“Oh, I can make the time,” he said. “After all the stumping you did for me? I doubt I would’ve made it past the primaries.” He held the water bottle in his lap. When he crossed his legs, he became self-conscious of his brown socks and black pants. He lowered his foot back to the ground and wished Helen had stayed in D.C. longer.
“You and Mick Webb go back, right? Both Bulldogs.”
It took Donald a moment to realize the Senator was referring to their college mascot. He hadn’t spent a lot of time at Georgia following sports. “Yessir. Go Dawgs.”
He hoped that was right.
The Senator smiled. He leaned forward so that his face caught the soft light raining down on his desk. Donald watched as shadows caught in wrinkles otherwise easy to miss. Thurman’s lean face and square chin made him look younger straight-on than he probably did from the side. Here was a man who got places by approaching others directly rather than in ambush.
“You studied architecture at Georgia.”
Donald nodded. It was easy to forget that he knew Thurman better than the Senator knew him. One of them grabbed far more newspaper headlines than the other.
“That’s right. For my undergrad. I went into planning for my master’s. I figured I could do more good governing people than I could drawing boxes to put them in.”
He winced to hear himself deliver the line. It was a pat phrase from grad school, something he should’ve left behind with crushing beer cans on his forehead and ogling asses in skirts. He wondered for the dozenth time why he and the other congressional newcomers had been summoned. When he first got the invite, he figured it was a social visit. Then Mick bragged about his own appointment, and Donald figured it was some kind of formality or tradition. But now he wondered if this was a power play, a chance to butter up the Reps from Georgia for those times when Thurman would need a particular vote in the lower and lesser house.
“Tell me, Donny—” The Senator reached for his bottle of water, glanced up. “How good are you at keeping secrets?”
Donald’s blood ran cold. He forced himself to laugh off the sudden flush of nerves.
“I got elected, didn’t I?”
Senator Thurman smiled. “And so you probably learned the best lesson there is about secrets.” He raised his plastic bottle in salute. “Denial.”
Donald nodded and took a sip of his own water. He wasn’t sure where this was going, but he already felt uneasy. He sensed some of the backroom dealings coming on that he’d promised his constituents he’d root out if elected.
The Senator leaned back in his chair.
“Denial is the secret sauce in this town,” he said. “It’s the flavor that holds all the other ingredients together. Here’s what I tell the newly elected: the truth is gonna get out—it always does—but it’s gonna blend in with all the lies.” The Senator twirled a hand in the air. “You have to deny each lie and every truth with the same vinegar. Let those websites and blowhards who bitch about cover-ups confuse the public for you.”
“Uh, yessir.” Donald didn’t know what else to say. This seemed like a strange conversation to be having. He took another gulp of water.
The Senator lifted an eyebrow again. He remained frozen for a pause, and then asked, out of nowhere: "Do you believe in aliens, Donny?”
Donald nearly lost the water out of his nose. He covered his mouth with his hand, coughed, had to wipe his chin. The Senator didn’t budge.
“Aliens?” Donald shook his head and wiped his wet palm on his thigh. “Nossir. I mean, not the abducting kind. Why?”
He wondered if this was some kind of debriefing. Why had the Senator asked him if he could keep a secret? Was this a security initiation? The Senator remained silent.
“They’re not real,” Donald finally said. He watched for any twitch or hint. “Are they?”
The old man cracked a smile. “That’s the thing,” he said. “If they are or they aren’t, the chatter out there would be the exact same. Would you be surprised if I told you they’re very much real?”
“Hell, yeah, I’d be surprised.”
“Good.” The Senator slid a folder across the desk. Donald eyed it and held up a hand.
“Wait. Are they real or aren’t they? What’re you trying to tell me?”
Senator Thurman laughed. “Of course they’re not real. Are you kidding?” He took his hand off the folder and propped his elbows on the desk. “Have you seen how much NASA wants from us so they can fly to Mars and back? No way we’re getting to another star. Ever. And no one’s coming here. Hell, why would they?”
Donald didn’t know what to think, which was a far cry from how he’d felt less than a minute ago. He saw what the Senator meant, how truth and lies seemed black and white, but mixed together, they made everything gray and confusing. He glanced down at the folder. It looked similar to the one Mick had been carrying and reminded him of the government’s fondness for all things outdated.
“This is denial, right?” He studied the Senator. “That’s what you’re doing right now. You’re trying to throw me off.”
“No. This is me telling you to stop watching so many science fiction flicks. In fact, why do you think those eggheads are always dreaming of colonizing some other planet? You have any idea what would be involved? It’s ludicrous. Not cost-effective.”
Donald shrugged. He didn’t think it was ludicrous. He twisted the cap back onto his water. “It’s in our nature to dream of open space,” he said. “To find room to spread out in. Isn’t that how we ended up here?”
“Here? In America?” The Senator laughed. “We didn’t come here and find open space. We got a bunch of people sick, killed them, and made space.” Thurman pointed at the folder. “Which brings me to this. I’ve got something I’d like you to work on.”
Donald leaned forward and placed his bottle on the leather inlay of the formidable desk. He took the folder.
“Is this something coming through committee?”
He tried to temper his hopes. It was alluring to think of co-authoring a bill his first year in office. He opened the folder and tilted it toward the window, where storms were gathering.
“No, nothing like that. This is about CAD-FAC.”
Donald nodded. Of course. The preamble about secrets and conspiracies suddenly made perfect sense, as did the gathering of Georgia congressmen outside. This was about the Containment and Disposal Facility at the heart of the Senator’s new energy bill, the complex that would one day house most of the world’s spent nuclear fuel. Or, according to the websites Thurman had alluded to, it was going to be the next Area 51, or the site where a new-and-improved superbomb was being built, or a place where mad scientists would tunnel to the center of the earth to prevent the core from melting down, or a secure holding facility for Libertarians who had purchased one too many guns at Walmart. Take your pick. There was enough noise out there to hide any truth.
“Yeah,” Donald said, deflated. “I’ve been getting some entertaining calls from my district.” He didn’t dare mention the one about the Lizard People, or the one that had to do with magnetic poles flipping. “I want you to know, sir, that privately I’m behind the facility one hundred percent.” He looked up at the Senator. “I’m glad I didn’t have to vote on it publicly, of course, but it was about time someone offered up their backyard, right?”
“Precisely. For the common good.” Senator Thurman took a long pull from his water, and Donald noticed for the first time that his office didn’t reek of old cigar smoke, wasn’t infused with the stench of pipe tobacco, aged leather, expensive whiskey, and the other deal-making scents he constantly nosed back at Rayburn. Hell, despite Helen’s aromatic electric candles, his own office still stank like the eight-term Representative he’d ousted in the primaries—the one who had voted on the energy bill.