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Apparently, they’d made endless jokes about his line-less face, and his too-dark tan that made his too-white teeth look like Chiclets.
I actually had a little much needed laugh myself.
They were only expressing the very things we were all thinking.
I mean a few of the interns at one point had tried to come up with a plan to discuss the excessive tanning with the senator. In the end, though, no one had the balls to bring it up to him.
Which meant that Michael just kept doing what he was doing. And that made him fodder for the comedians and talk show hosts.
“Senator,” I said, trying for an authoritative, but calming voice, “how about we have a few minutes alone?” I suggested, and the staffers looked thankful as they gathered their things and scurried out of the room.
He started in again on the program, but I had just about enough of it, likely thanks to the telltale pressure I was feeling in my temples, leaving me to wonder if it was just going to be a headache, or if I had another all-night migraine ahead of me. So I needed to get this over with as quickly as possible.
“Senator, how about you have a seat?” I suggested, waving toward the other side of the tufted leather couch I was seated on.
Normally, I attempted to stay as far away from the senator as possible.
What can I say? Sometimes—okay, a lot of times—men in power thought that any woman nearby was open game. I learned early on in my career to make sure I hurried right out of events as soon as all the official work was done.
I had no interest in getting felt up by a politician.
It wasn’t my goal to become one of these men’s mistresses or wife.
It didn’t help, in Michael’s case, that I looked alarmingly similar to his mistress. Same wavy blonde hair, same blue eyes, same general body type. The only real difference was she liked to pile on the glam, and I didn’t have time for my makeup to get all runny or smudged, so I went light on it.
The senator sighed as he wrestled his tie loose before dropping down on the couch.
“Why did you send everyone away?” he asked, and there was something slimy in the smile he shot in my direction.
“I need to talk about the more… sensitive matters involving your campaign,” I said, watching as he stiffened.
“Has Aaron caused more problems?” he asked, meaning his illegitimate son with the heavy cocaine addiction.
“Aaron is always… in touch,” I admitted. I’d given him my number early on, so he stopped calling the office, where other people might be willing to use that information against the senator.
To that, Michael shook his head, looking a little more human for a moment. “That was a mistake.”
“It might be smart never to call your son a mistake out loud. It’s not a good thing to get accustomed to saying, because it might slip out accidentally in the future.”
“He’s not my son,” Michael insisted, chin jutting out. “I have my boys already.”
He also had a daughter, but he never mentioned her. The two of them had a falling out twenty-some-odd years ago when she’d gone on a news program and begged everyone in Brooklyn to vote for anyone other than her father.
It was an incident that had fractured the family. He still didn’t speak to her. From what I understood, though, his wife was still very close with her daughter. She probably silently agreed with her daughter’s stance. But also liked the fact that her husband kept his Senate seat, because it meant he was busy most of the time, and left her the hell alone.
“Regardless, this isn’t about Aaron per se. I think it is just time we sat down and had a heart-to-heart about anything else you might want to tell me,” I said, closing my tablet, and placing my hands on it, folded over each other, looking welcoming.
“You want to know if I have any more dirty laundry.”
“We all do, Senator,” I said, shrugging.
“Yeah? What kind of dirty laundry do you have, Beth?” he asked, and I wasn’t sure if he was actually being slimy, or if I was just taking it that way because I was tired and the headache was definitely taking a turn toward a migraine, judging by the way the sound of a phone ringing in the next office had me wincing.
“We’re not talking about me,” I said, lifting my chin, making my voice a little firmer. “I’m not running for a public office,” I reminded him.
“As unfortunate as it is, your private life is for public consumption. I need to know if there is anything else you have not told me yet. As you know, we are only a few months away from the election. This is the time when your political rivals will pull a card out of their sleeves to play. When there’s not enough time for me to fix it.”
He nodded at that, knowing how true it was. There were many times over the years he watched friends of his lose their seats because of random scandals.