by Claire Adams
No.
I tugged myself into the shower and allowed the hot water to course down my back, down my sides. I scrubbed at my armpits and tried to rid my body of Xavier’s scent. I didn’t want to remember him as I pulled off my dress later this evening. I wanted every speck of evidence to falter away from me, for good.
I dried my hair, thinking about my apartment. I imagined the cameras lurking like sharks in the depths. I wondered if I’d ever return back there or if it was ultimately lost to me for good. I’d never allowed myself to lose so many things at once, before. I’d lost Xavier. I’d lost my home. All I really had, in this moment, was Rachel. And perhaps a drive to succeed, still riveted somewhere in my head.
I tugged my dress over my head and heard Rachel as she shuffled from the door. Both of us were late for work (and both of us were absolutely battling hangovers from the previous evening, I knew). I calmly trounced toward the door, taking every precaution from shaking my tender head too much. I spun back around, noting the comfortable shell of the room around me, before exiting into the revving world. Soon, I’d have to see Xavier. I tried to turn off the anxiety of my mind.
Finally, I arrived at the White House, pushing myself from the taxi in another long line of almost-late government employees. I nodded to them as we passed each other. They naturally allowed me to enter the White House first, to go through security first. After all, I was their leader. I was the campaign director. I was twenty, thirty years their junior, in some cases. And yet, there I was.
The secret servicemen looked at me stoically, without a speck of recognition. I wondered what this meant. I wondered if they knew about what had happened between the president and I—if they understood that it was over between us, that because of me, they had a serious security breakage on their end. I wanted to take them to the side and shake them, telling them it wasn’t my fault. But their eyes were so cold.
Dimitri, my old friend from the old campaign days, was especially cold. He pressed his lips together and allowed me to pass by. I imagined a day in which he would hold out his hand and shake his head dismally. “Not today, Miss Martin,” he’d say. The White House mouth would be closed to me. My dreams would rush through the cracks.
That morning, I sat at my desk and sipped my coffee, watching the campaign team roll around my evenly. The speed was ramping up, as it naturally did during the year before the election. The next few months would be hard and fast, and then in the summer, we’d ramp up even more. It was going to be a hard road, but it was a road that I’d imagined so many, many times before. It seemed impossible to imagine myself not involved.
Jason, on the other side of the office, seemed in a tizzy. He continually placed his hand on his forehead, scraping the sweat away from his brow. He shook his head into the phone he held at his ear, opening his mouth to bicker in a menacing manner. I raised my eyebrow toward him. Nothing ever went to plan, I wanted to tell him. Not even the best-laid of them all.
That afternoon, I ate my lunch at my desk, working through the last mechanisms of my later-afternoon briefing. I munched through cucumbers and some almonds, knowing that this would just barely push me through the rest of the day. But I didn’t have the time to go into the world to find anything. Before me, many of the desks were empty, revealing that these people had wants, had needs, had desires.
Above the desks, peering toward me in the darkness of the hallway, I saw a thin, muscled figure. I turned my neck toward him, alarmed at his secrecy. Of course, the man was Xavier. He’d pushed from his Oval Office to come spy on me—perhaps to fire me in decency, when no one but that little guy with the southern accent in the corner would know.
But as soon as he caught my eye, shivers coursed through both of us. I swallowed slowly. He spun around, giving me the darkness of his back, his black hair. I turned back toward my work, readying myself for the briefing. Sometimes, Xavier didn’t go to them. Perhaps I could push through. Perhaps this stress that pulsed in me could go unnoticed.
However, when the briefing finally came, I felt the shivers coursing through my body. I stood before the great crowd of fully-fed campaign workers, feeling Jason’s burly presence beside me. He leaned toward me and whispered: “You seem awful quaky today. You sure you don’t want me to cover it?”
I peered up at the back of the room, where I noted that Xavier had just entered, his dark eyes peering toward me. It felt like a challenge, like he wanted to make sure I was up to snuff. The anger grew in me, obliterating the love I had for him, even just for a moment.
