“There’s a leak”

Those three simple words could bring the wheels of business to a jarring halt. “There’s a leak” Myles read from his BlackBerry as he crossed the marbled Statehouse lobby. “There’s a goddamn leak.” he mumbled to himself from the elevator to his office. “Lori, find Ronald. I need to see him immediately.”

“He’s…” Lori started but stopped when Myles’s door slammed behind him. “….waiting in your office.”

“What’s this about a leak?” Myles asked, rounding his desk. He sat heavily and alert.

“Eugene Everett paid me a visit this morning.” Ronald’s eyes cut through Myles. “He knows about my divorce and the reason behind it. Now, how would he have known? Who, besides you and I, know the truth? Who stood to benefit by disclosing it? Who?”

Myles’s eyes narrowed in though. “It wasn’t me. I gave you my word.” Myles saw a flicker of mistrust in Ronald’s eyes. “We’ve always trusted one another. I’ve kept your secret this long, why would I change now? Hell, you know everything about me. You’ve seen me at my worst. Who was there for me when Rachel died? Davis? Rick? No, you were. And now you think I’d break my promise and throw you to the wolves?”

Ronald doubts drained from him. He leaned back in his chair. “No…no you wouldn’t. But someone has. There’s no way he could’ve known every detail. Whoever leaked the info is close to one of us. Linnea isn’t an option. She wouldn’t talk. That leaves Amy, though she stands to gain more if I’m in office, and…”

“Gloria. But she has nothing to gain.”

“She hates me more than she loves you.”

Brushing off Ronald comment, Myles sat quietly. The pieces of the puzzle didn’t fit. There was something they were overlooking yet neither knew what it was. “What does Eugene plan on doing with the info?”

“Nothing for now. It’s his ace in the hole—though I wouldn’t be surprised if he tried to blackmail me into losing the race or use it to extract campaign intelligence—both of which would guarantee them another seat”

“He’ll use both,” Myles bit the side of his index finger. “…but neither will work. You’re too strong a candidate and, politically, he’s afraid of you. He’d have to destroy you, eliminate your chance of running again or coming after him. He isn’t stupid enough to leave you still breathing.” Myles eyes scanned side to side as if he were reading his thoughts from thin air. “Even with the info he has, he’s not thinking clearly. He’ll act irrationally—he needs backing, someone in his corner. You’d kill him, he knows it. He won’t risk it alone.”

“He has the leak in his corner.”

Myles shook his head. “The leak, whoever they are, doesn’t have the influence he needs. He wouldn’t have come to you otherwise. His little trick was meant to frighten you, nothing else.”

“I’m not pulling out of the race, so what now?”

“Leave it to me.” Myles grinned. “Whatever you hear in the next few days, don’t believe a word of it. This stays between us. Understood?”

Ronald smiled at Myles mischievous expression—it was rare, but it was deadly. “God, I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“If I fail, we’ll go together, won’t we?”




“Ouch!” Shelby whined as the beautician brushed a mass of tiny tangles from her wet hair.

“Be still and it won’t hurt.” Jackson commented from the chair beside her.

“I am being—ouch—still. Ouch!” Shelby pressed her hands over her teary eyes. “Is it almost done?”

Jackson’s barber stopped clipping, Jackson leaned over and examined Shelby. “Yeah, almost. Sit still.” He looked up at the beautician. “She’s gonna cut it now, Shelby. It won’t hurt.”

“Okay.” Shelby sniffed. She could take a punch like a boy but dissolved into a sniffling mess when anyone went near her head with a comb.

Jackson sat straight in his chair, shaking his head in sync with his barber.


Gloria and, her dearest friend and fellow nanny, Ursula were a few feet away having their hair done. With her brunette hair now cut in a pixie and her Eastern European features, Ursula favored Yulia Volkova. Ursula wasn’t one to pry however she sensed something was eating at Gloria—she wasn’t a chatter box like Linnea, but she was never this quiet. She’d hardly said two words all day. Any attempt to striking up a conversation was met with clipped answers and shrugs. Finally bored with both her own thoughts and the salons literary offerings, Ursula embarked on the topic that was on everyone’s lip: Amy and Ronald’s divorce—a subject which Gloria avoided like the plague.

