Domestic Affairs (10 page)

Of course in Chris's case, as Olivia found out over the course of two years, that art was used without restraint and was practiced on women even more habitually than it was directed at politicos. He had broken her heart in a cruel, unexpected way. Who was she kidding? It was a totally expected way. Intellectually expected at least.
Damn expectations
, Olivia thought. She hated the phrase “Keep your expectations low.”
I wonder if that has ever made disappointment less hurtful or easier to handle for anyone.
Never that she could remember.

The low expectation she was supposed to have—the one she swore to everyone, including herself, that she had—that Chris was
capable of being in a monogamous relationship (any Google search would have invariably demonstrated the low odds) did not make finding out that she was not his only girlfriend any less painful.
Lucky. You're lucky
, she silently repeated, like a yoga chant reminding herself that the now-married Chris had lied to her with great regularity.
I'm lucky he didn't pick me, I would not want to be married to him. I would not want to be married to someone who cheats.
Olivia held tight to the words in the hopes they would function like a shield and fend off his admittedly handsome eyes and smile. Sure enough, his deep blue eyes were upon them when Olivia looked up from her thoughts. Taylor stood to give him a hug.

“My man, the gov,” Chris said, grasping Taylor's shoulders.

Damn it, even the cheesiest of lines sound perfectly acceptable when he says them.
Their two minutes of niceties and conversation were lost on Olivia while she tried to focus on staying cool, calm, and collected.
Breezy. Stay breezy, Olivia.

“Do you two know each—”

Chris interjected before the “yes” came out of Olivia's mouth. “No one steps into New York without knowing the beautiful Olivia Greenley.”

He leaned over to give her a kiss on the cheek and she politely smiled with a tense edge.

“Always the charmer,” she shot right back with a huge smile, knowing the only way to fight fire was with fire. “Chris is running this state these days. Today the mayor of the Brinmore, tomorrow maybe mayor of the city.”

She tried not to let her smile turn to a smirk even though she couldn't help feeling proud of doing what she always noticed him doing. That thing she could never get quite right. It would probably be Campaign Lesson #10 or 11 if she could ever learn it. It was a political bomb—couching private information in a compliment so skillfully that everyone around would be impressed at the kindness; meanwhile the person receiving the “compliment” would sting from it and have to humbly thank the complimenter for being stung. In public.

In this case, she knew he wanted to run for mayor eventually, and no one wants political ambitions known before they are announced. It was a rumor that he was constantly working to avoid.

“That's what I'm hearing. Seems the whole city is singing your praises.” Taylor played right into the compliment, going on about Chris's latest appearance on CNN. Chris's eyes widened a bit—he was seemingly caught off guard—but he continued to smile.

“Well, I'll let you get back to it. Time is money when Olivia is around.” Chris nodded to her and ambled away to his own table, continuing to greet people along the way.

Time is money. Hmpf.
She'd really have to practice her poker face.

“Nice poker face,” Taylor said, again as if he had heard her inner monologue.

“Huh?”

He cut off her embarrassing loss of words as they sat back down. “Did you work for him?”

“Ummm . . . No. I mean I helped him but no, never worked for him. We're friends . . . I mean we . . .”

“And the full-sentence translation of that is . . .?”

“We used to date.” She lowered her head in defeat.

“Oh, really?” The governor sounded surprised.

“Yeah. During the '08 campaign. Well, if you can call it that. He, well, he pretty much lived life like he was on
The Bachelor
, you know; he dated a number of girls, narrowed it down to two, and then chose one at the last minute.”

“What an ass. And I take it you were in the last rose ceremony?”

“Unbeknownst to me, yeah, I guess I was. Though instead of ABC, his surprise-to-me engagement was announced on Page Six. Good times.” She laughed self-consciously. It was a story she rarely talked about, and saying it aloud still made her cringe with embarrassment.
Really, Olivia? Really? Why are you saying this to the governor? Why would you tell him who you dated? Why would you tell him you dated Chris? You never tell anyone this. Idiot. Subject change stat.
“Wait, are you telling me you watch
The Bachelor
?” Luckily, her surprise that he had recognized the TV reference supplied the perfect transition.

