Chapter 34 Season 20, Episode 8 “… To Keep Me from You! （Part Two）”
“… To Keep Me from You! (Part Two)”
Get Luke’s lawyer on the phone, or so help me, Troy, I will walk off this show and never come back!” Imogen barked.
“And stop filming right the fuck now,” PB added over her shoulder. Barnes had instantly tried to approach me, but PB had blocked him. I was too numb to realize how protective PB had been until months later while watching the episode. I never gave him the credit he deserved for being on my side.
Amid the cacophony, I heard a livid Tati griping to Fortune (“Now they are both here? Why did the rest of us even show up?”).
Greta meanwhile shadowed Barnes, the flying monkey home to roost, her blond hair obscuring his face from me.
Was he giddy inside, to see the tidal wave he’d set in motion?
For once, I wished Balthazar was present so at least someone would recite Barnes’ litany of crimes at top volume for the cameras, because I certainly couldn’t.
The last thing I would do was gift wrap footage of me disintegrating into mania for his divorce attorney while Barnes played the cool customer.
All that grounded me was Erika’s hand in mine.
She’d discreetly evacuated me to the empty chairs in video village as soon as he’d appeared.
She was pointedly avoiding the melee, eyes boring like lasers into the columns of the Custom House.
I couldn’t bring myself to ask how she felt to be plunged into the orbit of the monster she’d every right to despise, all because of me, the carcass who’d drawn this scavenger to us.
Yet somehow she still refused to abandon me, which was more than I could say for Shawn.
He stood awkwardly on the periphery with Melange, his face out to the river.
Why was he not holding my hand? When Barnes arrived, Shawn had staggered away like I was a leper.
I wondered if he was worried his face might telegraph something to Barnes or the cameras without my approval.
Or maybe he finally understood I only brought trouble.
My husband had been there five minutes, and he’d already ruined everything I’d spent weeks building. Rebuilding. And now I found myself whispering, “I quit.”
Zara crouched beside me. “What was that?”
“He didn’t say anything,” Erika quickly interjected, shooting me a warning look.
“Luke, I have Jenny on the line. She’s conferencing in your attorney.” Zara indicated for me to follow, but Erika wouldn’t release my hand yet.
“No sudden decisions,” she said, her voice drained of its usual brightness. “Please.”
I swallowed, managing to nod, and accompanied Zara to an alley a block away, where she grimly handed me her phone. “Take as long as you need.”
But before I spoke to Jenny, I had to know. “When was this decided?”
“The network closed his deal forty-eight hours ago.”
“But he’s a senator,” I said, still dazed. “How can he be on a reality show?”
“Your sister will explain.”
“Was this what upset you last night? That Troy was forcing Camdon out to get Barnes on the show? Zara, you can’t be okay with this!”
“Do I look like I’m okay with it?!” she snapped. “A tape was left anonymously in the production office with audio of Camdon and Royce arranging a bribery ring.”
The tape recorder. My jaw dropped, immediately suspecting PB had orchestrated this whole spectacle. “Who were they arranging it with?”
“It was just the two of them. My best guess is a crew member caught it and didn’t want any blowback.
” Of course PB wouldn’t implicate himself on the recording.
But why target Camdon now? How could he have known it would bring in Barnes?
“Royce was already gone, but right when I was about to pull Camdon, the network demanded Barnes join. So Troy gave Camdon a choice: return in the future or get banned for life. Thus, the beer.”
“Wait—the network called? Saying Barnes was what? Available for a vacation?!”
“Talk to your sister,” she said wearily, positioning herself between me and the set.
Trembling, I brought the phone to my ear. “Jen?”
“Luke?! Thank God, we’ve been trying to reach you for days!”
“We were remote, no cell service.” Which now seemed far too convenient…
“Is he there?”
“Yeah.”
“That motherfucker,” Jenny hissed. “Evelyn, is there any way this can be considered fraud on the network’s part? Or entrapment?”
Evelyn rapidly began reading my contract aloud, noting I had no casting approvals, but I interrupted. “Stop! How is a sitting US senator here in a contestant’s uniform?”
Jenny was quiet for a second. “You haven’t seen any news?”
“You know we’re not allowed.”
“Luke, he resigned from the Senate four days ago. He’s out.”
“Christ, are there more guys?” Underage Georgetown freshmen and Eastern European escorts paraded through my brain as I imagined what could be so awful that he’d finally resign.
