Grand Master by D.W. Buffa Read Free Book Online

with a lonely smile
that she had to go away.
    “I can’t live here, I just can’t - I’ve
tried. I’d do anything for you, Bobby, but I can’t do this. I have
to go home, our home, Bobby; the one we bought together, where we
said we’d always live. I’m not leaving you; I don’t want you to
leave me. I’ll be there, at home, waiting every night.”
    It was only then that he realized what he had
done to her, and from that day forward his ambition lived, so to
speak, on borrowed time. He promised himself, and he promised her,
that as soon as he finished the more important things he had
started, he would quit the Senate, resign his seat, and come home
to Santa Barbara. This was what he thought he owed her, and it was
what he wanted for himself. He was still in love with her - he
would always be in love with her - and he could not stand the
thought that, for however short time, they would live apart.
    Helen moved back to Santa Barbara and Bobby
started spending weekends there as often as he could, and then, two
years later, at almost the same time, Bobby said it was time to
quit and Helen told him that instead of that she wanted a second
chance. She insisted she was stronger, that she had now quite
recovered, and that she loved him too much to let him stop what he
was doing because of her. And so she came back to Washington, and
Bobby for his part made sure that things were different. They
rarely went to Georgetown parties and they seldom saw anyone who
was not an old friend. They spent a lot of time with Charlie Ryan
and, when she was not at home in Ann Arbor where she had her
medical practice, his wife, Clare. Bobby did everything he could to
protect her, which meant, among other things, that he never, or
almost never, told her what he learned on the Senate Intelligence
Committee, no matter how angry and depressed he might have become
listening to more tales of wanton violence and every form of evil.
He tried always to be cheerful and eager, as if the only thing he
had had on his mind all day was getting home to her. But Helen had
acquired an almost mathematically precise ability, a kind of
calculus of false exuberance, to measure the degree of his
well-intentioned duplicity. She knew what he was doing and loved
him even more because of it.
    Their life soon settled into a comfortable
routine. And if it was not everything she had wanted, it was good
enough. She knew for certain that she would rather live with him in
the apartment they had taken in Washington’s northwest corner, she
would rather live with him anywhere, than live anywhere else, even
Santa Barbara, without him. Sometimes, if he was traveling
overseas, or had to give a speech somewhere out of town, she would
fly back to California where he would join her on the weekend. The
week the President died, when all of Washington gathered for the
funeral, Bobby told her no one would notice if she was not there,
and that he would not be going himself if he did not have to.
    “I never quite understood what people saw in
him,” she remarked when Bobby drove her to the airport for the
flight home to Santa Barbara. The Potomac glistened in the morning
sun as they passed the Jefferson Memorial and started across the
bridge. “I’m not sure I liked her any better,” she added as she
reached in her purse for her dark glasses. “You wonder what goes on
in private between people like that.” A smile full of puzzled
affection broke suddenly across her face. “I suppose there are
people who wonder that about us, aren’t there? Wonder what we’re
really like - whether we make love or you just give speeches.”
    Bobby kept his eyes on the road, but she
could see - he wanted her to see - the teasing sparkle in his eyes.
“Did I speak too much last night?”
    “I like it when you speak like that,” she
said in the silky voice that he never tired of hearing. “You can
speak like that every night to me.”
    When they reached the airport, he parked at
the curb and got