Millennium - 65. Chapter 65

February 24, 2000

We sat in Senator Danfield’s waiting room in anticipation of my 9:00am appointment, talking about the sights around Washington. “What do you want to do after this?”

He leaned in and whispered in my ear. “Go back to the hotel and fuck.” I laughed.

“Just being with you makes me happy,” I told him.

“The senator will see you now,” a young man said, even as he tried not to give us dirty looks. I guess if you’re a GOP senator, a darling of the far right, you have to employ those kinds of people. Robbie got up and I followed him. I couldn’t help notice the young man checking out Robbie’s cute ass. Another repressed homosexual.

The senator was all smiles and grins. “Brad, how great to see you. And you too Robbie! What an unexpected pleasure!”

“Thank you Senator,” Robbie said. The senator pretended to glare at him. “I mean Jeff.”

“We’re practically family,” he said, referring to Wade’s relationship with Matt. He turned to me. “What you’ve done for Elizabeth and me cannot be repaid.”

“I don’t want this to be another debt hanging over your head,” I said. “Besides, we get into some pretty kinky stuff ourselves,” I said, leering at Robbie and making him blush.

Senator Danfield laughed. “My wife is like a new woman. If I were Alexandra Carmichael, I’d be very afraid.” His joking demeanor had faded, and now he was being deadly serious. “I’ve got aides drafting a sheet of talking points, delineating quality problems with Omega, and requesting a ban on using them until we are comfortable with their processes.”

“Will that happen?” I asked, wondering if Triton had the capacity to fill the void.

“No, it won’t, but it will get you this contract, and it will set the stage for others. There are a limited number I’ll be able to review, let’s say three, before they automatically come before the committee for renewal. Those renewals sometimes take a while. If you have suggestions, let me know.”

“We’ve managed to evaluate Omega’s financials,” I said with an evil smile. “These are their top three systems,” I said, writing them down on a legal pad for him. “Without those, they’ll be strapped for cash, and lenders may be unwilling to front them money.”

“I’ll have to see if we can’t evaluate these systems, then,” he said. “I have a favor to ask of you, as if you haven’t done enough.”

“Certainly, Senator,” I said.

“I wonder if you’d be willing to take Elizabeth to Los Angeles with you when you return.”

“That’s not a problem at all,” I said. “We’ve planned to stay in the city until tomorrow, taking in some of the sights while we’re here. Does she need to leave right away?”

“No, in fact tomorrow will work out better,” the senator said with a sparkle in his eye.

“She is always welcome to stay with us, as are you,” I assured him.

“That won’t be necessary. She’s checking herself into the Betty Ford clinic.”

“That’s fantastic!” I told him.

“Great news!” Robbie concurred.

“There will be some political fallout, and this is an election year,” he said, showing his political stripes. “But it may work to our advantage. In the end, having Elizabeth healthy and sober is far more important than me winning re-election.”

“I spoke with my father last night,” I told him. “He wanted both you and your wife to know that if you want to come out and visit Wade, you are welcome to stay with him at Escorial. It’s safe, and private.”

“I’m not sure Wade is ready for me to do that, to spend time with him in his world,” he said cautiously.

“You could ask him,” I offered.

“I could,” he said, chuckling. “Thank your father for us, and let him know that we’ll take him up on his offer when we visit. While you are visiting here today, would you like to tour the Capitol before the hearing?” That sufficed to end our meeting, and Wade’s father dispatched one of his aides to take us around both chambers on a private tour before taking us to lunch. We were pretty impressed, since he took us to see the inner sanctum of the building, parts of the Capitol that were not on the public tours. The aide took us to lunch in the dining room and regaled us with funny stories about the life of a senatorial aide in Washington. We had a good time with him; he didn’t seem as homophobic as the first guy we’d met today.

Robbie returned to the hotel to get some work done and left me to concentrate on my business. I walked into the Senate Hearing and spotted my reserved seat. There were two empty seats next to mine, but I really didn’t think anything of it. I was deep in thought, planning how I might answer any questions should they come up, when I felt a presence next to me.

“Wade! I didn’t expect you to be here,” I said.

“I talked to my father yesterday, and it seems that you’ve totally rocked my family, so I wanted to see what that was all about. I figured I could fly back with you, if that’s alright?”

“Of course it’s alright,” I said. “You can keep your mother company.”

“My mother?” he asked, surprised.

“Your father didn’t tell you?” He shook his head. I was going to tell him that he should ask them, then, but I knew Wade would never accept that. “She’s going out to check herself into Betty Ford.”

He looked at me, amazed. Then he looked around furtively before asking, “My mother? Checking into Betty Ford? That makes sense.”

