Domestic Affairs (24 page)

She looked down at an unfinished email to her sister. The half-written e-mails seemed to pile up these days. She wanted to talk to her family and friends, but there was just never the time. And when there was the time, she didn't know what to say. Her sister's emails had gone from annoyed to passive-aggressive, to worried, and right back to annoyed.
I don't understand
, read the last email,
how it is possible you don't have five minutes in your day to call me. And if I hear one more “all good” from you I'll come to your campaign office and scream!
She read it again, to formulate a reply, but decided she was too tired to deal with her sister.

As she took the shuttle from the plane to her hotel, she called Jacob so he could fill her in on the intricacies of Taylor's relationships in Florida, as she did at the start of all her stops.

“Hello, Charlie,” she said in her best Cameron Diaz voice, which, Jacob had pointed out many times, was not good.

“Hello, angel,” he said, playing along. Then he added, “We gotta stop doing this. One day I'm going to answer the phone like that around Sophie, and she's going to freak.”

“Oh, please. She knows us well enough by now to not care!”

“True.”

“How are things going with her anyway?”

“All good.”

“Right.” She recognized the response and continued on. “Okay, so, Florida. I have Paul and Milo hosting the two big events but I was thinking of just putting them together.”

“Yeah, that's a good idea if you're looking to shorten your life. A bullet to the brain would be less messy.”

“Um, not such good friends?”

“Paul was married to Milo's sister and now he dates some twenty-two-year-old. Plus, now they are finance chairs of opposing sides in the gubernatorial primary down there, so it's basically devolved into color wars, with each of them at the helm.”

“Got it.” She thought for a minute. “Where do we fall politically on the race?”

“We're Switzerland.”

“Perfect. So I can offer our support based on which team raises more?”

“Yeah, brilliant, Liv,” he shot back sarcastically. “Screw up the second-most important state for us for a few extra dollars.”

“Kidding, Jacob. Chill.”

“Florida is a delicate freakin' balance. I'm petrified we'll have to actually pick a side in the primary. That would majorly cut into our base there. Senator Kramer would be all over it. One false move and the dominos fall.”

“Got it, got it. So we do one from five to seven and one from seven to nine. What else?”

“That's it on Florida. Unless you want to put in a YP event late-night.”

“Also messier than a bullet to the head. Not doing those until we need them politically.” A YP, or young professional, event was a euphemism for an event with a low ticket price. “You raise five hundred dollars for every ten hours of work you put in.”

“Good. Okay, so I'm emailing you the list of past Florida donors. Also check in with Theresa Chambers; she used to be our consultant down there.”

“Wow. I haven't heard that name in a while.”

“Yeah, she's laying low since that whole thing with Senator Traxton.”

“Right.” Olivia had heard rumblings of the story but had never heard someone say anything about it plainly. She tried not to sound as surprised as she was that it was clearly true. She always thought the rumor that had Senator Traxton's chief of staff driving Theresa across the state border for an abortion had to have been a campaign myth, but Jacob had known Theresa forever. He was stating it as fact.

“You know that asshole voted on the floor against a choice bill two weeks after she aborted his baby?”

“Yuck, that's outrageous. It's amazing that story never got out.”

“Yeah. You know I worked on that campaign for a month, right?”

“You did? How did I not know?”

“I don't tell anyone about it. I try to forget it myself. What a freakin' mess that was. Everyone knew what was going on. I mean, he slept with every female staffer. I got right out. I'm not working for someone like that. That could ruin your career forever.”

“Yeah.” Olivia rolled her neck down, cracking it as it moved.
He is not like that. It was a kiss. Taylor is not Senator Traxton. He is not someone like that.

“I mean look at the Edwards staffers—all of them have more subpoenas than the Madoff family. Doesn't even matter if they knew anything. Just being around for it won them each a lifetime of debt in legal bills.”

Olivia squirmed, hoping he would stop talking. Lawyers' bills. She didn't even have money to pay her cable bill. What if someone found out? What if Landon told Aubrey? She'd be the downfall of everyone. Of Jacob. She would lie. No one could prove anything. They wouldn't ask if she had kissed him, only if she was sleeping with him. And she was not sleeping with him. Thank God.

“Ah. I gotta go, Liv. Can you start with that and then we'll go through Texas later?”

“Yeah, yeah, of course. Later.”

“Later.”

When she got into her room, Olivia bounced down on the bed, thrilled to be there. The hotel was a sister hotel to the Brinmore and
since the Brinmore was her other family—her actual family would probably rightly say she spent more time there than with them these days—they comped her a room for two days while she set up the events. She looked around. The room was decidedly bigger than her apartment. And nicer. And considerably cleaner.

Before she could get comfortable, not that she would have even considered it, her phone began to ring—Jacob calling back with more background information on more donors. She talked while throwing her bag into a corner of the room, gathering up her materials, and heading back out.

Fortunately the Brinmore Miami was just as popular and convenient as the one in New York, so almost all of her meetings were right there in the lounge. Even her meals would be comped. Most likely the people she was meeting would pay the bills, all of them people who had more in their change pockets than she had in her bank account. Still, there was Campaign Lesson #4: Always have a backup plan—particularly on weeks like this when she couldn't be entirely sure her credit cards wouldn't be rejected.

