by Karin Tanabe
I learned very soon that people who were important had two desks. People who were less important had one. And people of the least importance, like me and the other Style section girls, had one small desk in the very back of the office in a corner with no windows.
I found Rachel sitting at her desk, her dark, angular haircut swooshing like a sail as she typed. She welcomed me with a smile, gave me a hug, and put a BlackBerry, two backup batteries, and a headset into my sweaty hand.
“This is your BlackBerry,” she declared. She pointed to the device, gripped tightly by my navy blue Capitolist-pride manicured nails, and said, “Keep it with you at all times. It helps if you imagine that it’s Velcroed to your hand. Feel free to do that if it makes it easier.”
I looked down at the phone and saw that it was already turned on and had the phrase “Write to Live, Live to Write” as a screen saver. That would have to be changed at once.
“We’ve disabled the off buttons on all the phones, so just keep charging it when the battery is low. If it breaks from overuse—which it will—no problem, we’ll get you a new one immediately. And it’s configured to work in every country in the world. Even East Timor.” I expected us to share a hearty laugh right about then, but Rachel was silent.
She reached across the desk and wrapped my fingers around the device a little tighter.
“If you don’t reply to an email within three minutes, I will be calling you. The pace is frenetic here, to put it mildly. We write seven to ten articles a day. It sounds like a lot, and it is. If you’re re-reporting a story, get fresh quotes. Don’t start paragraphs with questions; I hate that. Speed is more important than grammatical accuracy. You can always change a comma, not a time stamp. Have a good kicker, but don’t take ten minutes to write it. You don’t have to come up with your own headlines, but I will like you more if you do. So do. And they have to stay under one hundred and sixty-five characters and be written with search engines in mind. So keep them boring, but fun. Be creative, but not edgy. Always use a neutral voice, but try not to make it a total yawn. Inspire, but never with bias. Remember, you can’t do or say anything politically charged outside the office. You can’t campaign, you can’t donate, and you can’t wear any T-shirts or buttons printed with political slogans.” She looked at my outfit, made almost entirely of Mongolian cashmere, and added, “not that you look like the Newt Gingrich T-shirt type . . . Oh! and I’ll expect you to file at least one thing today. Two would be better. Three would be best. Sound good?”
I smiled and nodded, trying to look like this was exactly what I’d expected. Like it was perfectly normal to rig a BlackBerry so it never turned off. And who didn’t want to write ten articles a day? I was clearly going to thrive at this place. I mentally revised my list of prepared questions, dropping the ones about whether the paper had a car service or a cappuccino machine.
Keeping her eyes not on me but on her computer, where she was simultaneously editing a short piece on Senator Kirsten Gillibrand’s remarkable weight loss, Rachel kept talking. “I don’t know if I told you already, but we start at five A.M. every day. This means you’re writing at five A.M., not waking up or looking for things to write about. And you’re on email and on your phone and able to do interviews in different time zones if you have to. If you need time to find news, get up earlier. And you have to be on call on Sundays. You’ll get used to it, don’t worry.”
She finally looked up at me, smiled sincerely, and pointed to the far wall. Like all the others, it said THE CAPITOLIST and had two short rows of flat-screen TVs hanging on it. “Your desk is at the end of the hall. The one under the TV that always plays CNN. Don’t even think about changing the channel. You’ll ignite a revolution. The IT guys should be there in a few minutes to set you up. Three minutes, actually.” She turned back to her monitor, away from my bright, shiny, confused face, and said, “Better get walking. Oh . . . and good luck.” I scurried off lest I miss the punctual IT patrol.
Although my heart was toying with the possibility of cardiac arrest, my mind had grown surprisingly calm. I could definitely do this. I could be the kind of person who never slept, drank venti espressos, and stalked politicians for sport. Why not! I went to Wellesley College, a school that produced Hillary frigging Clinton. I was up to the task. I was not intimidated at all. And no, she hadn’t told me about the 5 A.M. start time. Must have slipped her dazzlingly acute mind.
