Domestic Affairs (25 page)

“Hey, angel,” he whispered, and crunched down on a potato chip.

“Hey, Jacob.”

She only called him Jacob when she was stressed. “What's going on? You okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. Just tired. Hey, I need to get Alek and the gov together for a meal.”

“Ugh, why? I need him to meet around eighteen million people. We don't have time for the people he already knows.”
She's out of her mind
, he thought, chomping down on two more chips.
I'm not having him sit through a four-hour dinner with Alek.

“Please. I'll make it easy. I can get Alek down to Miami and we can do dinner with him after the event. Please make this work, Jacob. I promise it will be worth it.”

He hated when she said “please” like that. He took a deep breath in, scrolling through the schedule. He had Taylor getting into Florida from Iowa at three forty-five, leaving barely enough time for him to get to the hotel, change, and race to the fundraiser. The Iowa day that preceded Florida was stacked, and the second day in Florida started at eight a.m. Adding in a late dinner made him tired on Taylor's behalf just thinking about it.

“Shit, Liv. He's going to be so tired.”

“There's literally no other time I can do this. Alek says Taylor was his first friend in politics and now he can't even get a meal with him. He's feeling totally unloved, and unloved people don't raise money.”

“They're donors, Liv, not girlfriends. They don't need to be loved.” Jacob looked up from his emails and peeked into the room to see the governor tightening the top on his water bottle, a telltale sign he was about ten minutes from being done. “All right, all right, I gotta go. Catch ya on the rebound.”

“Please try, Jacob,” he heard Olivia say as he hung up.

“Just a few more,” he whispered to no one in particular as he grabbed up another handful of chips.
I don't even like these
, he thought, wiping off the grease on the inside sleeve of his blue blazer. Clearly everyone in politics wore blazers like this because nothing stuck to them.
Well, at least in Iowa politics, where butter is more common than water.
He pulled the lapels together and started to button it before remembering that on the last trip here he had realized this particular blazer had gotten too tight.
Okay, so the tightness isn't particular to this blazer
, he thought, remembering that there was another Butter Burger stop on the schedule later that day.
Great. I'm getting a beer belly without even getting to have the beer.
He forced himself to walk around the room to where the governor was taking questions.

“What is your position on charter schools?”

Jacob recognized the tall, curly-haired lady from one of the school board events they had been to a month or so ago. Or maybe two months ago. Time really was flying, not to mention running together.

“Mrs. Stabile, it is so nice to see you again, ma'am.” The governor stepped toward her. “Mrs. Stabile and I met at the Jefferson Middle School just a few weeks back, where we talked with parents about the importance of after-school programs.”

Jacob shook his head, thinking he would never stop being impressed by the governor's ability to remember names.

“If you really look them in the eyes, right at the bridge of their nose, you can sear the face into your memory,”
Taylor had once told him.

Jacob had tried very hard that day to practice the new technique and had almost gotten slapped by a woman who thought he was checking out her plastic surgery. On top of which, he was so focused on staring at her eyes, he forgot to listen to her name or remember what color hair she had. There was no way he'd even recognize her, much less remember her.

“Harriston!”

The only thing he would have liked better than being able to remember people's names was being able to convince a few specific people to forget his.

“Hey, Joe.” He grabbed the hand of the robust man standing before him in a plaid shirt tucked into dark jeans. Joe Ottingly was one of his Iowa county captains. He was fiftysomething, with spiky, short hair, a remnant of his military days, that was now almost completely gray. Joe stood too close and was always sweating more than seemed appropriate, but he was a hard worker, and Jacob needed him happy.

“Great event!”

“So good to see you, Joe. The numbers from your county are looking good!”

“Thanks, thanks.” Joe wiped his brow, moving the sweat around rather than getting rid of any of it. “Listen, we need money for the vans.”

“I know,” Jacob said, pacifying him. “Let me get back to my desk and work out where we can get it from.”

He knew where he would get it from, but this was a standard reply, promising, but without negotiating in person. He had been schooled in this process. “Y'all never commit money on the spot!” Henley had yelled at Jacob once, smacking the back of his head like a
fraternity brother. Though the sting of the hit seemed harsh, the lesson was ingrained and he didn't commit funds ever, even though he knew Olivia could get money in for something as utilitarian as a van.
On my way to being a BSD
, he reminded himself. Then he thought about upping Olivia's goal yet again and emailed himself a reminder:
Schedule that dinner with Alek.

Jacob and Olivia jumped into the backseat from either side of the black SUV and closed the doors at the same time, like they had been doing since that first event in Connecticut, which now officially seemed like four years ago. As the car sped up Park Avenue in New York City, Olivia started counting the money, and Jacob placated the governor post-event.

Having settled into his seat and taken a swig of water, the governor turned back to Jacob, who placed the governor's BlackBerry in his outstretched hand, as per their routine. After the “Berry,” as the governor liked to call it, had rung in the middle of one of his speeches, Jacob had been tasked with minding it during events. He would switch it to vibrate and look out for “must-answer calls,” a.k.a. Billy and Aubrey. In recent months he had even gotten comfortable enough to answer some donor and political calls.
Only the ones the gov is never going to call back anyway. At least this way they get to talk to a human
, he thought, justifying it to himself, and, if they were calling for something, which they always were, there was a good chance he'd be the one asked to take care of the problem anyway.

