Eighteen Acres

by Nicolle Wallace

  “Roger had to leave early for a family emergency,” Charlotte whispered to Sam.

  “We’re on it. We’ll put Melanie next to the Panamanian defense minister and move Ralph into Melanie’s seat,” Sam said, turning her head to speak into her sleeve, where a two-way radio was hidden to allow her to communicate with the other staffers in charge of making sure the event came off smoothly.

  “Thanks, Sam. Any other changes I should know about?” Charlotte asked.

  “We can’t seem to find Mr. Kramer,” Sam said.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Melanie

  Melanie walked into Washington’s Union Station just after six-thirty A.M. and strode purposefully through the lobby. She’d never seen the train station so empty, but none of the regulars took the Saturday regional train to New York City. Only someone trying to avoid lobbyists and reporters would travel the regional, and that was exactly Melanie’s hope. She purchased her ticket and made her way to the waiting area. She bought a large coffee and a bottle of water and unfolded the newspapers she had brought from home. The festive photos from the state dinner days earlier were long gone. She glanced at the headlines: “President’s Approval Ratings at New Lows,” “Women’s Group Assails Kramer’s Apathy on Abortion Debate,” “Conservatives Plot Third-party Challenge to Kramer,” “Economy Continues to Falter.” Melanie sighed. She folded the papers back up and shoved them into her bag. She pulled out her personal BlackBerry and skimmed the e-mails that had come in since she went to bed the night before. She found one from Michael: “Forget Sarabeth’s—meet me at diner on 9th and 58th. Better bacon and more privacy.”

  She hadn’t seen Michael since the year before, when they’d run into each other at the Caucus Room in D.C. Michael didn’t frequent the D.C. establishment restaurants. Most of his sources couldn’t afford to be seen with him. He’d been out with his twenty-two-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, the night Melanie saw him. They were celebrating her graduation from Georgetown. Michael had mentioned that Elizabeth was trying to get an interview in the White House communications office. Melanie had arranged the interview and put in a good word for her. It had been enough. Elizabeth had just completed her first year as a junior press aide in the regional press office, and she sat in the same cramped office that Melanie had occupied when she started with President Harlow fifteen years earlier.

  The seven A.M. train arrived, and Melanie stood with the small group of travelers to board. She settled in an empty seat in the quiet car and tried to remember the last time she’d been on the train. When she’d first started working at the White House, she took the train to New York every weekend she could. She’d stay with her older sister, Claire, and they’d wake up early to jog around the reservoir in Central Park. Afterward, they’d order steaming cups of coffee and pastries from one of the bakeries on Madison. If Claire didn’t have to work, they’d visit the Met or the Guggenheim and shop at Bloomingdale’s and Barneys. At night, Claire would take her to Craft or Pastis or one of her other favorite restaurants. Melanie loved those visits. She’d depart Union Station an underpaid and overworked government staffer and arrive at Penn Station ready to dive into her sister’s glamorous New York life. As the head of antique furniture at Sotheby’s auction house, her sister ran with a hip, artsy crowd that couldn’t be more different from the buttoned-down political types who surrounded Melanie.

  This was a very different kind of trip. Melanie had lied to Charlotte about needing to visit Claire to get out of going to Camp David. Charlotte’s best friends from college, Brooke and Mark Pfiefer, would be there, Melanie reminded herself, pushing her guilt aside. She tilted her seat back as far as it would go and closed her eyes. Unlike the Acela, which sped to New York in less than two and a half hours, the regional train took more than three and a half hours. Plenty of time for a nap, Melanie thought, covering herself with her coat and turning the ringers down on all her phones and BlackBerrys.

  She had known Michael since she first arrived in Washington. One of the last of the old-fashioned “source” reporters, he’d earned a special place in her heart early in the Martin administration when he waited for her outside the White House gate to tell her that he’d seen her husband making out with a twenty-four-year-old legislative aide the night before.

