The Big Bang (7 page)

Moderate her indeed, Karen thought, as yet another lobbyist approached. It was getting late, and the music from their rapper host, Life SINtence, was giving her a headache. The lobbyist had something to do with the teachers' union—it was hard for Karen to catch the exact association over the thump from Mr. SIN. Karen leaned in to hear better.

“We kicked their asses,” The Congresswoman was saying as the lobbyist pumped her hand enthusiastically.

“You sure did,” the lobbyist agreed. “Brilliant to put in money for the education of the poor, huddled masses. Even if the Shrub vetoes the bill—”

“We have enough votes to shove it down that cracker's throat, right back at him.” The Congresswoman grinned. Her head bobbed to the beat, swiveling to look for a waiter. “Can a sister get a drink in a place like this?”

Karen caught her cue. “Champagne?” she asked.

The Congresswoman winked. “Two. I'm thirsty.”

Karen scurried away. The faster she found two flutes of generic champagne, the faster she'd be back. She found a harassed Guatemalan waiter by the buffet table. The table had been ravaged. A few wilted scraps of lettuce curled on the deli tray. Otherwise, almost everything edible had been whisked away.

She tapped the waiter on the shoulder. When the waiter turned, Karen reached out, lifted two glasses from the tray. Hurrying back toward The Congresswoman, Karen was intercepted by Tarik.

He eyed the champagne glasses dubiously. “Already?” Karen shrugged. It wasn't her place to comment on how soon, or how much, The Congresswoman was consuming. Tarik took a closer look at Karen. He took the glasses from her. “You need to go home. You've been up way too long.”

An old feeling flared in her chest. Undeserved dismissal. “But—”

The lyrics poured from the speakers. “Me and my bitch. Me and my bitch.” Tarik moved closer to be heard over the music. His voice was soft, concerned. “I can't have you falling over from exhaustion. We need you at the office. You keep us on course. Please, go home and get some rest. There's nothing of real value going on here.”

His tone, his words, soothed the old wound. She was getting a dreadful headache from the music and noise. “I'll see you tomorrow,” she promised.

Tarik smiled warmly. “Of course. Now go.”

Her cell phone was clipped to the strap of her purse. As she walked through the parking garage to her car, it chirped at her. She had bought the phone based on its great reception, after all. She reached for the phone in a reflexive and well-practiced motion. “This is Karen,” she said in her most professional voice, automatically scanning the garage with her newly developed city-girl skills. No rapists lurking in the shadows that she could see.

A familiar, upbeat voice came from her cell phone. “I saw you on CNN. Time to celebrate!” It was Pamela Cruz, former college roommate and one of her best friends. Something of a lipstick lesbian, but who cared?

Karen grinned, in spite of her fatigue. “You're kidding.” She unlocked her car as she listened to Pam.

“Yes, I saw you right there behind Harriet. Everyone else was in the moment, and there you were, all serious and everything. I said, ‘There's a girl who doesn't know how to enjoy her success.'”

“Pam, it's been a long day…”

“Just one margarita, I swear!”

Karen debated. It would be nice to relax, just for a while. “How about Pacer's, in Arlington?” It was a quiet, upscale bar, right on the way home.

Pam gave a very unprofessional-sounding squeal of glee. “See you in twenty minutes. I will make you enjoy your triumph!”

It was just one margarita. One
pitcher
of margaritas. Pacers was only about a third full, slightly more men than women. Standard for a Wednesday night in a neighborhood bar in Arlington. People worked late around here, Karen had noticed. The Metro was only a few blocks away and maybe they needed to stop in and have a beer or cocktail to counter-balance all the coffee they'd consumed during the day.

Pamela was topping off Karen's glass from the pitcher. Karen feebly gestured for her to stop. She'd already had one brain freeze. Besides, a couple of suits by the bar were looking at them. Looking at Pam, really. Karen didn't want to face that. Didn't these people have jobs? Even if she wanted to hook up after a long and satisfyingly successful day, why would she do it on a work night? Kiss kiss, fumble fumble, either try to sleep in a strange bed next to a naked stranger, or get up, dress in the living room and creep home for maybe three hours of sleep (guaranteed to make the next day Hangover Hell). And she didn't want to hook up, whether it was a work night or a weekend. Still, one of the suits would probably take a shot at Pam, as much for practice as anything else.

