Chasing Tail
Phil Mason hated Texas heat and had bought a place in Taos to escape it. He hoped that he and Patty could find a new groove summering there. The legislature met in the winter, and he could keep the dealership humming with a few Zooms a week and a monthly dive into the books.
Governor Abbott, bored and ambitious, called a June 1 special session. The proclamation said immigration and crime; everyone knew it was about Iowa. A really vicious anti-immigration bill might punch his ticket. Constitutionality was for the courts, not for men who wanted to be president.
As he drove down the Concha River, through San Angelo and toward the Capitol, Phil resented being pressed into service as video wallpaper for the governor’s ambitions. His F-250 dinged with a text from Patty. He paused a Hardcore History podcast, and the cowgirl drawl in the speakers read:
“I’m moving in with Julie. We are together. I don’t want your money, just enough to start over. Don’t hate me.”
Phil was more shocked than upset. The heat in Austin sucked whether or not you were married. The women of UT Austin were more discriminating. Yes, the undergrads were at home or abroad, but grad students studied year-round, and diligent twenty-four-year-olds could still be hot. The special session had just become a stag trip.
Phil arrived in Austin and checked in to the Hyatt where he always stayed. He usually drank at the Hyatt bar, but he was feeling frisky and didn’t want to prowl in front of staff he’d see every morning. He Ubered to a haunt a few blocks away—the heat made walking anywhere a bad pickup strategy—and ordered a double whiskey. Two lobbyists from the Texas Pawnbrokers Association were at the bar. Phil thought of leaving until he saw the waitress, whose perfect figure prompted him to stay.
Phil enjoyed being sized up again. Marriage had given him sex, but the chase was better.
When Phil mentioned he was getting divorced, she put her hand on his and said, “Starting over doesn’t have to be bad.” Phil smiled and asked where she was from. When he finished his drink, he pulled a hundred-dollar bill from his wallet, tucked it beneath the receipt, and slid one of his senatorial business cards under the glass.
“Please call me,” he wrote, and left.
⸻
Emily had always had her good looks. Sometimes she hadn’t had much more.
Her father always paid enough child support to stay out of jail but seldom enough to make ends meet. Once she turned eighteen, she made decent money waitressing—good enough to take her time in college, to major in psychology instead of accounting, to believe she’d always have options. By twenty-seven, those options looked like dreams.
Boys had always scared her a bit. One of her mother’s lovers had taken her before her fifteenth year, and afterward she half hated her body. The boys she did like turned out to be too interested in it. A boyfriend could be useful—for rent, for household things—so she’d had a few, and been a distant muse a certain kind of man could worship without much encouragement. But they never really knew how to please her, and she’d kept an aloof reserve around sex since that awful business fifteen years ago.
⸻
Emily: Thanks for the nice tip. I know getting divorced sucks.
Phil: Yeah.
Emily: At least there are still nice young women to look at.
Phil: You saying I should look?
Emily: You gonna ask me what I’m wearing?
Phil: Should I?
Emily: Your choice.
Phil: What are you wearing?
Emily: Jogging clothes—which I’m keeping on unless you do better.
Phil: How can I do better?
Emily: Tell me what kind of animal you like.
Phil: I like women.
Emily: That’s vanilla.
Phil: Maybe I’m vanilla. Want to go to Paris after the session?
Emily: I’m not vanilla. I’m a freak.
She attached a picture of her pierced nipples to prove it.
Phil: I’m getting hard, you freak.
Emily: I have this thing that makes me crazy.
Emily: A powerful man doing something totally innocent for me.
Emily: But only because I asked.
Emily: Like… adopting a rescue ferret in his own name.
Emily: Filling out the form, paying the fee, putting PHILIP MASON on the certificate.
Emily: Then bringing it to me.
Emily: The thought of you walking into that shelter because I told you to… fuck.
Emily: Would you do that for me, senator?
Phil: A ferret?
Emily: Yes.
Emily: A real one.
Emily: From the rescue.
Emily: Your name on the papers.
Emily: No one ever has to know why.
Emily: Just knowing you did it because it turns me on…
Emily: Please, daddy.
Emily: I’ll send you whatever you want if you do.
Phil: …Which rescue?
Emily: Travis County Ferret Rescue on Lamar.
Emily: Ask for Bandito.
Emily: Tell them you saw him online and had to have him.
Emily: I’ll be waiting.
Emily: And soaking. Sweet dreams.
⸻
The ferret pic, taken at the Travis County animal shelter, is a matter of public record.
A few minutes after the second deposit hit, Emily texted Phil.
Emily: those weren’t even my boobs asshole
Phil did not reply.