Fifteen Months Earlier
Things began to go south around nine thirty pm on election night. Dena had commandeered a booth in her Lincoln Square neighborhood tavern with a few friends. Normally sports channels blared on the half dozen flat-screen TVs, but tonight the screens were tuned to the networks and CNN. Early returns reported East Coast states falling pretty much as expected; her candidate had been piling up votes. Early calls had been proclaimed, accompanied in the pub with congratulatory cheers and drinks on the house. The crowd, mostly millennials, was in a good mood. The torch was passing in the expected way.
“Let’s have some wine,” Dena said. “We deserve it.” She ordered four bottles.
The first hint something was amiss happened during the second round of poll closings. Reports from Florida, always a thorny state, indicated the race was much closer than expected. Then came Virginia. Then a slew of too-close-to-call rust-belt states. When Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and even New Hampshire showed a lead for the Republican, the bar went quiet. Dena felt queasy. An hour later, she developed full-fledged nausea. And by the time they called the election, Dena joined ranks with the other shell-shocked voters who hadn’t seen it coming.
Her gut tightened with rage. How could this have happened? Bottom line—it couldn’t have. Something had gone horribly wrong. Someone or something had rigged the system. Ironically, that’s what the Republican candidate had been alleging throughout the campaign. Projection, maybe? He was as easy to read as a crystal bowl. Always blaming others for whatever didn’t go his way.
But this was a travesty. A miserable misogynistic narcissist had no right to the presidency. Like a pilot light that’s been lit, Dena’s rage exploded. She swilled the rest of her wine fast and hard.
As she did, the man she was currently sleeping with shot her a sympathetic glance. She eyed him with revulsion. How dare he feel sorry for her? She fucking wanted to belt him. This couldn’t go unanswered. In fact, this was war. She got up, went to the bar, and positioned herself next to a man she’d never seen before. He was drinking alone. She signaled for another glass of wine and ordered him a draft. When their drinks came, she took stock. Nice body, clean clothes, bedroom eyes. He would do.
She tossed back her drink in one go.
“That was fast,” he said.
“I dare you,” she said.
“Dare me what?”
“How fast can you swig that draft?”
“Why would I want to?”
“Because I want to get out of here, and I want you to come with me.” Even though it almost always worked, Dena braced for that split-second judgment every man made about her. She was attractive, she knew, with long, wavy black hair and big blue eyes. She still had a willowy figure, as well as a unique hippie-gone-straight style. She could have been a social worker, a millennial lawyer, even—she chuckled—a dedicated nonprofit executive. But this guy looked young. Happily, in the dim lighting of the bar, he couldn’t see her crow’s-feet, the permanently carved lines on her forehead, or the just-a-bit-too-flabby tummy that nature conferred on a thirty-fiveish woman.
A knowing smile came across the man’s face, and he threw back his beer. Dena smiled too. She threw a twenty on the bar, took his arm, and made sure her now former lover saw her before she sashayed out of the pub.
By the time they got back to her condo, they still hadn’t called Florida, but Michigan was looking grim. She retrieved the celebratory bottle of champagne from the fridge, poured them two glasses. Then she smashed the bottle into the sink. A flying shard nicked her finger. She sucked the blood off, picked up the glasses, and led him into her bedroom.