by Tara Sue Me
I bite back the groan because of course he did. Pharmaceutical debacle, my ass. He’s still pissed the pharma company dropped their advertising spend with us. In my opinion, the funds would be better spent on looking for a cancer cure than on advertising anyway, but I don’t say anything. Those advertising funds are a big part of how GBNC pays me my seven-figure salary.
Which, based on how things are looking at the moment, might not be for very much longer. I begin to scroll through contacts in my head, trying to decide who would have the best leads on a new job. Damn it all, am I really going to be fired because I wasn’t forthcoming about a classmate I had twelve years ago?
Across from me, George sighs.
My breath catches. Holy shit, I am.
“Rainer’s of the opinion that we should use this situation to set an example,” George continues speaking and I’m having a hard time listening because the only way for Rainer to set an example is to let me go.
I try to calculate how much money I have at my disposal. Most of my income is automatically transferred to various savings and investment accounts. I don’t know how long it’ll take to pull some of it out until I find a new job.
“I’ll admit,” George says, either oblivious or choosing to ignore my unease. “He made several good points. We could replace you with someone who makes a fraction of your current salary and someone who would be more easily controlled.”
A yes man, in other words.
“But even with all of that said.” George leans forward. “I told Rainer I believe you are an asset to GBNC, and I didn’t want to let you go.”
I don’t allow myself to feel hopeful at his words. Regardless of what anyone else wants, if Rainer wants you gone, you’re gone.
George hesitates, then delivers the real punch line. “Rainer has been in conversations with the White House about a potential change in the way the Presidential Press Pool is set up.”
I nod, not understanding the sudden change of subject or why George thinks I care about the setup of the Press Pool.
He takes his time when he continues, as if selecting his words carefully. “It’s been proposed it might be mutually beneficial to all parties for at least one press member on the Presidential Press Pool to be permanent. The White House has agreed.”
My stomach drops because I have a feeling where this is going.
“After much debate and discussion,” George says. “We’ve decided to send you as that person. Technically, we won’t cut your salary, but part of it will be used for your expenses as part of the Press Pool. Your take home will be twenty-five percent less than what it is now.”
I let his words sink in. “You want me to serve as a permanent Press Pool member and I’m going to make less?” Across from me, George doesn’t look like he’s joking. “I’m a lead anchor, you can’t ship me off to a basement office of the White House to rot for four years and decrease my pay.”
“No,” George agrees. “I can’t, but Rainer can.”
I try to imagine life working in the White House, following the President, and waiting for her to drop tiny scraps of news. Not even just any President, oh no, but Anna Fitzpatrick. It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell him no, I won’t do it, when George shuts me down.
“Let me make this clear, this is the only option if you want to remain at GBNC. I should also point out that if you do decide to leave, your contract does contain a twelve-month noncompete clause. No one will hire you, you’ll be untouchable.”
The contacts I’d been shuffling through in my mind vanish. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying if you chose not to be on the Press Pool, you won’t be working on the air. Not on the national level, anyway. That local outlet you started at in Virginia might take you.”
Chapter Ten
Her
The White House
Washington DC
My first week goes by in a blur. It’s what I’ve been working toward for a long time and to finally have it almost seems surreal. I recognize I’m in a honeymoon phase and it’s not always going to be this great, but I intend to enjoy it while it lasts.
I wasn’t one of those kids who always said I wanted to be the president when I grew up. My earliest career aspiration was to be a ballerina. But even though I had marginal talent that, with a lot of practice, might ensure I was decent enough, by the eighth grade I was much too tall to consider it for a career option.
I entered high school thinking I’d become a doctor, but a boy in my freshman biology class told me his brother was in medical school and had to cut open dead people. Since our class dissected frogs soon after that discussion and I puked my guts up, I decided maybe a career in medicine wasn’t the right move.
To be honest, I wasn’t sure what I liked, much less what I wanted to do for a living. I went from one activity to another. Mindlessly, from ballet on Mondays and Wednesdays, to Spanish club on Thursdays. I talked with my girlfriends about cute boys and went to football games where we pretended to ignore them.
It was the summer before my senior year that Jaya moved into our neighborhood from India. She and her mother and grandmother bought a house near ours and when I found out we were the same age, I walked over to meet her. I learned very quickly that though we were the same age, our life experiences had been very different. While I had been worried about who was going to be homecoming queen, she was worried about the fifty-year old man her father planned to force her to marry.
Jaya begged her mother to do something. Fortunately, she told me, there was an American attorney, a female, working in her home city of Mumbai for the advancement of women’s rights. Jaya’s mother thankfully sided with her daughter and with the attorney’s help, Jaya, along with her mother and grandmother left India for good.
I’d heard of arranged marriages for children, and while I thought they were horrible, they were also half a world away. What could I, a tall, skinny white girl do? I realized as I got to know Jaya better over our senior year that if the attorney who’d helped her shared my opinion, Jaya would more than likely still be in India.
