“Amazing,” Jay whispered, feeling as though they were at a campfire in the middle of Wyoming and Buck had a guitar and a canteen of Jack Daniel’s to share. A door smacked open in a distant room, the sound of street traffic resounding with it.
Buck straightened. “Anyway, no one ever knew—till now. And you can quote me on that.” He winked and backed away, then, just before leaving, added, “Birdie would never tell you that, but she would tell you the first thing she says when she wakes up the morning of her Hawkeye party every four years...” Jay leaned forward, listening.
4
I LOVE THE SMELL OF BUNTING IN THE MORNING
Every morning, as the flat screen TV in their bedroom flipped on, the electronic shades rose, and the coffee machine downstairs buzzed alive all at the same expertly programmed moment, Buck Brandywine greeted Birdie with the same four words: “Good morning, pretty girl.”
Birdie was well past girlishness—a meticulously preserved fifty-three, but who was counting? Not her—yet in spirit, she felt far younger, certainly. She made sure of it: everything about her was cultivated and deliberate, from her smooth, preternaturally firm skin to her flaxen hair (not too long but absolutely not too short), the fringy bangs obscuring just enough to shave off a few years, all lovingly maintained by Georgetown’s most exclusive salon; from her willowy physique and lean legs sculpted by daily early-morning sessions at the SoulCycle blocks from their home to her very name, Birdie.
Buck had woken her with these words every dawn since their first night together decades, decades, ago, and hearing them first thing in the morning—before the precious cosmetics, layers of expensive creams and serums, or the luscious clothes and heels—had taken on new meaning with each passing year. She absorbed his words like a kind of nourishment.
Except today. During election season.
Just as January flexed its muscles outside her window, the year’s first snow swirling in a bitter wind, something equally wintry raged within her. The midterm elections didn’t affect her the same way. But when the presidential campaigns began, she felt her battle armor slip on. She couldn’t help it; it was a reflex. Just as she couldn’t bring herself to perform the same quiet acts of kindness for him that she could the rest of the year. She couldn’t bear, for instance, to leave love notes in his office or to make his favorite fresh-squeezed orange juice every morning, a process that she’d otherwise enjoyed since acquiring that fantastic juicer, which had cost more than her first car.
Buck had cheated.
Years ago.
While on his first presidential campaign.
Out on the trail. Overworked, underpaid, sleep-deprived, thrilled by it all, loving every minute of it, as any true political junkie would. But, impassioned by the job, engrossed in the frenetic energy, and far from home, he had slipped up. He’d confessed to her immediately, with true tears and proper pleading, and as gutted as she had felt, she loved him too much, so she had stayed. But her heart had scarred, her healing never quite complete. For some reason, she could not just forget it all, and every presidential election cycle, those stubborn memories came barreling back, steamrolling over her life. So she hardened her shell and kept extraordinarily busy. She had a ridiculously successful political fund-raising and event-planning firm to run, after all.
And so Birdie Brandywine’s day, the eve of the true kickoff of the campaign season, had been an appropriate whirlwind: meetings, interviews, phone calls, confirming the timeline of tomorrow’s events, dishing details about her all-star guest list, fielding décor questions. For her, there was nothing more electrifying, except for the fete itself. The next day’s party wouldn’t be in full swing until at least eight o’clock, but the preparations would begin at dawn with deliveries, and her veins would already be humming with adrenaline. Coordinating, planning. Trying to ignore the memories. No matter how lovingly Buck had greeted her this morning.
The eve of an Iowa party was also absolutely not a night to turn in early. And so even after a long day, even as the sky began to darken, evening setting in, the temperature falling enough to freeze a thin layer of ice on the wet pavement, she had one more meeting.
The elevator doors opened onto the top of the W Hotel, music spilling out to greet her and lure new patrons—that song everyone was listening to by Rocky Haze. Her cultural tastes still skewed plenty young, thank God. She would never permit herself to become the least bit “out of touch,” there could be no worse fate, as she saw it. Career suicide, to be sure. People came to her for vibrance, and she delivered.
