Always (27 page)

Now, this one threw me until I turned around and noticed his briefcase on the dinette chair. On top of a red and black lace blindfold the next clue read:

I almost tripped as I headed for the back door. As I looked at our yard, I saw a tent behind our pool. It was illuminated with a purple light, which reflected along with the moonlight off the water, and I could see the outline of my Teddy inside of it. He was posing and casting these slow, sensuous, erotic shadows on the walls of the tent. As I walked closer, I noticed there were piles of beach sand surrounding it. . . .

“Teddy, what are you doing?” I asked.

He turned off the light and turned on the music as I walked into the tent. It was our song.

“Happy anniversary, dah-ling. May I have this donee?” he asked in a terrible impersonation of Antonio Banderas. And he asked it as if there were a possibility I would say no. Just like on the night he proposed.

As we danced in a tight C formation, I saw the Nipples of Venus candy and smelled the Jasmine potpourri in the air. When we stopped moving momentarily so he could light another candle, I even saw white rose petals in the sand. “You are just too . . .” I started to say as we began our dance again. “But how? How did you do all of this?”

“Well, I can't take all of the credit. I sent Penelope to the store to pick up most of the stuff and I asked the neighbors if I could borrow some of their kids' sand from their play box and whether the tent could get delivered to their
house.” He smiled. “Oh yeah, I owe Kadesha fifty bucks for keeping her mouth shut. She saw us out here about three hours ago when I was talking to you on the cell phone and made sure you didn't come out.”

When the song ended, he pulled out a surprise from behind his back. It was a pair of cute little sexy purple panties. “How did you know I wouldn't be wearing any?” I said, and put them on, knowing they would be off before the elastic band closed on my waist.

“Well, I guess I can read you too.”

“But you asked me,” I said, looking at him, puzzled, “if I like boxers or—”

In two strokes he ripped off his shirt and dropped his sweatpants just like a Chippendale stripper. He had on a pair of purple silk briefs that could hardly restrain him. “I'm sorry she bought these so small. I told her I had a thirty-four waist. But it was the last minute and she grabbed a pair of thirties by mistake.”

“Ahh, remind me to send Mrs. Butler-Richardson a thankyou card.”

And then as the stereo played “Scandalous” by Prince, my Teddy turned me around and put the silk black and red blinder over my eyes and whispered into my ear words I could never forget. “Everything that happened to us yesterday, the good
and
the bad, is now history. Everything that happens tomorrow will always be a mystery.” Cupping my face in his large, soft hands, he said, “But today, my love, today is God's gift to us, and that is why it's called the present. There were many times I did not deserve your present, and sometimes I even turned my back on your presence, but you were still there . . . waiting . . . to give it to me time and time again. For being there, Yvette Leslie Shaw Davis, I thank you. I thank you more than words could ever express, because you gave me . . . through all the years . . . the present . . . of you.”

As the warmth of his voice in my ear subsided, a breeze of reassurance blew through me and I continued to melt as I heard him squeeze something in his hands and rub them together. My teeth clenched as he paused just to heighten
my excitement. Then Henry began massaging my shoulders with the tips of his strong fingers. Slowly and evenly he deeply stroked the tension from my body as he had done previously to my mind with his words. I wanted to collapse on the spot, right on the sand with the little green army fighting men mixed in with it.

The heels of his oiled palms moved in big, deep circles down the edges of my back and then in tight shallow, circles up its valley. I started feeling light-headed from what had happened and what I knew would come to pass when he abruptly stopped what he was doing. “Teddy?” I knew he was there, I could feel his essence, but I couldn't hear him.

Then from nowhere he kissed me on the nose, and I smiled. He kissed me again on the forehead, and unable to contain my joy, I laughed like a teenaged virgin. Then he stopped, and before I knew it, he was behind me again. As he blew softly on my skin, the oil on my back started to heat and I could feel his passion as I said, “Dayuummmm.”

Henry kissed me again and again, but now I wasn't smiling because my breath staggered and my mouth formed a large O. He kissed my neck and continued kissing me down to the small of my back. He removed the underwear he had given me and I stood there as this man kissed my tush. His kisses left a trail from my lower back to the top of the divide. Back and forth his tongue slid, concentrating on just that one area. Up and down, round and round. He took his time as if that one spot had a large X on it and was the most important place on my entire body.

He paused as if he were trying to decide just how he would proceed and then he softly kissed the area where my thighs ended and my butt began. I stood there with my legs apart, my eyes rolled back, and my fingers locked behind my head as I tried to imagine what else this man could have in store. And on this night there was so much more to follow.

Later that evening Henry took out a blanket and we held each other under the stars. As I lay there, I wondered why this evening was so much better than previous nights. We'd
had surprise dates in the past, but none of them were nearly as exotic and romantic as this one. It was not because, after removing the blindfold, he lifted me onto his hips, and as I held the quivering center pole of the tent, he pleasured himself in me. It was not because of the creative things he did when he held my waist in just the right spot, at just that right angle, with just the right movement and just enough force. That night would always stand out because as we lay on the blanket and listened to the soft wind mixed with the sound of swaying palms and crickets, my Teddy made me feel like I was the only thing in the world that mattered to him. That I was more important than financial gain, his Senate seat, even his bid for the immorality. On that night, unlike any other night we had been together, I felt if I told Henry Louis Davis the Second it was either me or the presidency, he would choose me. That he knew the measure of his success was not in what he dreamed, but holding on to what he had.

