Always (12 page)

On that night Leslie and I moaned together and sighed together. We came to life together and died as one. And as we lay there, I knew in the bottom of my heart that I would never make the same mistake twice. I knew I wouldn't and couldn't, ever let her go.

After graduating from A&M, I went on to Georgetown Law and persuaded Leslie to do the same. Leslie was unlike any girl I'd ever dated. She was the only female I knew who was smarter than me in every subject. She made better grades, read more books, knew more facts, and could speak three languages when we met.

After I completed my studies at Georgetown and passed the bar in the state of Florida, I took a job with the DA's office in Dade County, Florida. Leslie went for the money, as I always knew she would. Her grandfather died the year she graduated, and she and her brother and sister split a
small fortune. She worked for a firm on Wall Street and bought a brownstone on Striver's Row in Harlem. We'd talked about marriage and we both wanted to be together, but when and where was never decided. From day one Leslie bought into my dream of being president and understood that if this was going to happen, I had to win a congressional seat by the time I was thirty, and that was not going to happen in New York City where I had zero connections. She was making a wonderful salary there, but eventually gave it up to move to Florida.

When Leslie moved here she was used to the fast times of New York and L.A. so Miami, which is more laid-back, was an adjustment. We did not get married immediately. It was not because we were afraid of it, but because there were so many things to get done professionally, and at that time all of our excess funds were going into a campaign saving fund. Most of Leslie's inheritance was invested, and our unspoken rule was that it was untouchable under any circumstance.

While working in the DA's office, I got involved with local politics and worked closely with a city commissioner on an appropriation bill. He was so impressed with me he asked me to consider running for local office. I thanked him for his vote of confidence, but I already had my eyes on a congressional seat. When we announced our campaign, there may have been seven people present. We were not very organized and we financed 50 percent of the cost of the campaign from our personal savings. Fortunately my friend on the city commission endorsed me and we started getting a few stories in the local section of the
Miami Herald
.

I think it was that campaign that affected me the most as a politician. Not because we lost, but because it taught me how to optimize my strong suit, which was talking to people one on one. I remember literally knocking on doors in this neighborhood of Miami that was 70 percent white and 10 percent Florida cracker. I would walk up to trailers with rickety wooden steps I just knew had white sheets with eyeholes in them on the clotheslines in back and I would talk to them just like they were from my neighborhood. What I discovered is that they had concerns about jobs too.
That they wanted to live in neighborhoods where they could feel safe at night and wanted the best education for their kids. Sometimes we would even drink a Pabst Blue Ribbion and I found out that some people who act as if they are the
biggest
racists in the world are actually a little ashamed of their beliefs and can be quite nice when you get to know them.

Two months after the congressional defeat, Leslie and I were married, and six months later Herbert married Doris, whom he hardly knew. They had gone out for about a month and the next thing I knew, they were calling me from the courthouse saying they were going to do it. I remember asking him if he had been drinking. I sped down there and talked to him for about an hour or so, and then thirty minutes later I was handing him this cheap little ring he had picked up for her on the spur of the moment. By this time Herbert was a civil engineer for a company in Lakeland, Florida, and was making good money and I considered him one of the brightest men I knew. But about some things, he has never shown much smarts. Due to her background in corporate debt restructuring, Leslie was accepted by the law firm of Gray, Moiré, Phillips, Lausanne and Hopper. Mr. Moiré was a bigwig in the Democratic party and would always entertain dignitaries such as Walter Mondale, John Glenn, and, back in the seventies, Scoop Jackson when they were in south Florida. When the opportunity came for Leslie to work in his firm, we were elated.

We started preparing for the '84 congressional race as early as the day after the '83 election. We had made a lot of friends during our defeat in 1982 and had come close, but the party did not support us and we ran out of cash coming down to the wire.

In the fall of '83 I quit my job, because Leslie was now making three times the amount of money I made, and it was obvious that if our ultimate dream was to come true in the year 2000, it was vital that we win this congressional seat. In our first campaign I found out the congressman was beatable, because with smoke and mirrors we'd given him
a run for his money. This time he was even more vulnerable because of large sums of cash he was receiving from the south Florida sugar industry.

