by Sally Quinn
“But Sprague…”
“No buts, Ally. I’m not going to jeopardize anybody I love.”
Nobody had mentioned the word love the night before. He didn’t dare say it to her straight out. He was too much of a gentleman. Gentlemen didn’t tell women they loved them unless they had something to offer them. Not only did he not have anything for her, he had broken his code last night. He had fucked his editor and cheated on his wife. This was the closest he could come to apologizing, explaining, confessing. She was relieved. She couldn’t cope with emotions at this moment. Love was not part of her vocabulary. She didn’t want to learn it. Even with Sprague. For this reason she was willing to abide by his rules.
“Okay,” she said, looking him directly in the eyes. “You may be right. It might be best if we don’t see each other again.”
* * *
She had demanded a meeting with Walt, Alan, the boys, and the political reporters to talk over campaign strategy. It was the first week in October. They had one month to go until the elections. She was not happy with the way things were going. No matter how many meetings they’d had, how many times she had objected, they kept going back to their old ways of covering the campaign. It was pack journalism at its worst. These guys had been doing it for so long they had become part of the system, part of the process. They wrote for each other and their buddies, the political in-crowd.
Allison felt that what they wrote meant nothing to the voters and it was why people were turning off to politics. Against her advice, they had covered every primary in every state and nobody gave a shit. As far as she was concerned they were part of the problem. They had set up a schedule a year ago outlining what they would do every week and they had become wedded to it. Consequently, they had had no flexibility. They weren’t able to change their coverage if things weren’t going the way they had predicted. It was like a train going in one direction that was impossible to turn around. The whole process had a life of its own. She had been in a rough position because she didn’t know as much about it as they had. She had been out of the loop, out of the country for three years. Which was why she had been hesitant to force her strategy on them. She also did not want to come up looking stupid if she turned out to be wrong.
These old-time political reporters divided everybody into two groups: insiders and outsiders. If you didn’t know who the Republican party chief was in Kansas you weren’t worth talking to. Allison thought they felt closer to the people they were covering than to their editors, or at least the editors they felt were outsiders, like herself and Malkin. She did have Walt’s support. She wasn’t so sure about Alan. She knew that every time anyone had gone in to Walt to complain, he had shut them up by saying, “Tough shit. I like the way she’s doing it.” So far, Walt had managed to keep them at bay. But now it was the rush to the finish line and when the going got tough these guys felt more comfortable doing it their way, not the new way, and especially not her way. With one month to go she thought they needed a little consciousness-raising session. A group encounter.
It was scheduled for Monday morning in place of the national staff meeting. Might as well get right to it.
She was the first into the conference room. She wanted to take a few minutes to collect her thoughts. She had no sooner sat down than Sprague walked in.
He stopped for a moment when he saw her, then came over and sat down beside her.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi.”
This was the first time they had been alone since Tippety Wichity. They had deliberately avoided each other. He had been traveling a lot and when he was there she had asked Malkin to work with him on the drug stuff, claiming she was too busy with the campaign. She had thrown herself once again into her work to avoid dealing with anything in her personal life. She had never been so happy about having so much work to do, so many distractions, as she was now. There simply wasn’t any time to think about anything but work. She had put Sprague out of her mind the same way she had put Des and Kay Kay out of her mind. She knew that somewhere down the road she was going to pay a price for it emotionally, but she wasn’t ready.
She had not been prepared for Sprague’s nearness to agitate her. She didn’t welcome it. She felt they had both been thoroughly professional about the whole thing and she didn’t want any momentary whim to spoil that. She had to remain detached at all costs.
“So. You’re still here, I see. You haven’t been mowed down by the crazy Colombians yet.”
“Yeah. Sorry about that.”
He was as nervous as she was. His laugh belied his cool demeanor.
“How’s it going? Malkin tells me that you’re on to the tapes.”
“Yeah. It’s looking good.”
“Great… that’s great.”
“Yeah.”
They had avoided looking directly at each other until now. After a moment or two of silence they dared. It was a mistake.
They spoke in unison.
“Look…. Sorry…. Not going to work…. This is too hard…. We can’t…. Maybe if we just… Unrealistic.”
Laughter.
“Oh Sprague. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what I think. I’m trying not to think about it at all. You’ll have to decide for both of us.”
“It’s too complicated right now, Ally. God knows I want to be with you. I can’t get you out of my head. But we’ve both got too much to deal with. You’ve got the election coming up. I’ve got this drug story. I’m not out of danger. I have to go see Melissa whenever I can get any time. We need to get a lot of things in our lives out of the way before we can even talk about anything, before we can see what we have. We’re doing the right thing. Professionally and personally.”
“You’re right. I know you’re right. Only I….”
The door opened and Walt and Alan came in, followed by the rest of the group, about ten in all. They took their places at the table. Alan opened the meeting.
