Domestic Affairs

by Bridget Siegel

  “Want company?”

  “Yes! I would love to talk this stuff over so I don’t make a complete fool of myself today.”

  “Be there in twenty.” Jacob hung up the phone and got dressed, feeling better just knowing she was on the same wavelength. And happy to have someone in Georgia who also couldn’t sleep. He had been in Georgia for a while but he still hadn’t gotten completely used to the relative quiet.

  Twenty minutes later Jacob slipped into the chair across from Olivia, who was downing her first coffee of what he predicted would be many. While it wasn’t reassuring to see her so nervous, he was glad that at least she was visibly aware of how important today was.

  “Thank you so much for coming over,” she said. “I’m so happy to have someone to talk this through with before the meeting.”

  “We have to talk? I thought I was just getting a free hotel breakfast.”

  Olivia laughed, putting down her coffee for the first time since he walked in. “Right. Breakfast. I’m so hungry.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever heard those words coming out of your mouth.”

  “I got in late last night! I didn’t have dinner. Plus I think if this campaign doesn’t work out, I’m going to try to be a competitive eater.”

  Jacob laughed out loud at her serious expression. “Yeah, if there’s a category for who could eat the least amount of food over the longest period of time, you would totally crush it.” Jacob looked down at the menu, happy to have other options than the box of probably stale cereal in his apartment.

  Olivia started her pitch after they ordered. “Okay, so this is the plan.” As she laid out her ideas, even walking him through the Power-Point on her computer, Jacob started to relax enough to enjoy his waffles, bacon, and grits, a delicacy he was enjoying more with every passing week. Olivia looked up from her notes and watched him shovel in some grits. “Big change from our Sausage McMuffin mornings, huh?”

  “Yeah, thank God. Another year with you and your McDonald’s habit and I would have been at least double my size.”

  “Oh please, we all know you couldn’t gain weight if you tried. Isn’t that what your wrestling coach used to say?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Liv, this is really good.” He pointed to her presentation and tried to sound less surprised than he actually was. She spoke with such authority on the numbers, Jacob bought into it all himself, and he knew he was as cynical—if not more so—than anyone coming into that room.

  “The grits? Ew. I am not trying those things.”

  “Yes, the grits are good. But, please, I know you better than to try to convince you to eat them. I’m talking about your presentation. It’s really good.

  “Really?” Her eyes widened with surprise.

  “Really. I mean I had no clue how you were going to make one million plausible, and instead, you made it completely doable. Gabrielle would be totally proud.” Gabrielle, their mutual former boss was their common standard bearer for all things fundraising.

  “Well, I’m going to tell them the public goal will be seven hundred and fifty thousand, and one million is their inside goal. That way if anyone leaks, which obviously they will, they’ll leak under one, giving me some room to fail.”

  “You won’t fail,” Jacob said, trying to reassure her.

  “But my real goal is one point five.” She smiled.

  Jacob laughed at her audacity.

  “That’s awesome, Liv. You know how many bumper stickers in Iowa I could buy with that?”

  “No, but I want to know!”

  “Huh?” Jacob smiled, assuming this was sarcasm.

  “Wait, no, seriously.” She stopped his laugh. “Can you tell me the numbers on some of those things? Donors will love that.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yes!” She squealed with a delight that seemed incongruous with bumper stickers. “Seriously, Jacob, that’s brilliant. Give them tangible things to fund. I’m not going to use it for this, but let’s do that for online giving.”

  “I like it. Liv, really, this is great.”

  “Oh, thank goodness.” She stopped and breathed a huge sigh of relief. “I’m so scared someone other than you will realize I have no clue what I’m doing.” She looked down at her untouched breakfast and took the last sip of her second coffee.

