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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 6 months ago

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1968 [Chapter 7: Apollo, God Of Music]

Series Summary: Aemond is embroiled in a fierce battle to secure the Democratic Party nomination and defeat his archnemesis, Richard Nixon, in the presidential election. You are his wife of two years and wholeheartedly indoctrinated into the Targaryen political dynasty. But you have an archnemesis of your own: Aemond’s chronically delinquent brother Aegon.

Series Warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, character deaths, New Jersey, age-gap relationships, drinking, smoking, drugs, pregnancy and childbirth, kids with weird Greek names, historical topics including war and discrimination, math.

Word Count: 8.7k

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“My uncle, he is a doctor in Zabrze,” Ludwika says, red Yardley lips, Camel cigarette. No one cares if she smokes; she’s not campaigning to be the next first lady. Fosco is puffing on a cigar. Mimi sips drowsily at her Gimlet; you could use a few shots, but you’re making do with a Pink Squirrel, something sweet and feminine and without any bite. “So I go to him and he gives me a bottle of chlordiazepoxide.”

“Oh, Librium,” Mimi says, perking up.

Ludwika waves her hand dismissively; cigarette smoke wafts through the air. “Whatever. The next day I have my audition. A tiny man who thinks he’s God. And I give it a real shot, I try my best, I’m nice, I’m charming, but he doesn’t like me. He says my teeth are too big, like a mouse’s. This is very rude. I did not comment on his fidgety little rat hands. But okay, no problem, I have a plan. No one will stop me from getting out of Poland.”

“You drugged him?” you ask, incredulous, grinning.

“You are a criminal,” Fosco tells Ludwika. “I will call J. Edgar Hoover, you should not be so close to positions of power.”

“Listen, listen,” Ludwika insists. “Here is what I do. I thank him very much for his consideration, and then as I leave I drop my purse and things go everywhere. I filled it before I left my apartment, of course. Anything I could find, empty lipstick tubes and perfume bottles, old makeup compacts with broken mirrors, coins, hair pins, tissues, pens, gum, Krówki candies, it is an avalanche. And when he bends down to help me pick up the mess—I have to encourage him, ‘oh sir won’t you grab that, I am just a stupid girl in a very short dress,’ you understand—I put the pills in his tea.”

“How many pills?” you ask.

“I don’t know. You think I had time to count? Maybe seven.”

“Seven?!” Mimi exclaims, and you take this to mean it was a generous dose.

“What? He did not die,” Ludwika says. “I wait two days and then I go back to his office. And it is so strange, can you believe it, he does not remember my audition! So I remind him that he thought I would be perfect for the ad he is shooting in Paris. He keeps squinting at me and saying ‘are you sure, are you sure?!’ Of course I’m sure! A week later, I am standing under the Eiffel Tower with a bottle of Coca-Cola. And then I book a job in London, and then another in New York City, and one of my new model friends sets me up on a blind date with Otto. Lunch in Astoria at a horrible Greek restaurant. Who wants to eat pie made out of spinach?! Now I am here with you people, and the journalists love when I smile for them with my big mouse teeth.”

All four of you laugh at your table, an elite club, the ones who married in. It’s Alicent’s 60th birthday, and the ballroom of the Texas State Hotel in downtown Houston is raucous with clinking glasses and chatter and music and the shutter clicks of photographers. The DJ is playing Fun, Fun, Fun by the Beach Boys. Alicent is dancing with Helaena and the children, and it’s the happiest you can ever remember seeing her. Otto, Aemond, and Sargent Shriver are deep in conversation by the bar, furrowed brows and Old Fashioneds, today’s newspapers and tomorrow’s itinerary. Criston is standing with the men but watching Alicent, face wistful, silver streaks in his jet black hair, and it occurs to you that they must have grown up together: Alicent a 19-year-old bride and Criston her husband’s fledgling bodyguard, the person closest to her age in the household, near and trusted and forbidden, orbiting adolescent twins like Artemis and Apollo. You keep looking around for Aegon. No one else seems aware that he’s gone.

“Otto thought he died and went to heaven when he found you,” you tell Ludwika. “His Eastern Bloc defector princess.”

“He is going to bring my mother to the States. I would be anything he wanted me to be. I would be a model, or a housewife, or a nurse. I would be Bigfoot! But this…” Ludwika gestures broadly: to the ballroom, the city, the latest stop on the campaign trail. “It is not so bad. I never expected to serve the Polish people so far from home. You know how you stop communism? You show the world that capitalism can do more for them. There must be a path to a better life, wars must be ended, injustices must be dealt with. Aemond will do that.” She grins at you, exhaling smoke through her nostrils. “You will help him.”

You reply a bit wryly: “It’s an honor.”

“We are like four legs of a table,” Fosco observes. He points at Ludwika with his smoldering cigar. “You are a Slav fleeing the Russians. My family has ancient titles in Italy and yet no castles, no land, we are essentially homeless. Mimi’s father is a third-generation oil tycoon from Pennsylvania. And she was supposed to fix Aegon.”

“I don’t think I succeeded,” Mimi confesses.

“And then when it was time for Aemond to get married…” Fosco turns to Mimi. “Do you remember? What an ordeal. The discussions went on and on and on. She must be smart, she must be sinless, she should be from a self-made family, a real rags-to-riches story of the American Dream.”

“Right.” Mimi nods groggily, reminiscing. “And from the South.”

“Yes! But not the Deep South. No, no. Someplace Aemond could actually win. Texas, Tennessee, North Carolina. Or Florida, of course.” Now Fosco notices how you’re looking at him, because you’ve never heard this before. He quickly pivots. “But the weekend Aemond met you, it was settled. Nobody could compare.”

