Authors: Claire Adams
The
taxi pulled me through Washington once more. I paid him quickly, my eyes nearly
closing as the stress took hold of my brain, and then I climbed the steps with
forceful footfalls. I tapped at the door and Rachel opened it swiftly, her eyes
wide. She didn’t expect me home so soon, if at all. Her words were on her lips
in a moment. “What happened?” she whispered.
I
knelt my head to her shoulder and began to weep. My body was quaking. Rachel
brought her hands to my shoulders and rubbed at my spine, at my very bones. I
could feel her small fingers attempting to loosen the strain and tension in my
back.
Finally,
she drew me to the couch. She leaped up and poured us both a glass of wine
quickly, noting that I was continually staring at the floor before me
listlessly. I accepted the wine and guzzled it back, trying to retreat from my
feelings. But they stayed. They stayed.
“Are
you ready to talk about it?” she whispered then, across from me in the chair by
the window. The moonlight glistened against her red hair.
I
smacked my lips slowly—what a satisfying sound. “You know. It didn’t exactly go
according to plan.” I felt a laugh escape from me now, forcing Rachel into a
worried smile.
“Sure.
Nothing ever does,” Rachel whispered. The silence hung between us for a moment.
“So you told him?”
I
nodded calmly. “It was a beautiful evening. One of the better we’ve ever spent
together. I started to feel, you know, like we were linked in some way—like we
were meant to be together. That perhaps it could even work out; that I could
hold onto my career and still be with him. What a silly thought, no?”
Rachel
just furrowed her eyebrows, then. She didn’t say anything, allowing me to push
through the story.
I
cleared my throat. “Anyway. I told him about Jason. Sure, I didn’t tell him so
well. The story was sloppy and ill-conceived. It sort of came out of nowhere.
But I told him, all the same. And he kicked me out of the bedroom. He
essentially told me he should have never hired an inexperienced girl like me.”
Rachel’s
eyes widened. “He said that?” She knew that this attack on my career was
greater than anything else; but she also understood that I was so assuredly
falling in love with this man.
“And
then. He kicked me out,” I nodded. “He told me to leave. I’m not surprised if
I’m fired. But I can’t be sure.” I sighed, taking another sip. The wine was
bitter, and it fit my mood. Everything seemed to be folding together into this
grand, bitter scheme.
But
Rachel placed her hand on my knee from across the coffee table. Her thin wrist
twisted a bit as she did it. “You’re going to get through this, Amanda. Come
on. You’re a fighter. That’s how you got into this position. Not for any other
reason. Not because you’re beautiful, because anyone can see that. But because
you have balls and brains.” Rachel’s face was so grim. Her mouth was a flat
line between her fine cheeks. In that moment, she noted that I was out of wine,
and she re-filled us both, bringing us into the next stage of this drunken
reality: away from sad drunk and more toward angry drunk.
“You
know what we should do?” she asked me, midway through her second drink. The
evil gleamed in her eyes. “We should tell his wife.” She nodded succinctly.
I
tossed my head back, shaking it. “What do you mean?” I asked. “Camille? No. No,
no.”
“But
think about it?” Rachel asked, flashing her palms toward me in a curious move.
“He won’t be expecting it. She’s not the public, certainly, and she won’t want
this to get out. But it will offer the perfect retribution for all he’s put you
through. He’ll have this hellacious woman figure in his life, and he certainly
will rue the day he ever misaligned your career like that.” She smiled in that
grim way once more. “It’s beautiful.”
I
laughed, but I wasn’t so sure. “What about going to the media?” I asked,
playing along with her words. “I could tell them that I was the president’s
little plaything for a while, that I have secrets to the ways in which he
handles other countries and world leaders.” I thought for a moment. “You know,
it’s actually kind of true.” I winked at her.
Rachel
laughed, nearly spinning her wind with the joyousness of it. “You’re wicked, my
girl. Wicked. We could ruin him. We two in this room. We have more dirt on the
president than anyone in the world.”
