doing this because of our friendship and because I care about you."

"I'm not a charity case. I don't want your charity."

"Will you just listen? If you get this paper to print a retraction and stop their investigation, then you can have your old job back. Is that fair?"

"And how the hell am I supposed to do that? They work for the opposition. They're not going to listen to me. And besides, why should I have to lift a finger to save my own job when there's no bribery going on anyway? Why should I have to lift a finger to prove my own innocence?"

"This is not a trial, Simon. You've been watching too many movies."

"I feel like I'm on trial. I never did anything wrong."

"I'm not going to argue about it anymore. Get a retraction, and you can come back."

"Fine," said Simon, "I'll do just that."

"Listen, I've got to go. Dinner with you and Caitlin next week?"

"Why not? I'll have nothing better to do."

After he hung up, he had an urge for Caitlin. She always put his mind at ease. She was probably shopping along Madison Avenue. Money was never in short supply, and at least he had that to be thankful for. But his dream of becoming a congressman had been pushed out of the picture. His missed campaign headquarters, Kimberly, the pleasures of delegating authority, hell, even the Manny the computer guy he couldn't do without. He was removed from the social climb and envisioned himself down the road as some sort of playboy, Caitlin the social butterfly at his side, and the thought of this sickened him a little – to be around people who had no knowledge of politics, and worse – people who didn't even care. He had to get back into it, and really he had never fought for anything in his life. He played by the rules, cared about the rules, and had conviction, but never had he been reduced like this. He blamed Sarah French, his nemesis who probably leaked the story to the press, and images of her power business suits and snotty attitude towards him burned like embers in his churning mind. It was just a damn shame that good ol' Simon Sample had been pushed out of his job after years of hard work, the only kid at Princeton who actually did his homework, all those meetings with political donors, all of that hustle to put Briarwood on top in the last election. But then his mind swung in a more moderate direction. Better to be calm and cool about this, not so hell bent on getting even. Play his cards right, minimize his anger, go to the commie newspaper and get a retraction, and then maybe everything else would fall into place. He had a right to be bitter, but bitterness never carried a guy very far. Yet something felt good about this bitterness. He finally had a right to be bitter.

Since Caitlin was out shopping, he needed more people around him. Their apartment together on the East side had a certain seclusion about it. They had spent months selecting the furniture – the four post bed, the leather chairs and sofa, the artwork on the walls, the Persian rugs. Caitlin picked out everything, and at times he felt like a foreigner in his own home, as though the place were a museum littered with antiques, rare books, and artifacts that made the place a neo-conservative shrine for the twenty-first century, a decorative paradox that planted them in the middle of all trends whenever they gained steam. The place was great for dinner with friends, but all alone he couldn't help but leave and take a cab to his club on Fifth Avenue. He was still a little drunk but wanted to be with others.

A doorman let him into a wide lobby. He checked his coat and ascended a flight of marble stairs, the music getting louder the higher he went. The room at the top had a bartender in uniform serving drinks and a piano player in the corner eking out quiet Cole Porter tunes. Already a group of his boys sipped drinks at a prewar oak table. He usually engaged in bragging rituals with these characters. On this evening, though, he had nothing to brag about. These weren't the type of people a once-proud Ivy league guy would come crying to either. He had to keep his game face on and think of positive things, the things that he had, like his girlfriend, his apartment, his Jaguar under a tarp in a local garage. The tweedy-types greeted him without too much fanfare. Thew were laughing about something, but when they saw him, they all turned a little solemn.

"Boys," said Simon, shaking hands.

"Simon, glad you could join us," said one of them.

He sat down and ordered a drink.

"Did you hear the latest?" asked one of the guys, "My girlfriend just landed a column at _Vanity Fair_."

"Really?" said another. "That's pretty exciting. She's going to take care of you now that the market is bad?"

They all had a chuckle over that.

"Actually she's flying to Europe next week. She's covering a story in Milan and Paris."

"Pretty soon, ol' Roy here will be decked out in Armani suits. Quite an improvement."

And another round of laughs. The only person not laughing was Simon.

"So, Simon, what's with you? How's Caitlin doing?"

They always asked about Caitlin. She was every guy's dream – her looks, her attitude, her social skills. These sharks saw her as the ultimate girl to be running around New York with, and it was no accident on Caitlin's part. She groomed herself like a kitten and avoided topics that were threats to their manhood. She partied, she loved life, and strangely enough, that's what Simon loved about her too – a smart girl who pretended not to be so smart. Instead she used her talents in other ways – at social gatherings, in the bedroom, picking out her wardrobe, looking good in front of the cameras for _Town & Country_. She outclassed every other woman in New York, and when Simon sipped his drink and pondered her for a spell, he sensed that they had very little in common. Although stitched from the same cloth – both from wealthy families, both educated, both successful, both good in bed – Simon saw himself a little differently. He believed in things. He cared about taxes and wanted everyone to know that he cared. He loved the idea of defense spending, disliked flaky artist-types, and generally believed that eight years of Clinton was something that no American should ever have to go through again. He had a political mind and imagined stump speeches, a campaign trail, a home in the suburbs of Washington. He wanted it badly enough, and his father told him time and again that he would replace Briarwood someday. This was his destiny.

Caitlin, on the other hand, didn't have a political bone in her body. Instead she charmed people and threw ice on a man's burning mind. That's why they all liked her. She soothed men with her playfulness, her etiquette, her urbanity.

"She's doing just fine, gents, just fine," said Simon. "In fact we're planning to go away fairly soon."

"Oh yeah? Where?"

"Probably the Caribbean. We could use a little time away from New York."

"Especially with what happened," said one of the guys.

The table fell silent.

"What are you talking about?"

The guy closest to him spoke softly.

"We heard, Simon, about the article in the paper."

"What article?"

The guy sighed, and the rest of the table looked away.

"You mean the article in an ultra-liberal paper that wants to derail the Briarwood campaign?"

"Yes, that article."

"Hey, it's no skin off my nose. People don't read that tabloid anyway. It's all garbage, and besides, when I get through with them, they'll print a full retraction."

Apparently no one at the table shared his optimism.

"Really, it's no big deal," said Simon.

"We also heard that you lost your job."

"Where did you hear that?"

"I don't know. People talk, I guess."

"But that was just this morning."

"I guess people talk fast."

"Well, just to set the record straight, I'm just taking a vacation, that's all. I'll be back on the job after Briarwood wins the seat. It's not a big deal. So what were we talking about?"

He left the club shortly after. When he got home, Caitlin was watching television and eating a pint of ice cream. He kissed her on the back of the neck.

"Hi," she said dimly.

"Hi, darling. When did you get back?"

"About an hour ago. I was out with some of the girls."

"Oh, yeah? How's Lucy doing? I heard she's working for _Vanity Fair_ nowadays."

"She's leaving for Milan next week."

"I heard. Her husband told me."

"You were at the club?"

"Yes. Listen, Caitlin, can we talk about something?"

"If it's about the article in the paper, I already know."

"God, word travels fast. How did you hear about it so quickly?"

"It's on the rack of every uptown newsstand. People are bound to hear about it."

Simon sat next to her and put his arm around her shoulders.

"How about you and I go away for a little while? I want to spend more time with you."

Caitlin got up in front of the television set.

"Shouldn't we wait until after Christmas season? No one else is taking a vacation right now."

"I know. I want both of us to be alone for a while."

"I can't go away. There's Kelly's wedding, a couple of baby showers, and all of those parties I've been invited to."

"What parties?"

"Y'know, the fashion shows. It's almost fall."

"So we'll go away for a couple of weeks, that's all."

She sat down and kissed him. Her lips tasted like chocolate.

"Awww, honey, I know that's the first thing you want to do after that terrible paper printed that horrendous article, but honey, we can't leave the city at the start of the season. That's when all the fun happens."

"I don't find anything fun about being here."

"Oh, no?" she said, kissing him.

"No. I don't find anything fun about being in New York."

She kissed him again.

"Maybe there's a little fun to be had in the city."

She kissed him passionately.

"Okay, I guess we can put off this vacation for a little while."

They both laughed. She tossed her hair and kissed him again. They made love on the sofa, and for a little while Simon forgot about the newspaper article, the fact that he just lost his job, that his circle of friends knew about it, and that as a couple they had lost points on the social scoreboard. Caitlin didn't seem to care either. If anything she cheered him up and begged him not to worry so much during their pillow talk afterwards. Maybe he took things a little too seriously. He didn't necessarily have to work on a campaign. Politics had so many angles, like lobbying, strategizing, working for non-governmental organizations, writing books, teaching, moving to another state and starting over. But after Caitlin fell asleep beside him, he realized that fundraising was a skill he had learned from scratch. All those years of fundraising couldn't be swept under the rug overnight. He was ready to get a retraction from the newspaper.

In the morning, he fixed himself some breakfast while Caitlin slept. How his life would be without anything to occupy his time, he didn't know, only that he fought an evil that kicked him out of a job. Sure he could take a vacation, many of them to anywhere, but he could only project so far, and he fought back images of himself being bored and out of touch with what the rest of the world did. Losing his job demanded changes he wasn't too keen on making. He sat down at the dinette over-looking the skyline. He unfolded the manhandled newspaper that got him into trouble.

A woman named Angela Ruiz penned the front page article, and he would have liked nothing more that to get even with her, maybe even sue her for slander, defamation of character, libel, anything he could get. He reread the article three or four times as his eggs got cold, and with every accusation, every piece of flimsy evidence presented by this woman, he had to control his temper like the heroic manic depressive on the verge of decking someone. He hated the logic of the article – how everything conservative involved corruption and sleaze when they never mentioned stuff like a commitment to family and charity and more jobs because developers like his father built more buildings due to lower taxes. These people were worse than outright liars, not liars but thieves, selling their lies and ripping off honest people who had no choice but to pass by a newsstand and have it shoved in their faces. His father was probably angrier than he, and when he thought about it, he figured he should talk to his Dad before seeing this Angela Ruiz in person. Thus far he didn't hear anything from his father.

'Keep cool,' he told himself, repeating it like a mantra. He should plan his strategy rather than get too emotional. Emotions can defeat a man more than his adversaries, and instead of going to the paper he went to his father's office in Midtown.

He took a cab, and the man at the wheel, listening to something foreign, asked for cab fare about three times when they reached their destination. The cabby broke him out of the fascination with getting even. And when he came-to in the back seat, he had forgotten how he got there. He didn't remember leaving his apartment or getting into the cab. His thoughts closed everything else out except this one battle. He didn't question it, only knew that something needed to be done. He didn't have any control over the situation yet. He looked forward to the day when he would have that control. Hard as hell to silence the press, but no one could push Simon and not get pushed back.

His father's office occupied the top floor of a fifty-story highrise in Midtown. His father moved around quite a bit, but for the past ten years the top floor of the building served as the Sample base of operations. Simon could have worked for his father, but he chose not to considering his affinity for all things political and how his father pushed him in the direction of Capitol Hill at an early age.

His mother, however, insisted that he lead a life free from ambition and the trappings of an affluent family's expectations, but she left under mysterious circumstances. As a young child he woke up one morning, and she had been declared missing. At one time Charlie said she ran off with another man. It was water under the bridge as far as father and son were concerned, but it gave Charlie Sample free reign to push Simon in any direction he wanted. A political life had always been Charlie's secret ambition. He told him he had everything in his trophy case but that. Simon pursued a political life like it was the only thing that mattered.

The elevator doors opened to a reception desk. The walls and the furniture lent the office the atmosphere of the club he frequented after work, although the magnificent view of the Manhattan skyline took first priority over the traditional, almost collegiate surroundings. His father's assistant offered him a drink. Had it been a little later in the day, he would have obliged, but he just had breakfast and was focused on getting the retraction.

His father's office had an exercise gym, soft couches, television screens, and a long bar. An outdoor terrace complete with a swimming pool and sauna hugged the perimeter of the office. It surprised him that his father ever left his office, because he could have lived there instead of returning home. Pictures of his most ambitious achievements hung on the wall, full-color photographs of architectural designs, computer-generated images, and then the overwhelming results of an actualized development. Simon would have been happy running his father's business alright, but he was meant for something a little better.

He thought that people in politics operated with a modicum of integrity, that there was a minimum threshold of dignity that any political participant had to maintain, but since the article, he realized how cut-throat the business could be. The opposition played dirty, forcing him to play a little dirty just to teach them a lesson. It's either that or he could have taken the high ground and fight on that level, something akin to sending a letter to the editor or writing an article for a paper that thought these changes nonsense. How that would help him get his job back he wasn't sure, because the only way to make these people stop printing lies was to make them suffer or at least work through different avenues to give their readership a greater understanding of the allegations.

Simon got frustrated waiting for his Dad to get off the phone. The older generation was so patient with things, or at least that was his perception of them. They learned somehow how to accept the good with the bad, whereas a younger man, such as Simon, couldn't stand it when liars got away with their lies if only to profit from them. Life was unfair as hell, and his father accepted it while Simon couldn't accept it at all. It made his blood boil.

"Good Morning, Simon," said Charlie Sample after hanging up the phone. "I heard."

Wealthy people had a glow to them, and his father, despite what was happening, beamed with a self-satisfaction Simon couldn't find in himself. He had no idea why his father was always so happy at the worst moments of his life. He had never seen his father unhappy at the office. Maybe he got disappointed every now and then, but the man never slipped or fell, or maybe he did but didn't show it.

We cry on the inside and try not to show it. Simon figured the older we get the less tolerance we have for that internal self-pity crap. Simon approached that age when he should have known better than to fight it so much. But his temperament usually got the better of him, as though a part of his youthful angst crept in, reminding him that he was still ignorant of a lot of things, especially how to let go of the stuff he thought he could control.

"This is a gross injustice," said Simon, his hands clutching the newspaper.

"I know it is," said Charlie. "You have a right to be angry."

"How could something like this happen? To me of all people?"

"Son," sighed Charlie, "there are people in this world that would like nothing better than to bring us down. I've been dealing with these people all my life. The more successful you are, the wealthier you are, the harder you work, the more these people who are less fortunate come at you. In politics, more so than any other profession, it's even worse."

"I could see if this happened to someone who deserved it, and I mean really deserved it for graft like this, but Dad, these are outright lies. Plain lies. I monitor all the donations that come into this campaign, and I've been doing it for a while now. Hell, I even turned you down. I've always followed the rules. I've always been ethical. Don't you think if you were bribing Briarwood, I'd be the first to know about it?"

"I think you're missing the point, Simon."

"You're right. I'm missing the point, because there is no point to this article."

"It's politics," said Charlie, standing at his desk, "and this is the way the game has been played for a very long time. This isn't the student council at Princeton anymore."

"I'm not naïve, okay Dad."

"No, but you're young, and you don't have enough experience to know when to walk away. You fight the fights you can win."

"I'm getting a full retraction. I am fighting a fight I can win."

"And what will that do? You think you can just walk into their office, demand a full retraction, and they'll just give it to you?"

"Not exactly. I'll have to talk with the reporter, maybe even sue her for slander or defamation of character."

"And you'll spend all that time and energy and money, when you know you have no chance in hell of winning?"

"People will listen to the truth. A jury would agree with me."

"But the law doesn't, and therefore a jury won't. C'mon, Simon, will you think practically for a change? Let time take this away. Wait a year, and you'll be in Washington with Stewart all over again. Take the hit now, learn how the game is really played, and then Stewart will definitely want you back."

"This is not a game when my reputation is on the line. My career is on the line. My livelihood is on the line. These battles must be fought or else the opposition will do it any time they please."

"Take an older man's advice, will you please? Play the game. In a year from now no one will even remember the article was written. Bill is so far ahead, it doesn't really matter what they say."

"And what am I supposed to do in the meantime? Sit around and take all of this? I'm sorry, Dad, but I'm not taking this."

"Y'know, you sound just like your mother – always fighting demons that exist nowhere else but in your own mind."

He paused for a second. He wondered about the comment his father just made. Charlie Sample knew his mother better than he, and his point of view was all he had to go on. His mother belonged in the past, and there she should have remained buried.

"I'm sorry," said Charlie, "I didn't mean to bring your mother into this, but sometimes I see a lot of her in you. Son, I'm just looking out for you, that's all. Every fight is not a fight to be fought. In this world we have to take the good with the bad. Accept what has happened, take a break for a while, and move along."

"And what am I supposed to do without work?"

"How about you and Caitlin go down to the Caribbean for a few months? You can use my place. It's really quite nice down there."

"It's a thought."

"Or how about Switzerland? You can use the chalet."

"Tempting."

"Anywhere you want to go. It's on me, okay?"

"I'll give it some thought."

Yet it was something he couldn't accept. Despite all the difficulties with Sarah French, Simon loved his job. He loved schmoozing. He loved getting donors to pull out their checkbooks, and with the laws now passed, the greater the number of donors mattered more than how much each donor contributed. It made him schmooze more and talk more and meet more people. It was the part of the job he didn't want to give up. He prided himself on making contacts, like a rock star who gets a thrill from how many groupies he sleeps with. A year away on some far-off island seemed like exile. The people he schmoozed would easily forget about him, and some new replacement would get to have all the fun. He couldn't help but think that this one newspaper article rearranged his life forever. And if he didn't fight the article then what else would he have to sacrifice? How many times would he have to lie down and have liberal Neanderthals walk all over him? Walking away would set a dangerous precedent, and even though his father allayed him, he walked out of his office determined to get the retraction. He could go to Switzerland anytime, but to quit the fight now would mean to quit every time someone tried to take away what was rightfully his. In this world, he reasoned, a man has to fight for everything. He has to fight for the clothes on his back, for the woman he loves, for the country that gives him his freedom. Every threat required a measured response, every offensive a strong defense. The world wasn't perfect, but hell, it sure beat being a slave to someone else. It sure beat being taken advantage of.

He walked uptown where white Manhattan and yuppie Harlem met. The city streets throbbed with workers on lunch break. Yellow taxi cabs meandered among large, overcrowded buses. On the sidewalks vendors sold hot dogs in the brisk autumnal air. Breaks on cars squealed and ground, horns blared, and manhole covers hissed with smoke. He hated New York at times, the pollution and the spiking population, the give-and-take no one's immune from, the ghastly annoyance of traffic, the underground rumble of the subways. Some days can get downright sickening. The further uptown he went, the more liberal it became, as though the newspaper's headquarters had a palpable presence on the street. Their offices might as well have been a soup kitchen for the disgruntled and malignant. They wanted more of what he earned while they sat on their asses and complained. Why the people put up with it for so long he wasn't sure. They all wanted a piece of him, and when he arrived, he could feel the phlegm of disgust blocking his throat.

He wanted revenge more than a simple retraction, to teach them a lesson not to fuck with him or his political future. He had the newspaper rolled up in his hand, and when he saw the receptionist and listened to her chatting with a friend, he had images of beating the poor girl with it. He had been a good man, and suddenly he found himself desperately wanting to get even. Politics just then may have been a metaphor for war or some means of getting revenge against those he didn't like, a system thrown in motion by the brute will to survive, and this newspaper certainly wasn't making things any easier. It remained a gross impediment to all he thought good and just, pure and free. These people had to be stopped for the good of the country. Forget about his own personal appetites. These cockroaches gnawed away at the infrastructure of the American political system.

"May I help you," she said, after a few minutes of gossipy chatter over the telephone.

Simon remained as calm as possible even though his personal rage and disgust spilled over to every quadrant of his mind.

"I'd like to see Angela Ruiz, please."

"And you are?"

"I'm Simon Sample."

She made a call to the back offices that were located behind a set of double doors. She spoke in whispers, cupping her hand over her mouth. Her conversation was drawn out, as though she argued with someone.

"I'm sorry, but Angela is on assignment right now."

The receptionist wore a pert smile suggesting she knew all about him already, which suggested that Angela Ruiz was inside but avoided him. It made him angrier still to see the smile on her face, as though she played a game with him without knowing the destructiveness of its outcome. A young kid, this receptionist, pretending to know what the world was really about. Well, Simon Sample wasn't going to be told what to do. He marched straight for the doors that led to the main office.

"Wait! You can't go in there," he heard from behind him.

He entered the back office like a tank mowing down a fort. The newspaper in his hand had been rolled so tightly in his palm that his sweat wetted the first few pages. He didn't ask anyone for Angela Ruiz but instinctively looked for her like a predator on the hunt. He went up and down every aisle, reading the name plates, mostly Hispanics and Latinos, some of them African-American, another guy an Indian, a few white people here and there. Telephones rang, and televisions hanging above the desks chattered with news about the declining economy and lower interest rates. For a paper that covered local news about the latest bodega shooting or protest rally, it was surprising these people paid attention to the national news at all.

By the time a security guard pursued him through the maze of paper-cluttered desks, Simon had already found Angela Ruiz. She sat at a computer screen, probably working on another sleazy article denouncing him. Her work certainly wouldn't qualify for a Pulitzer, nor would it be written in a language anyone educated enough would understand. He slapped the newspaper on her desk, startling her out of a quiet concentration.

Angela Ruiz wore a pair of black, rectangular glasses – the kind one would find in a Chelsea art gallery and not a newspaper joint. She looked in her late twenties and probably had very little experience. She was shocked, and Simon liked it that way. If anything, he hoped he scared the hell out of her or made her think about the wreck she made of him.

"Who the hell do you think you are?!" yelled Simon, his teeth clenched and the newspaper pounding on the desk.

The security guard caught up to him and grabbed him by the arm.

"If you'd just calm down, Mr. Sample."

"Don't tell me to calm down! You had no right to print this garbage! It was a malicious attempt to defame my family!"

"Please, Mr. Sample, if you're going to yell, Security will show you out."

"You want me to deal with this?" asked the guard.

Simon calmed himself considering he was about to be roughed up.

"No," said Angela after thinking about it. "Mr. Sample, if you're willing to discuss this in a calm, rational manner - "

"Fine."

Angela Ruiz nodded her head, and the guard let go of his arm. Simon took a seat. The two faced each other. Simon thought twice about ripping into her. All of a sudden he wasn't sure why he came. He didn't know what would be solved if they both argued the entire time and fought about who was right and who was wrong. He wanted to get even, but not with the guard eyeing him a few paces away. He took his seat. Angela then said:

"Look, I know what you're here for."

"Oh you do? Well, if you already know, why don't you tell me."

"You're here about the article, and I understand you're upset."

"You don't know how upset I am. I'd love to show you."

"Mr. Sample, we're not going to accomplish anything by sitting here and arguing. Why don't you just go if you're not willing to hear me out."

"After that article you think you have the right to be heard? You call this responsible journalism? No facts. No evidence. Nothing but this long rant defaming me and father? And now I'm out of a fucking job? You call this crap journalism?"

"Mr. Sample, we have very good reason to believe that Congressman William Briarwood took bribes from Charles Sample - "

"And what about me? That I had prior knowledge of it? Where's your evidence for that? You didn't even bother contacting me. You didn't bother investigating the damn story before you went to print with it. Where the hell is your evidence, Angela?"

"We have evidence that bribery did take place," she said calmly. "We have good reason to believe that your office took a blind eye to these bribes."

"And what's the basis of this belief?"

"Because Charles Sample is your father."

"I see. So because he's my father, you believe that I had a hand in this? Well, let me tell you something – I monitor every donation that arrives at that office, and not once did I see a check written directly from Charles Sample to Bill Briarwood on my desk. Not one goddamned check!"

"C'mon, Mr. Sample, we're not idiots here."

"This is my theory," said Simon, "you are not only wrong, but you are wrong idiots working for the opposition, trying to derail Bill Briarwood's campaign, but what you didn't count on was someone from his office coming down here to tell you he's innocent in all of this, and you've successfully derailed my political future by this sham of an article when you don't even have the facts to prove it."

Angela leaned back in her chair for a moment, ran her hands through her knotted hair, and said:

"Mr. Sample, I'm sorry, but we have evidence that bribery did take place. It may have taken place under your nose."

"That's not good enough. You don't have any evidence."

"We have discrepancies in the campaign's income taxes."

"That's all speculation on your part."

"And I didn't want to say anything, but we also have a source."

Simon's mouth dropped and sucked in the foul air that covered the place.

"A source?"

"Yes. We have someone who can substantiate our position."

He immediately thought of Sarah French, a neon sign blinking on and off in his head. Only a rock hurled at full speed could stop the sign from blinking.

"And you would be talking of Sarah French, right?"

"You know we can't give out that kind of information."

"Have you heard of Sarah French?"

"Honey, this whole town has heard of Sarah French, but I'll tell you, and I can tell you this only because I may have assumed incorrectly whether or not you had a hand in this. We were actually going to focus on you a couple of weeks from now, but the source isn't Sarah French. Not by a long shot."

"Then who the hell is it?"

"I can't say."

"But it's not Sarah French?"

"No. I know you two have your differences, but it's not Sarah French."

"I don't know where you get your research, Angela, but this whole thing stinks."

"Politics does stink. I'm surprised a man like yourself is involved in it."

"I'm involved. Very involved. So involved that I lost my job. Angela, I need a retraction."

"You're not getting one," she said.

"Bribery or not, half the stuff you wrote about my father was out of line, and you just wrecked a man's life: mine. I don't think that's fair."

"Like it or not we had ample reason to believe that you were a part of this. You won't get a retraction, but what you will get is a break. You're out of a job, so I'll have to reconsider the cover story we're planning on you."

"Even when what you wrote is totally false? You never even asked me for a statement. You're not going to write about me, are you?"

"Only if you tell me something I don't already know."

"Like what?" he seethed.

"Stewart Briarwood, for instance."

"I can't help you."

"We already know enough about Stewart Briarwood. It's just a question of when we're going to print with it. Confirm a few things, and maybe we can work something out. We'll clear your name. You'll remain totally anonymous. I protect my sources better than my own family."

Simon didn't think this reporter had enough dirt on Stewart in the first place. There were things Stewart did that even Simon didn't know about. Stewart kept things private. He was a master at that. When Simon got too close, Stewart protected his territory like a pit bull in an abandoned lot. Even though she had a source, Simon figured that no source was capable of getting up Stewart's ass far enough to make a story out of it. Besides, Stewart was more than a boss. He was his best friend, and friendship meant being loyal in times of crisis. He wasn't about to rat out Stewart just because this commie journalist wanted a story. Also, if she succeeded in taking down Briarwood's campaign, he'd be out of the Washington assignment as well. His Dad was right – better to take that long vacation until Angela had nothing else to write about.

"We have our sources," said Angela. "These articles will be written whether you confirm what we already have or not."

"Listen, I know what you're trying to do, and it's not going to work. Stewart Briarwood has done nothing wrong or unethical. And what about John Hernandez, your saintly leader? Why don't I get you some dirt on him?"

"I'm not writing about the Hernandez campaign, and if I were you, I'd be wondering why I got shoved out of a job when I didn't do anything wrong."

"What are you talking about?"

"Someone has to take the blame when the dust settles on all of this."

"This is not a game!" exclaimed Simon, staring into her opaque eyes. "You're dealing with people's lives here!"

"We're also knee-deep in a battle for the 14thdistrict. If I were you, I wouldn't blame Hernandez. You already know where this paper stands. I'd be investigating the Briarwood campaign."

"And what if your source has a motive to do damage to us? What if your source is unreliable?"

"I don't think so. Our source is very reliable."

For a woman younger than he, Angela Ruiz knew how to play the game fairly well, although Simon often thought these games beneath him. To him politics wasn't about playing games but more about solving paradoxes of political thought and deriving policies that shied away from conflict, thereby preserving the American ideal through a set of traditional values and beliefs. All the other stuff sickened him, yet it was stuff he couldn't avoid, like running into Angela Ruiz. She was attractive, though – a plain pulchritude that deserved a bit more makeup. She and Sarah French belonged together.

"Well," said Simon, "I guess you have all the answers then, don't you?"

"We're not the problem. Everything we've gone to print with is backed up. Maybe we're wrong about you, but Charles Sample is bribing William Briarwood. There's no question about that."

"I guess people will believe what they want to believe," said Simon, getting up. "But one thing's for sure, no matter what you print or in what way you print it, no one, and I mean no one, is ever going to elect John Hernandez. That's something you can count on."

"We'll see," said Angela Ruiz.

"And to tell you the truth, I'm not even sure what I'm supposed to do about all of this."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know what I mean, but I just fail to believe that there's bribery going on."

"Listen," she said, "if you change your mind about Stewart Briarwood, you give me a call. I'm sorry it turned out this way."

"Yeah, I bet you are."

He left without a retraction but wasn't finished with Angela Ruiz either. He had an urge to do battle with the forces that drove him from his job. He went to campaign headquarters to clear out his stuff. Manny, the computer guy, found him a couple of boxes, and he cleaned off his desk in one swift swipe. It caused a racket in the office, as his co-workers stared with mouths open. Some of them didn't know what had happened, and they were too afraid to ask. A gathering had formed outside his office. He paid little attention to them. He ripped down the picture frames and dropped them into the boxes. The sooner he left, the better, and then Stewart cruised through the hallway to disperse the crowd.

"What the hell is going on here? Get back to work!"

He came into the office and closed the door behind him.

"You didn't get a retraction, did you?"

"Nope."

"Listen, Simon, I'm really sorry about what's happening, but the article is doing quite a bit of damage already. I talked to the pollsters this morning, and our numbers will narrow because of it. And Sarah has fielded a few questions about it from the other papers, and it looks like they're getting involved."

"I know. You don't have to apologize."

"But you're upset."

"I am upset."

Stewart paced the room.

"What do you want me to say?" he asked. "If we kept you on, it could really do some damage."

"I know."

"Take that vacation, Simon. Go with Caitlin and have a good time of it."

"That's exactly what I plan to do."

"I don't know how long this will be, to tell you the truth."

"You've found somebody else, haven't you?"

"For fundraising? Yeah."

"Who?"

"You're not going to like this, but we're moving Sarah over to fundraising, and we're using Kimberly as the flak."

"Oh."

"It's just the nature of the business."

"I've been hearing that a lot lately."

"This doesn't mean that we can't have a drink sometime. Where do you think you'll go?"

"I haven't decided yet."

"Well, I tell you what: how about we have a drink at the club later this week?"

"I don't think I'll be around later this week."

"Simon, please don't be pissed off at me, okay? I'm not the one responsible for this."

"And I suppose I am?"

"No. It's that damn liberal paper and events we couldn't predict. I know you're upset, but it's not because of anything I did."

"I know. I'm just pissed off, alright? I don't know who's responsible, but believe me, I'll find out."

"I'm sorry to see you go."

They shook hands, and Stewart left his office, once again telling those outside to get back to work.

He admitted it was a little embarrassing having the office workers wonder why one of their top people headed for the exit doors after many solid years of ordering them around. He had always been a good boss, as that's what ultimately mattered now that he was leaving.

He loaded the boxes into the trunk of a cab, and as the city blocks passed, he wondered what life would be like without a decent job. Sure, there would be a vacation with Caitlin, but then what? And the money would eventually run out – his money, that is. He hated the idea of asking Caitlin for money or his own father. People who gave him money often expected something in return, and if he depended on his father, he'd have to work for him as well.

Simon had little drive to work in real estate after all this time in politics. Even a random desk job in the Midtown office didn't sit well with him. Relying on Caitlin would be worse. The sum he had for himself would surely run out if he didn't work. He did have extensive contacts, but the pain of calling these people and explaining what happened didn't sit well with him either. Some of the people he knew would secretly rejoice. People at the club would talk too.

His reputation, squeaky-clean and perfected, finally took a hit. He felt the need to do something about it, and slowly a curtain of pessimism walled him off, his thoughts shooting in different directions in the hopes that he could either return to the campaign or find something equally suitable. His ambitions had been pointed in one stubborn direction, and suddenly he had to diversify, and he wasn't too sure if he'd be able to do it, as though some kind of trap door opened beneath him, and he free-fell into a dark unknown. The insecurity scared him a little, something he hadn't felt for quite some time, as though the staircase he traveled, once meant for a slow and steady progression, buckled and swayed beneath him. He considered it his destiny to become a congressman. His life thus far had been built around that stubborn assumption.

Caitlin wasn't home when he got there, and he often thought about the things she did to take up a day. She shopped on Madison Avenue and went to parties with him on weekends. That was the extent of her employment. She never had any ambition other than engaging a social network of young, wealthy couples chit-chatting about art and fashion. It pleased him to have a woman such as this, a princess who could hold her own with an intellectual or a Wall Street businessman, and especially the young politicos they often caroused with. How this change in status would affect her he wasn't too sure. The entire town knew about it, and for any future politician image meant everything – for people to see the perfect outer shell of a couple even though on the inside they may be crumbling. Nothing crumbled yet, of course, but if Caitlin ran into too many people who heard about his loss of employment, she sure as hell would be down about it. Etiquette and social status may have meant more to Caitlin than any love she had for him. Another reason to be insecure, he guessed.

When he got to his apartment, he dropped the boxes on the floor and looked out the window to the skyscrapers filled with office people pushing paper. In this economy, he thought, one has to adapt. Yet he held onto the life he once had, these political fundraisers and flutes of champagne, getting to know what other people did with their lives. There was something very magical about the entire phenomenon of raising money – not the small-potatoes, pre-sorted mail campaigns, but targeting the big game, like chairmen of Fortune 500 companies and leaders of industrial organizations, from New York City real estate associations to senior citizen committees. Fundraising put him in touch with a vast network, and surely he could have reached out to one of them for a job doing something he really didn't want to do. Or he could find out exactly what went wrong.

