The Washingtonienne (18 page)

Chapter 31

T
hree days had gone by, and I hadn’t heard from Marcus. Even Fred had left messages, telling me not to be afraid of him, that he just wanted to talk. Part of me really wanted to call him back, but I couldn’t let my guard down just because I was lonely.

I locked all of my doors and windows and wished that I had a stun gun, pepper spray, or at least a set of steak knives I could use for my own protection.

Suddenly, I felt like Washington was a huge Pac-Man board, and all of the guys from my blog were “ghosts” out to get me. I had to remind myself that they were probably more afraid of what I might do to them because I had the upper hand.

These DC men were smart, so they had to know that if any of them came near me, I would have called the police
and
the press.

They were too afraid to leave detailed voice messages or send me e-mail because they knew I might use this stuff against them in some way (and I would have), so there was a communication breakdown in my favor.

And if any of them wanted to come forward and trash me in public, it would have been pointless. Everybody already knew I was a “screwed-up, lying, butt-fucking whore.”
And?

If any of them wanted to start some shit with me, I wasn’t afraid to hit below the belt, and they knew it. I could only stand to gain from this, while the men had everything to lose.

Advantage: Ms. Pac-Man.

But even Ms. Pac-Man had a boyfriend, and I had no one. How could
any
man want me after what I had done?

Every time my phone rang, I hoped it was Marcus, but it was always some gossip columnist or TV news producer leaving messages in my voice mail, asking me to call them back.

How did they get my number? I assumed it had to be some other asshole who thought it would be fun to participate in my humiliation. Who knew I had so many enemies in this town?

There was one voice mail from Phillip, who sounded totally oblivious to the “sex scandal” that he was involved in—he was actually inviting me out to
dinner
that night.

I called him back, expecting him to react the same way Mike had. But Phillip was unlike any other man I had ever known.

“You know what your big mistake was?” he asked. “Not fucking some congressman!”

“Oh,
that
was my big mistake!” I laughed. “So you’re not mad about this?”

“Mad? Why would I be mad? Why don’t you come over to my place this afternoon, and we’ll have lunch.”

I wasn’t sure if I should.

“Don’t you want to read the blog first?” I asked. “I wrote some bad things about you. And there’s all this other stuff, about me and other guys.”

“Did you use my name?” he wanted to know.

I told him that I had only used initials.

“Then what’s the big deal?” he asked. “It’s not like I can get fired!”

True, Phillip
did
own his own law firm. But if he hadn’t read the blog, how could he forgive me for something he didn’t understand?

Maybe he was luring me to his house so he could murder me, I thought, but Phillip was too cool for that. And it really
wasn’t
a big deal, was it? I was probably flattering myself thinking that this was something he would risk going to jail for.

I WAS SITTING ON PHILLIP’S
stoop when his Mercedes pulled into the driveway.

“I read the blog,” he said as he climbed out of his car.

I braced myself for a tirade of obscenities and insults.

“It’s pretty funny!” he chuckled. “Especially the parts about me! Let’s go inside and have ourselves a drink!”

As soon as we walked in the door, he grabbed me. At first, I was terrified, but then I realized that we were
hugging.

“I’m sorry,” he was saying. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

I wasn’t sure what he was apologizing for, since I was the one who had written all that mean stuff about him. I was angry with him for hurting me back in Miami, but I had never told him so. Then again, he’d read the blog.

I guess that was why he was apologizing, for hurting me.

He held on to me tightly as I shook in his arms, sobbing, getting my tears and snot all over his expensive suit.

I never thought that I would cry for
him.
All this time, I thought he was an arrogant jerk. But really, I was the arrogant one.

Once I was all cried out, I freshened myself up in the powder room and joined him for a drink in his huge stainless steel kitchen. Meanwhile, my phone kept ringing inside my handbag.

“What should I do about these calls?” I asked him. “I need your advice.”

“If I were you, I would sue your office for wrongful termination,” he suggested.

“Oh, Phillip, don’t be such a
lawyer.
I can’t sue them. They had every right to fire me, and I think any judge would agree.”

“We could claim that your use of the Senate computers was common practice and subpoena everybody’s computer records as evidence. We could have all of the computers in the Senate confiscated!”

It was brilliant, but somehow, it didn’t seem right.

I shook my head no.

“Well, that’s what
I
would do, but that’s just the kind of sick bastard I am,” he smiled. “It seems like you have two other choices here: You can try to cash in on whatever notoriety this thing brings you, or you can change your name and move out of Washington.”

“What would you do if you were me?” I asked.

“Have some headshots taken.”

“Seriously, do you really think I should come forward?” I asked to make sure I had his blessing.

“What do you have to lose? You don’t want to come off like you’re hiding from these reporters, now do you? You have to be brazen and shameless. People love that.”

“Should I call them back?”

“Yeah, but do it later. I want to be the first to fuck Washington’s newest sex scandalette.”

I went upstairs with Phillip, glad to have someone on my side. It was especially validating that it was one of the men from my blog. It gave me hope: If Phillip could forgive me, then maybe the others could, too.

We had a couple more drinks as we lay around naked in his house. I called back every reporter and gave drunk interviews over the phone. When they asked me to appear on television, I said, “Sure, why not? I’m not ashamed of how I look!”

Sure, I had been drinking straight bourbon all afternoon, and I probably shouldn’t have been giving interviews while under the influence, but I felt great: I was brazen and shameless, like Phillip said, and I wasn’t afraid anymore. I slept like a baby that night.

“HAVE YOU HEARD FROM
any of the other guys from the blog?” Phillip asked me the morning after.

