Max Collins - Fate of the Union

“Which I was in favor of!”

“That’s right, you were. And you were fine with it when I said working for a senator, participating in protests was out for me.”

He stopped pacing. Breathed in and out, slowly, like a man fighting a panic attack. Finally he let out a long period-at-the-end-of-a-sentence sigh.

“You’re right,” he said, holding up surrender hands. “You’re right, you’re right. I’m sorry.”

“... What?”

He came over and sat next to her. “I’m way out of line. I encouraged you to take the damn job.”

“You did,” she said.

“Figured you were in a position to do some good from within. From inside the belly of the beast.”

“But not in a subversive way, Bobby. I’m not a spy. I’m trying to see how the system operates, and see if I can have some small impact... and make that work in favor of what we believe in.”

“I get that,” he said, utterly calm now.

She arched an eyebrow at him. “This is still you, right? You aren’t an alien or anything, and I’m going to find a pod in the kitchen?”

He smiled, embarrassed. “No. It’s me. Hotheaded, frustrated me. I’m starting to feel like I’m on the inside looking out. You know what guys my age who go to protests alone are usually trying to do, don’t you?”

“Get laid?” she asked with a half smile.

“I was trying to think of a more graceful way to say it. But you’re not wrong. We’ve been a team, baby, and it’s hard sitting on the bench. These are important times. We’re on the brink here.”

She patted his leg. “Every generation feels that way. And I trust you not to pick up some latter-day hippie chick at the rally.”

He gave her a kiss. Small, sweet kiss.

“I get carried away sometimes,” he said. “I’ll be better.”

She studied him. “I am a little surprised that you got worked up about these Common Sensers. What’s so bad about standing in the middle of the road? Other than both sides trying to run you over.”

He shrugged. “They’re not as bad as the Spirit jagoffs, I’ll give you that. But the Sensers sure as hell will slow any small progress we might make in this country.”

“The Spirit” was more officially the Spirit of ’76 Movement, a splinter off the old Tea Party that had sprouted into a tree.

Bobby was saying, “And Wilson Blount and his old-school right-wing cronies? You’re right, they are so obviously worse . I mean, those assholes are always up to some damn self-interested thing.”

“Goes without saying,” she said, hoping to cut off what appeared to be a building rant.

No such luck: his eyes were flaring again.

“Did you know that old man Blount got that asshole Cunningham from Montana to sneak a line item into the highway construction bill? Lowering the age for becoming president from thirty-five to thirty ?”

“I did know,” she said calmly. “It got some media play. But Blount claims he’s only trying to encourage the youth of America. To show younger people, young voters, that he respects them.”

“That’s blather for the idiots. Blount has his eyes on the presidency for that puke-face kid of his, Nicky.”

“I haven’t heard anything like that,” she said, eyes narrowing. “Where did you get that?”

He raised and shook a “right on” fist. “Inhabit America website. Right now, they’re at the top of a short list of anybody spreading the truth.”

Inhabit America was viewed, at least by the left, as the next logical step after the old Occupy Movement. They espoused sweeping change to nearly every aspect of the country that was still touched by the neocon legacy of President Bennett. Inhabit America was Bobby’s latest hobbyhorse.

Of course, Amy followed Inhabit America online, too; but her experience from her new job had already made her more skeptical of sites like Inhabit and their self-proclaimed “truth.”

“So we have Blount and his bunch going after the White House,” Bobby was saying, getting himself going again, “while these white-bread Common Sensers are preaching their ‘Meet Us in the Middle’ nonsense. They just love to go on talk radio and cable news and present their old-time Americana bull, boasting that they aren’t on either side. Come on! Who isn’t more on one side than the other? They need to get off the goddamn fence!”

When she had first met and started dating Bobby, his save-the-world progressive notions had seemed to her noble, and she had joined in willingly. But the more time she spent on the Hill, the more she realized that Bobby’s simple answers were not reality-based. Governments had budgets, with thousands of programs, each begging for its share from the national coffers, each with defenders on the right or left.

People like Bobby never worried about the economics of a problem — just doing what they thought was right, damn the cost, practicality be damned.

“People like Bobby” — my God, was that how she was thinking now, about the man she wanted to spend her life with?

Whenever she tried to explain her revised, insider’s views to him, he only called her naive. Now the roles had reversed — he seemed the naive one.

“What’s so bad about a centrist movement?” she asked. “It’s where most people in this country really stand. The people in the middle just get shouted down by the extremes. And maybe the Common Sense Movement is ‘white-bread,’ but their demographics go across ethnic and even religious divides.”

He gave her that condescending smile she knew too well. “You’re cute when you mimic your dad. Such a good little girl.”

“Cute” was his code word for naive. And he had just crossed the line with this “good little girl.” Not a pod in the kitchen at all, just a condescending prick lying momentarily low.

She flew to her feet and glared down at him. “Go screw yourself, Bobby, because trust me — that’s your only option tonight!”

“Honey... sweetie...”

“Don’t honey/sweetie me, you smug bastard. First you talk me into that intern position, then you treat me like shit for taking it! Who is it again that ought to get off the goddamn fence?”

He shrugged with open hands, and made his case — lamely: “I just thought you could do some good on the inside, and that we’d have the ear of a US senator.”

“And by we ,” she said, still towering over him, “you mean you ... pulling my strings?”

“No... that’s not it. Not at all...”

Amy folded her arms, her anger shifting from hot to cold. “Senator Hackbarth isn’t progressive enough for you, I suppose.”

“She’s a good person, sure, means well but—”

“What would satisfy you, Bobby? An anarchist maybe? Somebody who’d toss a bomb in the Senate and run away cackling?”

Senator Diane T. Hackbarth, Democrat from Wisconsin, was rated by the National Journal as among the most left-leaning members of Congress. That was about all Amy had known when she’d been assigned to the senator, but she’d quickly done her homework to get up to speed.

Since Day One as an intern in Hackbarth’s office, the hours had been longer, the work harder, and the rewards greater than anything the young woman had ever done. All this was on top of her college workload.

Bobby had quickly gone from being her support system to a genuine pain in the ass. Like tonight — riding her about a protest at a political rally, which he knew damn well she couldn’t attend; it was finally just too much.

He showed her the surrender hands again. “You’re right, baby. I’ve been a real dick.”

“Finally,” she said, voice dripping venom, “we agree.”