His tone is odd; it suggests backstories, history, mythology. Ludwika appears to be just as intrigued as you are, taking a drag off her Camel, her eyes narrowing until they are thin and catlike. You ask: “Who else was being considered?”

“No one,” Fosco answers—too quickly—and he and Mimi exchange an uneasy glance.

What did Aemond and I talk about the night we met? you think dizzily. In those first hours, minutes, thirty seconds? Where I’m from. What I was studying.

Fosco, a true Italian, then attempts to deflect by flirting. He makes emphatic, passionate motions with his hands. “You were just so captivating, so clever…”

“And young enough that Aemond could easily beat Aegon’s record of five children,” Mimi adds. Fosco clears his throat and glares at her. Mimi realizes what she’s said and gazes forlornly down into her Gimlet, mortified, groaning softly. You’ve had one c-section already, and no living son to show for it. At most, you might be able to give Aemond two or three more children; and you don’t even want them. You want Ari back. You want to touch him, to hold him, even if only for a moment, even if only once.

“It’s fine,” you try to reassure Mimi, but everyone can tell it’s not.

Ludwika breaks the tension. “You do not want twenty kids anyway. Your uterus will fall out onto the floor.” And you’re so caught off-guard that all you can do is smile at her from across the table, knowing, appreciative. It’s a strange thing to be grateful for.

“She’s right,” Mimi says mournfully. “They had to sew mine back in.”

Fosco pleads: “Stop, stop, I will need a lobotomy.”

Mimi slurps on her Gimlet. “It’s sad. I used to love sex.”

“Mimi, please,” Fosco says, wincing, holding up his palms. “You are like my sister. I prefer to think you are the Virgin Mary.”

Ludwika sighs dramatically and looks to where Otto stands on the other side of the ballroom. “I used to love sex too.”

Now you’re all howling again, rocking back in your chairs. The DJ is playing Go Where You Wanna Go by the Mamas and the Papas. Cass Elliot is the real talent in that group and everybody knows it, but of course any mention of her must be dutifully accompanied by: If only she was more beautiful. If only she could lose weight and find a husband.

“I think you like it, yes?” Ludwika says to you like a dare, puffing on a fresh Camel, red lipstick staining the white paper, blood on sheets. She combs her manicured fingernails though her voluminous blonde hair. “I could tell when I met you. You dress like Jackie Kennedy, but you are not such a statue. She belongs in a museum. I can imagine you at the Summer of Love.”

Fosco and Mimi shift uncomfortably. It’s not the sort of thing they would ever ask you. It’s too personal, too easily a segue into criticizing Aemond. It’s a usurpation of the natural order. Mimi guzzles her Gimlet and flags down a waiter to get another. Fosco takes off his glasses and cleans them with his skinny black necktie.

Sex. You think back to before you began to dread it. This is difficult, like trying to remember Greek words or British manners, which fork to use with each course. Memories from another lifetime come back in flashes: tangled up with your first boyfriend in his tiny dorm room bed, Aemond peeling off your still-dripping swimsuit on the floor of your hotel room during your honeymoon in Hawaii. You shrug and give Ludwika a nod, a brisk, ungenerous answer in the affirmative. “I always feel like I could keep going.”

Paradoxically, this does not end the conversation. Ludwika, Fosco, and Mimi study you with the same bewildered, gear-spinning curiosity. After a moment Ludwika says: “Not after you’ve finished, surely. I am half dead by the end if it’s good.”

“Finished?” you ask, puzzled. All three of them gawk at you, then at each other.

Aegon breezes into the ballroom wearing the Gibson guitar he bought in Manhattan, blue like the Caribbean or the Mediterranean or the crystalline waves off the coast of Hawaii, dotted with fish and sea turtles. Your eyes go to him immediately and stay there; you can feel the swirling warmth of blood in your cheeks. As Aegon passes the table, he squeezes your shoulder—brief, familiar, welcome—and Fosco raises his thick eyebrows. Mimi is too busy gulping down her Gimlet to notice. Ludwika chuckles, low and wicked, then slides a makeup compact out of her Prada purse to check her lipstick. Aegon goes to the DJ and yells something over the music. He’s fucked up already, you can tell, pills or booze or both.

Fosco stops a passing waiter. “Signore, did you hear who won the United Nations Handicap?”

The waiter stares blankly back at him. “What?”

“The turf race at Monmouth Park. I have $200 on Dr. Fager.”

The DJ abruptly cuts off the music. Aegon gives his guitar a few practice strums to make sure it’s in tune. He stumbles when he walks, he lurches and sways. His blonde hair sticks to the sweat on his forehead. He is woefully underdressed. His white shirt is half-unbuttoned, his denim shorts tattered; on his feet he wears black moccasins. There is a small gold hoop in each of his ears. Otto keeps telling Aegon to take them out, and every time Aegon ignores him.

“Happy birthday, Mom,” you hear him say to Alicent, and she presses a palm to her heart, her dark eyes wide and shining. “When I first heard this, it made me think of you.”

Otto and Sargent Shriver—the aspiring vice president—are glowering at Aegon. Aemond smirks as he nips at an Old Fashioned, amused; but he makes sharp, intentional eye contact with each of the three journalists. You will tell the right version of this story, he means. You will not print anything we wouldn’t want written, or my family will be your enemies for life.

As soon as Aegon plucks the first few chords, you recognize the song. “Oh, that’s really funny.”

“What?” Fosco asks.

“It’s Mama Tried.” You stand and begin clapping, then motion for the rest of the table to do the same. They obey without protest, though Mimi can’t seem to keep track of the beat. Aegon is beaming as he sings.