I grabbed the baton, not giving Jason a decent response to his malicious question. I tapped it against the board before me, where I’d drawn a decent outline of our education bill plan—the one we were shuffling through congress in the following few months to really get a lead over the Republican candidate. “LISTEN UP, PEOPLE,” I announced, lending them a sense for my passion, my drive. “Get the fuck out of your heads and listen to me.” I furrowed my eyebrows. They were going to pay attention to me—their campaign leader—for as long as I held this chair. Xavier was going to know that a little phrase like the one he used—the one initiating his regret for even hiring a “29-year-old girl” like me—held no validity. I was strong, empowered.
And I would make him win.
Chapter 3
As I pushed through the meeting, I grew stronger and truer to the feelings of triumph inside me. I no longer looked toward Xavier. Rather, I turned my attention toward the people before me, the people who turned toward me with a sense of passion and drive for this cause. I didn’t have time for people like Jason and Xavier—people with such apparent cruelty in their hearts. Did they believe that you could only make it in this business if you were cruel, if you obliterated everything and everyone in your path?
I tapped the baton back before the table, bringing everyone’s heads back up from their notes. It was nearly five-thirty, which meant that I had overworked everyone well beyond their five-o-clock end time. I thanked them, nodding my head succinctly. “Good work today. I think if we follow this plan to a T—if everyone does his or her job appropriately—we can win this thing.” My eyes were drawn to Xavier once more in this moment. He still looked so dark beneath the fluorescent lights of the great conference room. I tapped my papers on the table. “You can all head out,” I announced. “Thank you.”
The conference room erupted. People began their long-held conversations that had surely been bursting in their hearts. They turned toward each other and discussed dinner plans, first dates. They allowed their thoughts to stem away from the campaign. I wondered what that was like. Everything about my life: from the cameras positioned in my apartment to the very real love I held for Xavier was rooted in the campaign. Thusly, I couldn’t very well rip myself away from it. I couldn’t’ find another topic in my head!
The people ran into the hallway to grab their coats and head into the fall day. I stayed behind, toward the white board, taking final notes for the day. Even Jason nodded toward me with a sense of near-decency, telling me to enjoy my afternoon. I wanted to kick him in the shin, but I held back. “Have a good evening,” I told him. My voice was brimming with constricted hatred.
As everyone left, I was still very much aware of the final, dark figure lurking at the top of the conference room. I turned to the left and tapped off one of the central lights, leaving my area in grey. I walked up the steps, clinging to my folders. I swallowed. “Hello,” I nodded coolly to the president. “How are you today?”
But Xavier stepped forward with such an anxious ferocity, I nearly stepped back—a step that would have forced me to fall down the steps. “Amanda. I need to talk to you. Immediately.”
I raised my eyebrows, my heart quickening in my chest. I didn’t allow my eyes to meet his. I knew this eye contact would churn me into a sense of sadness, of remorse. The last time I had looked at him, really looked at him, he’d told me that I wasn’t worthy of his campaign. He’d told me to leave. He’d essentially taken back every expounding
of love he’d ever given me. It was over. It had to be.
“I actually can’t talk right now,” I stated, looking down at my folder as if to check something. “I’m on my way to meet with a member from Congress.”
His head reared back. “Which one?”
I raised my eyebrow, still peering somewhere over his left shoulder. “Jimmy Everett.”
He scoffed, shaking his head. “That old crabby man. You don’t want to talk to him.”
I felt offended for Jimmy, even though I was lying. “I’m certain you don’t mean to speak of your supporters that way,” I reprimanded. I readjusted my folders. “You’re going to need all the help you can get next fall. I crank these numbers every day. Talking to Jimmy is going to give me insight on how to proceed.” My words were so forceful, brimming with anger. I could feel him deflating before me, and the thought of his sadness brought me a small sliver of pleasure.
