The Race (17 page)

"All I wanted was to erase that moment forever."

SHE FOUND A boyfriend at Yale—an acting student who burned so brightly that he seemed to live at the extremity of his nerves.

"Heroin," Lexie told Corey flatly. "The perfect rabbit hole for me to crawl down. I experienced each sensation vividly, and felt nothing at all inside.

"I was company for Peter. That was all he wanted from me." Her tone became flat again. "We snorted heroin every night. I learned to function, get myself through the school year. The day it ended, I flew to Mexico and checked into a seedy hotel near Cancún.

"I called Mama to say we were on vacation, and locked the door. Then I shook and writhed and sweated until I was all dried out." Corey felt her turn to face him. "I've watched you wonder why I don't drink alcohol. In Mexico, I looked in the mirror and saw an addict, with burn holes for eyes. I never want to know that woman again."

"At least you learned something important, Lexie—that you're strong."

Lexie inhaled. "Kicking heroin was the easy part. The rest is harder to fix."

HER SEPARATENESS, AND her silence, became part of who she was.

"Even after I married Ron," she said, "I chose not to tell him. Just like you never told Janice about Clay.

"Maybe I thought Ron was too caught up in his own worries and needs to really see me. And maybe that was what I wanted: a man who, even during sex, was focused on his own desires." She turned on her back again. "In a way, I underrated him. But only in a way."

"How so?"

"After I found out he was cheating, I asked if we could see a therapist. That's when he first described for me how distant I was, as a woman and as a lover—that there was something about me he couldn't touch.

"I forced myself to tell him the story, tears streaming down my face, with a male therapist sitting between us. After I finished, all Ron could say was 'My God, Lexie,
I
didn't rape you.' That's when I knew we were done."

COREY LET MOMENTS pass, trying to absorb all she had told him. Quietly, he asked, "Why did you come to me tonight?"

"I'm not sure yet. Maybe because I think you're going to run."

"And so you decided to sleep with me?"

She turned to face him. "If you
do
run, that fact will come between us, for all the reasons we understood before I called you. And now you know another reason.

"Nothing that's happened between us gives me the right to even hope that you won't run. And I didn't make love with you to give you second thoughts." Her voice became dismissive. "Maybe accepting your ambitions is a form of self-protection. There's a built-in end to us, and it won't be anyone's fault."

Sifting through his emotions, Corey found that the thought of never seeing her again made him feel far lonelier than before. "Don't be so sure of what I want."

"You should think about that very hard," she answered evenly. "As I will."

They did not make love again. At length, quiet, she fell asleep in his arms. Sleepless, he listened to the rhythm of her breathing.

In the morning, Corey drove to the airport alone.

ON WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, COREY DROVE WITH JACK WALTERS TO the horse country of Virginia, where his media adviser, Brian Lacey, owned a farm, a place for them to assess, without being seen or heard, Corey's chances of winning the presidency.

Blake Rustin was already there. The four men sat on Lacey's brick patio around a table covered with printouts and charts, the bones of Corey's prospective candidacy. Despite all of Rustin's prior successes, Corey knew, this was his chief adviser's chance to leave an indelible mark by placing an insurgent candidate in the White House, and his sense of urgency was matched by his preparation.

"We've done blind polling," he told the others, "describing Corey, Marotta, and Christy only by their attributes. For Corey, the key phrases are 'war hero,' 'independent,' 'defies his party on money in politics,' and 'not captive to the Christian Right.'" Facing Corey, he said, "You beat Christy by thirteen points, and Marotta by eleven—"

Corey looked at him quizzically. "Just how did you describe Marotta, Blake?"

A keen look crossed Brian Lacey's diplomat's face. "Marotta," Rustin answered, "is a professional politician with a cherubic-looking wife. His calling card is 'father of five' and 'stands up for family values.'

"You're a genuine hero, Corey. People trust you to clean up corruption, make your own decisions, and straighten out this fucked-up 'war on terror.'" Rustin placed his fingers on a sheet of data. "You risked your life to shoot down that Iraqi general, and then withstood torture at the hands of Arab enemies. That's invaluable."

