Domestic Affairs (30 page)

“Sweetie,” Aubrey said as she arrived next to her. Her pursed lips pushed her cheekbones up. “You usually do such a good job at seating.”

Olivia folded her hands in front of her and smiled politely, proud of pleasing the unpleasable woman who lately seemed to really like Olivia. “Oh, thank you.”

“And Landon tells me you've been just wonderful.”

Landon tells you about me?
Olivia felt a rush of nervousness.
What does he tell you? Does he tell you he loses himself around me?
Her eyes fluttered and her thoughts flipped.
Or does he tell you I'm a kid with a crush? Am I a joke? Does she know? What do I say to that? “Thank you”? Yes, “Thank you.”
“Thank—”

“But this seating,” Aubrey said, continuing with a bat of her eyelashes, “is just simply disastrous.” She nodded her head, lips still pursed into a half smile. “I mean, you couldn't possibly have thought it was a good idea to sit the Levkoffs next to the Donnellys, could you have?”

I guess I could have since I did.
Olivia tried to hide the fact that she was crushed. “Oh, I'm sorry, I—”

“Evvvveryone knows they don't like each other one bit. Jamie Donnelly is frightfully jealous of Jen. But, of course, you know that.”

“I'm sorry, I didn't.” Olivia looked out at the group of people in front of her, most of whom had already taken their seats. Campaign Lesson #15: No seating dilemma is unfixable. “Would you like me to try to move them?”

“Oh!” Aubrey's hand flew to her chest as if she were Scarlett O'Hara gasping for breath. “Heavens, no! I just wanted to be sure you knew.”

“Okay. Thank you. I'll be sure never to sit them together again.”

“I'm sure you won't. Thanks, sweetie.”

Well, there goes the nice Aubrey. If I were his wife, I would be so much nicer. I'd be a great candidate's wife.
Olivia folded her arms, then unfolded them quickly.
Maybe she knows. Maybe she can tell I've kissed him.

“Wow. This is kinda fabulous.” Jacob slid in next to her without her seeing his approach. He leaned back against one of the tent poles.

His words made her flinch a bit, breaking her concentrated gaze from Aubrey. She smiled when she saw it was Jacob.

“A little jumpy, are we?”

“Sorry.” She moved back to the wall next to him. “Just a little low on sleep.”

“I'd say that's the understatement of the year.”

“Yeah, probably true. The other day I tried to count up how many hours I had missed in the past four months, you know, based on that whole ‘humans should get eight hours of sleep a night' thing. It's a lot of hours.”

“But that's for regular humans. We are definitely not regular humans. Or so I've been told.”

“Sophie?” She could sense that the person who had alerted Jacob to his abnormality meant something to him.

Jacob shook his head. “She says I'm in a relationship with Landon Taylor and she feels like the third wheel.”

“Ouch.”

“I mean, what do I even say to that? We
are
in a relationship with Governor Taylor. Or Taylor 2012. Whatever.”

Olivia offered him an empathetic shrug as he went on, pleading his case.

“I never sold her a bill of goods that I was regular. Regular people definitely don't work twenty hours a day. They don't get paid shit and they definitely don't put one crazy guy's needs before their own well-being. She bought the tickets; she knew what she was getting into.”

“Yeah.” Olivia nodded. Then she thought for a minute. “But the thing is: regular people don't elect presidents.”

Jacob smiled. Why that argument, the exact one she had been trying to make for weeks, only made sense to other campaign people was a complete mystery to her. She looked out at the event, thinking about how rare it was to be surrounded by noise and chaos, yet stand in complete silence with someone else the way she could with Jacob. The two of them had become so accustomed to traveling together, passing glances back and forth in the back of cars and planes and giving orders to each other across rooms, it had become like they had an inaudible language all their own. He could tell when she needed a call made, just as well as she could tell when he needed Taylor out of or into a room. They worked together more like teammates on a football field than coworkers.

He furrowed his eyebrows. “So can I run something totally crazy by you?”

“Crazier than ‘Do you want a fun job on a campaign'?”

Jacob laughed. “Touché.” He motioned to Olivia to follow him to the chairs just outside the tent, where they would be out of earshot. “By the way, we should care more that Leo Davis, James Taylor, and Dana Klein are singing right now, shouldn't we?”

Olivia looked up at the famous musicians joking around onstage and mock-grimaced. She knew it was an exceptionally rare experience and not one she should be ignoring, but every glance at them just reminded her of the logistical nightmare she went through to get them all there. She sat down in the chair next to Jacob as he began to whisper.

“So.” He paused cautiously. “How much do you think the voters care about affairs?”

She could hear the words coming out of Jacob's mouth before he said them. She knew that look in his eye. He was about to tell her that the governor was having an affair.
With someone else! That's a stupid thought. There's no affair with you. It's just someone, not someone else. Ugh.
The thought of the words hit her like a steel pipe to the stomach.

“That's a scary question to ask. Do you have something to tell me?”

“Now, I have no real evidence of this. And I haven't told a soul in the world.”

Olivia's mouth got dry and she could feel her heart sinking. “Tell me.”
Just say it.
Olivia prepped herself, realizing how much she didn't want the governor to be having an affair. And not just because it would be an Achilles' heel to the campaign that was her life.

