Russian Spring (55 page)

Bobby couldn’t understand it. She was friendly, she was quite willing to talk, she even sought him out for meals, but she continued to play the Ice Princess. Her behavior was quite beyond his experience.

He had certainly encountered his share of girls who were simply not interested. But in every way but one, Sara Conner acted as if she
was
interested. So why in the world was she torturing him like this?

It became something of an obsession. He lost interest in other girls. He was horny all the time. And he found himself trying to impress her in the only way that seemed possible.

He threw himself into the Wolfowitz campaign, at least when Sara Conner was in the house, taking his turn at the phones, beside her when he could manage it, stuffing envelopes, counting receipts, pep-talking the other campaign workers, writing P.R. copy, and in general working his ass off to prove his dedication to the Futile Gesture.

Weirdly enough, he found himself perversely
enjoying
it. Sitting
there in the living room beside Sara with an aching hard-on and making phone calls. Rapping enthusiastically with campaign workers while feeling her eyes on the back of his head. Eating pizza and barbecue and hamburgers across the kitchen table from her, discussing politics and fantasizing about her enigmatic body. The sexual tension was enormously frustrating, but there was also something, well, sexy about it, energizing in some crazy way.

And despite his better judgment, he found himself actually becoming dedicated to the Wolfowitz campaign, as if the act he was putting on to impress Sara Conner had turned him into a Method Actor, as if in the process of convincing her, he had convinced himself, as if, somehow, all the political discussions he had with her while possessed of a raging hard-on had transferred all that frustrated sexual energy from his dick to his brain.

No, Wolfowitz was not going to win, the early polls gave him about 10 percent, and it was not going to get much better, but the campaign itself, the hustle and the exhaustion, the frenzy and the superheated atmosphere, even the jingo demonstrations outside the house, and the bomb threats, and the crank phone calls, and the snide media coverage, along with the feeling of taking part in some foredoomed but noble adventure, were like some kind of drug, a permanent adrenaline high.

He had missed being part of the Flag Riot. He hadn’t gotten to march behind that upside-down flag. But he was marching behind it now, and if he knew all too well that this too was going to end up being a futile gesture, the spirit of the effort was something he wouldn’t have missed for the world.

And Sara Conner’s weird behavior had given it to him. Which only made him want her more.

One morning when they happened to be having a cup of coffee alone together out on the front porch, he voiced his frustrations to Nat Wolfowitz.

Nat laughed. “The phenomenon is not unknown in the literature, kid,” Nat told him. “The technical term is ‘cock-teaser.’ ”

Bobby grimaced. “Tell me something I don’t know, Nat,” he said. “Like
why
is she doing this?”

Wolfowitz shrugged. “You won’t know that until you see her hole cards, you should pardon the expression,” he said.

“And when is that going to happen?”

“At the end of the game, of course. Unless you fold first, in which case, you’ll never know. Life is like poker, kid, you gotta pay to see. And that, it would seem, is what she’s making you do now.”

“Jeez, Nat, what am I supposed to do?”

Wolfowitz laughed. “These are the cards kid,” he said. “Play them, or drop out of the hand.”

Bobby sighed. “Which should I do?” he asked.

“That depends on what
you’re
holding,” Wolfowitz said.

“What I’m holding is my
prick
, Nat!” Bobby groaned.

Wolfowitz laughed again. “Seems to me you’ve already got too much in this pot to drop out now.”

“That’s the best advice the American Gorbachev has to offer?”

“Well . . . ,” Wolfowitz said slowly. “You might try a futile gesture. Think about it, kid.”

Bobby thought about it. He thought about it long and hard. Yeah, sure, try a futile gesture! But what the hell was that?

And then, on day ten, during the dinner break, when they were both in the kitchen grabbing slices of pizza, it suddenly came to him, and when it did, he realized it had been obvious all along.

What was the most futile gesture he could possibly make under the circumstances?

Turn up his hole card, of course! Come right out and tell her exactly how he felt. Then, at least, she’d
have
to show him her hand, and one way or another, the game would at least be over. Wolfowitz had been right all along, these after all
were
the cards, and if he wasn’t going to fold, he really had no alternative but to call.

