He shrugs, “Eh, you might want to ask Trevisan and Egbert what they’ve been up to.” Of course, Julian didn’t offer such advice thinking Warren would actually take it; if anything, ignorance truly was bliss when it came to things such as these. “The sheer panic on their faces might just make a day’s work worth it.”
Warren was an old-fashioned man as far as most things were concerned, but not so much so when it came to pleasantries. Perhaps it was in fact his age that added to it, the many years of political experience Julian didn’t yet possess. Julian still had the energy to say things he didn’t mean, to surround himself with people he could not stand. Maybe that had been the case for Warren, too, once.
At that, Julian smiles, “Of course not.” While he could spend hours on end talking about trivial things such as their families and vacationing in the South, Julian was glad today he would not be forced into it. It was as close to a break as he could seem to get.
“A warning?” Julian doesn’t make an effort to hide his surprise. He raises a brow at that, wondering then if he had suddenly tripped and fallen into some cheap mafia movie. This ought to be good. “Sure, let’s hear it.”
“I’ve heard from a few acquaintances in the House that the Speaker is working on the first steps of a committee on energy reform —— an extra-formality, if you will, beyond the normal energy-and-commerce. I don’t quite like the names I’ve seen, and I don’t quite like the ideas leaking from that side of the Hill either. In fact,” He paused, leaning forward with a saccharine smile. “I’ve tried my damnedest to think of just what in this reform proposal I could stomach. Frankly, unless we’re subsidizing coal and allowing drilling on federal lands…” He shook his head.
“So, that’s the warning. Of all the areas you and Wright could target, you choose the hardest. The riskiest. My friends at Fox have already got the spin machine running, and I can promise you there’ll be a vicious fight in the House and the Senate. I ain’t saying the parliamentarian in my pocket or anything like that, but I know my way around a copy of Robert’s a little better than the average Joe.”
He waved a hand, and his serious expression became more gentle. “But, in the interest of civility and, frankly, professionalism, I wanted to see what sort of olive branch you’re willing to stick out. The House is a circus —— I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again —— but they’re gonna do what we tell them.” He tapped on his lapel and chuckled. “I’m your biggest opponent as of today.”
“Please,” he says, as though the impromptu encounter had been a natural, small thing— no favor. “I have a meeting in not too long, but I’m always able to make time to talk to you, Mr. Senator.” Even if most of Warren Elkins’ views greatly diverted from his own, it never had been a bad idea to give him the metaphorical time of day. The opposite party was more or less a meticulously copied version of the was he himself was a part of, some details just flipped. The democrats had their own good apples and the eventual bad ones; that fact was also true for their republican counterpart. Some earned their positions, some didn’t. And very few were worth it.
Despite it not being Julian’s call to make — these things were always up to the voters, be it that a good or a bad thing —, he did think of Warren as one of the good apples. Even if Julian could not agree, he could understand.
“Hasn’t it already?” He says as the door slams shut, drowning out the noise from outside. “We’ve had what — two scandals in the span of two months.” We was a reluctant addition on Julian’s part. Before a few days ago, it was only Trevisan and his sloppy affair. Now, it was Egbert too. The media was on its way into tearing the senate to shreds, one member at a time. “If there’s anything to come after that, I don’t know if any of us are prepared for it.”
A thought — memory — strikes him and he asks, “Did you have a nice time whilst away?” He couldn’t possibly come off as distant. Even Julian didn’t entirely care, but he could pretend. It scared even him how meaningful he could make empty words sound. “How’s the wife?”
Warren waves his hand dismissively as he sits down —— heavily, with bones silently creaking. He is as aware of his age in that moment as he is of the relatively low distaste he has for this particular encounter. This is the start of something exciting, after all. He responds, “I ain’t got time to keep up with all the scandals rocking the hen house. Especially not while on leave.” A pause to chuckle. “Dora is fine, thank you, but I’m not here to talk about her.”