And then, as I stared at Wade, I saw Elizabeth Danfield sit on the other side of him. The poor guy, still shocked from my revelation, turned to see his mother. “Wade, it is so good to see you,” she said, and gave him a big hug. I could see her smile as she did, and she winked at me. I could tell from Wade’s posture that he was completely stunned.

“You look really good, Mother,” he said. “How are you doing?”

“I’ll be better in about a month,” she said.

“You’re checking in to Betty Ford?” he asked.

“Alcohol has ruled my life, along with Alexandra Carmichael. It’s time to cut loose all those bonds.”

“I feel like I’m in a dream,” Wade told her. “It’s like my life was a big nightmare, and slowly all the monsters are being killed.”

“I’m sorry for what we put you through,” she said, and tears filled her eyes.

“You aren’t happy with the way I turned out?” he asked playfully.

“As a matter of fact I am,” she said, and put her hand on his cheek in a loving way.

The senators filed in, and when Wade’s dad came in he had a smile on his face. I leaned in and whispered in Wade’s ear, so only he could hear. “I think your dad got laid last night.” He punched my leg to shut me up.

The committee opened with a blistering attack by Senator Danfield on the quality issues with Omega. The people who were most surprised seemed to be his colleagues, since he’d always been a big advocate for Omega before that. Alexandra must have known that was coming, as she hadn’t even bothered to show up for the hearing. In the end, Triton was given the whole contract, and Omega was out of the loop. It was a huge victory for Triton and a major defeat for Omega.

After the hearing, I left Wade with his mother and asked them to pass on my thanks to the senator while I went over to the hotel to get Robbie. “How did it go?” he asked.

“Great! We got the contract. It’s all ours!”

“See, I told you you’d win,” he said.

“This is a small battle. This will only dent Omega, not destroy them.”

“You still won this battle,” he said, challenging me to celebrate the victories that came my way.

“I did.”

We spent the rest of the afternoon celebrating my victory, making love, and then hired a limousine to take us around to see the monuments of DC at night.

“I think this is my favorite,” I told Robbie as we walked through the FDR memorial on an unusually warm February evening.

“Mine too. Do you think that when the Dot.com markets collapse, people will end up this poor?” he asked, looking at a sculpture of people standing in line at a soup kitchen.

“I think it will seem like that to them, but I doubt it. I think it will jerk people back to reality.”

“Kind of like November did for me,” he said sadly.

“Sometimes there has to be pain for there to be gain. Think of where we were then, compared to how we are now.”

“You say that, but I put you through hell.” He was so morose.

“Robbie, you weren’t really happy before November. You felt like I walked all over you, and didn’t listen to a thing you said. And you know what? I didn’t. I had my head so far up my ass I couldn’t see daylight. Now, we’re true partners, and I find that I don’t want to do anything important until we talk about it. Not because I need your approval, but because I want your input.”

“So you’re saying all is well that ends well, and that I should try and put all of this guilt aside?”

“See, you are pretty smart,” I said.

 

February 25, 2000

 

“Cody asked me to talk to you about something,” Robbie said nervously.

“What?”

“He wants us to fuck someone, all three of us, together.” He looked at me nervously. “We don’t have to do it. He said that. He was just asking.”

“Who?”

“That Aaron Eckhart guy. He’s a size queen, and into some pretty kinky bondage shit. Cody wants to know if we’ll let him use the bondage room and give the guy the ride of his life.”

“The three of us together?” He nodded. “That sounds pretty hot. I’m up for it.”

“I, uh, I mean the room was supposed to be just for us, and I don’t need anyone but you,” he said.

“Robbie, if we’re together, it’s fine. Besides, I promised Cody last fall I’d do this, so I owe him.”

“You know, when we think about what a hellhole Claremont is, it’s times like this that I see the appeal,” he said thoughtfully. “This kind of shit, the LA culture of pleasure now, pleasure always, and this Washington world of spend, spend, spend like it’s some other generation’s responsibility, isn’t pervasive in cities like Claremont. It’s easier there.”

“I am not moving to Claremont,” I said much too strongly. “I’m sorry, I overreacted. If you find a way to move an ocean there, we’ll talk.”

“I don’t want to move there, I’m just saying that I can see why it would appeal to people. When you do this deal and try to get people to move there and work for Triton, it may not be as hard as you think.”

“I hope you’re right.”

We met Wade and his mother at the plane, exchanged some pleasantries, and then we separated into two groups. Robbie and I went back to one of the bedrooms for a while, while Wade sat in the main cabin with his mother, getting to know her.

 

February 28, 2000

 

“I’m going to have dinner here, and then I’ll be home,” I told Robbie on the phone as I turned to drive up the road toward Escorial.