“The first thing I remember knowin’

Was a lonesome whistle blowin’

And a youngin’s dream of growin’ up to ride

On a freight train leavin’ town

Not knowin’ where I'm bound

And no one could change my mind but Mama tried.”

Cosmo sprints over from where he had been dancing with Alicent. He grabs your hand and tugs you towards the center of the floor. “Let’s go, let’s go!” he shouts impatiently.

“Call the FBI, I’m being kidnapped,” you say to Fosco and Ludwika as you let Cosmo drag you away.

“One and only rebel child

From a family meek and mild

My Mama seemed to know what lay in store

Despite all my Sunday learnin’

Towards the bad I kept on turnin’

‘Til Mama couldn’t hold me anymore.”

At the heart of the ballroom, Criston has swooped in to dance with Alicent, slow chaste circling. Helaena has floated off to the bar to chat with Otto, who keeps all his smiles for her. The children—Targaryens and Shrivers alike—are stomping and cheering and alternating between various moves: the Mashed Potato, the Twist, the Swim, the Loco-Motion, the Watusi, the Pony in pairs. Aemond whistles to a photographer and then nods to where you are holding onto one of Cosmo’s tiny hands as he spins around at lawless, breakneck speed. Of course this would make for a good image: you being maternal, you promising the American people that they will one day have not only a first lady but a first family.

“And I turned 21 in prison doin’ life without parole

No one could steer me right but Mama tried, Mama tried

Mama tried to raise me better, but her pleading I denied

That leaves only me to blame ‘cause Mama tried.”

Cameras flash and the crowd keeps clapping. Cosmo giggles wildly each time he almost falls and you pull him back to his feet. There is a hand skimming around your waist, a listless powder blue dress your husband chose for you. Aemond replaces Cosmo as your dance partner. Aegon’s 10-year-old daughter Violeta spirits Cosmo away; Aemond reels you in close, one palm pressed into the small of your back, his left hand gripping your right. When you steal a glimpse of Aegon—still strumming, still singing—he doesn’t look so triumphant anymore. His grin is frozen and artificial. His drunk muddy eyes go steely.

“I need you to do something for me,” Aemond begins.

Of course, you once would have said. Anything. “What is it?”

“I want you to cut your hair like Jackie.”

You’re so stunned your feet stop moving. Aemond coaxes you back into the steps. “No.”

“Think about how much more versatile it would be. Jackie is an icon, she’s sophisticated, she’s mature.”

“If you wanted a wife in her thirties, you could have easily found one.”

“Honey—”

“I do everything you ask,” you say, barely more than a whisper. “Everything. I wear what you want me to. I go where you want me to. I spend ten hours a week getting my hair fixed. I keep it up, I keep it presentable. But I’m not chopping it off.”

“You’re never going to be able to wear it down anyway,” Aemond counters, so calm, so rational, like your skull is nothing but incendiary feminine mania. “If I win, you’ll be surrounded by staff and journalists for years. You can’t be photographed with it down, you look about eighteen. And like you live on a park bench in Haight-Ashbury.”

“It’s my hair. I’m keeping it.”

Aemond leans in and says, cold and severe: “You’re my wife, and everything that’s yours belongs to me.” Then he kisses your cheek as cameras click and strobe. “Think about it. Now smile.”

You force yourself to. The crowd applauds as Aegon finishes singing and flees the dancefloor. The DJ puts on Light My Fire by The Doors. You and Aemond leave in opposite directions: he goes to talk to Eunice Kennedy, who is hugging her 3-year-old son Anthony to her chest; you return to your table to drain the last of your Pink Squirrel. You need something stronger. You need to be alone so you can collect yourself.

Now Aegon has shed his guitar and is standing with his back to the wall, smoking a Lucky Strike and talking to some campaign staffer—she looks like a girl, but she’s probably your age—who is gazing up at him worshipfully. She says something that makes him laugh, his head thrown back, his eyes sparkling, and you feel like you’re waking up from your c-section all over again, your belly split open and rearranged, aching, stabbing, nauseous.

“Are you okay?” Ludwika asks, scrutinizing you.

“I’m perfect. I’ll be right back.”

You hurry out of the ballroom, the music fading behind you. You slip into one of the elevators in the lobby and hit the button for the top floor, where Aemond’s entourage has booked every suite. As the door is closing—as only a foot of space remains—Aegon shoves his way into the elevator, startling you. The door shuts behind him and you begin the ascent. Aegon slams the red emergency stop button, and the elevator jolts to a halt.

“What the hell are you doing—?!”

“What pissed you off, huh?” Aegon taunts, stepping closer. You back away from him until you run out of room; not because you want the distance, but because you’re afraid of what you’ll do if it’s gone.

“Nothing. I’m so great, I’ve never been better, can’t you tell?”

He’s so close you can feel the heat rising off his flushed skin, you can see the miles-deep murky blue of his irises, open water, shipwrecks and drowning. “You want all this to be over? You want the women with their big, adoring eyes and their short skirts to disappear? Grow up. Stop acting like a kid. Ask for it.”

“Ask for what?”

“You know.”

If you touch him now, you won’t be able to stop. There’s nowhere for us to go. There’s no way out of this family, this year, this world. “I don’t. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Aegon barks out a sardonic, cutting laugh. “Yeah, you’re definitely 23.”

“I thought you loved girls young enough to be your daughters. Isn’t that what gets you hard?”

“You’re a fucking coward.”

“You’re sweating on me, you pig.”

