The Washingtonienne (5 page)
I
was looking forward to my lunch date with Fred if only because I hadn’t eaten a decent meal since New York. I was starving by the time Fred arrived at April’s on Thursday afternoon.
He looked around the apartment, which was decorated in her taste: sky-blue walls and brightly colored Ikea furniture, with plenty of junk from Crate & Barrel thrown in. He sat on the red foam couch in the living room without saying a word.
“I hope you didn’t expect me to cook anything,” I said, breaking the silence. “We can’t use the oven because I’m keeping my summer wardrobe stored in there.”
I sat down next to him.
“So where are you taking me?” I asked.
“We can’t go out to lunch,” he told me.
I waited for further explanation.
“We have to be discreet, and I can’t risk being seen with someone like you.”
Someone like me?
Part of me wanted to call his office and tell them that the people sitting at the conference table right now should know it was streaked with bodily fluids.
What was he so afraid of? Didn’t every respectable married man keep a mistress? I would let him finish saying whatever else he had to say. Then I would run up to him and kick him in the balls.
“Since I can’t take you out anywhere or offer you any kind of a future,” he went on, “I would feel guilty seeing you if I didn’t compensate you in some way.”
Compensate?
“You mean, like, money?” I asked.
“I’d like to give you an allowance, and whatever financial assistance you need,” he explained. “I know that you’re interning and you could probably use the money. It’s only fair.”
I wanted to know how much, but felt it would be tacky to ask.
“Sure,” I said. “That makes sense.”
At least I knew where I stood with him. No dating, no future. Just Fred and me, and some help with the bills. This was probably the most honest relationship I would ever have in my life.
He finished quickly, and I wondered how much five minutes of missionary was worth to him. But he didn’t get up from the bed to leave. He lay next to me, drawing me close in his arms.
Snuggling up to Fred felt unnatural. He was still a stranger to me, and I didn’t have “snuggly” feelings for him yet. This was false intimacy, and I didn’t like it. It was almost offensive, in the same way that a bad liar insulted your intelligence.
But maybe if he felt this comfortable with me, then I could stand to open myself up to him in return. I put my head on his shoulder and listened to him talk. He was complaining mostly, about his job, his marriage, all the things he loathed about Washington.
I got the feeling that Fred had nobody else to talk to. What he really wanted was someone who would listen to him. (And get him off on a regular basis, but that seemed incidental now.)
I asked him why he lived in Washington if he hated it here so much. It was my effort to participate in the “conversation,” which was fast becoming an hour-long monologue.
Fred smiled at me and said, “When the president offers you a job, you don’t say no.”
I looked at him dubiously. He wasn’t kidding.
“You know
the president
?” I asked incredulously. “You’re, like,
friends
with him?”
I didn’t know if I was more impressed with Fred or with myself. I was just one degree away from POTUS! Damn Washington was a small town.
“That’s how I got such a cushy job,” he explained. “Not everybody gets to take these long lunches whenever they want to.”
I looked at the clock. We had been here just over an hour, not counting our travel time.
He stood up and put his suit back on. Reaching into his jacket, he pulled out a sealed envelope.
“This is for you,” he said.
The money.
I thanked him as I tucked the envelope away in my handbag. The sight of it made me very uncomfortable for some reason. I supposed I knew that there was something inherently wrong with accepting an envelope full of cash. But then again, what made this any different from letting Fred buy me lunch? Either way, he had to pay. “Because I’m worth it,” as L’Oreal would say.
As soon as Fred left the apartment, I tore the envelope open and counted the money inside.
Four hundred dollars. For an hour of my time.
What a country.
Why four hundred dollars? I would never know. We never discussed money, and I never asked any questions; I just accepted the envelopes and said, “Thank you,” like the polite, well-bred girl that I was.
THAT NIGHT, I GOT
another phone call from my sister.
“Did the check bounce?” I asked her.
“Yes, but that’s not why I’m calling,” she sniffled into the phone.
I could tell that Lee had been crying.
“I can send another check,” I offered, “and I promise that it won’t bounce this time.”
“Listen to me!” she said. “Mom and Dad are getting a divorce.”