Yet the evening could not last forever, and soon dawn broke. A dog started barking, morning light replaced the moon and made a streak across our nude bodies, and that feeling of bliss subsided. As I think back, I realize I've never felt that way since.

We had our first official
unofficial
Davis in 2000 campaign meeting Labor Day weekend in 1995 in a small bungalow in the Hamptons. As charismatic, intelligent, romantic, and appealing as Teddy can be, I think his greatest strength is the ability to clearly see his own weaknesses. He and I both know he is not the best judge of character. In our congressional races as well as the first senatorial campaign, he hired people because they were nice or they needed the job. In the second Senate campaign, I assumed that duty and the campaign sailed along smoothly. We hired his brother as the campaign manager when he moved back to Miami from Lakeland, although most of the major decisions were made by me or Henry. But we needed someone else we could trust and whom we could let into our world without fearing he or she would be tempted by the world of tell-all literature.
The Carter administration had had a few, Reagan and Bush even more. But in the nineties it seemed campaign staffers were taking notes on every seemingly insignificant thing that happened, with plans to stay only as long as it took to fill four hundred half-decent pages. We were lucky that with Herbert we knew this would never be a problem.

Herbert married Doris soon after Teddy and I got married, and to this day I don't think she ever loved him. I remember the night Gerald, their eldest, was born. Gerald was a big baby just like Teddy and Herbert. After Gerald was born, Herbert walked out of the delivery room wiping sweat from his brow with his hand. There was a glow on his face as he sat down in his oversized green surgical scrubs and told us about the entire event step by step.

“When I was in there, I was holding Doris's hand and she was gritting her teeth and I was scared to death,” he said. “I'd never seen her in so much pain, in so much agony. Then,” he said, staring at the paint on the wall just over our heads, “the doctor said the baby was crowning. And I looked and saw the top of my son's head.
My
son. Can you believe that?” Herbert looked at Teddy, and said, “You make love . . . to someone you love . . . and you watch that love grow for nine months. Man, I knew this was going to be incredible, but I never knew it was going to be like this. To watch your wife's stomach swell just a little more each day and then panic no matter how much you tried to prepare when you heard those words.” With a smile he leaned back, exhausted, and said, “Hell, I think my water broke too.” Herbert looked at us, and said, “Guys, you don't
know
what love is until you have a child.”

I swallowed so hard because I wanted one, even then, so badly. I had a baby doll fetish until high school. Not dolls that looked like women. But soft dolls who usually came with a bottle. As I held the dolls I wondered how it would feel to have a child moving and kicking inside of me. We told everyone we were not ready, that we didn't want to have a kid because of this or that, but every time we said
it I knew I was lying because just the powdery scent of a baby would make me crumble inside.

After ten years and two children, Herbert and Doris filed for divorce. One night she caught him in a compromising position with a lady of the night when we were on the road at a fund-raiser, and a couple of months later the marriage ended.

I don't think most men would care as much as Herbert did when his wife took their kids, because he was in an almost comatose state for several weeks. He once told Henry that not seeing or hearing from his kids was the closest thing to death he'd ever experienced. Doris was nasty during the entire breakup, once making him clear it with her new boyfriend whether he could get his children for the weekend and even threatening to go to the tabloids with lies about Henry. But the deepest cut came when she didn't allow K'ren and Gerald to see or speak to their father for over a year. In time he was able to function and did a very adequate job for us, but he was never the same after losing those children.

Penelope Butler-Richardson was my press secretary. She and I have butted heads a few times, but I respect her because she will not roll over when I raise my voice. Our relationship can be described as incendiary because we both have something in common. We tend to shoot off our mouth at times and ask questions later. Sometimes the words we use get us in trouble, but they are always from the heart.

We're not friends because I don't mix business with emotions. But many times I think if Henry is the heart of our operation and I the soul, she would be considered the fire that pushes us forward.

It was Penelope who stood up to Henry regarding his image, which was something even I did not do. Henry never wanted to smile in campaign photos, and one time he wore glasses to downplay his looks and to look older. Penelope told him how he should style his hair and picked out conservative, custom-tailored suits for him to wear. She refused to
use any photos in which he was not smiling, and soon the Davis Factor was picked up by the press. The Davis Factor was described by one reporter as the phenomenon whereby men saw Henry as a jocular friend, women wanted to go out with him, college kids saw him as a cool older brother, and the elderly viewed him as the son they could brag about to their friends. The Davis Factor was devised on a yellow pad as we were flying to London. As I watched her doodle, I thought the idea was too pedestrian to amount to anything. But now we were riding the idea toward the White House.

After our first congressional victory, Penelope and I were in D.C. looking for shoes that would match the dress she'd planned to wear to Henry's congressional swearing in. I knew next to nothing about Washington at that time, so she drove us to this mall in an urban neighborhood. As we got out of the car, she continued talking as she put the Club on the steering wheel and never acted as if she was at all uncomfortable being a minority in a parking lot where there were nothing but black and brown faces. Then she started to talk about congressional committees, and as she spoke I was thinking,
Is she trying to impress me with her blackness?
While I'd known Penelope for years, even before she joined our campaign, I never knew much about her, so I could not resist the temptation. After she picked up the shoes and we returned to our car, I asked her point-blank. “Penelope, why did you choose this mall?”

“What do you mean? Didn't you see the shoes in that store?”

“No, I saw that. But how many malls with J. Linz stores did we pass to get to this one?”

“Two or three. But I wanted to help out the inner-city stores. You know, show support.”

I shook my head. I knew there was more.

“I know what you want to know. You wanna know why I'm like this. Don't worry, you can ask me. God knows I've been asked before.”