“So you’ll be home around 10?” he asked. He missed me. It was really hard to be away from him, and as much as it bothered me, I knew it bothered him even more.

“I will, so you’ll have to make sure to hustle all your boyfriends out before them,” I teased.

“You know I don’t have any boyfriends,” he joked back. “You wear me out too much for that.” I laughed, both because it was true, and because it was so indicative of where we were as a couple that we could joke about infidelity. It was such a foreign concept now, it was laughable.

I hung up the phone as I drove up to the gates, and was surprised to find a plain Chevy parked outside them. The gates parted for me, and I revved the Ferrari up the drive, anxious to see what this strange car was about.

I strode into the main foyer and found my mother there, looking worried. “What’s the matter?”

She hesitated, and then responded. “Brian is here. He is with your father and Stefan in his study.” Brian was here? That motherfucker. I’d kill him with my own two hands. My mother grabbed my arm before I could rush off. “Remember yourself, remember to be calm.”

I looked at her funny, and then got what she was saying. “Thank you Mother. I will try to pretend I am JP.” She giggled at that. I walked up to the doors of his study, knocked twice, and went in without being invited. JP was sitting behind his desk with Stefan standing behind him. In front of the desk sat Brian, his head down, with a posture of one who was defeated.

“Bradley,” JP said firmly, acknowledging my presence and warning me at the same time. Brian looked up at me, scared at first, then angry.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” I demanded, as much of JP and Stef as of Brian.

“Thanks to you, I’m running for my life. I need help,” he said.

“You have only yourself to blame if your schemes backfired,” I said callously. “There’s no help for you here.”

“That’s not your decision, now is it?” he demanded rudely. “I figured you’d be back in Malibu, enjoying the happy married life with your husband.”

“Despite your plans, I am enjoying the happy married life. I thought you’d be ensconced in the Carmichael mansion, servicing your obese boyfriend.”

“He’s not obese, and he’s not my boyfriend,” Brian snapped. “Not anymore.” He pretended to cry about that, but it was so fake, all of us saw through it.

“So your usefulness to them is at an end, and they discarded you like unwanted garbage?” I asked nastily.

“No, they are under the impression that you got an incriminating video tape from me. It seems there was a large amount of money wired into my account, and you left some other clues along the way.”

“Alexandra trusts you so much she didn’t believe it when you told her you had nothing to do with it?” I asked sarcastically. “That’s really too bad. It seems payroll must have made an error. We had it reversed.”

“I know that too,” he snapped. “If you were going to frame me, you could have at least let me keep the money.”

“Look what mischief you caused with only $5000. I can’t imagine what you’d do with half a million,” I said.

He stood up and got in my face, then thought better of it and backed off a bit. I was so close to beating the shit out of him, it’s a good thing he did. “Thanks to you, they’re out to kill me. I had to dodge hit men just to escape from the Northeast.”

“That’s a shame. They’ll probably look for you here. You might not want to linger for too long,” I said snidely.

“They’re going to kill me!” he shrieked. “You can’t let me die. You can’t let them do this.” Those last two sentences were directed at Stef and JP.

“Yes we can,” I said bloodlessly as I stared at Stefan and JP. “You are nothing to us now. You have forfeited any place you had here, and you have been disowned by all the members of this family. What fate you suffer does not concern us in the least.”

“How can you be so cold? How can you do that to a member of your own family?” Then he got all cocky. “Maybe it’s because you’re not really a member of this family. Maybe it’s because your genes are flawed.”

“I am a member of this family. I’ve been raised in it, nurtured by it, and I’ve devoted my life to it. Whether I have genetic ties is irrelevant. You act like you have this great entrée, that you have a place with us by right. You have no Crampton or Schluter blood in your veins. So save me the genetic diatribe.”

“We are half-brothers,” he said, pointing at JP. “He grew up in the lap of luxury, while I had to scrape for everything I had.” He turned to JP and pleaded, “Now when I come to you and ask you to save my life, you act like that is too much to even consider.” He was good, pelting JP with all the guilt bullets he could think of.

“We are not refusing to help you because you did or did not have an easy past. We are not refusing to help you because we are heartless. We are refusing to help you because you have declared yourself as our sworn enemy, and worked hard to hurt members of this family,” Stef said, chiming in.

JP stood up then, and eyed us all carefully. “I wish you luck, Brian, but there is no help for you here. Good day.”

Brian just stared at him, stunned. He didn’t think that JP would refuse him, not in a million years. The cynic in me wondered if JP would have been less firm if Stef and I weren’t here, forcing him to do the right thing, but that really wasn’t fair. He was making the call, he deserved the credit. “Then my blood is on your hands.”

“You have made your bed, now you must lie in it,” Stef said. “I wish you luck as well.”

