One In The Chamber

by Robin Peguero

Genres: Satire; Political Thrillers

Synopsis

On Capitol Hill, they work you to death.

Cameron Leann is new to Washington, D.C. An Iowa farm boy without a penny to his name, Cam has joined a group of affluent junior staffers working for a powerful cohort of U.S. Senators known as The Gang of Six. Liz Frost, the group’s charismatic leader, teases and strings Cam along as he grows increasingly infatuated with her. Heir to a political dynasty, Randy Lancaster pushes Cam to his limits with his penchant for booze, drugs, and meaningless flings. Charlie James, Liz’s linebacker boyfriend, keeps Cam at a distance, eyeing the newcomer with suspicion.

 All of them have one thing in common. They hate their bosses.

 As the Gang of Six takes up the rushed nomination of the first Black chief justice to the Supreme Court, Cam and his friends are plotting against them. But in the game of politics, one’s motivations are never as they seem—especially true for Cam, the enigmatic figure at the center of it all.

When a bombshell revelation threatens to sink the President's Supreme Court pick, the Gang of Six fractures, pitting senator against senator in a confirmation battle for the ages. Alliances shift with the wind. Everyone is lying to everyone.  And on Election Night, one senator will end up dead.

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 320

Sample

You aren’t born a killer. You don’t gradually become one, either. One minute, you’re not, and the next, you just are. Like your first time having sex. Just as thrilling. Just as awkward. Nothing much changes but the label. You’re still you. But now, you’re a quote-unquote murderer. You played God and took a human life.

It’s entirely natural, but it still shocks people. Some people want other people dead. We visualize our goals, and we achieve them. Shouldn’t that be celebrated?

You wish someone wanted you dead. Not that you have a death wish. You’re too self-involved for that, and suicide is so gauche. You just wish you were that important to someone. It’s a compliment really: to have given another person’s endpoint more than a passing thought. To decide for them that today is enough. And not just today, but at this very minute, their contribution to history should meet its unceremonious finish. High flattery.

You’re welcome.

You have the senator’s warm blood on your hands. In the darkness, it looks and feels like microwaved fudge. It smells like pennies. Like copper Lincolns. The decedent would have loved the comparison to the Great Emancipator.

You’re free now, Senator.

The crackling of the television whines in the background.

“… The news desk is now able to project the winner of the presidential election. Having netted Iowa’s six electoral votes by a razor-thin margin, we can declare that the forty-seventh president of the United States will be…”

One of your knees digs into the thin government carpet while the other hovers inches over the body. You don’t shake. You’re at remarkable peace. Like a coroner, you pore over your victim, head to heel. You memorize the details. You want the moment etched into your conscious mind. Why shoot a deer if you can’t admire its fallen carcass? You don’t need its permission.

The newly dead don’t undergo a transformation. They look like—at any moment—they might flip over, stand up, and walk right out of there. You watch precisely because you wonder if this might happen.

Death is just a silencing. You much prefer people that way.

You’re silent, too. You have so much to say, but it would fall on defunct ears. At the periphery stand a few eyeballs ensconced in shadows. Weaklings stunned silent. See, some people want other people dead, and they make good on their wishes, but they can’t stomach it afterward. You feel the saddest for them. Even the deceased has taken this development gracefully. You don’t hear them bellyaching.

You have so much to say, but not to those who stay on the sidelines. And you’re not the type to talk to yourself. You’re not crazy. That would be too facile an excuse. So is “evil.” What even is evil in a non-egalitarian, capitalist society that leeches off the labor of the least among us and wages perpetual war with untold civilian casualties? That isn’t a criticism—you’re no socialist! No peacenik! It’s merely a descriptive matter. There are no good guys or bad guys anymore. Just guys. And girls. And the sixty-one other genders, of course—you’re no bigot! All of them looking out for number one.

What you are is a rational actor. Murder is a perfectly rational enterprise. Governments do it. Even the greatest, oldest democracy in the world engages in it. Or something like that. You’re no history major.

The doors to the committee room fly open as armed men in boots and tactical vests burst in. You stand and raise your bloody palms in the air. You finally begin to shake.

You shout over the commotion.

“They made me do it!”

We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.