The governor smiled. “No, I get periodic briefings on trends and fads. Apparently it makes me more mainstream. You know, people like to feel they could have a beer with me.”

“Wow. How sad is that?”

“That I have to be briefed to seem human? Very.”

“No, no!” Olivia laughed. “That our country wants a leader who watches reality TV shows. I mean, I feel I lose brain cells every time I watch one. I want the person running our country to be way too smart for shows like
The Bachelor
. It makes no sense. Don't you want someone so much smarter than you deciding when we go to war?” She caught herself. “I mean not you as in you, as in people other than you.”
Oy.
“Case in point.”

The governor sipped his coffee, seemingly pleasantly amused as she flailed about in front of him.

“Anyway, you seem plenty mainstream to me even without the reality TV show knowledge,” she added.

“We'd be in good shape if there were more voters like you out there,” he said as he ran his hands back through his hair. “I'm getting the hang of it though. It's funny, I remember when I was a professor, thinking that same thing. Yelling at politicians on TV who were so blatantly dumbing down the issues. It seemed so fake. Remember when Jon Stewart did that bit about how screwed up it was that people wanted to vote for someone they could get a beer with when that person was a recovering alcoholic?”

“Yes, I totally remember that. You had to laugh. It was too scary to do anything else.”

“Exactly. But I'd throw a fit about it to anyone who was listening. Or not listening. About how wrong it was that those were the standards we held politicians to. And that the politicians were complacent because they played along. Then I started campaigning.”

“Do you feel like you became complacent?”

“No. Well, maybe, but I understand it's not what I thought it was.”

“What is it?”

“People don't want to elect someone they can have a beer with—that's just press spin on people wanting to know you can relate to them. They want to see in your eyes that you understand where they are coming from. You don't have to have a beer with them, but you have to understand and recognize their need to have a beer at the end of the day. Take
The Bachelor
. I think most people actually do agree with you. They don't want a president who watches that show. However, they do want
a president who accepts the fact that they watch the show as part of their life, not just a joke. Now, you can separate the two because you have thought through the idea on a thorough and intellectual level. But most Americans don't make a distinction between what they actually want and what they say. If I know what the rose ceremony is, then in a way I know the world they live in. It's really just a connection to their needs and their lives.”

“You never seem to dumb down what you say though. It's a rare ability. That thing Clinton could do too—translate an idea into someone else's language without losing the intelligence of the original thought.” Olivia had marveled a lot at this talent when she watched Governor Taylor in the past.

“Thanks, Olivia.” He held her eyes in an earnest gaze that made her feel close to him in a new way. “I think it's probably more of a learned skill than a talent. But thanks.”

He seemed to think for a minute before saying, “I'll tell you what, it was clearly a lucky miss for you, but I think Chris made a big mistake not giving you that rose.” Then he whispered in a way that seemed far less inappropriate than the words were, “I mean, if I were twenty years younger . . .” He smiled, standing up to greet their next meeting.

She tried to stop the blood from rushing to her cheeks as he moved into the next conversation. What she wouldn't have given to have met him twenty years ago. Well, no, she'd have been seven then. But if they were both twenty at the same time. She would have definitely loved him. He was the explanation she had been looking for when her friends questioned why she, someone who bought wedding magazines just to look through and who had already picked out her wedding dress, cake, and flowers ten times over, could never manage to stay in a relationship for more than two months. “I'm too busy,” she would always argue.

But the truth was right there in front of her. She was in search of her Landon Taylor, and she wasn't prepared to settle for less. She smiled, happy in the knowledge that the theoretical man on the pedestal in her head actually existed. Sure, he was older than she and already married, but his existence had to mean there were others out there like him.