Before the campaign, Mr. Moiré made a few phone calls and scheduled a meeting for me to talk with Congressman Charles Rangel, a few other members of the Congressional Black Caucus, and an important democratic pollster in D.C. While I was in town, Mr. Moiré thought it would also be a great opportunity to interview a few potential D.C. staffers. I felt that was jumping the gun a little, but who was I to question him at that point?

The meeting with one of the candidates to head my D.C. office was at the infamous Watergate Hotel. I sat in the lobby waiting for him to approach since he'd indicated on the phone that he knew what I looked like. Five minutes beyond our appointment time, in walks this kid with a three-day-old beard, jeans, and a sport coat over his navy “Kennedy in '80” T-shirt. This may have been the way they interviewed for such positions in D.C., but he struck out before stepping to the plate. I was wearing my most expensive wool suit at the time and I'd made sure my shoes were spit-polished clean because you just never knew who you may run into in such a town.

We chatted all of three minutes and I told him I would get back with him. And then he said, “Thanks. And please tell Uncle Ron, I'll try to get down there for Thanksgiving this year.”

“I'll do that,” I said as I shook his hand and headed for the elevator. If he thought I was going to hire him because he knew Ronald Moiré, then he had much to learn about Henry Davis.

The elevator door opened and I walked in excited about a hastily arranged meeting with Ron Brown of the DMC. Possibly it was the history, or simply the thought that the same monuments I saw had been viewd by W.E.B. Du Bois, FDR, and JFK. That the trees that lined Pennsylvania Avenue had watched a youthful Thurgood Marshall come into town with only the hope of equality and the law on his side. But whatever it was, it seemed every waking moment
I was in the District I thought of ways I could effect change. Ways I could make things better for others. And then it happened . . .

A little Asian lady walked to the door of the elevator, saw me, and stepped back as if I were dressed in bold black and white stripes just out on work release. There was an awkward moment as I stared at her and she crossed her arms and looked away, content to wait however long it would take for the next elevator. And then Ronald Moiré's grungy nephew stepped inside the elevator, and said, “Yow, I'm all out of coinage. Can you do me a solid and let me use the phone in your room?”

The diminutive golden pockmarked face lady looked at him, and then me, and back at him again, and got on the elevator. As she did, my shoulders slumped and my heart beat faster, fueled by anger, because as a great poet once said, “I really was not in a mood to be black on that day.” I didn't feel like carrying the weight of years of oppression. I just wanted to feel like a man. Nothing more. Nothing less. And respected as such, if only for that one moment. As the elevator door whispered closed, I understood for the first time, the phrase that Bull Connor and other old southern politicians used to say. You can never
legislate
morality.

When I returned to Florida, I hired this young lady by the name of Penelope Butler as my campaign manager. I paid her almost nothing, which was all we'd budgeted for the position, but she'd watched my campaign in '82 and wanted the experience. Penelope came from a very wealthy and important family in the area. The Butler family was one of two or three families one had to know if one wanted to succeed as a Democrat in south Florida politics. She was just under six feet and had green eyes, curly strawberry blond hair, and sun-freckled skin. If the Waltons ever needed another daughter, Penelope would have had no problem earning a little extra cash.

I think it is fair to say that she wanted to work on more than just my campaign. To make a long story short, we went out to a bar for a couple of drinks and the convo got intense
after one of our eighteen-hour days, and one thing led to another. Soon after getting into her Mercedes, she kissed me below. I will admit, I was curious, but that does not excuse what I did. It just felt so different being with a white girl. I'd never rubbed a white person's head until I rubbed hers, and it felt funny. Sort of like seaweed on a smooth stone.