The governor, now decently relaxed, took his BlackBerry and asked, “We good?”

Jacob looked slyly over at Olivia as she flipped through the last of the checks and shot him a thumbs-up. He smiled. Three events down and it wasn't midnight. And every event had hit goal.

“We're very good,” Jacob said. “All three events went over goal today.”

“Good, good,” the governor said, barely raising his voice.

Jacob turned and smiled at Olivia. The lack of enthusiasm was actually better than enthusiasm, and they both knew it. The governor knew they would hit goal, expected them to because they had been doing
it all month. His relaxed mood, after three events, was the best approval of their work they could ask for.

“Let's go over lists. Olivia, do you have time? Let's get some food too. I'm starved.”

“That would be great!” Olivia blurted out.

“Sal, is there a place we could get a good steak around here? I'm fixin' for one.”

Jacob couldn't believe his bad luck. He had promised Sophie he would be out to meet her by ten. It was another promise he would have to break, he realized as he watched the clock turn to eight–forty.
Hmpf
, he grumbled inwardly.
“Olivia, do you have time?” but, of course, there's no asking Jacob. No “Hey, Jacob, do you have a special date planned? A medical emergency? Is your house on fire?” Not only does it not matter, it's not even asked.
To make things worse, Jacob had made Sophie begrudgingly change her plans to be near the Brinmore and now he wouldn't even be there.

Olivia glanced his way and—as always—seemed to understand his expression.

“Actually, sir, I don't have all the lists with me. Could we possibly land at the Brinmore so I can print stuff out? Sorry.”

“No, no, that will work actually.”

Jacob shot Olivia a smile. Stopping at the Brinmore wasn't perfect, but it was definitely better than a restaurant somewhere farther away from his date.

Olivia was already clicking through her emails, no doubt trying to pull lists. Fundraisers seemed to have a greater supply of names and numbers than the white pages and an endless desire to go through them. She actually looked sincerely enthused.
Guess she's not getting laid.
Jacob laughed to himself, thinking about how easily campaigns substituted for sex for campaigners. He hadn't heard her mention any dates at all since she started. Maybe there was no one, or maybe she was seeing someone secretly. Those were usually the two choices on a campaign.
She did date Chris for a while. What an asshole that guy was.
He sat back, glad to be dating Sophie as it seemed like such a dose of normalcy.
I'm finally getting it right
, he thought, congratulating himself.
Perfect campaign. Perfect girl. Perfect balance.

Olivia scanned through her emails looking for new lists sent from Addie, whom Olivia had assigned to constantly search for new sources of names. Olivia had tons they could go through but she wanted the perfect ones. Going over lists was a lot like playing Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. With a really good list you could make connections from the donors on it to the governor in fewer than six moves. When the governor turned around to her, she tried not to let her panic at failing to be perfectly prepared show. He leaned back with a calm smile. “So how was Texas?”

“It was hilarious.” Olivia had been wanting to tell someone how funny Texas was all week, but no one who didn't know Henley or the intricacies of campaign fundraising would understand. No one except Jacob and the governor. “First of all, I walk off the plane and outside the gate is none other than David Henley, cowboy hat and all, in his little red Tesla.”

Jacob knowingly chimed in: “He looks like a kid in one of those motorized cars when he drives that thing.”

“Exactly!” Olivia grabbed his arm, so glad to be able to say something and not need to offer further explanation. The more time she spent on the campaign, the more she realized how inexplicable her experiences were to anyone not on it. Her sister had stopped pushing her on the “all good” responses at least a month ago, and she hadn't even told Olivia where she and Katherine were going to meet the past two Sundays. Olivia was officially off the Sunday brunch list. She thought about her exclusion with a healthy dose of guilt, but also with a bit of relief. It was so hard to have to talk through her stress about a filing, a campaign issue—things they knew and cared nothing about. “I know it doesn't seem like a big deal, but to me it is,” she would say to blank stares. It seemed the more she tried to explain, the less they understood. What did they want her to say? That she was in love with her boss? So they could talk her through it? There was no time for that. And more importantly, there wasn't time for the emotions she might find.

As Olivia continued on with her Texas stories, Taylor and Jacob laughed and listened like girls at a slumber party.

She told them all about how David had handed her ten one-thousand-dollar checks before he even said hello. She had sat in his little red sports car, knees squished together, while simultaneously trying to control her hair flying in the wind and tightly gripping her large black bag (“the briefcase,” as Jacob termed it) as they sped from Henley's law firm to every other law firm Henley knew. Olivia and Henley would walk into each, Henley strutting, his cowboy boots, complete with spurs, tapping on the marble floors, tipping his hat to the secretaries, whom he'd soon come back to take contributions from.

“Put a little hop in that step, darling,” he'd yell to Olivia as she power-walked behind him in the heels she now regretted changing into back at the airport.