Gloria and Ursula were too close in temperament and deposition for Gloria to imagine Ursula gave two shiny shits about the debacle—there still, to ease Ursula’s obvious torment, Gloria indulged her in conversation. It was the same old same old; half truths, he said, she said, nothing substantial or remotely interesting—that was until Ursula mentioned Amy’s strange conversation with her. Gloria and Ursula compared notes; it was the same perfunctory and one-sided conversation Amy had taken up with her. Like Gloria, Ursula hadn’t spoken a word to anyone (except Myles), not even the other nannies, because the whole situation and Amy’s behavior were in poor taste. Modernity aside, Amy had crossed a line of professionalism that didn’t rest easy with them. They chatted on and vowed to keep their mouths shut—of course Gloria would tell Myles.

Half an hour later, Shelby ran over to Gloria, her new bangs shaped her oval face perfectly however the two French braids hung longer than Gloria would’ve liked. Jackson wasn’t far behind, his dark hair trimmed to perfection like his father’s. Gloria smiled proudly, he was such a handsome little man…he’d break his fair share of hearts, that was a given.

When the beautician successfully straightened every hint of curl on Gloria’s head, they parted with Ursula and headed to the market, then home. Six o’clock came and went—then seven and eight. The kids ate dinner and took their baths. Shelby nodded off in front of the television beside Gloria while Jackson lie unceremoniously sprawled across her bed. Gloria opened her eyes drowsily peering at the clock, it was after eleven. She draped Shelby over her shoulder, and went to bed.


Myles shook out his rain soaked overcoat before hanging it on the foyers coat rack. It was late and the house was dark save a warm light coming from the kitchen. Myles went towards it, disappointed to find Gloria hadn’t waited up for him—then he remembered how exhausted she’d been the day before. It was selfish of him to expect her to wait up for him, but in Gloria he found a well-rounded, politically astute soundboard with a better grasp of the issues than half of the people he employed. Hell, if she ran for office she’d beat the pants off of him! She’s going to drive herself into the ground, he told himself, putting away the plate of dinner she’d left for him. In his mind he wanted to crawl in bed with Gloria, but his body betrayed him and cried out for sleep, rest, mending from the days events.

Myles collected Jackson from Gloria’s bed, kissed Gloria and Shelby, and retired to his room.


                                                *****


The next morning, to her horror, Gloria found Eugene Everett sitting across the desk from Myles when she returned from Jackson’s bus stop. Why the hell are you sleeping with the enemy, her eyes asked Myles before she closed the office door and went about her work—none more pressing than removing caked Vaseline from Shelby’s bangs. Another one of Shelby’s experiments goes awry.

Eugene’s presence was abnormal to say the least as Myles never saw anyone before eight AM, and certainly not in his home. Whatever was being said, Gloria surmised, wasn’t meant for anyone else’s ears….so, of course, she eavesdropped. Myles, it seemed, offered Eugene Ronald’s head on a platter in exchange for his discretion, and when the time came to play his hand, Myles throw his weight behind the allegations, thereby unseating and destroying Ronald’s political career and reputation with the public and the party in one stroke.

Though initially cautious and suspicious of Myles’s motives, Eugene agreed. He would’ve been a fool not to jump at the chance.

A fool, he was. 


                                                  *****



Ding-Dong! The witch is dead!

For the rest of the day, Gloria bopped around the house with new found glee, profoundly proud of Myles for showing his claws. This called for something special. What do you get a treacherous, back-stabbing, turncoat? A Dairy Queen ice-cream cake. Perfect! Gloria looked at her watch and rounded up the kids—they had just enough time to make it to Dairy Queen and back before Myles came home. Ursula and Allen, her carrot top charge, met them in the driveway. There was no time to chat, Gloria unlocked the front door and asked Ursula to watch the children until she returned. As usual, Jackson and Allen hurried upstairs, leaving Shelby in the dust.

Ursula made herself at home on the living room sofa and retrieved a stack on unopened mail from her purse. Rubbish. Rubbish. Rubbish, she mumbled, carelessly flipped through the envelopes. She stopped when an envelope emblazoned with “U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service” sucked the air from her lungs. With shaky hands, she stuffed the other letters in her purse and took a deep breath, preparing herself for the worst. Her chest grew heavy with each passing word…again and again she read the letter—hoping the words would somehow magically change. Sadly, they did not.

“Damn,” Ursula said, not hearing Myles come through the front door.

“Damn what?” he dropped his laptop bag and took a seat, exhausted.

“Gloria ran out,” Ursula quickly folded the letter and tucked it away with the others. “I don’t think she was expecting you home so soon. The children are upstairs.”

“What are you damning?” Undeterred by her news bulletin.

“Nothing, really, just news from home” she lied. “I’m helping Gloria with your dinner.”

