by L. A. Witt
I nodded. “Good.” Normally I’d have been pissed he’d jumped the gun and made a move without my approval, but time was of the essence here. I’d forgive a presumptuous move if it got me a director and a crew.
“In terms of content,” I said, “Casey always has an aggressive ad campaign. That man is the king of smear tactics, so we need to start early with ads specifically detailing Jesse’s qualifications. Put a preemptive positive spin on anything Casey might try to slam. He’s going to try to say you’re just a pretty face, so we need to emphasize you’re more than a pretty face.” I made the mistake of glancing at Jesse just then and barely kept myself from shivering. My God, you are a pretty face, aren’t—Focus, Hunter.
I cleared my throat and went on. “Celebrity politicians aren’t as accessible to Joe Citizen because they’re larger than life. Godlike. Whatever. The public sees you as being on a completely different level than themselves, and that’s a disadvantage in politics, which means you’re going to spend almost every waking moment of this campaign on the road meeting people. We need to get you in contact with as many voters as we can. Show them you’re on their side, on their level. Shake as many hands and kiss as many babies as you can.” I smirked at Jesse. “Stock up on vitamin C and echinacea, kid, because you’re about to catch every cold in California, and there’s no calling in sick on any of this.”
Jesse shrugged. “I passed the bar exam while I was half-dead from the flu. I’ll manage.”
“Yeah, well, this—” I stopped. “Wait, seriously?”
He nodded. “Probably would have scored better if I’d been running on all eight cylinders when I took it, but…” He shrugged again, and the faintest hint of a smug grin materialized on his lips.
I reached for my drink, using that subtle motion to mask the shiver that raised goose bumps all along my spine. Pretty boys on their own didn’t do it for me, but pretty-boy academics—the ones who flourished in academia and made it look so goddamned easy—were my Achilles heel.
I took a long swallow of not-nearly-iced-enough tea, and as I set the glass back down, I cleared my throat again. “Anyway. As far as staffing goes, I’ve got a few people along from your uncle’s last campaign. They’re working on staffing the campaign office, and we’ll open the office doors the morning after your press conference. We’ll have paid and unpaid staffers on the road with us as well as in the home office.” I shifted my gaze toward Jesse. “You’ve been around campaign events before, but you’ve never been a candidate, and you’ve never worked in a campaign office. There are some things you need to understand.”
Jesse said nothing, just gave a “go on” nod.
“First and foremost, these offices are gossip mills that make tabloid reporters look like monks who’ve taken vows of silence. Anything you say, do, or think is fair game to be twisted around and slipped to the press. We’ve screened the fuck out of every staffer, from the paid ones on down to the unpaid ones, but it’s still possible for a plant to get in.”
Roger laughed drily. “That, it definitely is.”
I nodded and gestured at Roger. “Your uncle’s third campaign? I swear to fuck, half the staff turned out to be plants from his opponent. That, or they were just very easily persuaded to give up gossip and speculation.” I folded my hands across my lap, digging my fingers into the backs of my hands just to keep from fidgeting. Or reaching for my cigarettes. “Okay, not half, but…it was a nightmare, let’s put it that way.”
“I can imagine.” Jesse squirmed like the idea of plants and moles made his skin crawl.
Oh, just you wait, Cameron.
“Watch everything you say and do,” I said. “It doesn’t take much for an innocuous comment about ‘hey, not a single black marker in this package will work’ to get twisted around and publicized as ‘African Americans are lazy and refuse to work.’”
Jesse’s eyebrows jumped. “Are you serious?”
“I swear on my life, I’ve seen that very thing happen.”
He shifted uncomfortably. “So should I just not say anything to anyone in the office?”
“No, then you’ll come across as unfriendly, and they’ll use that against you too.”
Jesse thumbed his chin. “Sounds like a catch-22.”
“It is. Welcome to politics.”
“Great.”