I was totally blindsided. My parents always seemed to have a very comfortable partnership, the kind I wanted for myself someday. Now it seemed as if they had been living a lie.
“Where is this coming from?” I asked incredulously. “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” Lee sobbed. “Neither of them wanted to talk about it. Dad just called, asking me if I wanted my stuff shipped to the sorority house. Hasn’t he called you yet?”
“No, I haven’t heard from either of them,” I said, wondering why they had left me out of the loop. “Why is Dad sending all your stuff to campus?”
“He’s putting the house up for sale! Why else would he be cleaning it out?”
“He’s selling the house?
I can’t believe this is happening! Where is Mom supposed to go?”
“What about us, Jackie? We’re, like,
homeless
! Where will we go? What will we do?”
“I’ll figure something out. In the meantime, I’ll send you some money.”
I got off the phone and cut Lee a check. She was right: We really were homeless. We couldn’t just go home to our parents if life ever got too rough. No more safety net—it was all up to me.
Next, I wrote out a check to April. She was very pleased to know that I could make my half of the rent. At first, I didn’t tell her where the money came from, nor did she seem interested in knowing. Money was money, after all. She probably just assumed that I was getting help from my parents, like everyone else who interned on the Hill. It was too embarrassing to admit that I had a “going rate.” It was like walking around every day with a price tag hanging from your dress.
F
red offered me his “financial assistance” about two or three times a week. At four hundred dollars per visit, I made twice what April took home in her paycheck. But I still needed to find a real job. I couldn’t count on Fred to keep giving me envelopes of cash for the rest of my life. This sort of thing was always finite.
April and Laura helped me put together a resume and some writing samples, and they gave me some helpful career advice during Happy Hour.
“You basically just want to kiss everybody’s ass so they’ll write you a good letter of recommendation for your grad school applications,” Laura told me, picking the olive out of her martini glass.
“I don’t want to go to grad school,” I explained. “I just want to get a real job.”
“I’ve been looking for a real job for months. I’m just biding my time on the Hill until I make my move to the private sector. I have a few interviews lined up on K Street.”
Laura named some lobbying and public relations firms that I hadn’t heard of, but April seemed very impressed.
“I hope you’ll help me get a job as soon as you get hired at one of these places,” she told Laura. “I am so sick of being poor all the time.”
“Don’t you enjoy working on the Hill?” I asked them. “I mean, you didn’t come here to get rich, did you?”
“It’s a great out-of-college job,” Laura explained, “and I love our office, but I’m just kind of over it.”
“I’m not sure that we’re supposed to stay on the Hill forever,” April offered. “I mean, they can’t promote
everybody,
so somebody has to leave every so often. They know that we’ll get sick of making less than thirty thousand, and we’ll leave to make more money in the private sector after a few years. Then our office will promote whoever is still around.”
“I’m convinced that it’s just a systemized way of restocking the office with new girls,” Laura said, gesturing toward me. “Just like our internship program.”
What was I getting myself into? Maybe I should have gone back to school instead.
“Talking to crazy people on the phone might
sound
like fun, like it’s one big episode of
Crank Yankers,
but trust me, it gets old fast!” April said.
Was that really what April and Laura got paid to do? Counsel psychos over the telephone?
“We get calls from mental patients with phone privileges all the time,” April confirmed. “Sometimes they make death threats against the senator, and then you have to get the Capitol Police involved. It’s
so
annoying.”
“And then we get calls from lonely old people who just want to complain about
whatever
for hours,” Laura said. “Some of them call every day.”
“Can’t you tell them to stop calling?” I asked.
“We can’t tell them off, or we’ll get in trouble,” April explained. “The rule is, ‘Don’t say anything to a constituent that you wouldn’t want the senator to overhear.’”
“Why? Does he listen in on the calls?” I asked.
“No, he’s much too busy to deal with constituents on that level! It just means that we have to be supernice to everyone who calls the office, even if they’re completely insane. On Election Day, their votes count just as much as anyone else’s.”
I imagined voting booths set up in mental hospitals, with patients in blue gowns, lined up to vote for the senator April and Laura worked for. A chill went up my spine.
