Olivia barely heard the rest of the conversation due to the mix of pride and relief clouding her brain and hearing.
Again characteristically not waiting for an answer, Stephen said insistently, “Ten a.m. She knows where the office is. This is going to be great.”
As they walked away, Taylor turned to her and said, “Tell Jacob to make that happen. My schedule tomorrow doesn’t work anyway.” He hesitated, then said, “And find out how long we have to wait after the bill signing to take a contribution.”
“Thanks,” he added. He smiled, seemingly remembering that she wasn’t yet a peon on his team. Not officially anyway.
As they proceeded to their table across the room, the governor stopped to say hello to nearly every person along the way. Some days the Brinmore could use a rope line, Olivia thought. The tables were filled and bustling with not quite the elite of New York City, but definitely an array of movers and shakers, just as they were every morning. In the corner booth sat the African-American politician always running for something, although no one ever seemed quite sure for what. Olivia actually loved to hear him speak at events—he was inspirational and always talked with gusto about being a Freedom Rider and marching at Selma, two things Olivia often wished she had been alive for. His oratorical skill made it all the more disappointing that he consistently made himself an easy target for character assassination. He traveled everywhere with a woman he freely introduced as his girlfriend even though he was married, noticeably paid for everything in cash, and spent his campaign war chests on things like weeklong stays in a Four Seasons hotel out of the state he was supposed to be campaigning in. And apparently a lot of it at daily breakfasts at the Brinmore, Olivia thought.
She followed closely behind the governor as he moved toward the front two tables. These were reserved for the real social climbers and the new people, both of whom were determined to have their costly breakfast be high-impact. Today, one was occupied by a designer who talked loudly enough for Olivia, and probably everyone else, to hear about plans for an upcoming charity ball.
“Well, what would elevate the event to that level?” the designer asked carefully, stirring her coffee with her well-manicured, diamond-covered hand.
Olivia laughed as the designer all but blatantly asked how big a check she would have to write to get the legendary New York Times social photographer Bill Cunningham to notice. Though Olivia admittedly loved looking at the pretty dresses in the Style section as much as the next girl, she couldn’t help but question the absurdity of the photographer being the kingmaker for charities in the city. Any fundraiser knew the phrase “Bill Cunningham will be there” sold more tickets to a charity event than anything like “One out of three children in America will go hungry tonight.”
Another politician appropriately sat at the other “climber” table. Olivia stifled an eye-roll as the short, overweight man stood in his already crinkled suit to shake the governor’s hand. He had literally made a career of running losing campaigns, including the congressional one he was in the middle of.
“This one really has that winning feel to it,” she heard him say, and she wondered how someone 0 for 6 would know what that felt like. Rumor had it, understandably, that his wealthy sister continually encouraged and funded his campaigns in order to keep him out of the family business. He shook Olivia’s hand as the governor started to walk away, handing her the same business card she had received at least a dozen times over the years. His committee was listed as “friends of” rather than specifying any year or office so he never needed to change it.
“So nice to meet you,” he said so superficially that it would have been better if he had ignored her altogether.
You have met me a million times, Olivia thought. She faked a polite smile.
“So nice to see you as well,” she said, changing out the words. She wondered why all politicians couldn’t learn Campaign Lesson #9—always use the word “see” instead of “meet,” just in case. She had to smile when Taylor leaned into her as she caught up to his side and whispered, “We should get his lists.”
Their hellos had given Yanni Filipaki plenty of time to get settled at the table. He didn’t mind that the walk around the room had made Taylor technically fifteen minutes late to the actual table, since that walk confirmed that the most popular kid in the cafeteria was ending up with him. Yanni was a Greek shipping heir turned trader, turned playboy, turned just about anything he wanted since he was worth billions. With an “-s.” She had met him on the district attorney’s race, where he had given over $150,000. He had also hosted events, and as someone always willing to lend a helicopter or one of his three jets, he had soared, quite literally, to the top of Olivia’s PPL.
