Olivia looked at him in silence, the words hitting her like a sledgehammer, as he continued.
“Liv, he’ll never be able to give you what you deserve. And you deserve so much. You are not the other woman. You should be the woman. You deserve someone who will shout your name from the rooftops. You deserve to be with someone who doesn’t have to go silent every time he picks up his phone. Someone who will be there for you. All the time. You deserve the moon and the stars and then some. He’ll never give that to you, Liv.”
She knew he was right but wouldn’t let herself admit it.
“What am I doing?” he said, more to himself, filling in her dazed silence. “Liv, I’m not going to stick around for this. That senator I told you about. The one who offered me a job. I’m meeting with him next week.”
“What?! What is that, a threat?” It was too ridiculous to be true.
“No, it’s not a threat.”
“Okay, you’re going to leave a presidential campaign to go work for a senator? Give me a break, Jacob.”
“No. I’m going to leave a man who doesn’t have a tenth of the morals he had when I signed on, for a man who has double what Taylor may have ever had.”
“He has morals, Jacob.” Olivia went on the defensive with whatever conviction she had left to conjure up.
“No, Liv. He had morals. Trust me, I believed in him more than anyone. But somewhere in between Georgia and here he lost his way. I’m not going to keep following the guide when I know he’s lost just because he’s the guide. I’m finding a new way and I want you to come with me.”
“I can’t just leave, Jacob.”
“Yes, you can.”
“You don’t know him like I do.” The minute she said it, she wished she could take it back. It was like she saw the words coming out of her mouth and she raised her arms to reach for them. “I don’t mean that. I just mean it’s not the same.”
“Yeah. You know what, Olivia, that’s the first thing you’ve been right about in this conversation.”
“Jacob, I didn’t mean—”
“No. I’m not offended. I don’t know him at all anymore. And I don’t want to.”
He looked so resolute, it hurt her heart. Olivia was almost glad that they had arrived at the doors of the Brinmore.
“I’m so sorry, Jacob.” She had just let down the last person in her corner.
“This, Olivia, is not something to be sorry about. It’s something to get out of. You’re a kid, and he’s taking advantage of you. He’s taking advantage of us. We deserve better. And,” he added in, “the world deserves better.”
Olivia walked the next twenty-five blocks home by herself with an unbroken stream of silent tears. They weren’t the hard kind of tears that fall in anger, and they weren’t the sobs that stop your breath; they were just plain human sadness.
NINETEEN
Olivia stared down at her vibrating phone as Alek’s number flashed in front of her. She looked at the clock, wishing he wasn’t calling at 11:54 p.m. For three days now she had served as friend, adviser, and therapist, and she wasn’t sure she had another pep talk in her. Plus, it was late. She was tired. Exhausted. It was only a week after New Year’s, and Olivia’s life had gone decisively downhill. The governor was trying to make up for his pre-filing behavior, but instead of making anything better, it had left her on an emotional roller coaster and the only person who understood any of her life, Jacob, was as far away and distant as all her other friends.
To top things off, three days ago the press had accused Alek of being the head of a Ponzi scheme. The accusations, all of which Alek vehemently denied, turned into an indictment. The campaign was in a flurry over it. Alek had called Olivia, originally trying to get a hold of the governor, but, as usual, Landon wasn’t calling him back, and Olivia was the stand-in.
She closed her eyes, shook her head, and begrudgingly picked up the phone.
“Hi, Alek.” She had the deflated tone of someone who knows they’re about to have a trying conversation.
“Oh, Ohhhlivia. Se princess.” His voice shook with worry.
“How are you holding up, Alek?” She knew the answer. She also couldn’t stop thinking about whether or not her every word was being monitored. There certainly had to be a Campaign Lesson about not talking when the FBI was likely to be listening.
“I can’t believe they are doing this to me.” He spoke with desperation. “They’re ruining everything. They just want to destroy me.”