Not if you saw Joe Fitts's severed head,
Corey wanted to say. Instead he turned, gazing at three dappled horses cantering in a field. Briefly detached from the others, he wondered what Lexie might think of this meeting, or the truth about Joe's death.

"Blake's right," Lacey interposed. "I know you don't like to cash in on your medals, Corey. But ads with pictures of you and your navigator would have a real impact."

Corey did not respond. Turning to Rustin, he asked, "Did you run any polls with real
names
attached?"

"Of course. Among likely Republican primary voters, you're neck and neck with Christy, and only seven points behind Marotta—"

"In other words," Corey interrupted, "my fellow Republicans like my biography until they know it's me. To Magnus Price, the
real
me comes with attributes like 'soft on gays,' 'callous toward stem cells,' 'panders to blacks,' and 'indifferent to the moral concerns of Christians.' Along with charming personal qualities like 'arrogant,' 'crummy father,' and, worst of all, 'unmarried,' which leaves open the question of
which
sex I might be having extramarital sex with. In the fever swamp of the Republican right, I'm as appealing as Chairman Mao."

As Rustin scrutinized him, Corey could read his anxious, unspoken question:
Where were you last weekend, and with whom?
"I grant your problems with our party, Corey. And, yes, I wish you'd beaten Marotta to Mary Rose. But if we can get you to the general election, Americans will make you the next president of the United States."

Even in this jaded company, Corey saw the talismanic power of those words. And he felt sympathy for Rustin, whose ambitions could only be realized through his surrogate, and who could only fret as Corey decided. "Chances are I never get to the general election," Corey argued. "Why do you think Marotta and Christy are fighting for the title of God's second-born child? In primaries like South Carolina, where turnout is low, the predominant voters are conservatives galvanized by their church, Christian talk radio, and even the hit men at Rohr News."

"Not this year," Lacey countered. "This may be the year that Marotta and Bob Christy tear Price's grand design apart—a year, by the way, in which Americans are more frightened and confused than ever about how we combat terror. And they've moved the primaries up in states like New York and California, where you figure to do well!

"Who knows what happens if there's another 9/11? By the time they get through with each other, Marotta and Christy may look like pygmies compared to Osama bin Laden. That leaves you." Lacey's speech became ever more insistent. "Only
you
can get to all the young people who don't vote. Only
you
can offer hope instead of rancor and division. Only
you
have the charisma to go over the head of the donor classes, and bail this party out of the mess it's in. And this year may be the
only
year that you can change our party for good. So I ask you, Corey: do you have the right not to run?"

Once more, Corey was silent; Lacey was deeply experienced, and his instincts were as sharp as his skill at crafting a message. Watching Corey's face, Jack Walters suggested, "Let's go over the issues—gay rights, for an opener. What do you think, Blake?"

Rustin eyed Corey with a wary expression. "We have to finesse that. Corey doesn't want to be for a constitutional ban on gay marriage. The classically conservative thing to say is that we're against it but we don't need to tamper with the Constitution."

"What about civil unions?" Lacey asked. "That's trickier."

"We should be against them, at least for now. But quietly." Turning to Corey, Rustin elaborated, "In the short term, we have to pacify suburban moderates without making religious conservatives irate. The subtle message to suburbanites is 'Keep having gay cousin Arnie and his partner to Thanksgiving, and eventually we'll work things out.' I know you don't want us to be the 'mean party,' Corey."

"So you can live with my vote on stem cells?"

"Under these circumstances, yes. With Christy and Marotta splitting Christian voters, that vote on stem cells enhances your appeal to centrists." He paused, then added, "Still, you might start going to church. Some plain-vanilla denomination, like Methodist or Presbyterian—Episcopalians are turning gay men into bishops, so they're out. It could help to put out that your mom's an evangelical—"

"Mom," Corey said succinctly, "is staying where she is. If God supports my candidacy, He isn't telling her. Pray that Christy and Marotta leave her out of this."

Walters kept his eyes on Corey. "There's also affirmative action."

"Oh," Corey said quickly, "I'm against
that
."

Brian Lacey raised his eyebrows. "Really?"

