19

Within seconds of meeting David Snyder, he could see why Mitch had found him so irresistible.

The idea of his boyfriend sleeping with his boss to get ahead had never appealed to André, but Mitch had assured him it would only be temporary and that it was just how things sometimes had to be done in Washington.

André had sat by and watched what was supposed to be a onetime thing blossom into a full-blown affair between the senator and his junior staffer. To say it bothered him deeply would have been the understatement of the millennium, but André was in love with Mitch and in love with the life Mitch promised the two of them would have together.

The fact that Mitch had dated a lot of women on the Hill was no secret, and André had accepted that as part of their cover, but Mitch’s deep involvement with Senator Snyder began to bother him greatly, especially when Mitch disappeared for entire weekends or when the senator called in the middle of the night and ordered Mitch to “hightail his little ass” over to Snyder’s town house.

It had finally got to the point where André couldn’t take any more. If he couldn’t have Mitch all to himself, he didn’t want to be in a relationship with him. It was bad enough that André had to hide the fact that he was gay, both at the D.C. law firm where he worked, as well as with his family, but to have to hide to the rest of the world the deep love he felt for Mitch was just too much. André Martin eventually reached his limit. He was through with living in secret, and he delivered Mitch an ultimatum. For the rest of his life, André knew, he would have mixed feelings about how he handled the response.

Mitch explained that he’d been trying to unwind himself from the affair for the past couple of weeks. The more he tried, the odder the senator became; distant and cold at times, downright inquisitorial at others. The senator’s temper had begun to flare, something Mitch had never seen before, only heard about. Sex with the senator became rougher, almost as if the man wanted to hurt him both physically and emotionally. Even through all of this, it was important, Mitch said, for him to have an amicable parting with the senator if he was to preserve his job. André felt he should be more important to Mitch than any job, and so to make his point, he moved out of the condo they shared. André knew he had done the right thing, but he was still racked with guilt.

Mitch told André again and again how much he loved him and that he wanted more than anything in the world to be with him. He stated that he was sure the senator was going to let him go soon; the treatment had become so bad that he couldn’t imagine that the senator would want him around any longer anyway. Mitch even said he would give it just one more week and if the senator hadn’t ended it, he would. He promised André with all of his heart that he would do it and asked him to hang on just until the end of the following week.

In his heart of hearts, André believed Mitch. His spirits began to lift, and he decided that if the relationship was in fact ended by the following weekend, he would move back in with Mitch. André went so far as to make late reservations for that Saturday night for the two of them at their favorite restaurant, Monroe’s in Alexandria.

When Saturday arrived, André sat by himself waiting for Mitch, and while he consumed three lonely glasses of chardonnay, he did a lot of soul-searching. Realizing Mitch wasn’t going to show, he paid the check and left Monroe’s, convinced everything had been a lie. Mitch’s job and his affair with the senator were more important to him in the end than André.

He walked back to the Holiday Inn where he’d been staying since leaving Mitch and convinced the bartender, who was closing up, to give him a final nightcap. André slugged back the Vodka and tonic, almost spitting it out when the partially astute bartender said, “Whatever she did, you’ll get over it, pal.”

After draining a third of the tiny bottles in his makeshift minibar and cursing himself for falling in love with someone who didn’t really care about him, André fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

When he awoke the next morning, his head was pounding, but at least that distracted him from the aching in his heart. He went into the bathroom, peeled the plastic sheet from around one of the cups, filled it with water, and chased down two Advil.

Reaching outside his door, he collected his complimentary USA Today and The Washington Post. He threw the two papers onto the bed and returned to the bathroom, hoping that brushing his teeth would make him feel a little bit more human.

After brushing his teeth, André crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed. He quickly scanned the room service menu and picked up the phone to order breakfast. He didn’t have the heart or the stomach to walk to one of the local cafés.

“Good morning, Mr. Martin, this is Tabatha. May I take your order, please?”

“I don’t know how good the morning is, Tabatha, but you may certainly take my order.” He began reciting what he wanted, half looking at the room service menu and half skimming the Post’ s cover stories. “I would like a pot of coffee. Two eggs and-oh, Jesus, no.”

André had gotten to the small article regarding a drive-by shooting the previous night that had killed Mitchell Conti, aide to Senator David Snyder, and an as yet unidentified man believed to have been a friend of Mr. Conti’s.

“Mr. Martin, are you okay?” asked the room service operator.

“Cancel my order,” was all André Martin could manage before rushing to the bathroom to throw up.

Through some very low-key questions to close mutual friends, André tried to piece together Mitch’s movements before the shooting. Everyone said that Mitch had been very down lately because of his job difficulties and because of losing André. Apparently, Mitch had been out with his friend Simon, looking for a gift for André, when the drive-by shooting occurred.

The police assumed that it was just a classic case of “wrong place, wrong time” for Mitch and Simon when they were caught in a hail of bullets. But what the police failed to dig up was who the shooters were and who the assumed target was. Despite the initial public outcry, Mitch and Simon became just another statistic. But not to André Martin. Something was rotten in the capital of democracy.

The whole thing smelled funny. There were conflicting accounts about the shooters, their vehicle, and nothing solid about the intended victims. The more André looked at it, the more he was convinced the drive-by was not an accident.

He continuously replayed in his mind the things Mitch had told him about Senator Snyder, how he never lost and no one ever stood in his way. André also remembered the final message Mitch had left for him at the Holiday Inn saying that he thought he knew of a way whereby the senator would have to cut him loose from the affair but still allow him to keep his job. Mitch had bragged he might even get a promotion out of it, and then they both could celebrate getting their lives back to normal.

Had Mitch been foolish enough to think that he could blackmail the senator? Had he thought the senator would end the affair and yet still allow Mitch to keep his job and maybe even go so far as to give him a promotion? It sounded like something Mitch might try. He’d always thought he was smarter than everyone else. On more than one occasion, André had told him he was too smart for his own good. No matter what Mitch might have thought he had on the senator, any way he came up against him, he would have lost. The more André thought about it, the more the drive-by shooting made sense if you assumed Mitch had been the intended victim. And the more the drive-by shooting made sense, the more André was determined to avenge the death of Mitch Conti.