“You want it so bad,” Aegon whispers as he presses himself against you, his ribs and thighs and hips, and you clutch for the walls of the elevator so you don’t reach for him instead. His left hand is tearing your hair out of its clips and pins so it falls free like you used to wear it; the right is all over your face, your jaw, your chin, your cheeks, touching you ceaselessly, ravenously, a blind man reading chronicles of braille. You’re trying to turn away from him, but he keeps pulling you back in. You’re breathing his rum and nicotine, you’re gasping in low, starved moans. It might be more intimate than kissing, than sex. He’s already felt your body. What he asks for now is your soul. His words are warm and aching as he murmurs through loosed strands of your hair: “Tell me you want it, please, just tell me, just tell me, tell me and it’s yours.”

Your palms land on his bare, damp chest, and Aegon starts unfastening the last buttons of his shirt. Instead, you push him away. Aegon lets you. He surrenders. “I can’t,” you choke out. You hit the red button, and the elevator resumes its rise to the top floor of the hotel.

“I’m really fucked up right now,” he says with sudden realization, swaying, staring down at his feet like he fears he’ll lose track of them.

“I’m aware.”

“I’m sorry. I think…I think I wanted that to happen differently.”

“I can’t trust you when you’re like this,” you say. I feel like I can’t trust anyone. Aegon looks up at you, his glassy eyes large and wounded. When the elevator door opens, you step out and he stays in, riding it back to the lobby.

In the suite you share with Aemond, you turn on the radio and spin the dial until you find a Loretta Lynn song. You go to the minibar cabinet and down two tiny glass bottles of vodka, something that won’t make you smell like too much of a drunk. You’ll have to fix your hair before you go back to the ballroom; you’ll have to change your dress. You’re painted with Aegon’s sweat and smoke. You can’t risk your husband noticing. You slide open the top drawer of the nightstand on your side of the bed and take out the card you keep there, the one that travels with you to each stop on the campaign trail. Loretta Lynn croons from the radio, wronged and wrathful.

“If you don’t wanna go to Fist City

You’d better detour around my town

‘Cause I’ll grab you by the hair of your head

And I’ll lift you off of the ground

I'm not a-sayin’ my baby is a saint, ‘cause he ain’t

And that he won’t cat around with a kitty

I’m here to tell you, gal, to lay off of my man

If you don’t wanna go to Fist City.”

You lie on the floor and peer up at the card in your hands: jubilant cartoon cow, festive party hat. You know exactly what’s written on the inside; it’s etched into your memory like myths passed down through millennia. Nevertheless, you read it again. The original message is still crossed out, and there’s an addendum below it in hasty black ink: I thought this was blank…congrats on the new calf!

You graze your thumbprint across Aegon’s scrawled signature. It’s smudged now. You do this a lot. One day his name might disappear altogether from the stark white parchment, from memory.