Things seemed too suspect to be real. The liberal paper said that they had a source very close to the campaign. Stewart said that there was no bribery going on, and it was just a smear campaign. His father said the same thing. Yet there was something about Stewart he didn't trust – how he left him out of things and hired Sarah French to replace him. He thought he could trust Stewart, but it all happened too quickly and too cleanly to be believed. For some reason he believed the commie paper instead. He hated things liberal, but there was something trustworthy about Angela Ruiz – her dark eyes, for instance. Maybe she had more journalistic integrity than he had originally thought. She could have thrown him out of the building, but she didn't. True, she worked for the Hispanic opposition, but she explained very carefully that she did have a source, despite their conflicting interests. Different interests usually competed, but the opposition newspaper didn't seem like the competing type. The lower classes, he figured, don't compete as viciously as those already in power, as though the lower classes in the political arena rely not on protecting what they have but on strengthening their own numbers, allowing people or wanting people to understand them in order to level the playing field. Angela Ruiz, he could tell, wanted him to understand, as though their primary contact was meant for some further relationship. She neither looked like a radical nor acted like one. It made him wonder, because he did trust her on some level.

Caitlin was on her way out of the apartment. They caught each other in the middle of the living room going in different directions. She had just showered and smelled of baby powder and the latest perfume. Her combed blonde hair reminded him of one of the workers in his office. She looked like she was late for something.

"I see you got your stuff," she said.

"It's funny," he said, "you spend your years in one place and all you have to show for it are a couple of boxes."

"Only a few years, Simon, not your entire life."

She put his arms around him, and he buried his head in her neck. Her scent filled his nostrils as though it protected him from the failure the day turned out to be.

"It'll be okay, darling," said Caitlin, her delicate fingers running through his hair.

"I don't know why this happened, but I will find out."

"Let it go, darling. Please, just let it go."

"I can't. Someone has wronged me, Caitlin."

"It's politics. We have to get used to it."

"I fail to believe that bad things happen to good people."

"So what are we going to do?"

He sighed and moved his hands around her body. He could have inhaled her forever.

"Something makes me want to fight it."

She let go of him and frowned.

"I know, sweetheart," he continued, "but I can't let people walk all over me. As a man I can't do that."

"And who are you going to fight?" she asked. "You can't fight a situation. You can't fight something that isn't tangible."

"There's a theory behind all of this."

"What theory?"

"I don't know. It just seems a little too convenient to have me leave, especially with the way Stu's been acting."

"Stewart? God, why would Stewart have anything to do with this?"

"I don't know. I just sense it. Stewart's been off track for a while, and we haven't been connecting as of late."

"He's Stewart, Simon. He's supposed to grow a little too, y'know."

"I know that, honey, but there are things he doesn't tell me. He used to involve me in everything, but lately he's been hanging around these Wall Street guys, and he's partying a lot. It's like he strayed, and maybe some of his values strayed with him."

"Shouldn't you be pointing the finger at the paper that printed the article? Politics gets dirty, you know that. Stewart wouldn't do anything to hurt you."

"But the way he's been excluding me. He goes against every recommendation I make. This Presidential fundraiser was all Sarah French's idea."

"Do I detect a note of jealousy?"

"Jealous? Of whom?"

"Guys get this way. It's the homosexual instinct in you."

They both laughed.

"Okay, maybe I've gone a little bonkers, okay, but I definitely don't have a thing for Stewart."

"Yeah right."

"But I do have a thing for you."

"Oh, Simon, sometimes I can't understand you."

"What's so hard to understand about that? Honey, by this time next year we'll be in Washington, and you'll be by my side. It's just that I can't let this thing go without a full investigation."

She disentangled herself from him and angrily put on her coat. She headed for the door, purse in hand.

"This is not television, Simon. You can't conduct an investigation when there's no one to investigate. Can't you just leave it alone? What's done is done. Let's just accept it and go on vacation like your father said."

"What am I going to do on vacation? Sit in a deckchair on some yacht? That's not the life I planned."

"Oh, I see."

"It's not, Caitlin. I plan to take Bill Briarwood's seat one day, and I'm not letting this thing tarnish my good reputation."

"What reputation? You're a political fundraiser. In a few months this whole campaign will be over, and then you can return to Washington with me and get your old job back. What's so wrong with that?"

"Plenty. It's unfair to me, to us."

"Simon, you're a thirty year-old political fundraiser. That's all you are. You are nothing but that. You have a job in an office, and your function is to raise money. Because of the unfavorable press, Stewart fired you. That's it. You're not a political big shot - "

"Not yet. Not yet."

"Fine, not yet, but you're definitely sacrificing your future as a politician if you don't cooperate."

"Cooperate? Now there's some sort of plan to all of this? This is some sort of game, is that it?"

She groaned and dropped her purse.

"Yes, Simon, it's a game, and everyone plays it but you. You always have some sort of issue with integrity, as though everything is a battle between right and wrong, good and evil, and if you'd just loosen up a bit and enjoy yourself once in a while - "

"And how am I supposed to do that? I just got fired from a job that I loved."

"It's not the end of the world is what I'm trying to say. Can't you just get over it and live your life? You're always so serious, and it's starting to drive me nuts. You never think about what I may want out of this. It always has to be your career, like it's the only thing that matters."

"I didn't know you felt that way," he said.

"I do. I'm sorry, but I do. Remember when we used to have fun, Simon? A good time? Remember when you used to come up to Wellesley and take me out, and we danced at those terrible clubs in Boston? It used to be that way. And then we had to come down to New York, and you got involved with the campaign, and it happened so quickly. You got too involved with your work."

"I did not."

"You did, and you became so serious with it. You neglected everything else."

"Like what?"

"Like having a good time, Simon. It's supposed to be fun, isn't it?"

"Well, it isn't very fun anymore, especially when there's an injustice involved."

"Since when did you care so much about justice?"

"When I decided to enter politics. When I got shoved out by someone rotten."

Simon moved towards the window, and when he looked down upon the crawling pedestrians like ants beneath his feet, he couldn't help but wonder if he'd have to do it all over again – the hard work and the trouble it took to stay afloat, to live a decent life, to care about his country, his city, his government. For most people, the real took over, it seemed – the real need for money, a nice house, a girlfriend soon to be a wife – but Simon had been raised and educated in such a way as to disregard these real things and the ongoing struggle it took to survive, the mentality that said that money is power, that the whole picture rested with some sort of need to have more, that contentment was only for the old and not for the young.

"I've never failed before," he said, the view from on high hypnotizing him, as though the cityscape were only a disguise that hid a darker truth underneath it.

"You haven't failed. It's all in your head, that crazy head of yours. You want too much too soon, that's your problem. And I know you're jealous of Stewart."

"I have no reason to be jealous of Stewart."

"Let's go to Greece, Simon. That's where I've always wanted to go."

"I thought you didn't want to go anywhere. I thought you didn't want to leave the city."

"I think we could both use a break from all this."

She wrapped his arms around his waist and rested her head on his back. He continued his gaze of the cityscape and also the buses and the taxis and trucks that darted in all directions below him.

It seemed that a lot of life involved choices, and he wasn't too sure if he'd like it better if some of these choices had been made for him. These choices, especially the most important ones, were made consciously, and right or wrong, he had to go with them. One road could lead to heaven and the other straight to hell. Cooperate and get along proved to be the path of least resistance, and yet going along with the decision, cooperating with Stewart, and even with his girlfriend for that matter, might have been easier and smarter. But his gut gnawed at him, some kind of deep-rooted suspicion that something was rotten, and that his father, for all his support over the years, may have bribed Bill Briarwood after all, even though it was something he was reluctant to believe.

Her arms around him and the gentle weight of her body along his back filled him with a comfort that he had known only in childhood. That's what he wanted really – a mother. But Caitlin wasn't his mother, and he supposed she was far from it. She kept her maternal instincts locked away, the fun free-wheeling part overtaking whatever feelings stirred beneath her urbane surface. But her warmth against his back sure made it feel like she had potential for a greater and more enduring love, if not now, then later. But she was, at the time, a city girl who wanted no part of his high principles and honesty and sense of justice. Caitlin didn't want these things, while Simon found them impossible to shake.

True that not many people were interested in his brand of integrity. Politics strayed far from what he had learned about politics at Princeton. It took many forms, as most in the game represented interests, lived a good life, and somehow dispensed with those notions of statesmanship and importance, as it was unlikely they would get very far with high ideals clouding their judgment and stuffing their heads with ideas of some great solution to all of our social ills. Yet Simon thought he could set an example for other newcomers. His life had to be perfect in order to succeed. There were no accidents, and from birth he had been groomed, just so long as he didn't tinker with the game plan.

But if he believed it in his conscience, he would have to do something and not fall for the same old trap most people his age surrendered to.

"Okay?" asked Caitlin, releasing him.

"Okay, what?"

"We'll go to Greece? Take it easy for a few months?"

"Why Greece? Why not somewhere else?"

"Oh, Simon," she sighed, "can't you just for one minute be spontaneous? Why are you so stubborn?"

"Greece it is. Let's leave in a couple of weeks."

"How about we leave this weekend?"

"What's the rush?" he asked. "It's not like I have anything to come back to."

"Y'know," she said, walking out the door, "you're impossible."

He continued his examination of the streets below him. Something in his mind had changed direction, and it left him a bit dizzy. With Caitlin gone and he alone and left to submerge in his murky thoughts, he couldn't help but get angry all over again. Nothing rolls on the wheels of inevitability, an idea from way back that moved immediately to the forefront of his mind. Back down now, and he would back down all his life. In this world, especially within the jungle of New York politics, one could not give an inch, because in all likelihood a yard would be taken. He gathered his resolve, and he would investigate this without Caitlin knowing about it. Nobody had to know about it. He could keep it to himself and act like he accepted whatever fate handed him. But underneath the disguise, if one were to be so intrepid as to crawl beneath there, there lurked some sort of innate need to get even. His own anger was too intense to ignore, as though he battled fiercely against an unfairness that the people around him couldn't see, and because of that everything was a struggle. Everything had to be working in order to remain at the same level of his high-achieving peers. Stewart, he supposed, didn't have to work that hard. Stewart did things without thinking them through and yet always arrived at some position of advantage to everyone around him. He wasn't jealous of him, as Caitlin accused him of being. But for some reason there was something about Stewart he couldn't trust and something about Angela Ruiz he could. Strange how a complete stranger became more trustworthy than a lifelong friend.

He had nothing to do for the rest of the day except pace and think. He watched a little television, and the stuff he saw sickened him, but he needed television to fill the void. Out of the hundreds of channels he had access to, he preferred watching an infomercial. A tubby chef sold revolutionary kitchen knives. The way the chef cut tomatoes and morsels of meat kept him watching for the full hour. He didn't have to think. The television did all the thinking and cooking for him. He quickly got bored and decided instead to have an early afternoon drink at the club. No one would be there, save for old retirees, ex-chairmen of this and that discussing national politics or some issue regarding management, what stocks did well in a down market, et cetera.

They treated him like a little kid. They were friends of his father, and some of them he knew for a long time without really knowing them. Simon's father liked to compare Simon with their children, how well, for instance, he did versus how well they did. Interestingly enough, a lot of their children went wild with rebellion after college and ended up in places like rehab or the psych wards or wheelchairs after driving their cars into trees or picket fences. The old timers considered Simon to be a model son, a 'chip off the ol' block' of a powerful and successful Charles Sample. Their sons had gone astray, it seemed, and even after they had given all of their money to support their children's excessive and clandestine lifestyles, they still had no one they could relate to. Some of their children turned Bohemian. Others left the country and lived off their allowances. Simon was one of the only children to remain between the lines. Stewart also stayed put, which is one reason for their continued friendship. They listened to their parents and walked in their footsteps, believing what they believed. Simon thought what a comfort he must have been to his father. Charlie Sample didn't have anything to feel disappointed about. He wanted him to cooperate.

It was refreshing to be out of the apartment, sitting in a leather chair and sipping a brandy. It was only midday, and a few of the old-timers smoked cigars in the oak-lined room. In another area elderly couples played bridge, and he couldn't help but feel a little out of place. Such is the predicament of the unemployed. He shook a few hands. He would count on their support one day, assuming they would be around long enough for his candidacy. He sat at one of the tables and read the newspaper. Allegations that his father bribed Briarwood hadn't appeared anywhere. He was a little thankful the story didn't move beyond the liberal side of the press, but even if it did hit mainstream, it wouldn't have mattered much. He was still out of a job.

Just then, midway through a story on booming real estate values and sagging stock prices, Simon witnessed something both surprising and peculiar. Stewart and Simon's father, Charlie Sample, walked into the club. They took their seats at the other end of the room. Charlie carried a black leather briefcase, which was odd, because his father rarely carried anything when he visited the club. Rather than go up to them, Simon hid behind the folds of his newspaper and eyed them from afar. He had no idea the two were meeting socially. He had no idea what his father wanted with Stewart to begin with. The room was long and ornate enough to hide him. The cigar smoke plumed and distorted his vision. His father sat with his back towards him. Stewart could have spotted him if he stood up, but Simon stayed put and shooed off the waiter when he asked if he wanted a refill.

They were having a serious discussion about something. The waiter served them a lunch of what looked like steak. They didn't laugh or smile or talk too loud as they were accustomed to doing at the parties they frequented. They ate in a casual manner. It appeared that Stewart did most of the talking. Charlie nodded his head a lot. Very strange, because they looked very solemn, Charlie's face expressionless, his hands folded and listening intensely to what Stewart had to say. The waiter promptly took their empty plates away. They ordered drinks and sipped at them slowly. The cigar smoke stung his eyes as he squinted through the dense haze.

When they finished their drinks, they moved towards the entrance of the building. Simon followed them at a distance without paying his tab. From far behind them he walked softly. They walked quickly towards the exits, only this time Stewart carried the black leather briefcase and not his father. Once outside, Charles got into his limousine and sped away. Stewart, however, hailed a cab further down the block. Simon followed him.

He figured he should follow the magic briefcase, that there was something inside that was worth tracking down. It could have been anything – documents, for instance, or some gift, but he didn't know, and there was no way he could tell. He stood inside the club lobby and watched Stewart through the plate glass windows. He asked the doorman to call him a cab after Stewart found one. He asked him to do this discreetly and slipped a twenty-dollar bill in his palm. The cab came right behind Stewart's. Simon hopped in and told the cabby to follow Stewart's cab with a one or two car cushion.

When the cabby fell too far behind, Simon, who hung his head through the opening in the divide, hurried the driver. They weaved in and out of traffic. Stewart's cab a half-block ahead sped swiftly along Fifth Avenue. Simon told the cabby to get closer until, at one point, Simon's cab was right behind Stewart's, waiting at a red light within a swarm of other cars. Simon sat back in his seat lest Stewart look behind him. When the light turned green, Stewart's cab drifted to the side of the avenue in front of a bank just a few blocks south of the Plaza Hotel. Simon's cab halted a block away, and he waited until Stewart disappeared from view. Simon then paid the cabby, hurried down the street, and entered the bank inconspicuously.

He blended into the long line in front of the tellers. The bank itself was one of the oldest in New York. Footsteps on the wide marble floors reverberated underneath an arching dome, and the old smell of leather chairs, the weight of heavy desks, and the shadows from green-shaded teller lamps gave him the impression that accounts were handled with the strictest security and confidentiality.

The tellers wore business suits, and a fleet of desks beyond velvet ropes served as an island of well-guarded transactions. Stewart, his back towards the entrance, sat with a gray-haired banker who greeted him warmly. The banker summoned a teller who took the black briefcase. The two talked for a moment or two, all smiles and brief laughter. The teller who had taken the briefcase returned with a slip of paper, which Stewart shoved in his breast pocket. He then got up to leave. Simon hid within the folds of the line. The bank lobby was wide enough to hide him.

Stewart left the building. Simon sighed and folded the newspaper that blocked a good part of his face. He rushed to the same gray-haired banker who fiddled with his computer. He looked much scarier up close.

"Hi, did Stewart Briarwood get here yet?"

"Why yes, he was just here," said the banker. "And who are you?"

"I'm Steven French. I work with the Briarwood campaign."

"Oh, yes, Stewart left just a couple of minutes ago."

"Great. That's just great."

"Is there anything I can help you with?"

"Yeah, well, I think I forgot to give Stewart something that he needed before meeting you. He did give you everything, right?"

"Yes, of course. Everything was there, just as he told me."

"Did he forget to take anything with him?"

"No, I don't think so. I gave him a deposit slip, and he went on his way. Was there something he was supposed to get for you, from us?"

"Ah, y'know what," said Simon, "it's probably back at the office. My mistake."

"I could call him if you like."

"No, y'know, that really won't be necessary. It's my fault. I just get confused."

"Well, okay. Are you sure you don't want me to call him?"

"Not necessary, really, but thank you. I'm at the wrong bank."

When Simon stepped onto Fifth Avenue again, he couldn't help but feel a little light-headed and nauseous. A large amount of cash from a black briefcase had passed from his father, through the head of the Briarwood campaign, and into a bank account. Not good at all. How he happened to stumble into the club after watching television he didn't know. He guessed they didn't expect him to be at the club at that time of day. Actually, the club was a perfect place for the exchange, considering that no one from a liberal newspaper would have the gall to become a member, and anyone even associated with the Hernandez campaign would have a tough time making it through the entrance doors. Angela Ruiz's source, then, must have been someone intimately involved with Stewart's business affairs. Who else but Sarah French had such access? The entire theory fit like pieces to a jigsaw puzzle, and while Simon's insides felt the rush of figuring this out, the rush soon turned into abject anger. Stewart and his father lied to him. He had been framed.

This is what he believed to be true. His father found another avenue to donate the hefty sum he originally tried to pass off on him at the fundraiser several nights earlier. He wasn't sure how long this relationship between Stewart and his father existed, but considering Charlie's relationship with Bill Briarwood over a span of many years, bribery must have been ongoing even before Stewart became campaign manager.

He had never been betrayed by anyone before. He thought of Stewart as a life-long friend and his father a guardian of his future. He never thought he'd have to struggle so much to achieve what his peers already had, and it should be said that Simon's peers were all well-off. He was of the age when status mattered. Hard to believe that the very people in whom he could confide, to whom he told his wildest ambitions, could plunge the knife deep into his back. Or perhaps it was all a part of a greater plan.

Maybe his father really wanted him to succeed, and Stewart as well. Maybe they made sure that he suffered now only to be strong later. Everyone gets betrayed at some point, even the great Caesar. But if it were part of a strange plan, then why didn't his father let him in on it? Why didn't Stewart tell him about it? A leap of faith to rely on this grand plan scenario, thought Simon as he walked up Fifth Avenue, the pavement glittering despite what had happened. Perhaps he was in denial. He loved his father and loved Stewart to some extent. He was loyal to both, as loyalty to people who supported him mattered more than anything material. Then again, this could have been Sarah French's doing.

He was too confused to solve it, too stricken by the ghastliness of the betrayal to come to any firm conclusions. What's worse, he had no idea whom he should confront first. Everyone wanted him to take this magical vacation and forget all about it. But if someone could do this to him once, they would do it to him again. He didn't have a faith strong enough to believe that things would work out without some initiative on his part. He had a choice – either to let it go or bite back. He had been trained to question, trained to think. He read much and studied hard, and he suddenly determined, with a degree of ingenuousness, that the greatest leaders in history never shied away from the truth, never became fearful of a challenge. To follow what he had been taught or to play ball became a harrowing decision once more.

He thought about it over and over again, and with each calculation, the anger grew within him. Someone had to answer for this.

He strolled along Central Park, admiring the jogging women. He walked so far, that his feet ached in his new Italian shoes. He finally found his way home.

Caitlin was in the bathtub with headphones on, a glass of white wine next to her. Simon knew he shouldn't disturb her, but he knelt next to the tub. She shivered when he touched her moist arm. Water splashed and spilled to the floor.

"Simon, don't do that!" she said, removing her headphones.

"Sorry, didn't mean to scare you. We have to talk."

"About what?"

He loved her body just then, her smooth blonde arms and shoulders, the bubbles hiding her figure like frosting on a cake. He wanted to climb in and forget reality for while.

"I found something out today," he said.

"Enough to scare me, I hope."

"I found out that my father really is bribing Bill Briarwood."

"And?"

"And, that's it. My father is bribing Bill Briarwood."

"Simon, didn't we already talk about this? I thought we were taking a vacation?"

"Can't you understand what I'm saying? The stuff in the liberal paper was all true. It wasn't a lie. And now I'm out of a job. I'm getting blamed for it. I'm the patsy."

She sighed deeply like a mother who tires from her son's antics.

"So what?" she said.

"So what? That's all you can say is 'so what?'"

He slammed the bathroom door on his way out. He stood in the living room messaging his forehead. His brain hurt. It burned not only with anger but also confusion. He looked out the window, the tall buildings a tranquil therapy as of late. Caitlin would not follow him down the path he approached. He annoyed her, and she was oblivious to his need for justice. Suddenly everyone around him didn't seem themselves anymore, even Caitlin. Ask her to stand apart from her role as a Manhattan socialite and she wouldn't budge. Despite her Wellesley education she didn't have any thirst to right the wrongs. She could be so loving, especially when they shared each other in bed. She usually gave more energy and feeling than he did, more of a commitment to their shared experience, but when asked to believe in him, she dropped the ball. When asked to do something other than socialize at a cocktail party or spend money at the latest boutique, or do something exotic in bed, she refused. That was her nature. She was more prepared for a cotillion than for political life. Yet she remained this flower to be handled delicately. She wasn't fragile at all, however. She had her combative side, but more like a flower that transmogrifies into a viper, sinking her fangs deep beneath the flesh when she disapproved of something Simon did. He was frightened she would run away if he pursued this. All the playboys in Manhattan would readily take his place, scores of them kissing her feet.

Foolishness is a funny thing. Ask the fool why he is a fool, and when you find out he doesn't know, you also realize that only says it like that for a reason. But that's the trick, because making foolish decisions does have a strange reasoning about it. A fool doesn't magically become a fool. There's a strategy at work, and in Simon's case, he knew that pursuing the matter would strip away whatever he made of his life. Not an easy decision at all. A fool's decision to make. But if he were to become a statesman one day, to become someone his children would one day read about in newspapers, perhaps even make it into some heavy textbook taught in a classroom, then that was the true path, he supposed. But his life as he knew it would end. And what if he were wrong about Stewart and his father?

He didn't say anything to Caitlin that night. They were disappointed in each other. They fought for a good hour or so, unable to agree. Simon lay awake on the couch as she slept in the bedroom, a cool single white sheet covering him from head to toe. Sometimes the few choices that we do have aren't really choices at all.

### Chapter Six

He woke up on the sofa with a bitter taste in his mouth, his tongue dry and his throat scratched by some demon who came into his dreams and sowed ideas of revenge. Revenge, and its best friend Anger, motivated him more than the dire consequence of confronting Stewart and his own father. He called both of them from the apartment that morning and made dinner arrangements. He stayed away from the club, as that's where they wanted to go. Simon knew a scene would erupt, and so he skillfully made reservations for supper at the Carlyle. None of their cronies would be there. A completely different crowd, less political and more aristocratically chic, the Carlyle was Caitlin's kind of place. She gave a dinner party there a year earlier attracting many of New York's young and wealthy, just out of college and already placed in some of the most lucrative positions in Manhattan.

Simon had a lot of champagne that night. He couldn't remember the interior of the Carlyle, only the music of the band, the women in strapless dresses, clean-cut men in tuxedoes, their talk of travel to exotic places, their knowledge of each other, how alike they all were despite their varied occupations. There were people from the art world, the financial world, also the political, a few psychologists and psychiatrists thrown into the mix. They chatted about the most superficial topics, as Simon lost himself in political theory. Yet there was unity in the diversity of the crowd, yet not a single person of color in the crowd either. Most of them knew each other, it seemed. They connected like a noisy tribe. He remembered feeling superior to them, because at least he sought something a bit nobler. Representing their interests someday, yes, but also making a statement on responsibility at the same time. He saw himself as their leader, protecting them but pushing them further. And with the way Caitlin looked in the elegant shadows of the room, East Coast glamour draped over her ledean body, holding a flute of Dom Perignon, he knew he couldn't be stopped. It was such an irony that a place once holding a sweet memory now became a damp cave where a showdown would take place.

He didn't know what to make of his father. He still trusted him. He still believed that he acted in his best interests, but he never expected him to be corrupt. Simon had always been in awe of him. Now he saw him as just another man who not only sold out his son but also used the same methods of corruption in other business deals, getting his money unfairly and unethically. He couldn't believe that about his father just yet, though. Perhaps there were circumstances beyond his control. Perhaps Simon witnessed the last of these transactions. He racked his brain trying to find good in what the two of them did. He couldn't. He tried to find justification. He couldn't.

He took a cab to the Carlyle on Fifth Avenue. By the time he arrived, Stewart and Charlie Sample were already seated in the Café. The whimsical murals by Marcel Vertes were unable to quell his anger. They were dressed professionally since they just got out of work. Simon, in his first couple of days without a job, looked unprofessional. He hadn't shaved. Politeness and congeniality wasn't a priority anymore. He was a bit out of tune with the rest of the people gathered there. He had been furious the entire ride over, but he made sure to give the two ample room to explain what had happened, to see if they would lie their way out of it or simply tell him the truth. He wanted to hear that this was all part of some master plan. Wonderful if that were the case, but he didn't count on it.

His father always kept his cards close to his vest. Simon didn't know how much he was worth, for instance, or how many properties throughout the nation he owned. There must have been a lot of low-income housing in low-income neighborhoods to justify paying off Briarwood. Money, it turned out, really was power, one of those rudimentary facts that he avoided all through childhood and adolescence only to discover it much too late in life when the choices had narrowed so finely that he doesn't have any options any more. All the stuff we learn – how noble government can be – is replaced by the omnipotent knowledge that it's the best government money can buy, the best system of justice money can buy, and the best army money can buy. It seemed like everyone but Simon already knew this.

Stewart and Charlie were curious of the idea of having dinner with Simon, especially at the Café Carlyle of all places. The place even smelled familiar to him, not of food but of a light and airy perfume that wafted over them, the drizzle of piano commingling with it. It made it hard to concentrate. The surroundings weren't exactly conducive to a showdown. He felt like drinking and palling around with them like he used to do – a slap on the back, stories about wild days at Princeton, money moving markets, people they met recently. They betrayed him, yes, but he wanted them back. He loved the same people who caused his world to fall apart.

They all shook hands and ordered drinks.

"Simon's always been a good sport," announced his father.

"Yes," said Stewart, "these are really tough times. We miss you around the office, Simon."

"What's everybody saying?"

"About you? Well, the fundraising team is suffering the most."

"I take it they're adjusting to Sarah?"

"We're all adjusting to Sarah. She's quite a go-getter."

"Enough about business, boys," said Charlie, taking out a cigar. "I want to hear where Simon and Caitlin are heading off to."

"We haven't decided yet, Dad, but you'll be the first to know."

"So what's the occasion for this dinner, if I may be so bold to ask."

"I feel as though I'm looking at you two for the last time," said Simon.

Both of them chuckled.

"C'mon," said Stewart, "we're still part of the same club. We're still buddies. I'll see you every now and then."

"And I'm still your father. You're not getting rid of us that easily."

"Maybe I'd like to."

They looked at each other for a moment, and then a silence.

"Are you okay?" asked Stewart.

"I'm fine, but from what I can tell, you two are doing much better than I am."

Stewart and Charlie again stared at each other.

"Look," said Stewart, "I know you're still pissed off about the job, but really, you've got to get over it."

"Not this again," sighed Charlie.

"I'm not going to explain it again."

"So tell me, how long have you two been at it?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," said Stewart.

"Don't insult me. I'm not stupid."

"What has gotten into you?" asked Charlie.

"Being hung out to dry by my best friend is one thing, but by my own father is quite another."

"I don't know what you're talking about, Simon, but one thing I don't like is your fucking tone of voice."

"What's the matter, Dad? Can't talk? Too many strategies going on in that corrupt head of yours?"

"That's enough," seethed Stewart.

Charlie put his hand on Stewart's wrist, calming him. He smiled and hailed a waitress.

"Let's have another drink, gentlemen," said Charlie. "I'll have a vodka martini, and the boys will have scotch and waters, isn't that right boys?"

Finally he had seen the darker side of Stewart, the part that betrayed and double-dealt, hidden by a suit and tie and his pearly-white smile, the side that snorted cocaine and fooled around with bimboes in the shadows of a dance hall.

"So tell me – why didn't you let me in on it? He's my father, Stu, not yours. I happen to be his son, not you. At least you could have told me the truth about your little operation."

"Settle down, boys, just settle down. We are, after all, at the Carlyle, remember?"

"You're right, Dad. You better tame your pet before things get out of hand."

"You're such an idiot," said Stewart. "You've always been an idiot."

"Settle down, Stewart, settle down," said Charlie, relieved when the drinks arrived.

Amazing how cool and calm his father was. He seemed to be enjoying himself.

Stewart took a deep breath, and Simon had a long sip of his drink. It made him less nervous, more honest, and more confident.

"What do you think happened with your job?"

"You were bribing Briarwood, the opposition found out about it, and they went ahead and published it. In case the story hit the big press, you guys needed a patsy to take the blame, so you let me go as a precaution. You also didn't want me to know about it, thinking that I would do something stupid and blow the whistle."

Charlie Sample smiled and took a sip of his martini.

"Y'know, son, that type of thinking can be harmful for your career."

"Coming from a man who has just bribed a New York congressman, I'd be more concerned about your career."

"What are you? A priest?" said Stewart, a snarl on his face.

"Can you prove your theory?" asked Charlie. "It seems a little too fantastic to be believed."

"What? That you're bribing Briarwood?"

"Yes. A little too farfetched, wouldn't you say?"

"His head has always been in the clouds," said Stewart. "Building bridges in the sky."

"Yeah, I went so far up in the clouds that I found out about your little business enterprise. And to think you could do such a thing. With my own father."

"Hey, son of mine, the way I do business clothed you and put you through college. You have no right to judge me or how I do my business, got that?"

Charlie straightened his tie and swept what remained of his hair into place. His father rarely got angry with him. He was as bad as Stewart, a hidden personality that erupted when something affected his wallet. These were sides of them he had never before seen, and these sides didn't scare him so much as bewildered him.

Simon wondered why he had never developed such a passion for money, or never found a darkness that he could rely on when circumstances threatened his welfare. He didn't exactly want to be in league with them but wondered instead what set him so far apart – all of this crap about justice and legality and service, and in the back of his mind, morality really did seem like crap. This wasn't grammar school. It was a dangerous lesson on how the system worked and what happened when politics and money collided. He had been under the illusion that policy was the result of sound thinking, but considering Stewart's fixed gaze, like he wanted to kill him, he had to consider that at heart a politician protects himself, and a wise policy is the result of keeping his enemies well fed and his friends loyal. The people are secondary to the organism, and Stewart and Charlie were a part of that organism, an apparatus that fed just like any other creature.

"C'mon, Simon," said Stewart, "let's stop this. We're not getting anywhere."

"Admit it then. I'm not stupid. Why don't you just admit it."

"Admit to what?" asked Charlie.

"The truth. Why don't you let me in to your little plan for my future."

"Walk away from this," said Stewart. "That's all you have to do. This is the last time we're going to ask you."

"And what if I don't?"

"We'll just see what develops, that's all."

"I want my job back. It's what I'm good at. I can't function without my job. It's who I am."

"In future we'll bring you back."

"How long?"

"Soon."

"How soon?"

"It's too difficult to tell."

"That's not good enough."

"And what are you prepared to do about it?"

"I can do quite a bit – of damage."

"So it's come down to this?"

"You're giving me no other choice," said Simon.

"Let's see what he does," said Charlie. "This is your last warning, Simon."

"I'll take my chances."

"You'll wreck your entire career."

"There's a right way and a wrong way to go about things. At least I'll go to my grave knowing that there's a right way, and I did things the right way."

"Then I guess your future is in la-la land, because you, my dear boy, have no idea what you're getting yourself into. It's a long way to your grave."

"You foolish sonofabitch," said Stewart. "Don't you dare go to the press."

"Don't worry," said Charlie, "he's always learned things the hard way. And we've got one important advantage: we know what he's going to do."

His father said this with a smile. It infuriated him. He didn't know much about how his father worked. Actually he didn't know much about him at all, only the kind, generous man who always supported him and always pushed him, not all the time but at intervals in his life, when he came home from Exeter, for instance, or when he saw Caitlin and they needed the luxury of a good meal, or when he needed money to help out a friend. The cruel understanding that his father was a cold-headed businessman never really found him before. Perhaps his father saw Stewart as a better son to him than he ever was. They certainly had more in common, as Simon always played dumb to the real world, while Stewart, it seemed, had his knees deep in it. Stewart and Charlie made a good pair, and by the looks of things they were going to make a formidable challenge to whatever ideals he had developed over the years. And then he considered that maybe he alone flew too high for his own good, all this shit about justice and tradition and the death penalty for murderers. What he sought seemed a little vague, a little too high a reach for his grasp. It scared him that they pulled him down to a gritty reality where neither vision nor ideal mattered. Only the organism for which they hunted mattered.

"Did you think I wouldn't find out about it?" asked Simon.

