The Prodigal Daughter (Kane & Abel 2)

Florentyna laughed.

“No offense meant, lady.”

“No offense taken,” she said, and doubled his tip.

She checked her watch and made her way to the boarding gate: another thirty minutes before takeoff. She bought copies of Time and Newsweek from the newsstand. Bush on both covers: the first shots of the Presidential campaign were being fired. She looked up at the telemonitor to check the New York gate number: “12C.” It amused her to think of the extremes the officials at O’Hare went to in order to avoid “Gate 13.” She sat down in a red plastic swivel chair and began to read the profile on George Bush. She became so engrossed in the article that she did not hear the loudspeaker. The message was repeated: “Mrs. Florentyna Kane, please go to the nearest white courtesy telephone.”

Florentyna continued reading about the Zapata Oil Company executive who had gone through the House, the Republican National Committee, the CIA and the U.S. Mission to China to become Vice President. A TWA passenger representative came over and touched her lightly on the shoulder. She looked up.

“Mrs. Kane, isn’t that for you?” the young man said, pointing at a loudspeaker.

Florentyna listened. “Yes, it is, thank you.” She walked across the lounge to the nearest phone. At times like this, she always imagined that one of the children had been involved in an accident and even now she had to remind herself that Annabel was over twenty-one and William was married. She picked up the phone.

Senator Rodgers’s voice came over loud and clear. “Florentyna, is that you?”

“Yes it is,” she replied.

“Thank God I caught you. Betty has decided she doesn’t want to run after all. She feels the campaign would be too great a strain on her. Can you come back before this place is torn apart?”

“What for?” asked Florentyna, her mind in a whirl.

“Can’t you hear what’s going on here?” said Rodgers. Florentyna listened to cries of “Kane, Kane, Kane,” as clear as Rodgers’s own voice.

“They want to endorse you as the official candidate and no one is going to leave until you return.”

Florentyna’s fingers clenched into a fist. “I am not interested, David.”

“But Florentyna, I thought—”

“Not unless I have the backing of the committee and you personally propose my name in nomination.”

“Florentyna, anything you say. Betty always thought you were the right person for the job. It was just that Ralph Brooks pushed her into it.”

“Ralph Brooks?”

“Yes, but Betty now realizes that was nothing more than a self-serving exercise. So for God’s sake come back.”

“I’m on my way.” Florentyna ran down the corridor to the taxi stand. A cab shot up to her side.

“Where to this time, Mrs. Kane?”

She smiled. “Back to where we started.”

“I suppose you know where you’re going, but I can’t understand how an ordinary guy like me is meant to put any faith in politicians. I just don’t know.”

Florentyna prayed that the driver would be silent on his return journey so that she could compose her thoughts, but this time he treated her to a diatribe: on his wife, whom he ought to leave; his mother-in-law, who wouldn’t leave him; his son, who was on drugs and didn’t work, and his daughter, who was living in a California commune run by a religious cult. “What a frigging country—beg your pardon, Mrs. Kane,” he said as they drew up beside the hall. God, how she had wanted to tell him to shut up. She paid him for the second time that evening.

“Maybe I will vote for you after all when you run for President,” he said. She smiled. “And I could work on the people who ride this cab—there must be at least three hundred each week.”

Florentyna shuddered—another lesson learned.

She tried to collect her thoughts as she entered the building. The audience had risen from their seats and were cheering wildly. Some clapped their hands above their heads while others stood on chairs. The first person to greet her on the platform was Senator Rodgers, and then his wife, who gave Florentyna a smile of relief. The chairman shook her hand heartily. Senator Brooks was nowhere to be seen: sometimes she really hated politics. She turned to face her supporters in the hall and they cheered even louder: sometimes she really loved politics.

Florentyna stood in the center of the stage, but it was five minutes before the chairman could bring the meeting to order. When there was complete silence, she simply said, “Thomas Jefferson once remarked: ‘I have returned sooner than I expected.’ I am happy to accept your nomination for the United States Senate.”

She was not allowed to deliver a further word that night as they thronged around her. A little after twelve-thirty she crept into her room at the Chicago Baron. Immediately she picked up the phone and started dialing 212, forgetting that it was one-thirty in New York.

“Who is it?” said a drowsy voice.

“Mark Antony.”

“Who?”

“I come to bury Betty, not to praise her.”

“Jessie, have you gone mad?”

“No, but I’ve been endorsed as the Democratic candidate for the United States Senate.” Florentyna explained how it had come about.

“George Orwell said a lot of terrible things were going to happen this year, but he made no mention of you waking me up in the middle of the night just to announce you are going to be a senator.”

“I just thought you would like to be the first to know.”

“Perhaps you’d better call Edward.”

“Do you think I ought to? You’ve already reminded me that it’s one-thirty in New York.”

“I know it i

s, but why should I be the only person you wake up in the middle of the night so that you can misquote Julius Caesar?”

Senator Rodgers kept his word and backed Florentyna throughout her whole campaign. For the first time in years she was free of pressures from Washington and could devote all her energies to an election. This time there were no thunderbolts or meteorites that could not be contained, although Ralph Brooks’s lukewarm support on one occasion and implied praise of her Republican opponent on another did not help her cause.

The main interest in the country that year was the Presidential campaign. The major surprise was the choice of the Democratic Presidential candidate, a man who had come from nowhere to beat Walter Mondale and Edward Kennedy in the primaries with his program dubbed the “Fresh Approach.” The candidate visited Illinois on no less than six occasions during the campaign, appearing with Florentyna every time.

On the day of the election, the Chicago papers said once again that the Senate race was too close to call. The pollsters were wrong and the loquacious cab driver was right, because at eight-thirty Central time, the Republican candidate conceded an overwhelming victory. Later the pollsters tried to explain away their statistical errors by speculating that many men would not admit they were going to vote for a woman as senator. Either way, it didn’t matter, because the new President-elect’s telegram said it all: