Debate
By Hugh Lessig
I'm covering a debate between two candidates for senator, right? Sen. Festus McDonald versus John B. Tate, the challenger. The names don't really matter, but for the record, that's who they are.
They're going at it blood-and-knuckles in the TV studio. We're in the next room, partly because the studio is so small, and partly because no one trusts newspaper reporters to be anywhere near live TV. At least that's my theory.
So we're listening, right? They're going around on abortion, Social Security, prescription drugs, and whatever. After every exchange, the McDonald people and the Tate people sweep past us with position papers and handouts, wanting to spin us one way or the other.
I hate spinners -- them and their Tic-Tac breath and their plastic hair. They're always whispering in your ear that the other guy is Benedict Arnold in a Bill Blass suit. (Did you just hear that? He wants to overturn Roe v Wade. Here, have a fact sheet.) 
And I keep noticing her.
One of the spinners looks like Mary, a girl I wanted to marry back in college. Back in our sophomore year -- this was eight, nine years ago -- Mary almost beat the bejeezus out of me by putting three Coke cans in a pair of panty hose and using it as a swinging club. I had made fun of her Che Guevera poster in front of people in the student union, and she hunted me down. She hit me across the face until I bled, until one of the Coke cans burst open, until I finally pinned her down and made her stop. Then she started licking my face. Weeks later, after we moved in together, I asked if she meant to lick the Coke or the blood, and she said "both were kinda sticky." I laughed, but she wasn't joking.
I invested in Mary big-time. We moved out on each other. We moved in on each other. We did this dance several times, and I always led. After college, Mary joined an eco-terrorist group and went off to save the rain forest. The day she left, she put a note on our refrigerator: Sorry. You will never control me.
I probably think about her every day. I see her face all the time. So it doesn't surprise me this is happening in a roomful of decent-looking spinner-women with business suits and navy blue pumps and serious CNN makeup.
The Mary look-alike walks over and asks: "Did you get this press release?"
It is Mary. God damn.
I go into brain lock. Nothing comes to mind except those brown eyes and those high cheekbones and the way her face changes when she smiles, which is happening right now.
Mary reaches out to caress my cheek, then quickly walks away. She leaves me with the smell of gasoline on her hands. 
The bomb goes off moments later.

The next day, I'm in the newsroom looking at the other papers. Everyone has pretty much the same thing: A small pipe bomb was planted in McDonald's lectern. McDonald is critical but stable. Both campaigns are temporarily suspended. No one has claimed responsibility. The cops are making noises that translate into "We got beat. This came from fucking nowhere."
My editor, Mr. Farnsworth, keeps circling my desk, asking for a follow-up. He's heard rumblings that it was someone who recently volunteered for one of the campaigns. Those people get hired without security checks, he says. They had access to the studio, he says. 
I tell him I have no theories and he gives me a look. I always have theories.
Later in the morning, a bicycle courier delivers a package for me. It is an old Book of the Month Club box, heavily wrapped with duct tape. The box is big enough to hold four or five paperbacks. It has no return address.
People see me sign for the package and one of the cop reporters asks what I've got. "I'd call the bomb squad," he says. A few people hear "bomb," and they come strolling over. The next thing I know, I'm standing in front of a small crowd, pulling off duct tape, smiling and clamping down hard on my back teeth.
Pulling slowly. Dead man pulling.
Mr. Farnsworth sees the scrum and ambles out of his office on his drumstick legs.
As the last piece of tape comes off, the top of the box flies open. A spring-loaded snake flies out and lands on the floor, and everyone is laughing and clapping me on the back. I have pissed myself -- just slightly, but enough to be official, enough that I'll have to go home and get new underwear. I'm hoping to hell it doesn't show through my pants. Inside the box is a small slip of paper with two words in familiar handwriting:
BEERS TONIGHT?
Mr. Farnsworth takes the piece of paper from my hand. He looks at the paper, then he looks at me.
"Go home and change your pants before you go out," he says.

Back in college, when Mary said "Beers tonight?" it always meant Mulcahey's at 9 o'clock. When I arrive, I see Mary in a back booth -- or a woman who looks like Mary. She has lost the business suit in favor of a flannel shirt and jeans. The Hillary Clinton wig is gone, and she sports a buzz cut, apparently performed by a blind person on dope. The cuts zig and zag across the top of her head in no apparent pattern. As I get closer, she turns and gives me a profile. The letter "A" stands out on the side of her head -- an A made from three, reddish-blonde slashes. It is the symbol for anarchy.
She has a dark beer that is two-thirds full and a shot glass filled with something. She drops the shot glass into the beer and watches it foam. She drinks the mixture in a single gulp. The empty shot glass clinks in the empty mug.