  Melanie was one of Michael’s best sources at the beginning of her career without even knowing it. He’d befriended her at the bar at the Hay-Adams, where Melanie and other press staffers used to convene after long days in the office. She’d drink big glasses of merlot and enjoy how quickly the alcohol would erase her insecurities. When she met Michael the first time, she’d just been noticed by President Harlow’s senior staff for her attention to detail and sharp political antennae.

  “Hi there. You look like someone important,” he’d said to her the first night they spoke.

  “You must have me confused with someone else,” Melanie had said, turning back to her friends.

  “You’re Melanie Kingston, rising star in the White House press operation and the provider of Harlow’s daily fix of Florida news.”

  His lines had been cheesy, but Melanie had desperately wanted his words to be true.

  “Uh, I don’t know where you get your information, Mr.—” Melanie started to say before he interrupted.

  “Michael. Call me Michael,” he’d said, taking a seat at the table next to Melanie, shoving a handful of wasabi peas into his mouth, and washing them down with a large gulp of his martini.

  “Michael. Well, you have my name right. I’m Melanie.”

  “I know,” he’d said.

  “Why did everyone warn me about talking to you? You’re not exactly subtle.” She’d laughed.

  “Maybe that’s my secret.”

  “What are you working on?” she’d asked.

  “You really want to know?”

  “Sure.”

  “Doug Fischer is going to be indicted by the end of the week for perjury, and I’m trying to figure out if the special prosecutor has given the president a heads-up,” he’d said.

  Doug Fischer worked in the White House counsel’s office, and he’d testified before a grand jury investigating an unauthorized leak that lead to an undercover FBI agent’s cover being blown. The agent had been killed as a result.

  “And you know this how?” Melanie had asked.

  “My ex-wife is the public affairs officer for the special prosecutor’s office, and when I went to pick up my daughter last night, I heard her on the phone. He was asking her to come back in, and the special prosecutors always fill in their press staff at the last minute—always the very last to know anything big, just like the White House, Kingston.”

  “Does that actually work for you? I mean, do people actually tell you things after you insult them like that?”

  He’d laughed. “Believe it or not, they do.”

  He’d been right about the White House lawyer getting indicted. Melanie had been sitting at her desk in the OEOB when she saw the breaking news on CNN. The OEOB was across the driveway from the West Wing, but it might as well have been on another planet. Melanie had stayed glued to the television all day. President Harlow had given a statement in the East Room shortly after the news broke. Melanie remembered reading in the papers that his communications director, Barry Donaldson, had written the statement on a computer without a hard drive so it wouldn’t show up in the White House records in case the White House staffer hadn’t been indicted.

  I want to have that role someday, Melanie had thought at the time. I want to be the person the president turns to in the middle of a crisis.

  Melanie and Michael had started meeting periodically at Starbucks across the street from the White House. He’d ask her about the mood at the planning meetings she went to, the cliques at the White House, and rumors about tensions or affairs between various staffers. And there was no shortage of scurrilous gossip to pass along, off the record, of course. When hundreds of young political animals from all across the country spent fifteen-hour
days together, seven days a week, working inside the confines of the eighteen acres that made up the White House complex, there was plenty of friction.

  Melanie had loved how important she felt meeting Michael for these visits. She didn’t realize at the time how valuable her rambling reports of life as a junior staffer were until she’d read an “analysis” piece Michael wrote about President Harlow a few weeks after the indictment.

  “It’s Business as Usual in President Harlow’s White House,” the headline had read. The story had gone on to say that “staffers attended meetings for the White House egg roll and planned for a bird flu outbreak just days after the resignation of one of the most powerful aides on the White House staff.” Michael had quoted her as an “administration official” saying that “nothing’s changed for those of us functioning at the nuts-and-bolts level.” His article had concluded that the White House was “out of touch” and “out of line” for refusing to discuss the indictment openly with staff.

