The List (4 page)

I smiled and nodded, trying to look like this was exactly what I’d expected. Like
it was perfectly normal to rig a BlackBerry so it never turned off. And who didn’t
want to write ten articles a day? I was clearly going to thrive at this place. I mentally
revised my list of prepared questions, dropping the ones about whether the paper had
a car service or a cappuccino machine.

Keeping her eyes not on me but on her computer, where she was simultaneously editing
a short piece on Senator Kirsten Gillibrand’s remarkable weight loss, Rachel kept
talking. “I don’t know if I told you already, but we start at five
A.M.
every day. This means you’re writing at five
A.M.
, not waking up or looking for things to write about. And you’re on email and on your
phone and able to do interviews in different time zones if you have to. If you need
time to find news, get up earlier. And you have to be on call on Sundays. You’ll get
used to it, don’t worry.”

She finally looked up at me, smiled sincerely, and pointed to the far wall. Like all
the others, it said
THE CAPITOLIST
and had two short rows of flat-screen TVs hanging on it. “Your desk is at the end
of the hall. The one under the TV that always plays CNN. Don’t even think about changing
the channel. You’ll ignite a revolution. The IT guys should be there in a few minutes
to set you up. Three minutes, actually.” She turned back to her monitor, away from
my bright, shiny, confused face, and said, “Better get walking. Oh . . . and good
luck.” I scurried off lest I miss the punctual IT patrol.

Although my heart was toying with the possibility of cardiac arrest, my mind had grown
surprisingly calm. I could definitely do this. I could be the kind of person who never
slept, drank
venti espressos, and stalked politicians for sport. Why not! I went to Wellesley College,
a school that produced Hillary frigging Clinton. I was up to the task. I was not intimidated
at all. And no, she hadn’t told me about the 5
A.M.
start time. Must have slipped her dazzlingly acute mind.

As I sprinted to the back of the newsroom, a man with a safari hat stuck to his sweaty
head ran past my empty desk. He clutched a tape recorder playing something and two
BlackBerrys. His round tortoiseshell glasses bounced around on his nose like a cowboy
atop a bronco.

I must have stared for an unnaturally long time, because a girl with hair the color
of India ink felt free to look me over rather unsubtly. Then, like an actual human
being, she smiled and spoke. I almost kissed the hem of her dress; she might as well
have been the Dalai Lama, as far as I was concerned.

“That’s David Bush. No relation. He always wears a safari hat, unless he’s on TV,
which is often,” she said, crossing her muscular legs.

Naturally. Like Bindi the Jungle Girl.

I smiled and started to introduce myself, but she interrupted me with a wave of her
thin hand. “He’s quirky, but he’s nice and he’s a genius and they love him. Worship
him. He writes the
Morning List.
It’s like the Bible, but with bullet points. You better read it every single day
the second it goes to print. We get it five minutes before the rest of the world,
so read it then. He writes it three hundred sixty-five days a year. Even Christmas
morning. When it’s his birthday we have an actual carnival. There was a real penguin
you could pose for pictures with last year. When it’s your birthday, no one will remember
and you’ll probably have to work late.”

“Cool.”

“You’re Adrienne Brown, right?” She extended her hand.
“I’m Julia Kincaid. We thought you were starting today. You’re going to be the sixth
on the section. I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m the one worth knowing.”

I was about to thank her for conversing with me, when I saw three gangly young men
holding wires and laptops heading in our direction: the IT team. But before they made
it to us, the sound of a dull cake knife tapping the side of a drinking glass filled
the vast room. The IT men turned on their rubber heels, computer parts in hand, and
went the other way.

“Get up. It’s time for awkward cake,” said my raven-haired colleague. Never mind that
I was already standing at attention like a Navy SEAL.

“What’s awkward cake?” I asked her.

“It’s just cake. We have two cakes every time someone leaves. And that’s pretty often,
almost weekly in the summer. One is always chocolate, and the other is a fruit tart.
Unless they liked you, and then you get expensive cupcakes. Georgetown Cupcakes. There’s
a speech or two that goes along with the cakes. They always wish the person good luck
and then smugly assure them that they’ll come to their senses and return soon. Of
course, if they really hate you, then you don’t get awkward cake at all. You’ll see,
it’s incredibly awkward.”

