The governor sat back in his chair. She knew he couldn’t be scared, but it was the only thing she could think of to explain the expression in his eyes as he looked away from her. He took a swig of his beer as if an “everyman” gesture that might dissipate the sense that his ego was so inflated he agreed with her. She actually felt a little badly for what she had said. It was a lot to lay on a person. And it was an intimacy she knew she wasn’t supposed to foster between them. “I mean . . . I just . . . it’s that we all know you can actually change the country and when you think about that, it just doesn’t seem like work.”
Now he was watching her, letting her babble. He had done this to her on one of the first days they had met. As uncomfortable as it made her, there was something about him when he was like this that she loved. Sure, it carried the awkwardness of walking a tightrope, but it made him seem so in control—like a net that could catch her no matter which way she fell.
“Okay, I’m going to stop now. Come on, we have lists to go over!” She pulled herself up straighter in her chair and tried to take charge of her thoughts, her words.
The governor looked completely pleased with himself. He sat back up as well and grabbed some fries. “Okay, Hallmark.”
TEN
Jacob followed the governor into his Miami hotel room. He cringed at the thought of having to hurry him right back out for the dinner Olivia had requested for Alek. It seemed as though they hadn’t stopped in days. New York to New Hampshire. New Hampshire to Iowa. Iowa to Miami. Going from New Hampshire weather to the Miami sun in the course of four days should have required a suitcase full of outfit changes. But Jacob had events scheduled so tightly that they barely stepped outside on any of their stops. It was one temperature-controlled venue to the next.
Jacob rubbed his eyes in exhaustion, the effects of the last Red Bull beginning to wear off. I drink so much I’m probably building up a tolerance to it. I gotta try one of those 5-Hour Energy things.
“I’m damn near exhausted, Jacob.” The governor loosened his tie and threw the jacket he was carrying onto a chair. “Who thought this day was a good idea? You couldn’t fit anything else in? Maybe a midnight bike ride?”
Jacob gulped and cracked his neck to the side. He hated it when Taylor chastised him, but it was the worst when he was mad for good reason. Jacob knew the day would be hell and he knew he shouldn’t have jammed so much into two days. He tried to think back to his conversation with Olivia. No. I could’ve just said no to the Alek dinner. But before he could come up with the words, Taylor sat down on the couch and glared at him.
“I need you to step it up, man.”
The words felt like a pitchfork stabbing Jacob—throat, heart, and stomach all at once. Words seemed so much more piercing coming from Taylor.
“I know, sir.” He sat down on the chair next to him, afraid of falling over if he didn’t.
The governor went on. “I get it. I know they’re pulling at more arms than you have. I know each one of them could manipulate an entire army. Hell, they manipulate me most days. But somebody has got to lead the ship. Someone’s got to be able to say no to all of them and it can’t be me.”
“I know.” It was all he could squeeze out. He had let him down.
“It has to be you.” Landon gave him a minute to take in his words. “You are the one by my side.” He paused again. “You are the one I need to trust.”
Jacob looked over at the governor as he continued.
“Listen, Jacob. I know you say you just fell into this when you were waiting for B-school, but you didn’t fall into anything. I saw your potential. I saw how good you were. You even saw how good you were. You are the only one who can do this job. You’re the only one who knows me well enough to know what I need, and you’re the only one who can get the rest of them to fall into line. I need someone in my corner, not just making decisions for me, but making the decisions happen for me. Someone has got to decide not to put me on the plane in the lightning storm. You understand.”
Jacob began to lift his head. This was one of those serious political lessons that people rarely ever talked about above a whisper. It was the story of candidates dying in plane crashes because someone, or more likely everyone, on a campaign put more weight on the need to get somewhere than on the risk of taking a flight in bad weather. Every campaign was bound to become bigger than the individual candidate, and the candidate’s needs were bound to be overrun at some points. But someone had to keep those public needs in check. Long days were fine for staffers who could fall asleep at their desk or flub sentences, but candidates could not be in the public eye for that many hours in a row. Taylor didn’t have the luxury of looking or sounding tired. Someone had to stop the candidate from getting on the plane when the wings were icing. Jacob remanded himself: Someone should have kept him from having two eighteen-hour days. I am that someone. He had to be in that corner with Landon, for Landon.