You close the card and hug it to your chest like a mother holds a living child.

~~~~~~~~~~

“What’s going on between you and Aegon?”

Alarmed, you meet Aemond’s gaze, two reflections in the vanity mirror. It’s the next morning, and you’re finishing up your makeup. Your dress and jacket are striped with black and white, your jewelry is silver, chains on your wrists and small tasteful hoops in your ears. “Nothing.” There is a lull you have to fill before it becomes suspicious. “He’s been helpful, he’s been…you know. Ever since Mount Sinai.”

Aemond adjusts his cerulean blue tie, studying himself in the mirror. He’s still wearing his leather eyepatch. Putting in his glass eye is the last thing he does before leaving the suite each day. “He was a comfort to you.”

“Well, he was there.”

“Because I told him to be,” Aemond says, resting his hands on the back of your chair. “Someone had to stay at Asteria to keep tabs on things, to let me know what you were up to. Aegon was the most expendable. Mimi and the kids make for good photos, but Aegon…he’s not especially endearing to the public. Those few years as the mayor of Trenton just about ruined him. I’d love to make him the attorney general if I win, but I don’t think the people would stomach it. Maybe if he behaves himself he can have the job for my second term.”

Eight years, you think, unable to fathom it. Eight years in a fishbowl. Eight years lying under Aemond as he tries to get me pregnant with children neither of us can love.

Aemond leans down to touch his lips to the side of your throat. “I’m glad you’re finally friends,” he says. “Aegon’s not all bad. But don’t let him get you in trouble.”

“I wouldn’t.” What did you and Aemond talk about before Ari died? What was this marriage built on? The senate, the presidency, civil rights, poverty, the Space Race, Vietnam, Greek mythology. Everything but each other. Dreams and ideals that would dwarf any mortal, would render them invisible.

“And watch out for any reporters from the Wall Street Journal. They’d kill for Nixon. If they can twist your words, they will.” He gets something from inside his own nightstand: the bloodstained komboskini from when he was shot in Palm Beach. He places it in your right hand, all 100 knots. “Give this to someone today. You know how to do it, you’ve always understood this part. Pick the right person, the right moment. Make sure there are plenty of cameras around.”

“Where am I going? Lunch with the mayor’s wife, that’s this afternoon, isn’t it?”

Aemond nods. “And a few other stops. Then we’re going to the Alamo in San Antonio tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

He recoils, reaches for the left half of his face, kneads the scar tissue there as nerve pain radiates through his flesh all the way down to the bone. Once you felt such agonizing pity for him; now all you can think about is the matching scar you wear on your belly, hidden and shameful and a badge of your inadequacies: your body too weak to protect Ari, your mind too pliable to resist being ensnared by the crushing gravity of this man, this family, this life.

“How can I help?” you ask Aemond, because it’s the right thing to do. And randomly, you find yourself remembering the statue of Apollo in Helaena’s garden back at Asteria, the god of music, healing, truth, prophesy.

“You can’t.” Aemond goes to the bathroom to force his glass eye into its socket. You depart for the hotel lobby where Ludwika and Mimi, your companions for the day, are already waiting. Ludwika is wearing a rose pink Chanel skirt suit. Mimi—relatively functional, as she hasn’t been awake long enough to ruin herself yet—is dressed in delicate dove grey.

Alicent, Helaena, and the children are scheduled to tour a local high school and library; Criston, unsurprisingly, is going with them. Aemond, accompanied by Otto, has a series of meetings with local business leaders and politicians. Aegon and Fosco are headed to the Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center to promise maimed soldiers that Aemond will end the war that carved out bits of them and filled the voids with screaming nightmares. The limousine you share with Ludwika and Mimi ferries you first to the NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center. Mimi is entranced by the reflective surface of the helmets, coated with gold to divert blinding sunbeams; in turn, the astronauts are entranced by Ludwika, who leaves lipstick smudges on their cheeks when she kisses them. Next is a tea party hosted by Iola Faye Cure Welch, the mayoress of Houston since 1964 and the mother of five children. And as you nibble daintily at triangle-shaped sandwiches and trudge through small talk about flowers and furniture, you can’t stop smiling. You can’t stop thinking about how ridiculous Aegon would think this is if he was here.

The driver mentions one last stop, then coasts through midafternoon traffic towards the city center. You spend the ride touching up your hair and makeup. Ludwika offers to let you borrow her seduction-red lipstick; you politely decline. You step out of the limo and shield your eyes from the glare of the Texas sun. It takes your vision a moment to adjust, and then you realize where you are. The sign above the main entranceway reads: Houston Methodist Hospital. The air snags in your throat, your lungs are empty. Your hands tremble violently. The earth rocks beneath your white high heels. Mount Sinai is the last hospital you walked into, and you left with your son in a casket so small it could have been mistaken for a shoebox.

“Alright, let’s go,” Ludwika says, linking an arm through yours. Mimi, badly in need of a drink, is looking deflated and edgy. “We are almost done. And I have been promised a medium-rare steak for dinner! Mushrooms and onions too! The Statue of Liberty did not lie. This country is a golden door.”

“I can’t.”

Ludwika stares at you. “What?”

“I can’t, I can’t go in there.”

“What is she talking about?” Ludwika asks Mimi, who shakes her head, mystified.

“I can’t,” you whimper.

They’ve never seen you like this. They don’t know what to do. They listen to you, that is the hierarchy; but it’s too late to change course now. Journalists are approaching in a swarm. Nurses and doctors are gathering by the front door to welcome you.

He knew, you think, suddenly furious. Aemond knew, and he didn’t tell me.

“It will be okay,” Ludwika says, patting your back awkwardly. “We are here with you. Nothing bad will happen.”

“Oh,” Mimi breathes, understanding. She looks at you with sympathy that shimmers on the surface of the opaque, polluted lake of her mind. Then she catches Ludwika’s eye and skims a hand down her own slim midsection. Ari, she mouths, and Ludwika’s face falls.

The doctors and nurses are whistling and applauding; the journalists are snapping photos and scrounging for quotes. You feel your conditioning over the past two years taking over: straight posture, gentle smile, hands clasped demurely together. But you are locked away somewhere underneath.

“Do not worry,” Ludwika tells you softly. “We will talk, we will make it easier for you.” Then she and Mimi begin boisterously shaking hands and thanking people for coming as you make your way through the crowd of journalists and towards the main entrance of the hospital.

People are saying things to you, but you don’t really hear them. You reply with words you won’t remember afterwards. You nod frequently and go wherever you are led. Doctors are explaining new research into placenta previa and c-sections. Nurses are showing you a state-of-the-art NICU for premature infants. Someone is placing a baby in your arms, and you can’t do anything but accept it numbly. You can’t look down at it, you can’t allow yourself to feel the weight of some other woman’s child. You wear your smile like armor and let the photographers capture their snapshots, painting a frame around you, deciding where you live.

Then you are introduced to the parents, women in hospital beds and men perched in chairs beside them, just like the one where Aegon slept at Mount Sinai. They take your hands when you offer them and tell you about their small children, sick children, dying children. One patient just delivered twins. The first did not survive beyond a few hours, but the second is in an incubator and gaining strength. You recall the komboskini stained with Aemond’s blood and take it out of your purse, give it to the suffering mother, watch faith rise in her face like dawn over the Atlantic. But you won’t remember her. You cannot allow yourself to.

Outside as you, Ludwika, and Mimi are headed back to the limousine, the journalists make one last attempt to poach a headline-worthy quote. “Mrs. Targaryen! Mrs. Targaryen!” a young man shouts, clambering to the front of the horde and jabbing a microphone in your face. “I’m from the Houston Chronicle. Can you tell me how the senator feels about the failure of the most recent phase of the Tet Offensive?”

You are in a fog; you don’t feel real, this moment and this city don’t feel real, and so you cannot remember what Aemond would want you to say. “The Vietnam War has claimed too many lives already. We should have never sent our men there to die. But since that is done, the best thing we can do now is end the draft immediately and then withdrawal from the region as soon as the South Vietnamese are able to defend their own territory, which is their responsibility.” The journalist already considers this effort fruitful and begins to retreat, but you have one last point to make. Ludwika and Mimi watch you anxiously. “I lost someone in Vietnam. I met him when I was in college. He had a good heart, and he joined because he thought it was wrong for poor men to have to fight while rich kids got exemptions, and he was killed in action in October of 1965.”

“This was a friend?” the journalist asks, eyes glowing hungrily. Then he adds as an afterthought: “I’m terribly sorry for your loss.”

“A boyfriend. Corporal Cameron Marino from Schenectady, New York. People called him Cam.”

