Chapter Fourteen
“What are you up to, Lee?” His father had questioned him for an hour already and came back around to the first question.
“I’m collecting favors, and, yes, Dad, I’m collecting some blackmail, too. I can’t keep living on your assurances and your connections. I have to make my own way.”
“Too true, Lee, but watch what you’re doing. You’re being noticed.”
That was like arsenic to his father, who’d spent his time in Washington flying under the radar as much as possible. “Can’t go unnoticed anymore, Dad. The DC of today is not the one you knew. With all the commotion, people have their eye on every one of us.”
“I know that, but don’t be out in front on any topic. Work in the background or someone will pay a lot of money to replace you. Let those idiots from Ohio and Florida take up all the online articles. And no more kissing the ass of the protestors. They’re not our people, Lee.”
He thought to ask to whom those people belonged, but he didn’t. “Okay, Dad. I’ll talk to you soon.”
He wished he could have stayed in the mountains, keeping away from Washington for a few months. He was tired and his head constantly hurt with the news briefs, the protests, and the talk of dissolving all the freedoms the other side had.
If his party was truly going after the Department of Education, it was going to be a hard-fought battle. For as much as people sometimes hated the schools their children were forced to attend, without them would be calamity for the country.
There were other reasons, other things he should focus on a well, but with Eli placing in his head so many questions, with his father pushing him to do what he and the party wanted and nothing more, he found himself worried he’d never accomplish anything except to alienate them all.
He’d racked up a lot of favors, and he guessed he could use them, but when and for what? He wasn’t sure of anything. Two months after their recess, as he’d been working hard on getting things racked up for himself, he was more lost than ever.
“Sir? Dinner is ready,” Mars said from the doorway as Lee sat on his veranda.
“Who the fuck am I, Mars?”
“Sir?”
Mars stepped onto the veranda and stood silently; hands clasped in front of him as he patiently waited for Lee to finish a thought. Good luck to him, Lee mused. He hadn’t finished a thought in weeks.
Mostly because, he was doing everything he was doing to make Eli hate him less.
“Am I a conservative senator, wanting the world to go back to the times of wives having babies and making meatloaf. Of men, real, rugged men, to go out to a long day’s work and bringing home the bacon. The bacon that I and the rest of the wealthy allow him to have?”
“I don’t think that’s who you are at all, sir.” He stepped a little closer and finished, “I don’t know what’s in your heart, sir, but I think you have let too many lead you. You’ve yet to discover what drives you. You think it’s money, the possibility of the small bit of power these men and women will allow you. I don’t believe it, sir.”
Then, he was gone. He left, the doors closed quietly, and he was alone again. The vast time spread in front of him like an ongoing joke. He’d eventually have to marry, and it would have to be a woman. He’d slip out after work to fuck hustlers and pick up men in bars, only to go home to a loveless marriage. Oh, she’d be happy enough. Fame, money, nice homes, extended vacations, kids maybe. He was sure she wouldn’t be in it for love either. A mutual commitment, a brokered deal.
He made it to the dining room, sat in front of a meal that he had no hunger for, missing things he’d never even had. Would she cook? No. Likely they’d still have a cook. And maids, and possibly Mars. Mars could watch another little boy grow up to be the man his father and grandfather wanted. He’d go to the best schools, have the friends his parents approved, he’d start out as president of his class, then run for governor, congress, maybe even the presidency and on and on it would go…