The Goode Governor Read online

  “At least they’ve stopped calling him the First Dude,” Josephine offered from her side of the ajar bathroom door.

  George peeled off her sweaty clothes and threw them in the hamper as the shower’s steam filled the expansive white marble bathroom. “Yeah well, they still call him the First Lady in some places,” she called out in response. “I saw that blog post suggesting he should try IVF because he probably has more estrogen than I do.”

  The pundit’s suggestion that Nathan take on the attributes of a seahorse would have been laughable if it hadn’t set off an avalanche of discussion about their relationship and George’s fertility. The news cycle had been packed with opinions on how unlikely it would be for a woman in her forties to conceive. After they had tired of trying to figure out if George had early onset menopause by dissecting a decade’s worth of video clips and photographs, the conversation turned to the same place it always did: the allegation that George was a lesbian and had only gotten married to fulfill her political aspirations. Anonymous sources would say that they’d known about her dating women in college and maybe even before that. George would never deny it, just simply refused to answer the question, choosing instead to pivot to actual issues affecting the State. Her private life was no one’s concern but her own. The truth hurts, as they say.

  “People are assholes. I know you’re not looking forward to the re-election cycle, but you’re going to do great. This time we at least know what to expect. I won’t let it get so ugly,” Josephine called through the door. “I’ll meet you downstairs in twenty,” she added before hurrying off to finish too many things in too little time.

  George let the hot water run over her muscles, still trembling from the morning’s exertion. Her tanned skin stood in noticeable contrast to the white marble tile in the shower. She often wondered about all the men who’d stood there before her in the mansion’s nearly seventy-year history. No matter what they were scrutinized for, she was sure it was never as personal and insidious as all the insults that had been levied on her. As soon as she put in her official re-election bid later that morning, the reporters would start sniffing around again. It would mean a full-scale lock down on any personal matters. She made a mental note to increase security at her father’s house and make sure that all non-disclosure agreements were up-to-date and airtight.

  It’s never easy being first, she repeated the mantra to herself until her heart stopped racing. She knew she was a dangerous a thing. A woman so unwilling to settle for a backseat to power that she would trade anything for it, including frivolous desires like human companionship.

  * * *

  “We’re ready for the governor,” a voice announced from the little radio in Josephine’s hand. Her honey-brown eyes shot up to George, who was busy painting her full lips a conservative, dark red. The lipstick complimented the form-fitting, white, sheath dress under the black robes.

  After speaking confirmation into the handset, Josephine helped George arrange the purple velvet hood hanging across her neck and down her back. It completed the full academic regalia expected of a person giving a collegiate commence address.

  “Reminds me of when we graduated from law school,” Josephine said with a chuckle as she pulled on the puffy black and purple sleeves. “So much pomp and circumstance.”

  “At least I don’t have to wear the ridiculous hat this time,” George replied as she ran her fingers through her dark, shoulder-length hair. “Do you remember how hungover we were the first time we stood with the graduates of Goode College?”

  “Nothing like intense nausea when you’re trying not to trip over your gown,” she joked.

  “Maybe we should change up the speech,” George said abruptly as she spun away from the mirror, her matte black stilettos clicking against the tile floor. “It’s too personal. If the opposition twists it and makes it seem like I’m exaggerating or using —”

  “Don’t worry.” Josephine didn’t let her descend any further down the doubt spiral. “It’s a good message. One both sides can get behind. It’s a true story of the great American spirit,” she said with open palms like low-key jazz hands. “Look,” she said more seriously when George wasn’t convinced, “the focus groups and polls give us the same data. People like when you appear strong, in control, but human and accessible.”

  George rolled her eyes. “So right up to the line of boss bitch with just enough Mary Poppins to keep me palatable.”

  “You got it. Let’s roll,” she said with an exaggerated smile as she pulled the door open.

  The silence they’d enjoyed evaporated into a whirlwind of staticky radios and half a dozen chattering state police officers waiting to escort George to the auditorium.

  In the cramped corridor cleared for security, the sounds of footfalls and constant relaying of their ETA bounced off the nearly two-hundred-year-old walls. The rushed trip down the empty hall was not at all reminiscent of the four years she’d spent learning, laughing, and coming into her own under the wings of smart, strong mentors.

  As George walked out of the main building and down the walkway, her academic regalia swirled around her as if she were floating. Far from feeling like some kind of graceful angel, George gave Josephine a glance that meant we need to walk faster before this 100% humidity annihilates my hair. Nothing was less magical than Florida in the summer.

  Moments later, the air conditioning from the re-christened Roxcy Bolton Hall eased the misery exacerbated by the unnatural fibers trapping George’s body heat and weaponizing it against her. The oldest building on campus was a small-scale replica of a gothic cathedral, complete with vaulted ceilings and arched windows.

  George had always loved that building. Its history flowed through the stone and wood like the echo of a heartfelt song. She always pictured class after growing class of women who dared to educate themselves and push for more. It was a place where they gathered for generations before they’d even won the right to vote. Her heart soared as she marveled at the grand hall just as she had the first day of freshman year at the all-female college. It was an imposing look at the past and a good omen for the future.

