President Elect. Jack Mars

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СКАЧАТЬ know who Luke was. His face darkened when he realized he was staring at his own father. Then he looked at the ground.

      Audrey knew who Luke was right away.

      “Can we help you?” she said before they even reached the grave marker.

      “You can’t,” Luke said. Audrey and her husband, Lance, had never accepted him as their son-in-law. They had been a toxic influence on his marriage since well before he and Becca exchanged their vows. Luke had nothing to say to Audrey.

      “What are you doing here, Dad?” Gunner said. His voice was deeper now. His throat had the cleft of an Adam’s apple – that hadn’t been there before.

      “I was called here by the President. But I wanted to see you first.”

      “Your President lost,” Audrey said. “She’s holed up inside the White House like a lunatic, refusing to admit defeat. I always knew there was something suspect about her. Now it’s on full display for the world to see. Was she hoping to become Emperor?”

      Luke looked at Audrey, taking his time, soaking her in. She had deep-set eyes with irises so dark, they seemed almost black. She had a sharp nose, like a beak. Her shoulders were hunched, and her hands were impossibly frail. She reminded him of a bird – a crow, or maybe a vulture. A carrion eater, in any case.

      “She lost,” Audrey said again. “She needs to get over it and prepare to hand over power to the winner.”

      “Gunner?” Luke said, ignoring Audrey now. “Can we talk?”

      “I told Rebecca in no uncertain terms not to marry you. I told her it would end in disaster. But I never could have imagined that it would come to this.”

      “Gunner?” Luke repeated, but now the boy was looking away. Luke saw a tear slide down Gunner’s face. The kid swallowed hard.

      “I just want to apologize.”

      The words came out wrong. An apology? That wouldn’t nearly cut it. Luke knew that. It was going to take a lot more than an apology to set this situation right again, if that was even possible. He wanted to tell Gunner that. He wanted to tell him he would do anything, everything, if only he would let him back into his life.

      He had made a terrible mistake. He would spend the rest of his life on this. He would fix it.

      Gunner looked at him, openly crying now. The tears streamed down his face. “I don’t want to talk to you.” He shook his head. “I don’t want to see you. I just want to forget about you, don’t you understand?”

      Luke nodded. “Okay. Okay, I can respect that. But know that I love you and I’m always open to hearing from you. Do you still have my number? You can call me if you change your mind.”

      “I don’t have your number,” Gunner said. “And I won’t change my mind.”

      Luke nodded again. “In that case, I’ll leave you alone.”

      Audrey’s voice followed Luke down the path. “That sounds like a good idea,” she said. “Leave the boy alone.” Then she laughed, a mad cackle that would have sounded almost like a coughing fit if Luke didn’t know better.

      “Leave us alone with our dead.”

      Luke made it to his car, put it in gear, and was almost to the cemetery gates before he started crying himself.

      CHAPTERR FIVE

      4:57 p.m. Eastern Standard Time

      Bubba’s Lounge

      Chester, Pennsylvania

      No one remembered who Bubba was.

      The small tavern had sat there on a street corner in the southeast end of Chester, near the river, since sometime after World War II. Ten different people had owned it at one time or another, and it had always been called Bubba’s, as far as anyone knew. But no one knew why.

      “I guess she’s going to throw in the towel,” one man at the bar said.

      “About time,” said another.

      Marc Reeves was working the stick today. Marc was an old-timer, sixty-seven years of age. He had poured beer at this bar, off and on, for the past twenty-five years, outlasting three owners in the process. He had watched the whole town go down the tubes right from this bar. In a city where damn near everything was boarded up or about to be, Bubba’s was a success story. Even so, nobody kept it for long.

      The place broke even – that was the problem. It didn’t lose money, it didn’t make money. You were better off working there, or drinking there, than owning it. At least you got something for your trouble.

      There was a big old box color TV set mounted on an iron rod behind the bar. This time of the afternoon, the place had four or five daytime drinkers lined up along the rail, wasting their Social Security checks and whatever was left of their livers. Usually the television was set to whatever game happened to be on. Today was different, though. Today the President was holding her first press conference since she lost the election.

      Marc had been skeptical of her when she first came into office, especially considering the circumstances, but she had grown on him. He thought she had done a pretty good job, all in all. She, and the country, had weathered a lot of storms. So he had done something yesterday that he rarely did – he had voted for her. He hadn’t stepped inside a polling place in twelve years before that.

      Not everyone agreed with his decision.

      “I like the new guy,” a fat man along the rail said. Everybody called him Skipper. He’d probably never been on a boat in his life. “What has Susan Hopkins ever done for Chester, Pennsylvania? That’s what I want to know. Anyway, it’s about time somebody put a stop to all these Chinamen flooding the country.”

      “And bring back our jobs while you’re at it,” a man named Steve-O said. Steve-O was so thin he was like one of those man-like pipe cleaner sculptures. He came in here and drank beer and bourbon every single day. Marc had never seen Steve-O eat even a bite of food. He seemed to survive on alcohol alone.

      Marc was drying pint glasses that had just come out of the washer. “Steve-O, you’ve been on disability for twenty years.”

      “I don’t mean bring my job back,” Steve-O said.

      A few people laughed.

      On the TV, an empty podium appeared. It was flanked by American flags.

      “Ladies and gentlemen,” a hushed voice said, “the President of the United States.”

      Susan Hopkins walked onto the stage from the right. She wore a tan pantsuit, her hair in a short blonde bob. Beautiful. Marc remembered her from her modeling days, in particular a certain Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue from twenty-five years ago. He had been middle-aged then, married with kids. There was something heartbreaking about her photo shoot – she was ethereal, unattainable, from another world. He didn’t have the words for what she was. And if anything, she looked even better now – more down to Earth, more mature. Marc liked a woman with a little mileage on her.

      “Take it off, baby!” Steve-O said, eliciting some giggles from the others.

      Marc СКАЧАТЬ