The PPL, or “private plane list,” was an ever-important Excel sheet that listed all the important details about private planes that candidates might need to borrow. It had each plane’s size, number of seats, whether or not it needed to refuel on a cross-country trip, and what the actual costs of its usage were on the off chance one needed to report it as a contribution. Olivia had gotten creative with her list while procrastinating one night, so it now also contained notes detailing things like “Yanni’s biggest plane serves hot food” and that the hedge-fund manager and designer wife’s plane had “the most comfortable couches and most spacious bathroom.” Jacob was always prodding her to add a ranking column for the attractiveness of female flight attendants and X’s for flights with the dreaded male attendants, but Olivia had yet to oblige.
From the instant they sat down, Yanni and the governor clicked. Olivia sat quietly through breakfast, marveling at the governor’s ease in gliding between subjects—export, import, banking, jazz, and American history. They even seemed to have read and memorized all the same articles in Golf Digest. Yanni, medium height and medium build, sat back comfortably in his chair. He had a mop of curly black hair and matching bushy eyebrows that would probably have seemed more intense if not for his always perfectly tanned skin. Olivia wondered if that was his natural Greek coloring or if it was due to his weekend jaunts to the Caribbean. Probably both, she thought.
In meetings like this she often felt like a fly on the wall of a man date and tried to stay on that wall so as not to disrupt the flow of the breakfast. Only toward the end of the meeting, when the conversation turned to the Hamptons, did she chime in.
“Yanni has a palace out there and throws the best parties ever,” she said, knowing it would please both men by boosting Yanni’s ego and providing an easy segue for the governor to ask for an event.
“It’s not as nice as my place in St. John but it’ll do.” Yanni played right into the ask. “We should do an event for you out there.”
“That would be great.”
“How much does one of those events have to raise?” Yanni asked, chomping on a piece of bacon.
Olivia jumped in, saving the candidate from having to say a number, something candidates across the board hated.
“We’d need it to raise at least a hundred thousand dollars to justify taking him out of Iowa.”
Taylor glanced over at Olivia, clearly impressed with her gumption.
“But how much does it have to raise to be a good one?” Yanni asked.
“Depends how good you want it to be!” Olivia knew this game well and thought she could get him to at least $500,000 before the breakfast was over, but Governor Taylor was relatively new to Yanni.
Breaking the game of chicken, he piped up. “Our top raiser raised us about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars at one event in California.”
Olivia was thrown by the low number, but she figured it would be an easy one for Yanni to top and she wasn’t wrong.
“Well, then,” Yanni said with a smile, “put me down for two fiftyone and let’s get this thing scheduled. Can’t have New York trailing Los Angeles. Who else are you meeting while you’re in town? How long are you here?”
“We’ve got a full day of meetings,” Olivia boasted.
The go
vernor finished her sentence, proud of his newly scheduled morning meeting with Bronler: “And we just added on a meeting with Stephen.” He glanced over at the film producer, knowing everyone recognized him simply by his first name. “So now we’ll be here till tomorrow.”
“Perfect. Well, now I’ve got your dinner plans,” Yanni said without waiting to hear if the governor could even make a dinner engagement with Yanni. “We can wrangle some cohosts for my event.”
As Yanni scribbled down a location for seven o’clock that night and said his good-byes, Olivia heard Jo receiving a boisterous greeting at the door.
Ugh. I know that voice.
Olivia looked to the door and confirmed the thought as Yanni left and Taylor sat back down to wait for their next meeting.
Chris, the former White House deputy chief of staff, whom she used to date, had walked into the room. He moved to Manhattan just to torture me. I know it.