She moved her meeting with the brother-in-law donor, Paul, back so as to make sure he wouldn't run into Milo and added on a meeting with the two college students, Peter and Mira, who wanted to talk about the young professional event she would not be doing.
That coffee I'll definitely have to pay for
, she thought, making sure to schedule it at a time that was decidedly not during a meal. She sat waiting for her first meeting—Wendy and Jason Silverman, also known as the apex of Florida society—drinking a coffee and wondering if she could go the full two days without ever leaving the hotel.

After her first two meetings, Olivia went back to her room, relishing the idea of having twenty minutes to herself and scheming to escape in a nice bath, something she hadn't had since she moved into her studio with just a shower only a few years ago. Once in the room, she started running the warm water, throwing in some of the hotel's soap to make it sudsy. It hadn't gotten more than a few inches high when her cell phone rang.

“Curses,” she muttered, seeing Alek's name come up and knowing that she not only needed to take the call, but that, despite its
larger-than-her-apartment status, this room was not big enough to conceal the sound of running water in the background. She begrudgingly turned off the water and answered the phone.

“Hi, Alek!”

“Se princess.”

She smiled, enjoying his nickname for her. “How are you?”

“Good. Good. I have question for you.”

“Yup?”

“Did se governor, he change his number?”

“His number? Umm . . . You know, Alek, I don't actually know. I never call him on his cell and when he calls me, it comes up as private.” She could tell Alek was in the mood to talk for at least ten minutes, if not twenty. He was always in the mood to talk. She balanced the phone on her shoulder, pulled up the drain in the bathtub, and watched the bubbles dissipate.
Just as well. Who takes a bath in the middle of the day anyway?

“Oh.” Alek thought for a minute, sounding dejected. “I just call him and haven't heard back. I thought maybe . . .”

“Really?” She tried to sound totally surprised, even though she knew how bad Taylor was at calling people back.
And they've been so busy lately. I mean I don't even get to my calls these days.
She thought about her sister's message waiting for her on voicemail.
Landon must have a million times more.
“I'm sure he didn't get the message! You know how awful he is at checking his phone!”

Alek quickly agreed to the not-complete lie, as donors always did for fear of seeming like they didn't know him well.

“You know,” she said, “the best thing is to call Jacob, and he'll get him for you. You have his number, right?”

“Um, yes. Actually, you give it to me one more time.”

“Sure, of course.” She scrolled through her phone looking for Jacob's number, which the ease of technology had spared her from having to memorize.

“You know Landon is my oldest political friend,” Alek said as she searched.

“I know, Alek. He always talks about how long you guys have known each other. It's so great.” The governor did talk about him frequently and
Olivia knew, despite the fact that Alek could be annoying to talk to, that Taylor genuinely liked him. She had heard him say so plenty of times. They were friends.

“I haven't seen him in ages. I know he's very busy, but, you know, I see him only now when he ask for money.”

That stung. Not just for Alek, but for her own confidence. It was her job to make sure donors didn't feel like Taylor's personal ATM machine. To do her job well—the way she wanted to do it, where donors raised because they were part of something—Olivia had to make them feel a connection to the governor. It was one of the reasons she loved working for Taylor. He really had those friendships; she just needed to maintain them a bit while he was busy campaigning. She thought back to Adams, for whom she needed to actually forge the friendships. This was easier. Well, it was supposed to be.

“I'm so sorry, Alek.”

She thought of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s quote about knowing a man's true character when he was at the bottom, but actually she thought it was a better sign of character to see how they acted when they were on top. That wasn't the case here, though. This wasn't about Taylor's character, which, she assured herself, was good, and more importantly, loyal.

“Every Sursday we would go to the peach pie place and the voman who knew us, she vould know exactly vhat we vanted.”

He's just busy. Plus, Alek is annoying. It takes him a lifetime to get to his point.

Alek went on about the pies. “Now, no more!”

Olivia felt bad for Alek. Then she had a flash, wondering if this was how Marcy and Katherine talked about her, since she had not made it to Sunday brunch in at least a month. Campaigns were hard. It wasn't as if she didn't want to go to Sunday brunch. And it certainly didn't mean she loved her friends any less. She would much rather be at a meal with friends than glued to her computer in her office.

“I know he misses the time when he could do that. Really, Alek. We're all just doing the best we can.” She couldn't figure out the war within her. She felt slightly annoyed at Alek and terribly sympathetic at the same time. She needed to help him but she wasn't sure if she was
doing it to placate a major donor or to redeem Taylor. Or if she was trying to remind herself that long friendships mattered most in life. She hung up, pledging to get some time on the schedule for Alek. And also to get to Sunday brunch.

As the governor started speaking to the Pottawattamie County Democratic Club, Jacob moved toward the back of the lobby. He ducked quietly off to the side and into the kitchen, a small, musty-smelling room where a few people were puttering around, putting chips into plastic bowls. He sat on a stool by the counter and began to answer emails and make calls.

You could always tell how long a staffer had been around his or her candidate by where they stood during a speech. People on the trail for one year would be as close to the podium as possible, hanging on every word that dropped from the candidate's lips. Two to three years later they'd be in the room but paying little to no attention to anything around them. Three years or more and you could always find them sitting in an adjacent room, hiding out to do work, making calls, or just getting some food.

Jacob, now nearing his fifth year with the governor, knew every speech by heart. If he could have left the building completely, he might have. He answered emails, snacking on potato chips and ignoring calls until he saw Olivia's number come up. He had been missing her since they spoke about Miami in the morning and he needed to make sure everything was okay.