"For white people," Corey amended with a smile. "From my own experience, being a privileged white guy is the biggest affirmative action program in America—anyone who doesn't get
that
isn't paying attention. So I'm absolutely against more privileges for guys like us."

Lacey's own smile was a wispy ghost. "I hope you're not planning to say that."

"Not as I just put it, Brian. But we both know that there's still a racial problem, and our party's response is slickly packaged condescension." Scanning the others, Corey said, "Look at our last convention. There were more black entertainers on the stage than black delegates in the hall—Rohr News interviewed all nine of them, I think.

"Our outreach to minorities is a joke. Someday we'll realize that sticking symbolic black folks in the cabinet doesn't cut it anymore." Standing, Corey asked, "So is everyone interested in how the world looks to
me
?"

"Of course," Rustin answered. "We all are."

"Our military is degraded from fighting the wrong war. Our political dialogue is bankrupt. Our party vamps on global warming while our kids wonder if
their
kids will still be able to breathe. And, assuming they can breathe, we'll have helped to put them as deep in debt as they are dependent on foreign oil. And what's our solution? Sticking oil wells next to caribou and reindeer." Corey began pacing. "_If_ I ran for president, I'd have a very hard time not mentioning some of that. Which, in this party, is a good reason not to run.

"My compelling reason
to
run is to change our party, our politics, and this whole corrupt system, which is strangling us all. I'd run as if politics is an honorable adventure, in the belief that Americans deserve more from us than narcotic babble punctuated by demagoguery and slander." Folding his arms, Corey finished evenly: "All of you will go on, regardless of what I do. But I only get one chance, and I'm not sure that this is it."

Rustin placed curled fingers to his lips. "There are things you can do, Corey, short of jumping off the cliff."

"Such as?"

"Assembling a campaign staff. Telling potential supporters to stay loose. Acknowledging that Christy's changed the political landscape. Redoubling your appearances in early primary states like New Hampshire, South Carolina, Michigan, and California."

"What about Iowa?" Walters asked.

"A waste of time, packed with evangelicals." Pointedly, Rustin added, "_That_ part's good for Christy, though. By winning Iowa he could take a piece out of Marotta."

Lacey looked at the others and then stood to face Corey. "We've all drawn straws," he said quietly, "and I get to ask the inevitable question."

"Which is?"

"Is any part of your reluctance based on something—anything—that voters would find disqualifying?"

Corey gave him a faint smile. "Voters? Depends on which ones, I guess. But there's nothing you don't know that
I
would find disqualifying."

Briefly, Lacey glanced at Rustin. "Then all of us agree, Senator. We admire you, and we want to help you to become president. But it's time for you to decide."

The three men stared at him, awaiting an answer as Corey tried to envision his life and future, the personal and political consequences of one course or another. But nothing was clear to him, and the reasons for his irresolution seemed murkier than before. "I appreciate all you've done," he told them. "And I owe you a decision. By Thanksgiving, I'll be in or out."

"Six weeks?" Rustin inquired dubiously. "It's very late already."

"Six weeks," Corey affirmed. "Put together a travel plan."

DRIVING HOME, COREY discovered that he could escape their importuning but not the echo of his own disquiet.

That night, unable to sleep, he called Lexie. Though she sounded surprised, even pleased, all she did was ask, "What's this about, Corey?"

"It's sort of a jumble. But I wanted you to know that last weekend was important. At least for me."

Even on the telephone, he could sense her hesitation. "Then I'm glad to hear from you," she answered. "I guess phone calls are safe enough."

"ABOUT RELIGION," LEXIE ASKED, "WHAT EXACTLY DO YOU BELIEVE?"

Corey sat in his motel room in Nashua, New Hampshire, cell phone to his ear. "Not much," he answered. "But I do believe that there's a balance in the world: that kindness breeds kindness, and that evil comes to those who perpetrate it. God doesn't control our destiny—we do. To me, character is fate."

He could hear her reflect. "Not very comforting, my mama would have said."

"It should be. It means that our lives, and our world, are our responsibility. No one else has the power, and there's no one else to blame."