“Who do you think is behind it?” Olivia asked the question less for the answer than to just have something to say.
“It’s se media. They just want to hurt me.” His voice started to crack. “After all I have done for this country. I have built schools. Everysing you have asked me I have done. No? And now sey want to juss take me down.” His accent became thicker as he became more upset.
Olivia rubbed her forehead, wondering how she was the one left talking one of Landon’s oldest friends off the ledge.
“Listen, Alek,” she said in the most calming voice she could muster, “the truth wins out in the end. Reporters can certainly make a mess but they can’t infiltrate the justice system.” She remained conscious of her word choice. “It’s late. Get some sleep. You’ll go tomorrow and you’ll prove to them you’re not guilty.” She knew there was a lack of confidence behind her words and hoped he didn’t detect it. She wanted to believe him. She couldn’t imagine how anything they were saying could really be true. This was Alek. Landon’s friend. Her friend. He couldn’t be a scam artist. It couldn’t be a Ponzi scheme. Still, the lingering doubt hung in the back of her mind.
“No. They ahave ruin everysing.” He spoke bluntly enough that it scared Olivia.
“Alek, you know what they say—the best way out is always through.”
“Yes.” He said this more as a sigh than a word.
“You just have to hang in there. One foot in front of the other and pretty soon we’ll be back at Hazan’s!” She tried to lift her voice into a pep-talk tone.
“You har very good friend. I want to sank you. You’ve been so very good to me.”
“You’ve been a good friend to me, Alek.” It was true, she thought with a pang of guilt for feeling so reluctant to talk to him when he was so desperate. He had been a very good friend. He had been there every time she called desperate for donations. He had gotten the campaign whatever they needed, from plane rides to restaurant reservations. Whenever they needed it.
“What’s your address? I have to send you a sank-you. Oh, never mind. Sere is no pen. You tex me your address, yay?”
“Yay.” She reflexively answered with his mispronounced version of “yes.” “Yes,” she said, correcting herself, “yes, I’ll do that right when we hang up.”
“Oh, se princess. You take care of everything.”
“Just try to get some sleep, Alek. Things always look better in the morning.” Olivia hung up the phone, hoping her adage had even a shred of truth to it. She sat in the silence of her apartment, holding on to her BlackBerry, desperately needing to reach out to someone. She started an email to Jacob, first with humor, then with seriousness, but no words seemed appropriate. Then she moved to Landon’s name.
Hey, she typed in red.
No, you cannot do this, she thought. You have to cut the cord. She erased the word. How had it become so hard to reach out to anyone?
She sat there for a few more minutes, thinking about Alek and the campaign, then pushed herself up off the chair and propelled herself into the bathroom. Sleep is the only appropriate way to go. It’ll be better in the morning.
As the shower water fell down on her head she thought through the worst-case scenario. If Alek were guilty of what they said, the campaign would take a huge hit. If she had stayed out of the fraying of the governor’s friendship with Alek, the governor would have never called Alek back, never seen him for dinner. Alek would have been a distant friend of the campaign, not a key player. Why couldn’t she have just stay
ed out of it?
She climbed into bed and tried to get comfortable, but nothing worked. She ended up on her side, staring down at the BlackBerry that lay on her pillow. She picked it up and started to write, wracked with a feeling that she could not just write for the sake of writing, as she would have two months ago. She scrolled to her saved messages and looked at the one from Landon with all X’s and O’s. It felt like a distant time and another person, but she longed for a connection to something about it, anything.
Hey. Spoke to A. He swears he’s not guilty. I’m so sorry for the mess.
As she wrote the last line she gulped to catch her breath and not start crying again. SEND. She lay staring at the ceiling for a minute, her heavy gaze broken by the vibration of a private number calling her phone. As much as she wanted to talk to him, she didn’t. She knew he would be logical and that she would have to be linear about it. All she actually wanted to do was melt into a thousand pieces in his arms. She hated both to need something from him and knew that he wouldn’t give it to her.