“You’re the only one who stuck by me,” I told him.

“That’s because I’m the only one who really loved you.”

It was a nice thing for him to say, but I hoped it wasn’t true. If only one of them truly loved me, I wanted it to be Marcus.

“So what now?” he asked. “What’s your plan?”

“I don’t know,” I replied. “I might move to New York to get away from all this.”

“
Or
you could move in with me,” he offered.

“Are you serious?” I asked.

“Just think about it.”

It was difficult to imagine myself living in Phillip’s well-appointed townhouse. I really wasn’t the “Georgetown housewife” type: I wouldn’t be caught dead in a quilted Burberry jacket.

I went home, read some e-mails, made some phone calls, and set up some appointments in New York for the following week. I was going to be in town anyway: Naomi and I were going to the Fleet Week party on the
Intrepid,
like we did every year. Sex scandal or no, I just couldn’t miss Fleet Week. The ships only came in once a year. Besides, I had agents in New York who wanted to make me rich. Now that I wasn’t being subsidized, I could only hope my own ship would come in.

NAOMI LET ME STAY OVER
at her place during this “business trip” to save me the expense of a hotel, since I was cash poor while I waited to cash in on the huge mistake that I had made. I figured I had to make the best of things, and everybody close to me agreed, especially Naomi.

“You need to make as much money off this thing as you possibly can,” she advised me as we got dressed for the party. “I hope you realize how small your window is. People have very short attention spans, you know.”

“They don’t in DC,” I said. “Everybody there is still totally obsessed with me.”

“Well, DC is small-time. It’s a lot harder to get famous in New York, you know. You were on ‘Page Six,’ like, a week ago. Do you think that anyone here still cares?”

Naomi and I tried to put together outfits with as much sailor appeal as possible. You would think that this meant anything short and tight, but after a few years of dressing for Fleet Week, Naomi and I knew what
really
made a sailor stand to attention: You had to look like that nice, sweet girl they left behind in Wichita or wherever the fuck it was they came from.

Seriously, you wore a sundress and a smile, and it worked every time. I wore one of my Lilly dresses, and Naomi wore a strapless dress that she bought at C.K. Bradley especially for this occasion.

It was a full ten degrees cooler in New York than it was in DC, so we wore cardigans over our dresses, which made us look even more adorable.

We walked in, took our sweaters off, and immediately we had company. It was too easy. Two nineteen-year-olds, fresh off the farm. Actually, I didn’t know where they came from, but I always liked to think that it was from the farm. (It was part of the fantasy, you see.)

Since they didn’t have ID, Naomi and I had to buy all of their drinks for them when we took them out barhopping with us. We ended up at Bourbon Street on the Upper West Side, which was always a scary place to be at four in the morning. This was when the extremely drunk, leftover single people stopped taking no for an answer. I was so tired I was about to fall asleep standing up, which was not a smart thing to do.

Christ, what was happening to me? I used to be able to stay up for three days straight, with or without drugs, and now I didn’t even have the energy to make out with either of these boys?

Maybe the stress was getting to me, because I didn’t even find them attractive anymore. I mean, they were just a couple of bumpkins. They weren’t even my type.

“What’s wrong?” Naomi asked me. “Are you about to puke?”

“No, I’m just tired,” I answered. “Can I have the key to your apartment? I think I’m done here.”

“Yeah, me too. Did you know they were gay?” Naomi asked, referring to the sailors. “They just wanted us to buy them drinks all night.”

We had been duped by gay sailors. So not cool.

I AWOKE AROUND NOON,
unrefreshed and sore. I felt like I had the flu, and I hadn’t eaten in forever. I looked around Naomi’s kitchen, but she was just like me: boxes of shoes in the cupboards, sweaters in the oven, nothing but booze in the fridge.

She was the one who told me that “New York girls don’t eat.” But I wasn’t a New York girl anymore, was I?

We went to Columbia Bagel and ordered egg bagels with tofu cream cheese.

“I shouldn’t even be eating this,” I told Naomi. “I’m going to get fat, and then people will have yet another reason to make fun of me. I can’t even leave my apartment without doing my hair and makeup anymore.”

“I think you should get out of DC,” Naomi said. “I mean, doesn’t it suck or something?”

“But I’m moving in with Phillip.”

“
What?
Why would you want to live with
that
dickhole?”

“Things are different now. At least I know he cares about me.”

Naomi snorted.

“Would you listen to yourself?” she asked. “How much fun can you have living with
Phillip
? If you moved back to New York, we could go out all the time and it would be awesome. It would be just like old times!”

I thought on this. Truth was, I was no longer interested in re-creating our young-and-crazy-and-living-in-New-York phase. I was also reluctant to leave Washington. I wanted to stay in DC just to spite all those people who were trying to shame me out of town.

“But isn’t living well the best revenge?” I argued. “Wouldn’t it just make everybody sick to see me end up living in a mansion with some millionaire? And not just
any
millionaire, but the one from the blog who found it in his heart to forgive me. Wouldn’t that be the perfect ending to all of this?”

“This isn’t some
story,
Jackie. This is your
life.
Washington is not a good place for you right now. You need to get out of there. I mean, look at you!”

She held up her golden Estee Lauder compact for me to see my reflection.

“Look at your skin,” she told me. “Your pores are huge. Your face looks like a damn strawberry. And look at your hair. It looks like it’s about to fall out at any second. Your face even looks different—you look old. All of this stress is starting to affect your
looks,
Jackie. You’re obviously not handling it as well as you think you are.”