He brought his hand out to grab my wrist as I walked by. I turned my head, frowning. I still didn’t give him my eye. “I told you. After the meeting with Jimmy, sometime before the next reelection campaign. Please respect that I’m doing everything in my power to get you re-elected.” These final words were my stand, assuring him that I was capable, that I wasn’t some silly twenty-nine-year-old bimbo. I wasn’t Clinton’s intern. I had pounded my way to the front door of the White House and I wasn’t turning away without a fight.
“But—Amanda.” He was pleading with me, now. I could hear it in his voice. “Know that this isn’t a work matter. I need to speak with you about something private.”
I spun toward him once more on my way to the door. I was sure that the president was not used to being walked out on. I tipped my head to the right, thinking that a private matter was nothing I wanted to talk about, then. Not now. Perhaps not ever. “A private matter?”
“Yes. It’s incredibly urgent.” More words of pleading, of anxiety. His heart was clearly lurking beneath his eyes.
But I just turned my eyes toward my papers. “I’m incredibly busy the next few days. But I’ll see what I can do,” I said to him, still speaking as if this was about the campaign. My voice was rimmed with authority. “My best to you and Mrs. Callaway.”
And then I was out of there, leaving that final spurn in the air between us. I caught my things up at my desk, and then I spun toward the door. I sped down the steps, my heart still in my throat. I couldn’t believe I’d just turned away from the man I truly loved. I felt so strong, so empowered in this moment—even as I felt that my heart was breaking.
I soon found myself speeding away in a taxi. I felt myself diving into a state of solitude. I couldn’t even dredge up the words to say thank you to the taxi driver. I found myself dragging up to Rachel’s apartment, feeling so low. I thought of the events coming over the next few days, and I couldn’t picture myself at any of them. Something was shrouding over my mind, over my muscles. It forced me into the chair by the window, a glass of wine in my hand. I didn’t know yet that I was coming into sadness, into a sense of mourning. I had never fallen in love before; I’d never lost love before. I sipped at my wine.
Rachel burst through the door about an hour later. She placed her bag on the table and sat beside me, placing her hand at my back. She pursed her lips before asking. “So. Did you tell the media? His wife?”
I shook my head slowly, feeling a bit of laughter churn up from my stomach. Of course I didn’t tell on him. He was my love; he’d been my life. I was trying to shell myself to him. But I was rattling around, feeling empty. I laid my head on my friend’s shoulder, and she sighed beside me. “It’s going to be okay, Amanda. Do you think—do you think you could stay home?” she whispered.
I shook my head, feeling the anxiety ramp through my arms, my legs. “I have so much to do for the campaign. I can’t stay home. Not tomorrow, not ever.” I felt my voice break as I said the words. I felt myself begin to shake.
“Shh,” Rachel began. She rubbed at my neck and held me. I didn’t realize that I was crying so profusely, that I was allowing all the emotion from the previous few days to exit my body. She brought a Kleenex toward me, and I sighed into it, quaking.
“What am I going to do?” I kept asking her—her and the world. I hadn’t realized that all this emotion had been brimming to the surface all along. The stress I had been under was too much, far too much for any one person to handle. However, I had thought I could handle it, like I could handle anything else. I had thought that it would work itself out. I had thought I could beat Jason at his game.
As I sat and cried with my friend that evening, I knew that I had to stay home, at least for the rest of the week. I knew that I needed to escape the penetrating anxiety of the White House if I was going to live through the campaign. This would be the wayward way I worked through the emotion of the previous few weeks. I would release the emotion I held inside of me. I would say I was sick—say anything at all to get me out of the office. Then, I would return a brand-new person, the type of person who would never be caught with her skirts up around the President of the United States. No. Never.
Rachel tucked me in that evening, and I stayed in bed the following day until noon. I stretched my arms high above my head, still feeling the stifling anxiety glimmer through my brain. I knew this meant I wasn’t ready, that I couldn’t face the music. I reached toward my cell phone and dialed a number I thought I’d never dial again.
