Page 39 of The Holiday

"I see." Peter Bond looked tired. The man was in his early eighties at this point, and he'd been through it. (As I promised him, this isn't a book about him, but I think it worth mentioning that our former VP's political career was severely stunted by his divorce from Sunday, and by the ensuing media circus surrounding his sexual preferences. And I'm not proud of that--for being a part of a system that churns out information about people's most private selves, endeavoring to entertain the masses with salacious tidbits that will be forgotten by us almost immediately, but will scar the subjects permanently. Another argument might be that Peter brought some of the storm on himself by living a double life and by making dastardly decisions in his marriage, but...again, this is not about Peter. Not directly, anyway.)

"How are you?" I asked him. Our paths had crossed many times over the years, and this was not an outrageous intrusion into his private life, nor was it a casual question asked by a semi-stranger; I truly wanted to know.

"I'm old, Mr. North. I'm on the opposite side of the mountain now, wondering when I crested its peak, and how I got back to base camp without even noticing." He smiled, but it did not reach his red-rimmed, rheumy eyes. "I never settled down, never found true love. But I have my daughters and my grandchildren, and I've had plenty of companionship in my life. How are you?"

Ever the politician, he laid the question back in my lap. "I've been better," I said honestly. "I spent the majority of my adult life married to Ruby, and I'm trying to find out how to be me without her."

Peter nodded, looking down into his whiskey. "It's not easy for a man to learn how to be on his own without his wife."

This struck me as strange, given the nature of his marriage to Sunday, and I said so.

"Well," he admitted, looking appropriately sheepish. "I may not have loved her in a romantic way, but Sunday was my right hand. She raised my daughters. Kept the outward-facing Peter in line. Without her, I lost my true north for a while. I drifted. I wasn't used to living alone, to making my own choices, to keeping my own schedule. It was hard."

I didn't quite believe him; Peter Bond had famously kept his own schedule and made his own choices throughout the course of his marriage--I'm not telling tales out of school about that here--but he did seem to find his footing again a few years post-divorce when he made the decision to publicly confirm that he was a gay man by appearing in a documentary about the subject.

"How were things once you officially came out?" I asked brazenly, hoping he wouldn't shut down whichever direction this conversation took. We were sitting in the dark, wood-paneled, low-lit bar of a pub in Georgetown, the booths each lit with their own individual lamps, the banquettes holding Supreme Court judges, senators, congressmen and women, and other politicos of various stripes. I was pretty sure Peter had flashed some sort of members' card just to get us in, and I wasn't entirely sure that he'd entertain my questions in the midst of so much political power.

"I had more dates than I knew what to do with," he said with a glint in his eyes. Even at eighty-two, he looked cocky as hell when talking about his sexual prowess. "More men than I could possibly date."

I laughed politely. "I'm sure you've had a helluva ride, Mr. Bond."

"You don't know the half of it." Peter knocked back the whiskey in his glass and subtly motioned for another.

"I think the willingness to be one's true self in public is so important," I said. "I'm sure when you showed the world who you really were, the general public became even more receptive to you.”

“Would that that were true, Dexter. But I think Sunday divorcing me was the end of my political career in any fashion.” Rather than looking perturbed, he seemed resigned. “And to bring this topic back around to the subject at hand, I think her friendship with Ruby made it possible for her to ultimately leave me.”

“How so?”

“Jack had died by that point, and Sunday saw her best friend surviving alone. Even thriving. Perhaps Ruby encouraged her to leave me—that I don’t know. But it seems possible. Women tend to lead other women astray like that.”

The boldness of this assertion in the face of his own misdeeds within his marriage was stunning. I bit my tongue and pondered what to say next.

“So, you think Ruby was leading by example? Or that she even explicitly encouraged Sunday to divorce you?”

Peter lifted one shoulder and let it fall. He took a sip of his whiskey with a bored look on his face. “Sure. Anything is possible. I gave Sunday a good life. How many women get to take a free trip to the White House? How many former unwed, teenage moms get to become the Second Lady of our country, have closets full of clothes, and get to live rent free while they raise children? Come on, Dexter. Between you and me, Sunday had it all, and then she saw what Ruby had and she wanted more.”

“Does ‘between you and me’ indicate that we’re off the record, sir?” I asked.

Peter shrugged again. Between his tired eyes and his casual responses, I could tell that he was beyond the point in his life where he feared blowback on anything that came out of his mouth. “Hell, put it all on the record. I don’t care. Call up Sunday and put her on speaker phone while we talk—loop her in. I’m eighty-two years old, Mr. North. No one cares what I say, and no one is going to ruin my life or my future.”

No one but you could truly do that, I thought, but I wisely kept quiet on the topic. “Thank you for your willingness to share and be open with me,” I said instead. “And I think what you’re saying about Ruby could be the important nugget I need for this chapter that I’m working on.”

Peter huffed. “That she was a ball-busting feminist who needed to keep her nose in her own business and out of my marriage?” He tipped his whiskey glass to the ceiling again as he took another slug. “Sorry. That was disrespectful to your late wife—my apologies. But I do mean what I say about my marriage not being under the umbrella of causes that the First Lady needed to concern herself with.”

I held up a hand. “Quite alright. I’m here asking you invasive questions and begging you for tidbits about my wife, so anything is fair game at this point.”

Peter leaned his elbows on the table and looked across the bar at two men in suits as they had a serious discussion. The men appeared to be roughly my own age.

“I miss that,” Peter said, lifting his chin in their direction. “Being a part of something real. Being considered a person with power, and with something to say. Now I’m just some old geezer. It’s even hard to date, though there are still a few young bucks out there who get a charge out of a fling with a former VP.” He lifted his eyebrows skeptically, looking back at me. “But the equipment doesn’t always work the way it used to, and sometimes I fear that information will get out there, and no man wants that.”

Because he’d already said that everything was on the record, I left this part of the conversation in my writing to accurately reflect the widely varied and ambling nature of this chat between us.

“Understandable,” I said. “There is something vital to feeling as if you’re a part of things.”

“Hence you writing this book.” He nodded at the recorder resting on the table between us. “You need something to do. Something to offer the world.”

“I suppose.”

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