“Let’s get this show on the road!” Jacob said to Manny as he pulled the governor toward the microphone.
Manny proceeded up to the podium, with the governor following closely behind. He began speaking, telling an inane story Jacob had heard at least a dozen times before. It was an explanation of how Manny and the governor met. After hearing it for the fifth or sixth time, Jacob had determined that the story had no point other than to describe in detail the size of Manny’s house.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Manny said boisterously, wiping the sweat from his brow, “I’m so happy to introduce my very good friend, the next president of the United States, Landon Taylor!”
The governor shook Manny’s hand and walked to the microphone, where, Jacob thought, he really did look like the next president of the United States. As Jacob moved to the back of the room, confident in the job he had done, the governor reached down without a glance and easily grabbed his water.
Jumping in a car to leave an event had the opposite effect of jumping out to start one. For Olivia, it was always accompanied by a feeling that she had left something behind. Getting a candidate out of a room was tough, especially a politician like Taylor, who always made it seem like he didn’t want to leave. She sometimes literally had to tug at a candidate to make him or her drop the handshakes and stop the chat. Olivia was glad Jacob had taken over staffing Taylor after his speech as she never particularly liked the feeling of making someone leave a room.
By the time Jacob, the governor, and Olivia got settled in the car, it was as if they had been a team for months. They had already fallen into a rhythm, stepping around each other with the comfort of people who had been well choreographed together for years. Olivia looked at Jacob as she started organizing and counting the checks she had collected from the volunteers. Different candidate, different circumstances, same us. It was like picking up where they had left off in the last campaign.
“Sakes alive.” Taylor exhaled as he pushed back on his chair. “That was a doozy. How’d we do?”
“Counting now, boss.” Jacob glanced over as Olivia scribbled down the amount she had counted out, $36,250. “Forty at the door. Plus I have ten on my desk, so we’re good.”
Olivia knew Jacob probably had forty total. They worked the same way—there was always money to move around in their goals so the candidate would feel good about each event and, more importantly, continue to allow more fundraisers to be added to his schedule. They would tell each other the exact numbers, but no one else. They had learned it together from their old boss, Gabrielle, who had taught Olivia almost all of her Campaign Lessons. She would tell them over and over, “Say what you need to say to the donors and candidates to keep them happy, and tell the truth to your teammates to keep your donors and candidates.” That was a Campaign Lesson that Olivia hadn’t numbered yet. Somewhere in the teens, she thought.
“He said seventy-five to me at the door.”
Jacob rolled his eyes at the governor’s reminder. “He always does, boss. I’m leaving it at fifty and if he gets that extra twenty-five in it’ll be icing.”
“How ridiculous is that?” Taylor still seemed to be genuinely baffled by the language of the donors. “Olivia, you think that’s normal? For him to fall short and no one calls him on it?”
“Normal, no, sir. But I don’t think political fundraising has ever held any claim to normalcy.”
“Yeah. I suppose.” He shook his head. “Could you imagine a businessman saying, ‘I’ll buy the stocks for seventy-five thousand dollars,’ and then only paying fifty? It’s ludicrous. We should try to change it.”
Jacob spouted out the laugh Olivia was holding in. The governor spoke with such levity, she couldn’t tell whether or not he was joking.
“Laugh, Jacob. You’re running this sham of a business!” he said with the sarcastic nudging tone of an older brother. “You’re letting these guys pay you fifty thousand for the seventy-five-thousand-dollar stock. Maybe you should have taken the GMATs after all. I’m going to have a talk with your dad about that next time I see him.”
Now it was Olivia’s turn to snicker.
Taylor wasn’t ready to give this one up. “Why don’t you call Manny and tell him we have him in our budget for seventy-five? You told him that was his goal, right?”
“I did,” Jacob replied dutifully.
“So,” he repeated, “tell him it’s in our budget and we need it.”
“I’ll get right on that.”
“Don’t placate me.”
“No placation, boss. Just don’t know how threatened Manny will be by our budget. It’s not exactly a certified contract, and even if it was . . .”