“Jason,” I croaked into the phone. I even sounded sick, to myself. My heart pumped slowly in my chest.
“Amanda,” Jason hissed, his voice urgent. “Where the hell are you? We’re supposed to have the re-election campaign meeting in ten minutes. I don’t have any of your notes.”
I nearly laughed out loud, but I kept it cranked in tightly. Clearly, Jason hadn’t been doing his job. If he’d been following along in our countless meetings, during our countless discussions about the campaign, he should have everything he needed to guide the troops, so to speak. But he didn’t. Not even close.
“I’m sick, Jason,” I said sweetly. I turned over on my pillow and gazed toward the wall. “I’m so, so sick. I probably won’t be there tomorrow, either. Please. Just do the best you can. Fake it till you make it. I know that’s what you do, anyway.” My voice croaked a bit as I spoke, but the sentiment lingered strong.
He paused, huffing into the phone. “If you don’t get here immediately, I’m going to tell your boyfriend I know all about yours and his little shenanigans.”
This threat didn’t make me quake, even for a moment. My “boyfriend” already knew about Jason’s comprehension of our non-relationship. But I just giggled into the phone. “I’d love to be there when you tell him, so please, please don’t yet.”
“Um.” Jason’s surprise was apparent over the phone. “Well. You’re sick, huh? Okay. Um. I can get through this. Just—if you could send me a few of your notes?”
I snorted and pretended it was all a part of my illness. “Oh, excuse me. Um. I don’t honestly know where they are right now. I’m on my way to the doctor. But I’ll try to get them to you as soon as possible. Okay, Jason? You can do this, man.” I hung up the phone with a smile, loving the feeling of tossing Jason out on a lifeboat, into the wind-tossed sea. Would he sink? Would he float? One was better for me, as a campaign leader. And one was far more likely and far, far more hilarious.
But this happiness—this joy at his struggles—flushed away in the following few moments, as I lay in silence in that comfortable cloud bed. I tucked the sheets around my shoulders and zoned in toward the ceiling, counting the wayward lines in the whitewash. Work was calling to me. But I had to re-build myself from the inside. I remembered pushing myself through every illness throughout my life; I remembered bickering with my mom about not wanting to stay home because of my flu—telling her that I wouldn’t fail any quiz just because of some microbe lurking in my body. I remembered turning my nose toward people who fell prey to the workings of their tumultuous bodies.
Bu
t now, I understood. The mind had such an effect on the body. It held you tightly, like a gloved hand around your throat. It allowed you to breathe, but only if you struggled and fought for it—only if you allowed everything else to fall away.
In those days when I avoided work—four days in total—I learned how to breathe once more. I learned how to stand. I learned how to train my thoughts to fall away from Xavier. I learned how to be a better version of myself: one that didn’t require the desire of the President of the United States to survive.
I stood tall on the final day—a Friday, of course. I drank coffee, like a past, stronger version of myself. I pretended to be that Amanda, and not that current shell. I would get through this. I’d scrape the grime from my past life and propel myself into a better future. I was made for this world.
Chapter 4
On that Monday, I rose early and made a pot of coffee, ready to meet the world once more. I showered for a long time, thinking only of Xavier in an abstract way. “So funny that I once thought the entire earth revolved around him,” I murmured to myself, scraping the grime from my shoulders, from my sides. Down the hall, Rachel could hear me singing a bit as I scrubbed myself. She told me later that she knew everything would be all right again in this moment—that I would return to work and meet my success head-on.
I strapped my tights to my body once more and I marched across the guest bedroom, this room that was suddenly becoming so much like home. I slotted my feet into too-high heels, knowing that I could strut around the office with an assuredness in these suckers that I couldn’t create with the other shoes. I knew I had to dress the part, if I was going to pretend that I didn’t hold any sort of emotion toward the president. I knew I had to convince both myself and the outside world of this fact.