“I know I’m asking a ton of you. I get it. I’m asking you to see the big picture and the details all at once, but I know you can do it. You can’t let Billy get too traditional and slow and you can’t let Olivia bulldoze you with fundraisers. That girl would have me at slumber parties if she could.”
Jacob laughed. There was something so heartening about knowing Landon understood the inside aspects of the campaign and the unique personalities of the people on it. Jacob didn’t want the governor to dislike any of them, but as terrible as it sounded, even to Jacob’s conscience, it was nice to hear other staff members criticized too. Even the slightest put-down of someone else really did make him feel a little better about himself. Moreover, it allied him with the governor as a confidante.
“That would be a whole different kind of fundraising, Gov.”
“Yeah. Let’s not put any ideas in her head.”
“Gov?” Jacob breathed out and took a moment to accept the weight of what was required of him. “You’re right. I can do it. I got overwhelmed. I won’t let it get to me anymore.”
“You know this campaign is only going to get harder.”
“Well, then I’ll keep getting tougher.” Jacob smiled.
Landon smirked, but they both knew this was the truth. It wasn’t so much a promise as it was a prediction.
“We’re going to do this, Jacob.” The governor clapped him on the shoulder. “We’re going to do this and it’s going to be great.”
Jacob had heard that before, but somehow in the hotel room, as he stood with the soon-to-be president of the United States, the promised land sounded more real than ever. It would be he and Landon against the world. Actually, he and Landon for the world.
“We are, sir. And it definitely will be great.”
“Okay then,” Landon said, slapping his knees and standing up, reenergized. “Now get me some freakin’ Red Bull.”
“Hello, again, Governor.” Olivia had barely made it to the restaurant in time to see Alek seated at his favorite corner table. Everything was set just in time for the governor to walk through the door.
“Hello, Olivia,” the governor said with a begrudging smile.
Jacob’s warning came flashing back to her: “Alek won’t feel very loved if the governor sleeps through dinner.” She looked up at the governor, trying to transfer over some of her energy to him. She scanned her memory for good sports stories, to get him talking, but she hadn’t picked up the sports section of a paper or made it home for SportsCenter in months. She remembered Jacob once telling her pretty girls put him in a better mood and decided either it wasn’t true or she wasn’t pretty. Both possible choices. She glanced down, knowing she wasn’t looking her best. But there had to be something more than that. He thought she was amazing. That couldn’t just disappear.
She settled on honesty. “I know this isn’t ideal. I promise I’ll make it worth it.”
“Let’s just get it going and keep it moving.”
His annoyance felt like an attack. It brought on an onslaught of obsessive thoughts about who else might be
annoyed with her and left her wanting to just run and hide, escape from her own body to anywhere. She toyed with the idea of jumping under the nearest table.
I should have listened to Jacob. Jacob’s probably angry at me too.
While she walked toward Alek she tried to figure the exact jump she would need to make to slide gracefully and quickly under the tablecloth of the empty table nearby. The governor had stopped to talk to two of the busboys. He was on the side of the room shaking the young men’s hands, while the wealthy patrons around tried to conceal their envy of the fact that he was not talking to them instead. A key rule in the world of the social-climbing elite, Olivia had learned, was not to show any traces of interest in anything you might theoretically not be able to have yourself. Of course the efforts never masked their deep desires. They just spoke louder to each other and looked away in a more obvious fashion than if they had been staring right at the governor.
Olivia couldn’t help but smile at the woman dripping with diamonds who lost all interest in her table’s conversation and even faked a cough in an attempt to catch a furtive glance. It so clearly pained her to see Governor Landon Taylor engrossed in conversation with people other than herself and, worse, people she deemed to be of a lesser station.
