Sex Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 6) (8 page)

More silence.

Deeper silence. Purple silence.

Then black silence.

She could only shake her head and whisper:

“I guess I wasn’t thinking.”

The black silence darkened.

She felt like a badly-behaved freshman who had been summoned to the principal’s office.

Only that would have been for some minor offense such as fighting or breaking a window.

She had humiliated herself before the President of the United States.

And the question continued to lie there on the table like a dead seagull:

What had she been thinking about?

Well..

Olivia Ramirez for one.

But Olivia Ramirez was half a continent away right now.

Olivia Ramirez did not have to deal with the stark realities of Washington life.

“No, Ms. Bannister, the President is the least of your worries right now. The House Minority Leader is fuming. I’ve had calls from about twenty people, congressmen, senators…they’re all asking me what drugs you’re taking. By the way, you’re not on drugs are you?”

She shook her head.

“No. I’m not on drugs.”

“Damn. That would be an easy explanation. Then all we would have to do is get you into a rehab program and we could forget the whole thing. But there’s no rehab program for stupid.”

That word again.

Still, nothing to do about it.

“What do you want me to do?”

He shook his head:

“The best thing you can do is not to have given this story. No one on Capitol Hill—no one—favors simply opening up our border to any child who wants to wander up to it, and saying ‘We’ll find you a nice American family to spend ten years or so with, until we can get you into Harvard Law School.’ Do you understand that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Most of the people calling me want your head. The problem is, there are more than twenty of them—by nine thirty, that is—and you’ve only got one head. So that’s out.”

She said nothing.

“There are various things we can do when congressmen—or women—speak out of turn.”

“What are they?”

“Shoot them. Drown them. Send them off on a fact-finding tour somewhere. Make them Ambassador to France.”

Nothing to say to that.

“But the truth is, we can’t punish you.”

“Why not?”

‘You’re too little. And you’re a woman. And you’re new. And you’re from Mississippi, which means you’ve got three strikes against you right there when it comes to human intelligence. No, whatever we did—at least in public—it would look like we were bullying you. The National Society for the Protection and Preservation of Small, Inexperienced Southern Women would be up in arms.”

She found this amusing, but she did not speak.

She had decided, actually, never to speak again.

Nor ever to leave her apartment again.

That would be the ticket!

A little boring, but much better than this.

“No, there is one thing you can do, and you have to do it, and you have to do it quick.”

“And that would be?”

“Apologize. You have to hold a press conference. This afternoon.”

“How do I…”

‘Don’t worry about it; it’s all set up. It will be here in my office. There will be about fifteen reporters, all the usual crowd. Some of them you just met. Associated Press, Reuters, CNN. Anyway, you’ll start the press conference by reading a statement that is already being prepared for you. Then you’ll leave.”

“But if they have questions…”

“They will have questions and you won’t answer them. You’ll just dammit leave. And that will be the last that anyone hears from the esteemed REPLACEMENT representative from the great state of Mississippi for the rest of your stay in Washington. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“All right. Now. You need to go with Tim. He’ll take you somewhere private where you can have lunch and be certain not to be seen. He’ll bring you back here at two. You’ll have a chance to read over the statement you’ve going to make. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“All right. Now please leave.”

He rose, walked around his desk, and showed her out the door.

Certain moments are so wretched that they cannot be lived away from. Certain moments are so bleak and rotten that they do not serve as jumping off points for the future.

There is nothing to do after them.

Her conversation with the House Minority Whip constituted such a moment for Nina Bannister.

Looking back months and even years later, she could not remember doing anything from ten in the morning—when she had been called ‘stupid’ two or three times—until two in the afternoon, when her press conference was to take place.

Certainly, Tim Sandler was a part of her existence in this vacuum/vortex of non-being of having anything to live for except humiliation.

He must have taken her somewhere; then he must have bought her lunch.

Which she must have either eaten or left on the plate.

He must have chatted with her.

He was very good at chatting.

She, when one actually thought about it, was getting pretty good at chatting herself.

And he must have taken her back to Jeb Maxwell’s office.

For that was where she found herself at two o’clock.