"All you have to do right now is walk away," said Stewart. "That's all you have to do."

"Son, you're hurting me right now. I feel hurt by this scandalous accusation, and you're biting the hands that are feeding you."

"Just walk away," said Stewart.

"And to think my own father did this to me."

"No one has done anything to you. It's a vacation. And if you go to the press, don't expect me to bail you out. Don't call me your father. Don't expect anything but dire consequences."

"You were never going to tell me, were you? You were going to put the blame on me if it ever hit the papers."

"Walk away, Simon," said Stewart. "This is not the time to be pondering hypothetical situations."

"You take that vacation and take it quietly, or you'll never work in this town again."

"I think I've said all I need to say," said Simon, finishing his drink and then leaving the Carlyle.

When he got home a half-hour later, he found Caitlin pacing the room.

"Where were you?" she asked, a lit cigarette between her fingers.

"I was out with Stewart."

"I don't like this one bit."

"Don't like what?"

"That you never tell me where you're going or what you're doing."

"I just told you where I was."

"Fine, Simon, fine. You did tell me, but you never tell me anything. You run around and make all these plans without me."

He sat her down on the sofa. She shook with anxiety.

"When are we going away?" she asked.

"I can't do that. I can't go away right now."

"But we agreed."

"I can't, darling, I can't. I have to fight this. And if I don't fight it, it will always be there in the back of my mind, telling me what a weakling I am."

"A weakling? You? What is this, some kind of test of your manhood or something?"

"Nothing like that at all. We have to fight this."

"Fight what?"

"It's complicated, okay? It's very complicated."

"No, Simon, you're making it complicated. That's all you do is build complication upon complication. Life turns one way, you turn the other. Who cares about what happened? So it happened. We move on."

"It's not that simple."

"Yes it is that simple. Stewart is your best friend. Charlie is your father, and he loves you."

"Who said anything about my father?"

"What?"

"Who said anything about my father?"

"You're avoiding the issue. That's what you do, you avoid the issue, complicate matters, and then when it comes time to do something, you do nothing at all."

"They called you, didn't they? Well, you were bound to find out sooner or later. This time I'm doing something about it."

"Yeah, they called me. You're biting the hands that are feeding you. And what will come of it, really? You'll make enemies out of your dearest friends, and you won't become a congressman, that's for sure, not to mention what will happen to our lives."

He considered it seriously now. It was just like him to be flaky when it came to decision-making. He always asked for advice, and as soon as he heard it, he delved into complicated scenarios of what could happen, and more often than not he thought himself into a box, the kind that undertakers shovel dirt on.

Stewart and Charlie acted like they were possessed by some demon feeding from their darkness. They looked like animals ready to eat flesh, and his father was an animal, but an animal glazed over by years of playing hardball. Surely his father had enemies. As of yet, though, Simon had no enemies, and the thought of making enemies out of the ones closest to him manifested itself in the beads of sweat gathering at his brow, the hot, feverish delirium that comes with knowing that in order to get anywhere, one had to have enemies, that one always had to step on somebody's toes, or to take it to an extreme – one man's death became another man's breakfast. Whether or not he could be so bold befuddled whatever intentions he originally had. He just wasn't that strong. His version of battle was something out of King Arthur's court, a war so well-mannered and dignified that sportsman's-like conduct warranted a shaking of hands afterwards. Stewart and Charlie wouldn't fight that way. Money, it seemed, made enemies out of these people, and where there is money, there's an awkward legitimacy to corruption within a gargantuan political machine. He should have expected it, but at the same time he couldn't believe that he of all people got stuck in the middle of it.

"It's the way of the world," said Caitlin. "Can't you just go along with it? It's foolish. You're acting like a dumb fool."

"Yeah, but then I can't live with myself."

"Who the hell appointed you God?"

"No one did."

"You have to give a little bit. We all collaborate. This is a free country, Simon. What you see as corrupt are just unwritten rules. You've already gotten away with a lot by confronting them. I'm begging you, stop this. We all have to compromise. This is not a perfect world, and you know that."

Then the flutter of his own heart. They could devour him alive. But what of his moral strength, and the assumption that good does win out every time? He was no saint, either. He too drank a bit much from time to time. A couple years back he cheated on Caitlin. He didn't give a damn about the poor – thought them lazy in fact.

He left the conversation at that, his mind already made up. He would expose this corruption even though it may derail the Briarwood campaign. Hell, he could become the darling of the New York press corps, maybe even run in Briarwood's place. They would find it tough to win an election in the midst of such scandal. And part of him did want to prove something after all, prove to Stewart that he was no chump, no whimp who just did what he was told, that he could be a monster too, just like them.

They didn't make love in the darkness of their bedroom. They both stared at the ceiling for time, and then Caitlin rolled the other way, leaving him to wonder what might happen to them. He did have a responsibility to her. A scandal would reduce her status and throw her butterfly-world into chaos. If he fell, she too would fall. The longer they stayed together, the more attached he became, and maybe they were getting too close. He would have liked to keep work a separate issue, let her do her own thing and he his. And as he reached out to touch her velvety skin, she pulled away. She could be cruel when she wanted to. She was unhappy with him. He felt her unhappiness. The last thing he wanted was to disappoint her. An absence of struggle, it seemed, had always kept them going as a couple.

The sunshine blared into the room shortly after he fell asleep. The heat on his body pulled him out of an uneasy slumber. He reached for Caitlin through the tangle of sheets but found only the warmth of where she had lain. Apparently she left in the early hours of the morning, an unusual departure, because Caitlin always slept later than he did. Simon figured she had some thinking to do and took a walk around the reservoir, in spandex no less. She did it more for the fashion statement than the exercise, and while something about this tickled him, it also conjured up images of lonely men trying to pick her up and the attention she gets, as though all of Manhattan mysteriously bowed to her or any beautiful woman running in spandex. What they talked about really didn't matter to her. She always carried on as blithely as ever.

He put on a coal black suit and a black striped tie. He liked the feel of it on his body. The last couple of days he had been in rags, it seemed, and his change of appearance, clean-shaven and all, brought him a lightness of mood that touched upon a belated self-assuredness. He wanted to impress Angela Ruiz, not only with his grammar but also his native good looks, not necessarily his charm and his wealth, but his intelligence, as conservatives can be just as intelligent as those loud liberals who want to change everything. He looked responsible, not moral but devilishly smart, not preppy but city slick as though something within him had graduated. Perhaps he felt the sting of being suckered, and his willingness to fight made him more of a man, more seductive and street-wise.

He strutted into the office of the liberal paper hoping to attract the attentions of the women hunched over their desks and reading horoscopes. The receptionist responded to him immediately.

"I need to see Angela Ruiz."

"Right this way."

She must have smelled his cologne. 'The man of my dreams,' she must have thought.

Angela stared into her computer screen. She wore rose-colored glasses and looked like she just finished a class on meditation or the healing arts.

"Sit down," she said, surprised.

"Don't worry, you won't need the security guard. Are you busy?"

"What can I help you with, Mr. Sample?"

"Call me Simon."

"Okay, Simon."

"I've been thinking things over."

"And?"

"Well, let's just say that I want to come clean about the Briarwood scandal."

"As of right now there is no 'scandal,' but obviously you're going to make it one."

"You've already made it one," he said. "I'm just here to be interviewed."

"What's my next question, Simon?"

"You want to know why I want to widen a scandal that so far doesn't exist. And to answer that, I'll tell you straight up, that it isn't any of your business."

"What is my business then? What's your side of the story?"

"That my father is bribing Bill Briarwood."

"And I can quote you on that? Wouldn't Daddy take away your monthly allowance?"

He got pissed off at this remark but played it cool.

"Not when my monthly salary is so paltry that it amounts to your yearly salary."

She smiled at this. Simon knew right away that she labored hard for the Hispanic opposition and that her reporting served as some sort of cover.

"So you're telling me that Charlie Sample is bribing Bill Briarwood – _the_ Bill Briarwood – and I can quote you?"

"Yes."

"How long have you known about this?"

"After your brilliant article I did a little investigating myself and found that you were right."

"The tax credits too?"

"I didn't get that far. All I know is that my father has been bribing the congressman."

"But it's your own father."

"Let's just say that he likes to test me."

"You're playing a game with him?"

"This is no game," said Simon, leaning back. "I just knew it had to stop."

"And you told him it had to stop?"

"I told him that it was wrong. That's not the way government should be run."

"I see."

"It really shouldn't. Listen, there will always be money in politics, but bribing a congressman for tax breaks, well, that's not my brand of government."

"You are talking about a very powerful congressman - "

" – who's about to win an election by a landslide, I know."

"I'd say you're crazy," she said, her wild hazel eyes hungry for more. "How much has your father been paying him?"

"I can't say, but it's a lot. Briarwood's getting a little old, you know."

"So Briarwood himself may not know?"

"Or he's forgotten about it. He doesn't know where the money comes from. That's my job, and I ran a tight ship. We complied with every regulation, really we did. I made sure of it. I reported directly to Stewart Briarwood."

"So Stewart Briarwood knows."

"He does a lot more than know these things."

"You mean he orchestrated this whole thing?"

"I wouldn't say that, because I don't know where this all started, honestly. I don't know what started it, but it's been going on for a while."

He believed he knew what he was doing. And in the midst of talking to Angela, who by this time perked up and hung on his every word, he couldn't help but think of where the time went. A moment passed before him in which this huge confession tumbled out of his mouth without his paying attention to it. His surroundings had been suspended, and he couldn't help but think about Caitlin circling the reservoir in spandex. Perhaps he had been too hasty. Things used to be much simpler – just go to school, drink beer with lots of women around at some basement bar, the music jamming and nothing to worry about except getting up at noon the next day. While talking to Angela he didn't understand why time moved on in this manner. One minute he toasted the Manhattan skyline on his best friend's boat, and then the next minute he fought bitterly with him, becoming a greedy and needy person, trying to drive a point home or changing the world to his liking.

He knew Caitlin before the world got in the way, and the more he talked, the more this netherworld closed like an aperture that zeroed on a kiss and then squeezed it into darkness. He missed her already. He missed Stewart already, and perhaps he made a foolish mistake. He never wanted to cross his father and never wanted to disappoint Caitlin. It all seemed like such a tragic mistake just as the most damaging corroboration hit Angela's ears.

"We'll go to print as soon as possible. You understand that, right?" she asked.

"Right," he said, exasperated.

She slid over a business card and told him to call if he wanted another interview. The entire event saddened him, almost like a complete defection to the other side if only to prove a point, if only to flex his muscles for two people he thought he knew.

He kept it from Caitlin. She was as cold as a fish when he tried to explain. She didn't want to hear it. She ignored him, even though he tried hard to warm up to her.

"How about dinner tonight?"

"I'm tired."

"So where are you going?"

"I'm seeing a friend of mine."

"Whom?"

"Lucy. She's picking a gift out for her brother's birthday."

"But why can't we go to dinner? You see Lucy all the time."

"She's leaving for Milan, and I don't want to miss her."

It went on for several days, this fishy coldness, refusing to tell him directly, giving mixed signals in and out of the bedroom. He tried talking to her in the darkness, rubbing his cold feet against her legs, as he had always done.

"Let's take a vacation," he said, rolling into her.

"I'm trying to sleep."

"C'mon, let's take a vacation. How about Bermuda?"

"Too much to do in the city."

"How about Vegas? Remember when we lost all of our money?"

"I'm not inclined to lose money."

"How about Europe? A lot of my old buddies are in Europe. We can look them up and go sailing on the Mediterranean."

"Please, I'm trying to sleep."

"How about Nebraska or Antarctica? I've always loved cornfields and penguins."

"Now you want to go on vacation? Now? Don't be ludicrous. You made your bed, and now you sleep in it. Next time you decide to ruin our lives I'd like to be considered."

It ended like this several nights in a row, and Simon worried himself to death. How long would she stay mad at him? She swung the other way, far out from under him. They were two threads unraveling. Every time he brought the issue to her attention, she got annoyed with him. They were no longer living it up like they used to.

Simon refused to see Stewart and Charlie and also felt the pang of separation, as though a huge chunk of him fell out. He missed going to the club and hanging out with them, smoking cigars and talking politics. They were always more realistic, and in retrospect he had little idea where his sense of purpose and moral justice came from. The other two always talked about free markets and how most people were stupid – 'the masses are asses,' Charlie kept saying. And he missed his father. He felt sorry for hurting him, but Charlie hurt him first, and he did it in the worst way. He deceived him knowingly and willfully. Hell, he missed Caitlin, and he slept right next to her.

There are smart choices and also the incredibly dumb. He made a dumb decision for the public good, because he was right, and they were wrong, because he did not believe what they believed. 'So what? You make a decision and then go with it,' he thought, but he couldn't get over the good times they had together. Stewart and Caitlin, especially when they went dancing, took him out of his shell. Their world was based on the good life, the champagne and the good fashion sense while perusing art. He loved the gallery openings and the night clubs, because otherwise he'd stay within his own head. Yes, a dumb decision, but maybe he had the courage to do something Stewart and Charlie were incapable of doing. That's what made them angry and he empowered.

He already knew, however, that he lost Caitlin over it. The distance between the two became palpable, and he would have given anything if they could talk like they used to, if they could go to parties and dance like they used to. In the soft light he loved everything about her. She would one day get over it, when she grew up a little and understood reality a little more. Things are divided and sacrificed. Options become more limited as time marches on. He would shower her with affection. They could go anywhere she wanted. Time would heal it.

When the story hit the newsstands, he picked up a copy and didn't find anything out of the ordinary. Angela had written what he had given her. There were no attempts at embellishing what he said or igniting a scandal. In plain black and white print it said that Simon Sample corroborates the previous story. He didn't find it surprising. In the swarm of the city he was still an unknown. No one would approach him and say 'hey, haven't I seen you before?' He landed the punch and waited for the return. When or how or even where it would be returned remained a mystery, but as soon as he came upon his apartment building on the day the story hit, a couple guys with cameras approached him.

"Stan Whitfield, New York Post," said one of them.

"Frank Rasconi, Daily News," said the other.

The camera flashes of white hot lighting made him dizzy. They rushed up to him with mini digital recorders.

"How long has the bribery been going on?"

"Who are the people involved?"

"When did you first find out about it?"

"Is it true your father wanted you to be quiet?"

"How much did they pay you to stay quiet?"

They hardly gave him a chance to respond. He didn't feel too comfortable with their questions either. They came at him all at once, and he led them to what they wanted to print.

"It's been going on for some time," he found himself saying, "and no, no one gave me a dime to stay quiet. I thought it was the right thing to do."

"What was the right thing to do?"

"To bring it to the public's attention?"

And then there were the totally irrelevant questions, as though they already had a story in mind, already had some kind of formula to test on him, a paradigm to fit him into.

"Do you have a wife?"

"How old are you?"

"Where did you go to school?"

"Were you always a Republican?"

"How much did you raise for Briarwood?"

The questions came like quick drumbeats, and at one point he couldn't respond. Whatever discipline he had, whatever strong stance he took turned into jelly in front of these reporters. After a few rounds he became more aware of his own defense and less concerned with his original plan: to stand up for himself, to right the wrongs done to him, to teach his father a lesson. Like a well-developed third eye he monitored his movements, not theirs. He wanted everything to be right, to be perfect, but he ended up deflecting what they asked him, because the questions were becoming personal. They became questions about his own character, the things that made him tick, his integrity. To show reluctance would only bolster their resolve.

"Bribery and corruption among our elected officials must end," he kept repeating.

"Is this a crusade?" asked the Daily News reporter.

"No, this is not a crusade. It is an attempt to set the record straight, an attempt to rectify the public good."

"Did they fire you from the campaign, or did you leave voluntarily?"

"They forced me out."

Meanwhile the cameras flashed. Why they wanted so many pictures he didn't know. They squeezed him for every last drop – both words and image, and when they finally turned off their recorders and capped their lenses, he had a throbbing headache, one of those stubborn ones that don't go away without a brain transplant. Swooning in the street, Simon collected himself and stumbled to his apartment building, as though he had been transported to another world and then suddenly returned.

He searched for Caitlin. He wanted her by his side. She would know what to do about this situation. She was more adept at it than he. But Caitlin wasn't there, and lately a pattern of being absent during his most trying times had materialized. A woman is a man's confidence, and her absence left him as hollowed out as a melon at a breakfast buffet. He poured himself a stiff drink and swallowed some aspirin. Where the hell was Caitlin? What could she be doing? But then he remembered how distant they had become, and soon enough he wasn't that surprised at all. He lay on the bed and stared at the high ceilings wondering when she would return. He didn't want to step outside as more reporters may have stalked the streets. He felt like a prisoner in his own home. Nothing felt worse than having the spotlight turned on him.

At night in his dreams, or even during the day while daydreaming, he often imagined himself being interviewed on the news or having snapshots taken of him in front of a teeming press corps. He dressed in a dark blue blazer and silk tie, fielding questions about some important international event. He had always imagined this and worked towards that mental picture with startling speed and ambition. But when it came time for him to do these things outside of his roaming imagination, he not only failed but hated the feeling of it, as though these reporters were like termites biting at his foundation. Things weren't perfect, he kept repeating. He got what he wanted, and the Lord certainly gave him what he wished for, but it came in a different package. It came mysteriously - this subtle and inappropriate deliverance of his most private and childish dreams. And what does he do? He looks like an idiot, stutters through every question, and lets the reporters have their way with him. He dreaded another fiasco like that. One thing's for sure, though. It certainly wasn't front page news. The story would probably be buried in the middle, the entire event an other-worldly experience. Here today, gone tomorrow. He analyzed the situation from every angle, and he silently believed it wouldn't happen again. The event popped his balloon. Nothing was what it seemed.

He couldn't stay in his apartment for too long. After a while of isolation, the gears turned, and he found no easy solutions, no easy way to go down. He took the elevator downstairs, and to his horror a throng of reporters stood outside the door: television crews, microphones, cameras, a dense swarm. And he was petrified. He didn't know how long they'd wait there. They were taking photographs of him through the plate glass windows. Thank God the doorman didn't let them inside. At least there were some ground rules, and suddenly the building itself became the prison he had slightly envisioned beforehand. He couldn't stay inside, though. He had to get out if only to buy food, if only to walk along Madison Avenue and stare at some artwork, even without Caitlin's arms entwined in his.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," said the doorman about walking outside. "I almost used the fire hose on 'em."

Simon walked out anyway. He wasn't about to become a prisoner, and in a moment of brilliance he thought he could handle an unruly press corps. As soon as he left the lobby five or six microphones from both radio and television stations were jammed in his face. The video camera lights blinded him, and of course the ubiquitous flashing cameras. They all asked questions at once. A dull roar surrounded him. He tried to move, but they wouldn't let him move. They cornered him near the door.

"I have a statement to make," he found himself saying.

The shouting lulled into a quiet but energetic abeyance.

"It certainly is true that my father, Charles Sample, has been bribing the congressman Bill Briarwood," he said, "but it's not true that I was involved. I had been used by the Briarwood campaign in their attempt to frame me. I am innocent of all of this. I played no part in bribing the Congressman."

And then came the same sort of questions that the other two reporters had asked.

"No comment," he repeated.

He tried walking to the right and to the left. He made the decision ultimately to plow the monkeys into the avenue, which he did with little success. He hailed a cab. They swarmed all over him, asking questions, taking pictures, the mesh of their microphones at his lips. He even admired the looks of one of the reporters, a beautiful but ferocious woman who stood at the front of the pack, dirty blonde hair, a mouse of a face, wearing a suit and yelling questions, her sharp teeth biting into him, anything for the story, anything to get there first. He could hardly open the door to the cab as the pack squeezed him into the back seat, the cameras gyrating, the flood lights spread over him.

"Where to?" asked the cabby.

"Anywhere but here."

In a moment they were away from it all, traveling north on Madison Avenue, up through yuppie Harlem, and then into the thicket of African-American neighborhoods in the Bronx. He urged the cabby to keep going, even though he didn't have a destination. In the back window he noticed a couple of news vans following him, but after a half-an-hour of traveling north, these satellite-capped trucks fell behind. A wave of relief flushed through him. He stopped along the highway and had an itch to check a local bodega for the latest news. To his surprise and to his shock, both New York dailies already had his picture on the front page. He was put side by side with his father, and at the bottom a smiling Congressman William T. Briarwood. One of the headlines read 'Business as Usual.' The other paper read 'A Family Affair,' embarrassing as all hell. On that chilly morning Simon Sample, even in the Bronx, was the talk of the town. Each paper printed a page or two of the same content. Other ailing papers were brought back to life by the boldface names of the culprits involved. They made it more scandalous by the suggestion that Simon and his father always hated each other and that Sample Real Estate tried to keep Simon quiet, that Bill Briarwood was on the verge of firing him before the scandal broke. He looked horrendous in the photographs. He looked like a criminal in a mug shot. He didn't know how the press obtained such a photograph.

Above all, the newspaper articles inflamed his general paranoia. The guy at the counter looked at him strangely, as though he knew all about him or had a general idea of what his life was like, and as any New Yorker on a heavy news day, the guy must have judged Simon – yes, the ability to absorb information, process it, and come to some sort of conclusion. As far as the counter guy at the bodega was concerned, everything in the newspaper was probably true, because in most cases one doesn't have any other option but to form some sort of verdict. With a frozen expression, the counter guy took Simon's money with the utmost respect and courtesy, handing the newspapers back to him delicately. For all he knew, Simon escaped from a prison down south where he was convicted of murdering his family, including his twin daughters with an axe or a hatchet, dismembering their bodies, cutting them up into meat cubes only to be eaten in a stew. Man, the counter guy wouldn't stop staring. Simon could have been a major celebrity, but it was the type of celebrity where no one wanted his autograph.

After buying a pair of sunglasses and a baseball cap, he returned home incognito and watched the news. Sure enough they taped him in front of the apartment building making his statement, and then they showed Charlie Sample offering his statement. Charlie said:

"My son has a history of mental problems and drug abuse, mainly with cocaine, and I'm begging him to come back home and stop all of these farfetched lies. He's a very sick young man."

And finally Bill Briarwood from a table at the Waldorf-Astoria:

"This is a very difficult case. We had to fire the young kid for drug abuse, and then he went to the papers and spread all of these rumors and lies. Although I really feel bad for him, I'm sure the public will know not to pay any attention to these allegations. It's actually a foolish attempt by the Hernandez team to spoil our large lead heading into the November elections."

Simon never expected the congressman himself to add his two cents. Drug abuser? He of all people? It got him very upset. He made a few phone calls, first to the reporters at the Daily News and the Post countering those statements made about mental illness and drug abuse. He also called a few of the television stations, but they reacted very coldly to him.

Apparently, Briarwood had a lot of pull with the political reporters, and they must have believed that Simon Sample did it for the money or the attention or for some material gain. After successive news programs, Simon became this footnote in the videotape. They showed him talking but without audio. When they balanced the story, of course the congressman got top billing. Briarwood stole the show. This had to stop. He kept calling the reporters involved, issuing statements. He glued himself to the television set. A few of the New York magazines called him, and he offered an interview. This was, by all means, an all-out assault on the campaign and the person he had slaved over for four good years. Strangely enough, many of the reporters weren't too interested in what he had to say. They simply thanked him for the phone call and hung up without any questions of their own. He likened it to a complaint taken by a customer service rep – you complain, and they log it into some kind of super computer for their records.

On the next morning, the same story ran but all the attention was focused on Briarwood. He said the same things, and the reporters asked the same questions, but to his genuine shock, almost to the point of fainting, Charlie Sample and Briarwood both as a team denied the charges and said once more that Simon abused drugs and ought to be hospitalized. Fine. Great. They were repeating the same things over again, his own father up on the podium acting his way through the news conference. What bullshit, only that the bullshit surprised Simon all the more when they brought out Caitlin.

Simon turned up the volume and moved closer to the television set. He strangled the sofa pillow as his father and the Congressman introduced his own girlfriend who hadn't been home in a couple of days. Caitlin looked dreadfully pail and sick, her hair frazzled, her lips cracked, her voice strained and weak.

"Ms. Hadley, has your boyfriend been abusing drugs?"

"I'm so ashamed," she said.

"Has he been using drugs?"

"Yes, he has. He's uncontrollable. He's unstoppable. I tried to get him to go to rehab, but he just won't go."

"Did he ever abuse you, Ms. Hadley?"

"What was the question?"

"It's okay, dear. Take your time. Did he ever abuse you?"

At this point Caitlin paused and let out a few tears. She stood next to Bill Briarwood who gracefully put his arm around her shoulders and hugged her close. Caitlin buried her head in his chest.

"That's okay, dear," he cooed, "it's all over now. You have nothing to be ashamed of."

"I can't," she said finally, "I just can't," and she wept in Congressman Bill Briarwood's arms. The cameras whirred into a frenzy.

"I understand you guys need to write a story, but as you can see, this has damaged us enough already."

Still the flashes lit up the podium stuffed with microphones from every news organization in New York. The dark shadows of reporters at the bottom of the dais raised their hands and shouted questions, but the news conference ended, and the three of them, like wounded victims, shuffled out of the camera's crooked eye.

"Unbelievable," said Simon in his apartment, still strangling the pillow and then throwing it with all his might at the television set. It knocked over a vase sitting on top of it and also a lamp shade on a nearby end table.

"Shit," he said.

He immediately called the news agencies again to deny charges that he was a mentally ill, drug-addicted domestic abuser, but they didn't call back for interviews or anything like that. They rolled footage of his previous statement and abutted it to the fresher, more controversial Caitlin sobbing into Bill Briarwood's chest.

A shiver ran up Simon's spine and into his heart. He had a sense that he was finished as a politician, finished as a person as well. Public opinion would definitely decide against him. There was nowhere left to go, no one he could call, and Caitlin somehow got caught up in Stewart's and Charlie's scheme. 'Unbelievable,' he kept telling himself. Caitlin had been in league with them all along.

Perhaps they had offered her something, another bribe to keep her mouth shut and act the way she did. Or did they pressure her, coerce her with something they knew about her that Simon did not? He ran through a list of possibilities, but he couldn't believe that the woman, given to him by some generous God, would stab him in the back. It became painfully obvious that it took talent, almost as though she enjoyed doing it to him. They rarely fought and always communicated on a level of mutual respect, but perhaps Caitlin never loved him as much as he thought. It was all an act, their entire relationship a fake set of protocols used to deal with each other on a regular basis. And then a darker thought crossed his mind. Maybe she was seeing someone else or was on the verge of dumping him. He did make a stand without considering her. The society around him probably considered him a low-life. He couldn't show face at the club at all. He would have called Stewart, but now they were enemies. Even his father – the person he loved the most, was suddenly an enemy knowing everything about him, knowing where to stick the knife in, knowing when to turn it. And the people would think whatever they wanted to think, guided by that terrible image of Caitlin. He? A wife beater? People believe these suggestions. They believe rumors, and once such an idea is captured in the mind, it becomes impossible to dump. Time will heal it, he thought. Only time can undo what had already taken place.

If anything, now was the time to get away. When the fire's too hot, that's the time to vacate. He couldn't remain a prisoner to this, his name in all the papers, the nails half way through the wood of his own coffin.

How he hated the media. No longer did they get to the truth of the story. Instead they reported information, making sure the viewers found it palatable. Their sources were government officials and men already in power, already able to control what the public perceived.

'Yes,' he thought, 'it's like that everywhere. We always end up sucking up to the top, as Caitlin did, as the throng of reporters sucked up to Briarwood, the unwritten rules usurping whatever platitudes of morality and fair play they taught everyone to believe, whatever the media themselves presented as their own positive and self-righteous image. But see, that's the real game of politics – to represent similar interests, certainly. To bury those with opposing interests, definitely. The small get buried.'

Whether or not Simon had it right was another matter. It was generally his own devastation that made him think in such terms. Perhaps he was a bit too Machiavellian to widen a single incident into a broad indictment of the entire political process. He laughed aloud in front of the glowing television set. He was never the type to be negative or cynical or even pessimistic. He had a great deal of optimism left, and perhaps the pendulum would swing his way, the side to side cycle working like a strange invisible clock that cuddles and comforts him one minute and kicks them in the ass the next.

When Caitlin showed up at the apartment a little after midnight, Simon was in bed listening to an oldies station. Music that once sounded stubbornly archaic and almost moronic sounded amazingly comforting. The music healed him for the time being. They were tunes he vaguely knew, violins and xylophones resuscitating a bygone era, and he mused that the era was a simpler time, not so hyper-injected with chemical and technological rubbish, more like lawn chairs and polka-dotted swimsuits, canasta at high noon, and drinking strawberry punch with an extra kick to it. The music dreamily sent him off on a journey in the surreal land of half-sleep, until, of course, Caitlin dropped her keys on the living room coffee table.

He didn't say a word, and he hoped she would come to him, take off her clothes, and get into bed. She had been in the living room far too long, staying quiet, moving around like a mouse. On a hunch he got up and checked the closet. All of her clothes were gone. He rushed into the living room where Caitlin stood in the doorway with a small suitcase in her hand.

"Caitlin!"

She stopped and looked at him.

"Caitlin, come inside, honey, please. You can't leave without saying goodbye, now can you?"

She reluctantly stood in the doorway looking for excuses to leave. He took her hand and led her to the sofa where she released her tears on his shoulder.

"I'm so sorry, Simon, but I had no choice. You wouldn't listen to anyone, not me, not Stewart, not your father. What was I supposed to do?"

"Shhh," he said, caressing her blonde hair.

"I didn't know what to do," she cried, "and they forced me into it, and my family threatened to cut me off, and I didn't know what to do, I swear I didn't."

"It's okay, honey, please don't cry."

"You must be so ashamed of me. You must think the worst of me, I know it."

"No, sweetheart. I don't think the worst."

"I'm sorry," she said, kissing him.

"It's okay," he said.

He loved her, he realized. He never knew before that Caitlin, besides being a late night clubber and a shop-a-holic, was as fragile as he, and in some deep zone of her heart she too loved him. He never knew. She was always spoiled and difficult to please. He never thought that she would regret what she did, never realized that she had a conscience to compliment a Daddy's-girl interior. He never knew there was any depth to her before. His assumptions had been built on years of being with her, and in the garden of their pasts they were just a couple of kids trying to be adult about their childishness, following the more adult couples, leading the pack as Manhattan socialites, always looking good but saying nothing relevant to each other, as though their being together was a chore to manage. She had been away for some time, God knows where, probably at his father's place where he threatened to do damage to her family.

"What did they say?" he asked.

"They said they'd have you arrested."

"Me?"

"Yes, you."

"And what about you?"

"That they'd ruin my family. My family said they'd cut me off."

"So what if you were cut off?"

"They've done a lot for us."

"They haven't done anything for us. We can make it on our own. We don't need them."

"I can't live this way. Not like this."

"Was it that bad? Were they that harsh?"

"Yes!" And then: "I've got to go."

"Where are you going?"

"I'm staying at Lucy's place."

"Stay with me."

"I can't. I have to go."

"You can't just leave."

"It's time for us to move on, Simon. It's a bitter and complicated world. That's just the way it is."

"What will you say to the press?"

"I'm leaving town," she said. "Eventually leaving town."

"I don't think you know what you're doing."

"I don't, but either do you. If you listened to the people around you, the people who cared about you, you wouldn't be in this situation. But you don't listen to anyone."

"I don't need to be sheltered. I'm a man, am I not? A man who knows how to survive."

"Without money how will you survive?"

"I have plenty of money."

"I don't think it'll be there too long."

"I have plenty of money."

"They've seized it from what I've heard."

"They can't do that. I have a trust."

"And your father is the executor. Face it, Simon, I think you're dead."

"Dead?"

"You know, the wheat from the chaff. You're dead, Simon. You don't have any money left."

"I have plenty of money!"

And then he quietly realized that his father had permanent access to all of his accounts, that he was the executor of his trust even though he should have turned it over to Simon years ago. But Charlie would never go so far as to confiscate what was rightfully his. The amount in trust, however, was nothing compared to the overwhelming amount Charlie had earmarked for him in his will. Simon counted on being written out of his will anyway. For now only the trust account mattered. It was his bread and butter.

He called his bank as Caitlin cried and shook her head. He talked to a live person. She said the account had been closed. Rather than argue, he hung up the phone and took Caitlin by the shoulders.

"What's happening to me, Caitlin, huh? What's happening to me? Where did all of my money go?"

"You messed up."

"This is not a game, okay! This is not a game! This is my life!"

"I'm sorry," she cried.

"Sorry for what, Caitlin? Where's my money? Where did it all go?"

"I told you. They took it!"

"Damn it, Caitlin, no man can live without money! How did they take it?"

"They know people! You're hurting me!"

On the verge of striking her, he let go of her shoulders. Caitlin sobbed, and he collapsed on the sofa numb from the sudden swing of emotion.

"I'm sorry," she said, her tears rolling. "I had nothing to do with it. You've got to believe me."

He sighed deeply and messaged his forehead.

"Jesus," he said, "what am I supposed to do now?"

"I don't know."

"Will you stay with me tonight? Please, Caitlin."

They made love. Caitlin wept the entire time. Simon handled her with a gentleness he thought he never possessed, but he did possess this gentleness. It had been covered up by some lunatic drive to be better at things. So suddenly he was a man without a political identity, without money, without a family. It seemed so sudden, and the only remnant left of his illustrious past lay in the bed next to him, soon sleeping restlessly, turning over and grabbing the pillow, a waking sleep that couldn't be put to rest. An end to things had finally arrived.

