Domestic Affairs (15 page)

Jumping in a car to leave an event had the opposite effect of jumping out to start one. For Olivia, it was always accompanied by a feeling that she had left something behind. Getting a candidate out of a room was tough, especially a politician like Taylor, who always made it seem like he didn't want to leave. She sometimes literally had to tug at a candidate
to make him or her drop the handshakes and stop the chat. Olivia was glad Jacob had taken over staffing Taylor after his speech as she never particularly liked the feeling of making someone leave a room.

By the time Jacob, the governor, and Olivia got settled in the car, it was as if they had been a team for months. They had already fallen into a rhythm, stepping around each other with the comfort of people who had been well choreographed together for years. Olivia looked at Jacob as she started organizing and counting the checks she had collected from the volunteers.
Different candidate, different circumstances, same us.
It was like picking up where they had left off in the last campaign.

“Sakes alive.” Taylor exhaled as he pushed back on his chair. “That was a doozy. How'd we do?”

“Counting now, boss.” Jacob glanced over as Olivia scribbled down the amount she had counted out, $36,250. “Forty at the door. Plus I have ten on my desk, so we're good.”

Olivia knew Jacob probably had forty total. They worked the same way—there was always money to move around in their goals so the candidate would feel good about each event and, more importantly, continue to allow more fundraisers to be added to his schedule. They would tell each other the exact numbers, but no one else. They had learned it together from their old boss, Gabrielle, who had taught Olivia almost all of her Campaign Lessons. She would tell them over and over, “Say what you need to say to the donors and candidates to keep them happy, and tell the truth to your teammates to keep your donors and candidates.” That was a Campaign Lesson that Olivia hadn't numbered yet.
Somewhere in the teens
, she thought.

“He said seventy-five to me at the door.”

Jacob rolled his eyes at the governor's reminder. “He always does, boss. I'm leaving it at fifty and if he gets that extra twenty-five in it'll be icing.”

“How ridiculous is that?” Taylor still seemed to be genuinely baffled by the language of the donors. “Olivia, you think that's normal? For him to fall short and no one calls him on it?”

“Normal, no, sir. But I don't think political fundraising has ever held any claim to normalcy.”

“Yeah. I suppose.” He shook his head. “Could you imagine a businessman saying, ‘I'll buy the stocks for seventy-five thousand dollars,' and then only paying fifty? It's ludicrous. We should try to change it.”

Jacob spouted out the laugh Olivia was holding in. The governor spoke with such levity, she couldn't tell whether or not he was joking.

“Laugh, Jacob. You're running this sham of a business!” he said with the sarcastic nudging tone of an older brother. “You're letting these guys pay you fifty thousand for the seventy-five-thousand-dollar stock. Maybe you should have taken the GMATs after all. I'm going to have a talk with your dad about that next time I see him.”

Now it was Olivia's turn to snicker.

Taylor wasn't ready to give this one up. “Why don't you call Manny and tell him we have him in our budget for seventy-five? You told him that was his goal, right?”

“I did,” Jacob replied dutifully.

“So,” he repeated, “tell him it's in our budget and we need it.”

“I'll get right on that.”

“Don't placate me.”

“No placation, boss. Just don't know how threatened Manny will be by our budget. It's not exactly a certified contract, and even if it was . . .”

“DFTL. I get it, I get it,” Taylor responded, almost but not quite conceding. “Let's see if we can make the process more accountable. More truthful. If we're going to inspire change, we have to be willing to jump a little ourselves.”

Olivia and Jacob smiled at each other in the backseat. Olivia recognized the happiness on Jacob's face as the same as hers—they were glad to be there, in the backseat of the SUV that contained their chance to inspire, to be inspired, and to jump.

As they pulled into the airport, they all three went back to their BlackBerrys, foreseeing the coming thirty-five minutes or so of inability to use them. The car pulled onto the street and over to the private terminal. Olivia had been on private planes before. Well, actually, she had been on two private planes. One was a small plane that she and Adams had taken with Bronler to his event on Martha's Vineyard when their flight was canceled. The other was a small prop plane that still made her
nauseous thinking about it. Both times she had been so nervous about where they were going, who was picking them up when they landed, and the timing of it all that she hadn't really appreciated the experience of being on a noncommercial flight. This time though she was a passenger. Not just any passenger, but a part of Landon Taylor's team, his crew. She was at the cool table in the cafeteria, and someone else was taking care of the details.

As the car rolled toward the small freestanding terminal, Olivia began to gather herself up, ready to go in. She tried to put on her best “I've been to this terminal before” look so as not to seem the newbie that she was. Jacob, as he so often did, saw the effort rather than the effect. He gave her a subtle “chill out” look just in time to stop her from opening her door.

“We good, Sal?” He checked in with the driver, more for Olivia than anything else.

Hand on the handle, Olivia reconfigured herself as the car started moving toward the metal gates to the airfield.