“Hello.”
“Hey.” He was talking in a hushed voice, which meant he was somewhere in the house and not somewhere safe for him to be calling her. “You okay?”
“Yep.” She said it quickly enough to cover up the lie, sad to be closed up to the one person she thought she could say anything to. His hushed voice and question were sure signs he wasn’t looking for any other answer than that.
“Okay,” he said, as if he had just checked off a box on his to-do list.
Olivia straightened up in bed, feeling almost offended by the call she’d wanted so badly. “I just—I’m really sorry for the mess. Alek says he’s not guilty. He says it’s all a big miscommunication.”
“I’ll say.”
“And the thing is,” Olivia said, feeling like she needed to be on the offensive and knowing the governor would appreciate the unemotional thought, “if it turns out he is guilty, every campaign across the board has taken money from him, along with most of the major nonprofits. Plus we have only taken twenty-four hundred dollars directly from him, which we could obviously easily give back.”
“You think he’s guilty?”
“God, I hope not.”
“Yeah.” The governor sounded less convinced or even hopeful.
“Have you talked to him at all?” she asked rhetorically, knowing full well the answer was no.
“No.”
She bit her lip, not wanting to give up the control she was holding on to by a thread, and let him sit in her uncharacteristic silence.
“We’re supposed to be in town tomorrow.”
“I know.” Olivia pinched her hand to keep herself from getting as emotional as she wanted. She hated him for everything that was going on and at the same time inexplicably almost ached for him to just hold her.
“Jacob thinks maybe I should steer clear, just until this blows over.”
“He’s probably right.” Even if she had wanted to, she didn’t have the energy to argue the point.
“You sure you’re okay?”
She listened to the phone, to his whisper, trying to grasp even a nanosecond of sincerity in the question. It was like he was pushing himself to ask her a second time to make himself feel better. He knew her well enough to know the answer, which made the asking even worse.
“I’m fine.” She pounded it out resolutely. She wasn’t fine, but she would be. Alek would go through the paperwork and it would all be okay in a week. “It’ll all be better in the morning,” she said once again.
“Get some sleep, baby.”
“Good night, Landon.” She said the words succinctly, hanging up before he had a chance to finish his “good night.” It was passive-aggressive to say it like that with his name, and she knew it, but she didn’t care. She was alone and wasn’t getting the hug she so desperately needed today or tomorrow. Tired and annoyed, she resolved to be independent. She thought of Alek and remembered that he had asked for her address, so she typed it out to him. When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hold on, she added at the end, taking comfort in giving the advice she could use herself. Her BlackBerry buzzed and a red message popped up,
You didn’t sound okay.
Duh. “I’m not okay!” she screamed to the wall. Then she picked up her BlackBerry and typed the only thing she wanted to share with him.
All good.
The next morning came quicker than Olivia would have hoped. Her nightmare of trying to get Alek seated next to Landon at an event was too obvious to spend even a minute trying to process. Nights when she dreamed like that, and they were many, were worse than not sleeping at all, since it felt like she had just gotten off work, not woken up.
She picked up her BlackBerry and saw the flood of emails. Annoyingly disappointed not to see one from Landon, she once again cursed the idea of being disappointed. She answered the emails that needed responses and walked past the outfit she had laid out the day before, when she thought she would be seeing Landon. She threw on jeans and a baggy, comfortable sweater. Jerk, she thought to herself, reminded of how insincerely he had asked about her in that late-night whispered call.
Her coffee didn’t have enough sugar, and the subway, of course, took forever to come, so by the time she got to the office, she was antsy with agitation and in no mood to explain to Addie why she hadn’t put on any makeup, all of which Addie clearly recognized.
“Um, hey, are you okay?”
“Hey, Addie. Just didn’t get much sleep.” Olivia took a sip of her coffee. “And my coffee’s shit.” She said it with an accepting smile, sorry to be starting off Addie’s day with misery.
