Distraction - Bruce Sterling [80]
Of course Boston had its less happy areas: the Combat Zone, the half-drowned waterfront … but being home, however briefly, gave Oscar a vital sense of grace. He had never missed the maelstrom of Los Angeles, and as for sorry old Washington, it combined the dullness of Brussels with the mania of Mexico City. East Texas, of course, was utterly absurd. The thought of ever going back there gave him a genuine pang.
“I’m going to miss that campaign bus,” Oscar said. “It’s pared me back, to lose that asset. It’s like losing a whole group of go stones.”
“Can’t you buy your own bus?” Moira said, adjusting her photogenic coat collar with newly lacquered nails.
“Sure, I could afford a campaign bus, if they built them out of concrete blocks with unskilled labor,” Oscar said. “But so far, that never happens. And now I’ve lost good old Jimmy, too.”
“Some big loss that is. Jimmy’s a loser. A no-neck geek from the Southside … the world’s got a billion Jimmies.”
“Yes, that’s why Jimmy was important to me.”
Moira jammed her bare hands in her jacket and sniffed at the freezing air. “I’ve spent too much time with you, Oscar. I had to live inside your pockets for months. I can’t understand why I still let you make me feel guilty.”
Oscar was not going to let her provoke him. They had dropped off the bus at FedDem headquarters, and they were taking a peaceful winter stroll to his town house in the Back Bay, and he was enjoying himself. “I’m not telling you to feel guilty. Am I judgmental? I was very supportive, I always looked after you. Didn’t I? I never said a word about you and Bambakias.”
“Yes you did! You kept lifting your big black eyebrows at me.”
Oscar lifted his eyebrows, caught himself doing it, put the eyebrows back in place. He hated confrontations. They always brought out the worst in him. “Look, this isn’t my fault. He hired you, not me. I was just trying to let you know—tactfully—that you were pulling a stunt that was bound to arc out as destructive. You had to realize that.”
“Yeah, I knew it.”
“Well, you had to know it! A campaign spokeswoman, having sex with a married Senator. How on earth could that work out?”
“Well, it wasn’t exactly sex.…” Moira winced. “And he wasn’t a Senator then, either! When I hooked up with Alcott, he was a long-shot candidate with five percent approval. His staff people were a bunch of weird losers, and his manager was just a young start-up guy who’d never run a federal campaign. It was a hopeless cause. But I signed on with him anyway. I just really liked him, that’s all. He charmed me into it. I just thought he was this naive, brilliant, charming guy. He has a good heart. He really does. He’s much too good a person to be a goddamn Senator.”
“So he was supposed to lose the race, is that it?”
“Yeah. He was supposed to lose, and then that bitch would have dumped him. And I guess I figured that, somehow, I would be there waiting.” Moira shuddered. “Look, I love him, all right? I fell in love with him. I worked really hard for him. I gave him my all. I just never realized that it would play out like this.”
“I’m very sorry,” Oscar said. “It really is all my fault, after all. I never quite made it clear to you that I actually intended to put the guy into federal office.”
Moira fell silent as they forded through the pedestrian crowd on Commercial Avenue. The trees were stark and leafless, but the Christmas shoppers were hard at it, all hats and jackets and snow boots in a mess of glittering lights.
Finally she spoke again. “This is a side of you that people don’t get to see much, isn’t it. Under that suit and the hairstyle, you’re a mean, sarcastic bastard.”
“Moira, I have always been entirely straight with you. Right up and down. I couldn’t have been any straighter. You’re the one who’s leaving. You’re not leaving him. You never had him. You’re never going to get him. He doesn’t belong to you. It’s me that you’re leaving. You’re leaving my krewe. You’re defecting.”
“What are you, a country? Get over