  Melanie had been mortified when she read the piece and saw slivers of stories she’d shared over the previous weeks reflected and in many cases distorted to fit Michael’s thesis that everyone at the White House was in denial. She’d phoned him and told him she needed to see him immediately. He’d laughed and said she was being childish. He’d assured her that he had many sources who told him similar things. Melanie had wanted to believe him, but she was fairly certain that he’d taken her stories and built his mood piece around her account.

  “It’s unethical,” she’d said to him on the phone.

  “Lesson number one, Kingston: getting a national security story or an indictment wrong is unethical. Mood stories are all bullshit. My editors wanted a mood story. I trust your judgment about the mood, so I wrote off what I understand to be true from our visits. Take it as a compliment. You’re a credible source.”

  “And you’re a piece of shit,” she’d retorted.

  She didn’t talk to him for months. Then, one day, when she was dropping off President Harlow’s Florida clips, she’d heard Barry Donaldson, the communications director, on the phone in the West Wing basement. He must have thought he was alone. It was just after six A.M., so it was a reasonable assumption.

  “Listen, you need to protect my ass. Can’t you ID me as a ‘senior government official’ instead of a ‘senior White House official’? No, not White House official—it needs to be ‘senior’ so they know it’s real. Listen, Harlow is going to dump her like a hot potato—he’s just waiting for our friends on the Hill to start complaining in the press. Then he can say that it was a matter of party unity. No, he isn’t going to throw her overboard until she embarrasses herself in front of Congress. I know, it’s cruel, but life’s a bitch. Welcome to the big leagues, Dottie. No, no, you can’t quote me on that, no way. Listen, I’ve gotta go.” He’d hung up and rounded the corner, where Melanie was standing in front of the West Wing security guards.

  Melanie had kept her head down and tried to avoid making eye contact.

  “Hey, Marnie,” he’d said.

  “Melanie,” she’d corrected.

  “Right, Melanie. Uh, how long have you been standing here?”

  “I just walked in and was on my way to the staff secretary’s office,” she’d said.

  “I’ve never seen you in the West Wing before.”

  “I deliver President Harlow’s Florida clips each morning.”

  “You’re here at this hour every day to satiate POTUS’ obsession with his beloved Sunshine State?”

  “Yes, sir,” she’d answered. President Harlow had been governor of Florida for eight years before being elected president, and he loved keeping up on his hometown press.

  “Cool. Hey, anything you hear over here is classified, right, Leonard?” he’d said, turning to the security guard.

  “Whatever you say, sir,” he’d said, winking at Melanie.

  She’d smiled at the guard. “OK, well, I have to go.”

  “I’m serious, Melanie. Classified,” Donaldson had emphasized.

  Her hands had been shaking when she handed the clips over to the staff secretary. She’d felt her stomach tie into a knot and her palms begin to sweat. The president’s communications director had been trashing the president’s nominee for homeland security secretary. Dottie Flor was President Harlow’s pick for the post, and her confirmation process was not going smoothly.

  She couldn’t go to her boss. Donaldson was her boss’s boss. She couldn’t go to the chief of staff. He played golf with Donaldson every Saturday. He’d never believe Melanie. She’d waited until ten A.M. and called Michael’s number.

  “Kingston, how the hell are you?” he’d asked on the first ring.

  “I need to see you.”

  “Usual spot?” he’d asked.

  “No, let’s meet in Dupont Circle.”

  They’d met twenty minutes later at the Krispy Kreme on Dupont Circle.

  “I think Barry Donaldson is trying to sabotage the president’s nominee for secretary of homeland security,” Melanie had blurted out as soon as they’d ordered their donuts and coffee.

  “Slow down, Kingston. What did you hear?” he’d asked.

  “Listen, you burned me once, so I need to do this off the record—like one hundred percent off the record. You can’t tie me to this information in any way, shape, or form, or I’ll get caught.”