Rachel
reached toward the cell phone on the coffee table, then. I paused from my
laughter, my eyebrows high. “What are you doing?” I whispered.
Rachel
shrugged. “We have to start somewhere, don’t we? The Times? Someone will be
awake, typing away in these late hours.”
But I
shook my head, a grim expression exhibiting itself on my face. “Not tonight,
Rachel. A couple of drunk ladies calling into the New York Times? I don’t think
that would work so well.” I winked at her, but really, my heart was quaking in
my chest. In these moments, I hated the president with a sure passion. However,
I knew that deep inside my soul, I actually cared for him a great deal. Even
loved him, although I hated to admit this to myself. Threatening Xavier from
afar was making me feel ever better (and the wine wasn’t hurting, either).
However,
ruining Xavier’s life also meant something else. It meant that I was exposing
myself as his “bimbo”—something that Jason was attempting to do, all this time.
And that meant that I couldn’t ever tell anyone. I couldn’t allow my identity
to be revealed. I couldn’t allow all that I had worked for to be burned at the
stake, so to speak, only for my anger and jealousy. I was much stronger than
that.
Thusly,
a few hours later—near sun-up, when Rachel went to bed—I laid in my guest
bedroom and listened to the cars as they whizzed by the apartment complex. I
thought about the life I’d always wanted: the powerful one at the top. I
thought about how lonely that one was: that if I ever found anyone to share it
with, that would truly be a beautiful thing. But my need for that life still
obliterated everything, almost even my deep passion for the president. And
thus: all my decisions had to keep my career in mind. If that ultimately meant
that I needed to leave the campaign in order to resist the president and get
away from his lying, scheming self—the man who had pushed me back out into the
dangerous world, even after I had told him all that had happened to me (the
blackmail, etc.), then so be it.
Chapter 2
The
next morning, I stretched myself from bed, unsure if I should go back into
work. I could remember the scorn from the president’s lips so well in my ears,
and I didn’t want to return to that mockery. I didn’t want to go see those
eyes—those eyes that had provided such comfort, such humor in the previous
days—and know that they ultimately hated me, now. It was too much to face.
However,
the White House had become my home, in many ways. As I tapped from the guest
bedroom in Rachel’s house, I noted the cold, slickness of the floor; I wrapped
my sweater around my shoulders. I didn’t feel like myself, as I did in the
White House. Instead, I felt like a foreigner. I could hear Rachel getting
ready for work in her larger bathroom, and I knew that I needed to head out the
door, as well. What was I going to do at home all day—in Rachel’s home? Read
romance novels? Watch talk television? Dream ever about reaching the heights of
my career, without really pursuing it in a realistic sense?
No.
I
tugged myself into the shower and allowed the hot water to course down my back,
down my sides. I scrubbed at my armpits and tried to rid my body of Xavier’s
scent. I didn’t want to remember him as I pulled off my dress later this
evening. I wanted every speck of evidence to falter away from me, for good.
I
dried my hair, thinking about my apartment. I imagined the cameras lurking like
sharks in the depths. I wondered if I’d ever return back there or if it was
ultimately lost to me for good. I’d never allowed myself to lose so many things
at once, before. I’d lost Xavier. I’d lost my home. All I really had, in this
moment, was Rachel. And perhaps a drive to succeed, still riveted somewhere in
my head.
I
tugged my dress over my head and heard Rachel as she shuffled from the door.
Both of us were late for work (and both of us were absolutely battling
hangovers from the previous evening, I knew). I calmly trounced toward the
door, taking every precaution from shaking my tender head too much. I spun back
around, noting the comfortable shell of the room around me, before exiting into
the revving world. Soon, I’d have to see Xavier. I tried to turn off the
anxiety of my mind.
Finally,
I arrived at the White House, pushing myself from the taxi in another long line
of almost-late government employees. I nodded to them as we passed each other.
They naturally allowed me to enter the White House first, to go through
security first. After all, I was their leader. I was the campaign director. I
was twenty, thirty years their junior, in some cases. And yet, there I was.
