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Authors: Richard Hawke
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store where Andy had gone to buy his wife a bauble. Andy’s heart could still get its beat screwed up at the memory of that one. The SORRY WE’RE CLOSED sign making an uncommon afternoon appearance on the store’s glass door. The audacity of the tall, heavy-hipped woman’s smirk as she insisted that Andy keep his eyes glued to her face the entire time. Her painted talons kneading his thighs while the wall calendar ripped free behind her head. Andy had gone directly to the nearest bar afterward and devoured a scotch, neat, almost fearful that the Amazon might march into the bar any minute and lead him by the tie to the nearest cramped space for round two. Andy’s stomach still berated him every time Christine lifted the necklace from her jewelry box.
Of particular bewilderment to Andy was an out-of-town encounter with a friend of Jenny Hoyt’s, no less. Extremely reckless, the incident had occurred during a never-fully-investigated rough patch with Christine. Happily for Andy, the woman’s husband had taken a job in San Francisco, a tidy continent away.
His only real affair prior to Joy Resnick had taken place during Andy’s first senatorial campaign, the same year that Christine’s brother died and that Whitney and Lillian had returned from London to see their floundering marriage carom into the final wall. A bad year for the family. The woman was a journalist with
The Washington Post
, and the genesis of the affair had been the sort of joshing and flattering attention that was common in many of Andy’s interactions with people. In the case of Rita Flores, Andy would have characterized his attentions as “flirting without intent” — that is, until the moment the candidate had found himself entangled with the fiery reporter in the back of a limousine on the way to her Arlington apartment. The fact that Andy had allowed his bantering friendship with the journalist to develop into a full-blown affair had surprised him, and he had sworn to himself — and asserted to Rita Flores — that his behavior with her represented no judgment whatsoever on the state of his feelings toward his wife and his marriage. In fact, Andy felt — but did
not
share with the journalist — that his tryst with her shined a bright beacon of affirmation on his and Christine’s relationship. Nifty trick, that one. But both during and especially after every sexual encounter with Rita Flores, Andy had found his mind (or was it his heart?) inundated with loving images of Christine, along with internal voices confirming that his sexual compatibility with his wife absolutely trumped the gymnastic session just concluded with the aggressive Ms. Flores. His and Christine’s pillow talk was certainly far superior. Plus there was an edge to Rita Flores that had never really agreed with Andy, a small hardness in the woman when it came to considering the circumstances and conditions of others. Christine had none of that. Her heart was always on the side of the other. Andy would drift off to sleep after every encounter with Rita Flores convinced yet again that Christine was his one and only. A semantic minefield that Andy would forever have to wander alone.
Andy snapped out of his reverie. Christine was calling out to him from over by one of the wickets.
“And you
stay
in that chair until you’re good and ready to apologize, do you hear me?”
She was standing next to the tedious ad exec who had been drooling all over her at lunch. A Greenwich action figure if ever there was one: the pale yellow slacks, sky blue Lacoste shirt, northbound hairline. In the instant of looking over at the two of them, the image of the ad exec climbing atop Christine in some hotel room flashed through Andy’s mind. Jesus God, he thought, give the poor woman more credit than
that
.
Andy called back. “Whatever it was, I swear I won’t do it again!”
Christine laughed. “If I can’t forgive you on Easter, then when can I forgive you?”
Andy’s glass was
Of particular bewilderment to Andy was an out-of-town encounter with a friend of Jenny Hoyt’s, no less. Extremely reckless, the incident had occurred during a never-fully-investigated rough patch with Christine. Happily for Andy, the woman’s husband had taken a job in San Francisco, a tidy continent away.
His only real affair prior to Joy Resnick had taken place during Andy’s first senatorial campaign, the same year that Christine’s brother died and that Whitney and Lillian had returned from London to see their floundering marriage carom into the final wall. A bad year for the family. The woman was a journalist with
The Washington Post
, and the genesis of the affair had been the sort of joshing and flattering attention that was common in many of Andy’s interactions with people. In the case of Rita Flores, Andy would have characterized his attentions as “flirting without intent” — that is, until the moment the candidate had found himself entangled with the fiery reporter in the back of a limousine on the way to her Arlington apartment. The fact that Andy had allowed his bantering friendship with the journalist to develop into a full-blown affair had surprised him, and he had sworn to himself — and asserted to Rita Flores — that his behavior with her represented no judgment whatsoever on the state of his feelings toward his wife and his marriage. In fact, Andy felt — but did
not
share with the journalist — that his tryst with her shined a bright beacon of affirmation on his and Christine’s relationship. Nifty trick, that one. But both during and especially after every sexual encounter with Rita Flores, Andy had found his mind (or was it his heart?) inundated with loving images of Christine, along with internal voices confirming that his sexual compatibility with his wife absolutely trumped the gymnastic session just concluded with the aggressive Ms. Flores. His and Christine’s pillow talk was certainly far superior. Plus there was an edge to Rita Flores that had never really agreed with Andy, a small hardness in the woman when it came to considering the circumstances and conditions of others. Christine had none of that. Her heart was always on the side of the other. Andy would drift off to sleep after every encounter with Rita Flores convinced yet again that Christine was his one and only. A semantic minefield that Andy would forever have to wander alone.
Andy snapped out of his reverie. Christine was calling out to him from over by one of the wickets.
“And you
stay
in that chair until you’re good and ready to apologize, do you hear me?”
She was standing next to the tedious ad exec who had been drooling all over her at lunch. A Greenwich action figure if ever there was one: the pale yellow slacks, sky blue Lacoste shirt, northbound hairline. In the instant of looking over at the two of them, the image of the ad exec climbing atop Christine in some hotel room flashed through Andy’s mind. Jesus God, he thought, give the poor woman more credit than
that
.
Andy called back. “Whatever it was, I swear I won’t do it again!”
Christine laughed. “If I can’t forgive you on Easter, then when can I forgive you?”
Andy’s glass was
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