April hadn’t heard from her boyfriend, Tom, in over a week. Each of her phone calls had gone unreturned, as did the e-mails and Instant Messages that she had sent him over the last several days.
“I know that he’s very busy with the campaign and everything, but he can’t be
that
busy,” April said. “I mean he has a fucking BlackBerry! There’s just no excuse for it. He could at least have the courtesy to break up with me via e-mail, but I guess even that’s too much to ask these days!”
“I know that the senator won’t win the nomination, but what if he gets picked as the running mate?” Laura posed the question. “We could all be working in the White House by next year!”
“That’s why I’m holding off on the job search,” April said. “Just in case something like that happens.”
April and Laura in the White House? It was possible. Every few years, jobs and office space went into flux, and there were winners and losers. I suppose that explained the cultlike atmosphere in the senator’s office.
It was as if each office had its own congressman to worship, who was both loved and feared by his own staff. As an outsider, I had to wonder what need it filled for these people. I couldn’t imagine that the work itself was very satisfying. It seemed like everyone just ran around in circles, not accomplishing anything, from the most incompetent intern to the senator himself.
I supposed everybody else was here to work and learn, just as I was. Only I didn’t come here to work
for
anybody in particular. I was here for my own reasons, as a mercenary. But maybe I would find a cause that I could get behind, just like Han Solo eventually did in
Star Wars.
(Like I said before, Washington was full of nerds, and obviously, I was no exception.)
T
he next day, April forwarded me the press release announcing that the senator was dropping out of the race. She wrote:
I didn’t really have anywhere to go when April and Tom took over the apartment. Tom shared a room with another Hill staffer in one of those awful
Real World
-esque group houses, so they couldn’t go to his place. Now that Tom was back in the picture, I guessed that I would be spending every weekend walking aimlessly around Washington on my own.
I had Fred’s envelope of cash burning a hole in my handbag, so I went to Georgetown for an afternoon of shopping. I was walking back toward the Foggy Bottom/George Washington University Metro stop, loaded down with shopping bags, when a shiny black Mercedes-Benz pulled over.
An attractive older man who looked like the omnipresent graying male model in the Brooks Brothers catalog rolled down the driver’s side window and asked me if I needed a ride.
What the hell did he think he was doing, picking up girls off the street? Surely, he didn’t think that I was a hooker. I looked more like a bag lady.
“Those bags look heavy,” he said. “Let me give you a ride. It’s freezing out there.”
Against my better judgment, I put my bags in the trunk and got into the car. I guess I was desperate for something exciting to happen to me. If he turned out to be a murderer or something, I would stab him in the face with one of my stilettos. At least I would have an interesting story to tell my girlfriends. Besides, I loathed public transportation.
“I’m Phillip,” he said, shaking my hand. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Jacqueline,” I answered, not sure if I should be telling him my real name.
“Where are you going?”
“Capitol Hill.”
“Do you work for a congressman?”
“Right now, I’m interning. But I’m looking for a job.”
Phillip told me that he was good friends with a few congressmen and that he could help me get a job in one of their offices.
“Thank you, but you don’t even know me. I could be a totally incompetent idiot!” I laughed.
“But I can tell that you’re not,” he said. “You’re obviously an intelligent young woman.”
Men always did this: tell a smart girl that she’s pretty, tell a pretty girl that she’s smart.
“Why don’t you send me your resume and I’ll make sure it gets into the right hands,” Phillip said, giving me his business card.
I directed him to April’s apartment and looked around the car for baby seats or any other telltale signs of a family life. The car was clean. No wedding ring, either.
“You really don’t have to help me,” I told him as he helped me carry my bags to the door.
“I’m the best thing that ever happened to you,” he said, kissing my hand.
I rolled my eyes, but I couldn’t help but smile at him as he walked back to his car. He was just the most ridiculous person I had ever met. I wondered if this was how he spent his Saturdays, picking up girls in his car and promising to help them. I guess that it wasn’t much different from picking them up in a bar.
