Authors: Emma McLaughlin
I realized I’d been expecting one of her I’ve-been-thinking requests from the moment I’d started working for Davis. Let myself hope, even, that sending money for Ray Lynne could somehow stave it off.
“I need it and you sure seem to have stepped in it here.” I watched her look over at Lindsay and Nancy Merrick, who were impeccable by comparison, even at this terrible moment.
“I can’t—I’m not making that kind of—”
“I bet one night here could cover a month’s rent.”
“But I’m not paying for this. Mom, if your back is going, you need a long-term plan— ” Unless I was her long-term plan.
“I get it.”
“Mom.”
“I said, I get it.” She lifted her hands over her head. “Merrick for President! Wooooh!” She ignored the tight smiles as she crossed to Billy. “Come on, baby, let’s go downstairs and get you ready for bed—”
Suddenly a hush fell as the newscaster announced CNN was ready to call the next set of states. We watched in collective nausea, as, from Canada to the Gulf, every state in the Central Time zone went for Hopkins. Even with New York’s thirty-one electoral votes, they were now tied.
Pax stood by my side as it really sunk in that the months of stumping, the tens of millions of dollars, the passionate endorsements from George Clooney and Lady Gaga, none of it might be enough.
By eleven pm we were grasping at straws. Merrick was demanding a recount of Dade county and refusing to concede. Teary, Belle had taken a sedative on top of her Julep and had to be helped to bed, still talking about her family’s starring role in the War Between the States. “Oh, shut up, Belle. Your ancestors were barefoot and stupid, same as mine,” I heard Tom’s father mutter as he hoisted her off the couch.
I looked around the room, the hope in people’s faces coagulating into something grim and heavy. “I’ll get ice,” I said to no one and took the bucket into the hall. I paused just outside the alcove when I heard voices.
“Millions of dollars—wasted.” It was Lindsay’s mother, Anne. Still going strong.
“Tom doesn’t make the campaign finance rules, Mom.” Lindsay sounded like she wanted to slump against the cooler.
“There’s just so much waste. And chaos. Do you need to be trailed by so many people? Does Tom really need that Amanda walking behind him with babywipes?”
“He does when he shakes three hundred hands a day. It frees us up to focus on the issues,” Lindsay spoke over the rattle of ice.
“You put too much attention on Tom.”
“He’s worth it, Mom. This is all worth it.” Her voice caught. “And about to be over. This will all be gone. The people, the chaos, the entourage, Amanda and her babywipes, it will all be gone. We’ll go back to our little lives just like you want—in that fucking house I cannot seem to get out of. So can you please, just cut me a little slack here, Mom?”
I backed away down the hall.
The sun didn’t rise—the sky just faded from black to grey like cheap pants. I stared at Pax’s ceiling from where we lay on the bed, still dressed. My bones hurt. My hair hurt. Every minute of sleep I had missed these last months was pinching my skin, demanding recompense.
At the urging of his advisers Merrick had conceded just after two a.m. It was over. Davis had no office to return to. And neither did I.
“What am I going to do?” I finally spoke. “I have no job. My mom is one bad lift away from needing major surgery that none of us has the money for. And there’s no one else—it’s all me. I don’t know how the fuck I’m going to take care of them. But I have to, right?” I turned to him, my terror too much to play down. “Tell me what to do.” I stared at him, desperate for consoling.
He looked back at me, his chest expanded with a breath that stalled. Whatever words he was planning to stay did not make it out.
“I’ll figure it out.” I tried to cover, but something had shifted.
He squeezed my hand and lay it down. “My flight’s at nine. I’m so
so
sorry to leave you like this. I thought we’d be—I mean I didn’t think—”
“It’s okay, I know, none of us did,” I forced myself to speak. I remembered all those balloons still pegged to the ceiling. Who would release them?
Pax went to take a shower. I couldn’t bring myself to turn my phone back on. “Don’t you need to go upstairs?” he asked, getting dressed in a fresh suit for the noon meeting he had to fly to.