There it was. One of the suits detached himself from the bar and was walking toward them. Lifting the glass like a barrier, Karen took a guarded sip. It was usually fun to watch Pam dispatch a bar shark with a deft phrase or two. Karen hoped the suit would have the decency to go back to the bar quickly and start complaining about the women in this town, so she and Pam could return to their celebration.

The suit was nearly at their table. Pam was sizing him up, ready to pounce.

Instead, the suit looked past Pam. “Karen?” he asked.

Surprised, Karen lowered the margarita. The suit was a short guy, but fit, with a kind of drawn face. Bright eyes, cute smile, even if his face seemed a little pock-marked. An image flashed in her mind. This guy, drunk at a wedding, leading a conga line. Bill?

“Will,” he said.

Oh, God. She gestured at the pitcher. “Sorry. Long day, too many margaritas.” He nodded with an understanding grin. Karen turned. “Pam, this is Will Evans,” she said, catching his eye for his acknowledgement that she'd gotten his last name right. “We were at Georgetown together. Worked on the school lit magazine. Haven't seen you for years,” she added. Will pulled out a chair, sat down. A blink of annoyance from Pam. He either didn't catch it, or ignored it.

“It's wild we're both still in DC,” he said. “What are you up to these days?”

Pam needed to reassert control. “Karen works for a congresswoman.” She poked Karen in the shoulder. “When are you going to get me into one of those fundraisers?”

“Next one,” Karen promised. “Really, it's not a lot of fun.” Not for me, she admitted. The Congresswoman held court, the focus of attention, with the guests like courtiers, vying for the opportunity to give her money.

“How could it not be fun?” Pam asked, looking to Will for confirmation. “The food, the music. You had LST mixing it up for you tonight.”

LST. Oh, Life SINtence. Months later, after everything had changed, Karen would remember this chat, just like she remembered so much of her life Before. She decided it was the margaritas and the fatigue that made her do something as unexpected as tell the truth. “The music was god-awful,” she said. “He kept rapping about his bitch.”

“That's just for show. His street cred or something.”

Damn, that margarita was good. Karen drained the glass. “Look, the way they talk is infectious. I go in the break room, and the younger guys are talking about their friends. N-word this, MF that. I don't want those in my head. After a while, I start thinking that because I've heard it so much. It's like a virus of ugliness.” Tarik, she thought. Kevin called him “that old-school nigger.” How could anyone call as decent a man as Tarik a nigger? It sickened her to even put that word in the same sentence as Tarik's name.

Pam affected mock shock. “You sound like the Republicans talking about ‘them.'” Under the humorous dig, Karen could feel a warning. Karen was talking out of school in front of a stranger whose allegiance was still unknown. “It's simply a part of urban culture.”

“That's kind of a lame excuse,” Will offered mildly. Pam's eyebrows went up. “A negative part of a culture is still negative. I grew up in the South. Part of my culture at one time said it was okay for a bunch of white kids to gang up on a black kid, egg him, and humiliate him. Since it's a part of my culture, would that make it okay to do?”

Karen giggled suddenly. “He looked like a clown. LST. He has on this garish suit, and all this bling, and he's rapping about his bitches and his ho's. I heard him talking to one of our staff at a break. LST was talking about jumping some cracker who rode a bike into his neighborhood when he was kid. How they beat him up and took his bike. They all laughed.” And they talked about pulling a train on some girl. And laughed even more, like they were talking about making the winning play in a football game. Karen could too vividly imagine that frightened girl in the sweltering back room of some apartment. Heart beating wildly, terrified, helpless. Just meat with a hole for those men.

She shoved away her glass. It wobbled, nearly tipped, then righted itself.

Pam looked at Will. “She's had a lot to drink. You won't mention this…”

Will shook his head.

“Good,” Pam said to him, talking as if Karen wasn't there. “She works for Congresswoman Stover.”