“Welcome to the group encounter, everyone,” he said. “I suppose you are all aware of some differences of opinion on how the campaign should be covered and how it has been covered up to now. The question before us today is, are we covering it right or are we covering our asses? Is our goal being able to say we had this or that story or is it to make sure that the readers of the Morning Miracle understand what the fuck is going on? Allison, I believe you had something to say on this subject?”
“I’m concerned about our coverage as we head toward the finish line, particularly of these political consultants,” she said. “It seems to me that we’ve been running an awful lot of stuff about the boys in the back room who are making the decisions and creating the images. I don’t see what we’re doing to help the prospective voter make a choice. I don’t think the voter gives a shit about whose idea it was to get the candidate to stand up for the American flag. I think the voters really care about the issues—health care, crime, drugs. The problem with concentrating on the consultants is that we fall into the trap of publicizing them, which creates an issue where there wasn’t one. It shows that we know what’s happening on the inside and that seems to be all the inside people really care about. The mere fact that we write about it becomes part of the process. So I guess what I’m saying is that we’ve got exactly one month to go and I would like us to rethink our mandate. Which to me is informing the public in order to help them make an educated decision on the first Tuesday in November.”
She paused and looked around the room. There were several pairs of beady eyes looking daggers at her. Nobody said anything.
“Look. I want you to know that I think you have all worked really hard and done a better job than any other paper in the country. There’s no question that ours has been the best coverage and we have the best team. I am also not impugning anybody’s motives here. I don’t see any malevolence. It’s just that everybody talks about how we have the franchise in politics and I’m saying if that’s true then we are the ones who can change the way we’re doing it. We have the duty
to update that franchise. Where is it written that we have to do it the same way over and over again for the next hundred years? I just want, in the next few weeks, for everybody to stop and take a fresh look before they assign a story or write a story. That’s all I have to say. Now I’ll shut up. Alan.”
“Okay. Let’s look at where we are politically. We’ve got the crap out of the way, we’ve identified the issues and the key states. We’re down to the short strokes. We’ve got to concentrate now on Texas, California, and Illinois.”
Alan went around the room, soliciting comments from the others. Finally, he turned to Sprague.
“It looks like Freddy Osgood is solid to win. What are the chances of breaking a really big story that could flip it? Sprague?”
“As everyone knows by now,” said Sprague, “I’m working on getting some tapes that could land the A.G. in jail. The question is when. I’m close but I don’t know whether it will come through before the end of October.”
“If you don’t have it by the middle of October,” said Walt, “it won’t have the impact that could change the election. We have to be able to plan on that.”
“There you go again. Planning ahead,” teased Allison.
“Give me a break,” said Walt.
By picking on Walt she had eased the atmosphere. Everyone was tired, stressed, and strung out from having been on the road for nearly a year. They had been sleeping in strange hotels, eating junk food, living without clean laundry, missing their families, working their buns off, and in some cases fucking their brains out. She understood that and she had to find a way to show them she appreciated what they had been going through.
“I can’t promise anything,” said Sprague. “I’ll get them when I get them. And it may not be until after the election. In any case, I don’t have any evidence that Osgood’s fingerprints are on this one.”
“Okay, everyone,” said Alan, standing up. “That should do it for this meeting. Any complaints, take them to Allison. And by the way, you’re all doing a first-rate job.”
The room cleared out and Allison and Sprague were left standing there together.
“By the way,” she said, “I’ve been meaning to ask you: Did you ever know Sadie Grey when you were both living in Savannah?”
She thought he looked a little stricken when she asked the question.
“Yes. Why?”
“We need to talk.”
* * *
It was the week before Thanksgiving, three weeks after the election. Freddy had won. Despite his sinking polls in the summer, his consultants had finally managed to pull him out of his slide. A series of brilliant TV ads detailing the positions of his religious right opponent and highlighting his running mate, Malcolm Sohier, had done the job. The Republican had been more than the American people could stomach, and Sohier’s appeal was overwhelming. They reluctantly voted Freddy back into office. Sprague had not been able to come up with the tapes of Foxy and Antonia doing dope together in Colombia. Bryan had uncovered nothing at the National Cancer Institute. Freddy had lost weight but otherwise seemed to be in perfectly good health. He had stonewalled Alan Warburg. Allison was frustrated at having both stories that they all believed to be true but unprintable. But she was not ready to give up.
She had an idea. She would send Sprague to talk to Sadie and see if he could get anything out of her. She knew Sadie worked closely with Michael Lanzer and was Blanche’s only friend in Washington. If anybody knew anything it would be Sadie. Unfortunately, Allison had only come up with the idea after the election—when she had brought up Sadie’s name at the brainstorming meeting it was just out of curiosity. They had never really had a chance to discuss her. Then she found out that Sprague knew Sadie pretty well from Savannah. She had tried to get him to see Sadie about Freddy. For some reason he had resisted at first, saying he needed to concentrate on the Colombian story. It was only after a lot of persuasion that she managed to talk him into going.