—Aesop

I dressed myself in my father’s hand-me-down beige suit on a late August morning. The cuffs fell short. The shoulders were tight. The tip of my fat yellow tie hit just above my belly button. I parted my gelled hair to the side. I settled my tortoiseshell glasses on the bridge of my nose. I applied aggressive globs of acne treatment to a patch of emerging redness.

My roommate—the formless mound of bedsheets in the corner—stirred.

The curtains shrieked against the metal rod as I swept them open, directing bright sun onto him. The mound bellowed a string of curses.

I walked off campus to the main road and waited for the bus, leaning up against a deep green light post, parked beneath potted lavender flowers suspended in air. The post left a film of dirt down my right arm. I spent the ride slapping my suit sleeve, drawing looks from riders, including a man in tattered clothing muttering to himself.

I got off at Union Square, dodging taxicabs and slamming my hard black soles against asphalt in a sprint toward the Senate side of Capitol Hill. The long walk—even under the shade of elms—left me coated in sweat. Summer was sticky and suffocating here. It was a lie that the city had been built on a swamp, but it still felt that way.

I slung my jacket over my shoulder for the last few paces. Before entering the Hart Building—the most modern of the three Senate office spaces—I stared at the Capitol Dome in the near distance. The sun distorted its surface, giving it an ethereal, wavelike appearance.

It looked more majestic in person than it did on TV. My chest puffed out in pride at making it here. I was there to change the world. We all were.

I stepped into frigid air-conditioning and stood beneath the doorway vents for a beat, audibly moaning. The Capitol police officer at the metal detectors cleared his throat to get me to cut it out.

A senator wearing an identifying pin on his lapel cut the line, striding around and past the magnetometers. Looked like he never got checked for weapons. The officer, who like his colleagues had memorized the faces of all 100, let him by with a smile.

I wandered the marbled floors, watching professionals my age speed-walk the halls in a controlled chaos. Many baby faces in full suits and Dupont Circle haircuts with bulging backpacks strapped to their backs, big enough to fit their egos. The skylit atrium poured sunlight on them so they were literally aglow. The month-long August recess featuring vacations and slimmed-down schedules had ended. Everyone was back in their Sunday best after weeks of strolling into Congress in jeans and chucks.

I arrived at my intern orientation on the minute, with not a second to spare. Exact counts were important to me.

Shelly, the twenty-something intern coordinator, stared at her phone and droned at me.

“Iowa Senator Bill Williams is the president pro tem, the oldest and most senior member of the Democratic Party. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t plugged into our generation. He’s inspired a sort of underground fandom. You’ve seen the TikToks?”

She didn’t look up.

“Of course you have. They call him 2 Bills. Get it? ’Cause his name is William Williams. It’s totally catching on. Sort of like a Notorious RBG thing. May she forever rest in power.”

She glanced down at the résumé in front of her.

“You’re a Hawkeye?”

“Just graduated.”

“Then we’re only a year apart. How was the game in Ames this year? That finish was wild, wasn’t it?”

My smile was tight. I was no good at small talk. I’m a killjoy like that.

“‘Wild’ is a good word.”

“How was everyone feeling afterward? I can only imagine.”

I swallowed long. She waited for an answer.

“Actually, I don’t follow football.”

She frowned and looked down, speaking to her hands.

“I was talking about basketball.”

She returned to her phone and finished her rote presentation. She led me to the ID processing room. I didn’t smile for the picture.

“Oh, shit. I forgot. Don’t laminate that yet,” she warned the middle-aged black woman behind the counter, who rolled her eyes but paused. “Senator Williams is the chairman of the Judiciary Committee. Did you want to work out of the personal office or—”

“The committee,” I said fast.

“You sure? You won’t get face time with the member.”

“Fine by me.”

Bills are born out of committee. It’s where things happen. Personal offices are for the grunts. It’s all skinny paychecks and stress headaches. Unlike most of my peers here, I didn’t care to be seen. I much preferred to blend in. It’s why I walked on the balls of my feet. It made the least amount of noise.

I looked surly in my ID picture. Underneath my square face it read, “Cameron Leann—INTERN, US SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE.”

I was raised on modest means by my withholding mother and doting grandparents. We were working middle class, and not middle class the way 70 percent of Americans call themselves middle class, but true-blue paycheck-to-paycheck, penny-pinching, clipping-coupons-in-the-grocery-aisle middle class. One big health scare away from bankruptcy. Mom was the type who let me steal small stuff, shielding me from detection as I shoveled candy into my mouth from those troughs of bulk goods by the pound.

