Faster on My Own: Chapter 19
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Releasing a statement calling the incident in the bar an “unfortunate event, which by happenstance occurred in proximity to Mr. Williams,” didn’t, as Rick claimed it would, end the daily questions over it. In just a week, Steven’s campaign was down ten percent in the polls. Steven, Rick, and an assortment of campaign staff whose names Steven didn’t know met in a conference room with all of the blinds pulled down.
Rick paced in front of a projector screen which showed those polls numbers. “Now we all know these numbers. But many of us don’t know that it means we’re fucked. Since this stabbing thing isn’t going away. Though it might have, if we hadn’t deleted all the footage from inside the bar showing it wasn’t our candidate’s fault.”
“I’m here, you can say my name.” Steven said.
“Steven, there’s just a way that campaign managers talk. I didn’t make it up. Anyway.” He clicked the remote in his hand and gestured to the next slide, which had the number “2024” on it. “I say we try to defuse this controversy as well as we can, and hope that next time people have forgotten. We try again. What do you say?”
“No. Another two years of campaigning?” Steven lurched forward and the chair clicked and cracked as it followed him. “I can’t do it. Absolutely not.”
“You’ll get a break for about a year. And then, let’s be honest, you might not be the party’s pick for the election after this loss. So it could be much shorter. Unless,” Rick clapped his hands in a transparent and failed attempt to excite everyone, like a kindergarten teacher holding on to the attention of twenty five-year-olds right before nap time. “Unless we exit this race on a strong note. If we look like we’re coming back and closing the gap, we can say we hit the rocks for a bit, but still had a chance. The question is, how do we do that?”
The staffers lit up, murmuring and occasionally shouting out ideas.
“Excite the base with some real nasty stuff, not like we have to worry about losing the moderates this time.”
“Go full on negative, air commercials on every bad thing he’s ever done.”
“Send get out the vote operations where we’re already strong so the numbers look better, even though we won’t win.”
After transcribing these ideas on the whiteboard, Rick tapped the marker against the board, creating a dead ringer for the Big Dipper. “These are good. I think we’ve got a chance to make this respectable. Any other ideas?”
“It doesn’t matter. We’re not giving up on this election.”
Everyone looked at him like he was a toddler whose hamster just died. Rick ambled down to the other side of the table and slung an arm around Steven, who couldn’t wriggle out of the hold. “We’re beat. This scandal got too big for us and too difficult to put down.”
“So there’s no way to make up this gap in two weeks?”
“Not a chance.”
“Even though our opponents made up a gap this size in one week?”
Steven didn’t blink, didn’t move a single muscle in his face, not even a twitch that would let Rick think he was wavering, grip soft like a father consoling his son after a tough little league game. But Rick just walked over to Steven and put a hand on his shoulder. “I know this feels like shit. I feel it too. This is probably the worst beat of any of our careers because we all know that nothing happened in there. But you have to know when to take a loss, kid. There aren’t any winning moves left.”
“I’m saying that there’s one. Why not do to Samuels’s campaign what the world did to ours?”
“If we had a scandal in our back pocket, we would’ve used it just as ours was getting press. The worst thing we found out was that his wife had two unpaid parking tickets. But if we hit that, which isn’t anything, we look like monsters because she killed herself three months ago. There’s nothing out there.”
“So we make one up. I didn’t do anything but I’m still getting slammed. Why not him too?” Samuels was barely even center-left, politically. Crushing him in service of The Plan was the greater good, no matter the ethics of the particular path. It might even have been moral on its own, since Samuels’s weak politics perpetuated the apparatus which drove humanity further and further into the dirt.
The murmur returned from its shallow grave.
“Simple bribery maybe. We make it seem like he’s in the pay of some fringe group.”
“If we put him in Black Lives Matter’s pocket, our voters will get very uncomfortable with him.”
“We’ve got a pocket of black voters in this district, what if we accidentally drive turnout?”
“Hm. You’re right. Maybe he’s a murderer. That could be fun.”
Rick finally snapped out of his fog and said, “What if he killed his wife?”
“Alright. Rick’s on the board.” Steven circled the table. “Dig deep, come on. And someone check if he was a hundred percent cleared in his wife’s death. If we’ve got any wiggle room we can work with that.”
“Foreign double agent?”
“Too ridiculous. No one’s going to believe that. China’s not calling this softboy’s name. Where are we at on the murder thing?”
A staffer scrolled through his phone. Every time he zoomed in or out, he stuck his tongue out of the corner of his mouth. Steven had made this a game to them, no one was taking it seriously any more. Fine. They’ll see how much fun this is at the victory party.
“Okay. He was on camera, giving a speech, when she died. No way he killed her.”
Rick punched a hole in the wall. “Shit.” He was invested now. Good.
“That’s okay. Keep going, we need to keep thinking. Maybe a hit man?” Steven wanted to sit down, but his legs demanded he keep pacing.
“No, no. People don’t believe in hit men anymore. Too much of a longshot.”
One of the staffers stood halfway up from his chair. “Do we have to…” He swung a pointed finger up and down his body.
“No, you can sit and talk.”
“Great. Can we say he drove his wife to suicide? Does that still work?”
Rick leaned against the projector screen, crumpling it behind him and creating deep valleys of shadow. “Depends on what it is. That’s good. It’s really good, but the reason why she killed herself because of him: that’s the scandal.”
“Cheating?”
“Too normal.”
“Gay?”
“No, we’re all supposed to like gay people now. That’ll just get us in trouble.”
One of the staffers said, “So we say he’s trans. His wife couldn’t stand to be married to a woman, but didn’t want to get a divorce, and realized she was married to a freak for twenty years. Get some fake leaked photos out there, and he’s done.”
“That’ll work.” Rick moved his fingers in the air, a sign he was doing strategist pseudo-math in his head. “If we get a wide spread on the rumor, it’ll tank him. We can win.” He spun toward one of the staffers. “Get someone on photoshopping those pictures. They need to be perfect. You,” he pointed at another one, “get a list together of people who’ll push this for us. We’ve got a plan, and we’re going to win.”
“Wait.” Steven said. Now there would be real victims of his gambit. But those trans people who saw the ad would only suffer a little. The Plan would save them. “I love it, do it.”
All of them rushed out of the room, leaving Steven alone. He closed his eyes and let the soft whir of the projector slip into his mind, erasing all his worries, his thoughts, his guilt.
Within hours, the scandal outshone Steven’s stabbing-adjacency. Samuels denied it, but it wasn’t enough to erase the image of him in a dress and makeup, nor the image of his wife lying dead on the living room floor. After the vote came in, Steven was a congressman. The Plan was as on track as it had ever been, and when Steven stared in the mirror and told himself that it was for the greater good, he believed it.