“DFTL. I get it, I get it,” Taylor responded, almost but not quite conceding. “Let’s see if we can make the process more accountable. More truthful. If we’re going to inspire change, we have to be willing to jump a little ourselves.”
Olivia and Jacob smiled at each other in the backseat. Olivia recognized the happiness on Jacob’s face as the same as hers—they were glad to be there, in the backseat of the SUV that contained their chance to inspire, to be inspired, and to jump.
As they pulled into the airport, they all three went back to their BlackBerrys, foreseeing the coming thirty-five minutes or so of inability to use them. The car pulled onto the street and over to the private terminal. Olivia had been on private planes before. Well, actually, she had been on two private planes. One was a small plane that she and Adams had taken with Bronler to his event on Martha’s Vineyard when their flight was canceled. The other was a small prop plane that still made her nauseous thinking about it. Both times she had been so nervous about where they were going, who was picking them up when they landed, and the timing of it all that she hadn’t really appreciated the experience of being on a noncommercial flight. This time though she was a passenger. Not just any passenger, but a part of Landon Taylor’s team, his crew. She was at the cool table in the cafeteria, and someone else was taking care of the details.
As the car rolled toward the small freestanding terminal, Olivia began to gather herself up, ready to go in. She tried to put on her best “I’ve been to this terminal before” look so as not to seem the newbie that she was. Jacob, as he so often did, saw the effort rather than the effect. He gave her a subtle “chill out” look just in time to stop her from opening her door.
“We good, Sal?” He checked in with the driver, more for Olivia than anything else.
Hand on the handle, Olivia reconfigured herself as the car started moving toward the metal gates to the airfield.
“Ready for takeoff,” Sal replied.
In front of them the metal gates began to open as a guard waved them through. Sal rolled down his window. “Thanks.” He used the tone of formality that security types reserve for each other.
Of course. We’re not going into the terminal. Landon Taylor gets driven straight to the plane, Olivia realized.
“That one’s ours?” The governor pointed to a jet not much smaller than the commercial plane she had taken to Florida over the holidays.
“Yes, sir.” Sal began to rattle off facts. “Gulfstream, wingspan is . . .”
“Cool.” Taylor, for a moment, sounded like a young kid with a new toy.
Sal drove them as close to the plane’s opened steps as they could get. Two men were standing waiting to open their doors.
“Thanks so much,” Olivia said as one needlessly helped her out of the car.
Jacob sprinted up the steps like an Olympic runner.
“My pleasure,” said the uniformed man to Olivia. “I’m Dan. I’m your pilot today.”
“How are y’all?” Taylor took the man’s hand.
“Very well, thank you. Honored to have you aboard today, sir.”
Olivia smiled, wondering if there was anyone who didn’t act deferential to Governor Taylor. She had spent time working for so many candidates and politicians, even former presidents, and all had an effect on people but none, that she had
seen, had inspired respect so across the board.
The pilot described for Taylor in detail the engine, the wings, thrilled to be so thoroughly captivating the governor. Olivia walked toward the back of the SUV, where Sal was handing the bags to the copilot.
“Here, I can grab mine.” She reached for her own bag.
Sal swatted her hand away. “No, no, darlin’. We got it here.” With a chuckle, almost just to himself, he said, “You really are new to this team.” And then with the tone of a sort of reminiscence he added, “Sweet.”
Olivia stepped back, feeling a little out of place, as Jacob jumped out of the door of the plane.
“We’re set up here. It’s been advanced!”
“Best one-man advance-and-during team in the game.” Taylor patted Jacob’s shoulder as he walked up the stairs past him.
Olivia followed the governor. As she walked in, she tried not to gasp. The plane wasn’t just huge, it was beautiful. It had two sets of enormous seats on each side with tables in between. Taylor strolled to the left, dropping comfortably into the window seat facing the front. Jacob had sat himself in the second set of seats behind the governor and had already sprawled out all his paperwork and books as if he had been there a week. Olivia smiled at the mess, walked quietly by the governor, and sat herself in the aisle seat across from Jacob.