Dad made his cameos in my life every now and again, but the disruption he wrought outweighed the marginal benefit. He was a drag, an anchor on the family, so we tolerated him only in small doses to keep from going under.

Mom and Dad together didn’t produce much good in the world, except for maybe my baby brother, Nathaniel, younger by seven years. When I felt homesick and lonely those first few days in the capital, I mostly thought of him. How I hoped to make him proud. How I hoped he might not recognize me now: suited up, shit together, shoulder-to-shoulder with the most powerful people in the country. I was a new man here.

I operated on a highly routinized system. I ate the same breakfast every morning: two hard-boiled eggs and one glass of 2 percent milk. I counted daily calories (2,750) and steps (10,250). I religiously jerked off three times a day at designated hours. Once in the shower. Once after the lunchtime lull. Lastly before bed.

That first week brimmed with nothing. Like a stray, I’d roam from desk to desk of permanent staffers, flashing idle hands and puppy-dog eyes. Will work for attention, they read. Other, more industrious interns had already come by and snatched up the research project or the memo-writing assignment: Brad had arrived an hour early each day; Katherine had scheduled her coffee chats weeks in advance; Jackson played lacrosse with the chief-of-staff’s son.

“We’ll find something for you to do,” they’d say. “You can always help answer phones.”

I’d let the phones reach the eighth, ninth, tenth ring. As I said, I didn’t like talking. Instead, I sat at a computer, refreshing news site after site until my pointer finger turned purple. Then, I went home.

At night, my roommate tried to ask how my day went.

He was a try-hard. From the first day we met, he was chatty and overly familiar, as if two grown men sleeping inches from each other meant we had to become fast friends. It was too summer camp, too inorganic.

I wasn’t there by choice. I just had no money.

So I’d shrug and say, “I have to shit.”

I’d stow away in the bathroom, sitting on the toilet seat and checking my phone until I saw the light under the door go out. Only then would I slink out to my bed, rub one out in deadly quiet, pray, and fall asleep.

One morning, a young white staffer asked me to cover his meeting with the top brass of an advocacy group so he could take an extended lunch. I took one look at the gray-haired adults waiting for him in the lobby and declined.

“Won’t they be offended to be babysat by a kid like me? I know nothing about the semiconductor industry,” I said.

“Neither do I. You think I can do shit for them? I’m twenty-three. Just nod as they talk your ear off. They know the game. They’re just happy to be away from their desks.”

By Friday, I had settled on the idea that coming here had been a mistake. One big waste of time.

But that all changed when I met her.

I had nearly missed out. I was headed to a secret self-session when I crossed paths with Shelly. She had rarely dropped in on me in the week, and even as her eyes scanned the length of me, there was barely a hint of recognition.

“Capitol tour. Rotunda. Now.”

Her order just floated behind her as an afterthought.

I considered ignoring it. Congress was out of session—senators famously don’t work on Fridays—and I had my mind already on the weekend. But this was my first assignment of interest. I would finally learn how to lead tours. I grunted, whipped around, and followed along.

The Rotunda was full of natural light and tourists. Noise echoed off its sandstone walls, so that tens roared like hundreds. At the eye of the cast-iron dome was a faraway fresco: George Washington ascending to heaven, flanked by women. Sun poured in from windows out of reach, lining the perimeter. Massive paintings of countless white men in wigs and stockings—in varying states of standing, sitting, talking, founding—outfitted the walls. Bronze and marble presidents on pedestals loomed as tall as giants. Noted racist Andrew Jackson was the most gallant among them with permanently windswept hair.

In the center, dwarfed by the majesty, was her.

Her hand hung off her hip. Her high-heeled, red-bottomed shoes pointed inward. (I couldn’t tell you the brand, but I knew it meant she was better than me.) Her updo had loosened, spilling streams of blonde into her face, prompting her to intermittently blow them away. Her cheekbones were high but full, and she had a prominent chin. Her eyes were big, blue, and nestled deep in her sockets like turquoise quartz sparkling in rock. She pulled at an invisible chain on her neck, groping herself until she made her pale skin red. I caught myself staring at her bony sternum.

She pulled the crowd closer with a wave of her hand. She gave a shouty introduction. I missed her name. She pointed lazily as she spoke, indicating generally without precision. Her hands were notably small.

