Power Games

Melinda sat back and flipped open a compact from her Louis Vuitton purse.

‘Stop looking at it: it’s just some witch out to grab a headline.’

Mitch tucked his shirt and zipped his flies. ‘For a man in my position I’d say that headline was a substantial concern, wouldn’t you?’

‘Our marriage is also a substantial concern,’ Melinda complained, shooting him her best martyred expression, ‘but I don’t see you caring half as much about that.’

Mitch gulped his guilt like a lump of cotton wool. He shuffled the papers on his desk, moving Eve Harley’s Examiner piece to the bottom of the pile. The Melinda he had married two decades ago had been a sweet, innocent girl, unimpressed by money or fame. She had always kept his feet on the ground, stuck with him through the drugs, the drink, the partying and the depression. Now that girl was gone.

‘Don’t you care, Mitch?’ she spat. ‘Go on, have the guts to tell me the truth.’

Truth. The word shivered between them, a caped stranger.

The world would never believe the truth. It could never understand.

His phone buzzed. ‘They’re ready for you, Senator Corrigan.’

‘We’ll talk about this later,’ he told Melinda, clicking his briefcase shut.

His speech went down a storm. Mitch was unsurpassed when it came to putting on a show. He was master of the persuasive address, the loaded pause and the witty riposte. His years in Hollywood had served him well.

He might have been a film star, but the time for acting is over …

Eve Harley was a clueless hack whose job it was to sniff out heat, even when there was nothing to back it up. Mitch was careful. The press would never get to him.

Afterwards, a posse of reporters was lobbying for a word. Microphones lunged as he paced through the foyer. ‘What’s next, Senator Corrigan? Is 2014 your year?’

Mitch turned at the door to his committee, winning smile resolutely in place. After feeding them their quota of practised lines, he slipped into his antechamber.

Checking there was no one else around, he located the bathroom.

Mitch had a diehard bathroom routine. He could not do the business unless any and all cubicles behind him were vacant. The stalls had to be open, wide open, so he could see into them. He refused to have his back to a closed door.

If you want my ass so bad you’ll have to damn well find it first!

But they had found it last time, hadn’t they?

No way was he laying his ruined rump bare. He might as well put a tablecloth under it, give them a knife and fork and invite them to pull up a chair. Christ!

Today, Mitch was in luck. The restroom was empty. After a quick inspection in the bank of mirrors, comprising a swift adjustment to his chestnut-coloured toupee and a reassuring thumbs-up, he unfastened his pants. As he emptied himself into the urinal, he prayed that Melinda had scarpered back to the apartment. Mitch was grateful for tonight’s TV slot—with any luck his wife might have gone to bed by the time he returned. Occasionally she would grope for him in the dark, murmur something enticing like, ‘Have you showered? If you’ve showered you can put it in me,’ but if he left it long enough she would have her eye mask on and her earplugs in.

If Melinda only knew where he’d been, what he’d seen …

Images from the house at Veroli came rushing back: the elderly couple, the shed in the courtyard, the driving rain … Part of Mitch wished he had never gone, had never laid eyes on the terrible reality. But there had been no choice.

Now he knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that these creatures were out there, biding their time, preparing to strike, their skills and machinery eclipsing anything this planet had to offer. Rome had confirmed their existence once and for all.

The invasion was nigh—and Mitch was its target.

Signor Rossetti had explained. ‘They want you, Senator Corrigan. You are a special man. You will soon run America, the most powerful country on Earth …’

Mitch would never forget those words as long as he lived. Them.

One probe was all it took. Fiercely he yanked up his pants.

Trembling, Mitch Corrigan bolted for the door.

The car arrived on the dot of six to escort him to the studio. Mitch was due live on America Tonight in an hour. He couldn’t be less set for a public airing if he tried.