Aisle seat? Why would I sit in the aisle seat?
As she mulled over moving to the window, a young woman dressed in a tight navy blue sheath walked by.
“Can I get y’all anything before we take off? We have a full bar and hot options as well as cold today.”
“Diet Coke would be great if you have one, baby,” Taylor said. It was strange to Olivia to hear the governor call someone “baby” and even stranger that she, Olivia, wasn’t offended. Usually the feminist in her, who was rather large and loud on most occasions, would have righteously scolded anyone who used such a term. But with Taylor it was different. There was something about his sincerity and casualness that made the way he called people “baby” actually sound nice. Maybe it was just the accent.
“I’ll have one as well, please!” Jacob said, waving his hand. “And what kind of hot options are we talking about today?” He knew by now to take advantage of the food on Henley’s planes. Henley always had his galley stocked with the best. It was the reason, other than the fact that Henley always said yes, that Jacob liked to ask him for the plane. Not to mention the flight attendants were beautiful.
I wonder if Olivia ever added that column for flight attendants to that private plane list she keeps. Probably not.
As the plane took off, Jacob bit into the Philly cheesesteak he had ordered and opened up his computer. He figured he could at least get a little work done before Taylor started in on his stories. It was like clockwork. The minute there was no signal left on the governor’s BlackBerry, the boss would turn and start with the “Let me tell you a story” stories, which were all well and good but, at this point in their relationship, redundant and distracting. Jacob glanced at his BlackBerry and saw the bars of signal disappearing. Even when it got down to no bars, he saw the small arrow still working in the corner and knew he had a few extra minutes, as Taylor would try to get the last bits in as well.
When Taylor finally tucked his BlackBerry into the front pocket of his briefcase, Jacob started to close programs and move toward him. But instead of his usual “Let me tell you” statement, Taylor leaned across the aisle.
“Okay, new girl. Come on over here—let’s get to know you if you’re going to join this campaign.”
Olivia looked surprised. She scuffled out of her aisle seat and moved next to the governor. Jacob leaned back and turned his computer back on, mentally high-fiving himself for having scored someone new to listen to Taylor’s stories. He shook his head, listening to her giggle as she spoke. Going to need to squash the schoolgirl crush she clearly has on him. Harmless, he thought, and went back to work.
For the next forty minutes, with the governor and Olivia chatting away in the background, Jacob went through a week’s worth of scheduling requests. He couldn’t remember the last time he got that much work done uninterrupted.
He congratulated himself. Brilliant! Now this is a campaign I can manage.
Yanni’s sprawling mansion was exactly what you would expect from a billionaire in the Hamptons. The latest TV series about the chic community had actually filmed most of its episodes in his backyard. A long gravel driveway led back through perfectly manicured lawns to a fifteen-bedroom estate. The outside was covered in gray shingles accented by bright white window frames. The ceilings inside were twenty feet high, at least, and windows covered the entire back of the house, giving every room a view of the two pools and the ocean beyond them. As they walked into the expansive white marble foyer, Olivia let her eyes dart off to the right, where the hall opened into a massive kitchen. A familiar-looking man stood spraying Windex on the counter. Is it?
As the man turned, she confirmed that yes, it was rock star Jon Bon Jovi, nonchalantly cleaning off Yanni’s countertop. Wow. Jon Bon Jovi with a paper towel and a Windex bottle? Then the inevitable greeting panic attack whirled through her head. I wonder what he goes by. “Jon”? “Mr. Bon Jovi”? “Mr. Jovi”? Is “Bon Jovi” one word or two? Is that his real name? Is it really “Jonathan”?
“Jon!” Jacob strolled over. “Album sales this bad, man?”
“Album sales are this good!” Mr. Jon Bon Jovi stuck out his wrist to reveal an A. Lange & Söhne Tourbograph. As Jacob leaned in to get a closer look at the watch, which cost two times as much as the house he grew up in, his face was met with a playful spray of Windex.
