John Fraim

(Playnotes: The woman first person narrator below is in her early 60s and has led a pretty amazing life in finance and investments. She has become a legendary investor with a media empire and a foundation worth billions.)

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I was very surprised when an old friend called the other day and insisted we have dinner. This old friend is my best friends from college and grad school. Besides this, she is the woman running for President of the United States right now. We’ve been friends but also fierce competitors through our friendship, each going our own way: my friend into politics and me into finance. We’ve each helped each other over the years.

We’ve come from different backgrounds. I grew up in west LA and my best friend grew up in Oakland. But we bonded so much in college at UC Berkeley. And then, through grad school and beyond school into early life.

* * *

But there was an abrupt break-up in our friendship when I began hearing stories about her escapades with various male partners while rising through the ranks of California politics. I met her for lunch in Sacramento when she was the AG and asked her about the stories of these affairs I read about. She said something. I’m still not sure what it was. Something circular perhaps that sounded like it should be profound but ended in a type of word cul-de-sac. Her face changed into that laugh she had through the years of her being the VP. Everyone in the nation must have seen/heard this laugh over the last four years. 

One thing was clear to me. She was not her own person anymore like the person I knew in college. She was operating for others and they were thinking for her so that she did not have to do her own thinking. I know this is a radical thing to say but this is how I saw her change over the years as she rose higher and higher in politics. Like Obama, she also seemed a person picked by the hidden controllers of the party going upward through the ranks at a spellbinding rate. 

We have met a few times over the last few years. She’s been the VP during this time and usually she will stop at my place in west LA when she is in town. But I can see that she is not the same person that I once knew. What is it that has happened to my friend? I imagine that politics has happened to her. 

* * *

So, it was somewhat of a surprise to me when the VP and Presidential candidate called the other day and said she was in town on her campaign swing and needed to talk to me. I said of course but I wondered about the urgency of her call to me. 

The other evening, they arrived at my place with a group of black Suburbans and people wearing sunglasses. The event was off schedule and kept quiet so there were no followers this evening.

I hugged my old friend when she emerged from one of the black Suburbans. We walked arms around each other up the path to my home. We go out to the porch and sit at a table with a white tablecloth and candles in hurricane lamps. Several SS people, station themselves around the backyard. 

* * *

The light of the day is fading into the twilight hours of west LA.

It is July and 90 days before the election. Indications in all polls is that my friend is up over the Republican candidate. She is fifteen years younger. Young is a good thing in this election. But the Fox crowd says everything is just a “sugar high” after the President declared he wasn’t going to run again. 

The two of us sat at the small table with the candlelight and the white tablecloth. My wine steward appeared with the wine for the evening. But more than anything, us two old friends simply looked at each other for a few brief moments. One of those moments to honor where someone has come in life by the only person who really knows the person and can honor the person.

* * *

            “Can you believe what’s happening?” she says to me over the flickering flame of the hurricane lamp. 

To be honest, I couldn’t believe what was happening with her life after the abdication of the current president to not running again and her month-long promotion by the media to the greatest thing since sliced bread.

            “It’s pretty spectacular,” I tell her. 

She gives one of her trademark laughs that seems like some type of wax seal for a statement from her. We talk as my waiters serve dinner and the night grows darker. The lights in my trees surrounding the backyard go on which puts a scare into the SS people.  We go through a few bottles of a good French Bordeaux. She feels free with being here with me. I can tell. She has nothing on her schedule tomorrow. Just a time to relax in her home now of LA. Where she lives with her husband, a partner in an LA law firm.

* * *

As the evening moves deeper into the night, my friend, the presidential candidate, loosens up on the second or third bottle of the French Bordeaux. She recalls events and pranks the two of us pulled when we were students at UC Berkeley. We both laugh at these memories we both offer up. Those were such great years. Neither of us knew where we were going. We just knew – somehow – we were going. Somewhere. The “where” would have to come later. 

Then, I remember her being quiet for a few moments as a worried look flickered over her face in the candlelight. 

            “No one has heard this yet, so please keep it quiet,” she says. “My VP choice will be dropping off the ticket in a few days.”

After she said this, she simply looked at me. 

            “There are some other great choices for you,” I said. The three or four other choices had been all over the news in the past month before she made her choice.

            “I know,” she said. “Excellent choices. All selected for me. Not by me.” 

            “You’re upset about this?” I ask.

            “Wouldn’t you be?” she asked.

            “Sometimes, it’s good to have things selected for you,” I say.

            “Sometimes, it stinks,” she says.

            “So, what are you saying?” I ask.

            “I could use more than anything else, a good friend to be my running mate. Someone who I trust more than anyone in the world. Someone who is not grafted onto my ticket as a VP running mate because of strategic political concerns.”

            “Just what are you saying Becca?” I asked.

            “I’m saying that I’d like you to consider becoming the VP on my ticket,” she says.

She is staring at me.

            “You’re serious?” I ask.

She shakes her head.

She gets up from the table and gives me a business card.

            “Just call me within two days at the number on the card,” she says.

She hugs me and gives me a kiss and then walks toward her entourage of black vans. I watch the vans leave down the long driveway of my home and eventually onto Sunset Boulevard. I stand out in my front yard looking at the driveway where the black vans go swishing down. I stand looking down the driveway after the vans have disappeared into the night. 

* * *

I know that the great machine of the party, really the hidden controllers of the party, would get the two of us elected. I have little doubt about this. 

But there was the question in my mind whether she knew about my conservative business career in private industry. And the fact that I hated being controlled by anyone else. Maybe this is why I’ve gone through a few husbands. Maybe she knows all of this? Probably.

So, tempting to take her up on the offer of VP running mate. There is so much I think I could add to her ticket.

Two people representing the pinnacle of careers in politics and finance and business. A once in a lifetime coming together of old friends to work as President and Vice-President of the United States. I doubt she knows how upset I became with her for all the affairs I read about. I also doubt she knows my current political ideology of Conservative. In fact, one of the leading conservatives in the state.

Of course, she must know all of this about me. My increasing conservative positions. And yet, she still wants me to be her VP. I wondered why. 

* * *

This is a lot of stuff to process at one time. 

I walk back to the porch area of my home and sit in the lounge chair on the patio by the pool. No, I tell my security person Rawa. I’m fine to just be out here by myself. 

It’s incredible in many ways that she wants me as a running mate. Does she realize how different the two of us are right now? She must know all of this. She has to. And yet, she wants me as her running mate. 

I get up and pour a glass of wine from the Bordeaux already opened on the table we had dinner at tonight. Out over my yard the lighted trees around my yard that jarred the SS people when they came on. It was a nice view out there, but I had seen a lot of nice views in my life. Since going through one marriage, I’ve been around the block so to speak. Or, as they say, this is not my first rodeo. But then I realize that some have been around far more blocks than I could ever go around. Been in a lot more rodeos than I could ever imagine.