“Oh, just ignore him,” interrupted Mike’s wife Jennifer, popping into the doorframe. “Come on in, you two, and get yourselves a drink.” Jennifer, who was a couple of years younger than me, was what you might charitably describe as “a handsome woman,” with short hair, a kindly face just beginning to show lines, and an infectious smile.
When Ellen first showed up on Capitol Hill, Jennifer was naturally concerned that the stunning young woman represented a threat to the McCleary marriage. But unusually for a U.S. Senator, Mike was completely devoted to his wife, and when this became clear to everyone concerned, she and Ellen became thick as thieves. There were absolutely no secrets between them, although I’d had to insist that my wife’s and my sexual proclivities remain the exception that proved this rule. Up to this point, I’d been pretty confident that Ellen had, in fact, kept our private life private.
A few minutes later, Mike and I were standing on his deck overlooking the woods out back, each of us holding a bottle of Shiner Bock. Mike was tending to an enormous rack of sausages, short ribs and chicken thighs grilling on his barbecue. Smoke leaked from a closed door next to the ribs, and I surmised that he’d had a brisket in the smoker since before dawn.
“The secret’s in the wet brush, Son,” he informed me, not for the first time. (He pronounced it “wait brush.”) “The barbarians around here add the sauce when the meat’s still on the grill, but that just detracts from its natural flavor.”
“Right,” I agreed. “So who’s coming tonight, other than Pharma Douche?” I gestured to the copious meat on the grill.
“Well, his wife, obviously. Plus a few folks from back home. I reckon that after dinner, we Texans can sit around and talk football, while you take the Yankee off and put the arm on him. But I tell you what, that sumbitch is a real piece of work.” Before I could ask him what he meant, the bell rang. “Hell, that must be them now,” he said, handing me the wet brush and the jar of his special-recipe marinade. “You take good care my birds, now.”
As Mike had warned, Pharma Douche turned out to be a real piece of work. He was the eldest son of the founder of PharmaCo, and he’d been given the company’s top job when his father retired, on the basis of no discernible ability or experience. He’d promptly steered the enterprise directly onto the rocks, which now necessitated them shelling out big bucks for top political talent.
Nevertheless, he somehow managed to maintain that special arrogance that is the hallmark of men who possess large fortunes, which they’ve done nothing to create.
After a couple of minutes, Mike, who was anxious to get back to his wet brush, brought Pharma Douche out to the deck and introduced us. The executive shook my hand with the warmth and enthusiasm of a dead fish. He looked pretty much like his publicity photos — handsome in a stuffy, New England prep-school kind of way, and he wore his fifty-three years pretty well.
Mike noticed that his guest still had no drink. “Need a beer there, Son? Go grab one out of the fridge. And bring me one while you’re at it.” Mike took the brush from me and got back to work.
Pharma Douche seemed nonplussed by Mike’s informality. He looked around, presumably for a butler or a footman or a who-the-fuck-knows what. Finding none, he looked to me as the next best alternative, perhaps thinking that since I’d been basting the chicken thighs, I worked for Mike in some capacity. He gestured back towards the house meaningfully with his eyes.
It’s going to be a long evening.
I took a second to drain my bottle and said, “I’ll take care of it. I need a refresh anyway.” When I offered him a bottle a minute later, he gave me the same look that I’d imagine he’d give a waiter at a Michelin-starred restaurant who offered him a glass of Thunderbird. “Shiner Bock is the best accompaniment to authentic Texas barbecue,” I said firmly. “All the experts agree on that.”
My appeal to expertise and authenticity had the desired effect, and he accepted the bottle with a wan smile. He took a tentative sip.
But unfortunately, that was about as close as I got to establishing a rapport with the new CEO of PharmaCo. He rebuffed all further attempts to make small talk or share political gossip. In his mind, the only person on the deck worthy of his attention was Mike, and he kept trying to engage the Senator in conversation, despite the latter’s obvious irritation at being distracted from his grill.
This idiot has absolutely no clue about who’s who or what’s what in Washington.
Since in D.C., knowledge equals power equals money, I began to increase my estimate of how much lucre I’d be able to extract from PharmaCo over the coming years.