  The dean of students announced her as she approached the auditorium stage. “It is my honor to welcome our distinguished alumna and genuine Goode Girl, the forty-sixth, but first female, governor of our great state, the Honorable Georgia Fernandez.”

  George waved as she crossed the stage, meeting with five hundred raucous cheers and thunderous claps. After so many years in politics, she still hadn’t grown accustomed to the fanfare. The sonic boom of applause caused every fiber in her body to buzz with energy.

  From a hidden place in her enormous sleeve, George pulled out the speech she and Josephine had been working on for weeks. After the requisite acknowledgements and expressions of gratitude, she started the speech she hoped would be inspiring and not ammunition for her opponents.

  “I know that commencement speeches are supposed to be about the future. My job is to get up here and give you the keys for success, happiness, and personal fulfillment. I’ll be honest with you, if I had those kinds of answers I’d be the next Oprah rather than a humble civil servant,” she said, eliciting a laugh from the audience.

  “So, instead, I’ll share the one thing you’ll need no matter where you are or what you do after you toss those caps into the air and embark on your own paths. Resilience.” She paused to let the word sink in. “Without it, when you first stumble on your way toward your goal, and believe me you will stumble,” she added to more laughter, “you will be unable to get back up. And getting up is the only thing that matters.”

  George’s stomach dropped as she moved down her prepared remarks and hoped Josephine had come up with the right tac. Wrestling the hot spotlights in her eyes, she found the journalists and self-styled news bloggers littered around the hall, their cameras poised and ready to capture any misstep. Improvisation was too risky. She glanced down at her watch, its leather band worn by generations of use.

  “To
tell you how I learned about resilience, I have to start nine years before I was born.” George straightened her back and steeled herself. “In 1965 my parents left their home in the dead of night under a volley of bullets and a torrent of insults and threats. You see, my father had made the mistake of petitioning the Cuban government for permission to leave the country. After years of waiting, the response was delivered by a group of armed men dressed in the olive-green uniforms of the revolutionary guard.”

  George swallowed hard. She’d heard the stories her entire life, but she’d never been able to play the mental movie without imagining the terror and heartbreak. “My parents had worked themselves to the bone to go from poor farm kids to upper middle-class business owners in Havana. Overnight, everything they’d worked for was taken from them. Just like that, they were told they could leave, but there’s always a catch, isn’t there? They could take nothing with them. Nothing. Not a single suitcase. Not a photo. Nothing,” she repeated, hoping the audience would imagine turning their backs on every earthly possession in favor of hope for a better future in an unknown land. She skipped telling them that the watch she wore was the only heirloom left in her family. It was too close to her heart.

  “Crammed together shoulder-to-shoulder on an old shrimping boat, my parents and eighty others held their heads up high and accepted President Johnson’s offer of political asylum. They endured rough seas, sickness, and complete uncertainty. And when they arrived in South Florida without a penny, without friends or family, without a lick of English, they had two choices,” she paused, not for dramatic effect, but so her heart might stop hammering against her chest.

  George held up one finger. “They could give up. Let the tide wash them away,” she said before holding up a second finger, “or they could dust themselves off and start again. The day they arrived, they grouped together with a few other families who had taken the same midnight boat ride from hell. They accepted the jobs at the first places that didn’t shoo them away. My father crossed a picket line without knowing what it was to take a job transferring images onto beach towels. My mother found work inhaling toxins in a factory assembling parts for airplanes. By the end of the week, the families had enough money to rent a very humble, one-room apartment. The couples traded clothes to make it appear like they had more than the single outfit they’d left home with, and they alternated use of the bedroom for some semblance of normalcy.”

  George smiled with her chin in the air. This was her favorite part. The one she made her parents tell her over and over again as a kid. “A month later, they were taking English classes at night. Three months after that, the families had enough to move into their own apartments. Within two years of stepping on this foreign land, my parents bought a modest little fixer-upper of a house that my dad spent a decade fixing, much to my mom’s chagrin.”

  The audience laughed when she channeled her mom’s irritated continence.

  “And a few years after that, they welcomed their first and only child. My dad used to say it was the proudest day of their lives, just a head of the day they took the oath of citizenship. And my parents, so grateful to this country for rewarding their resilience, named her Georgia Washington Fernandez. George for short, of course. Now, you can imagine that I learned a little bit about resilience walking into elementary school with a name like that,” she said with a knowing chuckle.

  “I remember the lesson my parents taught me every day. They could have chosen to give in when it got too hard or unfair. They could have simply decided not to get up after being knocked down time and again, but they didn’t. Their lesson is the most valuable thing I can give you. As women with aspirations, you will meet a world that wants to knock you back to your place. You will face situations where you will be treated unfairly. In those moments, when your mettle is tested, I advise you to stand tall and keep going. Focus on your goal and do not let anything shake your resolve. If you want something badly enough, be willing to sacrifice anything for it. Be fierce. Be fearless. Be unwavering in your determination. Goode Girls, I tell you this: Get up, dream big, and achieve bigger,” she boomed into the microphone. Her voice echoed through the hall, earning her a standing ovation.

