Chapter One

Bijal balanced the bags in her arms precariously as she turned her key in the lock. Just as her apartment door popped open, she heard the voice of her roommate Fran from inside.

“Oh, baby. Your ass is sooo tight.”

The door swung wide to reveal Fran sitting in the recliner, running her fingertips lightly over a glossy magazine page. She appeared to be caressing the image of a bikini model who was bending provocatively at the waist. “Why is this fucking thing not scratch and sniff?” She absently took another sip of wine and looked up. “Oh, hey. How’d your interview go?”

Bijal exhaled in relief, happy that she wasn’t walking in on some sexual hijinks and that her dinner wouldn’t have to get cold while she sat dejectedly in the hallway, waiting for Fran and her paramour to finish. She held out her trappings in answer to the question, clutching the neck of a bottle in one hand and a greasy paper bag in the other.

Fran’s eyes lit up. “Wow, champagne and manicotti? I’m assuming it went very well indeed.” She set down her vices and followed Bijal into the kitchen.

“You could say that.” Bijal smiled broadly. “I start tomorrow.”

“Congratulations. Um, which job was this again?” Fran began picking through the contents of the take-out bag, and her stomach gurgled as though from the sheer power of suggestion.

Bijal sighed in irritation. She was sure she’d told Fran about this position at least twice already. Perhaps if she’d been wearing a bikini at the time, Fran would have paid a bit more attention. “I’m the new research coordinator for Mayor Janet Denton’s U.S. congressional race.”

“Hmm, what happened to the old research coordinator?” Fran asked suspiciously as she pried the lid off the aluminum manicotti container and dove directly into it with a plastic fork.

Bijal struggled to open the champagne. “From what I could glean, he wasn’t terribly engaged.”

“What exactly does that mean? Not engaged?”

“He wasn’t finding enough dirt on the mayor’s opponent.”

“Ah, so you’re the mudslinger,” Fran said, waggling her meat sauce–covered utensil in recrimination.

Bijal bristled slightly. “I don’t sling the mud. I’m more the person who…harvests it from the earth,” she said, finally generating enough force with her thumbs to shoot the cork across the room.

“How very green of you,” Fran said, then scowled. “Or would that be brown of you?”

“Is that a racial slur?” Bijal asked, arching her left eyebrow in mock-accusation. She poured the warm bubbly into two coffee mugs, the only clean glassware they owned at the moment.

Fran scoffed. “Oh, please! You think you Indian Americans own brownness? For the record, my brown people were in this country getting shit on long before yours were.” She indignantly picked up her mug, which sported an image of Jane Fonda from the movie Barbarella, replete with tight space suit and ray gun, and took a sip of the champagne.

“Are you saying you want to have a brown-off?” Bijal joked, diving hungrily into her own take-out container.

“You can’t bring the brown, Ms. Life of Privilege. And you’re getting manicotti on your blouse.”

Bijal glanced down at the stain in horror. “Shit!” She put the food down and moved to the sink for a damp towel. “I need to start buying marinara-colored clothing.”

Fran laughed and took a seat at the kitchen table. “Okay, so tell me about your new boss. What’s she mayor of?”

“Ravensdale, Virginia.”

“I think I drove through there once…by mistake.”

Bijal continued to dab the sauce from the fabric. “Yeah, it’s not a big town. And it’s kind of out in the sticks.”

“So you’re saying she’s like the mayor of Mayberry? You’re really selling me.” Fran drank again from Jane Fonda, who was no doubt providing her with sweet succor.

“Now, now. They have both electricity and plumbing,” Bijal said, pulling up a chair, her blouse now sporting a huge wet spot over her right breast.

“And newfangled horseless carriages?”

“Maybe one or two. But no one in her campaign is named Goober.”

Fran took another bite of the magical pasta. “Here’s the real test. Would I hate her?”

“Probably,” Bijal answered absently. “She’s a Republican.”

“I was afraid you’d say that.”

“Easy, don’t blow ricotta cheese out your nose. My old boss, Dr. Hayes, recommended me and got me the interview. But don’t worry. I did some research on Mayor Denton before I even went to meet her. I definitely feel good supporting her candidacy, especially since it’ll be my first real job inside the Beltway.”

“So, when you say you feel good,” Fran said, punctuating the last two words with air quotes, “you mean she’s hot? Is that it? She’s bangable? Because if so, maybe you need to power down that snatch of yours for a little while, Bij.”

Bijal stopped mid-chew to glare, then swallowed what was in her mouth. “My snatch is on screensaver mode already, thanks. But I don’t want to sleep with her, Fran. I want to get her elected. Remember, this is primarily a job, but, luckily, I happen to agree with a lot of her political positions.”

“So she’s for marriage equality?”

“She’s for civil unions, which is close.”

Fran looked as though she smelled something unsavory. “Well, I’m glad we’re all fine with settling for something ‘close’ to equality,” she said sarcastically. “Wasn’t it Dr. King who famously said, ‘As long as it’s close, we’re cool’? No, that sounds wrong, doesn’t it?”

“Point taken,” Bijal said. “But please keep in mind that I said she was a Republican. Being pro–civil unions makes her exceptionally progressive for her party. She considers herself a moderate Libertarian.”

“What about on abolishing ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’?”

“She’s not opposed.”

“Is that the same as supporting it?” Fran asked, squinting.

“I would put her in the ballpark of not sponsoring legislation to repeal it, but she would vote for it if it came to the House.”

“Reproductive rights?”

“She supports Roe v. Wade.”

Fran seemed stunned. “And is she willing to run on these issues as a Republican in a red state?”

“We may need to downplay her more socially progressive views a little during the campaign to make sure she doesn’t alienate the far-right base.”