After she finished, she drove me home and Leslie met me smiling at the door. In her hands was the very first cake she had ever baked. Or at least tried to bake. It looked more like a heap of chocolate crumbs glued together with chocolate frosting. I played the surprised role, but I had never felt as ashamed as I did on that night. That was in '83 and after going through that, I felt I would never cheat on Leslie again. She was an eighties career woman who always said that domesticity was not her forte. But she was also the chocolate frosting that held me together so many times when things got rough.

I remember sitting in the yard in a lawn chair at midnight with a Bud Lite, looking at the stars, feeling bad about what I had done as I ate a handful of cake crumbs. And then to add insult to my emotional injury, I looked at the full moon over Miami and wondered where in the world Cheryl was, and if she ever thought of me.

Washington, D.C.

NBS News Studio

11:15
P.M
. EST

“Hello, America, I am Franklin Dunlop and welcome to NBS's clear, concise, and continuing coverage of election night 2000.

“Once I watched a Bulls-versus-Knicks game in the Garden, and Michael poured in fifty-five points. I was asked by my friend afterwards if I was a fan of the superstar from North Carolina. Being the devoted Knicks fan that I am, I said no, not particularly. He was a great player, but I was a Knicks fan first and foremost, win, lose, or draw. My friend looked me squarely in the eye and said, ‘If you don't
like Michael Jordan . . . you don't like basketball.' America, if you are not enjoying this race tonight, you just don't like elections. This election night, which started out as predictable as death and taxes, has given us a number of twists and turns already, and it's not even halfway over.

Before we go any further, let's send it out to Phoenix and Vincent Winslet, at the campaign headquarters of Governor Tom.”

“Thanks, Frank. The mood out here, if I had to put it in a word, is apprehensive. They are aware that their numbers have slipped a little in upstate New York where they were looking to pull off a Steiner-like upset. The endorsement from former senator D'Amato has not translated into votes thus far. As the minutes tick by, we hear that the governor and the first lady of the state are in their suite with his running mate former Majority Leader Michael Justice, and his wife and children.

“I have with me an adviser to the governor, Reverend Samuel Bellwort of the Christian Family United Coalition. Reverend Bellwort, your opinions on the race thus far?”

“Tonight I feel America still has the choice, as we have been saying for the last three months across this fine country of ours, to get rid of the liberal ideas which have caused the death of morality, and the soul of this country to become infested with pus at its very core. On one hand you have the poster child for liberalism and a proud card-carrying member of the ACLU, Senator Henry Let-Me-Raise-Your-Taxes Davis, and on the other hand you have the vice president with a pro-choice running mate. We have been trying to tell America for the past three months that if the man cannot be counted on to properly lead his ticket, how can he be counted on to lead a nation? This is the message we have been taking across America.”

“And apparently so far America has not listened. Back to you, Frank, for more election-night coverage!”

Fontainebleau Hotel

Suite 1717

Sitting in front of the television as the computer commercial came on, Myles asked, “Can you believe him?”

“Who? The preacher guy?”

“Yeah. He has some balls. I'm glad the reporter dissed his ass.”

“Child,” Leslie replied as she brought the blue flame of her lighter to the tip of a cigarette, “you need to have alligator skin. I learned that years ago. Nothing is off limits. So you roll with it. After all,” she said, blowing smoke away from him, “this is the life we chose and that's a part of the game.”

“I know, but it would get to me when it's personal.”

“Myles, I hate to say it, but if we win, you will more than likely have a camera crew following you to work every day for a couple of weeks. That's just the facts of life in politics 2000. Inquiring minds want to snoop.”

“I guess it's something you get used to. I saw this T-shirt in SoHo that made me mad at first, but it was kinda funny. The front said, ‘What's the difference between Leslie Davis and God?' and the back read, ‘God doesn't think he's Leslie Davis!'”

With a smile Leslie said, “Yeah, I saw something like that in Seattle. That's what happens when you're an intelligent woman. Either you're stuck up or a bitch. There's never an in between. If I sat in the background, baked cookies, and held Tupperware parties, you wouldn't hear that shit. You kinda learn to ignore it.