  “Olivia Greenley.” Jacob looked at her sternly. “You do know what you’re doing. You’re even better at it than I thought you were. And I thought you were pretty damn good. Now you need a dose of self-confidence to go with it. You know BSDs; these guys see fear a mile away and love to seize on it for sport. Do not let them see even a glimpse of it. You know what I say—calm, contain, control. That should be one of those campaign lessons you’re always counting.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know.” Olivia shook her head, looking like a scared kid. Jacob wondered if he had gone too far.

  “Come on, it’ll be totally fine.” He took great comfort in actually believing what he was saying. “Eye of the Gabrielle!” He lowered his eyebrows the way their old boss used to do when she got serious and hummed “Eye of the Tiger.” Olivia laughed and made the face with him. “Now, let’s get some of that competitive eating going.”

  Olivia laughed as she took two small bites of her burned bacon, passing her grits over to Jacob.

  Fifteen hours later Olivia stood at the hotel bar worried that if she sat down she might fall asleep. The day, filled with everything from a tour of the Georgia capitol to the Georgia Peach Pie Shop, had gone incredibly well by all accounts. She glanced down at her watch as inconspicuously as she could, hoping no one saw her lack of enthusiasm for staying out.

  After the last official event, a dinner at the hotel restaurant, most of the attendees, including Governor Taylor, had filtered into the old-fashioned bar. It was musty and had a lingering smell of cigar smoke, but there was something about it she loved. The dark wood tables were surrounded by chairs covered in all shades of velvet, and colored glass chandeliers hung down so low that some of the taller people had to duck to miss them. Olivia could imagine singers from the forties, dressed in feathers and sequins, standing by the piano that sat in the corner of the room. It would be a great place to sit and read a book, she thought. Hah! Like I would have time to read a book.

  Yanni came up next to her to order a drink. He patted her back.

  “This was great, Olivia. Really great. Thanks for including me.”

  “No, Yanni, thank you!” She smiled, full of pride. Her part, the one she had been practicing for days, the one that kept her up for three nights in a row, had been a huge success. When she stepped up to the podium, her hand had been shaking a bit, but Jacob had shot her an eye-of-the-Gabrielle look. No fear, she had reminded herself, and, head held high, she led the room of twenty-six men and three women through her plan to raise one million dollars. The flaws (she forgot the part about the pre–planning for next quarter’s direct-mail program and she should have had them all introduce themselves before she started) stuck in her head. But really she was proud of the job she did. Her voice, in contrast to how she felt, had sounded completely confident and in control, a theory confirmed by her audience’s reactions. The three women all complimented her directly and the men, without saying a word about her presentation, began speaking to her with a new frankness that was as obvious as a direct compliment. And no one had called her “kid” or “kiddo” all day.

  She moved around the room, fending off her exhaustion and embracing her budding confidence. As usual, at one point in the evening she got cornered by Alek, who was plenty nice, but could talk forever. He stood facing her at the bar, his hand tightly gripping his tumbler of vodka. His hands were pudgy, like his face, but his fingers were perfectly manicured. His button nose was always red, as if he had just come in from the cold Russian weather he often spoke of. His eyes were small, black, and sunken in, and his wrinkly forehead seemed bigger because of the blunt black bangs that were usually stuck to the top of his head.

  Twenty minutes that
seemed like an hour into his story about the NASCAR race he and the governor had gone to together five years earlier, Olivia blinked and stuck her nails into her palm, a trick that was supposed to wake her up, but never really worked. She had heard this one at least three times before and hoped he would get to the part where they met Stephen Colbert soon so the story would end. Her head started to bob down, tired of balancing on her neck. As she picked it back up, her eyes met the governor’s on the other side of the room.

  Sitting diagonally across from her, in a booth with Henley, Yanni, and some others, he let his gaze momentarily meet hers and smiled empathetically. He lifted his eyebrows and winked. Olivia looked around the room, which was crowded with people talking and laughing, all of them completely unaware of his wink. It wasn’t anything, she told herself, but her stomach stirred with their private moment. Henley, trading off between his cigar and his bourbon, pulled at the governor’s arm to engage him in the conversation. The governor turned, not missing a beat, and she swerved back into her own conversation. She was wide awake now. A mere minute later she heard her name.