The
secret servicemen looked at me stoically, without a speck of recognition. I
wondered what this meant. I wondered if they knew about what had happened
between the president and I—if they understood that it was over between us,
that because of me, they had a serious security breakage on their end. I wanted
to take them to the side and shake them, telling them it wasn’t my fault. But
their eyes were so cold.
Dimitri,
my old friend from the old campaign days, was especially cold. He pressed his
lips together and allowed me to pass by. I imagined a day in which he would
hold out his hand and shake his head dismally. “Not today, Miss Martin,” he’d
say. The White House mouth would be closed to me. My dreams would rush through
the cracks.
That
morning, I sat at my desk and sipped my coffee, watching the campaign team roll
around my evenly. The speed was ramping up, as it naturally did during the year
before the election. The next few months would be hard and fast, and then in
the summer, we’d ramp up even more. It was going to be a hard road, but it was
a road that I’d imagined so many, many times before. It seemed impossible to
imagine myself not involved.
Jason,
on the other side of the office, seemed in a tizzy. He continually placed his
hand on his forehead, scraping the sweat away from his brow. He shook his head
into the phone he held at his ear, opening his mouth to bicker in a menacing
manner. I raised my eyebrow toward him. Nothing ever went to plan, I wanted to
tell him. Not even the best-laid of them all.
That
afternoon, I ate my lunch at my desk, working through the last mechanisms of my
later-afternoon briefing. I munched through cucumbers and some almonds, knowing
that this would just barely push me through the rest of the day. But I didn’t
have the time to go into the world to find anything. Before me, many of the
desks were empty, revealing that these people had wants, had needs, had
desires.
Above
the desks, peering toward me in the darkness of the hallway, I saw a thin,
muscled figure. I turned my neck toward him, alarmed at his secrecy. Of course,
the man was Xavier. He’d pushed from his Oval Office to come spy on me—perhaps
to fire me in decency, when no one but that little guy with the southern accent
in the corner would know.
But as
soon as he caught my eye, shivers coursed through both of us. I swallowed
slowly. He spun around, giving me the darkness of his back, his black hair. I
turned back toward my work, readying myself for the briefing. Sometimes, Xavier
didn’t go to them. Perhaps I could push through. Perhaps this stress that
pulsed in me could go unnoticed.
However,
when the briefing finally came, I felt the shivers coursing through my body. I
stood before the great crowd of fully-fed campaign workers, feeling Jason’s burly
presence beside me. He leaned toward me and whispered: “You seem awful quaky
today. You sure you don’t want me to cover it?”
I
peered up at the back of the room, where I noted that Xavier had just entered,
his dark eyes peering toward me. It felt like a challenge, like he wanted to
make sure I was up to snuff. The anger grew in me, obliterating the love I had
for him, even just for a moment.
I
grabbed the baton, not giving Jason a decent response to his malicious
question. I tapped it against the board before me, where I’d drawn a decent
outline of our education bill plan—the one we were shuffling through congress
in the following few months to really get a lead over the Republican candidate.
“LISTEN UP, PEOPLE,” I announced, lending them a sense for my passion, my
drive. “Get the fuck out of your heads and listen to me.” I furrowed my
eyebrows. They were going to pay attention to me—their campaign leader—for as
long as I held this chair. Xavier was going to know that a little phrase like
the one he used—the one initiating his regret for even hiring a “29-year-old
girl” like me—held no validity. I was strong, empowered.
And I
would make him win.
Chapter 3
As I
pushed through the meeting, I grew stronger and truer to the feelings of
triumph inside me. I no longer looked toward Xavier. Rather, I turned my
attention toward the people before me, the people who turned toward me with a
sense of passion and drive for this cause. I didn’t have time for people like
Jason and Xavier—people with such apparent cruelty in their hearts. Did they
believe that you could only make it in this business if you were cruel, if you
obliterated everything and everyone in your path?