Domestic Affairs (2 page)

“I'll just get out here,” she yelled to the driver, seeing the hotel a block away. She jumped out and checked the seat to make sure that she hadn't left her BlackBerry, the nightmare she had the habit of living through when she was in a rush. And she was always in a rush.

As she waited for the crosswalk light to change, she took a quick look down at herself and realized what a mess she was offering. The conference call had lasted the entire cab ride, so she hadn't had her usual five minutes to tuck in her shirt and slap on some makeup. Everything in Olivia's makeup bag was smudgeable, meaning it could be put on with fingertips rather than brushes in the dark or in the backseat of a moving cab, or, if need be, both. She was never much of a makeup girl. She left that type of thing to her older sister. So being able to apply it while in a cab, otherwise known as Campaign Lesson #8, made the whole process more bearable. Or at least less of a waste of time.

Thank goodness for Brooks Brothers wrinkle-free
, she thought as she carried her bags, tucked in her shirt, and crossed the street all at once. The shirt was her saving grace. It stayed crisp no matter what hell she put it through. She didn't know who invented iron-free technology, but whoever did should win a Nobel Prize. And why hadn't every other designer followed suit? Why would anyone make non-wrinkle-free shirts anymore?

Why would I buy ones that weren't? Why do I only have one? I'll buy another one this weekend
, she pledged to herself, knowing full well she wouldn't be making it out to the stores.
Focus, Olivia.

She ran her hands down the sides of her brown pencil skirt, trying to force out some of the old-school wrinkles. It was one of her few classic go-to outfits and she was glad she had picked it. It made her feel better about the fact that her only makeup was a glop of Juicy Tubes lip gloss, smeared on as she walked in the door. She touched at the ribbon tied around her straight brown hair, literally
long
overdue for a haircut.

At least Jacob won't make fun of me for overdressing for Taylor.

Landon Taylor was not like other politicians. He was not one of those awkward-looking men who ran around DC in ill-fitting suits, concerned only with the sound of their own voice. Taylor stood six feet tall and had high cheekbones and youthful blue eyes that complemented his prep-school hair. He always looked like he should be standing alongside the Kennedy brothers in a black and white photograph, staring out at a horizon that only a few leaders would ever really see. When he spoke, his Southern accent blended with a sharp intellect to create
the right mix of smarts and accessibility. And although a few years of campaigning had left her with a degree of jadedness, Olivia found her adoration for Landon Taylor was untouched.

Her senior year in college, only five years earlier, she had written a paper about the impact of his campaign speeches on the American dialogue about poverty, and later, while she was interning for the Democratic convention, she had the chance to see him in person. She remembered it like a girl looking back on her first kiss. It was one of the rare moments in politics when the world quiets down enough so you can truly listen to another person. The moment he began speaking, the massive, chaotic convention hall hushed, becoming more and more rapt with every word. To this day, Olivia couldn't imagine anyone hearing that speech and not being moved to do something more with their life. Of course, near the end of the speech she was jerked out of her trance by a donor asking for a ticket to the Maroon 5 party the next night.

“What a waste of time,” the donor had said. “Does anyone really think this guy has a chance against the Republican machine in Georgia?”

She wanted to raise her hand to the sky and scream, “Me! I do!” but she knew Taylor didn't have a chance. She had been following his race as closely as if she were working on it. Every poll, even his internals, had him down double digits and he was being outspent three to one. Every hired political gun was urging him to center his message, but he stuck with his passion. For Olivia, as he spoke with fervor about everything she believed in, his impending loss was a substantiation of what she had just started to articulate to herself: that there used to be real leaders who could silence the world enough to argue for truth, but now they were all quieted by the circus that politics had become.