As I sprinted to the back of the newsroom, a man with a safari hat stuck to his sweaty head ran past my empty desk. He clutched a tape recorder playing something and two BlackBerrys. His round tortoiseshell glasses bounced around on his nose like a cowboy atop a bronco.
I must have stared for an unnaturally long time, because a girl with hair the color of India ink felt free to look me over rather unsubtly. Then, like an actual human being, she smiled and spoke. I almost kissed the hem of her dress; she might as well have been the Dalai Lama, as far as I was concerned.
“That’s David Bush. No relation. He always wears a safari hat, unless he’s on TV, which is often,” she said, crossing her muscular legs.
Naturally. Like Bindi the Jungle Girl.
I smiled and started to introduce myself, but she interrupted me with a wave of her thin hand. “He’s quirky, but he’s nice and he’s a genius and they love him. Worship him. He writes the Morning List. It’s like the Bible, but with bullet points. You better read it every single day the second it goes to print. We get it five minutes before the rest of the world, so read it then. He writes it three hundred sixty-five days a year. Even Christmas morning. When it’s his birthday we have an actual carnival. There was a real penguin you could pose for pictures with last year. When it’s your birthday, no one will remember and you’ll probably have to work late.”
“Cool.”
“You’re Adrienne Brown, right?” She extended her hand. “I’m Julia Kincaid. We thought you were starting today. You’re going to be the sixth on the section. I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m the one worth knowing.”
I was about to thank her for conversing with me, when I saw three gangly young men holding wires and laptops heading in our direction: the IT team. But before they made it to us, the sound of a dull cake knife tapping the side of a drinking glass filled the vast room. The IT men turned on their rubber heels, computer parts in hand, and went the other way.
“Get up. It’s time for awkward cake,” said my raven-haired colleague. Never mind that I was already standing at attention like a Navy SEAL.
“What’s awkward cake?” I asked her.
“It’s just cake. We have two cakes every time someone leaves. And that’s pretty often, almost weekly in the summer. One is always chocolate, and the other is a fruit tart. Unless they liked you, and then you get expensive cupcakes. Georgetown Cupcakes. There’s a speech or two that goes along with the cakes. They always wish the person good luck and then smugly assure them that they’ll come to their senses and return soon. Of course, if they really hate you, then you don’t get awkward cake at all. You’ll see, it’s incredibly awkward.”
She was right. It was incredibly awkward. Before the paper’s tow-haired editor in chief, Mark Upton, tapped his long knife against a Capitolist glass and started speaking, all the office lights brightened to a level Dr. Sanjay Gupta would describe as just right for brain surgery. The reporters and editors all gathered around in neat concentric circles and plastered on huge smiles like they were being handed Oprah’s favorite things. I backed into a corner with my colleague and sat on a stapler.
“It’s with heavy hearts that we say goodbye to our prized defense reporter Roger Roche,” Upton declared. His speaking pattern was soothing and rhythmic. “Roger has given so much to the paper over his eight months here. He covered the president’s trip to Iraq and the changing of the guard at the Pentagon. He even disguised himself as a corpse and slept in Arlington Cemetery for a piece on grave robbing.”
Wait, it was okay to pretend to be dead? I looked around to see if any
one else thought this last anecdote was odd. Julia grabbed my shoulder and whispered very loudly, “Don’t believe that shit. They fucking hate him. And they made him wake up at three every morning to write the ‘Good Morning Military’ tip sheet, so he hates them, too. See? No cupcakes.” She motioned to the table: two fruit tarts and nothing else.
The short but saccharine speeches had every person in the room laughing and clapping at things that weren’t at all funny. When the speeches were over, the staff leapt toward the cakes like prisoners of war, and Julia, who knew how to handle the scrum, brought me back a slice.