A solemn murmur ripples through the crowd. Hats are removed, hands held to chests. “Rest in peace, Cam,” someone says. Maybe they have somebody they care about in Vietnam, a friend or a lover or a brother. You wave goodbye and climb into the limousine. The outpouring swells as you vanish: We love you, Mrs. Targaryen! God bless you, Mrs. Targaryen!

In the lobby of the Texas State Hotel, you tell Ludwika and Mimi not to follow you. They have to listen. After some hesitation, Mimi heads for the bar in the ballroom; Ludwika asks the staff at the front desk if she’ll be able to make a call to Poland with the phone in her room. You take the elevator to the top floor. Fosco is in the hallway, on his way back from one of the vending machines with a Fresca. When he sees your face, his jaw drops.

“Dio mio, what happened?”

“Nothing,” you say, tears biting in your eyes. You pass him, digging your key out of your purse.

“Are you sure—?”

“Fosco, please. I don’t want to talk.”

“Okay,” he says doubtfully. Then he seems to get an idea and strides away with great purpose. You take shelter in your suite, silent and dim; Aemond isn’t back yet. You brace yourself against the locked door and sob into empty, trembling hands, at last hidden away where no one can see you, where no one can be disturbed or disappointed. You know now that none of it was healed—not the loss, not the revelations—but only buried, and now it’s all been unearthed again and the pain shrieks like exposed nerves.

It’s not fair. Ari deserved better, I deserved better.

There’s nothing you can do. Your hands ache to hold someone that no longer exists. You can’t unlearn the truth of what your marriage is.

There are two knocks, quick and rough. “Hey, it’s me.” And there’s such pure intimacy in those words. You know my voice. You know why I’m here. “Open the door.”

“I’m okay, just, just, just leave me alone—”

“Open the door,” Aegon says again. “Or I’ll get security up here to do it for you.”

Swiping the tears from your face, you let him in. He’s dressed in baggy black shorts, nothing on his feet, an unbuttoned stolen green army jacket. You once thought he wore those to play the part of a revolutionary from the comfort of his East Coast seaside mansion. Now you understand it’s because he misses Daeron, because he believes he should have gone to Vietnam instead. There are several dog tags strung around his neck; some of the veterans at the medical center he visited must have gifted them to him.

“What’s wrong?” Aegon’s eyes sweep over you, seeking, horrified. “What did he do?”

You can’t answer, you can’t breathe. You back away from him as more tears spill down your cheeks.

“Hey, hey, hey, let me help you. Please don’t be upset. Did he say something, did he hurt you?” Aegon reaches out, and as soon as he touches you your knees buckle and you’re on the floor, trying not to wail, trying not to scream, and Aegon is pulling you against his chest—bare skin, borrowed metal—and his hands are on your face and in your hair, and his lips are against your forehead as he murmurs: “Shh, shh, don’t cry. It’s okay.”

“No it’s not.”

“Whatever it is, I can help.”

“I had to go to a hospital and hold babies and I, I, I never even got to touch him, not once, not ever, and I can’t now because he’s gone. He’s locked in some fucking vault, he’s just bones, but he was supposed to be a person, and those other babies are going to get to grow up but he isn’t, and it’s not fair.”

“You’re right,” Aegon agrees softly, still holding you.

“No one else knew him.”

“I did. I was there the whole time.”

“Only because Aemond made you stay.”

“No,” Aegon swears. “I was supposed to spy on you. He never told me to do any of the rest of it. I stayed because I wanted to.”

“You did,” you say, very quietly, weakly, conceding.

“And I’m still here now.”

Your lungs aren’t burning quite so much. Your tears are slowing. You unravel yourself from Aegon, averting your eyes. Now you’re ashamed; you aren’t in the habit of revealing to people how much you’re splintering like cracked glass, fresh fractures every time you think to check the damage. “I’m, um, I’m really sorry.”

“Look, I don’t mean to bring up unpleasant memories, but this is definitely not the most embarrassing thing I’ve seen you do.”

You laugh, only for a few seconds, and Aegon smiles as he mops the tears from your face with the sleeve of his army jacket. Then he turns serious again.

“Can I ask you something? It’s very personal. It’s offensive, honestly. But I have to know.”

“You can ask.”

“Do you want more children?”

More children. Because Ari was real. “Not now. Not with Aemond.”

Aegon nods, suspicions confirmed. “Can you do that sponge thing you told me about?”

“No. I think he’d be able to feel it, he’s…” You gesture vaguely. It’s difficult to say. “He’s big.”

Aegon didn’t want to hear that. He didn’t want to have to think about it. He flinches, just enough that you notice. But as much as he’d like to, he doesn’t change the subject. “What about the pill?”

“No doctor is going to write me a prescription without my husband’s permission. Especially considering who my husband is.”

“I hate this fucking country,” Aegon hisses. “Puritanical goddamn hellscape. Old Testament bullshit.” He drags his fingers through his hair a few times, then pats your cheek like he did before: twice, gently, playfully. “Come on. Let’s go smoke.”

“I can’t do it on the balcony. Someone might get a picture.”

“Okay. No big deal. We’ll go to the roof.”

You stare at him. “The roof?”

“You really think I haven’t already been up there?” He stands and offers you his hand. “You’ll love it. The view is fantastic.”

The view is good, but the grass is better. You know that it makes some people useless, others paranoid, but for you it’s always painted the world a color that is softer, kinder, lighter, more bearable. You and Aegon lie next to each other, smoking and watching twilight fall over Houston like a spell. You’ll have to shower and gulp some Listerine before Aemond gets anywhere near you. It’s interesting; each day you seem to acquire new secrets to keep from him.

Aegon asks: “Where would you be right now if you weren’t Mrs. Targaryen?”

“Probably married to someone worse.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Okay, but let’s say you weren’t. Let’s say you can do whatever you want.” He points up at the lavender sky and acts like he’s moving the emerging glimmers of stars around with his fingertip. “There, I’ve changed your fate. Who would you be?”

You ponder this. “I want to teach math to kids and then spend every summer break getting baked on some beach.”

Aegon cackles. “Hell, sign me up.” He lights a third joint for himself with his tiny chrome Zippo. “Those are the people doing the real work. Teachers, nurses, farmers electricians, plumbers, welders, firemen, therapists, janitors, public defenders. The normal, unglamorous types.”

“You don’t think presidents and senators make a difference?”

“Sure they do. But only like 5% of the job is actually helping people. The rest of it is schmoozing and tea parties and making speeches, because looking and sounding good is better than doing good. They’re addicted to vapid pretenses that make them feel important. You live like that and you forget how to be a human. I mean, look at Nixon. The man was raised as a Quaker, one of the most peaceful religions on earth, and now he’s planning to throw ten or twenty thousand more boys into the great Vietnamese meatgrinder and probably napalm the hell out of Cambodia and Laos while he’s at it to get the communists’ supply lines. The man’s got no idea who he is anymore. I’d feel sorry for him if I wasn’t so terrified he’s gonna start World War III.”

I wonder who Aemond was a few decades ago. “What makes you feel important?”

“Nothing,” Aegon says. “I’m not under any delusions that I matter.”

“I think you matter, old man.”

“Really?”

“A little bit. About this much.” You hold your hand up to show him the infinitesimal space between your thumb and index finger, and Aegon chuckles, his eyes glazed and bloodshot.

“Let’s do it,” he says with sudden, forceful conviction. “If Nixon wins in November, we’ll get out of here. I’ll go back to Yuma to teach on the reservation and you can come with me. You get a math class, I take English, or Music, or both, whatever. We’ll buy a bungalow out in the desert and make s’mores every night and look up at the stars. I’ll show you how to play guitar if you give me algebra lessons.”

You peek over at him, intrigued. “Is that all we’re going to do?”

“Well we’ll fuck, obviously.”

“Oh, obviously.” You giggle; it’s ridiculous, it’s paradisical, it’s insane how good it sounds. But surely that’s only because you’re high. “I don’t know how Mimi would feel about that.”

“She won’t care. She doesn’t want me anymore, hasn’t in years. Sometimes she just forgets that when she’s wasted. Mimi can go to Arizona too. We’ll load up the kids in a van and strap her to the roof.”

Now your voice is somber. “She was supposed to fix you.”

“Yeah,” Aegon says: slow, meditative, guilty. “I think Mimi and I have a few too many of the same demons.”

You roll over, push yourself up on your palms, and crawl to the edge of the rooftop. You prop your elbows on the ledge and gaze out into the city lights, the sky turning from violet to indigo to primordial darkness. Aegon joins you, staring down at the distant aquamarine rectangle of the hotel pool.

He asks: “You think I could make that?”

“No.”

“Should I try?”

“You definitely shouldn’t.”

“A few months ago, you would have pushed me off this roof.”

You shrug. “You’ve proved yourself useful.”

“That’s why you like me now? Because I’m useful?”

“Who said I like you?” you tease, smiling.

“You like me,” Aegon says, grinning and smug, radiant in the silver moonlight and urban incandescence. “You like me so much it scares you. But there’s no need to panic. It’s okay. I know the feeling.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

You want to touch him, you want him to touch you, you want to study every arc and angle of him like he’s a marble statue in a garden: too beautiful to be mortal, too fragile to be divine.