“Part of the deal,” I said with a shrug. “Keep your distance from your staff, you’ll be seen as cold. Considering you’re a celebrity, that’s especially bad news, because it’ll look like your staff is too far below you to even get the time of day. If you know every staff member’s name, you’ll be seen as friendly and accessible, but get too friendly, and suddenly you’re having an affair with an unpaid staffer.” I paused. “Especially since your campaign is starting out with the emphasis on your rock-solid marriage, everyone and their mother is going to be sniffing around for a reason to call your relationship with Simone into question.”
Jesse’s posture tensed.
Roger laughed. “Somehow I don’t think Casey has a leg to stand on in that department.”
“No, he doesn’t,” I said. “But that won’t stop him from trying to bring Jesse down to his level. Put them on an even playing field where relationships are concerned.”
Jesse didn’t relax in the slightest. “How do we deal with that?”
“By focusing on every positive angle we can,” I said. “Your solid relationship, your credentials, things like that. What we’re not going to do is get on the smear-campaign bandwagon with Casey. Most opponents like to harp on Casey’s personal issues, but that can backfire. Smear campaigns are effective, but it’s too easy for them to make you look bad. That, and voters are sick and fucking tired of finger-pointing and mudslinging. We stick to the issues and the reasons you’re the best candidate while Casey tries to smear you, it’ll just make you look good. For that matter, bullying is a touchy issue for people right now. If we sit back and let Casey rip you to shreds while you take the high road, he’ll just make himself look like a petty schoolyard bully, which will work in our favor.”
“So, what if Casey doesn’t go for the smear-campaign tactic?” Jesse asked.
“Oh, he will,” I said. “He always does. I don’t think he knows any other way to campaign. And I assure you, he’ll do everything he can to find anything he can about you. So, if you have anything in your past he might dig up, I don’t care if it’s a speeding ticket when you were sixteen or a joint that was smoked while you were in the same room when you were in college, now is the time to tell me. You won’t like me if I get blindsided by something that Casey can use against you.”
Roger and Jesse exchanged a brief look that turned my stomach. Oh, God, Jesse. What are you hiding?
“Anything, Jesse,” I said, shooting a glare at his uncle. So help me, if you know something…
Jesse fidgeted, coughing into his fist. “Well, I… You’ve probably heard what the tabloids said about me during my college years.”
“I’m familiar with what they’ve said, yes.” Not that I’d spent half the night looking up every word that had ever been printed about him. Or every photo that had ever been published of—“How much of that was true?”
“Most of it,” he said with a casual shrug. “Yes, I flunked out of two classes my freshman year because I drank and partied too much. Yes, I slept with a lot of women. Yes, I nearly got expelled because of my grades.”
“Though he straightened out,” Roger said. “Took an extra semester to graduate, but…”
I nodded. “Good to know. Casey and the media might have a field day with some of that, but you still graduated with a reasonably solid GPA and then went on to do well in law school. And you made it through without using your father or uncle’s influence, yes?” I raised my eyebrows, hoping he heard the unspoken the only right answer here is yes.
“Yes,” Jesse said without hesitation. “Just needed a year and a half or so to get it all out of my system, I guess.”
“Anybody asks
you about it,” I said. “Interviewers, reporters, whatever, just be straightforward and honest about it. Don’t deny it; don’t dress it up. Got it?”
Jesse nodded.
“And the women you were with,” I said, not envying every last one of them at all, “anything there that might come back and bite you?” I looked him in the eye as if even the slightest avoidance of eye contact might give away any of the thoughts I didn’t have last night while I wasn’t flipping through hundreds of pictures of him online.
Resting his elbow on the armrest, Jesse chewed his thumbnail. “Not that I’m aware of.”
“No girls having abortions or illegitimate kids?”
“No,” he said with a hint of frost in his tone. “Never.”
“What about intoxicated girls?” I asked. “Inebriated to the point they might—”
“I never touched someone who couldn’t give consent,” he snapped.