“You should eat this. That way you can get used to the weight you will inevitably put on while working here,” she said, handing me a piece without candied fruit. “Just don’t drop any crumbs. We have mice. So don’t leave food on your desk. But if you do see a mouse, don’t say anything, and don’t tweet about it. They’ll be pissed. If anything ever goes wrong at the office, don’t mention it outside the office, because if they find out you did, they’ll start thinking about ways to demote or fire you.”
Eating with our plates right under our chins, Julia and I watched as Upton approached the paper’s managing editor, Justin Cushing. Cushing had Groton, Yale, and over a decade breaking news at the Wall Street Journal stamped on his résumé. His aura sang, “Trust me! I’m always right.” And people usually did.
“Justin Cushing once hit a reporter with his umbrella. Like a thwack below the knee,” said Julia, making a Babe Ruth batting gesture and flinging her empty plate into the garbage can.
“Really?”
“Yeah. But they didn’t report it to the HR department or anything. One, we don’t have HR, and two, the reporter was flattered that Cushing actually knew who he was. You should have seen him. He was glowing like he ate a flashlight. Just because you work here doesn’t mean the important people have to learn your name.”
And that, I realized, was what the Capitolist was all about: not sleeping, working around the clock, and fighting so that Upton and Cushing not only knew who you were but also cared enough about you to occasionally put your stories on the front page, maybe even to shoot the shit with you every couple of weeks. That meant coming by your desk and asking about your life. The right answer to that question was always “What do you mean? This is my life.”
The Capitolist was three years old. Four young Silicon Valley investors had founded it when all the other little papers were dying, but it had skyrocketed. From the beginning, the Capitolist had what other papers didn’t: money and intensely dedicated labor. They bought reporters away from other publications, they made the paper they printed on thicker than a book jacket, and they threw more parties than Vogue.
The paper and its equally prestigious website were still flying high, and so were its employees. A place obsessed with breaking news, the List was launched as print and online because there was no way any List story worth its ink was going to wait until the next day’s paper. The daily print edition and the site appealed to different readers, but they both brought in nearly equal dollar amounts and equally stressed out the employees. We Style girls had to file two Web stories in the morning, then a paper story, then more Web stories. Meaning that when we were breaking news, we were also writing long-form pieces for the paper. It was a little like the decathlon without the bonus calorie burn. If you lasted a year, you deserved to be knighted. Small nervous breakdowns requiring prescription drugs and Skype counseling (to save time) were commonplace. Sick days were never taken. If you had a mix of bubonic plague and shingles you might be allowed to work from home. The paper chewed employees up and spat them out in a matter of months, sometimes weeks. But the ones who made it past the breaking point loved it beyond all reason. The only other jobs they would ever consider were United States senator or dictator of planet earth and outlying galaxies. Or, if they had to, host of Meet the Press. The newsroom was filled with extremely young reporters, all rabidly desperate to make a name for themselves. If they played their cards right, they definitely would. One year at the Capitolist could save you five years somewhere else, but you had to get through that year without doubling your body weight and tripling your blood pressure.
Most people took their cues from Robert Redford in All the President’s Men: they dressed like farsighted intellectuals, called each other by last names, and shouted to sound important. They spoke almost entirely in acronyms, and each one quickly adopted a signature sartorial quirk. This quirk was never wearing father’s vintage Rolex: it was sporting a skunk hat once owned by Ronald Reagan’s press secretary or a stain-covered tie handed down from Senator Boring.
The Style section was free of the typical Capitolist type because the typical Capitolist type viewed Style reporting as the ninth circle of hell.
But I saw the Style girls as enviable, attractive geniuses.
Instead of deciding I was the competition and freezing up, Julia called a source in the office of the Speaker of the House, introduced me on a conference call, and helped me type out my first article. Rachel didn’t edit it to pieces, and seven minutes after I turned it in, it was live on the Capitolist website. I emailed my parents a screen shot.