“Everyone is checking out. I don’t think there’s anything for me to do. For anyone to do. I mean, yes.” My temples throbbed like there was a bullfrog in each one. “I’m sure tens of thousands of lawn signs have to be cleared and there are probably pizza places from coast to coast we owe thousands of dollars to.” ‘We.’ I would have to break that habit. “But not now, not today. I can’t.”
“Look, I only have the room til noon. Should I extend it so you can sleep?”
I wanted to pull the coverlet over me like a taco and black out. “I have to go downstairs. I have to face my family—get them to the airport. I thought—” I snorted. “I thought I brought them up here to witness history.”
“I’ll tell them you’re in high-level triage—I’ll get them into a taxi.”
“Really? Thank you. Since I’m probably moving back in with them next week there’s no need for a long goodbye.”
“So D.C. is out?” It was a question.
“I guess . . .” I didn’t know how to say, ‘unless we get a place together and you float me while I job hunt with my GED and a stellar reference letter.’
He nodded. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
He had his back to me as he returned his wallet and keys to his pockets. “This was a little crazy, anyway, I guess . . . flying all over the place, then moving to the same city. Rushed, I mean.”
“Well, those were the choices.” I sat up, the bullfrogs bursting. “Meet up somewhere, or move to the same place, right?”
He just looked at me, not answering. His phone buzzed. “I’ve got to go.” He turned back. “I’ll call you.”
My breath swelled in my gut—and stuck. What was happening? I felt like the floor was going to give and I was going to fall ten stories into Delilah’s suitcase. I’d be wheeled back to Tallyville like none of this—Lindsey, Tom, Pax, ever happened.
“Pax, are you—are we—is this over?”
“No, no,” he rushed, no smile in his eyes. “It just sounds like you have a lot on your plate right now.”
“It’s nothing I can’t handle, you know that right?”
“I’m sure. No, I just mean—we both have full plates. Look, we’ll talk.”
I nodded. “Safe flight.” The door shut.
“Stupid, Amanda,” I said out loud. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.” This wasn’t the start of anything. Pax Westerbrook was not going to move in with Amanda Luker. Three thousand balloons to drop at the wake for my career and my relationship. Which turned out to just be some kind of jetlagged hook-up—both of us no better or worse than whoever each of us ended up with the night we met.
I felt a building pain between my breasts. When I was seven I snapped my arm running in the schoolyard. I knew, standing there in the dust with my teacher, it would be awhile before anyone came to get me. So I decided I couldn’t let it hurt. I turned the volume in my arm down to silence. And now I did the same to the thumping, throbbing under my ribs. I twisted the dial until all was stillness.
There was a knocking. “Amanda!”
I unlocked it to Tom. Still in his suit from last night, he clearly hadn’t slept either. But where I imagined everyone else in the building looked sour and sapped he looked like he’d just recharged his battery back to full power. “Was helping Michael and Peter check out. Saw Westerbrook in the lobby—said I could find you here.” He crossed to the windows and looked down to the street. “Secret Service is leaving. We are no longer among the four most important men in the world.” His eyes sparkled like he found that funny. “Now there are only two again.”
“Sir?”
“Tom. I am not a senator. I am not a candidate. And right now I don’t even think I’m technically your boss.”
“Tom. I’m so sorry.”
He shook his head as if I was missing the point. “I can do it, Amanda.” He looked at me expectantly.
“I’m sure you can—do what?”
“Win. If that stuffed shirt could get forty eight percent of the popular vote and everything that came out of his mouth sounded like a farting foghorn, I can do this. You should have seen Merrick,” he said disgustedly. “He was done with us so fast he didn’t even shake my hand goodbye.” He grimaced, releasing the embarrassment before taking a stride toward me. “But I know how it works now. I’ve made the friends. I’ve made the connections. The pundits aren’t blaming me this morning. They’re all saying
I
was the best part of the ticket, that if it had been reversed we might have had a chance.” I wasn’t sure what was happening. I had seen guys cry when they lost big on a game—and I had seen the ones who doubled down, refusing to accept that they’d just put their rent money on the table. I stared into his face, not sure if I needed to herd him back upstairs to Lindsay, to cold reality.
