Release Me (Stark Trilogy, #1)(149)

He held a pen in his hand—a big-barreled fountain pen—and he spun it and rolled it between his fingers. He knew she thought he was an idiot. Somehow she looked down her nose at him even when seated. And she explained policies and probabilities with the voice of a kindergarten teacher speaking to a special student, telling him China had 20 percent of the world’s population, but only 7 percent of the arable land, their population outpacing their ability to be self-sustainable with grain production. The Chinese have bailed out Bank of America and Northwestern Mutual. Now they are ramping up their efforts at offshore land acquisition. They have purchased thousands of hectares in Africa and now want to do the same in the U.S. “Don’t allow it,” she said. “Enforce restrictions.” And, on top of that, he needed to put forth a conservation act that would stop suburban sprawl and preserve that land. With fuel costs out of control, locally grown food was no longer a luxury; it was a necessity.

He nodded and smiled and somehow carried on a reasonable conversation with her even though he was about to propose to Congress a revision of the Foreign Investment and National Security Act of 2007 that would lessen oversight on mergers, acquisitions, and takeovers in its specific support of offshore land acquisition by foreign agricultural companies and even though he could only think about what her pearl earring would taste like if he took her ear into his mouth.

The pen spun over and under his fingers—from his thumb to his pinky and back again—and he said, “Thank you. Thank you very much.”

They needed the bailout—he didn’t know what else to do—with an acre of Iowa farmland up to twenty thousand dollars—and he needed to get laid—he could not think about anything else—even days later, during an autoworkers and union leaders rally in Dearborn, Michigan, when he tells the crowd about his 447-billion-dollar jobs package, about fast-tracking economy-boosting initiatives, rolling out infrastructure projects and cutting payroll taxes and social security taxes, taxing capital gains, limiting deductions for the wealthy, and while he speaks, he can only concentrate on the redheaded woman in the front row wearing the Harley-Davidson tank top, so that afterward, when she emerges from the crush of photographers and hand shakers, he allows her to get closer than the Secret Service agents permit, her hand around his neck, her mouth at his ear.

Buffalo has followed him to Michigan. They have three more stops over the next two days in Flint and Ann Arbor and Kalamazoo. In the limo, after the rally, Buffalo clicks on an overhead light and snaps open a copy of the Wall Street Journal and from behind it asks, “What did that woman say to you?”

Chase unstrangles his tie and unbuttons his long-sleeve and tosses them aside. He wears an old white T-shirt with deodorant-stained pits and a hole torn in the belly. Once he arrived in D.C., his wardrobe was no longer his own, his closet and bureau stuffed with pinned shirts and neatly folded triangles of underwear. He hasn’t worn his old clothes for a long time, until now, and the smell of the shirt, of mildewy sweat, reminds him of the breath of some deep, dark place. He likes it.

“She said I was a fool. She said I was a wayward knight. She said I was Don Quixote. She said all it took was somebody to appeal to my elevated sense of worth and importance and I would do whatever they told me to do even if that meant spearing windmills and calling them dragons. That was what she said.”

The pages of the newspaper wither into a crumpled mess. “You just stood there? That whole time? And let her say that to you?”

“Well, to tell you the truth, it was sort of an interesting insult, so I thought I’d stick around to see how it ended.”

“How did it end?”

The rally took place at the Ford Motor Company headquarters and the limo and the police escort leave its gates now and pass through the throng of protesters outside. Their screams can be heard through the windows and over the hiss of the air-conditioning. They make their hands into fists and their mouths into toothy ovals. Their signs read IMPEACH WILLIAMS and THE DEATH OF AMERICA. A noosed doll in a blue suit dangles from a streetlamp.

Chase feels that old familiar anger uncoiling inside him. He wants to kick open the door, break their signs over his knee, piss in their mouths. Instead, he puts his hand on the door as if it needs holding shut and snaps off a line at Buffalo: “She said I could be my own man if only I cut loose that fat leech attached to my ass.”

Now they are past the protesters and cruising the empty, pitted streets of Dearborn, the sky as gray as the concrete stacked all around him. When Chase looks from the window to Buffalo, he sees that his adviser’s eyes have narrowed into slits, his mouth into a white puckered ring. “I see.”

Chase’s anger fades all at once, as if he were a house whose pipes have emptied of hot water. The sight of Buffalo shrinking away from him is too much. His old friend. Maybe his only friend, who is only trying to help.

This past week, it has been difficult to keep calm, to control his pulse, his adrenaline. He nearly crushed a ringing phone with his fist. He nearly knocked over his chair and ripped off his clothes and leapt out a window during a briefing. He nearly pressed one of the interns up against the wall when he saw the way she fit into her skirt. He looks now from the stop sign on the corner to the smudge on his shoe to a fly battering the window to the brown sphere of Buffalo’s eye. He is studying Chase.

Ever since he flushed the Volpexx, Chase has worried his secret would glow red hot and come sizzling out of his chest and reveal his risk, what would amount to betrayal, the possibility that he might come unleashed at any moment and alert the world to his condition. “Sorry,” he says.