As Jo ushered their next meeting to them, Olivia refocused on business and as she would continue to do all day, tried to push down the inappropriate thoughts of Landon Taylor as her perfect man.
You will not be the cliché girl with a crush
, she vowed, but Olivia caught herself more than once noticing how easy it was to be around him. She had even ordered a hamburger and fries when he jokingly pushed her to order food at lunch. “Just beyond your comfort zone,” he had said, “is where all the good stuff is.”

Even the donors seemed of a higher caliber around Landon. The last coffee was with Melissa Lowe, a businesswoman known for her temper, who spoke passionately about the work Share Our Strength was doing to bring school breakfasts to all communities. It was actually one of Olivia's favorite parts about political fundraising, being able to see hot-tempered CEOs and hard-nosed businesspeople in situations that they loved and enjoyed, where you were, therefore, more likely to catch them exposing a kinder side of their personality. Most people, she thought, really did get involved in politics for the right reasons—to do good, to help others, to make change. Especially when they were around the right candidates.

At the end of the day, the governor's driver dropped her off at home, concluding, for her, a perfect workday.

As she slumped down into her sea-green couch, a hand-me-down from her cousins that probably could be more accurately described as a very big chair, her head flopped back and her eyes landed on the poster hanging on the brick wall. She threw her feet up on the wood Ikea coffee table in front of her and considered the black and white photo of Martin Luther King, Jr. leading a huge march. Behind him stood a front line of people holding hands, each with a more determined look on their face than the next. She had gotten the poster in high school and it had been one of the few things to survive both the move to college and the bumpy U-Haul trip back from DC. She wondered if perhaps she had finally found her own movement, her own march, her own leader.

L
ater that night her BlackBerry lit up with a red message. Being superstitious, she hadn't saved Governor Taylor's name into her contacts, but no one else in her life sent pins, so she knew it was him.
Note to self, find out what pins are!

PIN 317323: Hey. Usually donors ask me to drop my staffers, not demand they come back. With some fans of yours. You busy?

Olivia's heart skipped a beat as she looked around at her half-baked French-bread pizza in the toaster oven; the computer, open to Adams's latest list, the one she promised him she would finish before officially leaving his employ in three weeks; and the DVR'ed
Colbert Report
playing on her TV.
Be professional. Sound busy. But not too busy. Write back quickly
, she ordered herself.

PIN 678018: For my fans? Never too busy. How can I help?

PIN 317323: Secondo, 51 and Madison. 20 min?

Yes.
Of course she wanted to go. Obviously anything would have been better than going through another list, but this—this was her invitation to sit at the grown-ups' table. She picked up her phone to tell someone. Then she quickly put it down. Campaigns left little time for friends so she hadn't talked to anyone non-campaign-related in weeks. Okay, months. Any conversation now would have to be longer than a quick squeal about her night-to-be.

She could call her sister, who knew about the Taylor job, but then she'd have to turn down an invitation to go away this weekend, again. She could call her mom in Westchester, but then she'd have to answer for the fact that no, she had not yet called Dr. Henner to make her annual appointment, for the third year in a row. She shook her head in frustration.
Campaigns really turn relationships into a lot of work. Who has time anyway?

She didn't even have time for a shower. Twenty minutes were barely enough to get to Fifty-first Street even if she took a cab, which she really didn't want to do. She'd already spent her self-imposed cab quota for the week. The quota she never kept to.

She glanced at her closet and groaned. It was full of useless items. Worn-out and mostly wrinkled—New York City dry cleaning was not a viable option on her salary—Banana Republic and J.Crew suits. All of which were about two sizes too big since she'd lived solely on Doritos and mochas on the last campaign. Surprisingly enough, stress and junk food made a better diet plan than Jenny Craig.

She looked at the Brooks Brothers shirt.
Wore that last time.
Then her eyes turned down to the black dress from earlier in the day that was strewn on the floor, amazingly not wrinkled.
Well, not too wrinkled
.
Just stick with what you had on
, she decided as she traded out the comfy sweats she had adopted the minute she walked in the door.
Definitely could've hung that up.
It would do though and kept her looking professional. Plus if she kept her outfit the same, her what-to-wear-freak-out might be slightly less obvious.
Probably not.