If death pervaded the living present, Simon sure as hell felt like death handed him his head. Most of the city hated him, and the ones remaining probably didn't want him around anyway. Caitlin would leave him. He allowed her that. He'd be out at the end of the month. He had a few credit cards left, so he wouldn't be totally broke. He could take a few cash advances and find a job somewhere. The dawn rushed in and cast shadows over their bed. Caitlin awoke, put on her clothes, and headed for the door.

"I'll get you back," he said from the shadows.

"If only the world could be as good as you, Simon Sample."

"I'll get you back."

"Sure you will," she said before walking out the door.

He hoped that something would keep him on the same side of things, as though there existed this magical second side where most people went after the first side wore out. And some rope tied itself to his ankles and dragged him to another side of reality – the dirtier side, the grittier end of the street, the rough and tumble areas where the neglected hovered in alleyways and streetwalkers flagged down lonely cab drivers. Without a monthly stipend from the trust and now without a job there was no way he could afford to live like he used to.

When the moving company came and carried the furniture away a couple of days later, he could scarcely believe that he was now meant to contend with the streets of New York in a new and unusually painful way. The city had been his playground, and playtime abruptly came to a halt, adding to his miserable confusion. He absorbed the cruelty of it when they hauled away the last remaining artifact of the love he shared with Caitlin – their four-post bed.

The apartment was then cleaned, and the phone lines and cable connections cut leaving an empty befuddlement in their places. He wasn't sure if his bankruptcy reflected his father's cruelty or his own unabated stupidity. Nevertheless the scandal continued as stray cameras followed him from place to place. Several times during the course of a day angry women called him 'wife beater' in the middle of the street. He could have called a lawyer or two, but he understood that without money up front they wouldn't grant him representation against people who had every talented lawyer in Manhattan in their back pocket. An overwhelming sense of dread consumed him as his descent from his lofty perch took place so quickly that emotional frustrations such as anger and bitterness and sadness had a hard time catching up to his status as a man without a place to live.

The front-page headlines ran for a few days more before coming to an abrupt end, but the negative publicity was so crude and intense that it literally inundated the tri-state area with the phony beat-up face of Caitlin, side by side with his grinning photograph. He feared reprisals while walking the streets looking for work. He wore shades and grew his hair long to avoid the eyes that came out of the walls, that pursued him in the street and followed him up three flights of stairs to a small, dark hole of a room – a bed of rusted iron creaking and wheezing with age, splintered planks for a floor, and windows so dirty that one could scrawl works of art on them.

He had learned over the weeks to call the place a rest stop. It wasn't home. He would leave the city altogether if the same spirited forces that pigeonholed him as a threat to every shred of womanhood endured for longer than six months. He would have to leave. He was done fighting it. His surroundings made him weary. He had little money, so he learned the hard way how to save instead of spend on what he once considered to be necessities – new shirts and shoes, a decent sit-down meal, a trip out West for ski season, those countless autumn fundraisers where he ate and drank liberally, commented on the food with Caitlin on his other arm, chatted away blithely with the Maitre 'd. To think that people at one time envied the both of them. It was as close to a fairy tale as a fairy tale could be, in retrospect of course. While he was in the middle of it, he never realized his fortune. He didn't know what it meant to play along, had no idea why people were content in their masks. They paraded like penguins if only to hobnob with his ilk.

After the scandal he stayed in a run down hotel on the edges of Times Square, next to a dilapidated building that housed some of the world's most incorrigible derelicts, a building that sat near the entrance of the Lincoln Tunnel, a building that his father owned. He was lucky enough to stay in the hotel next door and not the public apartment building itself. He had little cash remaining, and his attempts to return to the political game had failed in the short term, since his name was shit in most circles. Due to the loss of wealth and loss of status and a feeling of near doom, his mind did a tap dance on his outlook. He wore an eternally thin beard and moped around the hotel room, a man lost in his thoughts, walking in circles and looking to the streets below for rescue. Maybe Caitlin would ride up in a limousine and take him out to dinner, but it was better she didn't see him. He even hoped to reconcile the failed relationship with Stewart and Charlie. At this point there were no hard feelings, because the feeling of being in a crappy hotel room with drug addicts down the hall proved to be much worse than the idea of begging on his hands and knees for their forgiveness. He tried calling his father, but Charlie refused his calls. He looked for work, but it seemed most people still knew him as a wife-beater, increasing his sense of abject paranoia.

He missed being the center of attention. He missed proper English as opposed to the broken talk on the street below. He missed the club and the bottle of ancient scotch he drank from. It seemed that God had thrown a huge obstacle his way. Perhaps he never appreciated it enough or thought he could do a good social deed that God overlooked on his check list. If only his damned conscience didn't get in his way. If only he listened to his father. Integrity and stupidity went hand in hand, especially in a city where every different color and class just barely got along. He felt odd on the street. He tried to be as polite and friendly as possible to the shady characters that loitered the hotel, but such a demeanor made him a target. Even the clerk behind the counter took him aside and said:

"Hey man, you better watch out in here. These people don't play around."

He didn't look the part at all. His teeth sparkled white and his skin and hair were as blonde as a beach in summer. He wore Oxford shirts and New England corduroy. He looked just out of a catalog or off an Ivy League campus, only it wasn't a campus. It was the street, a lot of foreign faces blended into a sea of black ones, and he sensed that a lot of the people were unemployed or shared needles, and the women hustled them. He didn't like to assume things, but the area around the Port Authority attracted the polar opposite of what he once knew. And in the middle of the night he heard shouting matches a floor above, a fight in the hallway, doors slamming, and the omnipresent shrill of police sirens bouncing off the buildings.

He rolled up into a ball of fear and asked God why he punished him for doing none other than good deeds, why people who were no greater than common criminals always got away with the same shit time and again. Maybe by doing a good deed one is, in a sense, playing God or at least attempts to usurp his power. He never read the Bible or any other holy book, but God had always been in his life in some form or another. He wondered why God built him up only to knock him down. He saw no purpose in what was being handed to him. Luckily they didn't get Caitlin to prosecute as all the special interest groups wanted. Maybe Charlie just wanted to teach his only son a lesson he'd never forget. He was learning.

His cash ran short. He'd be able to stay in the hotel for a week more, maybe ten days latest, and his mind worked like it never worked before, churning and grinding, always focused on averting tragedy, and that would be ending up on the street without funds. Yet he was still very paranoid about applying for a job, especially when people thought of him as an unsavory character. Even a job flipping burgers was too much. Perhaps he would be the first Princeton graduate in history to flip burgers. It affected him psychologically, especially the poverty of his circumstances.

On some days he had no money whatsoever. He relied on credit when he didn't have cash. Slowly the credit card companies became aware of his plans, just like a machine becomes aware of being violated. He had five cards at the beginning, and they whittled them down to two, and both were certainly not his trusty American Express card, which he once used for everything. He mused that a man who starts at the bottom and works his way up is much better off than a man who starts at the top and slides his way down. People are born at the top for a reason, and with skill they stay there. Simon made the mistake of crossing his own people. Naturally they excommunicated him. At least among the destitute he could hide easily from his old crowd and act tough. And for the past few weeks he had been acting as such, a cover for a pampered heart that used to be carefree and perpetually concentrated on his own ambitions.

He soon purchased a black leather jacket. The hotel clerk had a good chuckle over it. And maybe it was a test to see how well he could hold up before his father accepted him back and Stewart asked him to return.

He kept his dream of becoming a congressman in tact, as though the whole event served as some kind of divine conspiracy leading him to greatness. These were the things he thought about in the middle of the night. Society itself was torturing him so he would become tough enough to lead. His mind churned in this way as the bumps in the night invariably got worse, and the sirens louder, and the drug addicts down the hall rowdier. He didn't know anyone anymore, except for Caitlin who had problems of her own. The scratchy wool blanket could not compare to those slippery satin sheets, the warmth of her body entwined in his, her lips pressed against his.

He hoped that this period of suffering would end as abruptly as it came. He bought the newspapers and scanned for his name. Luckily after a week or so of living on the edge, the media released its grip around his throat, the magazines ignored him, the tornado that twisted his life stopped dead cold. And with it came relief. He had come one step closer to his Lord, even though he never asked for it. Suffering brought him closer, not some twisted enjoyment of the suffering, but a plaintive suffering that took him down to what might have been Hell on earth. And usually Hell is a very personal, subjective experience. He analyzed everything to death, because he couldn't explain the depth of the curse, how someone so high could be taken so low.

Perhaps there were many more lives to be lived afterwards. Perhaps the hotel room, the blanket like burlap, the darkness and the noises from outside, meant something far beyond contemplation. He spent hours alone, buoyed by memories of Exeter and the good old days with Stewart and Caitlin. Every so often he checked himself against reality by venturing into Times Square and gawking at the huge television screens on the sides of buildings, reading the electronic tickertape of news events and gathering below MTV with a crowd of teenagers hoping to catch a glimpse of the heartthrob in the studio above them. It seemed unreal, because it was unreal. He had been to the museums, Central Park, the movies, and at times he didn't go anywhere if only to save a few bucks. The more money he spent, the shorter his stay at the hotel, and things were winding down.

He ate at the fast food joints and the delicatessen on Eight Avenue. He played pinball with the kids at the local arcade. He devolved into a young boy, as money, more than anything else, had at one time fueled his growth, and ever since the lack of it shallowed his pockets, he couldn't grow as planned. Nor could he escape the city. Without money wherever he went was always the same – stuck in the same neighborhood with the same type of people. Sure, a lot of them were good, honest, decent people, but they all had homes once the sun set, leaving the streets to the piranhas that fed off of goldfish like him.

One had to be as tough as nails, none of this polite, New England shit that worked so well at the fundraisers. He sensed that the street people sniffed him out already, a tall, bright blonde walking amongst them. He had years of athleticism on his side. He was still in good shape. Fighting at street level, though, scared him a bit. Some of the vagrants he saw must have come straight from Riker's. The block of his father's building resembled a prison when he thought about it. They were stuck, all of them, without the money or the connections to get out. C'est la vie.

He had been on a few job interviews, but they all turned him down. They took one look at him and paired him with the scandal. Whatever tricks the Briarwood campaign staff pulled worked, because the Congressman was way ahead in the polls despite the allegations. No one really took Simon's side, and he couldn't for the dear life of him figure out why. Angela Ruiz's liberal paper screamed all over its front page that Simon had been treated unfairly, but no one else cared. The machine lurched forward, and the ones involved held their breath as the wheels ran over his neck. And life rolled on.

Two weeks after the damage, Simon was ready to rebuild with the few thousand dollars he had left. He needed a job that didn't involve people, a low profile gig in a white collar office building filing things or answering phones, or running around getting coffee like the people who at one time worked under him. But two weeks worth of hiding out was not enough. He wanted to hide from prying eyes.

He went to Angela Ruiz, the only person in the city who valued him. He hoped she could refer him somewhere, now that he had crossed to her side of the battlefield. In return he could give the Hernandez campaign specifics on how the Briarwood machine operated and the in's and out's of campaign finance, and maybe he could get a job with their campaign. The Hernandez campaign would drool over him, he explained, and now that he moved to the other side he could make it his life's work to defeat his father and Stewart by defeating Bill Briarwood. He saw this plan in his sleep at night. In the dream he stood side by side with Hernandez, arms in the air and hands clasped in front of a teeming press. Of course these ideas were a result of many nights on the edge, but it could work if Angela Ruiz agreed to it.

"I don't think so," said Angela at her desk.

"Why not?" demanded Simon.

"First of all, you look like shit. Where did you get those clothes? And those sunglasses? Jesus, man, what happened to you?"

"Who cares where I've been. What matters now is the Hernandez campaign. I'd like for you to arrange a job interview."

"For what position?"

"Look, I'm not just some guy who walked in out of nowhere. This is me, Simon, remember?"

"Yes, I know that, but Hernandez isn't exactly looking for a fundraiser who's perceived as a woman batterer."

"You know that's not true."

"Yes, I know. We've been defending you every step of the way, but you can't work as a fundraiser for a candidate who's trying to distance himself from the very thing you represent."

"But he's not winning. He's way behind."

"And with you on his side, he'll fall farther behind. His supporters don't want you up there."

"What about behind the scenes?"

"Something like that may leak."

"This is becoming impossible, Angela. I've been living in a rat hole by the Bus Terminal, and I'm running out of money. No one knows me. I need a job. I need a place to live."

"I'm sorry, but I don't know how to help you."

"Get me a meeting with Hernandez."

"No."

"Please, Angela, just one meeting is all I ask."

"I can't do that."

"Then what can you do? I do the right thing, and suddenly I get shit upon? Is that the way it's supposed to work? I don't think so. After all I've done for your career, Angela? This story put your name on the map. I deserve better than this."

"Or else what?"

"Or else what? You're looking at 'or else what.' I'll be broke and better off dead, that's what. I'm not here to play hardball anymore. I'm not in the game anymore. I don't plan to live like this either. Maybe Hernandez isn't the right answer, but I need a job right now, just something to get me out of the gutter. I'm not meant for this, you know that."

"Okay, alright, but it's not going to be pretty."

"It doesn't have to be."

"Fine."

She shuffled through her desk drawer and pulled out a manila folder thick with information. She leafed through it carefully.

"You said you needed a place to live and a job?"

"Just something to get me back on my feet, that's all."

"What I can offer you is this – do you have any experience working with the elderly?"

"My father, but he's in better shape than I am."

"I'm serious."

"I don't have that kind of experience, no. I'm into politics. Don't you have anything with a non-profit or something? Grant-writing or anything along those lines?"

"I'm not the unemployment office, Simon. This is all I have."

"What is it?"

"It's a live-in position as an aid to an elderly guy."

"Live-in?"

"Actually, you would be living next to the guy."

"And what do I have to do?"

"Says here that you make sure he takes his medication and act as his general assistant, stuff like activities and food shopping."

"I don't know."

"Do you want to get back on your feet or not?"

"Yeah, but where does the guy live?"

"He lives on 39thStreet."

"And where?"

"10thAvenue."

"I live there."

"I guess you won't have to travel very far."

"Wait a second. How the hell am I going to live with him in the same goddamned neighborhood? I'm getting out of that neighborhood. I'm going the other way, not further downhill."

"Do you want the job or not?"

"How much does it pay?"

"It says you get the room for free plus minimum wage."

"Minimum wage? Forget it. I didn't come all this way to work for peanuts. It's insulting."

"Take it or leave it," she said.

After the meeting he walked along Broadway. He walked aimlessly along the parts of the avenue that curved into Lincoln Center and the Metropolitan Opera House. The faded, dusky scenes of Caitlin all dressed up and on his arm crept into his consciousness like the midday shadows on the sidewalk. He would have given anything just to hear the Philharmonic play at Avery Fisher Hall. He remembered the suspense of the hoary conductor tapping his wand on the stand and the orchestra's warm up closing to a still silence before it slowly let out a vague coherence of violin and flute, like butterflies released into the air. He stood in front of the fountain up on the slick slabs of gray-white marble beholding the diamond-shaped windows, eyeing the gigantic chandelier in the main lobby, searching for a path of return to the opulence of what he once knew. The daylight and the premature chill in the air interrupted his delusions of the laughter and charm of those warm evenings. There was no return, only the memories that were both sweet and haunting, delicious but maddening, sitting on the brain and waiting for expiation.

"It's over," he whispered to himself.

He gazed upon the city streets while seated at the fountain. Nothing was his anymore, and somehow he was determined to forget about Caitlin, just forget about what was once his. But these memories would always be there. They transmogrified into visions of grandeur, visions of the life he lived in all of its vanity and perfection. He had returned to earth from a voyage he wanted to continue. The good life can't last. It was the way things worked. What goes up must come down.

And this realization, the faltering economy, a presidential election so close it could be counted on a young girl's fingers and toes, culminated in the catastrophic destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11th. Two planes hit each tower, and moments later both towers collapsed to the ground. Simon had been sleeping in his hotel room when it happened. He awoke the next day to a catastrophe larger than any he had known in his life. A guy on the street told him what had happened. At first he didn't believe it, but when he entered a smoky pub a few blocks away, a television screen confirmed the unsettling news. Utter shock and disbelief spread within him, like a slow transfusion of freezing blood. Whatever world he had lived in prior to September 11thevaporated into the mists of a dream, and so suddenly everyone on his block milling around and talking to each other, and all of the ambulances, police cruisers, and fire engines, their horns blaring down the avenues, faced a completely different life ahead of them. And then there were the deaths – thousands of innocent people dead. It was a catastrophe that could not be made sense of within any context, except, of course, in what the newspapers said. Someone had to distribute the information that both the Pentagon and the World Trade Center had been attacked by Al-Queda terrorists.

Simon couldn't make sense of it. He feared that no one could. But two distinct strands of thought split within him. Could the Arabs really have carried out such an attack? Were they _able_ to carry it out? The newspaper and television reports, ubiquitous in this case, labeled the crime an act of terrorism by radical Arabs. They received their news from government officials who conducted the investigation. President George Bush then vowed to punish the terrorists involved. "Smoke them out of their caves," he said. He also said that innocent Muslims in America were not to blame. He said a lot of things, a stream of responsive remarks that put the blame squarely on Arab fundamentalists. One brand of thought spoke to Simon: that it was a conspiracy and that people in the administration knew about it ahead of time but couldn't prevent from happening. Another thought that fit within the same schema was that the government itself perpetrated this act to prevent a much larger war from happening. A divided election, an economy on its way down, the civil liberties of the American public at its height, and the balance of wealth and power tilted towards liberal states all pointed towards a gruesome act of internal perversion. He also thought about the slow decline of the Military-industrial complex in the post-Cold War era and how demoralized the military had become during the Clinton years. The end of the Cold War hit the military hard, almost to the point of non-existence. Politics can be the dirtiest of all games, and perhaps a few thousand lives had to be sacrificed for the whole.

That's not to say the military did anything, but it's something else to say that American intelligence at least knew that the towers were to be attacked. With the Republicans in control they could boost up what had been lost in the 1990's: the entire military-industrial complex of the Midwest and the Southern states. The Democratic Party may have been the problem – always wanting too much, too much greed for everyone's own good. But clearly the people who stood most to win from the terrorist attacks were the Israelis, the United States military, the South and the Midwest, and the Republican Party. 'A conservative revolution,' he mused. But this was all conjecture on his part. The question narrowed to a single point: could the members of the government itself perpetrate these acts, or maybe this – that there were heroes in the United States government who tried desperately to prevent such an attack from happening but were unable to prevent it. America had been too focused on itself. September 11thbecame a shock to the collective American mind.

But this is only one side of the argument, one strand of thought. What of the Arabs? There are many in the Middle East who hate America and what it stands for. America has supported Israel since day one. And during the Clinton years America tried hard to negotiate a peaceful resolution to the conflict with the Palestinians. Yet fundamentalist groups continued their attacks on innocent Israelis. Naturally the motives for the September 11thattacks fell squarely on the Islamic fundamentalists. Bombings of the U.S.S. Cole, the embassy in Kenya, hijacked planes, all of it intended to strike at the heart of America. Maybe Al-Queda really was to blame.

Simon noticed the two strands of thought that split within his mind. The first that America did it to herself, the second that Islamic fundamentalists were ultimately responsible, given their terrible history with the United States and Israel. The third, and probably a thought worth investigating, was that some sort of mystical and spiritual evil was responsible for the attacks, as though the world spun in the mind of God and an evil had invaded this mind. Something had to be destroyed. Or perhaps people from another planet destroyed the World Trade Center. Who knew?

But Simon knew a few things about the blame game. Point one finger at someone, and you get three more fingers in return. Perhaps in the end of things, there's no one to blame, just a living with all of the disappointments that serve as some reminder of the pain it took to grow. That was part of Simon's problem. While being comforted by so much excess on the top of things, he never considered that he would someday lose them. He never for a moment thought that the money would go away. And then it became a fight to maintain the same standard of living – always at the point of ruin, it seemed – that maybe he did something wrong to piss God off. He had always been a good man but never quite like the rest of the bunch. He was reminded of the stuff he read on Russian prisoners in the Gulag. The soldiers kept them on the edge of death by standing them naked in the cold. By the end of the cruelty, the prisoners didn't know if they were really dead or alive. Crazy, he thought. But being on the streets of a run down section of town felt that way.

The World Trade Center attacks were at the culmination of his misery. In order to get to the top again he would have to steal, or perhaps beg and borrow. Given the present set of circumstances he couldn't do much but hope to find work. It scared him, this idea of finding work. It certainly wasn't conceitedness on his part but a pervading idea that he could do much more if given the opportunity to work in fundraising again. It couldn't be anything else. It had to be fundraising. It also had to be Caitlin as well. He wanted things as they used to be. He wanted the life he had imagined, not the life handed down to him. That was the hardest part.

He worked vigorously for the utopia until he himself turned into an extremist, finding the ghetto to be a concentration camp. But he wasn't about to steal or kill to get out. He concluded that stealing and killing would ruin the fabric of his existence. He swallowed his punishment for sticking his neck out. Sure, they chopped it off, and as a result, he found himself in a bad part of town, ambling the streets.

It didn't feel too comforting, but that's what happens when the wheel spins. The World Trade Center attacks halted a confused and bewildered Father Time. He could not mistake the tragedy of the attacks, innocent people killed, and for what? These people didn't do anything. They confronted the system of things and played along, even though it sometimes hurt. They were heroes, and in many ways Simon considered the cosmic possibility that they died for the good of the country.

After hearing about the attacks, he stayed in his room for quite some time. He watched the red, gaudy wallpaper peel. The hotel room fell apart slowly but surely. The ceiling leaked in a couple of places. A small stream of water ran down the wall. But it was important nonetheless to be positive about it. A giant leap down, but maybe in some strange way it molded him, the country molding him, God's hands working His magic. And the magic overflowed, and sure, he did want to escape, perhaps go up to the country and smell the fresh, rural air, hear the crickets shrill, watch an old tractor barrel down the road, contemplate a big open sky at night. He imagined these things over and over, and the imagination had this mysterious way of coming to terms with the governing reality. Certainly he wanted his old life back, and while lying in bed he thought of many ways to achieve what had been lost and to turn back the hands of Time. Yet the page turns, and so he found a light within the darkness, a flame that flickered deep beneath the sinew of his body, something good, something pure that lived within him despite his surroundings. Hard enough to make that thinly guarded transition, from dark to light, light to dark. Castles that melted into the sea, he remembered, but also a ton of sand to build with. A change of psychology and an imaginative sweep of mind told him that he could be happy and still live in such a place. He saw it as an expulsion from paradise into the vast unknown which is this life, which is this world, and whatever kept him alive kept him going. Yes, he wanted to live. He wanted to work. He wanted to fall in love again with a woman from these streets.

The first step involved working again, just getting up on his feet and working with this elderly guy. The newness of his existence dawned on him slowly after searching for a way out. The search continued by its own indefatigable will. The people on the street smiled all of a sudden. He saw them smiling to him, inviting him into the serpent that was New York City – not the pampered New York, but the life of the ordinary, the constant street walking, as though the corners, the side-shops, the movie theaters, music venues, and restaurants still held the greatest of all magic: that ability to rise up from the ashes into a glorious phoenix that flies when darkness meets light, like tennis players switching sides if only to breathe a heavy sigh and wipe off the sweat.

Yes, the world continued – a terrible war, a change of government, the catharsis of lives lost. Yet the light continued to burn, an everlasting light that can never extinguish save by the hands of powers greater than himself. Even the urban blight could be no match to what is internal and thereby golden.

Inside or outside? He wasn't sure yet. One can't throw stones forever. A man can't complain forever either. He can search, and that's what he may have been meant to do, also to love again. He turned off the light and lay on his back. Another siren sounded on the street below. He decided to take Angela Ruiz' offer. He was ordinary now, as ordinary as skin on blood, and blessed to be ordinary.

### Book Two

### Chapter Seven

'Poverty's no big deal,' thought Simon, sipping a cup of coffee at a Times Square diner. After all he had been through, he handled it well, and lately he had been wearing his black leather jacket, a representation of a deep mourning for what happened on September 11th. The world had changed dramatically. People on the street wore tee shirts with American flags on them. Bumper stickers said 'God Bless America.' A young woman even dyed her hair the colors of red, white, and blue.

September 11throcked people hard, and Simon, being future-oriented, felt a great pang of regret as well as a deep sense of loss that gave him little energy to get things done. Nevertheless, renewal sprouted all around him. People still worked. The large buses waddled down the avenue, the subway cars grumbled below street level. He had come to the point of no return, and he hung over a cliff on the verge of jumping.

Life tugged at his wrists despite his resistance. No one in their right mind likes to be born again, but the aftershocks of September 11thchanged everybody. Things stayed uneasily quiet as New Yorkers slowly rebuilt their lives. He could feel screws coming loose in his mind, but after a few weeks of low living, these screws tightened until he felt whole again, and also at peace. The more things changed within him, the more things changed externally. Everything was hush-hush. One of the papers advised that citizens should remain civil to each other, smiling, keeping low tones, playing respectful and courteous. Simon played along, and he felt much better as a once leaky brain tightened and reformed, as though its different parts were communicating or at least in sync with the whole.

He acquainted himself with his neighbors, getting a feel for them by hanging around the hotel. They were an unusual cast of characters, most of them persons of color – Hispanics and Blacks, a few Indians and Pakistanis. He felt out of place, like one of them would attack him for no other reason than the color of his skin. He moved among them cautiously, losing himself among them but keeping a comfortable distance. They stared at him, curious stares that made him feel a little naked. His expulsion from the world he knew could have devoured him, but he accepted it and moved on.

The hardest part involved entering his father's apartment building across the street. Charlie had purchased the building with other low-income housing credits, and now Stewart and his Wall Street pals planned to buy it and convert it. Not only was it haunted by weak floorboards and pockmarked walls, but some of the tenants loitered the hallways. Doors slammed up and down the corridors. He double-checked his reasons for being there. Yes, he needed a job, but no, he didn't need a job that badly. At one point he wanted to turn back, but he knew the building as his father's and trusted the spirit in which the building was built. Charlie built it to house the poor, even though he planned to kick them out. Nevertheless his perception of danger proved to be more than the actual level of danger.

He held an unhealthy and irrational fear of the place, a fear of its people delivered by faulty media messages. He saw these people as ideas more than people. They signified danger. Some parts of the hallway were kept neat, the dust and litter swept away from the doorways. Other parts were disheveled and dull. But he admired how the tenants lived. They were a tough lot, and righteous. They had seen more pain in a day than most people experience in their lifetimes. Everyone struggles, but these tenants dealt with battered psychologies, the threat of crime hanging over them, the ideation of their own inferiority, endless work, the need to escape and flee the gangs, the drugs, the low incomes in the face of American excess. No matter how hard they tried, they couldn't level the playing field. It took them generations to see the light of day, and yet they still remained underground, as though the higher the floor, the more lowly the lifestyle.

After walking up and down the hallway in search of the disabled man's apartment, he couldn't fathom how his father could own such a crestfallen property. It needed a complete renovation – new paint, a sprinkler system, maybe carpeting and an exterminator. The tenants didn't play games with the landlord. They simply chewed on what was left of the infrastructure. He wanted out of the building, to fly down the broken elevator shafts and flee to places that were whiter, a place of lawns and horses and polo mallets. But the system of things thrived, and no matter how hard he tried to escape it, it always boned up. No matter how hard the revulsion, it adapted to that specific revulsion and learned what caused it. Then it made him reform. Resistance was futile indeed, and those who resisted were placed in the projects.

Before it was all child's play: the games he had played with Charlie and Stewart along with the idea that he could resist and get away with it. He saw first hand what happened to those who resisted. They wound up dead and buried, stored within memories only to be unleashed through the dream-world of ghastly apparations. He sensed that the only way to real freedom involved moving inward. In the apartment building he was a half-dead mouse traveling through the tube of a serpent's stomach. He knocked on doors and looked for clues in their eyes. At one door he completely lost his sense of place and stuttered through his question:

"I n-n-n-need to find Norris."

"Oh, you mean Norris."

"Yes. I'm Simon Sample. I'm here for the assistant's position."

The job paid minimum wage, but at least it was something he could hold on to. He stepped inside a small one-bedroom, a small kitchen to his left, a row of closets to his right. Furniture from yesteryear had been packed into a small, tight space, and Simon had to work his way around a maze of boxes, a vinyl recliner, and a woolen loveseat to find him. On an antiquated television set the news flashed scenes of September 11th. In front of the television sat Norris, a tall black man in a cowboy hat, a leather vest, and chaps for pants. He wore a pair of old cowboy boots dry and cracked with age. He also wore dark sunglasses.

"Who's this?" asked Norris of the woman who lived with him.

"This is Simon Sample," she said. "He's your new assistant."

"Assistant? I don't need an assistant. I'm doing just fine on my own."

"Now, Norris, let's make him feel comfortable."

"I told you, I don't need an assistant."

Simon thought he should probably get going. Working in such a crummy place wasn't worth his time.

"If he doesn't need an assistant, he doesn't need an assistant," said Simon.

"I don't need an assistant."

"Why don't I make us a nice pitcher of Kool-Aid. You like Kool-Aid, don't you Mr. Sample?"

"Maybe I should be on my way."

"Not without my extra special glass of Kool-Aid."

Simon thought 'what the hell,' and soon enough he sat on the couch next to Norris drinking a red punch that tasted like tap water. They drank from paper cups. Simon gulped his down quickly.

"Well, I've got to go," he said.

"Not without my homemade biscuits."

She brought over a plate of what looked like cookies.

"Very good, ma'am," said Simon.

Norris stayed away from the cookies.

"So what's your name again?" he asked.

"Simon Sample. I'm here to assist you."

His words sounded incredulous.

"Simon Sample? What kind of name is that?"

"It's a name, I guess."

"What kind of name, I said?"

"Just an ordinary, plain-old name."

"And what am I supposed to do with you around?"

"I guess we take it a step at a time."

Simon noticed Norris' guitar case in the corner.

"And what do you think of this war?" he asked.

"The war?"

"Yes, the attacks on the World Trade Center? The Middle East? The Palestinians and the Israelis? What do you think of that?"

"I don't know what to think."

"It is my business, by the way. I want to know who I'm dealing with."

"I work for Angela and the agency."

"Angela who?"

"Angela Ruiz at the newspaper. She sent me to assist you."

"Maybe I don't need an assistant."

"Maybe you don't."

"For the wage, I take it. That's all you people want from me – money, plain and simple."

"They're not paying me enough to put up with this. Good day to you, sir."

But then the woman returned with more of the cookie-biscuits. They were oily and tasteless.

"Oh, Norris, leave him alone. Norris gets a little cranky when he hasn't eaten anything. Norris is a guitar player. Tell him."

"Yes, I'm a musician," he said.

"Really? What kind of music do you play?"

"Mostly bluegrass and country. Some blues."

Simon didn't like any of the above. He preferred whatever music they played in the Manhattan clubs and the classical stuff they played at Lincoln Center. His life had been far removed from ecstasy tablets, Armani suits, and bottles of Krystal, far removed from elegant evenings at Avery Fisher Hall. So far removed in fact that he could only recall brief flashing images of laser lights and disco balls, European models in skimpy dresses, and especially Caitlin. His heart bled a little just then, as though it let out a tear from the harrowing loss of it all. In her place he got an old man, half-blind with cowboy gear and an ordinary guitar, which Norris took out of his case.

"This here is my guitar," explained Norris. "I've had it all my life."

"Yes, I can see that."

He strummed it for a bit, and then tuned it.

"I need help getting around from gig to gig. Someone to carry my guitar case."

"That shouldn't be a problem. How often do you play?"

"Every night there's something going on. I play mostly down in the village. Nights, I play."

"Shouldn't be a problem," said Simon.

"Even if you don't like what I play?"

"What makes you think that?"

"Well, you haven't heard any of it."

"There will be plenty of time for that."

"Okay. Meet me here tonight, because it will sure be alright," he sang while strumming.

He didn't know what he meant, but his singing loosened him up a bit. Norris had a soft, plaintive voice with a Midwestern twang. He had somehow gotten away with singing all of his life. An odd fellow, this Norris, and also quite a novelty – a different sort of artist, a recording artist, yes, and probably in his younger years he packed them in. He noticed from the pictures on the walls that he had a psychedelic streak in him, an era Simon loathed, its aftershocks still felt. He couldn't tell where Norris fit in along the political spectrum, but he certainly wasn't apolitical. Simon didn't expect him to have a political mind. When Norris asked him about the war a second time, Simon played dumb.

The Kool-Aid and cookies made him a little queasy, and he left the apartment with an appointment to return the following night. He walked down the corridor carefully. He didn't want to get mugged. He was an easy target, although lately he tried hard to look like a ruffian. Such a look must have taken years to perfect, and even though he bought the right clothes, he still looked like a young kid from Exeter buying drugs in a black neighborhood. He wouldn't be surprised if the cops stopped him. He was the only thing white in the chocolate.

Angela gave him an identification badge from the paper just in case. How he came to fraternize with these once liberal enemies he wasn't sure. They knew about him and the entire scandal, and the smiles on their faces reminded him of it. He didn't trust Angela Ruiz either. Perhaps she gave him the job to teach him a lesson – the poor little rich kid who got sideswiped by the New York press. He had no one else, though, and he made a decision to trust them a little more. They didn't exactly like him like the way Stewart and Caitlin liked him. It hadn't been easy at all to make new friends and feel comfortable in his new surroundings. Norris, however, didn't mention the scandal at all, and he wondered if he knew about it.