I swore she kept looking at me. I’d know because, even as others turned to study the room, I studied her. Her eyes never landed on me longer than a flash. They would float away, dutifully far not to rouse suspicion. But inevitably, they’d return, before flitting off again. Her eyelashes were long and moved in a hummingbird bustle.

She led our tour group away. I walked at her periphery, shoulders pulled way back and trying to stand taller. Inside a room of crimson drapery, gray columns, and rows of cherry wood school desks arranged in a semicircle, she came alive.

“This is the Old Senate Chamber, site of the famous caning of Senator Charles Sumner,” she said, grinning. “The hot topic of the day? Whether my great state of Kansas would enter the Union as a free or slave state, tipping the balance of power in the lead up to the Civil War. Antislavery Republican Charles Sumner had some choice words for his proslavery colleagues: calling one a nameless animal and telling another that slavery served him like an ugly harlot.”

She leaned in and lowered her voice.

“Apropos of nothing, Congressman Preston Brooks—who was apparently boys with one of these slavery apologists—took offense. He made his way across the Capitol, all the way from the People’s House to the Senate Chamber—right here—and struck an unsuspecting Sumner repeatedly in the head with his metal-topped cane. It was a vicious attack that left Sumner bleeding profusely onto the Senate floor and critically wounded, but Brooks walked right out, detained by no one. Each became heroes to their respective factions. But Sumner had the last laugh. He recovered and went on to serve another eighteen years in the Senate, whereas Brooks died soon thereafter at the hardy old age of thirty-seven.”

She shared in the light laughter. Her incisors were uncommonly sharp.

“And, of course—the ultimate victory—after catastrophic war, the scourge of slavery was finally tossed into the waste bin of history. Anyone able to tell me, perhaps a fellow Kansan among you, on which side—free or slave—did the state ultimately enter the Union?”

I fired off the answer unthinkingly. I was at least pleased with the depth of my voice.

“Free.”

She turned to me and held her gaze. She didn’t say anything at first. She just looked at me. Through me. Others turned to curiously peer at me, too. See what had stopped her dead in her tracks. I didn’t blink or breathe. My chest was too tight for air to pass through. Gradually, the muscles in her face softened and a smile poked through.

“Rock chalk, Jayhawk.”

At the end of the day, I tossed off my jacket, rolled up my sleeves, and slouched onto a retaining wall just outside the Hart Building. I shut my eyes and baked in the sun for a bit. At the sound of feminine laughter, I peeked out of one eye.

Our tour guide was standing to my left, opposite a young-looking white girl and guy sharing a vape pen between them. The two were mirror reflections: standing at identical heights, boasting pouty pink lips and sandy red hair, and wearing powder-blue suits and bored expressions. I didn’t catch myself staring. But the tour guide did.

“Free-Stater!”

She walked over, motioning for the smoking pair to follow.

Out shot her hand to my eye level. Her fingernails were a chipped pink.

“Liz Frost. Senator Dale Whitehurst’s office.”

They all introduced themselves that way in DC. Their full names followed immediately by what they did and for whom. A walking, talking LinkedIn profile.

I accepted her hand. It was warm and fit in mine wholly.

“I’m Cam.”

She squinted, but not one line appeared on her unblemished forehead. She had not let go of my hand.

“Erm, I work for Judiciary,” I finally added.

“Ah, 2 Bills,” she said, letting go. “These are the Blum twins: Isla and Scoop. They’re college interns in my office. Juniors at the University of Kansas.”

Isla and Scoop gave matching half nods before returning to their phones and e-cig. I was as equally uninterested in them. I turned back to Liz.

“What do you do for Senator Whitehurst?” I asked.

“Staff ass.”

“Excuse me?”

She laughed. She did so in bursts, not continuously like most people.

“You’re new here, aren’t you?”

“First week.”

“It’s what we call staff assistants. You know, answer phones, greet visitors, handle tours, supervise interns—basically the little bitch of the office. You’re an intern?”

I nodded.

“How old are you?”

I considered lying.

“Twenty-two.”

“You look older.” She said everything in a half taunt, hardly suppressing an impish grin. “I’m twenty-four. So you’re from Iowa, not Kansas?”

“Yes, Iowa. Small town. Farm country.”

