The Perfect Candidate

by Peter Stone

  I grabbed my phone and walked down the hallway, down the stairs, and outside into the inner courtyard of the Rayburn House Office Building. I dialed the number.

  After seven rings, I almost hung up. And then a tired voice answered.

  “Hello?”

  I did my best eager intern cold call, like Hillary had taught me hundreds of times: “Hi, I’m Cameron, and I’m calling from Congressman Beck’s office. We’re just confirming everyone’s addresses for the upcoming election, and we wanted to make sure you get the latest and greatest info about Congressman Beck!”

  A clumsy skittering noise came through the phone, like a cat was playing with the handset on the other end.

  The man’s voice was suddenly much more upbeat, saying, “Oh, you’re calling for Russell?”

  “Yes,” I stated. “Russell Meteer. Is this the right phone number for Russell Meteer?”

  “Well, Rusty’s not exactly available at the moment, but can I let him know you called? What’s your name? Where are you again?”

  “I . . . I’m calling for Congressman Beck. Just to confirm your address. . . .” I hesitated.

  “What’s your name, boy?” The voice was unsettlingly firm.

  “Ray . . . Burns,” I said, picking apart the building’s namesake as printed on a nearby sign. That was convincing, right? I told myself.

  “But don’t worry about having him call back,” I backtracked. “I can just call again.”

  “Oh, are you certain?” the man asked.

  “Yeah, yeah, no problem,” I said, now restless to end the call. “Have a nice day!”

  I ended the call and stepped toward a bench in the courtyard that was barely shaded in the midday sun. Closing my eyes, I retraced the conversation from the start. Memo would need to hear everything. Memo would be proud.

  And then I realized that “Ray Burns” had introduced himself as “Cameron” at the beginning of the call.

  18

  Tell me you’re joking.

  After the call, I texted Memo a vague Have Meteer update, nothing more. Apparently frustrated by my failure to provide more detail, Memo had intercepted me at the exit of the Foggy Bottom metro station that muggy evening. As Zeph, Hillary, and I surfaced, I saw him leaning against a light gray concrete ledge. A slight twitch of his head demanded that I come over to talk.

  “Go ahead to the apartment,” I had told an oblivious Zeph and Hillary. “I need to make a quick run to the store.” And by that, I meant, I need to go talk to my other boss for the other life I’m living this summer.

  “Tell me you did not call Russell Meteer,” Memo insisted.

  “I found a phone number for him, Memo. I’m officially past where Ariel got—and I’m still alive!” Halfway through the word “alive,” I dramatically decreased my volume—partly to avoid attention, mostly not to jinx things.

  “It’s one thing to do a little extra research, to come up with an interesting theory,” said Memo. “But when we find a guy whom we think may have been involved in the death of Wade Branson, you do not call him up for a little chat.”

  “I said I was calling him to confirm his address for an upcoming election mailer—just like any other call I do at the office,” I claimed.

  “Cam, this wasn’t just any other call. This guy isn’t just another constituent. When this guy gets a call from BIB’s office, a big bright red flag gets hoisted up the flagpole,” Memo said as he pantomimed raising a flag. “Thank God you didn’t tell him your name.”

  I slowly nodded.

  “Wait,” added Memo. “You didn’t tell him your name, did you?”

  “Of course not!” I barked back. What kind of idiot would do something like that? The lie was a heavy boulder that quickly sank and settled into my stomach.

  “Good. Because all this guy needs is a name,” warned Memo.

  “To do what?” I too eagerly asked.

  “To find someone, to be very persuasive with someone,” Memo said, with a particularly sinister emphasis on “persuasive.”

  Sweat gurgled up through the pores of my palms as I envisioned Russell Meteer tracking down this loser intern “Cameron” from BIB’s office. I innocently slipped my hands into my pockets and shrugged my shoulders. “So what’s next?”

  “Well, for now, good work.” Memo patted me on the back. “Not with the phone call, but everything else. We might have our guy. So now I get to work and you just let me know if anything weird happens.”