He glared at me. “You think you’ve won, that I’m done, but I’m not. I’ll be back, stronger than ever, and someday I’ll bring you down. I’ll bring all of you down!”

“They wished you luck. Not me. I hope they find you and put a bullet through your head,” I told him, and found that I meant it. “Now get the fuck out of here.”

He glared at me, and then stormed out of the house. I watched through the window as he marched down the drive. JP asked Rafael to track him and make sure he was gone. We all stood there, saying nothing.

“I did as you asked,” JP said. “I hope you are happy.” Stef looked at me, begging me with his eyes not to make this into a big fight.

“No, you did the right thing,” I said. “I think you should be happy.”

“What if they do kill him? Then his blood is on my hands,” JP asserted.

“Oh?” I asked him. “Were you the one who told him to go to Connecticut and make common cause with the Carmichaels? Were you the one who told him to try to destroy my life? Were you the one who suggested that it would be a grand idea for him to try and burn up some of Stef’s millions? Were you the one who put the idea in his mind to try to ruin Robbie’s career, his business? Was it your big idea to do that, something that would have hurt Marcel more than either one of us? Was all of this your big scheme?” My voice had gotten louder and louder as I went, and only at the end did I remember to calm down.

“I had nothing to do with any of that,” he said calmly. “And you know it.” It was extraordinary, how when he was faced with me being irate, he did exactly to me what I did to him: he got incredibly calm and rational.

I mimicked his tone, because I knew it would irritate him, and because it wouldn’t upset Stef as much. “If you had nothing to do with the schemes that have brought him to this point, then I fail to see how you have his blood on your hands.”

“Because he came to see me when he was desperate and I turned him away,” JP snapped. I almost laughed at how he got upset when I was calm.

“Please explain to me, logically if you can how that makes it your fault.”

“You set him up. You took this too far. People, Brian could die because of this,” he said self-righteously.

“If you can honestly stand here and tell me that you have never implicitly or explicitly been involved in someone’s death, then your words will have some credence,” I said.

“That has nothing to do with it,” he snapped.

“I have found,” I said even more calmly, “that when you say that, or when you say ‘that’s different’, or when you say ‘it’s not like that’, it means that you are wrong and just frustrated because you haven’t worked through it yet.”

“I just can’t be as heartless as you,” he said.

“Oh no?” I looked at him, daring him to challenge me, daring him to make me bring up Deke, the guy who had beat up Stef so badly and then died in a strange swimming accident. “I think you can be. I think you have been. I think you’d do it again, to protect the people you love.”

JP just stared at me. I had him in a Catch-22, and he knew it. “I just don’t see it that way,” he said.

“Another one of your dismissive statements?” I asked, really pissing him off. “You have a problem. You know that we could sit here and dredge out skeletons and prove you wrong, but if we do, it will just make it seem like you don’t love us enough to make those kinds of sacrifices anymore. I know that you do love us that much. I know that you will make those sacrifices, you just don’t like to. Well I’ve got news for you. I don’t like to make them either. But I’m not willing to let that asshole get his claws into me again. It’s very easy for you to be sympathetic when you haven’t been the target. It’s also incredibly selfish of you to whine about it.”

“You’re calling me selfish?” he demanded, outraged.

“Yes, I am. You want us to feel sorry for you, or worse, you want us to cave and tell you to hurry and summon him back so you can write a check and spirit him off to safety. We’re all supposed to risk our families so you can have peace of mind about this?”

“You have twisted the logic of this situation around so it is unrecognizable,” he asserted strongly.

“And this whole argument has become old and tiresome,” Stefan said, intervening. “You both have your points to make.” He looked at me. “Is it not enough that JP did the right thing, and sent him packing? Is it not enough that he has done what you have asked? Are you not being just a little bit ungrateful, especially when you know how hard this has been on him?” JP gave me a smarmy look.

“I guess so,” I said sheepishly. I felt like I was in grade school and I was being dressed down in front of the principal.

“And you,” Stef said, turning to JP. “Do you not think it is a little ridiculous to expect any of us to have any sympathy for that asshole after how badly he has tried to hurt us? Do you not think what Bradley said makes some sense, that you are being just a little bit selfish about this whole thing?”

JP could argue with me about this, about the moral right and wrong, until tomorrow and beyond, but faced with Stef’s tirade, he wisely surrendered. “Perhaps,” he said, just as sheepishly.

He and I made eye contact, and suddenly the whole thing seemed pretty funny. Stef stood there, glaring at both of us, while we smiled, then started laughing.

“Thanks Dad,” I said sincerely.

“You’re welcome,” he said, just as sincerely.

“You’re incredible,” I told Stef. “You never cease to amaze me.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” JP said. Stef just looked at the two of us, flabbergasted.