~~~~~~~~~~

Three nights later in Nebraska, there is a knock on the door of your hotel suite. The nannies have herded the children off to bed; the adults are unwinding downstairs in the courtyard of the Sheraton Omaha, designed to resemble an Italian garden. There’s a brand new Jacuzzi that you’re looking forward to taking a dip in. You finish pulling on your swimsuit, white and patterned with sunflowers, a one-piece with a flared skirt.

“Who is it?”

“It’s Richard Nixon,” Aegon says through the door. “Naked. Horny. Please love me.”

You laugh and let him in. He’s leaning against the doorframe in Hawaiian swim trunks and nothing else, pink sunburn glowing on his soft chest. He holds up a brown paper bag and shakes it.

“For you.”

“What is it, heroin?” Instead, you open the bag to find small, circular packs of pills. “No way. You did not.”

“That’s enough for six months,” Aegon says, smirking, proud of himself. “I’ll be back again in February. Guess that makes me your dealer, babe. I don’t accept cash, checks, or cards, only sexual favors. You want to get down on your knees, or should I?”

“How did you get these?”

“I told a doctor they’re for one of my whores.”

“Maybe they are.”

You’ve surprised him, you’ve got him thinking about it now. His face flushes a splotchy, charming pink. “So, uh, you coming down to the courtyard?”

“Yeah. Right now. Just let me hide these first. Are there instructions in here…?”

“Mm hmm,” Aegon says, still distracted, studying the entirely unremarkable carpet. You stow the paper bag of birth control pills in the bottom of your bras and panties drawer, then walk with Aegon to take the elevator down to the ground floor. You both notice the bright red emergency stop button and share a glance, smirking, taunting.

