Mean Woman Blues

recreation? Give me what I want, Goddammit.” He pushed her head toward his crotch and, despite her plans for motherhood, she felt herself becoming aroused.

CHAPTER TEN
    The day after, sated with good conversation and good sex, David was in his slate-blue home study, door shut, cigar lit, looking out the window at his wife doing laps in the pool— his gorgeous, young, luscious wife with the unfashionable figure of a latter-day Marilyn Monroe.
    Not the face, though. Monroe had a fuck-me face; Karen had the face of an angel, of a well-brought-up girl from a good family. It was a WASPy face, a high-school-sweetheart, Peggy Sue kind of face. And a sweetheart she most assuredly was. A beautiful, blonde, sweet-tempered, well-connected sweetheart, whom God had caused to fight with her family just so David could get them all back together again.
    It might have seemed amazing luck to anyone else, but, though David would never again be able to work as a minister, there was still enough preacher in him to know how his luck had come about. God had done amazing things for him over the years, and the partnership continued.
    What David had realized, watching TV back in that squalid Gulf Coast motel room, was that he really could be another Ronald Reagan. By putting his many talents to use— and he had some Reagan didn’t— he could go all the way. All it took was that sudden flash of divine inspiration to show him how.
    He was well on the way already. He had the show, which meant access to increasing numbers of followers. He had Karen and her politically influential family. And he had Rosemarie’s money. The problem was, he didn’t have enough of it.
    After his makeover, she’d given him a substantial little grubstake, but most of that was gone. Gone, granted, to good causes, but undeniably gone. Causes like getting a complete new identity in place. If he was going to run for office, things would be checked out. He couldn’t get by with the minimum kit: a professionally forged driver’s license and passport.
    Rosemarie could fabricate— for free— a complete employment record at companies owned by the Owens empire, but there were little things. His story involved lifelong friendship with Rosemarie’s late husband, a tale that required manipulated photos showing the two of them together, cash gifts to people who’d swear the two men were inseparable, even an ex-wife and child who couldn’t be traced to any organization with which Errol Jacomine had ever been associated.
    That kind of thing. There had to be records at universities he’d never even seen, much less graduated from. There were even newspaper stories to explain how his fingerprints were altered— about a burning building from which he’d rescued a four-year-old child, resulting in severe burns on his hands. Coming out of nowhere was both labor- and cash-intensive.
    Not only did the past have to be created, so did the present: His current identity as David Wright required current affluence and not just the appearance of it. He really did have to own a house in University Park and a BMW. He couldn’t just rent, lease, or lie. These things would all be checked. They all had to be perfect. And it was now abundantly obvious that, without them, he’d never have attracted a woman like Karen. (Odd about Karen: Rosemarie hadn’t balked at all, had seemed to find it a grand joke, in fact, his marrying into the McLean family.)
    However, having found another man herself, she could hardly complain. But she hadn’t exactly remarried. Knowing Rosemarie, you could bet she wouldn’t compromise so much as a penny of her considerable and hard-won fortune (and David was in a position to know exactly
how
hard-won it was). But getting the million or so he needed might require a little maneuvering, and he wasn’t sure how to go about it.
    Because right now, he needed an army. He watched Karen towel off and disappear inside.
    All of a sudden he was furious. He realized that watching her was the only thing keeping him calm, and once more he stopped to thank God for her, as he did a dozen times a day. But with his view of her gone, his thoughts turned once more to his immediate needs: 1. To eliminate the Devil-Woman and 2. To raise an army.
    Dammit, why couldn’t he have a goddamn army? He’d had one before, and, true, Bettina still seemed to have a few people to call on, but he couldn’t have any connection with them. Ever. Even Bettina couldn’t know about his