His impulse to slice through the cordiality is not always indulged, but he can make exceptions when the time is right. Now, relaxed into a chair in the vice president’s office, the swell of seniority beneath them provides a cushion for bluntness. Some notes are tucked into his pocket, but he leaves them hidden. “I come bearing a warning.” His tone is mockingly foreboding, and he cracks a good-natured grin at odds with his words. “With respect for your position —— not as Wright’s right-hand man, really —— but as the president of the Senate.”
As it turns out, the Senate functions just fine without its Minority Leader. Warren returns from his brief stint back home to a few curious reporters and a face-full of microphones, but brushing off the inquiries is a matter of simple word choice. He throws the dialect into high gear, talks a little bit about the family, praises Governor Cooper lightly, and then is able to disappear back into the depths of the office building. The little wobble in his step goes unnoticed, as does the cheap coffee he carries inside with him. He has a new favorite place; there are no eyes there.
“I need you to streamline the schedule,” he says to Jean as he walks down the hall. She’s a few steps behind, tapping away on his phone while hers is pressed to her ear —— on hold. A Blackberry, one specifically for scheduling, is tucked haphazardly into the front of her belt. He can hear her footsteps quickening, trying to stay close enough to hear without dropping anything. His pace is just quick enough to ward away the few anxious eyes lining the hall on separate business. The whole of the Republican conference is in what he likes to call a fuzzy mood.
They reach the office a few minutes before the meeting is set to begin. Jean has cycled through the devices: her phone in the belt, his to her ear, the Blackberry in her hands. He waves her away to go wrangling the senior senators from the Dakotas in talks about fracking, then is escorted inside by an aide.
“I appreciate you squeezing me in last minute,” he says, extending a hand. “The season has really just begun, and I’m anticipating a hurricane to blow through sooner than later.”
SENATOR ELKINS DID NOT ASK TO BE A BELLWETHER. At no point in his prodigious career did he ever ask for the mantle of prophet or did he demand the cardboard sign of an apocalyptic herald. Instead, his thirty-plus years of dedication to the conservative cause gradually transformed him into a tough love advocate for its transformation. His devotion to the right-wing has pushed him into battles with everyone from his own party to each branch of the government —— federal, state, and local levels, too. His image is one of a protector, if not necessarily a cage-fighter. He hearkens back to a different age of politics (one that he suspects never truly existed) when good men got their hands dirty behind close doors and while wearing gloves. The word integrity comes to mind, though it may perhaps be a partisan twist of the term. He does the right thing, even if that thing is announcing —— unflinchingly —— the impending demise of his own movement.
November 9th, 2016. The senator gives his final public speech of the year. At the time, no one suspected that he would disappear behind the scenes well into the new year. His ghost-like presence on the campaign grew gradually more public until the very last minute; his final speech was every bit what would have been expected. However, no one —— not even members of the Solis campaign itself —— could have predicted that the godfather of the party would seemingly turn his back in their darkest hour. In that speech, which some of his long-time enemies regard as infamous, he concluded by paying homage to Barry Goldwater.
“Offer a choice, not an echo,” the senator repeats to me. His home in Raleigh is every bit what one would expect: we sit on a massive wraparound porch; his wife handed me a cold glass of sweet tea with a wedge of lemon before disappearing in her scarf to the garden; there are a couple of grandchildren chasing each other along the edge of a cornfield in the front yard; the sounds of the city are just far enough away to emphasis that of a tractor somewhere in the distance; the senator’s mint-condition 1953 F-100 sits in the driveway. I sit in awe of my surroundings, aware of the depth to which the senator’s carefully crafted image goes.
“Voters want change, and that’s a fact. Even when things are good, they ain’t satisfied. They want better. They deserve better, and they know it. A lot of politicians would tell you off the record that the people are dumb, and their attention just ain’t long enough to keep track of four years of work. But, that’s plainly wrong. They know —— they sense it in their guts without having to pick up a copy of the Post. America is more than a place, you know. It’s a state of mind, it’s a place in the heart. It’s an ideal that voters expect us to strive toward. Do we?”