  “Get caught doing what? Sticking up for the president’s nominee? That doesn’t sound so bad,” he’d said.

  “I’m serious.”

  “OK, OK, Kingston. You got it. Double secret off the record. Now tell me, again, what you heard.”

  Melanie had told him the whole story, and he was able to confirm it independently with sources on the Hill. The front page of the paper had carried a banner headline the day the story broke: “Top Aide Runs Coordinated Effort to Sink Dottie Flor.”

  Donaldson had been fired, and Flor had been confirmed. Melanie hadn’t slept for a week. She’d kept waiting for the White House chief of staff to hunt her down in her office in the Old Executive Office Building or call her in the middle of the night to accuse her of leaking information. But no one had come after her, and after a while, no one spoke of Donaldson anymore.

  Melanie and Michael had remained friends. During the eight years she’d served as press secretary, he often gave her a heads-up when a crisis was about to break. When she took the job as Charlotte’s chief of staff, he’d sent her a dozen roses with a note: “I’m always happy when my friends keep their security clearances. Kramer is lucky to have you, Melanie. Fondly, Michael.” In her three years as chief of staff, Melanie had hardly spoken to him. He’d been pursuing corrupt members of Congress in recent years, and with his daughter working in the White House, he’d laid off the executive branch, much to Melanie’s relief.

  Now, when Melanie opened her eyes, the train was forty minutes from New York’s Penn Station. She walked back to the dining car for another cup of coffee, then tried to get through the newspapers but found her eyes skimming the words without taking in any of the stories. She kept starting over and ended up reading them out loud to herself to get through them.

  She arrived in New York at around ten. She walked out of the train station and pulled her black wool coat tightly around her. She was always surprised by how much colder it was in New York than in D.C.

  She got into a cab and gave the driver the address where she was to meet Michael. The cab stopped in front of the diner. Through the window, the crowd looked as if it was made up mostly of tourists. Melanie paid the cab driver and walked inside. She spotted Michael in a booth near the back—a cup of coffee and a copy of the New York Times were in front of him.

  He smiled at her as she approached. “You look tired as shit,” he said.

  “Thanks. I feel like shit,” Melanie said.

  “I didn’t say you looked like shit. I said you look tired as shit. There’s a difference,” he said, smiling again.

  “I’m fine. Living the dream,
” she said.

  He laughed and stayed quiet, waiting for her to say more.

  “We’ve been pushing hard—totally off the record, like so off the record that even after it happens, you and I never had this conversation. Charlotte’s going to Afghanistan again to be there for their elections, and it’s been a bitch to get the trip together. There’s still no functioning government, and the military is pissed at Roger over the budget, so they have refused to participate in any of the planning. It’s just been a brutal couple weeks,” Melanie said.

  “How is Charlotte?” he asked.

  “She’s good.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “I don’t know—she seems distracted when I see her on TV,” he said.

  “I mean, between the anemic recovery and two wars, she’s been dealt a pretty crummy hand, and every time she opens her mouth to discuss any of those topics, her approval ratings go down, but you know Charlotte, she’s good. I mean, she never complains, and she takes her lumps. Congress shits all over her, and she still treats them like they’re her best friends in the world. I don’t know who treats her worse—the Democrats or the Republicans—but she rolls with it. She works her ass off. I’ve done this for three of them now, and I’ve never seen anyone like her—she is a machine,” Melanie said.

  “Maybe that’s her problem,” Michael said. “With her poll numbers, she needs something big to change the dynamic, or she might get a third-party challenge from the right, and I’m not sure she’d survive that.”

  “Let me see if I understand this. Her problem is that she works too hard and doesn’t pay enough attention to her poll numbers?” Melanie asked, sarcastically.

  “No. But one of the problems voters have with her—and you know this as well as I do, Melanie—is that she seems superhuman, you know? She never stops—she doesn’t show any emotion. People want to know that she gets pissed, that she gets sad, happy, angry, something.”