  “What do you mean, ‘weird’?” I exclaimed.

  “You’ll know it if you see it.” Memo nodded confidently as he jumped on the downward escalator back into the metro.

  Comforting.

  • • •

  Though “weird” had kind of become my new normal that summer, the closest I got to especially “weird” in the following days was Zeph and Hillary’s newfound mutual hostility toward each other. They pulled me into stupid fights about some senator’s position on campaign finance reform, whether Uber was more expensive in DC than San Francisco, and Zeph’s tendency to dodge questions about himself.

  “It’s because one day you’re going to be governor and you’re preemptively clearing out all of the skeletons from your closet so the reporters have nothing to find, right?” prodded Hillary.

  Zeph smiled a there she goes again smile.

  “Cameron, meet your first of many baby politicians,” she said, hands grandly presenting Zeph. “The guy who feels like every day he’s writing his biography. Whose carefully edited Facebook photos look like you’re walking through his presidential library gallery. Who is already carrying around a mini copy of the US Constitution in his shirt pocket. Show it,” commanded Hillary with an accusing, pointed index finger.

  Zeph sheepishly pulled out a folded-up US Constitution—as was the tradition of most elected officials. “It’s a really amazing document,” he defended.

  “Anyway, these baby politicians are impressive at first, but mainly just impossible to know and in the end kind of boring.”

  And so on.

  For a few days, I looked over my shoulder to see if I was being followed by a stranger. But there was no stalker, no gun-wielding intruder hiding in my closet, no “weird.” Just another week of work, free food at receptions, my first constituent tour of the Capitol (much less titillating and more factual than Hillary’s version), and checking Smithsonian museums off my list. Refreshingly, Memo left me alone.

  And when sunset rolled around on Friday night, I made my way to the Georgetown Waterfront Park to meet up with Lena. Of course I did. She was beautiful and she felt guilty and she was sorry—which somehow made her seem more beautiful.

  As I scanned the park benches, I saw her see me and then pretend not to see me. She was in a long sundress (I wondered if she had any outfits other than these long, flowy, beautiful dress thingies) with light brown sandals.

  “Hey,” I said to Lena.

  “Hey,” she said back. “Ex couldn’t make it. Last-minute change of plans.”

  “He’s busy trying to get more followers on Instagram with pictures of his watch,” I said.

  “Okay, are you for real right now? You are obsessed with his watch. He doesn’t even care about it.”

  “I don’t really want to talk about him,” I said.

  “Okay, well, I do. For a second. I think it will help you understand. Our dads were college roommates at Princeton. His dad owns a bank back in Mexico, and our parents decided we were going to make grandchildren for them before I was in junior high.”

  “Wow,” I said. About the Princeton dad, the owning of banks, and the preteen arranged marriage.

  We started walking along the path. The day was waning, and the leafy riverside promenade swelled with tourists, families, and people getting off work. Kids frolicked in the fountain structure, which was a series of spouts shooting out from the sidewalk and forming a low tunnel of water.

  “And—he’s nice. Just finished his freshman year, so he has a lot of good college a
dvice. But he’s more of the same. He’s oblivious. Doesn’t even know how much that watch costs, because his dad gave it to him. And his finance internship in London this summer—he doesn’t realize that the only reason he got it is because his dad did some deal with the company.”

  “Must be rough,” I observed.

  “Anyway, we dated,” continued Lena, telling the story like I was her therapist. Purging her privilege. “If you can call it that: long distance, high school. Me here, him in DC. And he was in town over the holiday weekend and wanted to see me. And my mom and dad wanted me to see him.”

  “You mean they didn’t want you to hang out with the commoner from California?” I asked.

  “Cam, that’s not fair,” she said. “And besides, you are anything but a commoner. You’re different. I like you. Did you hear that? I like you.”

  She kicked off her sandals, lifted up her long dress, and walked through the splattering row of water. She rejoined me, her wet footprints evaporating from the path she left behind her. She was playful, carefree, sexy. And she’d said she liked me. Twice.