  “Miss Ohhh-livia Greenley,” Henley shouted from their booth. “Get your pretty little self over here.” His Texas accent was much thicker than the governor’s drawl and when he spoke, he always did so with a bit of a laugh that made his large belly jiggle. He reminded Olivia of what Santa Claus would be like if he were Texan. And a lawyer.

  Olivia gladly excused herself from the conversation with Alek and walked toward them. Henley and the governor stood, as they always did when a lady was joining or leaving the table. As Henley made way for her to slide in, the governor pulled his large leather chair closer.

  “Thought you could use a reprieve over there.” Taylor spoke without any acknowledgment of the moment of silent gazing they had shared. She smiled and nodded, hyper-aware of how close he was to her. She felt strangely lost between career and the contrasting fluttering emotions.

  “Now, let’s get us some more bourbon and talk about these Texas events.” Henley waved over the waitress.

  “Could I have a Diet Coke, please, as well?” Olivia half-pleaded, not wanting to drink just bourbon on an empty, tired stomach. She would not make that mistake again.

  The governor leaned over and said, “If we’re going to talk numbers while drinking bourbon, I’m going to need some food.” He smiled out of the corner of his eye at Olivia. “Sliders?”

  “That sounds great.” Henley piled on every other appetizer and the waitress headed to the kitchen.

  The crowd began to dwindle as Henley boasted loudly about the events he would put together in Texas.

  “You’ll stay at my guesthouse. I think you should come out three weeks before. At least.”

  Olivia got her second wind with the help of the sliders and a spinach-artichoke dip that she finished almost completely by herself. She was scribbling names as he rattled them off. She had heard of most of his friends and colleagues. They were well-known trial lawyers and Democratic donors, but before she joined the Taylor campaign, they had always been just names on call lists that never called her candidates back. At this level, it was a whole other league of prospects.

  “Do you think we can really pull off two-fifty? I think I can do fifty at a lower-dollar event but I’m nervous about putting his trip to Texas on the budget with a goal of three hundred thousand.” She barely noticed the ease with which she talked about hundreds of thousands of dollars despite not having a single thousand of her own.

  “We’ll definitely do two fifty.”

  Olivia breathed out. Whether or not she believed him, it was good to hear it aloud and even better to hear someone say “we.” It made her feel the tiniest bit less alone on the road to seven million.

  “LT, focus, grasshopper! I need your pretty-boy ass hitting the phones.” Henley reached over to grab the governor’s arm to pull him away from Alek, who had made his way over. Henley regarded Alek, whom he often referred to as a “chicken with his head cut off,” with an annoyed glare. Olivia caught the look and felt bad. Alek was a little peculiar but he really was a good guy. Henley continued. “Anyone staying for this conversation commits to raising another two fifty.” Henley loved to assert his chairmanship by throwing out such numbers.

  “Sat is too rich for my blood! I go.” Alek laughed.

  “Thank you so much for everything, Alek.” Olivia stood up and hugged him good-bye, reminding Taylor that Alek had brought in two new people for this meeting, both of whom had committed to raising fifty thousand dollars. The governor followed suit as Henley waved his cigar in the air.

  Olivia looked back at Henley and began gathering the papers she had spread in front of her. “I’ll leave you guys to discuss.”

  Henley shot an incredulous look her way. “Sit your hot little ass in that chair. You’re not going anywhere.”

  Olivia smiled at how his thick Texan accent made those words sound so much less offensive than they were.

  “Damn,” she said with one eyebrow raised and a grin. “I thought you guys could handle this part on your own.”

  “I have been around this shit enough to know a politician’s word is only as good as what his staff writes down. Plus,” he added, “you’re not half-bad at this.”

  “Thanks, Henley.” She was beginning to like him more every moment.

  “That Yanni guy you brought, he’s not so bad.”

  “Yeah, he’s great. He’s going to do two hundred in the Hamptons.”