“Ready for takeoff,” Sal replied.

In front of them the metal gates began to open as a guard waved them through. Sal rolled down his window. “Thanks.” He used the tone of formality that security types reserve for each other.

Of course. We're not going into the terminal. Landon Taylor gets driven straight to the plane
, Olivia realized.

“That one's ours?” The governor pointed to a jet not much smaller than the commercial plane she had taken to Florida over the holidays.

“Yes, sir.” Sal began to rattle off facts. “Gulfstream, wingspan is . . .”

“Cool.” Taylor, for a moment, sounded like a young kid with a new toy.

Sal drove them as close to the plane's opened steps as they could get. Two men were standing waiting to open their doors.

“Thanks so much,” Olivia said as one needlessly helped her out of the car.

Jacob sprinted up the steps like an Olympic runner.

“My pleasure,” said the uniformed man to Olivia. “I'm Dan. I'm your pilot today.”

“How are y'all?” Taylor took the man's hand.

“Very well, thank you. Honored to have you aboard today, sir.”

Olivia smiled, wondering if there was anyone who didn't act deferential to Governor Taylor. She had spent time working for so many candidates and politicians, even former presidents, and all had an effect on people but none, that she had seen, had inspired respect so across the board.

The pilot described for Taylor in detail the engine, the wings, thrilled to be so thoroughly captivating the governor. Olivia walked toward the back of the SUV, where Sal was handing the bags to the copilot.

“Here, I can grab mine.” She reached for her own bag.

Sal swatted her hand away. “No, no, darlin'. We got it here.” With a chuckle, almost just to himself, he said, “You really are new to this team.” And then with the tone of a sort of reminiscence he added, “Sweet.”

Olivia stepped back, feeling a little out of place, as Jacob jumped out of the door of the plane.

“We're set up here. It's been advanced!”

“Best one-man advance-and-during team in the game.” Taylor patted Jacob's shoulder as he walked up the stairs past him.

Olivia followed the governor. As she walked in, she tried not to gasp. The plane wasn't just huge, it was beautiful. It had two sets of enormous seats on each side with tables in between. Taylor strolled to the left, dropping comfortably into the window seat facing the front. Jacob had sat himself in the second set of seats behind the governor and had already sprawled out all his paperwork and books as if he had been there a week. Olivia smiled at the mess, walked quietly by the governor, and sat herself in the aisle seat across from Jacob.

Aisle seat? Why would I sit in the aisle seat?

As she mulled over moving to the window, a young woman dressed in a tight navy blue sheath walked by.

“Can I get y'all anything before we take off? We have a full bar and hot options as well as cold today.”

“Diet Coke would be great if you have one, baby,” Taylor said. It was strange to Olivia to hear the governor call someone “baby” and
even stranger that she, Olivia, wasn't offended. Usually the feminist in her, who was rather large and loud on most occasions, would have righteously scolded anyone who used such a term. But with Taylor it was different. There was something about his sincerity and casualness that made the way he called people “baby” actually sound nice. Maybe it was just the accent.

“I'll have one as well, please!” Jacob said, waving his hand. “And what kind of hot options are we talking about today?” He knew by now to take advantage of the food on Henley's planes. Henley always had his galley stocked with the best. It was the reason, other than the fact that Henley always said yes, that Jacob liked to ask him for the plane. Not to mention the flight attendants were beautiful.

I wonder if Olivia ever added that column for flight attendants to that private plane list she keeps. Probably not.

As the plane took off, Jacob bit into the Philly cheesesteak he had ordered and opened up his computer. He figured he could at least get a little work done before Taylor started in on his stories. It was like clockwork. The minute there was no signal left on the governor's BlackBerry, the boss would turn and start with the “Let me tell you a story” stories, which were all well and good but, at this point in their relationship, redundant and distracting. Jacob glanced at his BlackBerry and saw the bars of signal disappearing. Even when it got down to no bars, he saw the small arrow still working in the corner and knew he had a few extra minutes, as Taylor would try to get the last bits in as well.

When Taylor finally tucked his BlackBerry into the front pocket of his briefcase, Jacob started to close programs and move toward him. But instead of his usual “Let me tell you” statement, Taylor leaned across the aisle.

“Okay, new girl. Come on over here—let's get to know you if you're going to join this campaign.”

Olivia looked surprised. She scuffled out of her aisle seat and moved next to the governor. Jacob leaned back and turned his computer back on, mentally high-fiving himself for having scored someone new to listen to Taylor's stories. He shook his head, listening to her giggle
as she spoke.
Going to need to squash the schoolgirl crush she clearly has on him. Harmless
, he thought, and went back to work.

For the next forty minutes, with the governor and Olivia chatting away in the background, Jacob went through a week's worth of scheduling requests. He couldn't remember the last time he got that much work done uninterrupted.

He congratulated himself.
Brilliant! Now this is a campaign I can manage.