“Even a manservant lives large in Yanni-land,” Jacob said, wiping his cheek. “This flustered new member of our team is Olivia.”
Olivia shot Jacob a squint-eye glance of fake annoyance and held out her hand.
“Hi,” she said, opting for no name at all.
She heard Jacob behind her as she took in Bon Jovi’s sultry eyes and his famed hair. “Jon, you remember Governor Taylor; Governor Taylor, you know Jon.”
That kind of ease was what made Jacob the perfect staffer, she noted. It was a basic rule and first duty to enunciate the names of your candidate and whomever he or she was meeting immediately. In all cases. Great politicians had nearly flawless recall and some, like Governor Taylor, were known for it. So missing a name or a face because it was an off day or because they had just humanly forgotten was even worse than a regular person’s lapse.
Olivia had learned this, Campaign Lesson #14, the hard way. In the last campaign, the presidential candidate hadn’t recognized Ted Foyer, one of the bigger campaign supporters, and Ted subsequently withdrew all his support. “I raised you people four hundred thousand dollars, and the man doesn’t even know my name! Why the hell would I raise you another dime?” he had screamed.
Olivia still thought of a new response every time she retold the story, but really it was ultimately symbolic of a simple truth: People in politics wanted to be recognized. They paid to be. The name rule was one that was particularly important when it came to celebrities, because if someone had 99 percent name recognition, like Jon Bon Jovi, political candidates usually made up the 1 percent that didn’t recognize them. As Taylor reminded his top staffers on a regular basis, he had to know these celebrities’ names. He couldn’t be seen as someone who thought himself too high-minded for pop culture.
“High-minded pop culture” seemed to describe the rest of the evening perfectly. The party had been planned when Yanni had won, or actually, bid seventy-five thousand dollars for, the services of a catering company in a silent auction. Seventy-five thousand dollars to serve fifty or so people appetizers and drinks, Olivia figured. Add on the table of Nobu sushi and miso cod and it worked out to at least two thousand dollars per person.
In a rather unconstructive manner, Olivia sometimes liked to calculate the cost of a party or dinner she was at and think of what could be done with th
e money spent per person. At first it horrified her; thousands of dollars for a plate of sushi that she didn’t even like definitely could have bought lunches for way too many homeless kids. After a few years in fundraising she had come to accept the cost for the most part, rationalizing the trickle-down effect of campaign spending. But she still found herself often weighing the alternatives. In this case it was bought at an auction for the local hospital, so it was a somewhat easier pill to swallow.
Low-income rent for half a year, she thought as she grabbed a mini egg roll and leaned against the wall.
She looked around the room and saw the man from Hamptons magazine taking pictures. She wished she had worn a more fun dress. Everyone seemed to be in cool, flowy satin numbers—most of which she recognized from the most recent issue of Vogue. She had stuck with the skirt and sequined top. It was fine, but clearly not as cool as she had imagined it being. Untucked, the white sequined shirt flowed over the black pencil skirt just enough to make the low scoop neck acceptable. Over it, she had thrown her favorite silver-locket necklace, which hung down perfectly on baggy shirts, giving them a little shape.
Okay, it’s more Teen People than Vogue but Rachel Zoe would definitely approve, she thought, trying to reassure herself.
“Olivia!” Yanni yelled out as he entered the room, the governor trailing behind him. “Landon got the tour. Come drink with us.”
Olivia walked over obligingly and smiled knowingly at the governor. She had been on Yanni’s “tour of the house” a few times before and knew it included every nook and cranny. As Yanni ordered drinks, Olivia leaned in to the governor. “I forgot to mention Campaign Lesson # 23—always set a time limit before going on Yanni’s house tour.”
“That would have been really helpful an hour and a half ago!”
Olivia chuckled and pulled her head back, surprised by the impact of the scent of his soap. Freshly showered, he had a clean smell that reminded her of a fall day in Georgetown.
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