Having arrived fifteen minutes earlier, and having read the statement that had been typed out neatly and handed to her.

She stood at a podium.

Fifteen news reporters sat in three rows of folding chairs in front of her.

She did not have the courage to look at all of their faces.

Their faces were not important.

She had been told years before, in elementary school, that a good way to avoid being nervous while speaking before a crowd was to imagine all of the people in the crowd were wearing nothing but their underwear.

She had tried this once or twice, found it utterly disgusting, and given it up.

Now though, as she began reading, she could not avoid the feeling that
she
was wearing nothing but her underwear.

Well, so be it.

Underwear lady.

Nothing for it but to begin:

“Ladies and gentlemen, I am, as I’m sure you know by now, Congresswoman Nina Bannister.”

Some small laughter at this.

It helped.

She continued.

“Yesterday I gave an interview with a reporter from a newspaper in my home state of Mississippi. This story was carried on the AP wire and ultimately appeared this morning in
The Washington Post
.”

Everyone in the audience had laptop computers, the keyboards of which could be heard tapping away.

“I was not misquoted in this story, nor can I blame the reporter for what was in the story. She wrote down quite accurately what I said. What I must do now, however, is apologize. My statements did not reflect my actual feelings on the matter of the refugee children, nor did they accurately portray the views of the President, or the Democratic Party. I meant to say, and should have said, that in a perfect world, it would be wonderful if all American families could simply open their homes to the refugees of the world. It is not, however, a perfect world, and both major political parties realize this. They are, as we speak here today, attempting to find some compromise position that will allow us to deal humanely with the flood of children who are now standing at our borders. The President has made an urgent request for funds so that we can process these young people, and get them safely back to their families. But neither my party nor I really believe that it would be possible for us as a nation to offer them a blanket invitation to come and live in our homes. Our doing so would open up a flood of immigration that no nation could possibly withstand, or deal with. Once again, I apologize for having put my feelings so awkwardly, and having, because of my inexperience in public speaking, caused embarrassment to my party and to my President.”

Silence for a moment.

Then:

“That is the end of my statement.”

A sea of hands shot into the air.

“Congresswoman Bannister, do you…”

“Congresswoman Bannister, is it your…”

“Congresswoman Bannister, have you ever…”

Jeb Maxwell was approaching from the right of the podium:

“The Congresswoman, as I said before the press conference began, will not be…”

But then came a voice from the back of the room.

“Nina!”

A figure stood.

A tall woman.

With black-rimmed glasses.

“Nina!”

“I’ m sorry, but…”

“I’m Liz Cohen of the
New York Times
.”

Jeb Maxwell:

“Thank you for flying down, Ms. Cohen. We’re all aware of your articles on behalf of Ms. Bannister during her campaign. I’m sure she appreciates your…”

“Nina?”

A pause.

Everyone was looking at her.

She was looking at Liz.

And she said:

“Yes, Liz?”

“Nina, do you believe the statement you just read?”

More silence.

A thousand one, a thousand two…

And finally she heard herself saying:

“No.”

There was a collective gasp from everyone in the room.

The rattling of laptop keypads became deafening.

Everyone was typing and whispering into iPads simultaneously.

She was, she knew, being recorded.

At her shoulder, she heard the voice of the minority whip, saying quietly:

“What are you doing? You’ve got to…”

But she ignored the voice and went on speaking, while she looked directly at Liz.

“No, Liz. No. It was a statement written for me. But I don’t believe a word of it. What I do believe is, we ought to take those children into our homes. We can do it. We should do it. And every one of you typing into your computers knows we should do it. The President knows it. The Congress knows it. And yet we sit up here like we’re paralyzed. The whole government is paralyzed. We’re in our own little entrenched positions, and the world is going to hell around us, and we can’t compromise on anything. Not one damned thing. We are the most useless congress our nation has ever had. We are not ‘binding up the nation’s wounds’ as President Lincoln told us to do. We’re not binding up the world’s wounds, either. We seem to have malice toward all, and charity toward none. Charity toward none. Fifty thousand children. Children, Liz! And all we can do is squabble about how to send them away most quickly.”