She squinted again, making her eyelashes dance. Her mouth opened and shut, as if it were testing out but ultimately rejecting a bold statement. It lurched out of her anyway.

“You have Chinese in you, Cam?”

I felt itchy heat rise to my cheeks.

“I’m sorry?”

“You look vaguely Asian to me. You know, smallish eyes. No offense. You’re still cute.”

My upper lip twitched. Scoop raised his eyebrows and smirked into his phone.

“So cringe,” Isla murmured.

Gross was more like it. But I gave it a pass. Everyone’s a little bit racist.

“Just plain white. Irish actually,” I said through gritted teeth.

She shrugged.

“You make friends yet?”

I coughed, although I didn’t need to.

“Well, no. I have a roommate. But yeah, no.”

“That’s what’s great about DC. We’re all transplants, searching for a connection. You can come here and reinvent yourself. Become an entirely new person.”

There was intensity in her eyes and then, abruptly, warmth.

“Our friend Randy has a swanky pad nearby. We were just heading there to meet up with some friends. All of them work on the Hill. Wanna join?”

Isla looked up from her screen to indiscreetly roll her eyes at Liz.

“Sure, I’ll tag along.”

On the walk, as soon as we stepped off the Capitol complex, south past the main Senate buildings, the dome, the main House buildings, and into the million-dollar residential Hill neighborhood, the twins switched out their vape pen. Skunky sweet-smelling smoke wafted from this new one. I must have made a face.

“Weed’s legal here. Just not on federal property,” Scoop said.

He offered me a hit.

“I don’t smoke.”

It didn’t take long for Randy’s row house to come into view. It was a three-story brownstone topped by castle-like cones. A perfectly manicured rosebush bloomed to the side of its entryway steps, and a gleaming white Mercedes was parked out in front.

“Fuck,” I muttered. “This all him?”

“Basically. His uncle’s back in the state. Away most weekends. So it’s just him most of the time,” Liz said.

She led us down the side alley toward the back and down a series of stairs into the basement. The inside was just as lush: renovated kitchen with steel-topped appliances, masculine black and brown leather décor, a sweeping sectional couch situated around a massive flat-screen TV bolted to the wall, and a California king with silk sheets in the corner. Four other people were inside.

“Honey, I’m home!” Liz belted out.

“Who’s the new kid?”

I didn’t register who had asked it.

“Another stray Liz has charitably taken in,” Isla said.

My eyes focused first on the black man nearest to us, standing before an open refrigerator door. He was towering: easily over a half-foot taller than me and wide, noticeably built like a brick wall under his partially splayed open button-down. His skin was so black, it shined, and he wore a high and tight fade above a nicely symmetrical face.

Liz jogged into his arms. The two kissed lengthily. She had to get on her tiptoes to reach him.

“Baby,” she purred.

He was her boyfriend. She had a boyfriend. My chest deflated.

I strode up with an inflated smile and offered my hand. He gave me his. It swallowed mine. I initiated a hand slap and back pat.

“I’m Cam. I intern for the Judiciary Committee.”

“Charlie James the Third. I’m Senator Scott Denton’s body man.”

“You’re a Republican?”

It flew out of me. I’m sure my cheeks turned red. At our age, being progressive was reflexive. I’m not even sure I chose it. I had always been. Being siloed in congressional offices with like-minded people, you forget exactly half of the folks walking past you are on the other team, most of them as young as you, too. But almost never black.

Charlie chuckled, but it was Liz who answered.

“His boss is a RINO,” she said. “Moderate, pro-choice Republican from swing state North Carolina. We give Charlie a pass. Don’t worry. He’s woke.”

Charlie winced. Being around Liz apparently meant ignoring the screwy remarks she slipped in every now and again. Pretty girls get away with things like that. I found it refreshing. She was admirably carefree. The sting of offense was short-lived and all that remained was intrigue.

“You played football, Cam?” Charlie asked.

“No. I didn’t play any sports.”

Charlie’s forehead wrinkled.

“Well, you look it. Broad shoulders.”

“I’m an Iowa farm boy. Lots of baling hay.”

“Huh. I guess you are a little short for it.”

I widened my smile, baring teeth. I didn’t appreciate the barb.

“Charlie played Division I ball,” Liz said. “He was quite good at it at a place where football is religion. He was a literal god on campus who could do no wrong. But we know better, don’t we, Charlie?”

