As if to answer, with both hands, she pushed in on her bosom, which was already all but spilling out of the brassiere. “What do you think?” she asked, in a coy, singsong voice. “Brand new.”
“Which,” Glancy replied. “The bra or the boobs?”
“The bra, silly.” She put her finger in her mouth, sucked on it, then pulled it out, slowly, biting down on her nail just before she finished. “The whole outfit. I’ve been wearing it under my suit all day. Just waiting for you. Waiting till we had a chance to be alone together. You like?”
“Yeah,” Glancy replied. Because the camera was focused on the woman and the sofa, his head was now off the top border of the screen. “I like.”
The woman lay back against a sofa cushion with her legs slightly spread. “You want to show me how much you like it?”
“I think I can do that.” His hands moved below the screen, but it was obvious he was pulling down his pants and advancing toward her.
The woman’s eyes ballooned. “Oh God. I didn’t mean-I-You’re-”
“Waiting for you, baby.” She leaned back as if to lie down, but he held her by the shoulders and pulled her closer to him. Pixilated masking obscured his groin area. “Show me how bad you want me, baby.”
“Oh, honey, I-I-can’t-” She was staring at him-staring at his pelvis-with unmasked horror. “I can’t-put-that-”
“Sure you can, baby.” He pulled her closer to him, even though she was visibly resisting. “I’m your Sugar Daddy, right? Your all-day sucker. You said you wanted me inside you. Here’s your chance. Get to work.”
“Oh God, Todd, I-” As he pushed her face nearer to him, the pixilated masking spread from his groin to cover most of her head, but the audio continued uninterrupted. “Please, I-I-mmph-”
Her voice was obscured by a series of gagging noises. The captioning couldn’t possibly transcribe this dialogue, but it didn’t matter. No matter what language viewers spoke or wrote, they would have no trouble interpreting this scene.
The man’s head was still off screen, but his torso stiffened. “Oh yeah. Oh yeah, baby. That’s it. That’s exactly it.”
“Mmmph-mmm-” She was struggling, but with his arms locked around her, there was nowhere to go. Her eyes, the only part of her face that wasn’t obscured, were wide and panicky.
“Just a little more, baby. We’re almost there.” His hips started rocking. “Oh my God. Oh yes. Oh yes.” He began to shout, twisting back and forth. “Oh yes! Oh yes yes yes yes yeeeeeessssss!”
When he was finished, he leaned back, releasing her, and pulled his pants up. He smacked her once on the side of her left buttock. “Thanks, sweetheart.”
As soon as she was free, the woman rolled over. Her head was out of the camera frame, but the audio made it clear she was retching, then gasping for air, then retching again, her body convulsing with each new upheaval.
And then, abruptly, the tape ended, replaced by the image of the commentator who had introduced the piece. “And there you have it. Cynthia, what do you think?”
She didn’t need to speak. The expression on Cynthia’s face effectively conveyed what she thought. “Well…,” she began slowly, “of course, dressing up or playacting during sex is not that uncommon. The domination-subjugation model is a common facet of many people’s sex lives, and some forms of… punishment, such as spanking, while arguably aberrant, are not that unusual. But what we just witnessed on that videotape, particularly given the persons involved and the apparent absence of consent, went far beyond the bounds of… of… I mean, did you hear the girl vomiting? He obviously-”
Ben switched the television off. “Ugh. Too much information.”
Loving’s lower lip protruded. “I was kinda interested…”
“I think we’ve seen enough. I don’t need the color commentary.”
Christina had a hand pressed against her mouth. Her face had turned a greenish tint that, Ben noted, did not go particularly well with the red hair. “Are you okay? That was rather gross.”
“Übergross,” Christina corrected him. “What do you think will happen to Glancy?”
Ben puffed out his cheeks. “Well, for starters, I think he’s probably going to be dropped from my mother’s Christmas card list.”
The phone rang. A moment later, Jones held his hand over the receiver and whispered across the lobby. “Ben? It’s for you.”
At the moment, Ben had an overwhelming desire to brush his teeth. “Is it something that can wait?”
Jones shook his head fiercely no.
Something about the expression on his face made Ben’s Spidey-senses start tingling. “Who’s calling?”
“It’s from Washington. As in DC.”
All heads slowly turned toward Jones. Ben made his way to the phone. “Where in Washington?”
Jones pointed toward the caller ID screen on his phone console. “The U.S. Senate, that’s where.” He pushed the receiver firmly into Ben’s hand. “I think you’d better take the call.”
2
WASHINGTON DC, THE NEXT DAY
Ben was crushed with disappointment as they exited the overpass for I-395. Even though he knew they were nearing Capitol Hill, the neighborhood was, to put it politely, a dump. They were surrounded by all the hallmarks of abject poverty: low-income housing, trash in the streets, rampant graffiti, broken chain-link fences, homeless people holed up in cardboard boxes. He spotted two teenage boys in stocking caps huddled between homes, doing what looked very much like a penny-ante drug deal. Ben had read that DC had an astronomical crime rate, and gazing at this neighborhood, he didn’t doubt it.
Jones turned onto C Street, and the view gradually improved. Shantytown gave way to tall narrow brick townhouses, one squeezed closely up against the next. He could believe that congressional staffers could conceivably live here, although he was beginning to understand why most members of Congress had places in the suburbs.
“We’ve arrived,” Jones said at last. “And we’re early. Let’s take a spin around and see the sights.”
Ben gazed at the shimmering image of the Lincoln Memorial in the famed Reflecting Pool. Magnificent. The cherry trees were in bloom, and the Main Mall was dotted with picnickers, families tossing Frisbees, and aging hippies handing out flyers. They whizzed by the Holocaust Museum, then the Vietnam War Memorial-the first one. Ben marveled at its sheer stark blackness. A perfect commemorative of a stark black war, he thought. And all those names.
“There it is,” Jones said, pointing ahead of them. He was driving the rental car down New Jersey Avenue, and doing an admirable job of it, maneuvering through the frenzied DC traffic. They raced past the corner of Independence and South Capitol.
Ben didn’t need Jones’s help to spot it-Capitol Hill, the white sculpted dome glistening in the bright sunlight. A magnificent work of architecture. Again Ben felt his heart swelling. Gazing at this fabulous construction, it would be easy to become a superpatriot. Especially since, from this distance, you couldn’t make out any of the people who inhabited it.
“This is the House side,” Ben said. “We need to get around to the north-that’s where the Senate is.”
Jones complied. “Which building?”
“The Senate has three office buildings-the Russell, the Dirksen, and the Hart. Senator Glancy’s office is in the Russell.” He leaned forward and pointed. “That one.” Jones turned toward First and Constitution Avenue.
“That’s the side entrance where he told us to come in,” Ben continued. “I’ve got our passes.” Jones pulled up behind a cab stand. Ben, Christina, and Loving popped open their doors.
“Shouldn’t there be some sort of formal greeting party?” Christina asked. “Team Kincaid has arrived.”
“Guess all the heralds and buglers are momentarily occupied.”
A sign by the curb informed them in no uncertain terms that although this was a valid drop-off point, anyone trying to park here would be immediately apprehended by surveillance guards. “Wait a minute,” Jones said. “What am I going to do?”