I opened the door to April’s apartment, hoping that I wasn’t walking in on anything. I could hear her faking an orgasm through her bedroom door and hoped that I didn’t sound like that when I faked mine.
I really needed to get my own place. Maybe I should give this Phillip guy a call.
APRIL AND I MULLED IT
over in the cafeteria during our lunch hour. Located on the basement level of the Dirksen Building, the Senate cafeteria had no windows, but plenty of greenish fluorescent lighting that made everybody look especially unattractive. Cell phones didn’t work from here unless you had Verizon (which we all intended to switch to as soon as our existing plans ran out), and there was a large variety of substandard food to choose from.
It was an awful place to spend your lunch hour, but
everybody
was here. You at least did a walk-through, even if you had already eaten lunch at your desk or at one of the nearby “off-campus” restaurants. Like it or not, it was the place to see and be seen during the workday.
Some of the local papers even sent reporters to the cafeteria to eavesdrop on staffer conversations, so the etiquette was to never trash anyone by name. You always referred to your boss as “the senator,” and you had to watch what you said about anyone else, in case they were sitting behind you. (And they always were!)
“It’s all a little too
Pretty Woman,
” April said when I told her about Phillip. “I wouldn’t trust this guy. And what were you thinking, getting into some stranger’s car? Are you crazy?”
I nodded.
“And I was bored,” I added.
“You should have given Laura a call,” April said. “She would have loved to go shopping with you.”
“Yeah, right,” I snorted. “Does Laura even like me?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Well, you know how girls are.”
“What, that we all pretty much hate each other?”
“So Laura
hates
me?”
“I wouldn’t say that. She just thinks that you’re a little arrogant.”
“
Arrogant?
” I protested. “I am not arrogant! I just have high self-esteem!”
“Don’t get mad, Jackie. She’s probably just jealous. You know, Laura is really just poor white trash from Virginia. She would shit herself if anyone found out.”
“Why is that such a big secret? I could tell by the way she dresses that she’s trying to compensate for
something.
She looks exactly like a ‘Prep Personae’ diagram from
The Official Preppy Handbook.
”
Just then, Laura strolled into the dining room in a Fair Isle sweater and pearls. She spotted us and walked over to our table.
“If we’re both down here, who’s in the front office?” April asked her.
“Right now, I have a couple of interns watching our desks,” Laura replied. “Jackie, shouldn’t you be on your way back to the office by now?”
“Yeah, I guess I should be,” I said, getting up from the table.
“Great! You can answer the phones until we get back,” Laura smirked. “Tell the other interns to go back to the mailroom when you get there.”
I resented Laura for pulling rank on me like this, but I didn’t feel like staying there anyway. Not with her there.
And I was sort of pissed that April didn’t stick up for me just then. I needed to get some new friends, but how was a bitchy girl like me supposed to find any? The only people who ever wanted to talk to me were horny guys.
It could be worse, I supposed. Who wanted to hang out with a bunch of girls anyway?
WHEN I GOT BACK TO THE
office, I sat down at Laura’s desk and deleted her computer wallpaper, an insipid photo of herself standing next to the senator. It was a petty, immature thing to do, but I was a petty, immature person.
I was searching Rotten.com for a good “Fuck of the Month” picture to set as Laura’s new background when a bunch of men in Hazmat suits walked into the office.
“Uh, can I help you?” I asked them.
“Stay where you are,” one of them instructed just as Dan walked into the room, on his way back from lunch.
“What’s going on here?” he asked me. “Did you call these guys?”
I shook my head no.
“The two of you need to stay in this room until we say otherwise,” one of the guys in spacesuits told us. “Someone in your mailroom found a powdery, white substance on their desk. Your office is under quarantine until further notice.”
White powder? You know what I was thinking:
sniff, sniff.
But obviously, it wasn’t drugs or whoever found it wouldn’t have called the Capitol Police.
Note to self: Never bring your stash to the office. Someone might think that it’s anthrax and call the Bio-chemical Response Team.
They locked the doors and moved on to the other offices in our suite. Horrified, I looked to Dan for reassurance that we weren’t going to die.
“This happens all the time,” he explained. “Ever since the senator ran for president, he gets more death threats than ever. It’s probably nothing.”
