Chapter Nine
Things went as normal for the next couple weeks. There was a major bit of legislation that the other party was trying to push through, but Lee’s side wouldn’t hear of it.
In and out of meetings he went, Eli on the other side of the door along with other lawmakers’ assistants, interns, and pages. He used the time to catch up on Lee’s schedule and go over speeches that were written for him.
They were disturbing, filled with one liners, fear mongering and making voters hate the things that were there to help them. Eli wondered a few times if he deleted parts of it if Lee would miss them.
So, he did, just like he left out more than half of the party’s talking points. Little by little, he was pulling Lee away from the rhetoric, but that didn’t stop his mouth or his handshaking of those pushing him to join in making terrible policies.
The protests kept up outside the mansion, though the gated community threw them out when they grew in numbers of more than five. No one could figure how they were getting inside the gates. Eli wished it had been him.
Outside the gate, there were at least fifty protestors, and Lee growled as they passed them, so many slapping their hands down on the car, trying to see through the tinted windows. “Bastards.”
“Voters, Lee,” he reminded him.
“Not mine! I don’t represent them!”
It was Eli’s turn to growl. “Maybe not, but if you helped them, they’d be all over your voters to vote you back into office.”
“My donors put me in office, and I’m not talking about those rabble sending in a dollar or two at a time.”
“Oh, I know that. I know that big time.”
Once they went in the house, Eli found Lee staring out the window of his office, though that faced the back of the house. Mars had let them in and left them right away to get the cook to prepare dinner. Lee stormed to his office, closing the door behind him, but Eli walked through anyway.
“Lee, if I am going to stay your assistant, and if we are…going to…commence with the other part of that, then you need to stop this. Those people are suffering, and you happen to be in a position to help them!”
Like a true politician, he pushed it back off onto them. “They need to help themselves, like most everyone else has had to do and stop looking for handouts!”
Not only did Eli roll his eyes, but he did it so hard, he felt like his entire body was spinning. He slammed both hands on the desk and yelled, “They are! They came here! They don’t have the power to help themselves, so they came to the person that can! Don’t you get that?”
Lee was up and moving so fast, Eli was spinning more. Unable to move for a few seconds, he just watched the man storming out of the room, his ears redder than his face, if it was possible.
That was when he did move, realizing how angry Lee was, and suddenly, he jumped into action, rushing after him.
The front door was left open, and Mars was there, standing in the foyer with his jaw loose, finger pointing outside the door. Eli ran but he couldn’t catch Lee before he was down there with the protestors.
Expecting screaming, vile words flowing from his lips, Eli stopped, bracing himself, but then, he saw smiles, he saw Lee shaking hands with the protestors. Eli shook his head, unable to believe his own eyes. “What the…?”
It was the most remarkable thing Eli thought he’d ever seen. Lee sat there, on a lawn chair one of the protestors had brought, and the protestors gathered around him. For the next fifteen minutes or so, he watched as Lee nodded his head as the people poured out what they’d gone there to say, and even saw Lee grip the shoulder of a woman in tears.
Mars walked up beside him, astonished as well. “What is happening right now?”
“He’s discovering the man he could be. Let’s hope it sticks.”
“Don’t get your hopes up,” Mars warned. “They’re recording it.”
Eli saw a younger girl and a man with their phones in the air, and Lee wasn’t posing for the camera like usual. “Maybe that’s a good thing. He can see himself in a good light for once.”
“I like your enthusiasm, Mr. Bloom, but when the others see this, he’ll be censored.”
Eli looked over to him, disbelief taking the air from his lungs.
“Oh, not publicly or officially censored, no. They have other ways of doing it.”
Lee reentered the house a half an hour later, refused the food the cook had made and went right to his room. Eli mistakenly thought that this was a part of their deal, or rather, the deal he’d tried to make. He went to Lee’s room after him, turning the knob only to find the door was locked. Knocking, he quietly called, “Lee?”
“Go. The. Fuck. Away.”