But something had happened with Landon Taylor. After an explosive surge in the last two weeks of his campaign for governor, he won, by more than a few votes, the race that everyone agreed he couldn't win. True, his victory was mostly due to the revelation of his opponent's insider-trading scandal, brought to light by that candidate's third wife. But still,
Landon Taylor won
. That was enough to keep alive Olivia's hope that a decent man, a real inspiring leader, could succeed. Since then he had gained accolades for the Georgia state government
and consequently was selected as the vice presidential candidate in the last election. Though the ticket had lost (something she blamed entirely on Taylor's running mate), the publicity and exposure left him in an ideal position for a future run for president. He was an inspirational long shot who had beaten the odds to become someone with a real chance at the White House. Just thinking about it left Olivia with a renewed belief in the existence of the type of politics that had filled the posters on her old dorm room wall.

She studied him like an ongoing thesis project, picking up every fact, big or small. From his antipoverty speeches to the kind of shoes his gorgeous wife wore—Christian Louboutins, of course—Olivia knew the governor inside and out. He stood in stark contrast to the transactional candidates she had come to know in the last few years. They changed positions on major issues when public opinion shifted, made bland speeches so as not to ruffle any feathers even when the feathers clearly needed to be ruffled, and would say just about anything to get a donation. But with someone like this, like Taylor, her fundraising could serve a cause, not just her résumé.

So here she was. Running late, half-put-together, but as excited as she'd ever been for this life-changing meeting in the misleading calmness of the Brinmore.

The Brinmore was one of the most exclusive hotels on Park Avenue. It used to be the place ladies went to lunch, but fundraisers in New York had turned it into a political cafeteria. Its dining room, lined in dark wood and deep red fabric, had enough of a library feel to project gravitas, and it was just overpriced enough to make a politician feel fancy, yet affordable enough to not seem excessive to the donors, who always picked up the check.

Jo, the hostess, was a short, well-put-together woman who could best be described as a yenta, except she never gave away the gossip she collected. She ran the place with a gracious composure. Her control over where people sat at breakfast made her one of the most knowledgeable and powerful women in New York. Knowing who wanted to be near, or far, from whom gave her insight into every friendship, political alliance, affair, and divorce, often well before the heartache flamed up. Yet she held that power through a combination of intelligence and withholding.
She never gossiped, never gave a single detail away. Not to anyone. When Jo knew something about you, her subtle glances and moves told you she did, but they never seemed to tell anyone else. She also had an uncanny knack for knowing exactly who someone was meeting as soon as they walked in.

As Olivia turned the corner into the restaurant area of the hotel, she gave a quick smile to Jo, who blew a kiss, called her “sweetie,” and knowingly pointed to the back of the dining room. Olivia looked and saw the two men sitting in the large, couchlike chairs at a table in the back corner. The governor was laughing as she approached and Olivia caught herself smiling along. He had a nice way about him. His hair bounced lightly over his blue eyes, which could be seen from a mile away. There was something much more familiar about him than she had expected. She switched her coat and two bags to one hand and smoothed out her hair in an effort to condense the mess that she felt she couldn't completely contain.

“Hello.” The governor stood and reached for her hand. “How are you today?” His Southern drawl was the perfect add to the smile. It was clear why everyone was drawn to him, she thought. He took her hand and clasped it with his other hand, holding on just a little too long.

“Sorry I'm late.”

“We wouldn't expect anything else,” Jacob said, chiming in with his normal dose of candid humor.

Olivia turned and hugged Jacob, struck by how much he and the governor looked alike. Jacob was a little taller, standing at about six foot one, but he had the same sandy brown hair and effortlessly charming smile. She wondered if he had let his bangs grow a little long so they would flop over his brown eyes just like the governor's did. As Olivia sat down on the couch next to the governor she wondered if campaign staffers spent so much time with their candidate they could actually start looking like them, the way people said dog owners did with their dogs.

“Nooow, sit down here,” Taylor said with an extra-slow drawl, settling back into his chair and ushering Olivia with an outstretched hand. “Jacob here tells me that you are interested in education reform. Do you know that down in Georgia we've started to build communities that are working toward complete integration with every public school?”