"The beer was Guinness," she says. "The shot was Jameson's topped off with Bailey's. The drink is called an Irish Car Bomb. Do you still drink?"
It is her way of insulting me. She wags her tongue inside the shot glass, and I watch her tongue. She watches me watching her tongue, and memories pass between us. At least that's what I'm hoping.
"Are we here to talk?" I say finally.
"Dependths."
"What are we here to talk about?"
She puts down the glass and gives me her first honest look. "It would be nice if I could get a mention in the paper from an old friend."
An old friend? Another insult. "That's what this is about? You want me to name you as a suspect in a bombing?" I look around, lower my voice. "Mary, if you want your picture in the paper, find a rutabaga shaped like Richard Nixon and bring it to the newsroom."
She leans back in the booth and laughs uproariously. Distended neck cords disappear into the folds of her shirt. She has lost too much weight in the years she has been away. The padded folds of her business suit had obscured this. 
"It wasn't that funny," I say.
"Oh Picasso, but it is." 
She smiles sadly, then lapses into a deep-bass parody of a TV anchor's voice. "Sources could not determine a link between the bombing and Senator McDonald, a two-term conservative Republican from White Beach."
"That was in my story. I'm happy you remembered it."
"It was tripe.You should have put me in your story. Mysterious woman. Gasoline on her hands. You smelled the gasoline. I could tell." 
I want to ask about her days in California. I always imagined her standing in the way of bulldozers that were about to plow into a rain forest, or maybe living in a tree house and tossing Molotov cocktails down upon the heads of lumberjacks. Suddenly, it comes to me.
"Senator McDonald receives big campaign contributions from developers. He gets them all the time."
She touches her nose. Bingo.
"Developers who build condos on the beach, who would like to develop the entire beach. McDonald never met a bulldozer he didn't like."
"Very good."
"So this is about . . . saving the beach for future generations of surfers?"
She smiles but her eyes flash a bit of the old anger. "You are so cute. Yes, I'm sure that's what you think I did."
"What am I supposed to think? You tried to blow up a senator."
Mary takes my hand and interlocks fingers, squeezing hard. We used to hold hands across the table this way, always pushing against each other, white knuckles locked and loaded, pushing for something, pushing against something. We didn't know what.
"Poor Pico," she says, as if reading my mind. "You could-a been a contend-a."
I reach out and trace the outline of the A on her head -- A for Anarchy, A for effort.
"I can still be a contender."
"Really?" Her eyebrows arch.
"Sure."
A calm, hard edge settles around Mary's eyes and mouth. She reaches into her bag and pulls out something wrapped in white tissue paper. She slides it across the table and leaves it in front of me. Then she gets up and walks out of the bar. Five minutes later she's still gone, and I pick up what she left me.
It is hard and cylindrical, roughly six inches long, and for reasons I don't quite understand, I put it under my coat and take it home.

The bomb is a piece of metal pipe -- I presume lead, but I honestly don't know -- with caps screwed onto either end. A thick, black fuse protrudes from one end. It looks like shoelaces intertwined and soaked in something.
It demands attention, this bomb. I can't put it somewhere and ignore it -- like in the junk drawer with the batteries and the old maps. I wrap it in small towel and put it on the coffee table. I look at it for a while, as if it might start talking to me. 
The next morning, I decide to take the bomb to work, thinking it's safer with me than being home alone. I get my keys, my wallet, my cogs and my lighter. I head out the door with the bomb nestled in the inside pocket of my sport jacket, safe and warm. Thirty minutes later, as I walk into the newsroom, I spot Mr. Farnsworth sitting on my desk. He is resting one plump ass cheek next to my computer.
"Smith, come talk to me." 
My lighter is in my pants pocket. My bomb is in my coat pocket. I somehow just realized the significance of this.
Mr. Farnsworth walks into his office and closes the door behind me. I settle into the interrogation chair. He looks over his nameplate -- Aesop Farnsworth, Ed-in-C -- and swirls the dregs of a 20-ounce coffee.
"That package from yesterday."
He'll ask questions like this. You're just expected to finish his sentence.
"It was an old college friend playing a joke."
"Tell me the truth, Smith or don't tell me."
"Then I won't tell you, Mr. Farnsworth."
We say nothing more. I have earned points for uncomfortable occasions such as this. I guess you do anywhere, if you work hard enough, if you prove your worth. But as I leave, he gives me a look that suggests points are in limited supply, and I have just cashed in a wad.
When I get to my desk, phone mail is flashing.
"Hey Sluggo, I'm at the phone booth across the street. You just got into work. What's that sitting on your desk? Morroco Mole? Meet me at the diner for some breakfast."