“I’ll make a Starbucks run!” Addie chimed in cheerfully, probably more to get out of Olivia’s way than anything.
“That actually would be great, Addie, thanks so much.”
“No problemo! Skim mocha with whip?”
Olivia appreciated the care and waved Addie away with a twenty, cognizant for the millionth time of the profound effect Yanni’s extra five thousand dollars had had on her life.
The crazed monotony of the day started in as always, and it was already ten thirty when Olivia realized she hadn’t heard anything from Alek or anyone connected to the case. She did a quick Google search that had only yesterday’s news. She crunched her neck, feeling the crick in it harden. Just then her phone rang and Theresa, the fundraiser she worked with in Miami and Pennsylvania, the one who was also close with Alek, spoke quickly on the other line.
“Hey, Liv.”
“Hey, Theresa.”
“Question for you—when was the last time you spoke to Alek?” She asked calmly but there was an edge to her voice that made Olivia worry.
“Um, last night, why? What’s up?”
“Well . . .” She breathed in. “He’s missing. He didn’t show up for his arraignment.”
“Ohmygod.” Olivia’s heart hit the floor. That was worse than the worst-case scenario. “Where have they looked? Has anyone heard anything? Ohmygod.”
“Yeah, I know.” Theresa stayed calm and continued. “They searched his apartment and there was nothing there at all.”
“Empty?!”
Addie came to the door with a frightened look on her face, waving Olivia off the phone.
“Hold on a second, Theresa.” Olivia attempted to reclaim her composure.
Addie started in with rapid agitation. “Alek’s lawyers are on the phone. There are two of them. They said it’s really urgent. They sound scary.”
“Okay. It’s okay, Addie.” She clicked back to her call. “Theresa, let me call you right back, okay?” The need to calm Addie superseded her own worry.
“What’s going on?” Addie asked.
Olivia needed to be calm so that those around her would stay calm. “I don’t know exactly. Transfer the call and don’t talk to anyone until I’m off, okay?”
What would Jacob do? Calm, contain, control, she reminded herself, missing her friendship with him more than ever. H
e had barely spoken to her since New Year’s.
“Hello?”
“Ms. Greenley?”
“Yes?”
“This is Yael Utt. I’m Alek’s lawyer. I need to know if you have any idea where he is.” The lawyer said it sternly, and even worse, as any campaigner feared the most, like she was saying it for a taped recording.
“I just heard he didn’t show up today. I have no clue. Has he not contacted anyone?”
“Indeed he’s missing,” Yael said like a strict principal. “When is the last contact you had with him?”
“Last night.” Her panic grew as her mind wandered to her conversation with him. “He was very upset. Oh, no.”
The lawyer didn’t leave any hesitation for emotion. “I’m going to give you all our numbers here. If you hear from him we need to know immediately.”
“Okay. Of course. Of course.” Olivia wrote down three different numbers, as well as the lawyer’s assistant’s name and cell phone.
“Thank you.” The phone clicked off. Crap. Without logic, she tried Alek’s cell, which went straight to voice–mail. She banged her head down on the desk. How is this happening? Where is he? She tried to keep her mind from going to the dark place it was now heading toward. She opened up her email and then closed it. Instead, she picked up the phone.
“Jacob?”
“Hey, Liv, what’s up? I’m about to get on a plane to New York.” She wished more than anything that the edge to his words that had developed since New Year’s was gone, but he was as crisp as could be.
“Governor’s not with you, is he?” She asked the question despite its irrelevance and despite already knowing the answer.
“No. Billy and I decided it was better for him to lie low today. He’s going to do some community events.”
“Good.” Olivia was actually thankful that everyone was more logical than she. Keeping him in Georgia was a good idea, especially since this was going to be even more of a mess. “So . . .” The words seemed hard to say. “Alek’s lawyer just called me.”
“Oh, yeah? What’d he say? What’s going on?”
Domestic Affairs Page 32