Olivia knew but found herself hardly able to respond, she was so mesmerized by his desire to start off on policy. He fed right into the part of her that still believed in changing the world.

From as far back as Olivia could remember she'd gotten the same rush of excitement when a politician spoke with flair that most girls got from the high school quarterback's waving to them from the field or from buying a new bag. She wasn't immune to cute boys or new bags and was the first to admit she wanted a big white wedding dress and lots of kids. Five to be exact. But she had yet to meet anyone who could make her feel as alive as she did at a political rally. That was a foreign thought to the kids at her suburban high school, who'd rarely signed her petitions or even known when Election Day was. In her seventh-grade English class, Olivia was the first to volunteer to read her essay on love aloud. “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that,” she said, quoting Martin Luther King, Jr.

She continued on talking about love's role in civil unrest. It wasn't until she sat back down that she noticed the giggling around the room. The next forty minutes had seemed like forty hours. Olivia sank into her chair, feeling more alienated every time a new classmate got up to talk about Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, or David, the star of the junior high basketball team.

Though her parents supported what she did, they never quite understood where it came from. Her father was a Republican, her mother a Democrat, but neither had a strong enough attachment to either party to keep them from voting for Perot in '92, despite Olivia's best arguments.

“Born that way,” her mom would say when asked why her twelve-year-old daughter, Olivia, was protesting about environmental issues outside the middle school. Her sister's good looks and her brother's natural talent for sports were much easier to appreciate, even for Olivia, who herself had no explanation for why she loved politics. It was understandably simpler for her parents to come to school to see her sister in the school play or her brother in the state championship basketball game. A protest wasn't really the kind of thing they could pull up a chair to or invite the grandparents along to. Working on campaigns, though,
had been the home she had always been looking for. She could eat, sleep, and breathe world events. The age-old question of why she had not yet found a long-term boyfriend was answered not by the incomprehensible idea that she would rather change the world than fall in love, but by the simple fact that she was just too busy.

The governor leaned over to her with that stare she had only heard about. With quiet earnestness he said, “This world needs people who believe in the promise of a better day—not just in words and in rhetoric, but in every step we take. We're going to build something that will reroot this country in the freedom and justice it started on.” She was sold. He would do something about poverty, about justice, the issues that literally kept her awake at night, aching with a desire to stop the suffering. Amazingly, she thought, there wasn't anything corny about what he said. And his hand was enveloping her bicep to emphasize his sincerity. Hook. Line. Sinker.

“My man,” a voice bellowed a few feet from the table.

Governor Taylor looked over her shoulder and got up with a huge smile. He moved to hug the enormous man looming over them.

Olivia shook off her rapt haze as she recognized the statuesque man.

“How are you, man?” Taylor was saying. “You remember Jacob, right?”

“Of course.” Dikembe Mutombo casually threw a fist-bump toward Jacob. “Jacob introduced us!”

“And this,” the governor said as he put his hand gently on her back, “is Miss Olivia Greenley, the most sought-after political fundraiser in New York.”

Olivia shook her head in humble disagreement but she couldn't hide her smile. She knew it was a typical political embellishment, but she didn't care. Here she was being introduced to one of her favorite athletes by one of the nation's most famous politicians as “sought after.” She hated to admit it even to herself—as a hardened staffer she was supposed to be above the celebrity factor of it all—but this was Dikembe Mutombo and she was excited. “Olivia, this is—”

“Dikembe Mutombo.” She cut him off, trying her best not to sound like a schoolgirl.

“Ahhh, a basketball fan in our midst apparently.”

“More specifically, a Hoyas fan. Class of '06.” Olivia smiled.

“Gotta love a Hoya,” Dikembe replied. “Sorry to interrupt, but I was just telling my office to reach out to yours. I have a charity event coming up next month and we'd love to get you out there. Three-on-three for kids. All the old Hoyas are in—Touomou, Owinje. David Henley is hosting.”