He lets the question hang in the air and, at the time, I wonder if he recalls my original question. A few minutes earlier, I brought up a recent topic from an interview he allowed in his Hill office. Deterioration of the Republican party, he had said. Everyone from the RNC chair to the House Minority Leader have been forced to comment, and they all say the same thing: he’s working on it. The phrase has become synonymous with Senator Elkins over the years; when he gets to work on something, be it a vintage car or an improbable slog uphill and back into power, the work tends to be fruitful. But, rather than hashing through the how, I want to know the why.
“Right after we lose our way, we do.” He continues abruptly. The illusion of distraction comes across as he leans forward in his rocking chair to wave at a grandchild who has ducked toward the porch —— presumably for a glass of the tea, though I later see her rush outside with a model dump truck with working wheels which the senator says he hand-painted last Christmas. We take a break from the interview to go help the little girl load the back of the toy with dirt from Mrs. Elkin’s garden.
It is here that he really elaborates on his thoughts. I realize that I get real answers on his terms, usually as a product of a roundabout discussion that leaves the questions I fed him untouched to the point of frustration. Still, the senator’s home life is a fascinating look into who he is as a person. For a politician so paradoxically impersonal, even the way he helps his wife pull weeds tells a small story about who he is in Washington.
“The Republican party ain’t smart anymore. Emotions are a powerful political tool, be we’ve been using them right poorly as of late. Good ole McCain was destined to lose, going up against all the hopey-changey stuff.” He pauses to wink at me. “But, it’s been bad ever since then. Romney was out of touch. Solis was … a miscalculation.”
The Carolina soil under my nails is dark and wet; Mrs. Elkin’s tomatoes are beautiful.
“We went back to the Fifties, I think. We offered voters two shades of the same color, and they went with the one that did it best. Frankly, the conservative vision has become watered-down, weak, too indecisive to appeal to the average voter. They see a bunch of rich [jerks] in suits vying for a spot on some wealthy donor’s lap. It’s sickening, and people from Coal Country and the Delta and even the suburban Triangle can see that. Theresa Wright should not have won. She’s not as charismatic as Barack Obama, she offered herself as a lite version of him, and everything about her screamed centrism.” He clears his throat, and the sound is intentionally ugly. “We’re picking up the piece right now. I can’t figure out for the life of me how we were so off.”
This sounds like an aside. Can’t sounds more like paint when he says it.
“Conservatism looks like elitism these days. I want to take it back to the little people, and do it quick. The Dems have abandoned mom and pop and Joe and Suzy with even more zeal than we have, and it’s gonna become a race back to the trailer park once the midterms wipe them out.”
I ask over barbecue sandwiches if he truly believes that there will be Republican majorities in 2018.
“Absolutely. I like the word deterioration. I also like the word regeneration. I got things in the works, you know. Ever since Obama, we’ve been trying to make ourselves palatable. We like to play to the center as much as our base, and we went a little too far during the campaign. Not enough red meat. Not enough contrast. Wright is leading everyone into the wrong, and I can feel it like an ulcer. The people know when they’re being duped, and they know when Washington don’t care about them. Am I waiting for her to make a wrong move? Yes, I sure as hell am. When she does, we’ll show the nation that we ain’t an echo —— of anything, of anyone. People want something to believe in, and they want to believe in change. More than anything else, they want solid and real choices.”
After wading through a gaggle of reporters, Warren took refuge in an open conference room. His cheeks ached from the prolonged smiling as he lied through his teeth about the month’s accomplishments ( or lack thereof ) and his opinion on various cabinet appointees. The votes were still rolling along, all for respectable people, and he couldn’t be caught rolling his eyes as the progressive bonafides of the new transportation secretary.
“I sure am glad you asked,” he muttered, mocking himself as he shut the door. The smile was gone; he was grimacing as he looked up to find himself anything but alone. “Well, I do apologize for the intrusion.”