I put up a hand. “Jesse, I’m not implying anything. This is the shit people are going to dig for.”
He took a breath and released it slowly. “I never had any problems with women. I drank and partied, but I never combined that with meeting women. Any girl I was ever with was as sober as I was.”
“Good to know,” I said with a nod. “What about drug abuse?”
Color bloomed across Jesse’s pronounced cheekbones. “I…had a bit of a coke habit.”
“Define ‘a bit of’ and ‘habit’ in this context.”
“For a few months in high school,” he said. “I tried all kinds of shit, got kind of heavily into coke for the last part of my senior year.” He shrugged. “Never did it again after that. Still smoked pot for a while, but dropped that about the time I quit drinking in college.”
That much I believed. The photos all over the Internet commemorated the timeline of his life from his very public childhood to the present day. During his late teen years and into college, the signs were there: gauntness in his cheeks during the cocaine years, redness in his eyes during the weed-and-booze years. During the summer after his sophomore year, he all but disappeared from the public eye, and when he reemerged that fall, he was a different person altogether. Healthy. Clear-eyed. Lucid. Hot as fuck.
Not that I’d been looking.
So I believed him, both about the drug habits and their eventual demises. What bothered me, though, was that the more he told me, the more I was certain he was holding something else back. He quickly and unflinchingly admitted to substance abuse, screwing off in school, casual sex. But he was hiding something, and the longer he kept that back, the more he unnerved me. When a politician held cards to his vest, the tighter he held them, the more disastrous they were when they were finally played.
“Anything else?” I asked.
Jesse pursed his lips. After a moment, he shook his head. “No, I think that’s it.”
Oh no it isn’t.
He held my gaze. I held his. With each passing second, his expression hardened almost imperceptibly, his jaw tightening and his eyes narrowing slightly.
I forced out a breath and suddenly needed a fucking smoke. Whatever Jesse was hiding, he wasn’t letting go of it yet. No point in continuing to dig. I’d get it out of him sooner or later.
Sooner, if he knew what was good for him.
Resisting the urge to go out for a cigarette right fucking now, I said, “I need to know about Simone too.”
Jesse’s posture tensed even more. “What kind of things do you need to know about her?”
“Anything,” I said. “Someone digs up something as innocuous as seeing her take a friend into an abortion clinic a decade ago to pick up birth control pills, it could derail your entire campaign. If she’s ever taken a pill that was prescribed to someone else, if she’s cheated on you, her taxes, or a pop quiz in fucking kindergarten. Anything.”
The front of his throat rippled. He looked into his glass and took a deep breath but didn’t speak.
“Don’t make me pry it out of you,” I said. “You’ve already put your marriage front and center. Like it or not, the spotlight will be on both you and Simone. The public wants to trust her as much as they trust you, and people already adore her. They just need to know she’s not in some ivory tower above them. For that matter, as much as her schedule allows, she needs to be on the road with you. She’ll have a schedule of appearances on her own. She’ll connect with voters, which will connect them to you.”
Jesse’s eyes darted toward Roger, and I was sure a little color left his face.
“Something wrong?” I asked.
“What?” Jesse coughed. “No, no. I’m just… She’s just about to start promoting her new film. She needs a break between—”
“She’s married to a campaigning politician,” I said. “She can take a break when the election’s over.”
Jesse’s jaw tightened. “This isn’t entirely negotiable,” he said through gritted teeth.
“You’re right,” I said. “It’s not. The happy marriage card is on the table. That was your decision, not mine, so if you want to win this election? She’s going to have to take a proactive role.”
“And if it’s detrim—”
“Simone will handle it just fine,” Roger said. “You worry too much about her, son.”
Jesse exhaled. “I know her. I don’t want this to stress her out more than it already has.”
“She’s a grown woman.” His uncle waved a hand. “And besides, she’s used to red carpet events, meeting fans, all of that. This won’t be much different.”
