Mark Costello - Big If

Tashmo, who knew Tim’s type, eyed the volunteers. “How many people did you bring?”

“Ten or so I guess,” said Tim. “We have two vans.”

“And you know them?” Tashmo asked.

“Well, of course — what do you mean?”

“You know them, you know who they are. We don’t like a lot of strangers in the room. The rest of these people here are Moose.”

Tim said, “Oh, I get it. We have a group of Texas teachers, and three women from Mothers for the Truth About Gun Violence, it’s an issue group, strong for the VP, and two lobbyists on leave from the—”

“I’m just saying, do you know them?”

“Sure I do,” said Tim. “The Texans came in yesterday, the women from The Truth came in last night, and the others have been up here even longer. So what about it, buddy, which door will he be using?”

Tashmo didn’t like the buddy . He said, “We’ll use the furnace room. We’ll stage it all from there.”

“Great,” said Tim, hurrying off to the furnace room.

The Moose had been waiting in the basement, drinking beer and coffee, eating doughnuts by the box, and the line to the bulls’ room, AKA the crapper, wasn’t short. O’Teen rechecked every Moose returning to the beer hall from the loo, the mag wand bleating at their watches, keys, and coins.

“Anything metal,” said O’Teen, holding out a tray.

The Texas teacher volunteers worked quickly in the hall, unrolling bunting in the colors of the flag. Tashmo watched them closely, checking to see if any of the teachers were young and hot and possibly worth putting a move on later, at the hotel. Not that he would actually put a move on anyone, not that he was even up to it. He hadn’t banged a volunteer since Super Tuesday in Atlanta the last time around, and even that had been a stretch. Tashmo had hooked up with some old corporate broad who said she worked for Coca-Cola, who claimed that she had never cheated on her husband, had never even thought about it, until Tashmo swept her off her feet at a victory party, and yet this never-cheating woman had a room at the Hilton, and what the fuck was that, good luck? He figured he would play it smooth and soulful, tell his stories of the war, his adventures with Dutch Reagan, act like this was not about fucking, but rather about two people having an intense spill-your-guts type personal encounter, thinking this would be the right tack, but finally, in her room, the woman said, “For God’s sake, just shut up and do it.” She handed him a condom wrapped in foil, like a chocolate from a restaurant, and the whole scene was so beat, so threadbare, that Tashmo had to will himself a boner, which he was able to maintain just long enough to get the condom on. He lost radio contact with his boner the minute he was in her, felt himself go rubbery and small, and he had to fake a climax, pulling out, panting like a terrier, and when he did, the condom stayed inside her. The woman was nice — or mortified — enough to pretend that it hadn’t happened. She got up, got dressed, said she had another gala function to attend. They left her room, rode the elevator down, talking about the new mass transit system in Atlanta. She was smiling and talking, all Coca-Cola corporate, the little latex ring inside her the whole time. And that was it — Tashmo’s last illicit piece of ass, like the final sad at-bat of a fading slugger. Tashmo, disgusted, walked over to the choke point.

O’Teen was rattling his tray and watching an old man deloop his belt.

Tashmo told the man to go ahead.

O’Teen protested, “But I didn’t wand him yet. Everyone who leaves the room gets checked when they come back.”

Tashmo said, “The codger took a piss.”

“He left the room and came back, Tash. Maybe he hid a gun behind the toilet. He’s clean when he arrives, nips off to the bathroom, comes back with the gun. How do we know he didn’t?”

“Search the bathroom,” Tashmo said. “Bet you don’t find a gun. Me, I’m going for a smoke.”

Tashmo climbed the basement stairs to the parking lot. He called Sean Elias, who was with the motorcade.

Elias said, “We’re running late, we got a little lost. Turns out there’s four different Rumseys.”

“Of course there are,” said Tashmo. “Can’t you people read a map? We never had these problems on the Reagan team. Which Rumsey are you in?”

“We aren’t. We’re in Shawgamunk.”

“Keep going. If you hit a bridge, you’ve gone too far. I think we passed a press bus coming up here. You guys missing one?”

“Stand by, let me ask.” Elias hailed the press section on the radio. As he did, the lost bus pulled in from the road.

Tashmo said, “Hey Eli.”

“What?”

“Never mind, they found the place.”

Tashmo had a smoke in the dusk of the rural parking lot, brooding over Shirl, the disturbing conversation of that afternoon. Everything worked out like you said. I love you and I trust you. His inner threat investigator went to work on the known facts: Lloyd’s disappearance in the flood; the calls from Lydia since Hinman, unwanted and unanswered; the iffy starter on his pickup truck; the black eye and the mild kidney damage inflicted on Jeanette by her sorority sisters; Shirl, his wife, his ball-and-chain of thirty years, in a liberated mood. I love you and I trust you.

There was definitely something going on. The black eye and the pickup were probably unrelated, but the other facts were probably not so unrelated. He reached three conclusions as he flicked his cigarette away: 1) that Lydia Felker had talked to Shirl, and therefore (1A) that Shirl knew about his old affair with Lydia; (2) that his wife and former mistress, bonding over this, were now in league against him; (3) that all of Tashmo’s past was crashing in on him; and (4) that he needed to piss immediately.

He thought about weeing in the parking lot, but if the motorcade came in and Gretchen saw him in the headlights, watering a wall, he’d catch a lecture about Secret Service dignity, so he went down the stairs, moving through the crowd of Moose. People sat in folding chairs or stood in the aisles or were laughing at the bar, the flower of the Rumseys, oldsters most of them (which meant, to Tashmo, anybody older than he was). Tashmo heard Gretchen on the comm and knew that the motorcade was in range, coming down from Shawgamunk. Her signal grew stronger as the motorcade drew near and weaker as it passed the lodge without seeing the sign on the pole outside. Tashmo called Elias on the cell (the vans were crossing Rumsey Bridge by then), and gave him directions back from there.

The funny thing, the spooky thing — the thing most beautiful — was how it all came back to him, and how it always did. Just close your eyes and think of it: the last malaisey summer of the Carter presidency and Lydia, a frizzy waif in faded jeans. She is gorgeous, she is sleepy, she is sunburned on her legs. Her ass is white, however, a moon to be landed on, and her arms are deeply tanned. Her front is deeply tanned except for her bush and boobs, and Tashmo (in the bedroom, gazing at her bush and boobs) can’t work out how she came to have this grab-bag pattern of tan, burn, and total white.

He faced the dirty urinal in the men’s room at the Moose Lodge, feeling tense, trying to relax the special peeing muscles in his dick. His eyes were closed. He was seeing her again, naked, slick, and sleepy after sex. He felt at once relaxed and aroused, the twin sides of comfort, his dick releasing pee at last (he heard it drill the urinal), and getting hard a little in his hands too.

“Shit.”

He jumped back, dabbing at his pants above the knee.

Easy, big guy. Start again.

He coughed and started peeing. How it all came back, those delicious trysts, summer into fall. They got together at the house, the house she shared with Lloyd, and later at a motel in northeast Washington, the hilly ghettos around Catholic U. They weren’t Catholic, they weren’t black, they weren’t college students; nobody would know them there, they figured. They trysted at the house and the motel, and yes it was betrayal, Shirl betrayed and Lloyd betrayed, but Tashmo did it anyway. He was seeing Lloyd every day on Carter’s team. They worked the late watch in the shack at Camp David, a wall of screens, drippy eco-hippies trying to sneak in, and Lloyd could only talk about his wife.