LA CANDIDATE

SIGNATURES

"Madame Lafarge, Monsieur Lafarge est prêt à vous recevoir."

Severine got up and entered the office.

"You've finally decided to come and see me."

Severine advanced to give her father-in-law two mandatory kisses, "I saved the best for last," she said as her cheek swept his.

Pierre pointed to a seat that Severine took.

"How are you?" Pierre asked before being interrupted by a knock on his office door.

"I'm sorry, sir, it's a private interview."

"Private, it's my wife and my father we're talking about," Severine and Pierre heard before the door burst open to let in the intruder, who almost tumbled into the room.

"Alexis, I don't remember asking you to join us."

"That's why I thought I would invite myself, Father," Alexis replied while looking at Severine, who didn't waste an inch of her energy to turn her head to face him.

The woman looked ahead of her as she had decided to do since forever. There's nothing interesting in the past except memories collecting dust. Only the future held what she desired. Severine partially exercised what was written in Matthew, chapter 5, verse 30: If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.

Severine still needed Alexis, but he was useless in the instant she lived. Thus, she let Pierre slice her arm but made sure Alexis remained attached by the arm's joint.

"Severine, look at me when I'm speaking to you," Alexis yelled.

"Alexis, don't be a child. Please let us talk among men."

It was not the arm Pierre emasculated his son with his words.

Alexis lowered his head before speaking in a desperate attempt to turn the tables on what would bestow power on Severine to eradicate his existence, "Père ne signez pas!"

Pierre smiled, "Excuse me, I do what I please. Take him out."

Alexis didn't need to look behind him to know the bodyguards were already there. He sniffed, straightened his tie, and turned to barge through the wall of shoulders that blocked his passage, "Putain, vous voulez que je sorte ou pas?" Alexis yelled.

Silence fell once more. Pierre clutched his hands, "You never cease to surprise Severine."

"Why?"

"You're very calm forㅡ."

"Pierre, I'm not here to cry on your shoulder concerning my failed marriage. I thought you knew by now that I prefer to use any violence or anger for trophies of greater worth."

Pierre nodded; he stared straight into a gaze that didn't budge. Stoic and resolved, this was the reason the man believed in Severine.

He recalled the day he asked her what her greatest dream was. Severine had only been married to Alexi for five years; their son Noem was only three, and everyone expected her to say she wished to become an advocate.

Instead, she created the surprise with one sentence: "Presidente, je veux être presidente de la république. " Pierre saw the shock on his son's face.

"Un peu de rouge, Corinne," Pierre's wife said to appease the tension as she stood ready to pour. While Alexis' sister Maxine had a laughing fit, "Severine, since when do you harbor such ambitions?"

"I don't know. It may be because my husband is the mayor of Enghien, and my father-in-law is a senator. How could I not be inspired with all this in the family?"

"Don't listen to her. She's joking," Alexi said.

"No, I'm not," Severine replied, looking at her husband across the table. Perhaps it was then the infamous moment when Severine snapped the red thread between her husband and her. Alexis' stare became that of a man who always seemed to look behind him, though Severine announced her coup from then onwards.

Pierre had observed ever since, no, he began to study Severine from the day his son, at the height of his rebel stage, brought to dinner his black girlfriend.

Smart, Severine exploded any prejudice the Lafarge family could feel concerning her. Severine was the child Pierre wished to have. By her side, Alexis went from being an eccentric nepo baby who wanted to break away from family tradition to being precisely what he detested: A stuck-up wealthy politician. What made him digestible was his party, the Republican Reformist, which had the image of putting people first, while his father's party represented a strict, highly capitalist voice.

For Pierre, what mattered was to see his son on the starting blocks of his political race, but he soon realized Alexis played the puppet in Severine's show. A good wife, Severine supported Alexi while convincing herself she could live her dream by procuration before seeing she could stand on the center stage.

Here she was thirteen years later, demanding what her father-in-law had promised her that night. "You'll have my signature."

Pierre promised in front of everyone that he would sponsor Severine regardless of their relationship or the party she represented at the given time.

In the present, Severine watched Pierre take out the Around the World in 80 Days Mëistertuck bold pen she had offered him for his sixtieth birthday to fill in the form. He then took a stamped envelope, slipped in the form, closed it, and handed it to Severine. "I only have one word."

"And I have a good memory. I shall not forget when the time comes," Severine said and got up.

"You seem sure of the outcome?" Pierre said.

"I have to, a wise man once said; one has to see themselves with their heart's desire to obtain it."

Pierre smiled; "how many signatures do you have?"

"With yours enough," Severine said and left.

Five hundred signatures were needed for one to be a candidate and enter the presidential race officially. Severine maneuvered discreetly. She found her allies by standing by her husband's side. Female restrooms became her booking room as politicians' wives helped her approach her husbands. Dinners, brunches, christenings, bar mitzvahs and more, Severine spent years nourishing the ties she needed for this exact moment.

Ninety-nine problems, not even close. Severine held nine hundred and ninety-nine signatures as she strutted out of Pierre's Lafarge office.

"Do you think she can win?" Asked Pierre's chief of office.

"She'll win; the people will hear despite themselves," Pierre said while looking at Severine's black trench coat flow in the wind and showing the nova check pattern of its inner lining from the window.

"Why do you say that?"

Pierre turned," Because she is the change, my friend, the one none know they need."