There was something intuitive about knowing him, the way he strummed his guitar and sang a couplet. He may have known everything about him, his past, his inner fears, the way he lived prior to the attacks. He sang the couplet with a grin, a strange double-speak that told him not to worry so much, because everything about him was already known to some giant brain in the sky that distributed information to everyone in the building. He couldn't make sense of Norris just yet. It would take time before he trusted him.

He spent the next day in a state of sullen boredom. He masturbated to Caitlin in his hotel room, but even these memories grew tired with every revolution of the clock. It didn't matter if it were Sunday or Tuesday. Every day was a weekend as far as he was concerned, and after a short time it felt like some great spirit had imprisoned him in the economically challenged environment.

He paced the room. He went out for fried chicken only to return an hour later and sleep on the bed. He gained weight and bought a small radio. He found a station that played the same tunes over and over to the point that he knew all of the tunes by heart, the same melodies carried over from an era when he was happiest. It all seemed a little phantasmal, and he wondered if he would ever bust out of the eternal funk, like a company's stock that's consolidating if only to break out above resistance at some later date.

He imagined himself as someone else, the man he could have been had he cooperated. In this delusion he had fashionably wavy hair, a crisp Brooks Brothers suit on, a pair of mahogany loafers with pennies in them. He shook hands, talked about the weather, became the center of attention. But in reality he didn't know how to communicate with the life he once knew. A huge gap separated him from anything familiar. His body sagged under the weight of his dreams, and he found the entire process of living a big, incomprehensible problem that begged for some ultimate solution or at least a better design.

He bought the newspapers and read about the impending war. Reading the papers used to give him joy, especially when he used them to bounce his political theories off of the boys at the club. The papers filled his empty bags of anger, anger due to his impotence at controlling events or at least his inability to connect to the same wavelength that once gave him a sense of power, however false it was. He had touched a ceiling and paid the price for it. He now walked in circles, keeping his feet in line with the patterns on the carpet. He stared out into a no man's land of thought and idea and came back with nothing. Surely he found himself in the wrong moment and in the wrong place. Yet he came to realize that this strange period needed to happen. He needed to be forced down from his lofty height and engage the world, engage the ghetto, engage a cowboy guitar player in order to rid himself of the utopia he had nearly achieved. His life with Caitlin, he reasoned, was the utopia.

"There is no such place," he said in front of the bathroom mirror, eyeing himself.

His reflection didn't seem real to him, his instructions to himself just another vague set of unauthentic ramblings. He was weird all of a sudden, or at least a little off the point of normal. It scared him and thrilled him, because now he could do anything he wanted. He could spit at his reflection, he could piss on the carpet, he could drink himself asleep, and it really didn't matter. God's hands shaped him with both care and affection, testing his limits as a human being and slowly turning him into the strange animal at the primordial core of his being, as though he were the awkward result of centuries upon centuries of Simon Samples, from the caveman to his own timeless body and mind. It should have happened a long time ago. It's as though a man needs to descend in order to grow. Very odd.

The awareness of himself as a potential animal punished him a little. He had always thought of himself as refined and morally couth, an idealist with a heart of gold. The contrast gave him a better understanding of his father and why he did the things he did. He couldn't understand Stewart, though. He hoped the tables would turn on him for being an animal before his time. Stewart would one day reflect and know in his heart that he had failed miserably and hurt a lot of people in the process. Simon didn't long for revenge, however, as his view was more enlightened. He did not want to initiate yet another cycle of revenge to be stored in the closet with billions of other cycles. Brilliance became the point at which these terrible cycles broke and splintered in the wake of a higher good. It's no wonder then that Simon felt more like an imbecile the longer he hung around the hotel room, the longer he let his seclusion rather than a higher good mold and shape him into the person, not imagined, but more aligned with the truth.

He had to forget his illustrious past. That was the first item on his list of things to do. Although in the past he tried vigorously to control his life and live it on his own terms, he realized that he had little control over anything, and the harder he tightened the grip the more miserable he became. Sometimes one had to trust where life led him, even though the end result of the journey looked bleak and unrewarding. A man just had to trust it and move forward into the oblivion of his fate. He could not see his future no matter how hard he tried, and the stuff he could see loomed over him dark and foreboding. No, there was no way back to the life he once knew. He didn't want to see Caitlin either, even though he vowed to rescue her. It all seemed a little absurd that he could one day search himself back. He accepted his new life with the guitar player and noticed too that the more he accepted it, the more he became directionless and head-empty in his pursuits.

By the time he returned to Norris' apartment he had resolved to make the best of it. He was paid minimum wage to lug Norris' equipment from Times Square to the Village clubs. They took the A train from Port Authority. Simon led the way with Norris' guitar case in hand. Norris followed him from a distance. He walked slowly with a cane, and at times Simon had to wait on the side of the walkways for him to catch up. Norris also carried a dulcimer in a case slung over his shoulder. After walking through the maze of hot, underground passageways Norris looked like he was on the verge of collapsing.

"I'm getting too old for this," he said.

Simon couldn't tell how old Norris was. He seemed timeless, his face worn like an old horse's, his body the scent of leather and mink oil. He looked like an original with the rest of the passengers as his backdrop. He looked like a cowboy in a Spaghetti Western, the first black cowboy in a rodeo, someone who belonged out in the dust bowl trading crops and cattle.

"Norris, I'm sorry, I just have to ask: do you have any normal clothes? I mean, is there anything in your wardrobe that isn't country and western?"

"These are normal clothes."

"We're on a subway in New York City."

"So?"

"I'm just saying that maybe tomorrow we can go out and buy some new clothes, that's all."

"But I already have all the clothes I need."

"You wore the same kind of outfit yesterday."

"What's wrong with that?"

"It's just that if you want to make it as a musician, you have to dress, y'know, a little more - "

"White, is that it?"

"It has nothing to do with color. It has a lot to do with, well, at least wearing something to a show that appeals to your audience."

"Have you heard my music yet?"

"What?"

"I said, have you ever seen me perform?"

"Not yet, no."

"Okay then."

That's about the only real conversation they had for the rest of the evening. Simon didn't know what to think of him, but he sensed a tender side, a side that wanted to explain the nuances of a musician's life. Time had pelted his skin like a hailstorm, and his clothing reflected it. Maybe he was originally from the Midwest. Simon couldn't tell.

Simon never liked getting drunk very much, but on this night he finally understood why people liked it. The place, in all senses of the word, was a dive. The barstools they sat on almost cracked under their weight. The customers wore cowboy hats and ornate belt buckles the size of Texas. The beer was icy cold as it slid down his parched throat. It gave him time to reminisce about how good things were before the fucking terrorists blew up the Trade Center, before his father ruined his life. The past injustices, while drunk, came to Simon like a dream, and even though the dark environs of the bar conflicted with his version of what a civilized bar was like, he acted as though he were still at the club, talking conservative politics to a girl on the next barstool.

"I'm not that conservative, really, I'm just a little old-fashioned," said Simon.

The girl ignored him.

"Okay, we're on," interrupted Norris drinking red wine on his other side.

The emcee introduced him. Norris warmed up another act. He took the stage and sang an old Stephen Foster tune. Simon then understood why he dressed the way he did. His purpose became as lucid as the spotlight bathing him. He sang as though he were on a freight train heading West through thickets of cornfield. Simon paid attention to every note of his guitar, a symphony of chords that played slightly askew, a sound clumsy and rough-hewn like a half-dull knife whittling down birch-wood. It conjured up images of shack-dwellers by the Mississippi waters cooking fish over fires, chewing on twigs and tobacco, letting the dark simplify what the day could not. And a young crowd hung onto his words despite the age of his songs. For all of their technological cleverness and otherworldliness, the young crowd witnessed a part of America's history without knowing it.

Norris influenced them subtly while teaching them a lesson in the same breath, as though he carried the souls of fallen musicians on his shoulders only to release them and have them commingle with the newer souls in the room. Most of the young people were amazed, and a few of the older ones who had heard him before opened their jugs of nostalgia to music that actually meant something before the hyperactive pace of culture endangered it.

Simon felt out of place at the onset of the evening, only because he had been conditioned to the fakery of his former life. The more opulent the setting, the more he mattered. The more scholastic the speech, the more seriously people took him. Yet within the dark nightclub with those he saw as commoners, his superiority had been outstripped. No one cared that he came from good stock or at one time moved with New York's elite. Even if he dressed in tux and tails or even a business suit indicating wealth and prestige, no one in the bar cared. It shook him a little. For the first time in a while he wasn't the center of attention. No one cared about his image, or the way he talked, or what girl loved him. The past few months of living on the edge reinvented him. Shadows of the past added to his newfound confusion. He became a statistic, a face in the crowd, a stranger in black leather. No one cared whether he lived or died, and before it seemed like a lot of people cared about his wellbeing. People at campaign headquarters looked up to him, people on the street smiled at him, men emulated him, and if he could count the number of women he could have had, had he not fallen in love of course, the number itself would have exceeded any man's expectations.

The more he drank, the more he neglected Norris' performance, which included his dulcimer and then the banjo. He slipped inside an envelope of self-pity, longing to return. Maybe he had it a little too good, and good times, no matter the age, always have to end. Ideas that he would never rise to the same height, never mend broken fences, never make love to a woman in the same ballpark as Caitlin engulfed him still. He thought he had conquered these feelings, but in the bar where no one paid attention to him, he couldn't defeat them. Under all the self-pity and doubt he understood that he was finally free of having to impress people day-in, day-out. This new freedom felt awkward, even a little uncomfortable, like a man diving off a cliff into cold water.

The scotch, however, made him dizzy after a while. Norris ended his set after a few songs. The audience, awestruck, clapped as though they had just heard a great philosopher lecture them on the finer points of nature. It reminded him of a teach-in or at least a strange gathering of idealists and agitators, in cowboy gear no less. A guy a few chairs down broke out a joint, and no one in the bar minded. Considering the amount of smoke wafting head-level all around him, Simon thought he should shower before he hopped into a clean bed. He also couldn't afford the next drink.

Lately he had to budget, and the results were less than spectacular. His days at the hotel were numbered, and every drink meant a dollar less for room and board. Eventually he'd have to move into the apartment building as stipulated in his contract. Either that or just collect what was remaining and fly to Paris, just jump on a plane with the few clothes he had. He could find work in the sewers or at some jazz club where they played Jacques Brell all night, or maybe live with a prostitute. These things did sound appealing compared to what he faced in New York, captive to what he considered to be street life. Paris sounded like the best bet. He had been there a few times before, so he knew his way around. Of course he wouldn't be able to stay at the same luxury hotels or dine at the finest establishments like before, but he could live away from the epicenter of struggle which was Paris. All he needed was a ticket.

"Could you loan me fifty dollars," asked Simon on the subway ride home.

"I don't loan out that kind of money to people I don't know."

"I'll send it to you."

"Why? Where are you going?"

"I'm catching a flight to Paris. I've had enough of New York."

"Paris?"

"Yeah, it's just that New York isn't really a good place for me right now."

"You mean because of the attacks?"

"Not necessarily. Don't you know who I am?"

"I can't see you."

"Well, why don't you take off your sunglasses."

"No. I like it dark."

Simon waved his hands in front of him. Norris didn't flinch.

"You're blind. I didn't know you were blind."

"No, I just wear my shades all the time for the hell of it."

"I'm sorry. I had no idea."

"Not fully blind, mind you. Partial blindness. I can still see shapes, and I hear better than the Bionic woman, so you better be careful what you say around me."

"I'm flabbergasted."

"You're what?"

"I'm amazed."

"You said 'flabbergasted.'"

"Oh."

"And what's this about Paris? You work one night with me, and already you want a vacation?"

"This is a one way trip. I'm not coming back."

"So then how will you pay me the fifty dollars?"

"I'll get it to you."

"What if it gets lost in the mail?"

"I'll send it Express Mail."

"That's most of your fifty dollars right there. You may be able to squeeze in a trip to the Post Office."

"It's for part of the plane fare."

"Well, if you stay on, you could pay for your entire trip and then some."

"I realize that, but that's the idea. I don't plan to stay."

"You better pan to stay, because there's no way I'm lending you fifty dollars."

"Thanks, man. I appreciate it."

They rode the rest of the way in silence. Simon chose not to ask him for money again.

He collapsed on the bed as soon as he got in. He drank a little too much, and all that pot in the air tired him. On his mattress he felt like he was falling in an elevator shaft like the one near Norris' apartment. In the empty shaft he put out his arms and legs as brakes and came to a halt at some bizarre level unbeknownst to him. He went from the top of the shaft to the bottom in a few heartbeats, and then, a little dizzy, he passed out.

"It's a tough road, sure it is," said Norris at the bar one night.

"How long have you been at this?" asked Simon.

"What?"

"How long have you been a traveling musician?"

"All my life."

"And you've never received a reward, or you've never played Madison Square Garden, or you've never had wealth – why the hell do you keep doing it if there isn't a return? Don't you get impatient at all? Don't you want more things? I don't get it."

"I love to play. That's why I do it."

Simon couldn't understand why so many people lost themselves in their art. For him art remained a commodity to be bought or sold. People talked about it at dinner parties. Students studied it as though it were the only thing worthy in the world. And the artist-types he used to know? Well, they were pieces of work themselves. They didn't care about much, it seemed, at least the artists who frequented the gallery openings to which he and Caitlin were often invited. He trembled at the sight of these artists, living some Bohemian dream, lost in their own thoughts while getting by on someone else's hard-earned money. It seemed a bit stupid to pursue art, and with Norris he didn't get why he had sacrificed his entire life to make it. Even the painters he met he couldn't understand. They espoused an art-based religion. Most of them would one day wake up and get jobs, if only to realize how foolishly they had spent their lives. And the contradiction to this criticism sat right in front of him – a black man in a cowboy hat, his shades so dark he couldn't discern the color of his eyes, his gait so imperial that every man and woman looked at him and steadfastly paid attention. Norris slipped through the fingers of natural law. He trespassed in areas that were not traditionally his, a criminal who resulted in a beautiful contradiction to what Simon thought became of artists. Or maybe Norris hid his wealth as cleverly as he hid his eyes from the light, his clothing only a disguise for the millionaire beneath the dusty old vest. He radiated that sort of mystique, which begged the question:

"So you don't have any money at all?"

"Everyone needs money," he said. "It's just a question of how much."

"I started off really well, and now I'm sliding down."

"It could mean that you're finally growing up."

Norris said it as though he knew him from some far away place, as though he charted his development from day one of the scandal.

"And how do you know such things?" asked Simon.

"That's what it sounds like."

"Maybe it sounds like a hard-working man who's been stripped of all he's worked hard for."

"Or maybe there's a reason behind it."

"Like what?"

"Maybe it's time for you to experience the other side of things."

"Against my own free will, I take it? I've already crossed the boundary."

Simon's tone didn't sit well with him.

"Maybe you pushed things a little too far. It's not uncommon for a man to breathe a little."

"So breathe?"

"That's right. Enjoy your surroundings. There are many people who'd love to know you."

"There isn't a decent soul in New York that wants to know me."

"You're being a little hard on yourself."

"Well, this is certainly the hard way to go, don't you think? All I've got left is the dream of living in the same dump you live in. No offense."

"None taken. Perhaps it was your time to fail."

"I don't fail, okay. I don't fail, and I certainly don't hang around the failing type."

"You're not hanging around the failing type."

"I didn't mean it that way. I don't belong here is what I'm trying to say."

"Again, you're being hard on yourself."

"Fine, I'm being hard on myself."

His conversations with Norris went on like this for a few nights straight, and after a while the music rubbed him the wrong way too. He felt little connection to it, something alien that some ruthless God forced him to hear. He also drank a little more every night, his face unshaven, and his blonde hair on-end, as though he had just gotten out of bed. He wore the same clothes, and he went several days at a time without showering. By the time he moved to the floor below Norris he was not only afraid of what the inhabitants of the building may do to him but also keenly aware that he had hit rock bottom and had no chance in hell of getting out. He slept on the floor, as though the room itself was a hut in the jungle.

He knew he had to save whatever monies remained. He put whatever he had left with a broker he knew as an acquaintance. It wasn't easy locating this broker. He managed his way through a posh Midtown office, saw the guy for a minute or two, and then retreated down to the second floor where a young intern took all of his information.

"Make me money," said Simon to the intern.

"The market isn't doing too well right now, Mr. Sample."

"I don't care what the market is doing. Speculate if you have to. Just make as much money as you can as fast as you can. Buy stuff on margin if you have to."

"Sir, we're not miracle workers. Why take stuff out on margin if you don't have to?"

"Just do it, okay?"

"Yessir."

He returned to his new apartment and thought immediately of dyeing his hair. There wasn't another blonde soul around for a ten block radius, and the inhabitants who loitered the front of the building constantly looked him over and shook their heads. He didn't trust them. They looked like they were members of some proliferating, underground gang, their pants drooping and their hairnets taught and foreboding, and yet they let him pass through the lobby without a hitch. Maybe in some small way they respected him for being the only white kid in the building. By the way he looked, though, they must have thought him ill or disabled or addicted.

"Is everyone in the building a drug dealer or a criminal?" asked Simon over a martini at yet another East Village gig.

Norris leaned his back against the bar, his body on a stool facing the hee-haw gathering.

"Am I a criminal? Am I a drug dealer?" asked Norris.

"No."

"Then there you have it. You have been conditioned all your life to think that persons of color are either poor, drugged up, or criminal."

"Well, they don't look like they want a game of tennis, Norris."

"That's because many of these youth never had the same opportunities you had. They've never seen the other side."

"What do you mean by this 'other side?' I'm tired of hearing it."

"Have you ever seen any of Escher's drawings?"

"You know Escher?"

"I may be black, but yes, I know Escher's work."

"Sorry. What about him?"

"Do you know that famous drawing of the birds, one white, one black flying in opposite directions?"

"Yes."

"What do you think happened to you? It's no accident that you're here. I would call it inevitable."

"I'm here because my father and my best friend betrayed me. That's why I'm here. I'm here because the New York press doesn't care about anything but their own sensationalist sewage, that's why I'm here. I'm here because I have no money, no decent Oxford shirts, a crummy pair of shoes. I'm here because for once in my life I stuck my neck out for something I believed in, and look where it got me. That's why America is the way it is. That's why there's poverty and bloodshed, because too few are willing to stick their necks out, because the minute you do, a guillotine chops it right off."

"All you did was take a risk, Simon. You wanted to love yourself. You wanted to be better than everyone else."

"Who the hell are you to make such a judgment? You hardly know me."

They sat in silence before Norris took the stage. Simon ordered more liquor and listened to Norris strum a traditional bluegrass melody. His words, as he sang them, were simple, but when he hit higher octaves with his plaintive voice, the song itself carried an emotional complexity that compelled Simon to shed a tear. His music created an atmosphere of communal catharsis.

Things, at the time, were all wrong. The dark shadows of September 11thstill suffocated the city. Many couldn't express their grief openly. No one really agreed on what should be done. Everyone in the place understood their own powerlessness, their divergent takes on where they should go next to escape the catastrophic outcomes of their shredded worlds. Norris somehow understood these emotional upheavals, and his words weren't a response or a reaction but an understanding that mutually consoled. He played what the audience needed to hear – the sure mark of a professional at the height of his powers.

'This is what music is supposed to do,' thought Simon, hunched over his martini, sipping at its metallic dryness.

His drink proved to be too extravagant for both his income and his wardrobe. After Norris' set, he could hardly stand as he carried his equipment along the narrow Village streets.

Norris walked slowly behind him with a cane, and every hundred feet or so Simon waited for him to catch up. The area partied into the late hours of the night as the young people from the nearby university rowdily marched by the open taverns and night clubs in search of their own forms of ecstasy. Simon envied them. They saw their world as new, bright, and open, and he remembered vividly what his first few nights at Princeton were like. He went to parties and got laid and loved womanizing so much that he carried on for a year straight without Caitlin knowing about it. Stewart doubled the women Simon had. They kept count as they both competed against each other like wild thoroughbreds on a stud farm. Funny how things turned out.

"I used to be someone of great influence," said Simon to Norris on their third week out, "with women and with politicians."

Norris nodded his head and sipped at his Merlot.

"And now I carry the guitar of a bluegrass musician. I get paid peanuts, the women want nothing to do with me, and I have no means of getting out of this horrible city."

"Always feeling sorry for yourself, eh? Maybe you should stop drinking so much."

"There's no reason to stop."

"What if I told you there was."

Simon laughed as though he were on the cusp of the darker parts of his own personality.

"I'd say you're crazy."

"Well, you're not dead yet," said Norris. "Every day above ground is a good day."

"Thanks for that piece of advice."

"It's not all so bad, you know. At least you have a roof over your head. I know plenty of people who don't even have access to a bathroom."

"I'm not that lucky to be alive, Norris, if that's what you're trying to say."

"But you are. A man your age? You've been all around the world, you know what it's like to have money. You didn't expect to have it good all the time, did you?"

"Yes, in fact, I did."

"Maybe that's the problem right there – you want too much. You expect too much."

"Tell that to my father. Yes, the same father who not only betrayed me but owns the roof we sleep under."

"You mean he owns our building?"

"That's right."

"I did not know that."

"Well, now you know. Ironic, isn't it?"

"Listen, man, no one can understand the depth of your suffering but you. Let's make that clear. Y'know when I was your age, I had big dreams too."

"I guess we all had big dreams."

"Well, I used to play clubs like this, back in the 60's, y'know. It was a very tumultuous time. I played these same dives in the Village. The owners, they know me from way back when. I still tell them 'I want to play in Memphis.'"

"Memphis?"

"You got it. Home of Elvis and the Blues."

"Why don't you go?"

"Can't afford it."

"Norris, a bus ride to Memphis isn't that expensive. Hell, take the plane. I'd go with you if we can clear it through social services."

"You'd go with me?"

"I'd do anything to get out of Manhattan. I'd carry your guitar just about anywhere outside these borders."

"I'm a little too old to believe in fairy tales."

"It's not that difficult. I'll even ask Angela if you like."

"You mean the girl at the newspaper?"

"Yeah. She can arrange it, I'm sure."

"It's just a dream, Simon. That's all it is. I stopped believing in dreams years ago."

"But you're still playing. You're living your dream. Not many people can say that."

"Y'know, I always wanted to play on Beale Street. I don't care if it's playing for dimes thrown at me by the people on the sidewalks, but just to be there and hear the music floating out of those Beale Street clubs, that sweet Tennessee air, the ladies with long legs and all of them friendly, y'know what I mean?"

"I take it you're not married to her, your girlfriend?"

"I'm divorced, actually."

"Where is your ex-wife?"

"She's in Holland."

"Holland? I take it you haven't seen her in a while."

"No."

Simon didn't press him any further. By the way he tightened his lips, he could tell he hit a tender nerve. He figured that musicians often sacrificed what they held most dear in order to play. Simon couldn't understand why they sacrificed so much and received so little, but when Norris took the stage, when he sang solo or played backup for a group of musicians from down South, he could tell that he loved being up on the stage playing for an audience, having them let his songs, as simple as they were, permeate their complicated lives.

Most of the musicians in the Village dives, they had day jobs, they had needs – the impulses to raise a family, to own things, to send their kids to high school, and yet night after night they came together if only to play together, if only to have hungry ears listen to them. It didn't make much sense why Norris would give up his entire life to wander like a vagabond from club to club, drinking his red wine and playing stuff that was a bit too provincial for the raw, urban beat of the city. Yet after carrying his instruments from place to place, watching Norris work a crowd before he took the stage, even talking to some of the musicians who tuned their banjoes and fiddles before the gig, Simon carved out a place for himself in the Metropolitan bluegrass ecosystem and understood a little more of it each night. Most of the musicians didn't like him. He came from too much money, or he didn't appreciate the music enough. Yes, there was a fair degree of haughtiness, even at bluegrass jam sessions. But to the majority he was now known as Norris' faithful assistant, even though he didn't know a damn thing about bluegrass, even though he sometimes didn't want to be there.

It was his job to carry Norris' guitar, and so he did it without complaint. Even the bartender slid him a couple of drinks on the side every night, and slowly he learned the music, even hearing it in his sleep every now and then. He also stopped feeling so sorry for himself. Talking about his problems to Norris eventually tired him. Norris, like a good soul, always listened, but after a few weeks and then a few months of touring the Village and parts of the lower East side, Simon stopped longing for the good old days of navy blazers with patches on them, good scotch, and frequent travel. He drank whatever the bar had to offer and kept the pain inside for a change with the new knowledge that when he smiled, the world smiled with him, and when he cried, he cried alone. No one could see any spark of importance in him. He became just another face, smiling every so often at the women who came with the other musicians.

"Having fun yet?" asked Norris one night after talking with a couple of people he knew.

"It's amazing I get paid for this."

"You've been kind of quiet the last few nights. Is everything alright?"

"Everything is better than a month ago. I've adjusted."

"There's something that's missing, though."

"Missing? How can you tell?"

"You just don't seem like yourself."

"I'm not myself anymore. That's why I don't seem like myself anymore."

"Have you called her?"

"Who?"

"The girl you've been missing."

"You mean Caitlin?"

"Have you called her yet?"

"I don't think it's wise for me to call her yet. I told her I'd come back for her, only she's better off in the world I left behind."

"Maybe you should ask her."

On the next morning, Simon called her. He used a payphone a block away from the building. He bought a phone card from a local convenience store and planned to use every minute of it to hear her soft voice. He could have been in another country fighting a foreign war, because that's what it felt like. He might as well have been on the planet Mars calling Earth. He had gotten used to fast food, cigarettes, dry martinis, and shabby clothes. If Caitlin saw him, she probably wouldn't recognize him. He was in bad need of a haircut as well.

"Caitlin? Is that you?"

"Who's this?"

"Oh my God, Caitlin. It's Simon."

"Simon, where are you? Are you alright?"

"I'm okay. I'm alive and well. Can we meet?"

"Now?"

"I want to see you."

"It's not a good time. I'm sorry, but I can't."

"Just for lunch. Can you take me out to lunch? I haven't had a decent meal in ages."

"It has been a long time."

"Please, Caitlin. Say you'll meet me for lunch. I just want to see you again."

They arranged to meet in the Village, a place that Simon now considered his territory since much of the suit-and-tie crowd hung out elsewhere. He chose a small Mexican restaurant on West 4thStreet. He arrived early and waited for an hour. At first he thought she wouldn't show. From drinking soda, he switched to beer and prayed that Caitlin showed if only to pay the bar tab. Things must have changed in their few months apart. He worried there was no way he could win her back. When Caitlin walked in, his heart broke as cleanly as the day she left. She wore a dress that hugged her blonde body, and her flaxen hair smelled of roses when he kissed her cheek.

"How are you, Caitlin?"

"I can't stay."

"Of course you can stay. We have the entire afternoon."

"Things have changed, Simon. Things have changed a lot."

"What do you mean?"

He caressed her cheek with his callused fingers. He longed to keep his hand there, touching her soft lips. She moved away from him.

"What's wrong?"

"Simon, I don't know how to tell you this, but it has been so long. I didn't know when I'd hear from you. I thought you left the country for good or wound up dead. I had no way of finding you."

"I haven't gone anywhere. I've been here. I want you to come with me. I'm still so very much in love with you."

He leaned in for a kiss, but again she moved away.

"I have to go," she said.

"Listen, Caitlin, I have a plan."

"What plan?"

"I have gotten to know some of the people in my building."

"Where are you living?"

"In one of my father's buildings by the Port Authority."

"You should have called me earlier."

"I couldn't. I didn't have a phone."

"Oh, look at you. Just look at you."

She parted the wisps of hair crowding his face.

"Things have changed," she said.

"But I'm still the same person you've always known. I just look a little different."

"But maybe I'm not the same, did you ever think of that? Maybe I look the same but am a very different person."

"I've thought about that, but there are things about a girl that never change."

"I'm not the same girl, Simon."

"You still love me, don't you?"

"I don't know."

"Oh sure you do," as he slid closer. "I'm the same guy who loved you as a schoolboy, remember? The prom at Spence? All those debutante balls I escorted you to, those nights in Boston."

"And I stabbed you in the back."

"No you didn't. You had no choice. You never meant to say those things on television."

"Keep your distance, Simon."

"You're still in love with me, aren't you? You never stopped.

He moved closer and closer until finally their lips met. Simon felt a rush of energy cascade through his body. In an instant it brought them both back to where they started, only they were now in a Mexican restaurant, and he in rags.

"You have to hear me out," said Simon, sitting her down.

"And you must hear me out. Simon, I'm engaged."

"What?"

"I wanted to tell you earlier, but I had no way of contacting you."

"Oh no. Who is it?"

"Simon, I'm engaged to be married to Stewart."

His mind seized and his blood boiled. He was able to control his anger, though. He did it by breathing heavily, in and out, as though he were hyperventilating or having a heart attack.

"I'm sorry," she said. "Maybe this wasn't a good idea."

"I don't believe it. Is this another one of their tricks?"

"No."

"What's gotten into your head? Or are they forcing you to do this?"

"No one's forcing me to do anything."

"You don't expect me to believe you're in love with Stewart, do you? We are talking about the same Stewart who ruined both of our lives."

"After you left he felt horrible about what he did. He couldn't forgive himself. He came to me for support, and I soon learned to forgive him."

"You can't be serious. This is the same man who stole our lives from underneath us. He's the same man who pulled out the rug, Caitlin. Look at what he did to us. He ruined our lives."

"Your life, Simon. Your life. He saved mine, really he did. He's the one who picked me up when I was down, not your father, not anybody else. He put me back on my feet, and if you play your cards right, he just might be able to do the same for you."

"What are you talking about?"

"You can make up with Stewart."

"Through you, I suppose."

"Well, I am about to marry him, Simon. He's going to be my husband."

"And you think I'd stoop so low as to become friends again with the person who betrayed me? After all that's happened, you think that I can just wear those same old shoes and pretend like nothing's happened?"

"Damn you, Simon, you don't have to be that stubborn. What happened is over. People move on. You're the one who led me into this mess, and I can lead you out, but you're going to have to trust me, Simon. You have to trust me."

"You didn't."

"Didn't what?" she asked.

"Didn't marry him for me, did you? Or didn't you?"

"Stop it, Simon, I'm not doing this."

"Why'd you do it? You're not in love with him. After all the trouble he's caused?"

"That's not fair."

She held her tears, but once Simon got hold of the question he didn't relent, and the tears poured out of her. That's when Simon stopped asking. He already knew the answer. They had been seeing each other before the scandal broke.

"He can help you, if you'd let him. You can mend things with your father if you want to, but Simon, I'm no longer in love with you. I'm in love with Stewart."

"I can't accept that. I told you I'd come back, and it's been three months. I had plans to take us to Memphis with a friend of mine, if only to get out of this stink and corruption."

"It's life. Accept it. We were both beaten by greater powers. This has nothing to do what's morally right or wrong."

"Damn straight it does. I was right, and they were wrong, and the last thing I'm going to do is go running back to them with my tail between my legs proving them right."

"No one's telling you to admit they're right. It has nothing to do what's right and what's wrong. They won, Simon. I mean, look at you. I know you have integrity, Simon, but there comes a time in someone's life when he has to separate his brains, his balls, and his integrity. This is that time. Don't you think Stewart knows how hard it is for you even to consider the thought of making up after what he has done?"

"You don't know him. You don't know what he does to people. He did this to us. How many people do you think he's already done this to? And then to add insult to injury, you're marrying him. Goddamnit, Caitlin, Stewart is the devil!"

"He's the devil?"

"Yes, and you can't marry him. You were meant to marry me. Not him. Me."

"So what are you saying, Simon, huh?"

"I want you to marry me. Now before you say anything, I just want you to know that Stewart is a womanizer, does too much dope, and is hooked into some really sour political shit. I don't know what he's been saying to you, whether it's pillow talk or not, it doesn't matter to me, but you – you matter to me. You and I can just simply pack up our things, and we can be on a bus to Memphis, and we'll never have to listen to Stewart or my father ever again. We no longer have to be in politics. We never have to step foot in this city again, but that can only happen if you're with me on this, so I'm asking you, please, marry me."

He delved deeply into her eyes, an old schoolboy pleading with his first love.

"I always thought you were the smarter one," she said. "How incredibly wrong I was. All you have to do is swallow your pride and just come back home with me and Stewart, but you, no! That's not good enough for Simon Sample, because Simon Sample is never defeated when it comes to higher law, isn't that right?"

"Please, Caitlin. There's something in you, deep inside, hell, even on the surface, that knows marrying Stewart is not the right thing to do. I can't promise what he's been promising you. I can't give you the political rank that you deserve. I lost that kind of power months ago, and really I don't know what he's telling you in or out of bed, but I can tell you this much – marry me, and I will love you for the rest of my days, and we can have a life apart from this. There is more out there than politics or money or the clubs and the parties. There is an entire side to life that I've seen, and yes, it's poor and bleak, but there are good people too, and I'm saying that we can make it on our own."

Her eyes welled, and a shiver moved like liquid lightning through his heart. He knew then that he had lost her.

"You'll let me know how you're doing?" she asked. "At least you'll give me a little on that."