L. SOLIS: It's 2017. Politics is as much about whose bill you kill in the water, as it is about PR. Taking this one pot shot at you would've been a lot safer than doing it to me.
L. SOLIS: Bertha will forward you a copy of the plaint when it's drafted. Along with my press release.
L. SOLIS: Remember how you backed a biracial national hero for President for two years, Warren? This wasn't the payoff I expected either.
W. Elkins: Thanks for the inclusion. I love a good media circus. My press office is open if you need extra hands.
W. Elkins: Off to a meeting. Jean has my phone. Don't bother her.
She’s not a bourbon drinker, not in any capacity whatsoever. Her friends used to joke about what a pussy she was when it came to drinks ever since college, but something about her pride makes her want to one-up this guy and his assumptions about what kinds of drinks she may or may not want to consume. “Bourbon would be great actually,” she says with a tight-lipped little smile, a game of ‘Look at me, full grown adulty, I can drink bourbon like the big kids too’. And so she’ll glance down at her notes, the list of questions she’d meant to ask him, and she keep looking like she’s assessing the situation, like nothing she sees can ever fully confirm or deny any assumptions she makes about the guy.
She thinks, Fuck him and fuck his fake ass Southern charm that he’s just using to insult her without really insulting her. Whatever. She’s not even really gonna wait for him to grab that bourbon before asking him some stuff. He said he preferred conversational interviews, anyway. She’s glad she didn’t do the full camera crew ordeal. Probably would’ve said no to that one. “I’m just gonna go right in with this one— Do you think that bipartisanship becomes harder when a political party has the majority in all of the branches?”
He withheld a grin when she accepted the drink offer. Before standing, however, he let her ask her question —— he could see it was coming as soon as she had turned her eyes away. Part of him hoped for something interesting, something he could chew over while leisurely rounding the room to his drink bar; a softball seemed beneath her, after all. What she asked was not altogether disappointing, and he smiled as he stood up.
“I won’t conceal my bias,” he said as his back was to her. “But, I do believe my thoughts are fairly universal. Consider: if a man is given the opportunity to do things his own way, then why would he squander it by negotiating with someone else? Bipartisanship is a valuable tool —— well, in fact, let’s call it the glue of our democracy —— but it is unfortunately more subtle, more fragile, more time-consuming that railroading to easy victories with partisan power.” Having inspected one of the heavy glasses reserved for such things as the bourbon, a crystal thing sent by a daughter-in-law who watched too much Mad Men, he paused to pour.
“I do hope that the president fulfills her promises of binding the nation together.” He turned, smiling passively as he returned to his desk. The smile was more acerbic as he handed her the glass. “Including the other half of America in the conversation is a good way to start.”
Not even rusty pliers at his fingernails could have dragged out of Leon that he left standing instructions with the restaurant staff to inform him of an Elkins reservation. No doubt, he thought sourly, Warren had plenty of stories about he’d survived worse in ‘Nam. Seeing the olive branch for what it was, Leon didn’t pick a fight.
He couldn’t afford one anyway. The man who would be president. Right.
Leaning back in his seat, Leon faked relaxation very well. His open, good-natured smile when he regarded Elkins didn’t waver. “Besides the seafood?” he replied, knowing it was the only thing Elkins expected an answer to. “It hit me, Warren—belatedly maybe—that I’ve been a light touch where the future of this party’s concerned. I’ve made it a one-man show, neglected the people who brought me here.” Smile crinkling faintly in contrition, he ran a hand through his hair, a gesture that made his sleeve ride up and expose the Brietling watch. A reminder that Elkins had reposed faith and money in Leon once before, and history was ripe to repeat itself. “I’ve come to change that,” and the words were bitter in his mouth when he said, “if it’s not too late for us.”