She straightened, tense, trying to track his moves as he swept from table to table. He was, of course, caught up in a round of hellos. His hellos were always lively, something that had first attracted her to him. People seemed to love when he arrived, regardless of the people, regardless of the room. He had an infectious charm. And that was not just the biased opinion of someone who used to love him. Orin, one of her favorite donors, once commented to her that Chris’s walking and preaching at events was such a natural fluid movement that he seemed more like an athlete than a politician. Taylor has that too, Olivia thought. It was a rare gift to be able to make a speech or a round of hellos look like a beautiful dance.
Of course in Chris’s case, as Olivia found out over the course of two years, that art was used without restraint and was practiced on women even more habitually than it was directed at politicos. He had broken her heart in a cruel, unexpected way. Who was she kidding? It was a totally expected way. Intellectually expected at least. Damn expectations, Olivia thought. She hated the phrase “Keep your expectations low.” I wonder if that has ever made disappointment less hurtful or easier to handle for anyone. Never that she could remember.
The low expectation she was supposed to have—the one she swore to everyone, including herself, that she had—that Chris was capable of being in a monogamous relationship (any Google search would have invariably demonstrated the low odds) did not make finding out that she was not his only girlfriend any less painful. Lucky. You’re lucky, she silently repeated, like a yoga chant reminding herself that the now-married Chris had lied to her with great regularity. I’m lucky he didn’t pick me, I would not want to be married to him. I would not want to be married to someone who cheats. Olivia held tight to the words in the hopes they would function like a shield and fend off his admittedly handsome eyes and smile. Sure enough, his deep blue eyes were upon them when Olivia looked up from her thoughts. Taylor stood to give him a hug.
“My man, the gov,” Chris said, grasping Taylor’s shoulders.
Damn it, even the cheesiest of lines sound perfectly acceptable when he says them. Their two minutes of niceties and conversation were lost on Olivia while she tried to focus on staying cool, calm, and collected. Breezy. Stay breezy, Olivia.
“Do you two know each—”
Chris interjected before the “yes” came out of Olivia’s mouth. “No one steps into New York without knowing the beautiful Olivia Greenley.”
He leaned over to give her a kiss on the cheek and she politely smiled with a tense edge.
“Always the charmer,” she shot right back with a huge smile, knowing the only way to fight fire was with fire. “Chris is running this state these days. Today the mayor of the Brinmore, tomorrow maybe mayor of the city.”
She tried not to let her smile turn to a smirk even though she couldn’t help feeling proud of doing what she always noticed him doing. That thing she could never get quite right. It would probably be Campaign Lesson #10 or 11 if she could ever learn it. It was a political bomb—couching private information in a compliment so skillfully that everyone around would be impressed at the kindness; meanwhile the person receiving the “compliment” would sting from it and have to humbly thank the complimenter for being stung. In public.
In this case, she knew he wanted to run for mayor eventually, and no one wants political ambitions known before they are announced. It was a rumor that he was constantly working to avoid.
“That’s what I’m hearing. Seems the whole city is singing your praises.” Taylor played right into the compliment, going on about Chris’s latest appearance on CNN. Chris’s eyes widened a bit—he was seemingly caught off guard—but he continued to smile.
“Well, I’ll let you get back to it. Time is money when Olivia is around.” Chris nodded to her and ambled away to his own table, continuing to greet people along the way.
Time is money. Hmpf. She’d really have to practice her poker face.
“Nice poker face,” Taylor said, again as if he had heard her inner monologue.
“Huh?”
He cut off her embarrassing loss of words as they sat back down. “Did you work for him?”
“Ummm . . . No. I mean I helped him but no, never worked for him. We’re friends . . . I mean we . . .”
“And the full-sentence translation of that is . . .?”
“We used to date.” She lowered her head in defeat.
“Oh, really?” The governor sounded surprised.
“Yeah. During the ’08 campaign. Well, if you can call it that. He, well, he pretty much lived life like he was on The Bachelor, you know; he dated a number of girls, narrowed it down to two, and then chose one at the last minute.”
“What an ass. And I take it you were in the last rose ceremony?”