"No, I don't think so."

"You always were a maverick. You and your father are quite alike in that respect, only your Dad wizened up a long time ago, while you will learn the hard way."

"I've learned my lesson already."

"Poverty, Simon, to people like us, isn't natural. It's not something that comes naturally to people who had the upbringings we had. It's been three months. Imagine an entire lifetime, starting from scratch, without a decent pair of shoes - "

"I'll be just fine."

She leaned over the table and kissed him. The warmth of her lips led him into areas of self-doubt that even the strongest minds couldn't tolerate. He wondered, as he watched her leave, how much he could take before his values gave way. Sure he had every reason in the world to make up with Stewart, but there was a fire inside that ate at him. There was no telling when another opportunity to rejoin his elitist past would return, and perhaps a return would never present itself again.

He certainly couldn't say what led him into such a decision, but it didn't involve Stewart or Caitlin, and it wasn't at all to do with power, although some of it did involve his curious need to withstand the slings and arrows thrown his direction. He had always made things tougher on himself, always striving to achieve some sort of understanding of life's great struggle that maybe if he pushed the envelope just a bit, he may find a stronger man underneath his privileged and pampered exterior. But he knew not to confuse strength and power, or at least the longing for strength and power with anything intelligent. Three months of poverty had been quite enough, and he almost rushed out the door in search of Caitlin all over again. Yet he knew that a choice had been made. That's the tough part about getting older: the constant, unmerciful image of where he might have been had he made different choices. He sat in the restaurant for a few minutes more, contemplating her absence.

### Chapter Eight

He had dinner with Norris and his live-in companion later that night. They ordered Chinese food and ate on paper plates with plastic forks and knives. Luckily, Norris' friend didn't have anything of her own prepared.

Simon didn't say much. He ate his chicken and broccoli slowly, methodically, and because he didn't say anything, Norris and his companion didn't say much either. Only their chewing mouths could be heard, both Norris and Simon ruminating over the day's events. After dinner they watched the national news on television. A great recession continued with unemployment on the rise. A once colorful bull market had turned bearish and mean. The constant threat of terrorism hung over the city. The federal government, through homeland security, consolidated power domestically while picking yet another fight with the dictator Saddam Hussein overseas. Simon hadn't been near a television set for some time, as he purposely ignored all types of news, both local and national. He viewed the process of news gathering with deep suspicion. The reporters always asked the police what happened and never the guy who got arrested. Those with wealth and power always had top billing, and it seemed a bit odd that one had to live his life listening to the same propaganda, digesting the same stories, seeing things through the same point of view. He threw up his hands and accepted it, even though he could never identify with it or see what the outsiders saw.

It became clear to Simon that the main purpose of the media was to support the establishment while falsely proclaiming that it was on the side of the people. It told him what to think, how to speak, what products to buy, what to wear, and even more dangerously: what not to think, what not to wear, what not to say.

"Norris, can we please turn off the television."

Norris grinned for a second before shutting it off.

"Had enough?" he asked.

"It's been a long day," said Simon, "and the last thing I need is the news."

"I think he's right," said Norris' companion, passing around chicken fried rice.

Simon ate the rest of his meal in silence while Norris prepared his instruments for another night in the village clubs.

"I lost my girlfriend today," Simon explained.

"That's a tough one," said Norris.

"I lost her to the same guy who caused all of this."

"I'm sure you can still call her if you like."

"No, I can't. They're engaged to be married, and I'm on a totally separate road now. A totally different direction."

"You must feel terrible."

"Yeah. I never thought I'd lose her, never thought there was even a possibility of losing her. With my father I couldn't care less, but now my girl? I'm wondering what else there is to lose."

"Maybe it's something you can't control."

"Regardless, I stand by my decision."

"Good for you."

"And there's no turning back. Hell, Norris, let's go to Memphis before it's too late."

"Memphis is just a dream. I want to see the place before I die, but - "

"Then let's go. There's nothing left of this place. All three of us can go."

"I think it's a fine idea," said Norris' companion.

She sat beside Norris on the sofa with an arm around his shoulders.

"But how will we go?"

"Well, the rest of my money is in stocks right now. I can sell the stocks, get the cash, and we can start an entirely new life down in Memphis."

"Hold on, boy. Just hold on one second. Aren't we getting ahead of ourselves here? Your money won't support the three of us."

"No, but at least you'll have your guitar, and we can share the expenses. Three people will rent a pretty big apartment in the heart of Memphis. The cost of living is much cheaper down there."

"Not that much cheaper."

"Much cheaper than Manhattan, I tell you that. A pack of cigarettes here costs twelve dollars. In Memphis it costs only five."

"How do you know? You don't smoke."

"I'm picking up the habit," said Simon, brandishing a pack from his pocket.

"I guess a lot's changed about you. It only took a few months in the school of hard knocks, and finally we have a graduate of the streets."

"Money is an interesting thing, Norris. When you have it, the world is a sunny day. All the women look beautiful, and the world is wide open. So the man with the money does whatever he wants until he finds that money just isn't enough. He wants loyalty, he wants friendship, he wants things only bestowed to cute children, but it is the passage back to youth that has eluded him, as the money he's got only makes him grow up a little faster, his instincts always on the edge, and with it a never-ending feeling of guilt that compels him to trade it all away for something real, something pure, something better than this earth.

"And the money he's got doesn't matter one thin dime, because he has spent his entire life calculating, spending, saving perhaps, and even destroying. Man's reach will always exceed his grasp, and always reaching for money doesn't make anyone the happier. A man with money reaches but never grasps."

"Yeah, but money sure as hell helps," said Norris, laughing.

"This is quite true, but money was never meant to die for. Money can never be a substitute for strength of character."

"True. Very true."

"And I have learned enough from the school of hard knocks. I have learned enough how the machinery works and how easily it can deprive. I no longer wish to be a part of the machinery. It has chewed me up and spit me out for no known reason. I have always been a good man, and will always be a good man, and this good man is getting out before the machine stomps on him."

"Sounds like a cop out to me," said Norris.

"Memphis is not a cop out. It is a chance at a better life."

"Maybe you haven't learned enough yet."

"What are you talking about?"

The two of them sighed in front of him, and he wasn't sure how to interpret it. They looked disappointed.

"What did I say wrong?"

"It's not anything you said," said the companion.

"We're not looking for an escape," said Norris. "We could do that on our own. You see, you think by going to Memphis you can escape your past, escape what happened to you, escape this building. We, on the other hand, want something else."

"Like what?"

"Opportunity and respect for the way we live."

"You demand a lot from people. That's not anything two tickets to Memphis can buy."

"No, it can't. That's why I'm saying that Memphis is like a dream to me. It can't be achieved. Imagine for a second if we leave, get there, and no one around us treated us with dignity, because we were poor, because I was black?"

"That was a long time ago. It doesn't happen today."

"Bullshit it doesn't."

"It happens to us," said the companion.

"It may not happen to you, but it happens to us."

"Then you're asking the impossible. You should really be asking: why the hell should I care what other people think."

"It's not as simple as that. Remember how you felt when you first moved into the hotel across the street? That's what our people feel like every day of their lives."

"Your people? Who's your people?"

The companion interrupted Norris before he had a chance to respond.

"Simon," she said, "I really do think you should think it over. I mean, we want different things. We don't want to escape more than we want acceptance and to have certain opportunities that are closed to us within the city."

"Memphis will have that."

"How can you be so sure?" asked Norris.

"We deserve better than this, that's all I'm saying. I mean, you're a musician, and you deserve to be heard, and we deserve a better life. What's so wrong with that?"

"Good lives don't magically appear, Simon. People don't flock to the sound of a guitar. Something more needs to be gained."

"An adventure? Is that what you want?"

"No. I want us to be accepted. To be treated equally as a couple."

"I never knew it's been so hard for you two."

"My family disowned me," said the companion, a white woman. She was also quite attractive in the similar way Caitlin was attractive. Maybe they had similar upbringings as well. She had maintained her beauty while enduring tumultuous times with Norris.

"Harder for her than it was for me," he said.

They held hands, though – a sure sign of their lifelong solidarity against people who tried to separate them.

"Well, I was disowned by my family too," said Simon. "Since two out of three of us were so politely disowned, I'd say that it's two-thirds majority that we forget about this higher meaning shit and get three tickets, not two. I didn't know she was coming along as well."

"First, we visit," said Norris. "Get two tickets. All we need is two."

"But all three of us should go. Norris, we have to forget about this place. Can't you guys see that? And we can sleep soundly tonight, after we pack our bags and get our shit in order, and we can take a slow bus ride, and I want it to be slow, because we finally get to see the rest of America – all those dumb towns – the heartland, all of that shit. We have to mobilize. The both of you are sick and tired of living in the ghetto, I know I am, and we just get up and go. It's as simple as that. Why are you creating complications? Why does it have to be so complicated?"

"You're still young, Simon. There are things you can't possibly understand."

"I'm thirty years old."

"That's still young," said Norris. "How long have we lived here?"

"Ten years," said the companion.

"Our people have shown us the way towards a stable and fruitful life. We have no reason to leave. Our life has been good so far. We are poor, but we have lived in peace, and our people, especially the folks down in the village, understand. The understanding we have received there is unparalleled. People accept us as a couple. That is why we visit for the time being. Black and white don't necessarily go together so easily down there. What I call political correctness and mutual understanding they call bondage, and so we have to be careful."

"Who is 'our people,' Norris?"

"All you need to do right now is get two tickets to Memphis. Just go up to the Greyhound counter and order two tickets. That's all you need to do. Stop questioning so much. Grow up a little and order the tickets."

"Fine. I'll call my broker first thing in the morning, but just to let you know, New York isn't necessarily the stew of understanding we think it is. It's not a perfect city. Look what they did to me: it took a good, just, and honest man and turned him into an animal, and I, for one, refuse to accept it. I refuse to accept defeat."

Visiting Memphis and moving to Memphis, however, were two different things. His excitement calmed a notch, as he hoped he would be leaving the city for good. Unfortunately, no one wanted to leave with him.

His spirited walk on the way to the Port Authority bus terminal a week after he had sold his stocks attracted many onlookers and those begging for change, an inverted dandyism of sorts, considering his wardrobe hadn't changed in three months. They didn't see his clothing but admired the way he walked, as if his clothes were a regal badge and his aura imperial. He felt like himself again, a smile on the edge of his lips and the old Sample gleam in his eye. It was the same gleam of his father at the sale of one of his properties and his own gleam when he broke a fundraising record and his candidate won the election by a landslide.

He found his way to the Greyhound ticketing area in the basement of the Bus Terminal. There were two parts to the Bus Terminal, the first taking up a square block and the second another square block further up Eighth Avenue. Walkways above and below ground linked the two buildings. Simon had never been to the bus terminal before, so getting to the right ticket counter took a few queries at the various information booths. It was also an annoying excursion between both buildings just to find the damn ticket counter.

He planned to advanced-purchase the tickets for both him and Norris and then return to the apartment for dinner, since Norris had a gig that night. They would depart the following day. When he got to the counter, a long, serpentine line snaked in front of it. Considering the number of people waiting online versus the two agents at the cash registers, the line moved unbearably slow. The line itself had sub-lines of people like those of the post office. The ticket agents instructed people to return to the line after they filled out the necessary paperwork to hand to them. In all, Simon had a good wait ahead of him, and what's more, just before getting into the cue, a beautiful, tall African-American woman cut in the line before him without giving it a second thought. The nerve of some people. But she was definitely a beautiful girl, a shapely body, a nice knit sweater, and soft brown skin. Simon thought of starting a conversation with her. It had been a long time since he had been with a woman, and he stood in the line prepared to take her away to his hole in the wall just a few blocks away. The woman smiled as she looked around her. She was as fresh and lovely.

"Where ya headed?" Simon had to ask.

"Excuse me?" she asked.

"I said it's a long line. I hope we don't have to wait much longer."

She nodded her head and then looked towards the counter.

"Where ya headed?" asked Simon again.

"Memphis, Tennessee."

"Really?"

"Yes."

"That's a real coincidence. I'm also headed to Memphis."

"Wow, that is a coincidence," she said. "Do you live down there or something?"

"No, just a friend of mine and I are visiting. We haven't been out of the city in a long time."

"There are plenty of places to stay down there."

"Yeah. We figured we'd stay at a motel for a couple of days, hopefully close to Beale Street."

"I love Beale Street! That's the first thing I want to do when I get down there."

"We're traveling musicians. Well, I'm not a musician, but I'm assisting a musician."

They had a full conversation by the time they got to the ticket counter. Everything about her exuded an intelligence and beauty he wanted all to himself. She smiled and laughed as he charmed her. She lived down in Memphis, and it occurred to him that he should ask if they could stay with her for a couple of nights. As of yet they didn't have accommodations, and he worried their money would run out should they stay in hotel rooms.

The woman ordered one ticket to Memphis. She looked over her shoulder and smiled at him. She seemed to know the guy at the ticket counter. They were on familiar terms. She must have taken the bus to Memphis often enough to have known him. She bid Simon a quick farewell and then headed towards the escalators that led to the gates below. Simon faced the ticket agent with a wide smile, as though he had finally made contact with planet woman and passed through her atmosphere without burning up. He noticed too that she had left her ticket at the counter by mistake.

Simon never liked moral dilemmas, but unfortunately he stared into the strange face of one. He knew he should behave properly and always held himself to high moral standards, but now that he had seen a tougher side to existence, he wondered what material benefit might be gained from acting in a moral manner. He knew he had very little money left. He had taken a loss in the market, so he had even less than what he started out with. If he took the ticket for himself, he would save quite a bit. He stood in front of the ticket counter like a zombie, staring at the ticket the woman left behind. He looked to the counter person for help, but apparently the guy feigned ignorance of the second ticket.

'Life is not perfect,' he thought to himself, as his immediate urge was to take the ticket for himself. He was no longer a young pilgrim trying to reach the center of God. His conscience buckled. He no longer wanted the things he used to want – things like being a good person throughout his life or keeping his conscience clear – so that at an old age, perhaps on his deathbed, he could say to himself that he lived his life well and never stole, never killed, never raped anybody for a buck. Yet he understood that only the rich could afford such a luxury – only the affluent could keep their purity. Those at the bottom had to steal if only to keep their own self-respect in a society that overwhelmingly favored wealth and success to that of poverty and failure. What they taught him in all of those years of fine education never prepared him for this. Never had he imagined that he needed to steal in order to get by. Sure, people did it every day without thinking twice, but Simon learned never to cut corners, even though things like stealing were widely accepted, glorified at times, just so long as no one got caught and evaded the authorities with a savvy and intelligence that made everyone in the society declare: 'Look, this guy stole and got away with it, so he must be savvy and intelligent.' Anything moral translated into an earnest stupidity that people respected him for but never won him the girl, never bought the car, never gave him power. He never knew morality could also be his greatest weakness.

He reasoned that there was practically no material benefit in exercising the conscience, especially if one is a very small man, at the bottom, wanting so much. He needed the free ticket. Why not be a gentleman about it, chase after the girl, and give her the ticket?

It was the right thing to do after all, even though it pained him. Then he reasoned that there are other situations unforeseen that require a strong conscience. To the realist's trained eye, the conscience is but one component in the overall picture of the human being. Yet to the idealist, perhaps the conscience is a gateway to the world's unforeseen, the ingredient that prevents future mistakes from happening, the vehicle by which better worlds are created, better perspectives that take hold and improve the spirit. It all sounded very nice to him. He grabbed the extra ticket and raced after her down the escalators.

He saw her ahead, her pace quickening as she moved through the terminal. He called out to her, but apparently she didn't hear him. He bumped into those waiting on long lines. The basement terminal swarmed with passengers, the crowd large and dense. At one point he could barely keep track of her, his eyes darting from corner to corner hoping he had the right person. She then exited the terminal through one of the metallic doors, into the roadway where the other buses stood idle. Simon diligently pursued her.

She exited the terminal through one of the gates and traversed an underground roadway used solely by the buses. The sound of bus engines on their way out of the terminal was ubiquitous. She crossed the roadway, and he followed, not knowing where she went or why she headed in such a strange, unorthodox direction. He called out to her again, but she kept walking, as though she ignored him on purpose.

Interestingly enough the woman looked over her shoulder every few feet, and at first Simon thought she meant to evade him. As he crossed the wet roadway she moved farther into another tunnel perpendicular to it. This dark tunnel was closed to traffic and may have served as an emergency exit ramp for official use only. Simon had pursued her this far, and although a thought told him to turn around and forget about the pursuit, he still pressed on, finding her behavior completely out-of-line.

He crossed the roadway, and he followed her into the dark tunnel. The lights from the roadway illuminated the mouth of the tunnel but nothing beyond a few hundred feet. At the edge of the roadway's light and the pitch blackness of the tunnel the woman hurried down a stairwell that led further underground. Simon ran towards the stairwell and called out to her. She didn't respond but tacitly egged him on. She wanted him to follow, he was sure of it. She disappeared from view as he approached. Her silence and her mysterious smile kept him chasing her.

When he reached the stairwell he faced a doorway at the bottom. The woman had already entered it. A single light shined below, but the stairwell itself was covered in darkness. He carefully descended through the darkness, his hand gripping the loose railing at his side. When he reached the door, he opened it.

"Hello!" he called out.

There was no response, only another long, dark corridor that led into blackness. He shivered as he walked. The further he went, the colder it got. He felt himself going deeper into an abyss. As the corridor sloped downwards, he searched for a light switch, but he couldn't find one. He ran his hands along the moist concrete walls, his footsteps slow and apprehensive. He had no idea where this woman went. Amazing how she raced ahead of him, as though she already knew these corridors.

The path ended at a wall, and there was nowhere else to go but to the left, and when he turned, he thanked his luck, because now there shined another light ahead of him. As he approached this second light, he moved through puddles of cold water. The walls were still wet, indicating some sort of underground leak or faulty pipes or even rainwater seeping in from above. The puddles were deep as he walked towards this shining light. He must have been several hundred feet below ground when he confronted a second door after reaching dry ground. The air was stale and cold, his breath visible, but when he entered this second doorway, the air grew warm and moist, the underground passageways exposed by a row of soot-caked lights. He heard conversation ahead of him and walked softly in that direction. He heard voices and didn't know what to expect.

In the short distance, he made out two tall, muscular figures. They were African-American men in threadbare military fatigues, rifles slung around their shoulders. He moved closer. The woman he followed disappeared beyond them.

"Welcome," said one of them.

They guided him through a set of double doors. What was once a corridor fanned out into a larger room the size of an auditorium. The crowd at the rows and columns of chairs stood and observed him walking down the aisle. To his strange horror, the hairs on his body on end, he saw Angela Ruiz in the audience staring right at him. He saw Manny the computer guy from office headquarters. He saw the woman who left him the ticket at the Greyhoud counter, and what gave him the greatest shock, he saw Norris and his companion standing a couple rows back from where an empty chair waited for him.

The audience packed the underground auditorium to the hilt. More people flowed in through the side entrances. Many stood along the side walls. In front, a spotlight from overhead bathed a small stage. A pair of armed guards kept watch at the corners of the stage, their stiff, rugged bodies facing the audience, their faces firm and expressionless. The audience whispered amongst themselves.

Simon kept silent, talking to no one, his gaze fixed on the empty stage as well as the armed guards, hoping that the speaker would explain and clarify this irrational event. He wanted to ask Norris what all of this was, but he was too awestruck to turn around. It might have interrupted some predetermined flow, as he knew full well that Norris and his companion had set him up. The same with Angela Ruiz, and even Manny the computer guy who must have been the mole in Briarwood's office. Next to him stood John Hernandez, the opposition candidate. Only Manny had access to everyone's email, and naturally he leaked the story along with proof of bribery to Angela Ruiz.

Simon felt like a dope. He never had a clue that his movement to the other side of things was merely a best-laid plan, a grand scheme, and he wanted to know who orchestrated it. Angela, Norris, the companion, and Manny were all pawns in this most dangerous game, and certainly they couldn't have planned it without a guiding force. He suspected that whoever set him up also needed him while ruining him at the same time.

His general confusion transmuted into an intense anger. He viewed his former life as flawless, Caitlin's body as flawless, his bank account at one time overflowing, and his work the thing he loved most. All of that was stolen by a few people with a plan, and how dare they toy with the fragility of his life. It wasn't a complete scam, though. He still believed there was some higher purpose that brought him to the packed, humid auditorium. He stood next to strangers who looked at him and smiled. He peered behind him to Norris and his companion. They held hands. How clever they were. They knew his every move. They knew his mind and the decisions he would make. They had monitored him, knew his dreams, and understood his weaknesses. The audience knew of these things. They had a unique power over him, and he kept still instead of running for the exits and straight up to street level.

The audience quieted themselves as an older woman walked upon the stage. She commanded the attention of the entire audience. She was an elderly woman, gray hairs like coarse wires sprouting from her head, her wrinkled skin illuminated in the bright, hot spotlight, her clothing plain and earthy, as though she belonged out West or drifting on a friehgt train. Her skirt was a tapestry of colors, and she wore a woolen gray sweater with a jade necklace hugging her collar. Her presence exuded a beauty lost to older age, a venerability that took on the form of some vague leadership based on an ideology the audience drank up like water in an endless desert. She had chlorine blue eyes that stared straight into him like hot lasers. She had a sense of his presence and knew his thoughts and feelings.

They knew each other on some intuitive level as she alone was responsible for his excursion to the underground. He knew this, but he still did not see the bigger picture. He had many questions, but he held them for now. In front of a small microphone she spoke.

"Welcome, every one of you," said the old woman. "We are finally complete, and I certainly thank all of you for ending your work early this evening. Our movement gets its strength from those who work, as labor is our most valuable commodity. Our cabinet is now ready for its final showdown with the outer world. We have all worked incredibly hard to get here. Our arsenals are full, our guard strong, our collective will unbreakable.

"No longer will our children and grandchildren remain in hiding. With our well-trained revolutionary guard we are finally poised to retake what is ours, not below ground, but above ground. We can no longer stay here. Our numbers have grown steadily year by year, and this place, although special as it nurtured the seeds of our rebellion, is no longer large enough to give room to our vision of a just and equitable society apart from the corruption of the government and corporations above ground. The movement must finally unveil itself to those above, and we now have the strength to conquer whoever stands in our path. What will be is inevitable. What's to come is inevitable. For us there is no turning back.

"We have kept quiet for too long. We have played by the rules, and every time we are smarted by the same unjust system that had originally sent us below. Well, to this we say that we will no longer be stepped on by the boots of their inhuman, calculating machine. We will not be deterred any longer by the slow inadequacies of the pseudo-democracy shoved down our throats. Each of us started as powerless, and look at us now! Take a good look at yourselves – look into the eyes of your brothers and sisters to both the left and the right of you and realize how far we've come. No longer are we powerless. We have an army. No longer does a fate control us. We control our own destiny. And what binds us together is the belief that in a democracy there will always be those who go without, and democracy, contrary to popular belief, is not perfect.

Any system that kills us is neither virtuous nor just, and that is exactly what the system does to the poor, the hungry, the sick, and the ugly. There will always be those who are crushed by the boots of an unjust system, and I say, loud and clear, that we are the people who have been crushed. We were born without guidance, and most of us without capital. We played their game and found that the game was created if only to protect those already in power, those who already have money. We went underground to survive, and now we seek our liberation. We are through playing games. We are through withstanding blow after blow just to have our voices heard, just to have enough to buy food, just to keep ourselves warm during the cold and ruthless winters.

"We do have a plan, and that is to overpower the forces above so that we can live in our own building, a building that will soon become our home, a place where our young shall live for many more years to come. But overtaking the apartments above won't be easy. It has taken careful planning by our revolutionary guard who will soon usurp the power of the landlords and by degrees of separation the City of New York and the federal government. The building is ours, and in a week's time no one among us will have to pay a penny to live there. And no one among us will have to worry about food ever again.

"These are promises that are ironclad and form the basis of our movement. In a week's time the government above ground will witness the full wrath of our power. We must fight for a better way of life, and no, there is never an easy way. There will be blood and tears, but at the end of battle we shall be victorious. It is up to every one of us to take up arms against the dogs who defend only wealth but never poverty, defend only the blackest of hearts and never the innocent. This is our time, and we shall manifest what has taken years of planning and soul-searching to achieve. We shall overcome, and ultimately conquer the forces that oppose us in favor of the light in our hearts, the light that demands a better way of life for all of our people."

A thunderous applause followed her speech. Everyone in the auditorium then held hands for a moment of silence. Simon held hands with people he didn't know, and together they prayed – Simon for a way to escape, the others probably for a swift takeover of the apartment building, owned, of course, by none other than Charlie Sample.

In the hazy darkness the woman next to him smiled. She knew him already. How he wasn't sure. He needed to get out. As soon as he disjoined hands he excused himself and headed for the double doors at the rear of the auditorium.

When he opened them, the two guards smiled as they blocked his passage to the world above.

"Mr. Sample, you will come with us," said one of the guards.

"I can't," said Simon nervously. "I've got to go to work tonight with Norris. You guys know Norris, right?"

"He won't be needing your services tonight."

"Please, I need some fresh air. I'm feeling horribly faint. I must get outside."

He tried to run around them, but they caught him by the arms. Another passageway circumvented the auditorium. They escorted him through a passageway to a place which he figured to be behind the stage, another lair altogether with doors bolted tight. They took him to an open room complete with a small bed and night stand. In the corner sat a toilet with a matching sink and an electric space heater. The guards shoved him inside. He yelled at them, but his voice bounced off the concrete walls. They quickly bolted the door outside. He banged on it until his fists hurt, but no one responded. He had plenty of time to cool off and think of a way out.

There were no windows, only an iron grate where a side of the wall met the ceiling. He moved the nightstand below the grate, stood upon it, and tested the strength of the iron bars. None of the bars moved, just hot air that blew through them. He called out, but only his own voice echoed through the darkness. Apparently the vent beyond the iron bars led to another room in the complex. He made out bits and pieces of faint conversation, none of it intelligible. He called through the bars several times, but to no avail. Soon he grew tired and collapsed on the bed.

Every few minutes he studied the door, pulling and pushing it, but the door didn't budge, and after what seemed like an hour or two of canvassing every conceivable escape, he accepted his imprisonment and his inability to escape from the room.

He had many questions for the person in charge. The woman who spoke represented the entire audience, as she alone must have founded this underground society. Judging by the guards who locked him away, they were well armed and well trained. They would give the police one hell of a fight if they planned to overtake the apartment building above them. Simon was sure that the underground bunker linked the Bus Terminal and the apartment building. He didn't know what they might do with the Bus Terminal, but considering the number of people in the auditorium, they could easily overtake it and the Port Authority police force as well. Simon figured the audience was an army of sorts hanging on the old woman's words as they would a high priestess or a great leader. They were a ragged bunch but fiercely determined to see their visions achieved, and he was suddenly very afraid that the underground bunker would eventually become a war zone with him locked inside, perhaps shot to death before being found. But then why did they need him? Why all the pomp and circumstance and the elaborate set up if only to do away with him? They conned him so skillfully that he was oblivious to their motives. Even Norris, whom he trusted more than anyone else, acted so well as to fool him into thinking that Memphis was for real.

Perhaps they held him hostage for ransom, the ransom being the apartment building itself. He searched for answers but found nothing. While there must have been some love for him in his father's heart, old Charlie would never relinquish the building without a good fight. He would call the police before making any moves. If anything, they needed Simon ever since he blew the whistle on Briarwood's campaign. He felt cheated, used, and abused by them. He wanted answers right away and blamed himself for being so naïve.

He was sick of staring at the walls. He even tapped on them hoping to discover a prisoner on the other side, but to no avail. It had been a few hours since they locked him inside. He ran out of things to do and lost track of time, as though the room became an endless void breaking his routines and confusing his internal clock. He desperately longed for a return to the way things used to be, not necessarily with Caitlin or at his old job anymore, but assisting Norris and hanging around the midnight clubs. He longed for his freedom apart from the movement taking shape. They didn't even give him a chance to negotiate his own release. He told himself repeatedly to be patient, but the minutes were long, the hours grotesque, and his thoughts circular. No matter how long and hard he thought about his fate, he arrived at the same stubborn conclusion: that he didn't know why they kept him captive or what they needed from him. He wracked his brain so much that he soon fell asleep.

The old woman slipped into his dreams. He saw her on the stage, only she spoke more fervently, the audience engaged in call and response. She said something against the grain, and the crowd cheered, her palaver cynical until suddenly she offered the hope of a new society. Then came images of warfare above ground, the guards in fatigues firing shots at police in riot gear, tear gas choking the rebels, all on account of her fierce words.

Simon awoke in a cold sweat, the bright lights of the prison cell burning through his eyelids. Perhaps he dreamt of the events to follow. It seemed that that's what they wanted – a showdown with the government more so than any apartment building landlord.

"And what makes a government moral?" he heard the old woman asking, only this time it wasn't a dream.

The old woman sat in a chair on the other side of the room. Her gray locks had been combed neatly, her wardrobe black as night, her bony hands resting upon a wooden cane, her index finger tapping the curve of it like an old school teacher waiting for her star pupil to answer.

"A government cannot legislate morals," said Simon, wiping sweat from his brow. "That's not its function."

"Good answer. Where did they teach you that?"

"I have a degree in Political Science from Princeton."

"That's quite an accomplishment, Simon Sample. Tell me, how does it feel to associate with undesirables such as ourselves?"

"It wasn't by choice, but I have accepted my new life. It hasn't been easy, but you're good people. I know that, because Norris has been good to me."

Her chlorine blue eyes didn't flinch, and her smile hinted that she already knew the answers to her questions.

"We are good people," she said. "Many of the people you saw tonight have been cast out of their families, some of them sick without the ability to pay for medical treatment. They had no money, no food, and eventually they came here to start new lives apart from a society that took everything from them. See, down here we are the dregs of humanity. We are the ones who will never fit in. We never got along. We refused to play ball, just like you."

"I see."

"No, I don't think you do, because out of nothing but a collection of poor, hungry people we made something of ourselves. We're proof that under certain conditions, away from the expectations that a corrupt society and culture forces upon its citizens, people who are good and honest can really make something of themselves."

"Again, I get your point. I respect what you have built here, although I wouldn't kill anybody over it."

She laughed at this remark, a sinister laugh that slapped against the walls.

"Life isn't worth living if there's nothing to die for," she said.

"An extreme view. I'd rather spend my time living than learning how to die."

"It depends what you're living for and whether or not it's worth dying for. Everyone dies, Simon. I just want to leave with my soul intact."

"I don't think congratulations are in order."

"I'm not asking for your approval," she snapped.

With the help of her cane she stood and paced back and forth. For a second he thought she'd beat him with the cane.

"When I heard what happened on September 11th, I couldn't help but think that America deserved it. I also couldn't help but think that it served as another excuse for yet another war, this time a long term conflict."

"Thousands lost their lives that day," said Simon. "They didn't deserve to die. They had families and good lives."

"Yes, they did have good lives. The worst civilian catastrophe in American history, but so odd and coincidental that this war on terrorism is also an attack upon civil liberties as well, so funny too how people all of a sudden rally around the flag, how ghostly war heroes fade in from obscurity, how anything and everything un-American slowly becomes – how should I put it – the enemy."

"That hasn't happened, and that won't happen again."

"Again? Again, you say?"

"Yes, that won't happen again, I said."

"Because it has happened before, hasn't it? Back then it was communism, and now a war on terrorism. What was once the House Un-American Activities Committee is now the Department of Homeland Security. Anything to keep the union together, even at the expense of innocent lives."

"You're sick, that's what you are! That happened years ago, and it won't happen again. Things have changed, whoever you are."

"Miriam. My parents named me Miriam."

"Whatever."

"And these same old battles. The same old problems. It's tragic that the great answer becomes war. Human nature has remained exactly the same, petrified in time if you will."

"All you see are the ugly parts. No wonder things stay the same."

"Sometimes the truth is ugly, Simon."

"Your truth or mine?"

"Clever boy. You always were so clever. Very stubborn too. You get that from your mother, you know."

He sat on the edge of the bed becoming more confused as the conversation widened.

"You knew my mother? But how?"

"You could say that I knew her very well. I still know her."

"You mean she's still alive?"

"Oh yes. Still alive."

"What happened to her? Please, I beg of you, tell me."

"She was once a very attractive woman, a very prosperous and educated woman, yes. She had a beautiful childhood, raised in a wonderful home with loving parents. She married at an early age. She fell in love with your father, and together they made you."

"And then?"

"Your mother always liked to read books, you know. And then the war came."

"You mean the Vietnam War?"

"She was coming of age at about that time, yes. She certainly did identify with the anti-war movement, but her husband did not. Her husband wanted to fight communism. Her husband supported the war."

"I see."

"And after the anti-war movement faded out, I guess something within her died as well."

"I don't understand."

"Something seized her, and her marriage fell apart."

"She was disturbed. She left when I was little."

"She went to a state psychiatric hospital for treatment. Then, after a time, she left. The treatment worked for a little while."

"What did they do to her?"

"I don't think it's something we should discuss."

"Please. I want to know. Tell me."

"Well, if you must know, they gave her shocks. Your mother's mind, you see, it never slowed down. It kept forging ahead into unknown waters, and these waters were both rocky and shallow. She thought too wildly for her own good. She thought she had answers, and she bullied her way into higher thoughts that only the mad can touch. Something, some force, had confiscated her. Her mind and her body aged prematurely, and when she was rifled back down to earth, she could never fully recover."