It was one of the governor’s great qualities: that he could walk straight past even a king’s table on his way to talk to the footman. She smiled. The busboys were in their glory, and the governor seemed to have perked up a little. He saw her waiting and caught up.
The governor nodded. “Nice guys,” he remarked, loud enough for the lady in diamonds to hear. He put his hand on Olivia’s elbow as they reached the table and pulled out her chair before crossing to Alek with a hug and a hello. Alek was sitting in a perfectly tailored, light gray suit with a bright orange Hermès tie and matching pocket square. His cheeks were red, as always, and puffed out like a proud blowfish’s.
“So good to see you, man! It has been way too long.”
Alek beamed at the attention he had so desperately wanted. He started to talk even before he sat all the way down in his chair. The governor grinned, almost comparably happy to have his attention so desired. He reached over for bread and took a bite. “Sakes alive, this here is some fantastic bread! Olivia, you gotta try this!”
Olivia grinned at the turnaround in his mood. In an instant he had cleared out every negative feeling in the room. That’s what he’ll do. He’ll make people feel better about themselves. She tried to make it general, so that it wouldn’t seem such a personal feeling. It’s not just me who feels this way. But it’s me who gets to sit next to him.
After the entreés were served, Alek excused himself to the bathroom. The governor slid his hand across the table and touched Olivia’s wrist.
“Thank you for making sure this happened. I get so busy sometimes, I forget what is important in life.” He continued on. “I know he talks a lot, but Alek, he’s a good friend.”
“I agree, Governor. Sorry it had to come on such a busy day.”
“Ah, they’re all busy these days.”
She felt settled again in her friendship with him. He patted her wrist, and she longed for each pat to be prolonged for even a second more. His touch was so gentle. She knew it. She knew this was the real Landon Taylor. She knew that his bad mood was caused by the fact that he just was stretched thin to build an enormous, complicated campaign. She didn’t need to decode her emotions about him—she loved him. She loved who he was. She knew he couldn’t love her back, but that was okay. She got to be this close to him. That would be enough.
ELEVEN
Stephen Bronler had enlisted magazine editrix Eva Bloom to help with the Martha’s Vineyard party. The event—or the “kill,” as Addie had come to refer to it after Olivia had burst out one night into an overtired monologue about how the event would either “kill” in the slang sense of the word or kill her—had to do six hundred thousand for the campaign to meet their quarterly goal. That thought in and of itself was enough to send Olivia into a panic mode, and that was before Eva offered to hold the planning meeting at her office. A meeting at Eva Bloom’s office took it to a whole new level. Staffers were never invited, that she knew of anyway, to the editrix’s lair.
To top it off, Aubrey was coming to the meeting. Eva and Aubrey had become friendly in the last campaign, when the magazine ran a five-page spread on Aubrey, labeling her “America’s Political Beauty Queen.” It was a compilation of photos that were absolutely breathtaking—mostly Aubrey in couture, and one final one of the whole family walking on the Georgia coast looking like they had been painted into a perfect beach mural. The campaign had gotten slammed for it, having already taken heat for being too elitist, but Aubrey loved it and insisted that Olivia send it to all hosts and prospective donors before they were to meet Mrs. Taylor.
At first Olivia had ignored the request, thinking it would be seen as egotistical and totally incongruous with the campaign’s focus on the gap between rich and poor. “She’ll never know if I don’t send it,” Olivia had remarked to Addie.
Sure enough, ten minutes into a meeting with potential campaign donors, Aubrey had started in about her good friend Eva Bloom and was promptly told that none of the six people in the meeting had seen the article, one of whom even unsuccessfully searched his email to find the message that Olivia “thought for sure” she had sent. Olivia apologized profusely afterward and swore it would never happen again, to which Aubrey responded, “I should hope not.” And then she added, with folded arms, “You should know I have no bid for incompetence around me.”
Olivia now stood in front of the formidable office building, which seemed sleek and elegant even from the outside, waiting for the political queen.