She caressed his clean-shaven jaw, capping it off with a pinch that appeared to hurt a little too much.

“You drink beer, Clark Kent?” Charlie asked, extending a frosted can to me.

“Clark Kent?”

“Yeah. You got the dark hair. You got the glasses. You got the Iowa farm boy thing—”

“Superman’s from Kansas, Charlie. Not Iowa,” Liz said.

I accepted the can.

“I do drink beer. Thank you.”

Scoop stretched out his hand for one.

“You’re not twenty-one yet, kid,” Charlie said. “Ask me in a couple months.”

Scoop smiled in earnest for the first time, revealing a slight gap between his front teeth. I had known him for only twenty minutes tops by that point, but lightheartedness was so antithetical to his essence that he looked like a different person. Charlie threw an arm around his skinny shoulders and rustled his hair before handing him a beer despite his teasing.

Liz detached herself from Charlie and—in a move that accelerated my heart rate—planted her palms on top of my shoulders.

“Let me introduce you to the rest of the gang.”

A man with slicked-back hair and a beauty mark on his cheek was rolling a joint on the couch. He stood to greet me.

“This is Chuy,” Liz said. “That’s Mexican for Jesús.”

“I’m from Ecuador. Not Mexico. Our group is a rainbow coalition—as diverse as the Hill gets,” he said. I noted that he was just as fair-skinned as Liz, and he looked moneyed. “My government name is Jesús Lavandeira. But it’s true: you can call me Chuy.”

He pronounced “Ecuador” correctly, not like a gringo, and he sang his name in a perfect Spanish accent. He wore a tailored herringbone suit that hugged him, a floral pocket square, and a series of rings, one sporting a purple gem. One, but only one, of his fingernails was painted black on each of his hands. It was the middle finger.

“Oh, and my pronouns are they/them.”

“Cool. Mine are he/him,” I said.

Chuy’s eyes widened.

“I like this one. You done good bringing him around, girl.”

Liz laid her head on their shoulder.

“Chuy’s the highest ranking of us all. They’re the legislative correspondent for Senator Abby Kelley from California.”

“It’s a fancy way of saying I write constituent letters for the crone.”

“I’ve heard stories about her,” I said. “Yelling. Cursing. I read somewhere she doesn’t let junior staffers look her directly in the eye.”

“Yeah, she’s a real bitch,” Chuy said, before sitting back down, crossing one leg lazily over the other.

Liz next brought me to a white man tinkering with the TV. He was lanky and dressed in casual seersucker with floppy brown hair that fell into his eyes.

“This is Randolph Lancaster. He works for his uncle, Senator Chris Lancaster from Connecticut. What are you on now, Randy? Your third year as an intern?”

“Fourth. But who’s counting?”

“Your uncle, no doubt,” she said.

He grimaced.

“That asshole wouldn’t say a word. I know where the bodies are buried,” he said, turning to me. “I didn’t catch your name, bruh.”

“Cam. Your place is chill.”

“Thanks. Where do you live?”

“The dorms at Georgetown. It’s a shoebox I share with another guy. But it’s funded housing, so I can’t complain.”

He and Liz shared a pregnant glance.

“We don’t have one of those in our little Benetton ad,” he told her, smiling.

He meant poor. It was humiliating.

“You single, Cam?”

I stuttered. “Oh. Uh, yes. Single.”

“Bet. We can cruise together. Chuy isn’t the best wingman for landing chicks. I’m more likely to score him ass than the other way around.”

“Them,” Liz corrected.

“I love you, Chuy, and you know I’d kill for you, brother. But you’ve got a dick. And I know this because when you get me drunk, you try offering it to me—”

“One out of eight straight men try a same-sex experience these days!” Chuy chimed in.

“—so you’re a he to me, unless and until it comes off.”

Randy planted a lengthy kiss on Chuy’s cheek. Chuy looked unnerved.

“That’s a Greenwich limousine liberal for ya!” Chuy hollered, sweeping their hand across their body theatrically.

In a normal voice and directed at me and my stunned look: “Ignore the performative transphobia. Queers love Randy. And he loves the attention. He’s a textbook narcissist. Forget gay or straight: he’s a Randy-sexual.”

“Randy is a rake,” Liz added.

“Pardon her. . .