"What seized her mind? What did this to her?"

"I don't know. I honestly don't have any idea what or who captured her mind that way. She thought too much and thought too seriously. She had been cast out just like those you saw at the gathering tonight. Her marriage failed and so did her mind – a very weak mind, so stubborn that it hurt itself, and for what, Simon? Why did she hurt herself? Why did she self-destruct?"

"Maybe she wanted what she couldn't have?"

"Yes, her youth restored. A heaven on earth. These were the things she wanted. She wanted them for you. All for you."

"So she mentioned me?"

"For a time you were the only thing she mentioned. When she came to this place, she was a broken spirit, her thoughts unable to grasp her abject poverty. She came to these people, only a few of them at the time."

"And you were one of them?"

"Yes, I was one of them, and together we built a place where the poor, the sick, and the downtrodden could come and break bread and even stay if they liked. This was back in 1976."

"What happened to her?"

"She left. She passed on the money she made, and she left. I don't know where she went."

"If she had the money, why didn't she leave the country?"

"And go where? Spend it on whom?"

"It would take an adjustment, but if you have the money there's no reason to stay down here."

"Some things are more important than money," she said. "Money is only a currency that buys materials. It buys food. It cannot buy goodness, kindness, honor, or self-respect. Nor can it buy love. Money will never restore what the system has done to our people – a corrupt system that has taken on a legal form. An unjust system. People down here aren't educated. They weren't born with anything but their beating hearts and fragile minds. Their only choices were to live above ground as laboring slaves or live in freedom down here, away from the cruelty that depersonalizes every shred of humanity into greedy machines.

Down here we read books. We teach people how to read and write. They get food and a warm bed. Our society has evolved to the point where we even have our own medical team. And come a week from today we will be ready to wage war and capture the very building that houses our people."

Simon thought the idea ludicrous.

"If you have the money, why not buy the property? Hell, buy part of the building! Form a cooperative for Chrissakes!"

"Our goals is to go beyond the buying of property. The goal is to make a statement. A point, if you will. We want to send a clear message that tests the strength of their power. Our actions will turn the tide. No longer will America have a permanent underclass. No longer will we live by their unwritten rules, their profiteering decisions, their biased laws."

"It sounds like what you're doing is terrorism to me."

"Or a fight for our freedom – to live in peace away from a corrupt system in which the poor always lose out. I'm sorry that you see us that way. That's how most of society will see us when we take up arms against our oppressors."

He found it hard to believe that his mother would have wanted an all out war with the authorities. He still thought the entire scheme ludicrous, because a small rag-tag army, no matter who well-trained, would never be a match for the New York police force and especially the United States government. A war seemed pointless, even though it would send a chill down the government's nervous system. But that's all it would do. The old woman, in his opinion, was committing suicide. He still didn't know why she brought him down there.

"Come," she said, "I'd like to show you what we've made of ourselves."

Simon followed her out of the prison cell. They were flanked by four armed guards as they walked through tunnels and corridors. They moved away from the auditorium, deeper into the ground, the temperature and humidity rising as they descended a puddle-laden stairwell that opened into a hallway. An armed guard rose from his desk and saluted the old woman. Simon walked with her, calculating how far they went just in case they left him there. They came to a locked iron door. The armed guard dutifully opened it. They entered a large room, the air damp and fuming. They turned on the light, and to his shock Simon faced a room full of assault rifles, ammunition, and explosives.

"My God," he said.

"Now do you see how close we are?" said the woman.

"But how did you get all of these weapons? It must have cost a fortune."

They exited the armory and walked towards another wing of the bunker. They must have been a half-mile or so below ground. The guards opened another locked door. The old woman revealed a room replete with brown plastic packages.

"Drugs?"

"Heroin to be precise. We only hold it for our clients who then distribute it."

"And that's how you get your guns?"

"They pay us in food and guns, yes."

"This is quite an operation you have going."

"Simon, we don't touch the heroin. Our society steers clear of it. We don't use the supply. We're only a holding area. Our goal is to obtain arms and ammunition for the coming conflict. We also use some of it to pay off the Hernandez campaign, but he's never won year after year."

"You mean you supported Hernandez?"

"We're the people who fund him, but we don't give him too much. We have mouths to feed."

"And you figure the more mouths you feed, the more people who are willing to fight?"

"Something like that," she said.

"But there's something I still don't understand – you know you can't defeat the government. They outnumber you. I still don't understand why don't you just buy the apartment building with the money you have? You can then live in peace. Hell, you can even continue the operation. Why the hell are you going to war over it? It's a fucking apartment building."

Simon didn't mean to get emotional, but he saw the absurdity, and dare he mention, the silliness of her plan. They climbed a set of stairs to the main level of the bunker, the guards like zombies still flanking them – two in front and two behind, the air dryer and cooler. They led him back to his cell. The old woman joined him.

One of the guards brought them sandwiches, as a day of wandering made him acutely famished. He still didn't know this woman or what she wanted with him, but such a loyalty from her military ready to fire at a moment's notice combined with rooms full of drugs and guns commanded a certain degree of respect. This woman was an enormous power, but similarly there was an enormous twistedness to her that needed straightening. She had gone too far and crossed boundaries that perhaps only a few could cross. A fiery disenchantment with the system of things remained. Her beauty, at one time a defining characteristic, soured. Her thinking, at one time enlightened, darkened. Her vision, at one time delightful, hovered as ominously as a dark cloud.

"I know what you must be thinking," she said, holding her tea cup delicately.

"I don't know what to think anymore. It seems like you dragged me into the middle of a bloodbath."

"Is that what it seems like?"

"It's suicide. They will overpower you. You will be caught, and you will die."

"Many will die, not just me."

"Which is why I think you should just buy the apartment building and start living above ground just like everybody else."

"You still don't get it, do you? After all you have lost, you still don't understand. Maybe Norris was too hasty in bringing you down here."

"I do get it," said Simon angrily. "I lost my life. I lost my girlfriend. I lost my job, my apartment, my livelihood. Don't say I don't get it, goddamnit, because I do."

He couldn't control himself in front of this woman, but he knew that she wouldn't harm him. Whether or not she needed him any longer wasn't the point. Something about her said that he could emote freely and still survive.

"Imagine what you've lost," she said, "and then multiply it a hundred times."

"I can't imagine something like that."

"Well, that's what everyone down here has lived through, and they will fight tooth and nail to prevent that from happening again. We are sick of having to live under a system where the sick are nothing but liabilities, where children go hungry in the middle of the night, where hard work and labor mean nothing to the greater society, where innocence is taken away for the love of the almighty dollar."

"But it's changing," said Simon. "Ever since the attacks there has been an awakening."

"Bullshit! The minute America gets what it deserves, we go to war with people we don't even know – for oil to satisfy those Texan washouts who can't produce enough of it on their own, and so they have to hijack the country for it. September 11thushered in a new regime hell bent on war and nothing else. These people don't know how to fix the economy. They don't know how to fix health care. They don't know how to fix the schools. They only know war, and they'll lie and cheat and cut taxes and raise the deficit if only to send young fresh souls into submission and service, and ultimately to their deaths.

They will do anything to reengineer a once-thriving society, corrupt as it was, into a neo-conservative war-drum that they can beat until it makes soldiers out of every one of us. Don't lecture me on the morals of this country, because this country doesn't have an ounce of morality compared to those it is all too willing to conquer. We pretend to have it, but we don't. It's all about money and whores above ground, so maybe it's time you start understanding what we are and where we come from, and have a little respect for what we're about to do. Our battle is not for dollars. Our battle resides in the mere fact that there will always be people who do not benefit from the American system of economy and government. Our little war is a function of that fact. To us, a life above ground and in compliance with the rest of those Briarwood-types is worse than death. Oppression is worse than death. To fight gives us life. To die in battle is how we live, and no one I lead will go quietly."

She talked as a general talks. It didn't bother him. To wander through the labyrinth of her muddled philosophies would have confused even the most gifted academic. Perhaps it was more a question of psychiatry. But then she made it clear:

"It's a question of ideology more than it is a question of money or property. It is the battle of ideas and what ideas shape our future. The ideas from the loins of Washington, hell, from City Hall, from Hollywood, from the media, are all incongruent with the society we wish to develop and sustain. To stop us from fighting would take, how should I put it, a miracle."

She laid her teacup on the floor, crossed her legs, and with her blue eyes, rather than her lips, smiled at him. Her eyes had been smiling at him all along. Simon couldn't believe that politics went this far. Miriam's movement was the result of being defeated many times over, the horrible result of a winner-take-all electoral system in which her ideas never made it to the surface.

"I suppose I'm the miracle you've been waiting for?" said Simon after a time.

The armed guards escorted Miriam out of the cell. They left Simon by himself, the door bolted shut. He needed a shower and a shave and presumed that facilities down in the bunker took care of such things, but he had been imprisoned by the guards and prepared for another span of time alone, uncertain if it were day outside or night.

He knocked on the door and asked one of the guards if they could turn off the light. They obliged him this courtesy. In the darkness he groped for his bed and pulled the covers over him. He did not think of the past anymore, and this was a relief. Instead he thought of the old woman and her vaults of guns and heroin. In a way he felt sorry for her. A sadness radiated from her pale blue eyes as well as a persistent darkness over her smiling eyes he would never comprehend, as though the darkness entertained her and not the simple things, like the smell of a rose or a gust of fresh air that would otherwise bring a dying woman to life. The effects of time upon her psyche would never reverse, and instead of finding a perfect world, she found a gaping void in its place.

After her expulsion from youth she longed for an old age that would supercede time's effects and keep her garden safe and secure while fighting anything that tried to enter it, only that the fight itself, particularly the friction between deviance and morality that came with the unbearable loss of innocence, contributed to her aging, her mind on a slow decline until she confronted the end-all-be-all of power, as if power in and of itself could heal her, win her personal battles, massage her burning muscles, and restore what was once beautiful.

But power corrupted this woman. She played games with it, manipulated people with it, and promised others a better life if they waged war with her. Yes, she had considerable power, and she must have known that the only way to get anything done in a slow democracy where nothing came for free was not to work through it but to fight, as a general fights.

She had found her niche in the darkness, and her reign the result of a short cut rather than a slow ascension. It pained him to see her like this. She fought not against poverty or powerlessness but the unforgiving properties of life itself, a battle she would never win. Simon came to the conclusion that she must be stopped, but he didn't know how to penetrate her intellect or intervene in her reasoning. He struggled with this for some time, tossing and turning within moist and tangled sheets looking for a way to prevent a conflict that would end the lives of the hundred or so gathered there.

He awoke several hours later, the lights burning in his face. The guards took him to a shower stall near the entrances of the auditorium. They gave him a towel and a bar of soap. Cold water dribbled from the showerhead as he washed off the grime and sweat of living underground. They also gave him old, camouflaged fatigues in lieu of street clothes. He reluctantly donned the fatigues after showering. He disliked wearing them. They tried to make him a part of their cause without his consent. They assumed he would fight with them when he really wanted to stop them. The guards led him to another room a level below.

Blue prints of the apartment building, the Bus Terminal, and the underground bunker rested on easels towards the back wall of the room. The old woman sat in the middle of these blue prints, at the head of a collapsible table. Around her sat several others, also in uniform. They were armed and tough-looking.

She welcomed Simon and introduced the members of her 'cabinet,' as she called them. Simon neither shook their hands nor smiled cordially. He was not for them, and the more he learned, the more ignorant he wished upon himself, as the information given at the meeting made him an uneasy partner or at least implied that he was a part of the team, aiding and abetting their suicide mission.

The other soldiers were silent as Miriam explained her plan. She didn't dwell on specifics. She talked efficiently – her words exact and to the point. From what Simon gleaned, much of the battle, logistically-speaking, would take place in and around his father's apartment building. The rebels would hold positions in apartments with windows on the perimeter. Most of the people in the building would be armed. She didn't plan to hold anyone hostage and would evacuate those who didn't want to fight, the children in particular. According to her, most of the tenants wanted to fight, and the tenants living on the perimeter were already notified of their apartment's strategic importance. Also, the tenants were specifically instructed not to pay their rent on the first of the month. The day before, her army would enter the apartment building through passageways connected to the underground bunker. The underground bunker itself, which linked the apartment building and the Bus Terminal, served as operation headquarters. The rebels would move through the bunker and into the apartment building gradually. By the time the police arrived, both the bunker and the apartment building would have been fortified by her troops. She made a firm commitment not to fire unless fired upon.

The police would surround the apartment building on ground level, station sharpshooters in adjacent buildings, and probably infiltrate the apartment building through the roof by helicopter. Her army would fight from the bottom up, while the police would fight from the top down. Almost like a thread, her troops would be positioned up in the apartment building, down through the bunker, and on the edge of the Bus Terminal. Should they have to retreat, her troops would evacuate the building and the bunker through the Bus Terminal and out onto street level. They would then shut the police in the bunker and set off explosives.

"And what comes next? What if you do defeat the police?"

"They'll send in the military," said Miriam.

"What if they destroy the apartment building itself?"

"The won't. They'll think we're holding hostages."

"When there are no hostages."

"Right."

"So you'll keep fighting - "

"Until we have the building for ourselves, until the police and the government recognize that they can't overtake it without further loss of life."

"So it's the apartment building or death."

"And we want to continue our operations below ground without interference."

He threw up his hands, unsure of what he could do or say. Their reasons for fighting, however, didn't end with principles. It became clear to him that, more than a better society above and beyond any apartment building, these people wanted power as an end in itself. Yet no one above ground noticed them. They were ignored. The greater society had at one time treated them unfairly, and now these commandos, these soldiers united by the figurehead of this old woman, wanted revenge as well. They tasted its blood. They sought to make history, to defeat a greater power with their own. They were no different.

"The bigger they are, the harder they fall," said the old woman, as Simon paced at the end of the room.

"You'll all die," he said. "Many will die."

"What other alternative do we have?"

He had been avoiding this question all along. It became clear, quite suddenly, why they needed him. It finally made sense.

"You know you can't win, and only I can help you. I can help you retain ownership of the apartment building."

Miriam smiled knowingly.

"How?" asked one of the commandos.

"I can talk to the owner."

"You mean you'll talk to Sample Real Estate?"

"Yes. My father owns the building. If I can convince him to sell it to you, then you must agree unconditionally not to provoke a conflict and to disarm, get rid of the drugs, and go legitimate."

The offer sparked immediate argument by the men around the table. They all talked at once, all of them except Miriam who smiled at Simon. It became clear that she knew all along that they stood little chance against the police, the FBI, and the other military organizations that the U.S. government would hurl their way.

The debate grew louder, until one of the men seated closest to her quieted the group. Apparently the final decision would be left to her.

"So," she said, "Mr. Simon Sample has offered us a way out of near certain catastrophe."

"I'm saying hundreds of lives will be spared. Let me talk to my father. He'll listen to me. This conflict isn't necessary. You can buy the building from him."

"Miriam," said one of the commandos, "we are ready to fight, all of us are. We are prepared."

"Yes," she said, "we are prepared to fight and to die, but I think our guest has a point. The battle won't be won until either we are destroyed or they are destroyed, and we are but a small army compared to the thousands they could call in for duty. Surely we'd make history. Surely we would have proved something, but at what cost? It's one thing to die for a cause, but quite another thing to die when it could have been avoided."

"Don't equate us with those pigs above ground," said the commando. "I would gladly give my life for our cause."

"I know all of you would. I know our army is prepared. But we'll have to try this."

"And go legitimate?"

"If we have the apartment building at a fair price, I would say we could go legitimate, yes, and live above."

"You guys could still be together," said Simon. "You could still feed the poor and have each other, but this war would be over. You'd live in peace, and you'd be free."

"I just don't know," said the commando.

The others didn't know either.

"Okay," said Miriam, "we'll try this approach. But Simon, you know damn well we don't have that kind of cash. Only banks have that kind of money."

"How much can you come up with?" he asked.

"How much does an apartment like ours cost?"

"I would say $100 million."

The entire table sighed. Then they argued.

"Hold on, people," said Miriam, "just hold on."

It was difficult to settle them, but after a few minutes and a few gloomy faces, they continued.

"You'd have to come up with ten percent," said Simon. "The rest a bank would have to finance."

"We could come up with ten million, but first thing's first – the landlord has to be willing to sell."

"And a bank would have to lend us the money," said the commando.

"No one's gonna lend a bunch of militants that kind of money," said another.

"Let me go to the owner," said Simon. "We'll work something out."

"This is a long shot, people," said Miriam. "Be ready regardless."

After the soldiers left the room, Simon and Miriam spoke privately.

"You realize what you've done?" asked the old woman, eyeing him.

"You now have a way out," said Simon.

"More than that. You've given us an alternative. We were all prepared, but now my guard has an idea that we can resolve this peacefully. Tell me, do you think your father will really sell us the building?"

"Honestly, I'm not even sure he'll talk to me."

She held his shoulder with her hand.

"I wish you good luck, Simon, but we are ready to fight. No one is deterred by this."

"Just let me see what I can do, okay?"

"Fine, but not without Salazar."

"Salazar?"

One of the soldiers remained. He stood up, pulled a side arm from his holster and checked the clip.

"He will go with you," said Miriam.

"Why?"

"Well, if you're thinking about running to the police, Salazar will kill you before you get there."

Salazar was just about the meanest sonofabitch Simon ever saw.

Thereafter he returned to the cell and donned his street clothes. The old woman gave him some money for a new suit, as he needed it for a meeting with his father. A couple of guards and Salazar escorted him to street level. They walked through passageways and climbed a few sets of stairs, and they arrived alone in a dark room in the basement of the apartment building. They walked cautiously towards a faint light a few hundred feet away and found the building elevators. The elevators were out of order, so they took the stairs up to his apartment.

Salazar waited outside once he got to his bedroom. Simon immediately opened the window and breathed the cold Manhattan air. He was lucky to have gotten out alive and thanked God for his freedom. He didn't stay in his apartment for long, though. With Salazar at his back he soon knocked on Norris' door. Norris, with his cowboy hat on, greeted him with an ice-cold beer. Simon took it and wiped his forehead with the cold, perspiring bottle. Salazar turned down a beer for himself and waited in the hallway.

"I guess Memphis will have to wait," said Norris with a grin.

"After this is over, I'm definitely getting out of town."

### Chapter Nine

He didn't understand yet why people had to fight over everything. A fire in their eyes wouldn't extinguish, and Miriam, above any one person, fueled that fire with a wavelength of thought that countered the prevailing tide.

Hope didn't work as well as outrage, as hope for a better future for the rebels pacified them into thinking strategically. But if pushed to outrage, which Miriam almost did amongst her army, it would have enabled the killing. He reasoned that it was not enough to be poor in order to kill, steal perhaps, but not enough to kill. A group needed to be outraged in order to kill, and he sensed that these commandos of the underworld were tired of living underground and outraged that others had the luxury of living above ground, and this outrage would lead them into battle and not the hope of living peacefully.

Simon had access to this outrage, this emotional blunder of the human mind. He had been given a good taste of it. He knew what it felt like to hate society and instead love a vague utopian vision in which he won the girl, had money in his pocket, and was respected by his peers. Unfortunately this conflict went beyond his simple utopia, because when that bit of outrage is exploited, it inexorably tears down an entire system of government, an established economy built on years of compromise, and also the communities that have accepted both of these as a way of life. Perhaps there is something to be said for the status quo, he considered. The status quo, he reasoned, was far more preferable to what an ounce of outrage could do. Miriam quelled her followers with hope, but she knew very well how to tap the outrage and make it explode, whereas her opponent, the U.S. government in this case, was trained to defend a system, trained to defend themselves, and lacked the outrage, lacked the adrenaline, lacked the madness it took to pump waves of violence into the trigger-happy fingers of people who had nothing to lose but everything to gain. The rebels had successfully fused their personal outrage with their reasoning, unable to separate them, and he wondered whether a police force that had been tempered and conditioned to separate their emotions and their logic by an above-ground civilization could win the fight. He didn't know.

But this had to end somehow. If it were a mere difference of reasoning, then maybe the two sides could be brought to an understanding based on a common logic. But Miriam had infused emotion into the intellect, emotion into basic cognition, and to separate the two would take a life above ground and not below. It came to a point where he didn't know which side he was on. The threat of conflict split him down the middle, and perhaps that's why Miriam smiled to him at her cabinet meeting. She knew he didn't have the maturity to pick a side, and so she used him, hoping he'd do the right things with his time when they finally let him loose, albeit with Salazar following him.

The ice-cold beer Norris handed him did wonders. He could have kissed the man.

"You really think you'll get away with it," said Simon on the couch.

"I don't know," said Norris, sitting next to him.

"And you'll fight? You don't know, but you'll still fight in her war?"

"It's not just _her_ . It's a fight for our way of life. It's a fight for everything we believe in."

"Was it really that hard – to live as a mixed couple?"

"We never felt at home. Miriam showed us a way out of secrecy. She gave us another world, and yes, Simon, I'd fight for that world."

"You'll fight because you were wronged. What makes you any different?"

"I'll fight for that too. But what I really want - "

"You want what you can't have. Hell, I want what I can't have, and now I have to go back to my father? You'll be killed, don't you understand that? Can't you just accept life the way it is?"

"No, I can't."

"And that's worth dying for – 'no, I fucking can't?'"

Norris didn't respond. Instead he took out his guitar, beat-up and scratched from his many years of strumming it, and sang a tune. It moved Simon to hear a sad song that created emotion out of simplicity, as the song was simple and tragic, reducing doom into a few simple verses. It was amazing how country folk developed an entire philosophy out of morbid circumstances. The song lacked complication as though it knew its own purpose as a song and nothing else. Norris sang about rising water off a river, and in the song, when the water spills over into a man's house, the man is as calm as a grandfather in a rocking chair, the flood washing over his feet. And that's what it felt like – a flood that washed over Simon and slowly sucked him under.

Miriam's movement could not continue, and yet this same movement kept her alive through the floods of time, as though she thrived on the cosmic adversity – the biting off of more than she could chew – and she kept chewing. In some irrational way it was nothing less than heroic, but at the same time it was pointless. The world changes, and we move on, yet she still tethered him to the primordial and shallow battle between hawk and dove, liberal and conservative, war and peace, the haves versus the have-nots. Incredible how past battles are somehow inherited until there is nothing left but pat answers to every question, firm beliefs and ideologies that any imagination could neither reduce nor overcome. Simon didn't know why she fought these old battles. If she could just spend a day above ground, a day in the newly renovated Times Square, for instance, standing in front of the endless electronic ticker tape, the many visual accoutrements that attracted a new tourist element, and not the Times Square that had yet to be conquered by some militancy that offered no substantive plan in its place, maybe Miriam would have ended her mission. She never lived above ground, and he didn't know why she tortured herself, why she thought that another man's poverty was somehow a permanent fixture never to be erased by the beneficent and healing properties of time. She must have lost something or someone back in the trenches before all of this took hold.

He didn't feel comfortable at all returning to his father and that asshole Stewart. Little connected them, and he grew nervous at the thought of approaching these two. He saw the light just then, as Norris attempted to resurrect a cowboy trauma unfamiliar but with which he empathized. He slept well on the couch as Norris sang into the early hours of the morning. Old Norris loved playing, and in his sleep he dreamt of ranches with cattle and men in cowboy hats stalking the earth with steel-tipped boots and lassoes twirling about their heads.

He awoke while Norris and his companion slept in the next room. Salazar still waited outside, wide-awake the entire time. He was a machine that didn't need sleep. He left the apartment with Salazar and caught a train up to Broadway. He had a wad of money in his pocket. Before leaving, he shaved painstakingly. He cleaned his face with alcohol swabs, cleaned his ears, and put on laundered clothes. He still dressed in street clothing, but his showering and shaving morphed him into another person altogether. He even combed his blonde locks, and when he boarded an uptown train, he felt at once at home and on par with the other young starlets on their way to well-paying jobs. He sat on the long, hard turquoise seats, a woman in front of him holding the steel strap above, a leather purse at her side with the New Yorker tucked into it. What a contrast.

He had taken the wrong train from 42ndstreet and ended up by Central Park instead. He figured Salazar had never traveled to this part of town, and he was right. Salazar wouldn't know where to buy a suit, because he never had a need for one. Simon just wanted to sniff the old neighborhood.

He ascended the stairs to the Natural History Museum and the New Planetarium nestled across from brownstone mid-rises. He sucked in the air. What he saw was what he wanted from life – kids with backpacks on a routine field trip, joggers and cyclists on their way into the green of the park. He longed for the feel of them, to associate with them, as when he was a Dalton pupil, and Caitlin at Spence, and he longed just for a touch of what experiences the people on the street took for granted now that they had regular lives and jobs apart from their youth. Perhaps he felt at home within the whiteness and longed to feed on the core of affluence and urbanity that every upper West side family preserved. He wanted the home in the country, the duplex in town, a stable job and a stable marriage just like any other affluent, well-pedigreed man. He missed the ridiculous holiday parties, the ludicrously expensive bottles of red wine, the inanity of pleasant conversation about things so shallow that a man could take a shovel and hit rock bottom without straining a muscle – these were the things he wanted. He never minded standing around a warm fire, his father poking at the wood and talking about a transaction gone awry, Caitlin with her glass of red wine, her fingers moving up the stem of the glass in anticipation of making love to him afterwards. He missed his own culture and the luxuries it afforded, a time of safety, security, learning, and etiquette. He had forgotten these things, and in a sense forgotten his own people and the things that he loved, the things that allowed him to matter.

But a life underground matured him. He understood that in life everyone had their own paths to follow and battles to wage, and instead of the fierce longing he had grown accustomed to, he also understood that it was merely an image of perfection, an image of what life ought to be like and never how it really was. Families didn't get along all the time, not even affluent ones. Of course he had always heard about these counter-intuitive notions, but as he headed back to Times Square station he manifested them for the first time. Sometimes the wealthiest of people and the wealthiest of lives face harsh realities as well, and maybe the struggles of those above ground and below were not too different but alike in that they shared dreams they could never realize, goals they could in no way reach, people or situations over which they had no control. Maybe Miriam had prematurely come to terms with this truth, because to Simon it seemed perfectly obvious. She may have wanted to negotiate, because she knew there was no way out. When push came to shove, despite the wounds inflicted by the world's insensitivity, she did not want to die or lead people to their deaths.

He gradually understood the other side. He understood why she was a radical. They were the have-nots, and oppression, or at least the perception of being an oppressed people, would have led anyone into the hazards of cynicism and ultimately into a fight for the same things others had. But her war lacked practicality, even though it could be justified.

Simon took the shuttle from 42ndstreet to Grand Central, Salazar keeping a watchful distance. He rejoiced in his newfound freedom from the underworld. They then caught a train uptown. He marveled at the passengers on the train, even went so far as to cherish their proximity. His euphoria, however, didn't last very long. His freedom was fleeting, as he had a job to do. He found the clothing store on Fifth Avenue and waltzed right in with Salazar at his back, his weapon loaded under his camouflaged jacket.

He looked himself in a mirror while passing through the woman's section. He had gained plenty of weight, probably from all of those martinis and beers and also a lack of exercise. He needed a larger-sized suit. An attendant with yellow measuring tape over his shoulder waved him into the men's section. Together they determined his size and length. He needed something ready-to-wear. There was no time to have it tailored. Luckily the portly attendant had a coal black two-piece suit of worsted wool in his size. Simon looked in the mirror and with a tie on he saw a completely different person. He looked like a conservative again, even though his mind had been irreversibly transformed. Salazar even thought he looked better than before, although he resented what the business suit represented. He himself browsed through the woolen suits on the rack, impressed as well as disgusted by the luxury of his surroundings. An attendant approached Salazar and asked if he wanted to try something on. Simon sighed with relief when Salazar turned him down with a politesse that skirted an in-store homicide. Simon left the store dressed to perfection, his street clothes in a plastic bag.

On several occasions he thought of running from Salazar, darting into a crowded restaurant if only to escape through the back door. He kept a level head, though. Any false moves would have sent a trigger-happy Salazar into firing his snub-nosed revolver into a crowd, and it wasn't something Simon was prepared to live with. Salazar kept his distance in the crowded subway car, commuters packed in like sailors in a sinking ship, the train careening on the tracks and bodies leaning up against him. The doors opened at the next station, and once again he considered making a break for it. Yet Salazar had steady eyes that captured him like a bear trap, and in no way could he leave without being fired upon. Salazar's smirk from the middle of the car indicated that he knew the exactitude of his escape plans, and he made it a point of sliding his hand into the side of his jacket to make sure Simon kept both feet in reality.

When they arrived at the Fifth Avenue offices of Sample Real Estate, Simon didn't know if his father would receive him after all this time. He hadn't called for an appointment, and even though he looked like a professional, it probably wouldn't get him passed the receptionist. Plus he had Salazar with him, his smirk transmogrifying into a tight-lipped seriousness, and he nervously followed Simon through the penthouse hallway.

Charlie's taste in women didn't change. His receptionist looked like a Las Vegas showgirl. She wasn't hired for her typing skills. The receptionist's position had always been a revolving door, so it didn't surprise him that a woman so gifted in this regard answered the phones. The office was more a hotel room than a place of business, and it appeared she was the only person there. Charlie may have been swimming, taking a sauna, or even exercising.

"I need to see my father," said Simon.

She called a back room and whispered a few things with her hand cupping her mouth.

"I'm sorry," she said finally, "he's in a meeting."

"Tell him that this is an emergency. I'm his son, Simon."

She called and whispered again.

"I'm sorry, but he's in a meeting. He's not available."

It angered him to the point that he went down the hallway anyway with the protesting receptionist and the calculating Salazar in pursuit. He barged into Charlie's office overlooking the Manhattan skyline. Charlie watched the financial news from one of his sofas. He calmly made his way to his desk and picked up the phone, but before he could call security, Salazar towered over him with the snub-nosed revolver aimed right at his head.

"Put down the phone, or I'm gonna blow your mother-fucking head off."

Charlie complied. Salazar then ripped the phone out of the wall and told the receptionist:

"You better sit down too before I throw your cute white ass out the window."

She also complied. Salazar then took a vigilant position in front of the door and handed the ball to Simon who was by this time about to faint. Simon calmly went to the bar closet and poured himself a drink. His eyes watered as he sipped his scotch. Charlie also played it cool despite the circumstances.

"I can't say that it's very good to see you, Simon. What's all this about?"

"I can explain."

"I see you've made new friends since I saw you last."

"Dad, I - "

"You don't have the right to call me 'Dad' or 'Charlie' or anything."

"What am I supposed to call you?"

"Don't call me anything."

"First of all, you have no right to be angrier than I am of you. You have no right to sit there and believe that I wronged you after so much wrong you've done me. Let's make that very clear."

"Just say what you need to say and get out."

"You're unbelievable. You put me out on the street, take away everything, and you dare think that I hurt you? Do you expect me to take you seriously? After all of your corrupt business practices, after shaming me, slandering my good name in front of the eyes of the world, and sentencing me to a life of poverty, you think you're the victim? I ought to have Salazar here pump a few bullets into you, you twisted sonafabitch. I ought to kill you."

Oddly enough, he sensed that his father respected him for wanting to do away with him. He had always been a do-gooder, and the complete reversal of his saintly behaviors proved that there was a bit of Charlie Sample in him after all.

"That's a very nice thought, Simon, but I doubt you have the balls to carry it out. Besides, I am still your father when all's said and done. I never realized you'd come this far."

"You're shit as far as I'm concerned. I really should kill you, but you're right – you're still my father, and you're not worth going to prison for."

"Then what do you want?"

"I want to buy one of your properties. I've got a few investors lined up, and we're willing to buy it for a fair price."

"Which property are you talking about?"

"The slum-town you own by the Bus Terminal."

"I don't recall - "

"It's one of the low-income buildings you plan to convert. It's by the Bus Terminal on Tenth Avenue."

"Oh, yes," remembered Charlie, "that old sorry excuse for an apartment building. Yes, it will be converted, and all of those welfare tenants who never pay their rent on time will be thrown out, you're right about that."

"I don't care what you think of those tenants, but the investors and I would like to purchase the building from you, at the market rate, of course."

"How the hell could you of all people afford to buy that building? You don't have that kind of money."

"That's none of your concern, but we are willing to put down ten percent, and we will be able to finance."

"Who's financing it?"

"Again, it's not your concern, only that you agree to sell us the building."

"Well, if you must know, I'm planning to sell the building to your old pal Stewart. He's been after me night and day for that property. After I clean up the place and the neighborhood around it, I should get a good price. He's raised a lot of money, and I bet he's able to afford twice what you'd offer."

"How do you expect to clean up the area?"

"All of those tenants are out once Briarwood's bill passes. I'm sure you were glad to hear that he won by a landslide. Stewart has about a two year jump on you as far as that property is concerned."

"It amazes me how corrupt you people are. I mean, the fucking nerve of you two."

"Hey, that's how business is done in this world, Simon. You never wanted to accept it, and now look who's the one committing the crime. I'm your father, Simon, and maybe I asked too much of you, but you'll never divorce money and politics. They go hand-in-hand. Money is the basis of politics, not a man's fairy tales and flighty ideals or plans to make the world better. The world is what it is, and it's time you start accepting it."

"You'll never kick the tenants out. And you'll never clean up the area without selling to me. There are laws in this city."