She strode into the sleek lounge, phone to her ear as she listened to a voice message left half an hour ago—when she had intentionally declined the caller: Buck. Walls of windows faced the Treasury Building, that statue of Alexander Hamilton presiding proudly over the columned fortress, and in the distance the White House aglow. “Guess I missed you, just got home.” Buck’s easy twang. “Anyway, it’s a no-go on the remote hit. MSNBC is doing the panel, after all. I’ll have to head out to Des Moines tomorrow morning. Sorry, Bird...” In other words, he would not be making even so much as a cameo at her Iowa Caucus viewing party tomorrow evening.
She rolled her eyes and hung up just as a helicopter buzzed past the windows, chopping at the navy sky loud enough to sound like an extra percussion line in the Rocky Haze track. Marine One en route home to 1600 Pennsylvania. The lounge patrons collectively hushed, craning necks and pointing for a moment, gawking, before sitting back in their plush banquettes again, remembering to play it cool. Birdie refocused too, scanning the room for her 7:30 p.m. appointment. So many dapper twenty-and thirtyish men in their slim-cut suits with splashy candy-colored ties and thick-framed glasses, you could just tell they were hipsters on the weekend. Their female counterparts in structured knee-length sheath dresses, heeled boots, bags that cost more than Hill staffers ought to be able to afford—Birdie loved it all. They made her feel enlivened instead of decrepit. If only Washington had been more like this when she was coming up. Of course, she told herself, she helped it become this, hadn’t she?
She had truly grasped it, how this city operated, for the first time in her twenties when she watched a gaggle of her contemporaries—all gorgeous, leggy, the kind who could get any man—huddle around a balding, chubby, middle-aged White House press secretary at a downtown cigar bar like he was the sixth member of Duran Duran. She got it then, and it gave her comfort: this was a town that ran on power and proximity to power, not looks, not even money—though looks and money never hurt.
As she made her way around the bustling bar, she could feel those many sets of eyes shift to her now. She pretended not to notice getting noticed, but felt her posture straighten, her stride lengthen as though she were walking a runway. And she reveled in looking the part: collar of her crisp white shirt popped, just enough buttons undone to show she wasn’t in government, glittering chunky necklace peeking out, her jacquard pencil skirt giving way to toned legs. She was glad she hadn’t caved and put on the stockings. She never wore stockings, even in winter, though she had almost made an exception today, what with the snow. At her age she considered stockings a white flag of surrender, one stilettoed foot in the coffin. She would flaunt what she had as long as she could. In her five-inch heels tonight, she entered the room at a glamazon six foot one, which pleased her, and she enjoyed her view: she had earned those eyes on her.
She spotted him at the very back of the room, on a low, cushy couch with the best sight line to the White House. Nose buried in his phone, he glanced up and, seeing her, stood and buttoned his suit jacket, grinning. Tall, dark, handsome, early thirties and baby-faced.
“Hope you weren’t waiting long,” she said, having planned to arrive exactly seven minutes late.
“Hi, oh, no, not at all. I was immersed in the new Madison Goodfellow interview.” He flashed his phone. It was the top story on The Queue, a sneak of the next Us Weekly cover featuring the first-lady
hopeful. Birdie had already seen it. “Thank God I don’t want her husband to win.”
“I know! The sound bites are horrifying,” she said, her hand on his arm as though about to tell a secret. “I have got to meet this woman.”
He laughed; she did too. But she had meant it. Birdie had a gut feeling that, politics aside, she and Madison were cut from the same cloth: both stealthily scrappy. She had, naturally, made sure an invitation to her Iowa party had found its way to Madison.
“Well.” He shook his head as though starting over. “I have got to meet this woman.” He gestured to Birdie. “The whole room just watched you walk in, and they’re wondering how I got so lucky that you’re here with me.” He said it sweetly, holding out his hand. “Cole Cleaver. Honored. And delighted, Ms. Brandywine. Obviously.”
She took his hand and leaned in, turned his formal greeting into a kiss on her cheek, so much better for their audience. “Well, there’s certainly a reason you’re a lobbyist.” Even though she knew charm was a prerequisite for his work, she still appreciated a man who could flirt.
