What Really Happened (13 page)

The last thing Johnny wanted was to get in the way of Elizabeth controlling her image, because that would cause her a great deal of pain, which, of course, would be directed at him.

TEN

On and On

“Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.”

—
M
ARK
T
WAIN

E
LIZABETH WAS NOW OBSESSED with getting the tapes back and wanted all the footage I had shot. Johnny told me to go through it all and pull whatever I wanted—anything I might think that would be a bad idea for Elizabeth to see, which meant anything that might trigger the venom. I did and stored them with my personal stuff in my hatbox.

During one of my many phone calls with Andrew, I told him that his boss wanted me to have his schedule, so that I would always know where he was, what hotel he was staying in or speaking at, and when his run time was, so I could call the landline if needed. Andrew started sending me all the schedules.

I also informed Andrew about his new duties as master of the cell phone, which he liked because he loved having something on Elizabeth—or Ursula, as he called her, after the sea witch from
The Little Mermaid
.

I knew the one tape that would drive her over the edge more than any of them was the one that I couldn’t pull because she knew about it—the day I shot footage of Johnny and was given a tour of her dream house with Johnny’s parents. I had no idea at that point how much she disliked his parents or the degree to which she ostracized his entire family, but to see them giving a tour of her house would have been a trigger.

And just as Johnny suspected, Elizabeth took the footage and locked herself in a room to watch it all. Hour after hour. She found the footage of Johnny walking into the room before he got his shots for Africa and she saw his reaction to seeing me, the way he lit up. She apparently told Johnny that he never once looked at her the way he looked at me. So she took that little bit and put it on her computer as a screen saver in order to watch it over and over again.

He wanted to take those tapes away from her, but she hid them from him. It became a battle: whenever he was home, he would search for the tapes, but she would hide them or lock them away in drawer that he couldn’t open.

Hiding Elizabeth’s craziness from the world was something Johnny had a lot of practice in doing. Apparently, late at night she would often go into what he would describe as the dark place; her voice would change and she would begin saying extremely vile things or emailing such things or calling people and harassing them. According to Johnny, Elizabeth had a very long history of very bad nights.

Johnny and Elizabeth come from the school of “just stay busy,” and they both stayed very busy indeed. His campaign schedule was a primary part of his survival tactic. She continued on her path of relentless self-torture, watching footage and calling Johnny to scream at him or disguising her voice and making odd calls to people in search of my number. She went into full damage control, blogging happy stories on the campaign website about their wonderful marriage and romantic time together after the announcement tour.

I found all of this to be beyond heartbreaking and beyond disturbing.

But, of course, I was not about to leave him alone with his mess. I had warned him it was going to be bad, and he had announced his run at the worst possible time. I wasn’t about to abandon him at that crucial point. I did continually suggest therapy but I also really did understand the resistance to that. How bad does it sound for a presidential candidate and his wife to be in therapy?

Shortly thereafter, he told me that Elizabeth wanted to renew their wedding vows in July. When he told me, my first thought was, “Yeah right, there is no way that’s going to happen.”

I flew down to Palm Beach, Florida, to see Johnny on January 17
^th
or 18
^th
. I went to The Breakers for the first time ever and had dinner in the bar until he called around 8:30. I then took a cab to the Four Seasons Resort Palm Beach, where he was staying.

My traveling to see him had become more complicated because I had worked for him and now most of his staff knew me. But now Johnny was actually running for president. I had to stay completely away from John Davis, and now Elizabeth knew about us. Johnny had no idea where John Davis was after they had parted but he guessed the bar. Johnny gave me the instructions on how to get to the elevators and how to stay clear of the bar (in case John Davis was in there and not in his room), so when I arrived at the Four Seasons, I knew where I was going and made it to the room without being spotted.

As usual, when he saw me he lit up, and, as usual, my heart melted. I realize that it’s a really lame way to describe what we have, what happens when we are together. But when we looked into each other’s eyes, as we did in the hallway when I walked into the room of the Four Seasons that night, it took my breath away, made my heart pound, and my head spin. I loved this man like no other and there was just no way that I was going to leave him alone in his hell.

This visit was far better than the one in New York because we had been talking regularly and because his schedule had kept him away from Elizabeth; he was still beat up but he wasn’t as beat up as he was the last time I saw him.

John Davis was set to come to Johnny’s room in the morning, so we figured the best idea would be for me to just go wait in the stairwell until John got into the room, and then I would go downstairs and grab a cab.

So there I was, standing in the stairwell of the Four Seasons. I waited and waited and waited. Johnny did not call. I finally gave up, exited the hotel, and sat on a bench outside. The concierge had called a car for me. My phone rang. Johnny said that Davis had still not shown up in Johnny’s room. “Where are you? Did you see him?”

“No,” I replied, “I’m outside and I did not see him.”

As I was checking in at the airport, the computer asked me if I wanted to take another flight, one that was already boarding, or wait another hour? Now please! I hopped on that flight, turned off my cell, thereby missing Johnny’s call to change my ticket and fly to Louisiana or Arkansas or Timbuktu, wherever he was headed next, I can’t remember. I remember it was a remote location and difficult to get to. But had I not missed his call, I would have tried. Instead, I went home to Jersey.

Somewhere around this time Johnny and Elizabeth finally started seeing a therapist. Praise the Lord.

I flew to Detroit in February for two nights. Johnny and John Davis were staying at a Westin some twenty minutes from the airport. In the elevator at this Westin, you needed a key to get up to your room, so Johnny had to come down and get me. This would always tickle me. There was never anyone on the elevator with him, nor did the elevator stop to pick up anyone. What are the odds?