When we finally sat for dinner, Pharma Douche stuck out uncomfortably. Whereas the rest of Mike’s guests (eight couples from various parts of Texas, who’d drifted in and made themselves comfortable, while I was on the deck trying to make a good first impression on my prospective client) were wearing smart casual, the PharmaCo CEO had shown up in a light gray bespoke suit with all the trimmings. His wafer-thin Hermes tie had probably set him back at least three hundred bucks.
But the item of clothing that he really needed was a bib, because from the moment he laid eyes on Ellen, he seemed in dire peril of drooling all over the front of this clothes. He was sitting to my wife’s immediate left, and from my position across the table from her, I could see him take every possible opportunity to sneak peeks at her cleavage. (In fairness to Pharma Douche, I should note that Ellen’s cleavage, always magnificent, was even more so in her new cocktail dress.)
Pharma Douche alternated between initiating intimate small talk with my wife and relating loud, boastful stories on topics that no one cared about, ostensibly to entertain the entire table, but clearly intended to impress only Ellen. I saw the other guests start to roll their eyes at his leering and sniggering and boasting, and I almost began to feel embarrassed for the guy.
Unfortunately, the guest who took the most notice of his oafish behavior was Mrs. Pharma Douche, who was sitting to my right directly across from her husband.
She seemed a perfectly acceptable corporate wife — pretty but not beautiful, intelligent but not sparkling. According to rumors, the primary asset she’d brought to their marriage was money — enough to fend off Wall Street vultures while allowing Pharma Douche to pursue a number of dubious acquisition projects. She was a couple of years on the wrong side of forty, and I imagined that this was not the first time that her husband had embarrassed her in public.
But it may have been the first time he’d done so with a woman so clearly out of her league as Ellen.
The tension between the two seemed to confirm other rumors, namely that the Pharma Douche marriage was on the rocks, for all the usual reasons — his philandering, her shrewishness, both of their who-the-fuck-cares. As I understood it, the key issue for the couple at that moment was how to prevent their mutual loathing from becoming so much of a scandal that her family would turn off the tap and force PharmaCo to go hat in hand to Wall Street.
I sensed a catastrophe brewing.
While there was little that Mrs. Pharma Douche could do to help me get the PharmaCo contract, there was plenty she could do to stop me from getting it. So, I was as solicitous with her as I could be, asking polite questions about her life, making suggestions for things to see and do in Washington, offering to arrange special events for her and her friends (as a former Member of Congress, I have access to some pretty impressive perks), and so on. My efforts seemed to distract her from her husband’s behavior, but I nevertheless got the distinct impression that she somehow blamed me for bringing this tantalizing temptress to the party.
My wife, meanwhile, was not helping the situation. At all.
As a beautiful woman working among Washington’s power elite, Ellen very frequently had to deal with a variety of arrogant pricks — over-the-hill Senators, fat-cat donors, steely-eyed Pentagon brass, etc. — all trying to use their positions of influence to worm their way into her panties. This being the days before #MeToo, her only reliable defense against these scumbags was her wit. And over the years, she’d honed this until it was as keen as the sharpest katana of the greatest Samurai warrior.
I can’t count the number of times when I saw some half-drunk asshole corner Ellen at a cocktail party and try to impress her with clumsy boasting, in the lead-up to inevitable even clumsier advance. Ellen would smile and play along, and at precisely the right instant she’d shut him down with the perfect riposte. Then she’d coolly walk away, leaving her victim to realize only a minute later that he’d been sliced in half and that his intestines were now dripping out from his belly onto the floor.
Astonishingly, Ellen had made no enemies among the haughty Washington players whom she’d humbled in this manner. If anything, once they’d stuffed picked their guts up off the floor, they were even more eager to use their positions to help her get whatever she needed. The contact list on my wife’s iPhone was impressive, even by Washington standards, and anyone on it would return her text within ten minutes.
But during Mike’s dinner party, my wife was engaged in what can only be described as shameless, almost girlish flirting with the CEO of PharmaCo. Had you observed her body language that evening, you would have had no doubt that there was no more charming fellow on the planet than Pharma Douche. She listened, enraptured, as he regaled the table with his ridiculous stories, and when she laughed at one of his jokes, she gave him a meaningful smile, as though to say that she was the only one who truly understood him.
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