“Well.” I cleared my throat. “You know that’s not entirely accurate. Similar in concept, but not completely in practice.” I looked at Jesse. “Is there anything I need to know about her? I mean, I know there’s an eating disorder involved here, so I need you to tell me honestly: can she handle this?”
Jesse’s eyes darted toward Roger. Something unspoken passed between them, and the subtle drop of Jesse’s shoulders screamed resignation, not relaxation.
He sighed. “She’ll be all right.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Will she?”
He dropped his gaze, but not quite enough to mask another quick flick of his eyes toward his uncle. Then he looked at me. “She’ll be fine. Roger’s right. I just worry about her too much.” He offered what was probably supposed to be a reassuring smile.
Can’t imagine why you couldn’t cut it as an actor, kid.
There was more at stake than Oscars in this business, though, so I wasn’t letting him off that easy. Looking him in the eye, I said, “Now’s the time to tell me this shit, Jesse. Either of you know anything about Simone that could cause problems during the campaign, I can’t emphasize this enough: I need to know.”
Jesse drew in a long breath. Without looking at his uncle or me, instead fixing his gaze on the coffee table, he said, “The biggest thing they can dig up on her is her eating disorder. The media’s made some assumptions about it that aren’t true, but the disorder is very real.”
“Assumptions?” I picked up my iced tea. “Such as?”
“That it’s for her career, mostly,” he said. “Have to stay thin to succeed in her line of work.”
Furrowing my brow, I took a drink. As I set the glass back on its coaster, I said, “So…that isn’t true?”
“No,” Jesse said, a note of irritation in his voice. “She’s had problems with it since she was a kid. It’s…it’s how she copes with things.”
“Things like…?”
“Stress.” The word came out with just enough emphasis to let me know that was as much as I was getting out of him about it.
I swallowed. “It might be best to let the media continue with their existing assumptions, then. That it’s an issue with maintaining her weight for her career. It’ll look better than—”
“No fucking way,” Jesse snarled, his sudden anger startling me. “We are not spinning my wife’s condition for the sake of my campaign.”
“I’m not suggesting we do,” I snapped. “I’m sugges
ting we let the media continue with their assumptions rather than give the sons of bitches a reason to dig for signs of mental instability, sensationalism, what have you.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “You want to protect her? Let their assumptions be the smoke screen that keeps them from the truth.”
At that, he relaxed. A little. “All right. We can do that.”
“Good,” I said. “Is she actively having issues with her eating disorder right now?”
Jesse’s eyes lost focus. He took a breath, and I couldn’t decide how to read his expression until, with a note of deep, palpable sadness, he said, “Yes. She is.”
“She is?” Roger’s head snapped toward Jesse. “Since when?”
“I’m not sure.” Jesse glanced at him, then at me. “She doesn’t know I know, though. I’m only telling you for the sake of…I mean…” He gestured sharply at all the papers in front of me as if they represented all our campaign efforts. “Beyond you knowing for the sake of the campaign and doing damage control if needed,” he said, looking me in the eye, “that does not leave this room.”
There were campaign managers out there who’d exploit this little piece of information to make the candidate look good. After all, in a field like politics where adultery was so ridiculously commonplace, nothing would make a candidate shine like standing by his wife while she struggled with something like this. A devoted husband like him was the unicorn of the political world: pretty much a mythical creature.
But I couldn’t ask Jesse to do that. And from the fierce determination in his eyes, I suspected he’d show me the door if I even suggested it.
Since our conversation last night, I’d begun to respect Jesse. Now I caught myself admiring him.
“None of it leaves this room,” I said. “Now why don’t we discuss content for the ad campaign?”
Roger stood, picking up his mostly empty glass. “Well, I’ll leave the two of you to figure out all of that nonsense.”
I smiled. Exactly what I’d hoped for. Roger hated discussions of advertising, and just as I knew he would, he shook hands with Jesse and me, then left the living room.