The doorbell rang, and she reluctantly rose from her clifflike aerie, in exchange for the gloom near the front door. It was almost midnight, she’d been up since six, and yet she approached whoever this was with more curiosity than irritation. A late-night encounter was as good a way to wrap up the day as staring into the darkness.
Still, she was pleasantly surprised at who was standing before her and happily gave the thumbs-up to the cop a half step behind Susan Raffner.
She hugged her old friend in the darkness and reached for the hallway light switch, offering to fix something for Susan to drink, but Raffner stopped her by laying her hand on her forearm. “No. Leave it dark. I like it. It’s kind of wonderful.”
Gail turned in the direction of Susan’s gaze and saw that she’d noticed the view filling the far end of the distant living room, whose faint glitter touched the pale walls even back here.
“I’ve got a bottle of wine open,” Gail suggested, taking Susan’s hand.
“That would be perfect.”
They walked together into the lofty space, and Raffner sat as at a stage play before the wall-to-wall scene while Gail fetched another glass.
Susan let out a sigh and toed off her shoes, one by one, enjoying the massage of the thick carpeting on her soles.
Gail resumed her seat and filled the glass before handing it over. “Tough day?”
Susan took a sip. “Interesting,” she said afterwards. “I know we’re not supposed to gloat or poke a stick at others’ misfortunes, but I think, so far, that we’re doing better with this mess than they did with Katrina in Louisiana.”
Gail snorted. “Well, yeah. We had three deaths and have just over half a million people in the whole state. What’s Louisiana got? Four and a half million? Plus, they got an ocean surge on top of the rain.”
Susan took a second sip, unruffled. “You know what I mean. Pat yourself on the back, girl. You’ve been out in the towns, standing in the muck, talking to people in food lines, you’ve been shown meeting with FEMA and the Corps of Engineers. You’re like the goddamn Energizer Bunny. That’s good stuff, and you know it. And we’ve been just as good in our districts”-she pointed out the window-“working the phones and backing you up. There’s no shame in taking pride in work well done.”
In response, Gail simply held up her glass so that Susan could clink it against her own.
After they’d both taken swallows, however, Gail asked, “So that’s it? Rah-rah for the home team?”
“That’s a bad thing?”
“It’s not why you’re here at midnight.”
Raffner’s initial silence confirmed Gail’s suspicion. “Well,” Susan admitted, “I have been approached with something I think you’ll find interesting.”
“Like a snake in the grass?”
She made a face, which Gail could not have seen. “I hope not. I’m seeing this as a good thing.”
Gail twisted in her chair and faced Susan’s profile, attracted by something in the tone of her voice-a form of powerfully suppressed excitement that she’d heard only on rare occasions. “You have my interest, Senator.”
Susan turned toward her, the lights outside gleaming in her eyes. “Catamount Industrial,” she said. “You know about them?”
“Of course. Vermont’s own fairy tale.” Gail reacted slightly scornfully. “The exception that proved the rule. The founder started out as a tinkerer, began with … what was it? Surplus machine tools after the bottom fell out in places like Springfield? He traded that into equipment to run everything from stone quarries to ski slope operations, then branched out into farm machinery, agriculture, banking, God knows what else, before selling out to the second- or third-biggest agri-corporation in the country for … whatever … a zillion dollars? I miss anything?”
Susan had been nodding in agreement throughout. “Harold LeMieur,” she confirmed. “On the financial high end of the national food chain, born and bred in good-old-Vermont, although he hasn’t lived here in decades.”
“And who’s had nothing to do with us, either, if memory serves,” Gail concluded dismissively. “Which is one reason I was told not to waste my time hitting him up for support. Not to mention that he’s a right-wing poster child.”
Susan was laughing by now. “That’s the man.”
Gail smiled, caught by Susan’s mood. “So, why’re we talking about him?”
“Because,” Susan said almost gleefully, “if this works out, it’ll be the exact opposite of George Bush’s ‘Hell of a job, Brownie’ boner following Katrina. I’ve been contacted by LeMieur’s people, who say he’s interested in working with you in creating what they’re calling a para-FEMA.”
Gail held up her hand. “He’s not one of ours, Susan.”
“That’s the point,” Raffner exclaimed. “He wants to do this for Vermont, not us, and he’s willing to work with whoever to get it done, even a bunch of liberal wackos. Which is the best part of it, you see? If it works, it’ll undermine the whole right-left paradigm we’ve been fighting for years.”
Gail scratched her head. “It doesn’t make sense,” she said. “What does LeMieur get out of it? He’s never done anything that wasn’t to his own advantage.”
“That’s what I asked,” Susan argued. “And they said that’s exactly why-as he’s aged, he’s become haunted by his own ogre image. Like what happened to John D. Rockefeller when he got old. He started donating money, handing out dimes to kids, and conning people into thinking he’d become a nice, doddering, generous old man. Totally bogus, of course, but what do we care if you get to stand up at the end of the day and say that under your administration, even the likes of Irene can be tamed through bipartisan cooperation?”
Gail laughed and took another sip of her wine. “Okay,” she then said. “Assuming this isn’t a total crock to make us look like fools, what’s he mean by para-FEMA?”
“In short? His organization would operate as a super-low-interest bank, paralleling FEMA. Applicants to the U.S. government would get whatever money FEMA doles out, then Catamount would show up and handle what fell through the cracks or came up short. It would function as a safety net for people FEMA didn’t completely take care of, or who didn’t qualify in the first place for some reason.”
“They’d be loans?” Gail asked suspiciously.
“Structured as such for those who could afford them. Otherwise, they’d be grants. It would work on a case-by-case basis.”
Gail resumed staring out the window, deep in thought. It was a political reality that garbage strikes and snowstorms got politicians thrown out of office-or tropical storms. Her poll numbers had begun high, based on her covering the state like a wet sheet and showing up wherever there was a TV camera. But people standing next to the wreckage of their town and homes were beginning to complain about the lack of money, the slowness of road and bridge repair, and how she’d been acting to set things right.
Political storm clouds were gathering. And certainly, the essence of what Susan had just outlined seemed like a sudden shaft of sunlight.
“Is LeMieur open to sharing the stage?” she asked slowly. “If I used his offer to get places like IBM or Ben and Jerry’s or C and S to chip in as well, would that be a deal-breaker?”
Susan remained undaunted. “I wanted to know the same thing. They made it clear that he’d like special mention for starting things rolling, but after that, sure. He’d let whoever pulled out a checkbook step onstage with him.”
Gail shook her head. “And he’s ready to act now? Immediately?”
“That’s what they told me,” Susan assured her. “Of course, none of it can happen if the state drags its feet. It’s not like Catamount could simply set up shop independently. All sorts of special allowances are going to have to be cranked out to make it legal. And you’ll have to be out front through it all, goading, leading, blackmailing-whatever it takes to make it happen.”
“Right, right,” Gail replied, and faced her mentor one last time. “Okay, Susan. Call them back and take the next step, but on tiptoes. Word of this gets out prematurely, we’ll have so much shit on our shoes, we won’t be able to move. What you’ve brought me is right up there with jumping out of an airplane and only hoping you’ve got a parachute.” She slid halfway out of her chair to put her face inches from Raffner’s. “We are fucked if this fails,” she said.