Sprague’s initial reluctance made her wonder what kind of a relationship he had had with Sadie in Savannah. He was clearly not neutral about her. But Allison decided she didn’t want to know. Somehow she knew too much already. She would leave it for now. Maybe later, down the road, if their relationship developed into something, she would ask. But not now.
She herself would go see Michael Lanzer. Though she had seen him on television and seen his picture in the papers, she had only met him once at a White House dinner after Rosey had been killed. She had found him extremely attractive, even more so in person. She had often wondered if he were having a thing with Blanche or Sadie. Both of them spent so much time with him. She would never have dreamed of suspecting a First Lady before, but now, after Sadie and Des, she knew better. She certainly wouldn’t have blamed Blanche for having an affair, especially being married to Freddy. Sadie was an even more likely possibility because she was single and Lanzer had apparently split up with his wife. But then Sadie and Des had begun seeing each other again, so that shot down that idea. At any rate, that was all beside the point. She was not going to see him to discuss his sex life. She was going to see him to discuss, well, the President’s sex life. Or former sex life.
It was up to her to get something out of Lanzer. Bryan had said Lanzer was adamant about never discussing his patients under any condition. A famous television reporter had called him asking about a famous AIDS patient who was being treated at the National Cancer Institute anonymously. Lanzer had hung up on him. If Allison wanted to talk to Lanzer she better have another reason. She found one.
* * *
He had agreed to see her the next afternoon at four. She explained to him that they had a potential problem on their hands with AIDS in the newsroom and she would like some advice from him on how to handle it.
His secretary ushered her into the small conference room and offered her a cup of tea. When she was alone she walked over to the picture window overlooking the Bethesda Naval Hospital and the imposing Mormon temple in the background. It was a beautiful view despite the dreary November weather. The clouds were so dark it looked almost like night, and she shivered just looking at the wind blowing the trees. She used to love the fall weather, especially Thanksgiving. Now she dreaded it. It reminded her of death. This time last year she was happier than she had ever been in her life. Christmas was coming, she was a month away from having her baby, and she was madly in love with Des. How things reversed. A year later she was more unhappy than she had ever been. Christmas was coming, the anniversary of her baby’s death, and she and Des were not together anymore.
She felt a stab of pain like she hadn’t ever remembered and she clutched her stomach reflexively. It lasted only a second. She had trained herself well. She could manage to eradicate the thoughts that had subjected her to that pain almost before they began. It was like some kind of meditation trick. She could just put those thoughts behind her. She did.
She had remembered correctly. He was attractive. He had these eyes that saw through you, and high cheekbones and a sensual mouth. The interesting thing about him was that, unlike most good-looking men, he didn’t seem to know it. That was an immensely appealing quality. The white doctor’s coat only added to his appeal.
It was even more inexplicable, now that she had seen him again, why he and Sadie didn’t have something going. It would have been natural since they were both single now and were thrown together so often. There was no point in pondering that. It hadn’t happened. She did think, though, that in other circumstances, he would be someone she might be interested in.
He seemed completely oblivious to what she was thinking. He motioned her to a chair and sat down himself.
“What can I do to help you?” he said.
“Actually, we have a reporter on our staff who has AIDS and who is being treated here. His name is Bryan Babbitt. He knows I’m here. I told him I was coming. I don’t expect you to acknowledge that he is your patient. However, it will become known soon, since Bryan is developing symptoms and he very
much wants to continue working in the newsroom. I’ve got to know how to handle the fears of other reporters and editors who work with him.”
“AIDS is not contagious that way. There is absolutely no need to discriminate on any level.”
“People are going to ask so I need to get some answers from you. What if someone objects to sharing a phone or a computer terminal with him? What about him using bathrooms and water fountains? What about the cafeteria, the possibility of drinking out of the same glass—these are questions on everyone’s mind, even sophisticated journalists. As open-minded as we all are, as we would like to be, I’m afraid everyone is a little apprehensive.”
“There is absolutely no evidence of any possibility of getting AIDS except through sexual intercourse or blood products. All those things you mentioned would be perfectly safe. There is nothing to worry about.”
“Well, you’ve certainly set my mind at ease on that subject.”
She emphasized the word that.
He didn’t say anything. She saw that he sensed there was another agenda. She might as well come out with it.
“There’s another subject I’d like to discuss with you.”
He kept looking at her with those eyes. He was inscrutable. It was making her nervous and she was a pro at this.
“Bryan tells us that you are treating President Osgood. He saw him in the examining room with you.”
She was going with harder information than she actually had. An old journalistic trick.
“I’m not going to comment about the President or anyone else, so don’t even try to ask me questions about him.”
He didn’t seem surprised at the question. He didn’t gasp in shock. He didn’t deny. She would keep going.
“If I had known you were going to ask me this, if I had known this was the real reason you wanted to see me, I would never have agreed to talk to you.”