  George glanced to the side of the stage where Jo was waiting with a broad smile and a thumbs up. She was exhilarated as she stepped down from the podium and congratulated the graduates.

  Chapter Two

  George was still riding high on adrenaline when she climbed into the back of the large, black SUV with Josephine right behind her. “That went well, right?” she asked as she trained the backseat air vents on her sweaty body. Even with the borrowed regalia off, the trapped heat radiated from her body like a thermal blanket. “The kids seemed into it,” she continued, replaying the events in her mind.

  “I don’t want to exaggerate, but I counted more than a dozen sniffles. Good call on skipping the part about the watch. It could have come off as pulling on heart strings a little too hard. No need to risk being hokey,” Josephine decided with a single nod of approval. “Now let’s see what the vultures thought,” she said as she retrieved her tablet from her shoulder bag.

  George basked in the arctic blast and hiked up her skirt to indulge in the glorious air conditioning. As she waited for the verdict, she allowed herself to relax. She’d gone over the speech a thousand times. There was no way she could see for her opponents to twist it into something negative, but she’d been wrong before.

  When she noticed Josephine’s silence, her cautious optimism turned to dread. The muscles in her back tensed and she clenched her jaw out of habit. The reviews weren’t glowing or Josephine would have read them to her already. Oh God, what are they saying?

  George willed herself to open her eyes. “How bad is it? Was the robe tucked into my underwear?” she asked, only half joking.

  Josephine’s face, illuminated by the light from her screen, was severe. Her knit together eyebrows cut deep lines into her otherwise smooth, dark skin.

  Her words were a husky whisper. “How bad could it possibly be?” The thumping in her chest made it difficult to breathe or speak naturally. She couldn’t wait a moment longer. Whatever the hell Josephine was looking at, she needed to see for herself how bad the problem was so she could start trying to figure out how to fix it.

  “Wait,” Josephine tried to snatch the tablet back, but it was too late. George’s wide eyes were scanning the front page of an online gossip rag.

  “For the love of . . .” George’s words trailed off as she tried to make sense of the image. Nathan, a dark cap pulled low over his face and sunglasses obscuring his eyes, stepping out of a building. Above him, and the young blonde at his side, was a bright neon sign. There was no doubt they’d been caught leaving Feral Strip Club. The headline, First Dude Finds Feral Femme, was splattered across the top of the image.

  George perused the article for the scant details of the moment captured a few weeks prior. The image said everything that needed saying and had obviously been saved to coincide with her announcement. She handed back the tablet and relaxed into the backrest, her eyes out the window and her thoughts a thousand miles away.

  When the numbness abated, she cleared her throat and turned her attention to Josephine. “Can we deny it’s him?” she asked, throwing out the first possibility that materialized in her mind.

  Josephine shook her head. “Apparently he was in a state issued vehicle,” she said, her dire expression making it clear that she wished it wasn’t true.

  George shut her eyes tightly for a moment. This had the makings of a nightmare. “How could he be so sloppy? Did you tell him we were announcing re-election today?” she asked rhetorically. They’d always enjoyed a clear understanding. Years of close friendship had served as the bedrock of a long-term arrangement. Nathan had always acted with discretion. She couldn’t think of a worse time for such a costly lapse in judgment. “I should have married you instead when an unwed woman under thirty polled so badly in a mayoral race,” she added, pinching t
he bridge of her nose to ease the throb in her head. If they’d been legally allowed to marry then, she would have seriously considered proposing to the woman she’d been dating at the time. Marriage equality wasn’t even conceivable at a time when their identity kept them from adopting.

  “Oh yeah,” Josephine chuckled. “That would’ve gone over like a lead balloon. If it was shocking that you were a single woman fifteen years ago, imagine if you’d married a black woman,” she snorted, “and an agnostic no less.”

  The laughter eased some of the strain pulling at the edges of George’s composure. “Well, at least you’d know better than to prance around town with a leggy blond.”

  She shrugged. “Who knows if an Alexander Skarsgård type tempted me,” she added, her eyes drifting off as if reliving a memory.

  George smirked as she crossed one leg over the other.

  “Alright, enough of that,” Josephine waved her hand as if clearing a heavy curtain of perfume. “Listen, we have a long time before the first ballot is cast,” she said with certainty in her eyes. “All we have to do is get out in front of this thing. Put out our narrative before anyone else gets the chance.”

  “Oh sure,” she scoffed. “Let’s just say he was picking up his cousin from her first day of work.” There was no innocent explanation to be constructed out of such a mess. It would have been bad enough if Nathan had been spotted leaving a hotel, but at least those had restaurants. There was only one reason to be in a gentleman’s club.