I tell Mr. Farnsworth I'm heading to the police station, and he looks at me like a lost son. Then I walk to the Fourth Avenue Diner, our other college haunt. It is a 24-hour place that was a hospital for Confederate soldiers during the Civil War. Today it serves fried apple omelets and a healthy dose of Skynard on the juke box. Mary is sitting at one of the middle tables, sipping a Bloody Mary.
I sit down and say: "When I rub your head, it is not a secret code for 'please give me a bomb.' "
Mary smiles. "What did you do with it?'
I pat my jacket.
Her eyes wobble for just a moment. "It's here? Well, that's interesting. I thought maybe you'd write about it."
"Or maybe give it to the cops? Or maybe set it off under a bulldozer? I get it. This was a test, this was only a test. Had this been an actual terrorist emergency . . ." I laugh at my own joke. I am feeling a little weird. 
Mary pushes up from her seat. "Let's talk elsewhere."
"What about breakfast?"
"We've already eaten."
"We?"
We are two other men. We are the men I didn't notice sitting at separate booths around us. After a few awkward glances, we get up and walk out the door like one happy family.
The two men walk ahead of Mary and I, and there seems to be an implicit understanding not to talk. I assess both of them: Cat Man, who slinks and looks like an evil Tiger Woods, and Tall and Droopy, a neo-beatnik sloucher who is probably six-two and less than 160 pounds. Cat Man takes us into a residential neighborhood with row homes, into someone's backyard, up an outside flight of stairs and into a second-floor apartment.
The door opens to a small kitchen. An empty can of Spaghetti-o's sits in the sink, and the place smells of French fries and dope. We adjourn to the living room -- the two men and Mary take chairs, and I decide to stand. 
"You don't know us," Cat Man says. "And we don't know you."
"Well, allow me to introduce myself . . . "
Tall and Droopy gently pulls out a black revolver and lays it on his leg. Cat Man looks at the revolver, looks at me, then continues. "Like I said, we don't know you. Our organization is in its embryonic stage of development . . . "
"One tip? Never use a five-dollar word when a 25-cent word will do."
" . . . and we lack a certain presence. What you witnessed in the television studio -- well, we were universally displeased with how the news was disseminated. The suppositions. The prejudgments."
"Prejudgments? Like what? Like this was done by a bunch of no-account terrorists? Where would someone get that idea? If it's publicity you want, why didn't you claim responsibility? Not that I'm giving you advice."
Cat Man and I lock gazes. His eyes contain a hint of welcome, like he wants to lick the blood off my face. Tall and Droopy casually turns the gun over in his hand. Mary digs into her pocket and pops a piece of candy into her mouth. She is enjoying this.
"Do you want to give us advice?" Cat Man asks. "You know the media from the inside. We need a covert spokesman. You could be . . . valuable to us. Or you could die."
Tall and Droopy cocks the gun, points it at me and pulls the trigger. It clicks empty. Mary giggles. I instinctively look down to my crotch to see if I've wet myself, but then I remember the bomb. The bomb gives strength.
"I can't work for you," I say. "We wouldn't like it."
Cat Man looks at Mary and says "We?"
I reach into my breast pocket. I pull out the bomb and find my lighter with my left hand. I cock the lighter and fire it up. The fuse and the lighter are a few inches apart. Cat Man stands up in a very businesslike manner.
"Mary," he says, "explain this."
She looks at Cat Man like she wants to be in love with him. I manage to hold the bomb and the lighter with the fingers of one hand. I grab Mary by the arm and pull her into the kitchen. Her fingernails dig into my arm, quietly and effectively.
I put the bomb in the can of Spaghetti-Os and light the fuse. I'm thinking, rather calmly, This could be a three-second fuse. Mary sees this and bolts out the door, clomping heavily down the steps. Tall and Droopy peeks into the kitchen and says "Uh, oh, Spaghetti-Os," and begins to laugh in a crazy, high-pitched voice.
But then he backs off, too. Everyone is backing off, and it feels good.
The bomb explodes as I am running down the steps. I always expect explosions to be these big, slow-motion deals, like in the movies. But it has a short, loud bark that rattles the kitchen window and rings in my ears as I run into the alley. 
Mary is in the alley, hugging herself, looking down at the ground, shaking her head, laughing or crying, I'm not quite sure. As I come up, she slaps me hard across the face. I take both her hands, interlocking fingers the way we used to, always pushing.
"Do you think I killed them?"
"No. They wouldn't stand there and watch it."
"You needed to leave them anyway."
"Leave them?" She appraises me up and down. "For what?"
"For me. For me, Crazy Mary." 
She tries to pull free, but I hold tight. Mary has tiny hands with skinny fingers. When I hear the bone crack -- I think it's her ring finger -- it seems no worse than if I had snapped a chicken bone. Her face turns white, and then she kisses me with sticky-sweet lips. 
I'm thinking this is all wrong.