As the black town car pulled up, Olivia peered into the darkened windows to see if she could decipher Aubrey’s mood through the glass. Before she could see anything, the door opened and out came Aubrey’s purple Christian Louboutin–shoed foot. Aubrey emerged, clad in a purple tweed Chanel suit the exact color of her shoes that hugged tightly around her hips. She was considerably heavier than she had been in her younger days and her plumpness, combined with the wrinkles around her eyes and lips, softened her look. She appeared kind. Olivia chuckled. Can’t judge a book by its cover.
“Hello, Olivia. Don’t you look pretty today.” She spoke with a rarely heard sweet tone.
“Hi, Mrs. Taylor.” Olivia pulled open the door to the building for her boss’s wife; “That is such a beautiful suit.” Translation: I’m sorry I kissed your husband. Please go back to being mean so I don’t feel worse about it.
“Well, isn’t that lovely of you. Thank you. Okay then, let’s get on with it.”
They walked together to the front desk where an elderly man with tiny spectacles sat.
“Oh!” The man behind the visitor’s counter jumped up, nearly knocking his glasses off his round face when he recognized Aubrey. “Mrs. Taylor. It’s such a pleasure.”
“It is mahhh pleasure.” Aubrey extended her hand to shake his and Olivia couldn’t help but stare at how perfectly manicured her fingers were. Her nails were a perfect shade of pink and just long enough to look classy. Olivia looked down at her own hands, dry and with chipped polish only half-covering her bitten-down nails. She had thought of getting a manicure before the meeting and had even made it to the front of the nail salon when Billy had called with a list of demands, which, as always, he spelled out in the slowest way possible. Knowing her fingers wouldn’t be free any time soon, Olivia had turned away from the salon and headed back to the office.
As they stepped into the elevator, surrounded by a handful of gorgeous, leggy thirty-year-olds, Olivia stuffed her hands into her pockets, feeling completely insecure about her go-to Brooks Brothers white button-down, which she had tucked into her black Theory cigarette pants. She had put a gold chain necklace around her waist like a belt, a move that had seemed so fashion-forward in the small, fogged mirror at home but was so obviously pathetic in the clea
rness of the magazine elevator mirrors. She wondered if she could remove the necklace without anyone noticing.
No such luck. Eva’s assistant, Stella, was waiting for Olivia and Aubrey close enough to the elevator when they walked off that Olivia thought the assistant might tumble in. Stella led them to a white conference room, sparsely decorated with a glass tables and chairs. In the middle of the table sat the most beautiful bouquet of white roses Olivia had ever seen.
Other people began to shuffle in: Stephen Bronler’s assistant, Lisette, who as always looked like she was taking a meeting at the Cannes film festival, perfectly glamorous and chic, in one of those impossible-to-get Animated Closet dresses Olivia had ogled in a store window and Jimmy, a man too old to be called by a name with a “-y” at the end, but who nonetheless seemed to wear the moniker well. Olivia was never clear on what exactly Jimmy did. It seemed as though he covered everything from marketing to new film development to special events, and since all events that Bronler was involved with were unquestionably special, Jimmy was always in every meeting. Then there were the production people, whom Olivia had worked with once before. They did events like the Super Bowl, and so it seemed a little over-the-top to have them at a planning meeting for an event in Martha’s Vineyard. But they were nice and highly efficient, and Olivia was in no position to turn down help. Each of them greeted Aubrey with reverence, complimenting her suit, her hair, her shoes. Aubrey sat perfectly straight, shoulders back, chin up. That really does make her look thinner, Olivia thought. She remembered how her grandma Becky used to always inform her of that fact and she vowed to do it more often herself.
Stephen would be connecting in through a conference call. Olivia watched as Eva’s assistant patched it through to the small but perfect-looking silver box in the middle of the table. “It’s a Jambox,” Stella explained, causing Olivia to hope she wasn’t the only one who looked confused enough to warrant the explanation. “It’s completely wireless. Eva dislikes wires.”
Domestic Affairs Page 20