“Tell that to Senator Bronson,” he said with a laugh.
As she took her seat beside him, the bartender appeared without her having to signal him, and set her usual dirty martini on the table.
“You got it.” She held up her glass in a toast and took a sip. “He and I go back a long way, you know.”
“I do. I might’ve heard some stories about you,” he teased, a mischievous glint in his eye. “Something about House and Senate ethics rules being changed because of some over-the-top birthday party you threw for Bronson.”
“Guilty,” she demurred, swirling the olive in her drink. It was indeed true, her old firm’s lavish party for the senator fifteen years earlier had caused quite the stir. She had secretly loved the attention. And recalling this to her now, with just the right amount of reverence and awe, was the quickest way to her heart. She felt an instant pull to him. “Well, don’t you just know all my secrets? Bob—Senator Bronson—did promise me you were the best and brightest.” He would have to be for her to agree to meet with him instead of the senator himself.
“He’s very kind. I’m probably not fit to even shine his shoes.” He smiled.
“Or ghostwrite his Twitter feed,” she quipped.
He laughed at that. “Exactly! And I’ve done that too, but, honestly...it freaks me out.”
“As it should.” She glanced at her vibrating phone—a text from Buck—turned it facedown and pulled her iPad from her handbag, firing up her proposals for the Arnold fund-raiser.
“Although, I guess I’m doing something right if they’re letting me take this meeting,” he said, just enough earnest self-deprecation to fully win her over. “The senator says hi, and that money is no object.”
“Excellent. Always liked that guy.” Senator Bob Bronson had been her first boss, and she was proud to call him a lifelong friend now. He had recently left the Senate and launched a lobby shop. His first order of business: getting Vice President John Arnold elected president. “So! Bronson has got himself a new firm and wants a party full of the fabulous people and deep pockets to rake in cash for Arnold and put him in good when Arnold wins the presidency.”
Cole nodded, taking a drink. “In a nutshell.”
“He told me last week,” she went on. “He wants young turks on the guest list, press in the right places, image-building, buzz. No problem, love.”
“He said you would make this easy.” He drained his glass.
“That’s what I do.”
“His words—‘Just make it not stuffy, not like another one of those parties thrown by retired senators who started a lobby shop. Fun! Arnold needs young voters.’” He mimicked the man’s deep, grumpy-sounding voice.
“We’ll have the details done before you finish your next drink.” She signaled for the bartender.
He suddenly looked embarrassed. “Can I tell you: I was a little nervous. To meet you.”
“Who, me?” She smiled. “I love that about you.”
She would be out all night. It was decided.
* * *
The sun rose into a pink-hued early-morning sky over the Capitol dome as Birdie breathed in the brisk air, clearing her lungs. It had been a long time since she had smoked weed, or whatever the kids were calling it these days. But it was legal here now, and though it may have felt even better when it wasn’t, she forgot how much she liked it. Still in her skirt and now-rumpled button-down from the night before, she wandered up the center of Pennsylvania Avenue, her stilettos dangling from her fingertips. Early risers zipped past in cars, zooming up to the Hill and down to the surrounding agencies: Labor, Justice, IRS, FBI. She just wanted to walk a few more blissful blocks here at the center of the world. Today was the day she had been waiting for, much like the way athletes ticked down the years and months until the next Olympics.
She was so fixated on time in its grand sense, that she had lost track of it in the more immediate: When had she said she would meet The Queue guy? She checked her watch. Now. She ran down a cab whizzing past the Newseum and once inside freshened up her makeup, spritzed Chanel Nº 5 and chomped a handful of Altoids.
Birdie emailed her assistant from the cab—on my way. phone out of juice. keep everyone happy pls. be there soon. thx.—and arrived to a nervous Abbie pacing by the front door, an interviewer in the sitting room and decorators on hand transforming her home into its own bipartisan campaign headquarters. Those iconic half-moons of red, white and blue draped her mansion and the one next door, which she and Buck used as their offices. The vintage posters had been hauled out from the storage room in the basement: “I Like Ike” and “Keep Cool and Keep Coolidge” and “All the Way With LBJ” now replaced some of the more obscure artwork usually displayed (though the Banksys and the Shepard Faireys were, of course, still prominently on view). Extra flat screens had been brought in, enabling guests to watch the caucus returns in nearly every room.