“Not technically,” Evelyn began. “The whole premise Barnes maintained to stay in office was that none of the men he slept with were working for him concurrently, thus no quid pro quo and no misuse of funds. He was adamant no taxpayer money financed anything related to his affairs. An oversight committee’s been auditing his office since the scandal broke, and they finally found something.
He neglected to use his personal credit card for a Tampa hotel room at the RNC in 2012—”
“No, I was with him at the RNC.”
“His other hotel room,” Evelyn said hesitantly, but I should have expected it.
He’d apparently stolen to the other room between meetings while I juggled the kids.
I remember him “needing quiet” to practice his speech, the one defending each state’s individual right to determine the definition of marriage.
It had been ages since he’d consulted me on speeches, and I was too consumed with Wallace starting to walk to disapprove beyond a grunt while he opined about paying the piper, the tax of our lives due once again, the cries of hypocrite inevitable.
And the storm… Hurricane Isaac delaying everything by a day. As the winds kicked up, we’d lain in bed, the kids asleep between us, and he’d said with a tired smile, “Even better than our first hurricane.” Then he’d leaned over our children to kiss me softly on the lips.
But mine weren’t the only lips he’d kissed, according to the corroborated statements of the three men he’d recruited for group sex in the room six floors below our own.
“One receipt and down came Humpty Dumpty,” Evelyn concluded. “He resigned after it became public this past weekend.”
“This weekend?! The kids were with him when this broke?” I asked, rage born anew.
“His shithead lawyer said the kids had to stay with Barnes until the usual drop-off time, unless I wanted to go to court to alter the temporary custody agreement,” Jenny answered, her tone savage now.
“The kids came home sobbing. I couldn’t get a word out of them before Evelyn was calling with a message from the shithead that Barnes had left the country for a ‘confidential opportunity’ and ceded full care of the kids to me until his return in late June. Pretty obvious where he’d gone.”
He’d left them. He’d abandoned our children, both their parents gone now. I could have slaughtered him. “How are the kids? Did he tell them where he was going?”
Jenny might as well have vomited the response her disgust was so thick. “He told them he was bringing you home.”
I should have quit the second I hung up with Jenny. I should have run, middle fingers in the air, and caught the first plane to DC before the cameras captured even one more frame.
Which is why it was a stroke of genius for Ecklund to reveal no one was going home, given Camdon’s exit and the addition of Barnes.
Shawn and Melange would continue with us to New Zealand, a reprieve Troy obviously devised to trap me.
Moreover, PB was yet again proven correct.
As the crew filmed us in tight close-ups, Ecklund confirmed it was indeed now an individual game, and I’d never pretend single-handedly winning $5 million wouldn’t be life-changing, no matter how livid I was about the uninvited guest I’d endure in the interim.
Troy had shrewdly vanished, Keyser Soze already off to New Zealand, by the time Zara and I returned to the imbroglio.
But I wasn’t quitting. I was too furious.
Just the sight of Erika’s expectant face as I stormed back was enough to guarantee I’d never let Barnes chase me off.
This was my show, my people, my world. And I’d evict him from it the first chance I got.
As Zara herded us toward vans for the airport, I finally corralled Shawn, who still appeared dumbstruck.
“Don’t leave me like that again,” I said, harsher than I intended.
“We can’t give him an inch, do you understand?
Pretend he’s not here.” Obviously this was laughable, but Shawn could probably tell this was the worst moment to disagree with me.
In an unprecedented move—no doubt concocted by Troy—the cameras lingered at the airport, poised to catch even the slightest interaction between me and Barnes.
Shawn and I poked at appetizers with Erika in the first-class lounge, silently rotating dumplings through soy sauce while Imogen and Melange guarded the three of us like stone-faced assassins.
Barnes sat across the room, his back to me.
Greta had him to herself, no doubt thoroughly briefing him on me and Shawn.
As we made to depart, the sound guy finally took our mics, allowing me to corner PB unrecorded in the bathroom.
“So, how’d you keep yourself off the bribery tape before slipping it to Troy?”
His eyebrows rose. “I didn’t give Troy the tape… Who said he has it?”
“You expect me to believe that? It’s how they engineered Camdon’s exit.”
“Luke, you know I lost the tape recorder. Maybe Troy found it?”
“Wow, convenient.”