Chapter 10
Eric’s mind kept drifting to the closet. His mind dug under the boxes and the shoes, and in his daymare came up empty. He wanted to check to make sure that no one had stolen it. But that was crazy. There was no one in the house. He thought about Henry. He counted down the days until their next meeting. He tried to feel casual about it. But when he thought about this coming weekend in New York, the rest of his life paled in comparison. Henry had been clear. This weekend there would be more than enough to go around. This weekend they would each go home with a bottle. Last week when he saw Henry at the gala, Henry had filled up a flask for him. He alone had gotten one, but there was barely a drop left. A bottle, the word was full of promise.
The question was what to tell Sarah. Henry had insisted that she come. Did that mean he wanted her to drink with them? He couldn’t mean that. Eric shuddered at the thought of a Sarah who had more power and influence than she already had.
He approached her cautiously. He had waited too long to ask her, and now he was going to have to use all of his charm to get her to go. He steeled himself, walked down the stairs, and found her sitting at her desk in the front room. It was meant to be a dining room, but she used it as her office. She liked all the windows.
“I’m going to New York this weekend,” he said carefully.
“Really?” she looked up only momentarily from her work. A charitable mailing was spread out for her either to sign or write short, personalized, and witty notes. Nothing made her more irritable.
“Yes, really, Sarah. I’d like you to come. It’s an event with that big donor I was telling you about, Henry Halstead.”
“I don’t need to go to New York,” she said coldly. She continued signing and moving cards across the table, not looking at him.
“I thought you’d want to go.”
“And meet your Al Capone? No thank you. I don’t want to get caught in the crossfire when the FBI shows up.”
“It’s not like that. He’s just a nice man who has made some very good investments. The reason he wanted our relationship to be secret at first was because he wasn’t sure of me.”
“Imagine that.”
“Sarah, please come.”
She detected a note of desperation in his voice that made her all the more happy to deny him.
“Why do you want me there?” she asked. “I’ll just be in the way.”
“No you won’t! I’ll be happy to have you. We can go to that French restaurant that you like so much.”
“Oh yeah? I’m supposed to believe that we’ll do that instead of meeting with rich people the whole time?”
“Scout’s honor.”
“No.”
Eric walked back up the stairs and into his bedroom. He dug around in the shoes and boxes. He hated to do it, but he needed her to go. And if he needed to use that last drop to influence her, so be it. This was not the time to go back and consider fair play. Henry needed her to go. Why did Henry need her to go? No, that was enough. Don’t start questioning Henry. He rummaged through the boxes in the bottom of his closet. It was right where he left it. He swished the flask. It made a satisfying sound. A minute later he emerged, smiling.
He touched her shoulder. She looked up, surprised.
“Sarah, rethink it,” he said massaging her back. As far as she could remember he had never done that before, not even when they were dating. It felt surprisingly good.
“Okay, maybe,” she relented. Was it sweet that he suddenly needed her so desperately? She thought it was perhaps just to keep her quiet about the affair. But of course she wouldn’t reveal that. She also had a career.
“Maybe, yes?”
“Give me a day to think about it. And to try to cancel those other events you have me going to.”
Eric quickly slinked out of the room.
A text came in that night from Henry. “Is Sarah coming?”
Eric hadn’t realized that Henry knew her name. The thought occurred to him that it was a little creepy, but then he laughed it off. He wasn’t quite used to being as famous as he was becoming; neither was Sarah. Of course Henry knew her name, everyone did. People knew their faces, his and hers. Everyone knew too that she was the big liability to his campaign. She was strong willed, but she would step up. She had been stepping up. It was growing pains.
He wrote back, “Yes.”
Sarah lay in bed that night thinking there was something fishy going on. She kicked at the sheets until they came out from the foot of the bed. She wasn’t a bed-maker by nature but she always made the bed now, just in case the press showed up and somehow ended up in her bedroom. She had a feeling Martha Washington was a bed-maker. The press hadn’t come into their house yet, but she had so many things she did now just in case the press showed up; why not add one? Even their eating habits had changed. Sarah and Eric could be seen all over the city conspicuously eating pizza with their hands instead of the knife and fork that politicians got in trouble for. The press, once you started thinking about them, became all consuming. Taxes had to be paid for the cleaning lady, registration stickers on the cars had to be updated, cars had to be washed, you couldn’t give to beggars, but you also couldn’t be caught on camera ignoring them. What a mess, the press.
Had she really been convinced to go to New York? In her mind, she was definitely not going, and then, suddenly, she was going. She wasn’t a wishy-washy person, but he had been adamant. Lately Eric had seemed so appealing, so charismatic, even to her. She didn’t like it. A man you had been married to for many years shouldn’t be able to sweet-talk you anymore. It made her doubly irritated because she was so mad at him. She hadn’t forgiven him for the affair. One minute she wanted a divorce, and the next minute she didn’t. She couldn’t get one anyway, and she was restless. She thought about replacing herself with someone else, like in a spy movie. She could hire someone to get plastic surgery to look like her. Then she’d go off to lead a quiet life, and this actress could be first lady of the United States. What a relief. She’d have to tell Eric, but she guessed he’d go along with it. Maybe he’d even thought about doing it himself—dropping her in the river.
He slipped into bed much later, but she was still awake, tossing and turning. “Eric?”
“I thought you were sleeping, honey.” He sounded like he had been caught doing something naughty.
“Would you be terribly upset if I hired an actress who looks like me to be your first lady?”
“Don’t jinx me, honey.”
“You could have sex with her. I wouldn’t mind.”
“Well, now you’re talking,” he joked.
“And then I’ll go live on a beach somewhere, and I won’t say a word about it.”
“Hmm. Well, then can we find someone who looks like me too? And I’ll come to the beach with you?”
“Then you won’t get to have sex with the actress.”
“Well, the actor who plays me and the actress who plays you can have sex with each other.”
“How does that help us?”
“I don’t know. What are you planning for us to do on the beach?”
“Honestly?” She laughed. “Lie around and eat.”
It was the first laugh they had shared in a long time. Eric loved her. It was precisely that edge, the one that might lose him the election, that he had fallen in love with. He felt guilt rising up in his throat, and then nausea. He went to the bathroom and turned on the fan, hoping it was loud enough. Then he threw up. This must be what Henry had meant when he said it takes some getting used to. Or maybe there was some rule that he didn’t know about against using this power against your wife. Eric didn’t want to think about why Henry wanted Sarah in New York.