Warren was relaxed into his chair, elbows propped on the arms and hands clasped loosely. He listened carefully with a smile just barely visible; as subtle as it may have been, it was far from a merely polite gesture. As sincerely as he may renounce the unsavory craft of playing with others, he could stand to appreciate a victory nonetheless. Still, more than a sense of respect controlled his expression. Unacknowledged was that the softer part of his heart —— the part of nostalgia and sentiment and empathy —— wanted to welcome Leon back into the fold.
“Well, we’re gearing up for a hell of a fight on multiple fronts,” He paused, allowing a wider smirk to replace the simple smile. His cover was effortless. “So I’d be mighty appreciative on any extra hands on deck.” The impersonality of his response, the lack of intimate warmth and glow of friendship rekindled, settled in a matter of several quiet seconds. Warren sat up a little straighter.
“A little birdy is telling me that Wright is just as foolish as Obama was in 2009. Fresh-faced, smells like daisies, and ready as can be to ruin it all by foisting something terrible on the country.” He sniffed distastefully. “Her mistake, if my sources are correct, is choosing something so damn risky.” At this, he chuckled. “I want to make her whole administration sweat, Leon. Obviously we’ve got midterms to prepare for; you and plenty of others are still shiny and well-liked enough to be leading the charge. Anyway, what’s the minority’s role if not to make noise and stonewall the hell out of everything?”
He waved over a waitress and quietly requested his wife’s favorite wine. When she was gone, he turned back to Leon. “The last year is water under the bridge as long as you’re willing to help build it, is what I mean.”
I just woke up to an email from that damn toilet rag you’ve decided to take to court. The Enquirer? Yes, that one. They want to know if my, quote, political prodigal son has embarrassed me and the Republican establishment with, quote, a refusal to embrace racism lite or sanity in the face of real journalism.
Not sure which cocky new hire wrote the email, but you can bet your ass I’m fire-mad that they’re onto my tail about this so quickly. I distance myself for nearly three months, and it still ain’t enough.
I declare, you better make them look like the piss-poor publication they are before I have Jean block your calls permanently.”
L. SOLIS: I'm sorry, Warren, your legal team looks too much like sliced bread.
L. SOLIS: A carton of eggs actually, if we're talking about their age.
L. SOLIS: I was leaning more towards Barnes & Alvarez. Their speciality is discrimination suits and violation of civil liberties. I want to make every nail I put into this coffin count.
W. Elkins: Lord help. This is a legitimate thing, ain't it? I reckon they'll be asking me about your stand for political correctness by the end of the week.
W. Elkins: Just to be clear -- this is some tomfoolery, and I'm not condoning it, but picking a fight with the Enquirer sure as hell ain't the worst way to waste your time.
L. SOLIS: Really, Warren, state-sponsored buffoonery isn't my gimmick.
L. SOLIS: I'm filing for defamation. Nothing makes a liberal look worse than holding tabloid trash where they compare——what's that byword? That's right, a person of colour——to a fucking Nazi.
W. Elkins: Of course you are.
W. Elkins: Let me guess. Planning to pull a Peter Thiel and force them into bankruptcy?
🌟 …someone my muse trusts.
💔 …someone who broke my muse’s heart.
💕 …someone my muse loves.
😒 …someone my muse hates.
🔥…someone my muse would die for.
💀 …someone my muse would kill for.
👻 …someone my muse considers a best friend.
💘 …someone my muse has a crush on.
🔪 …someone my muse hurt in the past.
👀 …someone my muse likes, but doesn’t trust.
💩 …someone my muse dislikes, but admires.
👿 …someone my muse used to like, but doesn’t anymore.
😉 …someone my muse has had sex with.
💋 …someone my muse used to date.
😜 …someone who makes my muse laugh.
👪 …someone in my muse’s family.
👑 …someone my muse is jealous of.
👊 …someone who hates my muse.
👫 …someone who has a crush on my muse.
👌 …someone my muse has only met once, but will never forget.
🍓…someone my muse has never met, but wants to meet.
👰 …someone my muse would consider marrying.