I set my sights on law school that day. I had all intentions of working as a human rights attorney for the life of my career.
Five years after graduating from Harvard, I was well on my way, yet, even though I found the job rewarding, it never seemed to be enough. One day, following a meeting with my supervisor during which I lamented that in placement situations, our current judicial system placed too much emphasis on biology as opposed to what was more beneficial for the child, he mentioned in passing I should run for office. Specifically, he said, for a congressional seat coming up for election in two years. I brushed him off with the typical excuses. I didn’t have the time, the money, or the connections. Not to mention, no sane person ever ran for political office. After laughing it off, I tried to dismiss the suggestion altogether.
But the more I tried to dismiss it, the more it kept coming to my mind. Eventually, I had to admit, I couldn’t reach my goals for change as an attorney. I needed to be in Washington DC.
Young and idealistic, I’d registered to vote as an Independent as neither of the two major political parties appealed to me. “The Democrats don’t want me, and the Republicans are scared of me,” I used to joke, not knowing how close to correct I was. It made no sense to go back and pretend to be something I never was, so I ran for office as an Independent.
I lost that election, and looking back, it was the best thing that ever happened. It made me truly think about which mountains I was willing to die on and what I needed to let go of. It also taught me humility. Which, in my opinion, is sorely lacking today. That congressional seat was the first race I lost. It was also the last. Two years later, I ran again, and won.
I was late to join the race to be President. Even though I wasn’t thrilled with either of the candidates offered by the two main parties, I kept waiting for someone to step forward. But they never did. I had given thought to running for higher office, but I always viewed
it as happening later, years later, for all the reasons people would soon throw at me. I was a woman. I was barely thirty-six. I was an Independent. The odds were impossible.
And yet, here I am.
But as successful as I’ve been in the political world, I have been a miserable failure when it comes to relationships with men. Everything else equal, the fact of the matter is a large number of men don’t know how to handle a successful woman. Multiply that times four thousand for a woman who has aspirations of being President.
Though I’ve dated casually, I’ve only had one serious relationship after law school.
His name was Hayden. What I felt for him, looking back, wasn’t love but more like an extended crush. A crush that lasted over two years. For that entire time, I’d been blind to the real Hayden. It wasn’t until the day I mentioned my idea of running for President that I saw his true colors.
At first, he thought I was joking and brushed my idea off, but as he realized I was serious, he grew angry. I couldn’t understand that. How could he possibly be upset I wanted to run for President? I asked him but he didn’t answer, choosing instead to stew in the living room with his anger all night.
The next morning I learned why he was angry. He told me over breakfast that if I wanted to pursue this pipe dream, it’d be without him. Without even having to think about it, I told him he knew where the door was. It was my townhouse we were staying in, I remember thinking at the time. I wouldn’t be the one leaving.
But I’ll never forget his parting words. As he carried the last of his boxes out of my door later that day, he looked over his shoulder and said, “You may end up winning and you may become the first female President, but you’ll wind up alone. No man wants his wife to be more powerful than he is, much less for the entire world to know it. Good luck finding a man who wants to be called the First Gentleman.”
It appears he was right. When I told reporters Captain Jackson Phillips was the only one who asked about the Inaugural Balls, it wasn’t a lie.
I console myself with the thought that it doesn’t matter now because I’m finally where I want to be. I don’t have time for a relationship, anyway. Even if I did want a man, if he can’t handle me for who I am, too bad for him. I’m not changing for anyone.
Or that’s what I say Saturday night following my first week to Jaya when she asks how I plan to date while in office.
We’re enjoying a brief moment of peace in my private sitting room and I look at her like she’s lost every bit of sense in her head. Which is possible. Why else would she ask such a stupid question?
“I don’t plan on dating while I’m here,” I say.
She rolls her eyes. “Not like a date date. I’m talking about sex.”
“Then that’s what you should have asked about.”
“I was trying to be a little circumspect.”
“Why?” I ask. “You can’t be circumspect around people. Most of the time it takes a two by four to get someone’s attention, much less have them understand what you’re trying to say.”
She places her glass of wine on the table in front of the couch we’re sitting on. “Fine then. How are you going to have sex while in office?”
I shrug. “I wasn’t planning on having any.”
“For four years?” Her eyes are on the verge of popping out of her head.
“Eight if I’m lucky.” I take a sip of the red I’m drinking. “I don’t see what the big deal is. I mean, really, sex isn’t all that great. Why would I miss it?” I wait for lightning to strike me dead at that blasphemy. I’ve had great sex before, but it was so long ago it’s almost like a distant memory. It’s somewhat of a relief knowing I won’t have to deal with anything related to my sex life, or lack thereof, for however long I’m in office. If I have any needs, I can take care of them myself.