Jacob took a big breath in, and even though no one was anywhere nearby he whispered, “I think Aubrey's having an affair.”

Just saying the words aloud, even in a whisper, was a huge load off of Jacob's shoulders. Olivia, in contrast, looked like she had seen a ghost. He immediately tried to calm her.

“I'm really not sure. I mean, it could all be coincidental.”

“No, no.” She recovered. “I just—I'm surprised, that's all. Why do you think that?”

“Well, it's a couple things.” Jacob began to spew his theories. As he did, it all became even more incriminating than it had been in his mind. “The first was that trip to Miami, the one where she simply
haaad
to get away from the kids for a bit.”

Olivia laughed at his always perfect impression of Aubrey.

“She was supposed to be meeting friends there, but when I called Shelby, one of the friends she was allegedly ‘meeting,' to talk about a local women's event we were doing the week after, Shelby inadvertently made it crystal clear Aubrey had not been in Florida. Definitely. And she had not been with Aubrey. ‘Coincidentally,'” he said, with air quotes, “Roger Tiwali—you know the former secretary of state—happened to also be in Miami that weekend. My paranoid self checked. Then there were the handful of times when Roger's assistant mentioned seeing her when she wasn't scheduled to see him. One time I even tried to ask the governor about their meeting, and he didn't even blink. He said they barely knew each other. Also, don't you think it's odd that we'd have the former secretary of state showing up at so many events recently? His endorsement is, according to Aubrey, ‘in the bag.'”

Olivia looked more and more amazed as Jacob talked. And she was almost smiling.

“Plus, well . . .” He paused, wondering if he should finish the sentence, but then remembered it was Olivia he was talking to. She was in the foxhole with him. “Gov would kill me if he knew I said anything about this. Actually I don't really even know anything about it. But,” he whispered even more quietly than they had been, “Aubrey and the gov, they were kind of rocky for a while there. I don't know the details, but I think he even moved out for a week or something before all the campaigning started.”

Olivia looked, understandably, shocked as Jacob continued to seep information. He felt so good telling someone, having someone to share the burden of the secret, the worry and the rationalization. “You are sworn to secrecy on this,” he added.

“Obviously. It's kinda funny at this point that we'd have to say that.”

“Yeah.”

“So, do you think she'd leave him? And during the campaign?”

Jacob looked at Olivia, his relief turning a bit to guilt at saddling her with the upsetting information. “Aubrey? No way. He's the product she's selling in the sale of her life.”

“Yeah, I guess.” She almost seemed teary.

“You've seen her though enough now. She barely likes the guy.”

“Yeah, I guess that's true.” Olivia paused and then asked, “Why doesn't she love him?”

“Who knows! She thinks he's lowbrow, not up to par with her. She's constantly telling people he doesn't read books. She comes one step short of calling him an idiot.”

“You think he loves her?”

Jacob shook his head. He had asked himself that question so many times, but still, he really wasn't sure of the answer. “I don't know. He definitely needs her constant approval, or wants it. I don't know.” He glanced down at his watch. “Shit! I gotta get the speaking program started. I hate this place and its absent coverage. How can I keep track of time without the metronome buzzing of my BlackBerry?”

He sprang up from the chair and headed into the tent.

He called back, “Sorry to drop this on you, Liv. I had to tell someone.”

“It's all good,” she said, smiling reassuringly. “We irregular people gotta stick together.”

As Olivia went to sleep that night she replayed the conversation with Jacob in her head over and over. It had to be true. Jacob knew these things. Plus, there were all those times Aubrey excused herself from events. All those furtive calls she would take.
Poor Landon. That's why he kissed me. He's just lonely. I wonder if he knows. Of course he knows. Who could hide something like that? How could Aubrey not cherish him?

She tossed and turned, rolling around in the soft Pratesi sheets, wondering what this all meant. She knew she shouldn't follow the thought path to where it was going, but it seemed impossible to avoid. Would they get divorced? Could there be a world where Landon Taylor would be single? She guiltily relished the notion of her dream man becoming a viable option and then quickly batted the thought from her head.

No.
She scolded herself.
You like this man. He has kids. A family. He has to be the president. You can't want him to get divorced.

C
onference calls were usually the bane of their existence, but Jacob and Olivia couldn't wait to get on this one early on a Tuesday morning before the filing. The filing was three days away and there was 1.6 million in hand, way more than even the craziest goal they had set. Jacob sat across from Olivia in the conference room as she dialed the call-in number. It was a weekly call, but since the Hamptons and Martha's Vineyard both fell within the last six days, the bottom line—the amount of money the campaign had collected and would report for this quarter—had changed drastically.

“Okay,” Billy said in his usual monotone, “everyone on?”

The nine participants—Jacob; Billy; Olivia; the press secretary, Peter; the political director, Ron Mixner; Addie, whom Olivia insisted be included since she had been such a big part of things; and two consultants who had helped on the events called out their names in a totally disorganized fashion. It always reminded Jacob of one of those childhood games where you would try to count to ten without anyone saying the same number at the same time.