Not sure what to write about next—though Julia told me we’d better figure it out quick, so I wouldn’t be fired immediately—I headed to the front of the building, to the photography department, to have my picture taken for the staff page. Before I reached it, though, a gangly man leapt out of his desk chair, planted himself in my path, and started shaking my hand up and down like a water pump. “Welcome to the Capitolist. I’m Mason Swisher. Congress reporter. Also elections. Sometimes business and lobbying. We’re thrilled to have you,” he said loudly.
“It’s really exciting to be here,” I said, introducing myself.
“Adrienne Brown, Adrienne Brown.” He said my name twice and then sat back down at his desk. “I’ve heard of your mother. Obviously. Did she get you this gig?”
After giving Mason a firm “no, but thanks so much for asking,” I escaped, had my quick portrait session with our staff photographers, and walked back to tell Julia about my encounter. She laughed as if the entire cast of Saturday Night Live were tickling her with feathers.
“Don’t even worry about him. He will probably take over the world in five to seven years, but that doesn’t mean you’re required to speak to him now. I’ll show you who you should waste your breath on.” She was touch-typing an email on her phone while speaking to me. “There’s me, of course. And the other Style girls, because in the grand scheme of things they’re kind of normal. The design team, the photographers, the cartoonists, a few energy reporters, the two cute lobbying reporters, and Rachel. That’s it.”
I was twisting around, trying to identify the cute people, but Julia kept talking about our shared boss.
“Rachel’s our third editor in a year,” she explained. “She’s the best one we’ve had. The last one had a mild nervous breakdown and went to Crossroads rehab center in Antigua, where she met Colin Farrell. Now she works at the New York Times.”
“Really? That’s pretty cool.”
“Well, that’s what this place gets you eventually. A great new job, ten extra pounds, a brush with celebrity, and deep mental scars.”
“Got it.” I pressed my fingers together as hard as I could until I noticed they were stuck in the American Sign Language hand gesture for “camp.” I gave them a shake and tried to position them nonchalantly on my waist, but I still looked nervous. And like I was about to clog dance. I had to calm down. Julia wasn’t exactly painting the paper out to be Disneyland for adults, but I was still high on the power of the place. Everyone looked busy and important. At Town & Country, everyone looked rich and hungry. Why not embrace change?
I hadn’t spotted one single male I would consider swapping DNA with, but the three chairs around Julia and me were still empty.
“Who sits here?” I asked, giving one a swirl.
“Chicks. All three. This is Style,” replied Julia, point
ing to the nameplates I’d missed.
She gestured toward the first desk. “That’s where Libby Barnesworth sits. She’s from Kennebunkport, Maine, and went to Dartmouth, as you can tell from the mug.” Julia pointed to a large green coffee cup. “She always smells like cinnamon. I think she has one of those pine tree air fresheners sewn into her pants. She came here two years ago from Washingtonian and has a vocabulary like John McEnroe, but she’s not so bad if you’re nice to her. She’s very Georgetown. Hangs out with those preppy types, like Jenna Bush.”
“She knows Jenna Bush? Cool.”
“I didn’t say Jenna Bush. I said like Jenna Bush. Same hair color. Different fathers.”
She pointed to the even smaller desk next to Libby’s. It had a huge snow globe of Aspen and a picture of very attractive blond people on it. “That’s Isabelle.” She looked, clearly expecting some sign of recognition, but all I gave her was the look of someone whose mind has just been erased with a magnet. “Everyone knows Isabelle. She was in the Olympics. For the slalom.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I am not. I can’t believe you don’t know her.”
I couldn’t believe it, either. I was going to work with an Olympian? I needed to know every single detail starting with the Olympic trials and ending with the closing ceremonies. Was it Vancouver? Or maybe Turin? Nagano? I was crossing my fingers for Nagano. That was my favorite. All those picturesque Japanese villages covered in snow and fiery Olympic rings.
Before I started singing the national anthem, I caught myself and replied coolly, “I’m more a summer Olympics type.” This was true. I still had a balance beam in my parents’ basement and had grand plans to get my backflip back now that I was pushing thirty. I mean, Jackie Chan could do, like, eight, and he was nearly sixty.