“Exactly.”
Coretha put down her purse. “You need a life, honey. Family. A husband. You can’t hit the snooze button on your biological clock forever.”
Allison made a face. At age thirty-seven, the issue was a sore spot. If anyone other than Coretha had brought it up . . .
“Just because you couldn’t make it work the first time . . .”
Allison returned to the file and focused on the first page. “See you tomorrow.”
Coretha stared at her a moment then gathered her purse and left.
A few minutes later, unable to concentrate, Allison picked up her keys, passed through the reception area with its tired collection of faded vinyl chairs, Formica coffee tables and tattered copies of Ladies’ Home Journal and Field & Stream, locked the beveled glass door with the sign that still read Winston Medical Clinic, Horace Wright, M.D. and headed for home. Hippocrates met her at the door, rubbing against her leg and purring. At least the cat was glad to see her.
She popped a low-cal frozen casserole into the microwave, ate a quick dinner and crawled into bed. She started to reach for the stack of medical journals at her bedside but reconsidered and snapped off the light. She reviewed the events of the day. She decided she would recheck the file of the woman with the earlobe infections. Seconds later, she was asleep.
Harry Dorn saluted, waved and strode off the ballroom stage of the Greenbrier Hotel with his audience in the middle of a standing ovation. Always leave them wanting more, he had learned early on.
As often as he had given the Liberty Agenda speech, it never failed to inspire almost everyone in the audience—including him. Tonight had been no exception. He’d been at the top of his game, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. He’d done a table count during the Pledge of Allegiance. There must have been six hundred people in the audience. And the introduction! “Ladies and Gentlemen, the next senator from West Virginia and the future president of the United States!” Way overdone, but still . . .
The applause continued as he slipped out a side door. Before the speech, he’d been tired, dying to get out of his monkey suit and out to his weekend retreat on the river at Possum Island. But the speech had energized him. He was on a roll, eager for the next item on the agenda.
He ducked into the men’s room and went immediately to the mirror. He arranged his remaining hair in the manner the consultant had suggested, straightened his black bow tie—he had switched to hand-tied at the consultant’s suggestion—and prepared for the parade of men and women who had paid extra to have their photographs taken with him, pictures they would proudly display on den walls and office credenzas all over America.
Who could have imagined? What had the USA Today profile called him? A paunchy, balding congressman with a funny name from a backward state with few electoral votes? True, in large part, he conceded. But so what? Ike had been bald. He wouldn’t be the first “Harry.” Bill Clinton’s Arkansas didn’t offer any more electoral votes than did his West Virginia. And hadn’t the West Virginia primary given Jack Kennedy just the win he needed in 1960?
He didn’t mind the photo ops, the endless grip-and-grins. They allowed each donor to feel personally connected, yet they required almost no effort on his part. The aide who handled the introductions indicated through a code whether the congressman and the donor had previously met. “Of course, I know who you are,” he would say to those he was meeting for the first time, inflating them with the illusion of official notice. “It’s so good to see you again,” he would say to the others, as if the previous meeting had been one of the memorable moments of his life.
He left the men’s room and walked briskly to the private function area, shaking a few hands along the way. He took his place between the aide who introduced the donors and the aide in charge of ensuring they didn’t tarry after the photo. Through the thin partitions, he could hear the clattering of dishes, the buzz of the staff as they cleared the adjoining room. A line of well-dressed people waited.
The end of the line did not arrive until after 11 p.m. By then, Dorn’s right hand ached. He’d been blinded by the camera’s flash so often that it took five minutes for his pupils to dilate enough for him to see. He passed the lobby bar—happily noting that Dan Clendenin, his chief political strategist, was procuring a paper cup of ice and scotch from a waitress in an intriguing Tinkerbell-like outfit—and collapsed into the back seat of a black Lincoln Town Car that waited beneath the hotel portico. A moment later, Clendenin slid in beside him. Dorn accepted the paper cup once the door closed. “Possum Island,” he said, as much to comfort himself as to direct the driver. The congressman and Clendenin sipped and sat without speaking for thirty miles as the Lincoln swooshed over the interstate through the deep crevices of the West Virginia valleys, made darker than the night by the steep hills that loomed on either side.
Clendenin broke the silence. “I talked with the Carbon Forward people. This global warming stuff’s really got their attention. You impressed them tonight. They want to help.”
Dorn yawned. “They’ve helped us since they were the Fossil Fuels Council. They can’t afford to have more tree-huggers elected.”
Clendenin swirled his drink. “Really help us. Not just piddly individual contributions to your campaign. We’re talking underwriting bloggers, Political Action Committees and 527 groups. It’s powerful stuff.”
Dorn couldn’t argue. The Fossil Fuels Council had shown it had plenty of money to spend when it changed its name to the more progressive-sounding Carbon Forward and adopted the upbeat slogan, “Carbon—The Building Block of Life.”
He retrieved that morning’s USA Today from his briefcase and turned to the politics page. “Harry Dorn,” the headline read. “Bigger Than The Boardroom.” The sub headline added, “Not Just in Corporate America Has W.Va.’s Harry Dorn Become a Hero.” Dorn, the story noted, was favored to become the next senator from his state and was already being mentioned as a possible presidential candidate following his Senate term, although possibly as soon as the next election. The story revealed that the head of the party in New Hampshire had issued a personal invitation for an escorted visit—a fact Dorn himself had only learned that morning when he’d first read the story in the breakfast alcove of his Georgetown brownstone.
He marveled at the turn of events.
As a boy, he had taken his state’s high unemployment and poverty and low education levels as a given. As an adult, he had come to believe that these problems could be remedied and that he could help do it. Once elected to Congress, Dorn had brought literally thousands of jobs to his district through defense contracts and tax breaks for new industry. There was no question he had worked hard and that he had a real passion to serve.
He had also quickly become adept at playing political hardball—a requirement in West Virginia where votes were bought for a couple of slugs of moonshine and where terms in the governor’s office were often followed by longer terms in federal prison.
But a lot of it, he had to admit, had to do with just showing up. You get elected to Congress. Then you get re-elected. And then you get a seat on an important energy committee because you represent a coal state and on a defense committee because you followed the party leaders and can always be counted on to support the military because, by God, that’s where half the boys and girls in your impoverished state land when they graduate from high school or drop out. Jobs and contracts for your district follow, along with no shortage of lobbyists with checkbooks waiting in your anteroom.
He accepted the need to raise money. Despite all the recent efforts at reform, it was still the price of the game if you wanted to have an impact and especially if you had ambitions. He understood that it was endless.