“Uh, could we eat out on the porch, Sara?” he said. “There’s something I should discuss with you in private.”

“Something to do with the campaign?”

“Uh, yeah, sort of,” Bobby told her. Though not exactly the one you think, he thought.

They went out onto the rickety front porch and sat down on two old folding chairs. Across the street, a handful of pickets paraded back and forth carrying signs that read “Stick It Up Your Peen,” “Fuck Communism,” “Traitor Wolfowitz,” and “Eat Anti-Protons, Peen-lovers.” Two bored-looking cops stood at either end of the police-line sawhorses. The jingo jerks yelled across the street at Bobby and Sara for a minute or two when they first appeared, but then quickly lost interest.

It was not exactly romantic, and yet, in a certain sense . . .

“Well, what is it, Bobby?” Sara said, biting off the tip of her pizza slice.

Bobby took a deep breath, felt a hollow blossoming in his stomach, hesitated. Ah, the hell with it!

“I really want to go to bed with you, Sara,” he said. “Surely you’ve noticed.”

Sara, surprisingly enough, didn’t react at all. She didn’t even look
at him. She took another bite of pizza and chewed it down slowly before she even spoke to him.

“I’ve noticed,” she finally said.

“So?” Bobby demanded.

“So what?”

“Jesus Christ!” he groaned. “So yes or no, already!”

Sara finally looked up at him, but her face was quite unreadable. “Why do you want to go to bed with me?” she said.

“Because you turn me on, damn it, why else?”

“What about me turns you on?”

“Come on, Sara, give me a break, you think this is easy?”

A ghost of a smile creased her lips. She slowly licked a glob of pizza sauce off of them with the tip of her tongue. “No,” she said. “Why should it be?”

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you!” Bobby cried.

Sara laughed knowingly. “Aren’t
you?
” she said. “Haven’t you been? Don’t you have a hard-on right now?”

Bobby flushed. “Sara!”

“Answer my question and then I’ll answer yours,” Sara said. “What about me turns you on? My tits? My ass?”

“Will you be serious!”

“This is
very
serious to me, Bobby,” Sara said earnestly. “I want you to be honest with me. I want you to be honest with yourself. Why do you want to fuck me?”

Bobby sighed. He thought for a long moment about what he was supposed to say next, and then gave up. All right, he decided, give her what she wants, speak straight from the heart.

“The way you dress, I don’t even know what your tits and ass look like, so it can’t be your fantastic body, I guess,” he said. “Maybe it’s your eyes, I mean, there’s something there that . . .” He threw up his hands in exasperation. “I don’t know how to say any of this right,” he admitted. “I just feel different around you, you know, I act different, I think different, I’m a different person somehow. . . .”

Sara smiled at him softly. “Do you like it?” she said quietly.

“Of course I like it!” Bobby snapped. “But I can’t say I’m too entranced with what’s going on now!”

Sara laughed, then grew suddenly serious. “Are you in love with me?” she said.

Bobby sat there transfixed. No one had ever asked him that before. “Are you in love with
me?
” was all he could manage to say.

“I asked first.”

Bobby shrugged. He sighed. He looked down at his shoe tops. “I’ve never been in love with anyone before,” he muttered, “so how the hell should I know if that’s what I’m feeling?”

“Me too,” Sara said, and broke into a smile that was positively radiant.

“So?” Bobby said.

“So I guess after we get off tonight, we’d better find out,” she told him. And she leaned over, pressed her lips against his, and opened her mouth. The pickets across the street hooted and jeered. He could taste the pizza on her tongue. But none of that mattered. Somehow, it only served to make the moment sweeter.

Far out in Berkeley, long known for leftist loonies, comic candidate Nathan Wolfowitz is getting laughs with his independent campaign for Congress. Wolfowitz, a UC Berkeley assistant professor of history and notorious card shark, advocates American entry into Common Europe and openly admits that his campaign is primarily financed by poker winnings.

“Why not?” declares the self-styled American Gorbachev. “At least I’m not dealing marked cards from the bottom of the deck, which is more than you can say for what the Democrats and Republicans are doing to the American people!”