In the courtyard, Alicent is struggling to pay attention as Helaena identifies each and every species of plant and explains where in the world it is native to. Fosco is simultaneously teaching Criston how to yo-yo and berating him for not believing the Cubs will end up in the World Series. Fosco has apparently bet $500 on them. Ludwika is stretched out on a lounge chair like a cat and reading a copy of Cosmopolitan. Aemond, wearing his eyepatch and a blue pair of swim trunks, appears to be arguing with Otto over the contents of a newspaper article. Mimi is alone in the Jacuzzi, bubbles rumbling all around her as she slumps against the rim, a frosty Gimlet clutched in one hand.

“Mimi, get out of the Jacuzzi,” you order.

“I’m fine!” she slurs, and you groan, knowing you’re going to have to drag her out.

Aemond is approaching; no, not approaching, raging. “What the hell is wrong with you? What the fuck is this?” He hurls the newspaper at you, the Houston Chronicle. The headline reads: To Mrs. Targaryen, ending the Vietnam War is personal. “Why would you tell somebody that? Other papers are going to start reporting this. You gave them his full name. They’ve found his school, his friends, his gravesite in motherfucking Arlington National Cemetery—”

“You set me up,” you say. “You didn’t tell me about the hospital.”

Aegon takes the newspaper from you and frantically skims the article. “Hey, man,” he tells Aemond as he pieces it together, attempting to deescalate. It’s not a skill you knew he possessed. “She was rattled, she wasn’t thinking clearly. And there’s nothing bad in this article. It makes her sound invested and sympathetic, not…um…whatever you’re thinking.”

“You don’t get it,” Aemond seethes. “Journalists are going to start hounding his friends, his classmates, people who lived in his dorm building. Nixon’s newspapers will publish any gossip they can dig up about what she did when she was in school. Things people saw, things people overheard—”

“What, the fact that she had one boyfriend before she met you? That’s worthy of a nuclear meltdown?! Better prepare for Armageddon, a woman got laid, launch the goddamn warheads!”

“She doesn’t get to have a past! She should understand that, she signed up for this, she knew exactly what was expected of her!”

“And what about your past?” Aegon says, low and searing, and Aemond goes quiet. Their eyes are locked on each other: Aegon defiant, Aemond unnerved. You try to remember if you’ve ever seen that expression on his face before. You don’t think you have. Not even when he was shot and half-blinded. Not even when Ari died.

“What does that mean?” you ask your husband. Still staring at Aegon—tangled in a thorny, silent battle of wills—he doesn’t reply.

There are swift, thudding footsteps. Otto grabs Aegon by his hair, hooks a finger through the small gold hoop in his right ear, and tears it straight through the earlobe. Aegon screams as blood streams down his face, feeling the ravaged fringes of his flesh.

“I told you to take those out,” Otto says. “Now remove the other one before I rip it free, and go get yourself stitched up.”

You do something you’ve never done before, never even thought of. You strike out with both hands and shove Otto so hard he goes staggering backwards, his arms wheeling. The others are yelling and rushing over. Aemond is trying to yank you to him, but he can’t get a grip on your swimsuit. “I will kill you!” you roar at Otto. “I will push you down a staircase, I will slit your fucking throat, don’t you ever touch him!”

Alicent is weeping, appalled, trying to get a look at Aegon’s damaged ear. Criston is helping her, moving Aegon’s bloodied hair out of the way. Fosco links his arms around your waist and drags you out of Aemond’s reach just as he’s getting his fingers beneath a strap of your swimsuit. Helaena is covering her face with her hands and wailing. Ludwika is shrieking at Otto: “What did you do? Don’t give me that, what did you do?!”

You are engulfed with rage, red and irresistible. You’re trying to bolt out of Fosco’s grasp. You want to claw Otto’s eyes out; you want to put a bullet in him. As you struggle, you catch a glimpse of the Jacuzzi. You don’t see Mimi anymore.

“Wait,” you plead, but nobody hears you over the noise. You look desperately at Fosco. “Where’s Mimi?!”

Once he figures out what you’re trying to say, he whirls towards the Jacuzzi. “No!” he bellows, releasing you, and careens across the courtyard. You dash after him. Now the others understand, and they come running too. You see it just before Fosco dives in: there is a shadow at the bottom of the Jacuzzi. When he bursts up though the roiling water, he is carrying Mimi, limp and unconscious and blue.

Everyone is shouting at once. Fosco lays Mimi down on the cobblestones of the courtyard. Criston sends Ludwika to call an ambulance, kneels beside Mimi, checks for a pulse. Then he begins CPR. When he breathes air into her flooded lungs, there is no response, no resurrection.

“No, no, no, she has to be alright!” Aemond says, and everyone knows why. If she’s not, this will consume the headlines for days: no victorious campaigning, no speeches or photos, just a drowned alcoholic with a damning autopsy report.

“Oh my god,” Otto moans, pacing. “This can’t be happening, not this year, not now…”

Alicent seizes your hand and squeezes it until you think it will break. She is reciting prayers in Greek. Helaena is curled up under a butterfly bush, sobbing hysterically. When he realizes this, Otto hurries to comfort her.

“Don’t watch, Helaena. Let’s go inside, I’ll walk with you, there’s nothing more we can do here.”

“Mimi?!” Aegon commands, slapping her hard across the face. “Mimi, come on, wake up! Mimi? Mimi!” She’s still motionless, she’s still blue. Aegon turns to you, blood smeared all over the right side of his face. He’s petrified, he’s in shock. “I think she’s…she’s…”

“She’s gone,” Criston says; and he lifts his palms from her hollow body. The silent sky above is a labyrinth of bad stars.

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