Chapter Twelve C: Blind Rage

For an hour after Nina left the hospital, she drove around the Beltway. Maryland, Virginia, Washington, D.C. They were lines she crossed every day. How had she become so good at crossing lines. Loyalty, ambition, love. When did she cross that line? It was too much to give. But she couldn’t help herself. In the midst of painful memories, she could not separate her emotions from her rational mind. She couldn’t separate person from person. They all blended and merged with as little difference as crossing From Maryland to Virginia to Washington, D.C. They were all one.

She automatically took her turn-off in Alexandria on 395 and soon found herself coming down Independence toward the Capitol. To her left across the long Mall was the White House past the Washington Monument. That was the center of her dreams. The heartbeat of America came from the White House. It was the center where all reform had to start. They could change the world with the right person in the White House. It was Nina’s dream to serve with that administration.

She had no vanity in thinking that she was the one who could actually be the President. She was savvy, but her whole career had been set up around picking the right candidate and attaching herself to her early. She knew that she’d have to choose carefully and that there would be exactly one chance to choose correctly. She recognized Polyhymnia Stamos as that one immediately. The seeds of change were blooming in her. This would be the nation’s first female president, the agent of reform that would stabilize the world situation, bring peace, and ecological rejuvenation. She heard the words with her heart when the Congresswoman spoke.

But a pristine political figure like this needed to be cared for. She couldn’t get her hands dirty in everyday politics. She shouldn’t even know about what goes on to get her elected and where her staff has had to go to ensure her success. That was where Nina would come in. In the name of the great reform, she would be the one who did the dirty work and protected the Congresswoman on her rise.

Where had she crossed the line? Where had she come to look at the dirty work of politics as the purpose instead of the reform that she could facilitate? It was too much.

She was seething with conflicting emotions as she pulled into her parking spot at the Rayburn Office Building. There was no reason to be here at this time on a Sunday night, but she couldn’t stand the thought of returning to her apartment to be alone with the thoughts of Marvin and the price he’d paid for being a double agent working for her. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. There must be something that she could do in her office—something productive that would put her mind on the right track, get her back in the groove of supporting her candidate and moving her election hopes forward.

She stumbled into the office suite and headed toward the door of her private office next to the Congresswoman’s. There was a light on in the office shining under the door. Damn cleaners. They were so careless. Nina pushed the door to Representative Stamos’s office open and froze.

The Congresswoman was there, locked in an embrace with her new press manager, Aaron Case.

It all became suddenly clear. Marvin had been confused with Aaron Case. She’d sent Case to recover the Steel vote and he’d blown it again, exposing a story of mercury poisoning in the Lake. Marvin’s bosses had assumed that it was he who leaked the story and took it out on him. But it was Aaron Case who was at fault. And it was her fault for challenging him to go straighten out the mess. If she’d only known.

But Aaron Case was fouling up everything. He’d stuck his nose in and lost control of the vote, destroyed any chance that they could capture steel workers, dock workers, oil refinery workers, anyone across the northern tier of the state who worked in industry would hate Pol Stamos for destroying their livelihoods. How could he undo so much hard work and then get Marvin killed, too? Marvin who should have had this job in the first place. And then to risk exposing the Congresswoman to a scandal of being involved with an employee! Damn! Didn’t he learn anything from the Clinton administration? This was too much. It was all too much.

They broke their embrace and Pol looked toward the door as she straightened her jacket.

“Nina,” Pol said.

“Shit!” Nina breathed as she turned on her heel and left the office and stormed to her car. “Shit, shit, shit!” she spat through her tears as she unlocked the car and jammed the key into the ignition. “I’ll kill him!”

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