‘Remember our focus is the campaign,’ Oliver, his PR guy, chattered, stabbing keys on his BlackBerry. ‘I’ve briefed the producer on what we will and won’t say. I’m not sitting through a Who’s Who of Mitch Corrigan movies like we did last time.’

Mitch’s knee started to shudder as the downtown traffic rushed past. ‘It’s what they’re interested in,’ he conceded. After eight years in politics, people still hankered after morsels from his showbiz past: instead of hearing his views on a proposed health reform or a controversial rule on education, what they really wanted was a rendition of a celebrated catchphrase from his best-known flick, nineties action-fest A Good Day to Die. In it, Mitch’s character Blaine, a stunt driver, tells his arch-enemy to: ‘Side with me if you want to ride with me.’ Those ten words had haunted him the majority of his adult life. They got yelled at him in the street, at party conferences, on beach vacations, in restaurants when he was halfway through his shrimp appetiser …

‘Wrong,’ corrected Oliver, ‘we tell them what to be interested in. Once we confirm our White House campaign, they’ll soon see where our priorities lie.’

Mitch felt exhausted by the whole thing. Along the line he guessed he must have signed up for this demented full-throttle ride, first Hollywood, then Washington, then a fucking presidential bid. Why was he doing it to himself? Fame was a cruel mistress. She had brought him notoriety, but she hadn’t brought him happiness.

In the vehicle’s wing mirror he spied the same black car he had noticed trailing them on to the freeway. Mitch narrowed his eyes. His knee juddered.

Quietly he eased back in his seat.

‘Everything OK?’ asked Oliver.

‘Fine,’ he replied.

Mitch couldn’t confide in Oliver. He couldn’t confide in anyone. They would pour scorn on his revelations: Too manydrugs with the Screw Crew? That had been the name of his actor clique, years ago when the A-listers had stalked Sunset for babes and tallied up their victories. Maybe he had taken too many drugs. Maybe he had lost his shit at too many parties. Maybe the whole thing was a delusion brought about by his longevity at the top of a precipitous fame mountain: a gradual decline.

Mitch could forget all about a White House campaign if the world uncovered a breath of what he knew. Who would have thought it? This was the man who, back in his heyday, had been king of the silver screen; he had wrestled crocodiles, battled felons, shot at hijackers from a swooping chopper and flown missiles into Vietnam …

Yet here he was, besieged and cursed, tripped and taunted in the endless labyrinth of his waking nightmare. His palms were sweating. He wiped them on his trousers. He checked the mirror again. The black car was still in pursuit.

‘Here we are.’ Oliver was all business as their vehicle pulled up at the studio. Mitch sank down in his seat. The black car slid past, its windows opaque.

‘Senator Corrigan, it’s an honour, thanks again for joining us.’ A smiling producer led him through the rear entrance, and he was encouraged by Oliver to raise a hand to the waiting band of paps shouting his name. Ten minutes in Make-up and he was set.

Mitch had to wait backstage while Jerry Gersham’s star billing took the stage. Noah Lawson was that rare concoction to which every actor aspires: looks, charm and talent. It was why he was Hollywood’s hottest property. Mitch knew that while he himself had done an OK job, somehow garnering his handprint on the Walk of Fame, he had hardly been the most versatile of players. In fact, his acting was shit.

‘Side with me if you want to ride with me.’ Good grief.

The studio audience went crazy as Noah told a joke. The actor ran his hand through his blond hair and gave them an easy grin. So charming, so relaxed …

Mitch wished it could be that straightforward for him.

The studio lights burned. A trickle of sweat travelled down his neck and into his collar. His tongue bloated. His lungs squeezed. Panic rose in his belly.

The house at Veroli flashed terribly through his mind. The thing …

Mitch released a strangled cry. He could take it no longer. He felt his asshole begin to protest, that horrid twitching dance it forced him into whenever it recoiled against a further assault, as if still reeling from the penetration two years before, as if so certain it was about to happen again: his poor, vulnerable, raided asshole.