  “Well, you’re in luck, because I kind of like you,” I said cheekily. “I mean—if you’re around. It’s convenience, more than anything. You fill my downtime.”

  “Shut up!” She slapped my arm with greater force than one would expect from a joking hit. She was strong. When I didn’t say anything, she quickly followed up, with the kind of neediness that is irresistible, not scary: “It’s more than convenience, right? You were joking?”

  I answered: “I was joking if you are ready to move on from high school boyfriends.”

  We walked away from the crowds and closer to the water, toward some large steps that led to the lapping waters of the Potomac River below. The sky looked like a finger painting of baby blues, lavenders, and faint reds—plus some wispy clouds in between. The hulking white mass of the Kennedy Center glowed orange in the far distance. We both sat down on one of the steps.

  And even though a few minutes had passed, her “I’m ready” came eventually and decisively.

  “I’m glad,” I said.

  “Besides,” she added. “It’s a lot more attractive when a guy gets a big internship on his own instead of because of Daddy.”

  I laughed as she silently leaned forward with her elbows on her knees. But she wasn’t joking. She rested her chin on her hands and looked out at the water. As nice as the night was, it was more beautiful to look at her taking it all in. The darkening river began to reflect the lights of the shore, which started to dance off her delicate profile.

  “The real world, you know?” She stretched out her arms in the thick evening air and leaned back toward me as she uttered this non sequitur. I listened happily, just glad to be there. “You read about it, you hear about it from older friends, you watch movies—but you don’t really know what it’s like. And soon we’ll be there. You already are, basically.”

  “Princeton is the real world?” I asked, dubious.

  “Anywhere away from my parents is the real world. Where I decide who I hang out with on a holiday is the real world. Like what you’re doing, Cam—out on your own, across the country. You must be loving it,” she suggested.

  My eye followed the bank of the river on my left. To the site of Ariel’s car accident, just beyond the Watergate complex. The red lights of cars whipped by, oblivious to the events that transpired there at the beginning of the summer.

  “You are loving it, right?” Lena asked. “No more of that—what was it—pushing over poor cows in fields?”

  “Yes, it’s great being here,” I told her as I envisioned how Russell Meteer could have made a murder look like a drunk-driving accident. He did good work. “It’s great. Mostly.”

  We sat together in the warm night as the crowds in the surrounding park thinned out. And I felt the weight of my charade, especially with her. Even more unexpected, I felt a wave of homesickness and nostalgia.

  “Mostly?” she asked. “Cam, is everything okay?”

  “I guess the things you resent the most turn into the things you miss the most,” I said. “The curfews, the boring familiarity, the empty dirt fields, the sameness of every night.”

  “Is this the same Cameron I met at the beginning of the summer?” she asked. “Now you’re missing that sad little town of yours?”

  “It’s not sad,” I replied. “It’s small and it’s in the middle of nowhere and I can reasonably predict the careers of most of my graduating high school class—if you can even call them careers. And I know that sounds cheesy, but I feel like I forgot to bring something from home when I came here. Like shoes or a suit or my photo ID—something important, something missing. But I’m making do without it—like I don’t need it anymore. And I’m beginning to realize that what I left behind was my home. And it feels wrong to be okay without it. Does any of that make sense?”

  “Kind of,” she said. “Theoretically—for me.”

  “I guess leaving home is a bigger deal than I realized when I did it. And you can’t really go back to how things were. So enjoy your parents, enjoy the obnoxious friends, enjoy now. Before you change. Before the real world changes you.” I wondered if there were Caitlin Fryes and Russell Meteers and Memos in Lena’s future. I hoped there weren’t.

  “You’re a funny one, Cameron Carter,” Lena said as she quickly and suddenly kissed me on the left cheek. My eyes grew big and I hoped that the darkness of the sky hid my reddening face. We sat in silence for a few minutes. And I felt like I could tell her more. Memo, Virginia Beach, Wade Branson, my call to Russell Meteer. I wanted to tell her everything. But we were one hour into rebooting our relationship—our summer thing, whatever you want to call it. We were cheek kissing, easing back into things, and I didn’t want a crazy rant to derail anything. My mind was racing for something to say. Lena was calmly playing with her hair.