The next day I left early (with my own key so I could return later) and walked to a hotel next door for coffee and my morning CNN. I then took a cab to a multiplex movie theater and spent the day at the movies. I have always loved going to the movies by myself during the day for as long as I can remember. It’s also something I did a lot during my stint as a mistress.

I had dinner at some Detroit basketball sports bar attached to the multiplex, and Johnny called about some “campaign disaster” media crisis that was happening. I think it may have been about the “cutting-edge” bloggers they had hired; one turned out to be a little too cutting edge. Anyway, this delayed my return to the hotel, and when I finally got a cab back, I ran smack dab into John at the elevators. While it was really great to see him, I was a tad freaked.

I went up to Johnny’s room and told him, “I just ran into John Davis. Should I go talk to him?” So that’s what I did. John Davis opened the door wearing a white bathrobe and opening a bottle of wine. I was very uncomfortable so I wasn’t very direct. I never came out and really said anything to John explicitly about my relationship with Johnny; I just said something like, “Anything you see going on on the road is best kept to yourself.” But it was my understanding that he understood exactly what I was saying. I went back to Johnny’s room and had yet another unbelievably crazy night with Elizabeth calling to rage at him and Johnny continuing to play into it, attempting to help her. He got very little sleep and was in the bathroom on the phone most of the night. From what I could tell, she believed he was responsible for taking on her pain, taking her punishment, and for making her so miserable.

Don’t get me wrong: I am no advocate for cheating, I believe that if a third party pops up, you need to go to your partner and say, “Hey, we have problems”
before
you jump into bed with the third party. But I also know that is not the norm.

And, silly me, I
thought
that running into John Davis was going to make my life a little easier. However, Johnny (as usual), especially coming off a sleepless crazy Elizabeth rage night, didn’t trust anyone. Johnny later told me that he told Davis that I had come to see him because I was upset about losing my job and wanted to talk to him.

The week following Detroit, I flew to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on February 12
^th
and had dinner. For some reason, by the time I had finished, Johnny hadn’t called yet. Naturally, I was getting impatient. I tried his cell and it was off, so I called the hotel he was supposed to have checked into and they said there was no reservation under that name. I called Andrew and asked him if he could locate Johnny. Andrew was less than thrilled that I was interrupting Jack Bauer on
24
. Of course, he had no idea I was actually in Fort Lauderdale; he thought that I just was trying to reach the senator for another phone call.

Andrew found John Davis and Johnny called shortly thereafter. It turned out they had changed hotels and were now staying at the Sheraton Yankee Clipper Hotel (now the Sheraton Fort Lauderdale Beach Hotel), which was in dire need of an update. On my way there in a cab, I passed by my grandfather’s old apartment building on Galt Ocean Mile, where I had learned to play backgammon as a kid. It was one of those weird high-rise buildings directly on the beach. Seeing his building flooded me with memories of my early childhood in Fort Lauderdale.

I remember on my way out in the morning, as I was waiting for a cab, I saw one of Johnny’s staffers downstairs. Maybe he was a local guy? He was young and I had never seen him before, so there was no need to worry that he would recognize me.

At the end of February, I remember driving into the city early to beat the snowstorm that was coming. Johnny was somewhere in Westchester, New York, at a fundraiser. I went to my usual haunt Serafina and had wine while I waited for him to call. I walked over to the Regency after he rang. We watched Al Gore win an Oscar on TV together, and Johnny told me about a woman who had been (unsuccessfully) hitting on him that night.

I called or emailed Jonathan Darman for lunch sometime at the beginning of winter. In hindsight, it was sheer stupidity to call him. But the truth is I really liked him, regardless of the fact that I did not like the snarky spin in his writing and hated the piece he had done in December on the webisodes.

I had lunch with Darman and liked him even more than the first time. I’m not sure why he would later take some of the things I said over that particular lunch and claim I had said them much earlier. Was it malicious, convenient for his storytelling purposes, or did he just have a bad memory?

I had lunch at Nobu with Lisa Blue one afternoon when she was in town. Even though I was no longer working for Johnny our friendship continued, and I believe that she still did not have any idea Johnny and I were in love or even intimately involved.

At the beginning of March I went to LA for a little less than a week. As usual, I loved being in LA. I stayed with a friend for a few nights and stayed with Johnny a couple of nights. I remember staying in two different hotels in LA with Johnny. The first night it was the old Hotel Nikko on La Cienega (now the SLS Hotel at Beverly Hills), where you needed a key to use the elevator, so Johnny had to come down and get me.

In the morning, I had to hide in the bathroom when John Davis came in to get Johnny’s bags. (The amount of hiding that goes along with being a mistress is downright comical.) I took a leisurely shower before I left. The hotel in Santa Monica had a hot tub on the terrace, which we did not use, but we did avail ourselves of the hotel’s great room service breakfast. I remember Johnny calling me in the middle of the night from the plane. He was attempting to hold on to the “goodness in life” because he was about to descend back into the hell of his marriage. As you can probably guess, he and Elizabeth weren’t exactly making great headway in therapy. Johnny was taking little baby steps in his attempts to be honest with her, and yet any honesty he expressed would be met with rejection and abuse from her. She continually questioned how in the world he could be attracted to someone like me? The honest reply, “She makes me happy,” was not received without punishment. Unfortunately, they could never get past what an awful person Johnny was for cheating on her, because she really believed that she was the victim of his awfulness.