Myles’s forehead furrowed. “What dinner?”

“The one you asked her to plan for…”

“Oh! That. Shit.” Completely forgetting he’d begged Gloria to arrange his gathering. “Thank you. She’ll need all the help she can get. You attended my party last year, correct? But you left early.”

Ursula was surprised Myles remembered. “Yeah…well,” she eyes danced around the room.

“Where’d you go? And don’t say you went home” Myles smile accompanied a ‘busted’ expression. “Come on, tell me.” He went to the kitchen and returned with two bottles of beer. “If you don’t tell me, I’m gonna make up an outlandish tales of you moonlighting as a stripper or running booze.” He handed Ursula a bottle.

“Why are you so interested?” Ursula laughed.

“Because I’m the keeper of secrets. News goes in but it doesn’t come out.” Myles rolled his sleeves up and reclined comfortably in his chair.

“Gloria was right; you’re not like the rest of them. The other families don’t take interest in us.”

“Don’t change the subject by flattering me. Now, split it, stripper nanny.”

Ursula took a deep breath and checked that the coast was clear. “I went out on a date…well, to dinner with a friend.”

“And?”

“And…we…” Ursula frowned playfully at Myles. “You’d better not repeat this!”

“Repeat what? You have done anything half as interesting as you think. Goodness stripper nanny, I’m disappointed. The way you guarded your ‘secret mission’, I thought a car chase with a trunk full of aliens and class-A drugs were involved. Let me tell you how the evening unfolded.” Myles and Ursula kicked their feet up on the coffee table. He closed his eyes. “You came to the dinner and stayed long enough to appease Allen, then made up a lame excuse to leave…probably calling your ‘friend’, we’ll call him Bob, from my driveway. You then met Bob in a darkened restaurant and asked to be seated away from the damning stares of onlookers…”

“You’re having too much fun with this…” Ursula laughed.

“Quiet! I’m not done.” Myles snickered and cleared his throat. “Where was I? Ah, yeah. After dinner and far too much wine, you and Bob went back to his place…a nice little place you wouldn’t mind calling home…”

“The end!”

“Ha! If you say so, stripper nanny!”

Thankfully for Ursula, the children raced in, dividing Myles’s attention. “We should be going.” Ursula placed her half drunken bottle on the table and gathered her belongings, forgetting momentarily about the contents of her letter. “I feel sorry to Gloria; her employer is a mad man.—you’re easy to talk to but you’re still mad.”

“Why thank you.” Myles said mockingly and the kids walked Ursula and Allen to the door. He stopped short and spoke quietly, “If you need to talk, my door is open.”

Ursula smiled at his sincerity. “I know.”

Myles winked and opened the door.

Eugene almost knocked Ursula over as he came inside. “Excuse me.” They both said, then like something out of The Matrix, their eyes met in slow, suspended animation—just long enough for Ursula to take a read of him. Sucker, she thought as she came back to reality. They parted ways….for now.

Too easy, Myles thought, witnessing Ursula and Eugene’s exchange.


                                                  *****


If Myles had any misgivings about jumping into bed with Eugene, he hid them well. Gloria studied him all evening and he neither mentioned nor alluded to their meeting. She hadn’t expected fully closure, but an acknowledgement would’ve been nice. As it were, Gloria didn’t know what was up his sleeve. For her it was business as usual: dinner, family time, baths, and bed while Myles worked late with the guys.

Around midnight she tip-toed downstairs after finding Myles’s bed empty; Rick and Davis were still in his office. Gloria listened at the door hoping to catch a crumb of info. Nothing of any consequence was being discussed.

“What are they saying?” Ronald said quietly startling Gloria. He smiled.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“I’m working. You?” Ronald closed the office door. “You shouldn’t make a habit of listening at doors. You might hear something you weren’t meant to hear.”

“And you should kiss my ass.” Gloria looked Ronald up and down and started upstairs.

“Gloria,” He called in a hushed polite manner. “I don’t want to fight with you anymore but I’m serious. Don’t eavesdrop and don’t mistake movement for action, or adoration for allegiance. This is politics; all is not as it seems.”

For once, Gloria didn’t have snappy reply.

“Goodnight, Gloria.” Ronald retreated into the office.

“Pleassse,” Gloria rolled her eyes and returned to bed, pretending Ronald’s words hadn’t confounded her when in fact they had. Normally gobby and irritating to boot, Ronald’s demeanor was altogether cautious. What was he up to and why wasn’t Myles forthcoming?