Birdie barely paid attention as Abbie ran through the checklist on her iPad. She was too focused on Buck’s voice coming from the sitting room, her ears pricking up: What was he doing? They had long had an agreement that he was to stay out of her business. It got her wondering what act of sabotage he might be committing, just how ruffled his feathers might be by her staying out, ignoring his calls. She tossed her bag and shoes on an antique brocade chair and headed in his direction.
She reached the room just as Buck said, “Birdie usually wakes up on Iowa Caucus day and says to me—”
“I love the smell of bunting in the morning!” Birdie finished his thought, strutting in barefoot in wrinkled clothes, but with that luminous smile.
“Speak of the devil,” Buck said. “Ears burning, were they, Bird?”
“Shouldn’t you be on a plane to Des Moines instead of hijacking my interview, darling?” she asked in her most flirtatious tone, giving him a peck on the cheek.
“Weren’t you wearing that yesterday?” Buck smirked.
“Oh, Buck! Your suits all look alike to me too,” she volleyed, upbeat. She knew what he was doing, could tell from the flinty set of his eyes that he was angry. She turned her attention to Jay, who stood, extending his hand. “Buck wouldn’t know a Derek Lam skirt if it bit him in the ass,” she said saucily. “So terribly sorry to keep you waiting, Jay.” She kissed him on the cheek.
“No problem at all, I—”
“Just putting out some late-breaking fires, as you can imagine,” she cut him off.
With an “I’ll leave you to it,” Buck let himself out.
Birdie turned to Jay, throwing her arm around him. “The flowers have just arrived and I have so much to show you. Shall we get started?”
5
WHAT A WINNING IDEA!
Madison Goodfellow was the only one paying attention as Hank’s new press secretary, Mike Something, sat in a co
rner of their suite at the Des Lux Hotel a day before the Iowa caucus, quietly apoplectic as he read from his smartphone. “Ohhhh, boy. Ohboyohboyohboyohboy. Not good. Not. Good,” he said.
Madison looked up for a moment, just in time to make eye contact from across the room, where she sat on a chaise by the window. She gave her best poker face: a blank canvas. She could guess what he might be reading.
No one else seemed to notice. Room service tables, with the remnants of dinner, sat in the middle of the room. Outside, the dusk rush hour began to overtake downtown Des Moines, and on TV a buxom blonde news anchor gave a rundown of everyone’s Iowa odds: Hank still came out the favorite. Madison hated that picture they always used. He looked so much more presidential when he smiled without showing his teeth (perfect as they were—veneers, naturally), not that anyone had bothered asking her opinion. She had never loved watching the news, but there was so much of it on every hour of the day on so many channels that it was unavoidable. And it had become a new brand of torture watching clip after clip of Hank shouting from so many podiums in so many states. Her husband had undergone some sort of lobotomy since declaring his candidacy. In every public appearance he was sounding more and more like he did at cocktail parties when he’d had too much bourbon: “What’s the big deal? I could fix this whole goddamn mess. Washington just needs a kick in the ass and lemme tell ya, I can kick.” Except he wasn’t drinking. And every day brought new challenges as she learned to coexist with this Frankenstein in expertly tailored suits. She missed the old Hank. The one who used to skinny-dip in their pool in the Hamptons at all hours of the day.
Madison curled her long legs beneath her, sipped her cappuccino and scrolled through her own emails. The most interesting among them: an invitation from Birdie Brandywine. She knew the name. She had read Birdie’s decorating and entertaining book when Hank first started talking about a presidential run nearly a year ago, in an effort to wrap her head around what Washington was about. She realizes you’ll likely be in Iowa, but even so... the email from Madison’s assistant had read, with a photo of Birdie’s very flattering FedExed handwritten note calling Madison a “tastemaker” and “powerful woman in her own right.” Madison so wished she could go to the Iowa viewing party at Birdie’s undoubtedly stunning Georgetown home.
Campaign Widows Page 3