She was right. It was incredibly awkward. Before the paper’s tow-haired editor in
chief, Mark Upton, tapped his long knife against a
Capitolist
glass and started speaking, all the office lights brightened to a level Dr. Sanjay
Gupta would describe as just right for brain surgery. The reporters and editors all
gathered around in neat concentric circles and plastered on huge smiles like they
were being handed Oprah’s favorite things. I backed into a corner with my colleague
and sat on a stapler.

“It’s with heavy hearts that we say goodbye to our prized defense reporter Roger Roche,”
Upton declared. His speaking
pattern was soothing and rhythmic. “Roger has given so much to the paper over his
eight months here. He covered the president’s trip to Iraq and the changing of the
guard at the Pentagon. He even disguised himself as a corpse and slept in Arlington
Cemetery for a piece on grave robbing.”

Wait, it was okay to pretend to be dead? I looked around to see if anyone else thought
this last anecdote was odd. Julia grabbed my shoulder and whispered very loudly, “Don’t
believe that shit. They fucking hate him. And they made him wake up at
three
every morning to write the ‘Good Morning Military’ tip sheet, so he hates them, too.
See? No cupcakes.” She motioned to the table: two fruit tarts and nothing else.

The short but saccharine speeches had every person in the room laughing and clapping
at things that weren’t at all funny. When the speeches were over, the staff leapt
toward the cakes like prisoners of war, and Julia, who knew how to handle the scrum,
brought me back a slice.

“You should eat this. That way you can get used to the weight you will inevitably
put on while working here,” she said, handing me a piece without candied fruit. “Just
don’t drop any crumbs. We have mice. So don’t leave food on your desk. But if you
do see a mouse, don’t say anything, and don’t tweet about it. They’ll be pissed. If
anything ever goes wrong at the office, don’t mention it outside the office, because
if they find out you did, they’ll start thinking about ways to demote or fire you.”

Eating with our plates right under our chins, Julia and I watched as Upton approached
the paper’s managing editor, Justin Cushing. Cushing had Groton, Yale, and over a
decade breaking news at the
Wall Street Journal
stamped on his résumé. His aura sang, “Trust me! I’m always right.” And people usually
did.

“Justin Cushing once hit a reporter with his umbrella. Like a
thwack below the knee,” said Julia, making a Babe Ruth batting gesture and flinging
her empty plate into the garbage can.

“Really?”

“Yeah. But they didn’t report it to the HR department or anything. One, we don’t have
HR, and two, the reporter was flattered that Cushing actually knew who he was. You
should have seen him. He was glowing like he ate a flashlight. Just because you work
here doesn’t mean the important people have to learn your name.”

And that, I realized, was what the
Capitolist
was all about: not sleeping, working around the clock, and fighting so that Upton
and Cushing not only knew who you were but also cared enough about you to occasionally
put your stories on the front page, maybe even to shoot the shit with you every couple
of weeks. That meant coming by your desk and asking about your life. The right answer
to that question was always “What do you mean? This
is
my life.”

The
Capitolist
was three years old. Four young Silicon Valley investors had founded it when all
the other little papers were dying, but it had skyrocketed. From the beginning, the
Capitolist
had what other papers didn’t: money and intensely dedicated labor. They bought reporters
away from other publications, they made the paper they printed on thicker than a book
jacket, and they threw more parties than
Vogue
.

