My Future Sanity
I woke to the smell of coffee and sounds of a kitchen clean-up. When I called to Alex, he returned, barefooted, wearing striped boxers and a t-shirt advertising Tito’s Vodka. I touched my head to see what my hair was doing. Was there a brush in my bag?
He lay down next to me, an arm around my shoulder, his left hand landing casually on my left breast. “I only meant to offer you coffee or tea,” he said, “but as long as I’m here . . .”
“Give me a sec—” I said, then ran to the bathroom, peed, rubbed toothpaste around my mouth, returned to a now-undressed Alex, who was wearing a look that was arousal-apologetic and so sweet.
I told him not to do any more dishes while I showered and got into last night’s clothes. He asked what I liked for breakfast.
“Such as . . . ?”
“Eggs. I can do scrambled—”
“Any pie left?”
“Definitely. I’ll warm it up. I like a girl who eats pie for breakfast.”
I said, “I noticed.”
I took inventory while in his bathroom: the black and white tile, the Soft-Scrub with bleach sitting on a sponge where tub met wall; the just-unwrapped bar of soap. His towels were a flattering shade of red, so with one wrapped around me I popped my head into the kitchen to say, “Nice bathroom. Brand-new soap. I’ll be dressed in a sec.”
When we sat down to warmed-up pie, he said, “Tell me about work. Tell me what you do every day.”
Had I realized how much I needed a sounding board who wasn’t a boss, a litigious attorney-roommate, a parent, a publicist? I said, “I’d really like to tell you what I do, but I’m not supposed to.”
“Because . . . ?”
“I signed something that said, essentially, what happens at work stays at work. No leaks.”
“Not to anyone? Not even”—he gave my bare foot a nudge under the table—“close personal friends?”
Didn’t my mother believe that a secret whispered to her could be shared with my firewall of a father? Her loose confidentiality rule was all the green light I needed. I summarized: I’d signed a piece of paper without thinking it through. Yes, I’d read it before signing, in front of hawk-eyed Sandra, wanting to look like a smart, analytical, cautious future employee. “Transfer of intellectual property” sounded reasonable, even fair, merely asking that I wouldn’t help myself to what Team Champion covered.
“Is everything you do there so hush-hush?”
“No. A lot is . . .” Should I say it? Worthless? Mundane? Past its sell-by-date. I settled on, “pretty dull”.
“If this helps: I’m trustworthy. And discreet. I have to be.”
He refilled our coffee mugs and returned to the table. “What do you have to be discreet about?” I asked. “Do you mean at work?”
“Okay . . . I know this sounds puritanical . . . Let’s say a customer comes in with a woman, and they’re all over each other, and they’re buying Sancerre as if it’s the cutest thing two people ever bought, like I don’t know it’s straight out of Fifty Shades of Gray. Then, maybe a week later, the same guy comes in with his wife and two kids. I don’t look confused”—he cocked his head, feigning a puzzled look—“I don’t say, ‘Hey, weren’t you just here with a woman young enough to be in your Introduction to American Literature seminar?’”
“Not even a raised eyebrow that says ‘I’m onto you’?”
“Nope. None of my business, and bad for customer loyalty.”
I wasn’t sure how retail diplomacy squared with the type of secret-keeping I’d need. I started with the merely historical. “Did I ever tell you I was hit by a car, leaving the EEOB?”
“No! When?”
“September.”
“Holy shit. No, you never told me! Were you hurt?”
“I was. Not that I remember anything, because I was knocked unconscious, but I bounced off the car with several broken ribs and a concussion. Police, ambulance, hospital, the works. I’m fine now.” Out of habit, I lifted my wet bangs to show the ghost of former bruises. “Anyway, here’s the part that’s going into Kirby’s next book: the car that hit me was on its way to the White House.”
“For?”
“Sexual relations with Donald J. Trump!”
“Wait. What? A prostitute hit you?”
“No. An optometrist.”
That earned me a most gratifying near-spit-take, after which he managed to ask, “How do you know all this?”
“Oh,” I said as airily as I could, “from the driver’s husband’s lover.”
I was officially, at long last, enjoying the topic. I’d been telling half the story to various parties, but now, adding the presidential sexual sub-plot was not only liberating but, for the first time, bordering on fun.
“Was this a one-off or an affair? Do you know?”
“An affair.”
“Also learned from the girlfriend? If the lover was a girlfriend.”
“Correct. Mandy Cullinane, girlfriend and real-estate agent. She called me at my parents’ store, filling me in and asking me to go public with it.”
“Why couldn’t she go public with it?”
“Because I was nearly killed by Veronica—that’s the driver’s name, Veronica Hyde-White, O.D.—so people would see it as the angry accident victim speaking out.”
“And Champion has your scoop under lock and key? Is he contributing anything himself to this alleged book?”
“So far, not much. He talks to quote-unquote sources, but there’s nothing new. Blah blah POTUS is an idiot, fighting and yelling in the West Wing . . . a big fat baby, apoplectic, vindictive beyond belief. Separate bedrooms, steak and ice cream, same old same old.”
“He’s using you,” said Alex.
“I know! But I was so happy to get the job! When he asked me to write a summary of the whole weird thing, accident plus adultery, I never thought to say, ‘No, that belongs to me. Hire me or don’t hire me, but it’s my story.”
“You don’t think voters should know Trump is having an affair in the White House, maybe in the Oval Office? You don’t think evangelicals should know? And faithful husbands and wives and priests and rabbis?”
“But it’s second-hand! Maybe third- or fourth-hand. I can’t just pick up the phone and call the Post or the Times with hearsay. What could I offer as proof: ‘Mandy Cullinane of Cornwall Parker says her alleged boyfriend’s wife is shtupping the president?’”
“Do you think she could be making it all up?”
“The husband claims to have proof.”
“What kind?”
“Clinton kind of proof. On his wife’s knickers—they’re British—stashed in the freezer.”
“What a world,” Alex said. He left the kitchen, came back with his phone, sat down, opened his email. “Tell me what I need to know.”
“Is this for therapeutic purposes? For my future sanity?”
“No.”
What was left? “For patriotic slash moral reasons?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“But why? We know Trump will deny everything. Fake news! All lies. He’ll say, ‘I don’t even know this optometrist! And my vision is perfect! Melania didn’t leave me. She’s up in New York, shopping for her next inaugural ball gown.’” I pushed some pie around my plate and mumbled, “Plus I’d lose my job.”
“No you wouldn’t. Your boss sounds incompetent. He needs you.”
When I still hesitated, he tried, “What if this is the affair that gets him defeated? What if the anonymous leak checks out . . . Think of the possibilities . . . It could mean clean water, clean air. You could flip the senate. You could pass gun control . . . You could reunite families at the border.”
Did he know me that well already? . . . Babies at the border. My face must’ve been signaling I could be convinced because Alex put his hand over mine. “What if you didn’t leak it? What if someone else tipped off a reporter?”
“Like who?”
“Like me,” he said.