—
Time
, “People”

They went up to Bobby’s room at 12:30. Bobby had been fantasizing about this moment endlessly, but now that it had finally come, he found his mind quite empty when it came to an opening move. They sat down on the edge of the bed together awkwardly, not touching, not saying anything, just staring at each other for what seemed like an agonizing eternity.

“This is weird . . . ,” Bobby finally managed to say.

“Uh-huh. . . .”

“So . . . ?”

“So . . . ?”

And then, somehow, all at once they were in each other’s arms and kissing, and once that finally managed to happen, it was another world. They rolled each other around the bed, and groped each other clumsily, and fumbled with their clothing, all the while keeping their mouths tightly locked, tasting each other’s tongues, hot, and awkward, and not at all fastidious in the sudden release of all the endlessly prolonged sexual tension between them.

Somehow, they managed to get their clothes off without breaking the long, long kiss, and then, at long, long last, Bobby lay naked in his bed atop the naked body of Sara Conner.

He propped himself up on his hands and took a long look at what was now finally revealed. Her ribs showed a little beneath small breasts with large, erect pink nipples. Her pubic hair was black and thin, and there was a small mole just to the southeast of her belly button.

In truth, it was a rather ordinary female body, and Bobby had seen much better, but, in that moment, under the circumstances, the sight was nevertheless magic.

He kissed her on the belly, deep inside each thigh, he sucked on one nipple, then the other, gave her a long kiss on the mouth, and then slipped his prick easily inside her.

It had been simple and basic up until that moment, but then it became something quite unlike anything he had experienced before. As he fucked her, Sara stared straight into his eyes, moaning, and sighing, but hardly blinking, and finally, when he had built her up to a peak, she took his head in her hands, and pulled him down into an open-mouthed kiss, so that when she bucked, and screamed, and came, she breathed her orgasm, her spirit, her essence, deep inside him.

And then, a moment later, with her hands kneading his balls, she broke the kiss, and he found himself looking deep, deep, deep, into her green eyes as he came, and when he did, she smiled, and ran her tongue slowly across her lips, and kissed him ever so gently in the moment afterward.

“So?” she said with a contented sigh.

“So . . . ?” he answered.

“So is this the beginning of a meaningful relationship?”

Bobby rolled off of her and snuggled her into the crook of his arm. He leaned over and kissed her tenderly on the lips. “Could be,” he said. “Tell you one thing, it certainly wasn’t any futile gesture.”

Billy Allen: “And why do you call yourself the American Gorbachev?”

Nathan Wolfowitz: “Because he’s my hero. He took a country that had had a terminal case of economic and political constipation for seventy years, held his nose, and gave it the enema it so desperately needed. Sound familiar, Billy?”

Billy Allen: “Please! We’re on
national television!
”

Nathan Wolfowitz: “And so are the atrocities we’re committing every day in Latin America, Billy—seen any good neuronic disrupter footage lately?”

Billy Allen: “Roll the damn commercial!”

—
Newspeak
, with Billy Allen

Nathan Wolfowitz’s Congressional campaign did turn out to be a Futile Gesture, as promised, though the Election Night party at Little Moscow was hardly a wake. For once, the drinks and the food were on Wolfowitz, not the guests—residents and campaign workers only.

Sara Conner was more or less both by that time; she hadn’t exactly moved all of her stuff into Bobby’s room, but she did stay over every night after the campaign work was over, and she had moved in three or four changes of clothes, as well as her computer.

The phones and the desks had been removed from the living room, and everyone gathered around the videowall to watch the returns. Even though the outcome was never in doubt, Wolfowitz waited till after midnight before making his formal statement.

By then, 98 percent of the precincts were in, and the final numbers would not vary by more than a percentage point or two at most. Michaelson, the Republican, had won with 48 percent of the vote. Carmelo, the Democrat, got 39 percent. Wolfowitz finished way behind with 13 percent.

“Well, at least we prevented the bastard from getting an absolute majority,” Sara said to Bobby as they sat there on the couch holding hands and watching the inevitable. “Not too bad for a futile gesture.”

“And maybe cost Carmelo the election . . . ,” Bobby muttered.