  The UT fight song erupted from Henley’s phone. “Shit, it’s my assistant,” he said. “Gotta take this. Y’all hold that thought.”

  Henley excused himself from the table and began to talk rapidly, waving his cigar around as he spoke.

  “He’s amazing,” Olivia said.

  “He’s a good friend. He really is.” The governor shook his head, closing his eyes in thought. “He’s not going to do two fifty though. I love him but he can’t do that.”

  “I only have him in the budget for one fifty.”

  The governor widened his eyes, seemingly charmed. “Good.”

  Suddenly she felt she needed to defend Henley. She wanted the governor to like him, and vice versa. Fundraising was the apex of people-pleasing for Olivia. She didn’t just need the players involved to go through the transactional motions, she wanted them to actually like each other. She wanted to build relationships. “I think he might be able to get there though.”

  “That’d be great. That’d be just great.”

  Before she could respond, Henley came walking back in, cell phone pressed between his ear and his shoulder. He kept flinging around his cigar with every hand gesture. He leaned over the table, put down his cigar, and grabbed his tumbler of bourbon. He pulled his iPhone from his ear and rolled his eyes.

  “I gotta deal with this shit. See y’all tomorrow?” His gruff voice barely lowered as he walked off, without waiting for an answer, carrying the bourbon.

  Olivia sat back. “He’s such a character.” She smiled. “I feel like I’ve been transported to a smoky room in a black and white movie when he’s around.” She watched him motion to the waitress for the check and sign his name, all while yelling into the phone.

  “Who else did he say will host his event?”

  Olivia reached for the paper she had scribbled on, embarrassed at the mess. “Sorry, he started on names so quickly I didn’t have time to pull out my notebook.” She looked across the room at her large bag with the laptop sticking out among folders and papers, wishing it was closer and neater. “I’m going to transfer it all to Excel when I get to my room.”

  The governor studied the list and didn’t seem to notice the disorder.

  “Ugh. Harry. This guy is scum—you watch out for him. In fact, watch out for all the trial lawyers. Jacob has some name for them.”

  “DFTLs,” Olivia said with a smile, remembering the acronym.

  “Yeah, yeah, that’s it. Okay, so this is about one hundred here. You have to get Henley to g
et you more than this. Ask Alek too. That man can come up with money anywhere.”

  “Right. Yes.” Shit, she muttered internally. She had thought it was easily two hundred on that page. She took a deep breath.

  “Do you have the budget with you?”

  “Sure. Yes. Let me just get my bag.” She walked over to the wall where she had stashed it and nervously pulled her laptop out. As she returned to her place in the booth she thanked him for standing when she sat.

  “Sorry, it’ll just take a few minutes to load up.”

  “No problem.” He checked his BlackBerry reflexively.

  As the computer loaded, she watched him typing away. Now that she felt more relaxed, she asked the question she had been too embarrassed to ask before.

  “Hey, by the way, what’s with the pins?”

  He looked up, confused, and she instantly wanted to retract the question, but it was too late.

  “I mean the pins rather than emails. What’s the deal with that?”

  He replied matter-of-factly, “Pins are device-to-device, no servers, so things aren’t saved remotely anywhere. It’s just a more secure way of communicating.”

  “Oh.” Olivia thought for a second. That could be Campaign Lesson #20: No servers. As she noted the new rule in her head, her list popped up on the screen.

  He leaned in, and they went down the budget as Olivia included names and numbers from the day. The math was starting to add up. She spoke, again, with authority on her plan. She couldn’t remember a time she felt more comfortable in her own skin.

  When the governor excused himself to go to the men’s room, Olivia sat back and watched him walk. She caught herself smiling with more than a tingle of excitement. He’s perfect. This is perfect. I’m doing it, she said to herself. This is what dreams are like when they come true.

  Upon his return, the governor slid into the booth next to her. She caught her breath with the nearness of him. As he moved in, his hand gripped her knee. “We’re really going to do this, kid.”