“That’s great.”
“Let’s flip it,” he said urgently. “Let’s flip the ticket.”
“Okay.” I was stymied. “Let’s do that. Shazam. Ticket flipped.”
He was taken aback. “Everyone else in this operation has turned into a zombie, but I thought you of all people would be up for this. Don’t you think I should do it?”
“Of course—”
“Good.” He clapped his palms together, his enthusiasm restored. “Because I’m forming an exploratory committee.”
“But isn’t that something people do, like, two years from now?”
“I’m not in office. I need to be proactive. And I want to send a clear message. Hopkins, I am coming for your job. Down, but by no means out, that kind of thing.” I felt out. So far out.
“Great,” I said, still sounding halfhearted. I stood up, mentally slapping myself, trying to access the belief he was asking for.
He grabbed my shoulders. “Amanda, when you’re in charge the prompter is always cued to the right speech, there’s never milk in my coffee, and the reporters all think I remember their birthdays—you make this machine run. Get packed, head back to Jacksonville. Get some rest. Then report to our place first thing Monday morning.”
“Really?”
“You’re our first hire.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“What? Sorry, I sound like an idiot. What are you hiring me to do?”
“I have no idea yet.” He grinned.
“Who will I be answering to?”
“No clue.”
“Who will be paying me?”
“Gotta figure that out. You in?”
I had started my morning with a man I had naively thought was going to stand by me. Or at least continue making space beside him I could eventually fill. Instead I was discovering that the man who couldn’t let me go, come what may, was my boss.
“I’m in.”
Jacksonville was not the White House and I no longer had a federal job with health insurance, nor did I know when my next check was coming—or what amount it would be for.
But
I wasn’t cancelling my car or apartment lease and taking the bus south just yet.
That weekend I picked up my phone to call Pax ten times a day. Maybe he was looking at his phone, too. Either way no call was placed. Not from him to say—hey, sorry I was weird. Not from me to ask why he was weird—because I wasn’t ready to deal with the fact that he wasn’t ready to deal.
By Monday I had pushed myself to catch up on laundry, scrub my place, get a haircut, and arrived at the Davises ready to—something. For once I had really agonized about what to wear. “You need to wear a suit, Amanda,” Becky said.
“But what if they’re in sweatpants.”
“Doesn’t matter. It’s great that Tom knows you can keep his coffee order straight, but, no offense, so can a monkey. You have more to offer than that. And after what your Mom said you need to move up a rung—or two on the payroll.”
So I settled on white linen pants and a short sleeve blouse. When I got to their house I had to park on the street the driveway was so full. I rang the bell and Lindsay answered. “Amanda,” she startled, pulling me into a hug. “What are you doing here?”
“I invited her,” Tom said as he passed through the entry hall carrying a tray of muffins, his sleeves rolled up. Did she not know I’d been hired?
Where he seemed refreshed and ready for battle Lindsay still looked deeply depleted and her face was puffy from crying. “Well, then, come on in. Lend me a hand with the breakfast.”
Knowing what Becky would say I nonetheless helped her ferry trays of baked goods and a couple of boxes of Dunkin Donuts coffee into the living room, which had remained cleared of the twins toys and was now filled with the fallen soldiers of Merrick’s campaign.
“Hey, Amanda,” Michael Zohn greeted me. He was the brains behind Merrick’s strategy, which the news networks agreed would have worked—had Merrick not been Merrick. Had Zohn just been able to shove his hand up his ass until he could operate him like a puppet.
“Shouldn’t you be sleeping somewhere?” I asked.
“Yes. I should. But your boss can be very persuasive. Suffice it to say this is just a courtesy stop-over on the way to the Caribbean, where I will be turning my phone off until Hanukah.”