  Even so, I was seconds from talking about the man in the fishing vest who cornered me during a Capitol tour when she said: “Well, you can thank the ex for one thing.” She broke the silence and pulled out a photo ID from her purse. A fake one. “He says this is more important than your school ID in college. I don’t know . . .”

  I looked at the very pretty picture of Lena on the card. And the name—“Marisol Castro, from Indiana. Just turned twenty-two.”

  “Well nice to meet you, Marisol,” I said and pulled out my own contraband. “I’m Chester Arlington Vanhille III.”

  “From Alabama!” she shouted.

  “I think we should put yours to the test tonight,” I said.

  “You mean they really work?” she asked.

  “Of course,” I said. “I’ve been ‘Chester’ all summer—never get any questions.”

  We both stood up from the steps and she let out a giddy laugh.

  “Okay,” she said as we walked up toward the string of bars on M Street.

  We strolled along a narrow but deep canal that ran parallel to the Potomac River. Our hands brushed each other and then linked together. Like magnets—flailing, then locked tight.

  “This is the C and O Canal,” she explained to me. “It’s superlong and used to be for shipping things up and down the East Coast. Now it’s just for little tourist boats. And romantic evening walks. It’s swelling this year because of all the rain.”

  It looked charming but somehow stark in the orange industrial lights. One other person walked in the opposite direction—otherwise, the whole stretch of the canal was deserted. We crossed a small walking bridge and went up to the livelier M Street, where Lena stepped up to the first bar she saw. She proudly displayed her fake ID to a burly man standing by the door, like a child showing off an “all-As” grade report to her parents. The bouncer just waved her in. From inside the bar, she looked back at me and waved with a guilty grin. I flashed my card and proceeded to enter the bar, as I had multiple times before that summer. The firm, fat arm of the man came down and stopped me. He nodded at another man with a shaved head, who came over and put his ar
m around me.

  “You think we serve alcohol to minors here, son?” the shaved-head man said to me.

  “I showed my ID,” I claimed, my voice quavering slightly.

  “Don’t lie to me, kid,” he said as he guided me to a stoop under the entrance of the bar. I looked up and saw Lena peering down at me from a window. She looked confused and awkwardly alone. Then I noticed that the first man I’d talked to was no longer standing by the bar door; he wasn’t anywhere in sight.

  The man with the shaved head got on his phone and informed someone on the other end that “we have an underage drinker here.”

  “Please don’t call the police,” I pleaded and wondered why Chester had failed me after a successful summer of fooling all of the other bars. Why when I was with Lena? Why that night?

  The man didn’t respond and just stood there. Over me. I wondered who was giving him orders. My face flushed with embarrassment and, for the first time, fear.

  “I need to talk to my girlfriend.” I raised my voice at the man.

  He put his index finger over his lips and stepped away for another phone conversation, all the while staring at me. It all seemed a bit wrong.

  Weird, as Memo had warned.

  Suddenly, an aggressive Latino man in a suit approached the man with the shaved head. At first, they looked like they were calmly conspiring together, but things escalated as they began to shout at each other. The Latino man flashed a badge that seemed to scare the man with the shaved head, who then became deferential and even courteous.

  “Sorry for the misunderstanding,” he said as he turned me over to the custody of the man in the suit. I didn’t know whether this was a good thing, or if everything was about to get worse. When I saw Lena waiting for me in front of a black SUV, I figured she had played a role in my rescue. She ran to me and gave me a hug. “Meet Oscar,” she said. “Head of security at the embassy.”

  The man’s stern expression threatened to give way to a slight grin as we shook hands.

  “I guess you were right about enjoying those things that I currently resent,” she said as she patted Oscar on the back. “Diplomatic security detail has its privileges, especially when your friend gets busted for a fake ID.”