“Oh, my God,” she says, eyes wide with shock, when I don’t add anything else. A second later, her expression changes and she gives me an all knowing smile filled to overflowing with trouble.
“Whatever thought you just thought, the answer is no,” I tell her in my best no nonsense voice.
She rolls her eyes because she’s immune to that particular voice. “You can’t say no before you know what it is.”
“I don’t have to know what it is, I know who you are.”
“All I’m trying to do is get you laid.”
“I don’t need your help.”
She raises her eyebrow. “Obviously.”
I’ve never told Jaya about Navin for a few reasons, mainly embarrassment at being left high and dry, but sitting here and talking with her, it hits me how much I need to talk about him. Especially since I’ve recently approved for him to be on my Press Pool. Which I have no idea why I did that. I should’ve said no. At the moment, my need to discuss him supersedes the reasons not to tell her.
“I have a confession,” I say and my face must reveal the seriousness of the subject, because she doesn’t make my words into a joke. In order to get this over with, I spit it all out at once. “I went to law school with Navin Hazar for the first year and a half. And I lied about not ever having great sex. I’ve had it with him, but only him.”
I’ve never seen Jaya shocked speechless before, but she sits and stares at me for a long time before simply saying, “What?”
I blink, trying to decide where to start and finally pick the beginning. “We were in a study group together. Me, Navin, and three others. It was an intense group, and we had ground rules. No dating between the five of us. If there were less than three of us, we had to study separately.”
“You had rules for a study group?” Jaya asks. “Reason five hundred eleven I never went to law school.”
“We didn’t want any romantic entanglements to distract us from studying. Seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“What happened?” she asks, obviously knowing something did since I mentioned great sex.
I shrug. “Navin and I broke the no less than three rule.”
“Liar,” she says. “You’ve never broken a rule in your life. What really happened?”
She’s partially right. “We didn’t do it intentionally. We were paired up for a mock trial. It took months to prepare for and due to its nature, there were times we had to work independently from the others.”
She shakes her head. “I can’t believe you’ve never told me this.”
I don’t reply to that because it’ll become clear soon enough why that’s the case. “Keep in mind, all we were doing was studying when it was the five of us and, for the most part, that’s all Navin and I did.”
“For the most part?”
I nod. “The night following the mock trial, Navin and I decided to celebrate. We wound up in bed.”
“The great sex?”
I close my eyes and for a brief moment, I allow myself to remember.
I’m in Navin’s arms and I feel the warmth of his skin. We’re so close his breath tickles my neck. He wants me to turn my face toward his so he can kiss me, but I’m feeling playful, and refuse to do so.
I think I’ve got one up on him, but he mummers something about having other ways.
Before I can process what that means, his lips are on my earlobe and that sinful voice of his obliterates everything except for the two of us. He gives an unhurried and detailed narrative of exactly what he’s going to do to me later.
I call him a tease, but he proceeds to prove me wrong by doing everything he said he would.
“The best,” I reply.
“What happened then?”
I try to keep the hurt hidden because what happened then was why I’ve never told her about Navin. “Two days later, he dropped out of school and I never heard from him again."
Chapter Eleven
Him
GBNC Offices
New York
My last day in New York, everyone’s doing their best to stay away from me. Not that I can blame them, I’ve been in a foul mood ever since I was told I’d been reassig
ned to Washington DC or I wouldn’t be working at all. I’d hired an attorney to double check my contract, and George was right. I’m untouchable.
DC would be rotten enough on its own. It’s made even worse to be there because I’d been kicked from my lead anchor position to the Press Pool, where I’ll work locked away from the rest of the world for four years. And I wasn’t exaggerating, the offices are located in the basement of the White House. I thought briefly about quitting and going into a different field, but decided it’d make Rainer too happy.
It’s not only because I’m being an ass that my coworkers are wary of me. They all know I’m leaving and where I’m going. There’s no hiding it’s a demotion, and because of that, they don’t know what to say. It’s not like when someone’s moving on to bigger and better things or when they’re retiring. You can wish that person well and send them off with a slap on the back. What could anyone say to me?
Tomorrow morning, the White House will confirm publicly both that I’m joining the Press Pool and that Anna and I are acquaintances due to the eighteen months we spent together in law school. I’m not sure which is funnier, them calling us acquaintances or that I’m joining her Press Pool—following her around like a lost puppy, hoping for a soundbite.
I look up as Gabe walks into what will no longer be my office as of tomorrow, takes a quick look back into the hallway, and closes my door. Odd.
After learning about my soon-to-be exile to Washington DC from George, I had Gabe over to my place and I told him about law school, Anna, and the demotion over beers and pizza. He said he’d suspected something of the sort between the President and me, but understood why I’d never told anyone. He admitted he wouldn’t have said anything if he’d been in my shoes.
Now, he sits down in one of my visitor chairs and pulls it close to my desk. Leaning in toward me, he whispers, “I’ve heard something.”