The paper and its equally prestigious website were still flying high, and so were
its employees. A place obsessed with breaking news, the
List
was launched as print and online because there was no way any
List
story worth its ink was going to wait until the next day’s paper. The daily print
edition and the site appealed to different readers, but they both brought in nearly
equal dollar amounts and equally stressed out the employees. We Style girls had to
file two Web stories in the morning, then a paper story,
then
more
Web stories. Meaning that when we were breaking news, we were also writing long-form
pieces for the paper. It was a little like the decathlon without the bonus calorie
burn. If you lasted a year, you deserved to be knighted. Small nervous breakdowns
requiring prescription drugs and Skype counseling (to save time) were commonplace.
Sick days were never taken. If you had a mix of bubonic plague and shingles you might
be allowed to work from home. The paper chewed employees up and spat them out in a
matter of months, sometimes weeks. But the ones who made it past the breaking point
loved it beyond all reason. The only other jobs they would ever consider were United
States senator or dictator of planet earth and outlying galaxies. Or, if they had
to, host of
Meet the Press
. The newsroom was filled with extremely young reporters, all rabidly desperate to
make a name for themselves. If they played their cards right, they definitely would.
One year at the
Capitolist
could save you five years somewhere else, but you had to get through that year without
doubling your body weight and tripling your blood pressure.

Most people took their cues from Robert Redford in
All the President’s Men:
they dressed like farsighted intellectuals, called each other by last names, and
shouted to sound important. They spoke almost entirely in acronyms, and each one quickly
adopted a signature sartorial quirk. This quirk was never wearing father’s vintage
Rolex: it was sporting a skunk hat once owned by Ronald Reagan’s press secretary or
a stain-covered tie handed down from Senator Boring.

The Style section was free of the typical
Capitolist
type because the typical
Capitolist
type viewed Style reporting as the ninth circle of hell.

But I saw the Style girls as enviable, attractive geniuses.

Instead of deciding I was the competition and freezing up,
Julia called a source in the office of the Speaker of the House, introduced me on
a conference call, and helped me type out my first article. Rachel didn’t edit it
to pieces, and seven minutes after I turned it in, it was live on the
Capitolist
website. I emailed my parents a screen shot.

Not sure what to write about next—though Julia told me we’d better figure it out quick,
so I wouldn’t be fired immediately—I headed to the front of the building, to the photography
department, to have my picture taken for the staff page. Before I reached it, though,
a gangly man leapt out of his desk chair, planted himself in my path, and started
shaking my hand up and down like a water pump. “Welcome to the
Capitolist
. I’m Mason Swisher. Congress reporter. Also elections. Sometimes business and lobbying.
We’re thrilled to have you,” he said loudly.

“It’s really exciting to be here,” I said, introducing myself.

“Adrienne Brown, Adrienne Brown.” He said my name twice and then sat back down at
his desk. “I’ve heard of your mother. Obviously. Did she get you this gig?”

After giving Mason a firm “no, but thanks so much for asking,” I escaped, had my quick
portrait session with our staff photographers, and walked back to tell Julia about
my encounter. She laughed as if the entire cast of
Saturday Night Live
were tickling her with feathers.

“Don’t even worry about him. He will probably take over the world in five to seven
years, but that doesn’t mean you’re required to speak to him now. I’ll show you who
you should waste your breath on.” She was touch-typing an email on her phone while
speaking to me. “There’s me, of course. And the other Style girls, because in the
grand scheme of things they’re kind of normal. The design team, the photographers,
the cartoonists, a few energy reporters, the two cute lobbying reporters, and Rachel.
That’s it.”

I was twisting around, trying to identify the cute people, but Julia kept talking
about our shared boss.

“Rachel’s our third editor in a year,” she explained. “She’s the best one we’ve had.
The last one had a mild nervous breakdown and went to Crossroads rehab center in Antigua,
where she met Colin Farrell. Now she works at the
New York Times
.”

“Really? That’s pretty cool.”

“Well, that’s what this place gets you eventually. A great new job, ten extra pounds,
a brush with celebrity, and deep mental scars.”

“Got it.” I pressed my fingers together as hard as I could until I noticed they were
stuck in the American Sign Language hand gesture for “camp.” I gave them a shake and
tried to position them nonchalantly on my waist, but I still looked nervous. And like
I was about to clog dance. I had to calm down. Julia wasn’t exactly painting the paper
out to be Disneyland for adults, but I was still high on the power of the place. Everyone
looked busy and important. At
Town & Country,
everyone looked rich and hungry. Why not embrace change?