“Unbeknownst to me, yeah, I guess I was. Though instead of ABC, his surprise-to-me engagement was announced on Page Six. Good times.” She laughed self-consciously. It was a story she rarely talked about, and saying it aloud still made her cringe with embarrassment. Really, Olivia? Really? Why are you saying this to the governor? Why would you tell him who you dated? Why would you tell him you dated Chris? You never tell anyone this. Idiot. Subject change stat. “Wait, are you telling me you watch The Bachelor?” Luckily, her surprise that he had recognized the TV reference supplied the perfect transition.
The governor smiled. “No, I get periodic briefings on trends and fads. Apparently it makes me more mainstream. You know, people like to feel they could have a beer with me.”
“Wow. How sad is that?”
“That I have to be briefed to seem human? Very.”
“No, no!” Olivia laughed. “That our country wants a leader who watches reality TV shows. I mean, I feel I lose brain cells every time I watch one. I want the person running our country to be way too smart for shows like The Bachelor. It makes no sense. Don’t you want someone so much smarter than you deciding when we go to war?” She caught herself. “I mean not you as in you, as in people other than you.” Oy. “Case in point.”
The governor sipped his coffee, seemingly pleasantly amused as she flailed about in front of him.
“Anyway, you seem plenty mainstream to me even without the reality TV show knowledge,” she added.
“We’d be in good shape if there were more voters like you out there,” he said as he ran his hands back through his hair. “I’m getting the hang of it though. It’s funny, I remember when I was a professor, thinking that same thing. Yelling at politicians on TV who were so blatantly dumbing down the issues. It seemed so fake. Remember when Jon Stewart did that bit about how screwed up it was that people wanted to vote for someone they could get a beer with when that person was a recovering alcoholic?”
“Yes, I totally remember that. You had to laugh. It was too scary to do anything else.”
“Exactly. But I’d throw a fit about it to anyone who was listening. Or not listening. About how wrong it was that those were the standards we held politicians to. And that the politicians were complacent because they played along. Then I started campaigning.”
> “Do you feel like you became complacent?”
“No. Well, maybe, but I understand it’s not what I thought it was.”
“What is it?”
“People don’t want to elect someone they can have a beer with—that’s just press spin on people wanting to know you can relate to them. They want to see in your eyes that you understand where they are coming from. You don’t have to have a beer with them, but you have to understand and recognize their need to have a beer at the end of the day. Take The Bachelor. I think most people actually do agree with you. They don’t want a president who watches that show. However, they do want a president who accepts the fact that they watch the show as part of their life, not just a joke. Now, you can separate the two because you have thought through the idea on a thorough and intellectual level. But most Americans don’t make a distinction between what they actually want and what they say. If I know what the rose ceremony is, then in a way I know the world they live in. It’s really just a connection to their needs and their lives.”
“You never seem to dumb down what you say though. It’s a rare ability. That thing Clinton could do too—translate an idea into someone else’s language without losing the intelligence of the original thought.” Olivia had marveled a lot at this talent when she watched Governor Taylor in the past.
“Thanks, Olivia.” He held her eyes in an earnest gaze that made her feel close to him in a new way. “I think it’s probably more of a learned skill than a talent. But thanks.”
He seemed to think for a minute before saying, “I’ll tell you what, it was clearly a lucky miss for you, but I think Chris made a big mistake not giving you that rose.” Then he whispered in a way that seemed far less inappropriate than the words were, “I mean, if I were twenty years younger . . .” He smiled, standing up to greet their next meeting.
She tried to stop the blood from rushing to her cheeks as he moved into the next conversation. What she wouldn’t have given to have met him twenty years ago. Well, no, she’d have been seven then. But if they were both twenty at the same time. She would have definitely loved him. He was the explanation she had been looking for when her friends questioned why she, someone who bought wedding magazines just to look through and who had already picked out her wedding dress, cake, and flowers ten times over, could never manage to stay in a relationship for more than two months. “I’m too busy,” she would always argue.
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