Will looked at Karen with some emotion she was unable, in her fuzzy state, to exactly identify. “You work for Harriet?”

Karen nodded.

“Why do you work for a traitor?”

“What?” Pam snorted. Karen giggled again. Pam was doing all her talking, as if Karen was a mental ventriloquist and Pam the puppet with sawdust for a brain.

“Harriet is the one who leaked the SWIFT program.” Any friendliness in Will's face was gone. Both women looked at him blankly. “The SWIFT program. Last year, remember? The
New York Times
broke the story. It was the secret program that was tracking money that supported Al Qaeda and the rest of those bastards.”

“That's so yesterday,” Pam said dismissively.

“It was a
legal
program!” Will said loudly. People in the bar looked around. “It was completely legal. Senior Congressmen were briefed…it was secret, and it WORKED.” Now the bartender made a move toward them, unsure if they needed help with this rowdy drunk. But Will was dead sober.

Pam was not completely sober, and leaned over to get right back in his face. “How do you know Harriet leaked it to the
Times
?”

“I work there!” He said hotly. “Worked there. I did the legal clearances on the story,” he added miserably.

“It was legal, then?” Pam worked with lawyers.

“Of course. Look, Murtha even asked the
Times
not to run the story. You know he's no friend of the Administration. But the
Times
ran with it. Harriet was feeding them information right up to the day we published.”

Karen finally spoke. Her voice was echoing a little in her head. The tequila, she guessed. “People leak all the time. Rove probably leaked it, too. We just didn't tell it the way they wanted.”

Will looked at her, his eyes strangely haunted. “The program was working, don't you see? The Bali bombing back in 2002. They were able to catch that thug because of SWIFT. But Harriet wanted the
Times
to owe her. So she exposed the program…and now the terrorists know one more way we were looking for them. It didn't cost Harriet anything. She was willing to pay with other people's blood for her political advantage.”

“Harriet wouldn't do that,” Karen insisted. Now she was calling The Congresswoman “Harriet.”

“You were sweet in school,” Will said, suddenly off on a tangent. Okay, Karen thought, maybe he wasn't sober. “You worked at being sweet. You didn't want to see what was in front of you.”

Pam got in front of him. “It's time for you to go, asshole. She didn't sleep with you in college because you're a loser.”

Will focused on her. She was aggressively close, probably had blasted a little spit onto him. He turned to Pam, gave her a long, hard look. “One of the benefits of feminism,” he said to her. “You can say any damn thing you want to a man, and not have to worry about getting punched in the mouth by any relatively decent guy. If we do punch you out, it's because we're evil, oppressive men. It's never because you're an insulting, obnoxious liar.” He stood. “Karen, it was nice to see you. You're too skinny, though. You look sick.” He walked past them and out the door to the street.

Karen's head was buzzing. She thought she might throw up. Pam ranted about Will, and how he was just like all men, they all wanted to control what women thought and did. The rant didn't help. Karen reached under the table, snagged her purse. “I have to go,” she said.

“You aren't going to let that jerkoff ruin our evening, are you?” Pam protested.

Karen dropped some bills on the table, shook her head. “Work tomorrow. Have to go.”

She didn't remember driving home, which meant she was lucky not to have been stopped and pulled over. She didn't have the name recognition of a Kennedy, so she would have spent the night in jail. Walking alone and buzzed from the parking lot to the front of the building, she quaked. She knew she should be vigilant, but she couldn't keep focused. She fumbled her keys out and somehow made it up to her apartment.

Inside, her whole apartment was spinning. Karen made a rush for the bathroom and vomited up most of the margaritas. She stripped off her clothes, climbed into the shower. As the hot water pounded down on her, she had a strange, still drunken moment of elation. At least she'd thrown up with no help from any of her dependable gag inducers. She'd thrown up naturally, the way God intended.

Wrapping a towel around her wet hair, she walked the long twenty or thirty feet to her bed and fell into it.
Tarik
, she thought sleepily.
I'll ask Tarik tomorrow. Will said I looked skinny
.

She laboriously rolled over onto her back, and before she could formulate the next thought, she was asleep.