Sex Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 6) (11 page)

“It’s the tip of the iceberg. Stories are coming in from everywhere. Everybody on Capitol Hill is being deluged with letters. ‘Support our Nina!’ And ‘Nominate more women!’ And ‘Time for a sex change in November!”

Nina shook her head:

“This is stunning. I don’t know what to say.”

To which Laurencia Dalrymple smiled.

Everyone, Nina now noticed, in the room was smiling.

“Nina, dear, I think the most important thing for you to say, if you will, is that you take back your resignation.”

‘I…I just…”

“We need you.”

For a time, she could not speak.

Then she nodded, and in a voice that would have quavered had it been required to say more than two words, said two words:

“All right.”

And Nina Bannister was back in Congress.

INTERLUDE

He had gotten used, by now, to the place he lived in.

The scuffling of feet on the sidewalk outside the window no longer bothered him.

He knew what he had to do.

A voice told him what he had to do, and he knew that voice to be God’s.

So now he unwrapped the package that he had placed on the bed, carefully put the paper away, opened the long box, and stared down at the black oily surface of the rifle.

He took its scope carefully between his right thumb and forefinger.

And memories came flooding back to him.

Memories of his father, all those year ago, all those decades ago.

His father teaching him to hunt deer.

Memories of them walking stealthily through the deep woods of Mississippi and then sitting ever so quietly in the deer stand, aware of every small movement around them, waiting for the sun to set, moving not a muscle.

The voice came softly to him and invaded his memory.

SHE IS DETESTABLE. SHE IS TURNING RIGHTEOUSNESS INSIDE OUT.

SHE MUST BE DESTROYED.

Then it went away, and the memory could resume.

And, in it, a buck came slowly out of the undergrowth, raised its massively horned head, sniffed the air around it, lowered its head, and began to eat.

He could remember taking aim ever so carefully, squeezing the trigger, and exulting as he heard the bullet
splat
against the animal’s side.

CHAPTER SEVEN:
 
OLD DEAD GREEKS

At five thirty PM that same evening, Nina found herself entering the station headquarters of WRV Washington, there to be interviewed by a woman named Danielle Slaughter, who was the anchor of
The Capitol Dome
, the city’s highest-rated evening news program.

She seemed to find herself facing a good many professional women with microphones in their hands, and so this one, she felt, was beginning “to fade into the light of common day.”

As Wordsworth might have described the phenomenon of all anchor women beginning to resemble each other.

This woman was not as tall as the reporter who had interviewed her two hours earlier; but then that reporter was taller than any woman Nina had been interviewed by except for Liz Cohen.

She was not as serious as the woman from Vicksburg who had done the interview that had gotten her in trouble; but she did not have the chatty, constant, glowing brisk smile as the woman from the Bay St. Lucy paper who had interviewed her on the morning following her election to the House of Representatives.

No, the only thing that stood out about this woman was the fact that she made Nina worry by telling her so often not to worry.

“Just be yourself, and everything will go fine.”

“Okay. I can do that.”

It was a bit awkward being told this while she was sitting in a chair like a barber’s chair having makeup applied to her—
much too heavily
, she told herself.

“I guess the main thing is, just don’t worry.”

“I won’t worry.”

She began to worry.

Eyeliner going on now.

She never wore eyeliner.

Why did she need eyeliner?

“So have you been keeping up with the last hours around the country?”

“Not really. I had to take a car over here, and I went by the office—the mail is amazing.”

“No, what’s amazing are the demonstrations. There’s one planned tonight here in the city. Will you go?”

“I don’t know. I just…”

Someone sticking a head in the makeup room door:

“Two minutes, Ms. Slaughter.”

“Right.”

Door closing.

Ms. Slaughter to Nina:

“You’re not worried now, are you?”

“No. I promise I’m not worried.”

“Good. Because I’m just going to ask you some basic questions. The first question will be ‘How have you been holding up under the strain of the last two days?’ Got that?”

“I got it.”

“It’s always been my philosophy that people being interviewed worry less if they know what the first question is going to be.”

“That makes sense.”

“So again—your first question will be ‘How have you been holding up under the strain of the last two days?’”

“I understand.”

“And you’re not worried?”

“Not a bit.”

She could now feel sweat forming in her armpits.

“Ms. Slaughter?”

“Yes?”

“Time!”

“All right, Nina. Follow me. Right through here!”