“That’s fucked up,” I said. “The poor, unpaid interns in the mailroom are risking their
lives
for the senator, who could not care less. You would think that the safety of his staff might matter more to him.”
“Well, what is he supposed to do? Stop accepting constituent mail?”
“Yes, I think that he should. He doesn’t read any of those letters anyway. People should know that writing to your congressman makes absolutely no difference. Maybe they would put their time and energy into something more effective.”
“But then the senator would have to fire, like, half the staff,” Dan argued. “Hundreds of LCs
*
would lose their jobs.”
“Wouldn’t the senator like to save the taxpayers some money anyway?” I argued. “He’s paying a dozen staffers thirty thousand a year to write letters to crazy people. It’s such a waste!”
But what did I know? I was actually trying to get one of these LC jobs, so I was just a big hypocrite.
He sat down in Laura’s chair.
“What’s this you’re looking at?” he asked, nodding toward the computer monitor on her desk.
Oh, crunch.
I had left Rotten.com up on the screen. Now he was going to know what a sicko I truly was.
“‘
Fuck of the Month,
’” he read. “What is this?”
“Oh, nothing! I don’t know how that got up there,” I lied.
“Yeah, right,” he laughed, scrolling down to see a picture of a woman with a giant hairy bush. “Ugh! This is disgusting. I hope you’re not this hairy!”
“No, I get waxed every month,” I said defensively.
“Really?” he asked, casting his eyes down toward my lap.
That was the point where I had to make a decision: Should I put an end to Dan’s leering, or should I encourage it?
April already had a boyfriend, but she would be pissed if she knew that I was flirting with her crush. You know how girls are: As she herself said, we all pretty much hate each other.
I rolled my eyes and turned away from him. Playing hard to get was always the safest bet.
He got up from the desk and walked over to where I was standing.
“Show me?” he asked, trying to pull up my skirt.
“Get away!” I laughed, scurrying away from him. “I’m telling the senator!”
Just then the door opened and Hazmat gave us the all-clear signal. After everybody was so excited, wondering if they had anthrax or not, it turned out to be powdered sugar from some cookies that the chief of staff had baked for an office party. April and Laura stumbled into the office with coffee cups in their hands.
“They wouldn’t let us into the office, so we went to the Dubliner and had the bartender ‘Irish’ up our coffees,” Laura said.
“Hi, Dan,” April cooed. “What are you doing here? Waiting for me?”
Dan looked at me nervously and made excuses to get back to his desk.
“Oh. My. God. You will not believe what just happened,” I told the girls after he left the room. “April, that guy you like is a total perv.”
I thought that they would appreciate my dirty story about Dan, but they were disgusted.
“You like him, don’t you?” April accused me. “Why else would you tell him that you’re
waxed
?”
“And what were you doing looking at that crap on
my
computer?” Laura wanted to know. “You could get me fired for that!”
“Is it really that serious?” I asked. “Who’s going to know? I’ll take full responsibility if anyone says anything about it: I’m an intern, so I can’t get fired.”
I was surprised that April and Laura would come down on me so hard. Maybe it was the alcohol that was making them so emotional, or perhaps I was just wearing out my welcome here.
“I think you should go back to your cubicle,” April said. “We’ll discuss this later.”
“Tonight at the apartment?” I asked.
“Probably not,” she replied. “Tom is coming over.”
I rolled my eyes and went back to my desk. Just then Kate called me into her office:
“Sweetie,
could I see you for a minute?”
I had come to loathe the sound of Kate’s voice. She always had some crap job for me to do, like count the number of knives and forks in the party supply closet or buy new batteries for the senator’s remote. And I hated the way she called me “
sweetie.
” (Trust me, she had a tone.)
Today, I had to Autopen a hundred copies of his new book. The Autopen was a machine with a robotic arm that could forge the senator’s signature perfectly. I sent Valentine cards to all of my friends signed by “The Senator,” and I even left little notes around the apartment for April:
Dude!
We’re out of tampons.
Pick some up at CVS? I’ll give you $ later.
Thanx,
“The Senator”