"You're a little out of your league," chuckled Charlie sardonically.

"The tenants will fight."

"Oh, please. They don't have the resources to fight. Against my lawyers and my councilmen? The city is dying to stretch their improvement district to the Bus Terminal."

"They won't fight you with lawyers or courts or elected officials. That's what you don't understand. Who the hell do you think Salazar works for?"

"A gang of low-lives will fight, I take it?"

"I'm asking you again – sell us the building. We'll improve the area with the tenants already living there."

"Once again, Simon, you fall prey to some social ideal. I almost feel sorry for you."

"This is not a social ideal," barked Simon. "Many lives will be lost. I'm warning you!"

Charlie laughed again.

"Y'know, I admire you," laughed Charlie. "Acting on what you believe in is commendable, but Sample Real Estate is not in the charity business. I'm not selling the building to you, and that's final. You'll be lucky if I don't press charges for what you've already done."

Simon took a long, slow sip of his drink. He swallowed with difficulty, the quick inebriation warming his brain.

"Okay, Dad, you won, okay? You beat me. You taught me a good, hard lesson, and I've learned, okay? But I'm you're son no matter what's happened. Can we agree on that?"

Charlie, having secured victory, reclined in his chair.

"You won," continued Simon, "and maybe this whole thing was an entire misunderstanding, and who knows who's to blame. We don't see eye to eye, I guess."

"Oh, Simon, you never admit defeat to your adversaries."

"You're my father for Chrissakes. This conflict between us is not a good thing."

"Will you let me and my receptionist go now?"

Simon almost forgot about her. She sat cross-legged on the sofa behind him.

"Not without the building," said Simon. "I know we've had our differences, but I need the building. I'm asking you for this as a son. If you consider me as anything you'll grant what I ask for."

"I'm sorry," Charlie said finally, "but business is business. The sooner you learn that the better."

### Chapter Ten

Preparations for war are never easy, but preparations do take place before a battle, and not during or after. Some would say that whole campaigns are won or lost before anyone in their right mind fires a shot. Simon understood that he was the last hope of preventing a war, and he never thought he could fail, but he did. Salazar followed him after he left his father's penthouse, and suddenly it was war, a war between bipolar worlds, among agreements and disagreements, as though each side knew already what was to be won and what was to be lost, and it sickened him that after all these years they already knew the battle, already knew the issues, already knew the context of argument, and moved forward on their own accord regardless of himself. He was, after all, a good man. He wanted no part of it.

He didn't know how he would repair the relationship with his father, or if it were even possible to repair it. The way Charlie dismissed him from the penthouse suggested that Simon had been relegated to his memories and was in no way a part of his future or his real estate fortune.

The fortune didn't matter as much as the loss of love between them. He could tell by the tone of his voice that he didn't want to see him again, and any love they had shared didn't exist anymore. He considered himself disowned, and the entire fiasco with Salazar holding them up at gunpoint served as their final meeting. He couldn't imagine his life without his father, and he grieved a little after they left. Yet he remained confident that they would cross paths at some later date, in the not-so-distant future. And the hope of someday meeting Charlie again prevented him from sobbing like the lonely and frightened child who had lost his way under ground, only that underground was the concrete jungle of New York and Salazar with the gun pointed at his back his only remaining motivation to return.

Salazar followed him through the subway system, the gun tucked in his jacket. Had Simon wandered astray, Salazar would have shot him without question. The westbound shuttle arrived at a crowded platform, and Salazar followed him into the subway car and eyed him from a distance. Simon moved down the subway car in the hopes of running from him, but Salazar followed just a few paces away, the gun at his side cocked and ready. Salazar caught up to him and cornered him in the subway car. Had Simon slipped through the sliding doors Salazar would have fired.

Simon remained cornered, obeying his command. How badly he wanted to escape, but he didn't want to die. He had rediscovered the world, and, despite all of its abnormalities, he still wanted to live. Yes, it was about money and power, and it turned men to stone, but he didn't want to die. He would accept the imperfections of his life and move on. At gunpoint these things became clear.

Salazar eventually brought him to the Bus Terminal and into the hands of Miriam who stood upon the stage within the underground auditorium. The masses hung on her faint but venerable words. The air loomed hot and wet. A matchstick would have melted, and a fire would have devoured the place, an interchange of heat and humidity that made him sweat and yearn for an open fire hydrant above ground. He figured she indoctrinated everyone in the same manner, ripping them from their known lives and relocating them within her own sordid paradigm of what people ought to be doing and ought to be thinking. God bless her then, because Simon realized that most people, when it came down to it, didn't know what to do or what to think. She alone had every hypothetical covered within the web she spun, and after a time sitting and watching Salazar from the corner of his eye, Simon listened to what the woman had to say. Salazar gave Miriam hand signals from his seat. After the crowd settled, he felt like yelling into the silence. In no way could he prevent her preparations.

"Those of you in doubt at this time are welcomed to leave," she said. "I grant you amnesty. Leave now and avoid what's to come, for we have tried to get along. We have kept quiet, done our work, and tried, really tried to make peace with the outer world. To those of you who needed clothes, we have clothed you. To those of you who were hungry, we have fed you. To those of you who needed shelter, we protected you. And our own world is different, isn't it? It is unlike any other world. We think differently now that we have been counted for naught. We have been wronged, and so our reasoning has changed. We adapt in ways that are unique, and I say that we who gather here have a novelty of reasoning and a gift of personality that is in no way compatible with the world above. But I alone cannot tell you what you should do. You are all indecisive at this juncture for a reason, aren't you? One way leads towards compliance, and the other towards rebellion, and it is understandable that you feel this way. I am no different.

"I am a woman who thinks, and so I must choose amongst a variety of thoughts and opinions shaped nonetheless by our newfound rationality and experience.

"Well, this is where we have ended up. We have all thought the matter through, and despite the world of opportunity above, we have refused it and opted instead for another, separate world. No longer will we compromise, because the moment we bend is the moment we allow them to dictate our fate. It is the moment we die. Fighting for our lives is much better than death, and believe me, we have tried to find a reasonable solution.

"We have negotiated with the oppressive power above, and we have searched for a common compromise. We just learned that they don't want to compromise. They won't let us buy our own building. The won't listen to our pleas for a space above ground where we could finally live at peace and legitimacy, and they won't listen to our reasonableness. Instead they use muscle and selfishness to get what they want, whereas our society is based on altruism and good will. This is what separates us from them, and the divide is too wide to bridge. Not only do they profit from the suffering of our tenants, they also humiliate us in our impoverished condition. What they call freedom, we call inequality, because we already know that freedom is reserved for those who are able to afford it, those who own the means of production, those who already hold the cards and deal losing hands if only to win the game. It makes me sick to my stomach that this corruption has infiltrated their government, that an elitism fuels their media, and that we in the pit of despair have to fight to get what is rightfully ours. And fighting is the only option. Fighting is our only salvation..."

She talked in the same vein for a good hour, casting a spell over the audience. She rallied them with her rhetoric, as all of them were ready to refuse Sample Real Estate its rent, barricade themselves within their respective apartments, and kill anyone who tried to enter.

In her new world they would be given apartments and not have to worry about paying rent. In her new world they wouldn't have to worry about food and clothing, and with her words she forged heavenly dreams into plans for a more equitable reality.

With Salazar next to him, his hand still tucked into his jacket, Simon couldn't escape her insanity. What she promised she could in no way deliver, her vision a fantastic mirage that hid a need for absolute control and power, which, if unchecked, would have resulted in a dangerous dictatorship and a ghastly atrocity in order to capture what couldn't be captured. He discovered that her world was a paradise that he would never want to live in. It relied on the idea of happiness while excluding its pursuit, an ideal that neglected what was actually possible.

She ended her speech, and the audience roared in approval. She certainly had a way with words, but her words didn't sway him. Salazar nudged him in the back with the gun, and Simon exited the darkness of the auditorium and landed back in the prison cell. In her speech she said anyone could leave, but apparently this didn't apply to him.

He paced the cell, wondering when she'd release him. After his mind grew tired of thinking, he fell asleep on the bed, the lights shining into him.

She startled him out of a restless sleep. She sat in a chair next to the bed, her thin lips curved into a mocking, menacing smile.

"I suppose it's time to find out if you're with us or against us."

"I'm of no value to you. I don't understand why you insist on keeping me here."

"You can't leave. You already know too much. You know how we finance our operations. You know we are taking the apartment building by force. And you know beforehand that many lives will be lost. I can't just let you leave."

"I want to go home. I can't stay here like this."

"You are home, Simon. Where else do you have to go?"

She had a point, and it scared him.

"If you let me leave, I won't tell the police. I'll walk away and leave town. I won't return."

"We both know that that won't happen. Your integrity led you here, and your integrity will lead you right to the nearest police precinct. Don't try to outsmart me."

"I'm not trying to outsmart anyone. You have no right."

"Bringing you down here, you mean?"

"Yes. You have no right."

"But you've been given something remarkable. You now know how superficial and corrupt your society can be. You understand what it means to be treated unfairly, to be hated, to be shunned by your father and your peers. You know what it's like to lose everything due to the selfishness and inhumanity of others. As I see it, you can either return to that society or help build a new one here with us. Even if you wanted to return, you couldn't, because it's not in you to be selfish or inhuman, because that's what they thrive on. That's all they have, and the greediest win. It's a very simple game up there."

Maybe Miriam cared for him more than anyone else did. He had a strange need to be sheltered by her, her soft voice healing him.

"You don't belong up there," she said. "You belong where your talents are appreciated. You're an intelligent man, and above all else, you're a good person, and that's what we're trying to preserve in our people – the innocence and the goodness, and we'll fight to preserve it, fight for the right to galvanize a new world from it. Our aim is not to conquer. We're only defending what is rightfully ours, and it starts with the apartment building."

"I don't know," he said. "I don't know what to believe any more. I see the horror, and I'm not sure what's right or wrong any more. I'm not sure where I'll end up. I want what most people want, but I have no idea how to get it. I'm no longer myself. A world based solely on integrity can be as murderous as a world of materials and wealth. I just don't know any more."

"But admit to yourself that you'd prefer a better world, a place where you'd be rewarded for the strength of your conscience."

"I'm tired," said Simon, "sick and tired of struggling all the time."

"I know you are, but we must fight. It's the only way. I promise you that you will have a prominent place in our history. I'm offering you real leadership, and I want you to take my place after I die."

"What?"

"I want you to lead a new generation of those who have been shredded by the gears of the cruel and inhuman machine."

"But why?"

"You are here for a reason, and my health is failing, I can feel it. I need someone who understands both sides – someone with integrity and intelligence. Someone like you."

"Why me? Why not a member of your guard? Why not someone who has lived down here?"

"Because you will always have the ability to negotiate with the forces that oppose us."

"But I failed."

"No. Your father failed you. He is the failure, not you. After this battle is fought, we will need to rebuild. We'll make a dent, but as far as sustaining our offensive, we need many more soldiers and much more ammunition."

"So you know we'll lose."

"We'll make a dent. People will know about us and know that we're a threat. After the dust settles we will need to reorganize. We'll need to recruit more people. The point is that this is just one battle in a string of more to come."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

She folded her hands in her lap and sighed. She stared into the ground and said:

"There's still so much of your father in you. He colonizes your body like a virus."

"Is that so? This coming from a woman who's about to kill hundreds of New York City police officers. This from a woman who thinks she can just take over an apartment building and live happily ever after. Maybe you're the virus in this city. Maybe you're the one who'll promise the people the world and then vanish when the going gets tough."

"I promised them a better life where they wouldn't have to worry about their own survival. Above ground they offer no reasonable solution for this problem of survival – things like food, shelter, and clothing could all be provided if we can admit to ourselves that resources are plentiful and not scarce. It's the human animal that has been trained to horde these resources and the government's use of violence to obtain these resources, not for the good of mankind, but for the corporation, which in turn makes the stratified classes beneath them work for the basic necessities. I presented my people with the idea that we can distribute our resources evenly by the labor we collectively produce."

"Yes, and that type of system has already collapsed," said Simon. "You offer a world that no longer exists, and when it did exist, it was far from ideal. This is a good country, Miriam, and even though it's harsh and unrelenting we develop through it and evolve and resolve problems through teamwork and also individual achievement. You may have promised them heaven, but damn it, it's an old and unfeasible version of it. My father represents the extreme version of it. He is heartless and cruel, but he certainly didn't colonize my body."

"I tried to contact you, but your father – he wouldn't let me see you."

"You left us," he said. "You left us, because you wanted what you couldn't have, something that no one on this earth could have, and you wanted it, so you went after it, and left me there."

"Oh, Simon, that's not true."

"Hell if it isn't!"

"I was captured, Simon. It captured my mind and did horrible things. I couldn't defend myself. There's so much you need to learn, so much I want to show you."

"You left us, and now you've ruined my life, and for what? So you could show me this underground shithole? To prove you're more powerful than Sample Real Estate?"

"I'm sorry."

"That doesn't make up for all those years. I'm a misfit now. I'm a freak!"

"I know you're angry. I wanted to see you just once, just to touch your face before this entire fiasco ends. I never meant to leave you. All of this is for you. These are your people, those are your guns, this is your operation, your revolution. You've seen the divide for the very first time, and that's why we fight. It's in your heart to resist. You were born to resist."

"You have no idea," he said as he wiped away his tears.

"I can't make up for what was lost," she said, "but I can sure as hell bequeath what has taken many years to build. It is you who will rise up, you who will lead."

"It's a death sentence, goddamnit. We have no chance. We have five hundred, and they have thousands at their disposal. I'm not willing to lose my life. I'm not willing to kill anyone. I'm not willing to use violence to accomplish things. Y'know, after all this time of bemoaning my fate and longing for the riches I once had, I just want to live a normal fucking life for once."

She stared into space for a moment and then returned. This was common in her, and he wondered if her imagination had forced its way into her cognition and notions of what was rational. She smiled with her pale blue eyes. Another personality won the competition among a variety of them.

"It's too late," she said. "My guard occupies the building as we speak."

"I want no part of it," he said, gritting his teeth. "I'd rather enjoy my life. I'd rather live, not die. I'd rather get along. I'll walk a tightrope between the two poles if I have to, but no one fires a shot. No one has to die."

"I can't just call the whole thing off. My people are ready to die."

"You can stop them. Only you can call it off. You're their leader. One word from you and all that bitterness and hatred towards society can be over."

"What do you expect me to do?" she asked.

"If you really want a better society, you'll tell your commandos to return their weapons to the armory. Too many people have already died this year."

He didn't know if she'd agree with him or not. The hot lights above radiated upon his shoulders like hot suns at midday. A trail of sweat and tears trickled down his cheek. The room should have had a clock. He had little idea what time it was – if he should be sleepy or wide awake. Miriam sat across from him in a trance. She too fought chronic indecision.

"They say a stitch in time saves nine."

"There's no justification for fighting," he said. "They wronged you, and we have to bigger than that. Eventually corruption will catch up to Briarwood. The people find out one way or the other, but for Godsakes we can't kill over it. Then we become worse than they are, and I don't want blood on my hands. I don't want to go to prison. Living well is the best revenge, not war."

She covered her face with her hands and wept the slow tears of an old and broken woman. He stood next to her and lay his warm hand upon her shoulder. He hated to see her cry. Tears didn't suit her. She was strong and powerful but with a renewed understanding of her intransigence. Her tears signified an end to her reign and thus an end to the direction of her movement. Miriam had finally found her son, and she realized that's all she ever wanted in the first place. Her movement reflected years of bereavement and an infirmity of mind.

His warm hands embraced her frail body. Her many years of loss, frustration, neglect, and bitterness poured onto his shoulder. For the first time in his history Simon hugged his mother and found her again.

### Chapter Eleven

Her guard of solid African-Americans wearing faded fatigues implored her to continue with the battle. The others around the table simply listened and waited for a consensus. Her guard was prepared to confront the vast armies of the government until they themselves were killed in battle for a cause more righteous. Over the years Miriam led them into the belief that they should sacrifice their lives for the cause, and that war with the outer world would forever exist until her people conquered those above and formed what she called 'a world more favorable.' Her advisors wanted to continue, but Miriam convinced them that it was time to get along with society if only to prevent a bloodbath. She used her son's reasoning, as though a part of her mind saved it and trapped it in a corner for decades only to be release it like a flood upon her followers. It took several hours in the underground situation room to convince them. They doubted her leadership as a result. Although they agreed not to overtake the apartment building, they decided, in the end, to remove her from her position of leadership.

On the next day, her advisors gave the order to reclaim all of the arms distributed to the tenants and store them in the armory under tight security. They continued to guard the many pounds of heroin for their clients if only to sustain revenue, feed the hungry, help the tenants with their rent, support political candidates, and indoctrinate the alienated with their underground way of life. But there would no longer be a war due to Miriam's cancellation of it. Not a shot had been fired, and even though she so badly wanted to make a statement that would ultimately derail the machine and force the government to rethink how it dealt with the poor, she acquiesced and resigned honorably.

They chose a young African-American guardsman to replace her, and he vowed to concentrate on revenue instead of augmenting a final solution. That had been Miriam's flaw during her leadership – she thought of war as the only answer after years of stockpiling weapons and safeguarding dope, and once the audience heard the young man speak, they were surprised how far astray Miriam had led them. It was time for a change, and the new leader spoke to the masses in the underground auditorium, packed to the hilt with those forever associated with the movement.

The new leader, wearing a black beret and fatigues, lauded Miriam for her leadership and for founding the underground bunker back in the 1970's. He praised her work and above all her brilliance in organizing and empowering those who fell through the cracks, himself in particular who had been rescued from poverty and had lived in the underground bunker for most of his life. Simon thought the new leader a little too young until he arrived at the meat of his speech – a resounding call to learn from the past and not to relive it. It became the beauty of evolution, the transference of power from an older generation to a younger one, and ultimately it prevented a major conflict from taking place, which is the art of politics apart from its science. The young man was ready to lead after all, and after his speech the crowd accepted his vision of stability instead of giving in to their most dangerous and bellicose impulses.

Sitting in the audience next to his mother, Simon noticed that a lot of them were disappointed. They had prepared for a fight only to fold on the brink of it. He likened it to a man on death row who gets a stay of execution before they throw the switch.

"Not bad," she said to Simon during the applause.

"A little like you were, I take it."

"Yes. I wanted the same things."

"What's next?"

"I stay down here for at least a couple of months as I break our new leader in, and you have a job waiting for you, if you want it."

"Hanging out with Norris doesn't pay very much. I think I'll start living above ground again."

"What if I can offer you both – above ground living but staying close to us as well? A decent, living wage too."

"Doing what?"

"A cashier at one of our ticket counters. Many of our people have taken jobs upstairs in the bus terminal. You'd be close to me. You can stay in your apartment, and after a year or so, we'll see."

In the darkness of the auditorium Simon didn't know where he was heading. The spotlight over the stage where the new leader spoke illuminated a slice of audience whose ovation was both surreal and necessary, his mother with wet eyes clapping with them, and for the first time Simon felt that his integrity had a purpose after all. Of course, one couldn't use it all the time, but integrity had its time and place and loomed as an entity beyond him that he could use with caution and with care but not exclusively and continuously. He would ultimately think twice before being so stubborn and uncompromising, and instead use it whenever it didn't interfere with his own happiness and discard it if it provoked conflict and violence, and not harmony. He figured that integrity can build bridges to new worlds if its rigidity didn't destroy old ones.

### Chapter Twelve

Simon never liked the Bus Terminal much. It sits on Eighth Avenue around Fortieth street, and there's nothing in there that doesn't remind a traveler that he's in a bus terminal. It's the type of building that was meant to serve that one particular purpose. It sort of stands there, this behemoth of a building meant for buses. Simon worked below ground, down where the people from the subways vacated the hot underground and hit the cool once they passed through a wall of glass doors. Simon found those doors difficult contraptions. One or two were open, and the rest of them closed, not locked, but closed, and when a crowd rushed through them he always ended up holding the door open for a few seconds more than he liked, or when he faced an oncoming commuter, he wondered: 'who's going to get through this door first?'

He worked the night shift at the Greyhound ticket counter. He rang up bus tickets to every domestic location imaginable: New Mexico, California, upstate New York, down South, you name it, but he also eyed the clock. He was one of those clock-watchers who couldn't wait for the supervisor to set him free after the dull night's shift.

'It's almost time,' thought Simon, punching the keypad.

And out of the machine came an ugly looking ticket with letters and numbers on it a mile long. He never knew why the ticket itself had to be so complicated, but people didn't ride the buses as much as they used to. Nowadays they took the plane, and the bus was reduced to this artifact from the Depression era or from the Civil Rights days. Although the ticketing system was a little outdated, the computers old, and the lines not as long as they used to be, the passengers waiting online still had a dreamy look in their eyes, as though they could better their lives in some other place. Or sometimes they arrived at the counter a little sad that they couldn't make it in the Big City. And so they purchased a ticket back to Ohio or some territory away from the fast life - back to the ranch, you could say.

Simon had seen about every type of passenger – young and old, white and black, women, men, and some who were questionable. It just seemed a little strange that he couldn't join them on their journey, and he wanted to be on the other end of the counter someday, buying a ticket to the promised land or the easy life where one didn't have to pull twelve hour shifts or get roped in for weekend work. He even envied the retired crowd. They had youth in their veins, a certain sparkle that said 'Yep, I'm getting the hell out of here and going some place better, because I'm older.' Everything ran smoothly, though, especially for a weekday night.

It approached one in the morning, and in an hour or two, he'd go upstairs, out into the cool air and back to his apartment. He lived a couple blocks west of the terminal in a shoddy apartment building that had seen better times. Yes, the night ran smoothly until one particular customer came up to the counter and said:

"A ticket to Memphis, please."

She was the handsome African-American woman, slightly older and dressed on the fashionable side.

"One way or round trip?" asked Simon.

"One way," she said.

"But you don't have any baggage."

"You know the deal. I just want a ticket to Memphis, and please hurry up. I don't want to miss the bus."

"But the bus doesn't leave for another hour. You have plenty of time."

"Listen, Simon," she said, "don't be difficult. Not tonight."

Simon wore a nametag. His customers used his first name too, especially when they got upset.

"But how can you go to Memphis," he asked the woman. "You have no baggage, and it's the middle of the night. There's no rush. There's really no rush at all. You can't jump on a bus like that without any baggage."

"I didn't come here to argue. Just do your job and give me a ticket to Memphis, alright?"

Simon always did his duty when push came to shove. He punched up the ticket. The printer made a loud, rackety noise. He put the ticket in an envelope and slid it across the divider.

"That's one hundred and fifty-five dollars," he said.

She put cash on the counter and went downstairs to where the buses gathered and people stood on line for out-of-state destinations or waited for hours for a bus to Jersey. But she left her ticket at the counter. The ticket sat there like it ought to be crumpled up and thrown away. Simon thought it a shame that tickets to Memphis are always wasted – one hundred and fifty-five bucks of riding pleasure thrown away.

The next customer came up and noticed the extra ticket there. He was a young guy, a little shy and innocent-looking. He had short brown hair and wore a knapsack over his shoulder. He wore shorts and a tee shirt bearing the name of a liquor company. He looked serious too, not about getting his own ticket, mind you, but more about chasing after the young African-American beauty who hurried downstairs without it.

"She left her ticket here," said the kid to Simon.

"Don't worry about her. Where are you going this time of night?"

"A ticket to Memphis, please."

"One way or round trip?"

"Listen," said the kid," lemme just run down there and give her the ticket. I'll be back in a minute."

"No," said Simon.

"No?"

"Why don't you open it first," pointing to the ticket already there.

"I'll run down there first. It'll only take a minute."

"Why don't you open the envelope she left behind?"

The kid opened it and discovered a free ticket to Memphis inside.

"So now you have two tickets to Memphis," said Simon. "The question becomes: do you pocket the ticket and run out of here, or do you do the honest thing and run downstairs and return the ticket to the good-looking woman, and pay for your own."

"The honest thing," said the kid angrily.

"Of course. Of course you do the honest thing. Everyone always has to do the honest thing. There's no in between anymore, just the honest thing, huh? Don't you know where the honest guy ends up? He ends up in the dumpster out back, that's where he ends up. He sucks on his whiskey bottle and warms his hands over a barrel, you know that? I think you should seriously consider if doing the honest thing is in your best interests, because when people do the honest thing, they get punished for it, and believe me, the punishment is long, slow, cold, and hard."

By this time Simon's supervisor at the far end of the counter overheard their conversation. He rushed to the scene like an ambulance, poised and ready to handle the emergency. The supervisor had taken kindly to Simon. He was a friend of the same generation, only a bit more level-headed. He tapped Simon on the shoulder.

"Uh, Simon, mind if I had a word with you for a minute?"

"Get this: another honest person in our midst. Well, Mr. Honesty, say hello to the supervisor of this racket. You can call him 'supervisor,' but I like to call him 'Oh Mighty Facilitator Of Honesty,' spreading honesty throughout the world, because you know my doe-eyed little friend, we got here long before you did."

"Just settle down," said the supervisor in a bedside manner.

"Settle down? I am settled down. I've been living in the bowels of this factory for far too long, and do you know why? Because I had to be honest, just like this kid here."

"I can always come back another time," said the kid, wondering what the fuss was about.

"Look at that," said Simon. "He's not only honest, but he has the decency to ask if he can come back later. What an honest kid we have on our hands."

"Listen," said the supervisor to Simon, "why don't you go upstairs and get a drink, okay? It's been a long night, and you've had your share of passengers. Go upstairs and have a drink, okay? It'll relax you."

"I just don't know what we're doing anymore," said Simon. "I really don't know if a ride to Memphis will do anybody any good. It has gone on long enough, and nothing good comes of it."

"Simon, let me handle this, okay? Look at yourself. Your uniform is all wrinkled, and you didn't shave today, and right now you need a break. Take the rest of the night off. Go on now."

Simon sighed like someone who had gone through years of work only to get laid off. The supervisor was right. He was always right. Simon took a last look at the kid and said sadly:

"Yeah, do the honest thing, kid. Pay for your own ticket and run downstairs. The woman's at the gate."

He then unpinned his name tag, pulled off his clip-on tie, and got on his way. It was the silent retreat horses take when they're taken out to pasture. Simon had many more years, though. Just thirty years old, and he was too sluggish to move, too tired to walk to the other side of the terminal and take an escalator up another flight to the bar near a set of gates.

He got to the bar eventually. He took it slow. He stopped by the newsstand and bid a good evening to the Indian proprietor. They called him Roger, but it was the Americanized version of Raj. The man came from Banglore. He was busy stacking newspapers. Simon didn't bother him, just looked at all the colorful magazines with half-naked women on them. He had gotten used to looking at one magazine to the other, using stealth, as people would think him a pervert for gawking too long. He looked at the pretty faces and the slim bodies.

It was close to two in the morning, and the bar was empty. The bartender wiped down the tables with a soft cloth. The bartender traveled all the way from the Bronx to serve drinks to a bunch of unknown travelers in Manhattan. Simon thought him a little on the heavy side, but he grayed around the temples too. Old age and weight gain went hand-in-hand sometimes. Simon liked beer, even on the job some nights. He took a seat in front of him.

"Well, if it isn't the professor! What'll it be?"

"Why do you insist on calling me that?" asked Simon.

"You don't look too good. Long night?"

"You can say that. I've had enough of this shit."

"Enough, huh?"

"Yeah. I'm just about done with this whole charade."

"It's not exactly a charade. You know that better than I do."

"Whatever it is, I'm getting pretty tired of it."

"Wha? And go back to the rat race? Forget about it. You belong here, with us, so spare me the attitude and let me pour you a drink, huh?"

"Only if you'll respect me in the morning."

"It's already morning," as he put a beer in front of him.

The bartender went back to what he was doing, leaving Simon with time to sit and think. But his thinking didn't get that far, considering the woman who walked into the place. She took Simon by surprise, and the bartender even let out a slow whistle. The bartender went for the thickly accented women of the outer-boroughs, but this woman fit Simon's tastes quite nicely.

She took a seat a few stools down and ordered red wine. Simon thought it odd that a woman in the middle of the night would order an elegant drink in the shittiest bar that side of the city. Also, the buses didn't depart too frequently at night. She must have been traveling out of state. She had blonde hair and blonde skin. Simon liked that. She tied her frizzy hair in the back with a scrunchy. Her tee shirt boasted a hotel in Martha's Vineyard. She was definitely out of college, it seemed, but a little green when it came to her future plans, he figured. She wore dark sunglasses at a bar that was already dark. She smiled while ordering the wine. Simon checked if she had a ring on. She didn't, just soft, slim fingers and manicured nails, the kind that glistened under dull track lighting. When she smiled her teeth gleamed, and when she talked, her diction rolled smoothly from her tongue and shrouded her in sophistication.

For a moment it didn't seem possible that a woman of her sort would buy a drink there. It was, after all, an old man's bar. The patrons were members of the movement. They worked in the building selling tickets or cleaning, or they were contractors hired to fix potholes in the bus tunnels or clear blocked air vents. She looked out of place, and Simon gazed at her with curiosity but also resentment. Her appearance had something to do with this resentment, but that wasn't the whole story. True, he didn't know the girl, and he did pigeon-hole her into a type, like a debutante or a daddy's girl from the upper West side or even the upper East side where all the preppy kids hung out, but Simon had gone to college too. Things had changed. He now had love-handles, a pot belly, and a bit of a double chin. His wardrobe was the shirt on his back, and even that the bus lines gave him. Through her he saw what he looked like – a little old and washed up, thinning hair, a little liquored up as well, and kind of greasy. He didn't think he'd ever fall that far down the ladder so quickly, but Simon fell the hard way. The woman at the bar took care of herself, and he missed women like that. Simon knew the world she came from.

He wanted it back. Of course he didn't know this woman at all. Nor did they ever meet. They've never seen each other before, but somehow he knew of her.

He had an urge to say something smart, but years had flown by. The woman reminded him of someone he used to know, and it kept him sitting there and drinking. He couldn't get over how alike they looked: the skin the same, the clothing the same, the look of a daddy's girl the same. She was out of his past, and at the oddest moments the past comes full circle. It reached out, grabbed him by the collar, and pulled him in. He thought a chemical in the brain triggered it, but in no way could he explain it. He could have left the bar, but he sat there watching the woman from the corner of his eye.

He resented the woman he once knew. It was a long time ago. A different feeling it was back then, different colors, a different geometry – a tight, boxed-in life that would have sufficed had he listened to the advice of others. He should have listened. He was much better off back then.

'Live and let live,' he thought as he eyed the young woman at the bar, sipping her red wine. She looked like Caitlin, but after a heavy dose of thought he didn't miss his former life so much. He had been working the ticket counter for several months and moved with Time instead of fighting its current. Sometimes the arms and legs tire, and lucky for him, Time didn't drown him but carried him into a strange new reality.

"I hear you're a little down these days," said a voice behind him.

Simon hadn't seen Miriam since her resignation. She wore a white, cable-knit sweater and black slacks. A smile beamed from her teeth and in contrast to the way she looked in the bunker, she was a completely different woman – her white hair combed back and her once chlorine eyes now bluer, cleaner, and wider, her skin radiant. She even wore makeup which was quite a departure from her old and severe visage.

"I don't get up here too much," she said, sitting next to him. "You still miss her, don't you?"

"No. I'm just reminiscing, that's all."

"It hasn't been easy for you, I know. I wanted to tell you that I'm moving into the apartment building. I'm above ground for the first time in twenty-five years."

"That's great, really. Congratulations. The changing of the guard worked out well."

"He plans to raise a lot of money, this kid. Anyway, I just wanted to stay goodbye."

"Goodbye? I don't understand."

"Simon, I'm at the end of my life, and for once I'm not fighting anymore. There are so many worlds I haven't seen and so much more I want to learn about this one. I fought the hard battles, but somehow it never prepared me for this newfound sense of – oh, what do I call it?"

"Freedom?"

"Yes. That sounds just about right. It's so different being out in all this open space, all these people. I had no idea there were so many of them."

"A lot has changed since you last came up here. I was hoping we could, well, experience it together for a change."

She placed her fragile hand on his.

"You're still so young. You have the rest of your life ahead of you. You now understand what it's like for our people, and that's the most I can ever ask of you. But I must say goodbye."

"But I'm not going anywhere."

She handed him an envelope. He opened it. It was a ticket to Memphis.

He laughed and gave it back.

"What's the point? I don't know anyone in Memphis. What the hell am I going to do down there?"

"Take the ticket, Simon. I can't keep you here if your heart wants to leave. We all move on. Even me."

He thought about it for a moment or two. Starting over wouldn't be easy for him, but beginnings, he guessed, are much better than endings. Maybe he could build a new life in Memphis.

"If you need me, I'll be here," she said.

"What about Norris and his girlfriend? Don't they want to go too?" he asked.

"They're waiting for you at the gate."

He took the ticket, kissed his mother, and walked to the gate where Norris and his companion waited for him with bags packed. They departed on an early morning bus and headed out on a blank interstate, chasing down their most guarded dreams.

### About the Author

Harvey Havel is a short-story writer and novelist. He is formerly a writing instructor at Bergen Community College in Paramus, New Jersey. He also taught writing and literature at the College of St. Rose in Albany as well as SUNY Albany.

Copies of his books and short stories may be purchased at most of the major online book retailers.