And so she was led out to face the cameras.

National TV.

National TV!

She was put into a chair, with Danielle Slaughter facing her, smiling.

Shadowy figures sat behind desks stretching back into a room surrounding her.

There was music playing now.

People were gesturing to each other, whispering.

The music got louder.

She was now
really
worried.

Well. At least she knew the first question:

“How have you been holding up under the strain of the last two days?”

“Okay everybody, we’re…we’re…LIVE AND ON THE AIR!”

Huge smile at the camera from Danielle Slaughter.

Then:

“Good evening, Washington! I’m Danielle Slaughter and we’re live from Capitol Hill. My guest tonight? Who else could it be? The lady whose face is popping up around the nation, and who seems to have instigated, almost single-womanly, the biggest potential electoral revolution since—well, since the Revolution! And so, without further ado, I give you Congresswoman Nina Bannister from the great state of Mississippi! Nina, welcome to the show!”

“Thank you!”

“The first question I have to ask you is: what was the Peloponnesian War, and who was Lysistrata?”

Nina stared at her:

“I’m sorry…”

What the hell happened to “How have you been bearing up under the strain?”

“Yes, if you could just tell us, “What was the Peloponnesian War and who was Lysistrata?”

Nina took a deep breath, said to herself,
I’m bearing up quite well under the strain, and…

“The Peloponnesian War was a terrible conflict fought between the Greek city state of Athens and a group of other city states under the leadership of Sparta. It lasted from 431 to 404 BC, and we know a great deal about it from the writings of the historian Thucydides. Sparta was essentially a land power, Athens a sea power, so they had a hard time getting at each other. Finally though, Athens conceived, in 413, a plan of an attack against Syracuse, a Spartan ally. The attack was a disastrous failure. Anybody in Athens should have been able to read the writing on the wall, but the war party was too strong, and the Athenians too proud. They had gotten so wrapped up in being a city state that they had forgotten what it meant to be Greece, to be a nation working together.”

“And Lysistrata?”

“
Lysistrata
was a play written and performed just after the disaster at Syracuse. The writer was Aristophanes, who is known for creating Old Comedy. Old comedy is wild, crazy, unthinkable, and hilarious. Lysistrata, the title character, is herself an Athenian woman who gets all of the women in Athens to join with all the women in Sparta and demand that the war be ended—or else. The
or else,
of course, is a sex strike. They all plan to sequester themselves in the major buildings of the cities involved, and not give in to their husbands’ desires until the fighting is stopped.”

“Did it work, Nina?”

To which Nina could only shake her head.

“The play worked as a play and it’s still done today. It’s hilarious. But it didn’t solve the war. The war ended with the complete destruction of Athens, and the severe weakening of Sparta. Greece as a whole never really recovered. The nation was conquered by Phillip of Macedon in 338 BC.”

“And so, Nina, that leads to the big question. Given the unbelievable amount of support your impassioned speech has generated around the country, do you believe that the women of the United States should actually go on a sex strike?’”

And it happened once again.

Those two categories of answers presented themselves clearly and unmistakably in her mind:

CORRECT ANSWER:

Danielle, I think that might be taking things a bit too far, and, of course, I never meant that women should stop having sex with their husbands. Nor, I’m sure, did Aristophanes. But sometimes a little shock is needed, and that’s the role satire performs. I honestly do believe that certain things are true beyond question. It is beyond question that our government seems stuck in neutral. Each political party has staked out solid positions on vital areas of dispute, and neither seems willing to budge. It’s a matter of pride, just as it was to the Athenians and Spartans. Also, it’s beyond question that only approximately one-fourth of our legislators are women, even though women form the majority of the electorate. That seems insane to me. Finally, I do honestly believe that women are better listeners than men. They are more adept at compromising. They have strong beliefs, certainly; but they are in general more willing than men to at least modify these beliefs, so that a common ground can be reached, and so that genuine problems can be solved before they become crises. So, should all women around the country go on a sex strike on, say, July 4? No, of course not, that would be ludicrous. But—should we think seriously about increasing women’s role in the government in November? Yes. Definitely.”

And that was the answer that she should have given to the question, ‘Nina, do you actually believe that the women of the United States should go on a sex strike?”

As opposed to THE INCORRECT ANSWER, (which she actually gave) which was:

“Yes. On July 4
^th
.”

Every light in the studio seemed to get brighter.