Fran sat and silently stared at her for a moment. “Were you hypnotized shortly after you arrived?”

“Look, we’ve talked about this before. Conservatism is founded on fiscal responsibility and small government—two things I believe in. I don’t happen to support the Republican Party’s social platform—”

“Perhaps because it includes your subjugation?”

“And neither does Mayor Denton,” Bijal said.

“Uh-huh. And does the mayor know you’re a lesbian?”

Bijal looked at the table in discomfort. “It didn’t come up at the interview, no.”

“But it certainly can’t hurt that you’re a woman and a minority, right?” Fran asked, dunking a piece of garlic bread into her marinara sauce.

Bijal feigned outrage. “Are you implying that I got the job because I’m Indian and not because the mayor knows my old boss? How dare you!”

Fran chuckled. “So who’s the mayor running against? Some old Dixiecrat with his hand in the till?”

“Actually, the incumbent is Congresswoman Colleen O’Bannon.”

Fran choked on Barbarella’s nectar. “ Openly gay Congresswoman Colleen O’Bannon?”

“That’s the one.”

“You’re a disgrace to your people.”

Bijal shook her head slowly. “Which ones? As a triple minority, I have a lot of people who I can shame.”

Fran pushed the manicotti away from her. “I don’t know if I can continue to eat your celebratory food.”

“Why not?” Bijal asked, slightly hurt.

“With fewer than half a dozen openly gay members of Congress, you, a muff-loving homo, have chosen to work for someone running to unseat one of them?”

“Look, O’Bannon being a lesbian doesn’t automatically make her the best candidate. I’m sure she’s made plenty of questionable, corrupt decisions in her career that have nothing to do with her being gay. You’re generalizing.”

“Am I?”

“You absolutely are. Do you vote for every black candidate because you’re African American?”

“Do you really want an answer to that?”

“Are you serious? Why don’t you just vote for all female candidates who share your bra size?”

“Because, as far as I know, there’s no active discrimination against 34Cs.”

“So you have no problem boiling down a candidate to just their race? Their stance on issues doesn’t matter?”

Fran pulled the manicotti back to her and stabbed it, clearly frustrated. “Of course it matters. So does life experience.”

“And if Richard Nixon was black, you’d have voted for him?”

“In Bizarro World, you mean?”

Bijal goaded her impatiently. “Just answer the question.”

Fran looked at her smugly. “It wouldn’t have mattered, because a black Richard Nixon wouldn’t have been the 1968 Republican nominee, would he?”

“Aren’t you always arguing that being equal means having someone judge you on how well you do your job, and nothing else? Congresswoman O’Bannon’s sexual orientation has nothing to do with her ability to create and support effective legislation.”

“So if I understand you correctly, you’re betting that Mayor Denton has better ideas and is more ethical than the oppressed lesbian, so that proves we live in a post-homophobic society?”

“Fran, you need a job where you don’t spend all day with angry militant liberals at that nonprofit.”

“You aren’t kidding. They don’t pay for shit.”

“Hmph. I’d just like this election to bear no resemblance to O’Bannon’s last one.”

Fran swallowed loudly. “Refresh my memory.”

“Buddy Campbell?”

“Oh, shit! He was her opponent?”

“That’s the one,” Bijal replied. Everyone knew exactly who Buddy Campbell was. The Republican incumbent congressman had been doing just fine in the polls until his dirty secret was uncovered less than two weeks before Election Day—the ultimate October surprise. Campbell was a married father of four children and the co-sponsor of the failed Family Values bill, but he was also carrying on a surreptitious sexual relationship with his fifteen-year-old babysitter.

At first, he’d tried to deny it, but when incriminating e-mails, recorded phone calls, and text messages had emerged, it was clear to everyone that his was a lost cause. The Republican National Committee begged Campbell to drop out, even though the election was only days away and they couldn’t possibly get another Republican on the ballot. The party dictum was that having no one in the race was better than having a lying, adulterous, hypocritical pedophile, even if he somehow won. After all, how could they even celebrate that without looking skeevy?

But Campbell was deluded enough to think that his constituents loved him so much, no sex scandal was great enough to stand in the way of his reelection—especially since his Democratic opponent was a self-avowed lesbian with no political experience to speak of.

Sure enough, Campbell was the only one surprised when the ballots were tallied and O’Bannon was elected to Congress. But that shock would seem insignificant when stacked up against what came next for him—divorce and statutory rape charges.

Bijal poured herself a refill of champagne. “So hopefully Mayor Denton has been utilizing a little more…”

“Rectitude?”

Bijal nearly choked. “What about her rectum?”

Fran glared. “Rec-ti-tude,” she overenunciated.

“Oh, right. That.”

“So what else do you know about O’Bannon?”

Bijal wiped her mouth with a paper napkin. “Well, I haven’t had much time to look into her voting record, but she’s only been in one term, so there may not be much there.”

“I suppose you can go the ‘What has your congresswoman done for you?’ route.”

“Precisely.”

“Where’s the mayor’s election office? Is it way out there in East Lower Ballsack, Virginia?”

“Unfortunately, yes. It’s nearly an hour away. Though they did put it near the traffic light.”

Fran snorted. “Well, sure, you want to show off the town’s landmarks. I’m going to hazard a wild guess and say it’s also within a block of a restaurant that has the word ‘waffle’ in the name.”

“Wow, you really know your rural Virginia boondocks. You’re right. It’s across the street from the Waffle Nook, which is just down the street from the book depository and adjacent to the grassy knoll.”

“Sounds picturesque.”

Bijal had a fresh pang of self-doubt. “I just hope I can pull this off, Fran. This could be big.”

“I know, honey. Just try not to sell your soul in the process, okay?”

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