The List

by Karin Tanabe

  “Look, here she is on the top of her new Range Rover.” He opened a photo of my sister sitting in a white dress on the roof of the car. “The whole roof rolls back like the top of a tuna can for better views. They had it customized.” He clicked the arrow, and the next bright picture filled the screen.

  Payton’s hair was curled and golden blond, her skin was evenly tanned, and she still had the same haughty look on her face. There was no denying that she looked absolutely gorgeous against the backdrop of South America. Then I remembered the time she convinced me to eat trash on Christmas morning, and I hated her all over again.

  “Doesn’t she look like Grace Kelly?” my father said, going to the next shot.

  I could still hear her voice. “On Christmas, we all eat out of the trash as a way of remembering the starving children of the world,” she said, handing me an apple core covered in hamburger remains. She grinned and clapped her hands while I ate it, then told everyone I ever met for the next five years that I ate trash. Years later, when I was vacationing in Thailand, I bought an enormous knife, which I told the vendor was to cut off my sister’s tongue. He gave me a discount.

  I looked at her picture again. “Grace Kelly? Without the crown or the talent,” I replied.

  “Oh, Adrienne. You two were always fighting,” said my dad, pointing out the obvious. I rested my chin on his gray head. It smelled like old man pomade and the comfort of home. “Are you still mad because she was always trying to kill you when you were younger?”

  “Younger? She put a live raccoon in my bed on my eighteenth birthday. You had to call pest control.”

  “That was pretty creative, you have to admit,” he said, chuckling proudly. “She always had a really funny side to her. That great dark humor, like Woody Allen. I don’t know why she had to up and move to Argentina, but I guess Buck had grand plans.” This again. The way my father talked, I was pretty sure I would wake up one morning and my entire family would be living in Argentina without me.

  “Here’s one of her and Buck,” said my dad, smiling with pride. Buck was lifting Payton up like he was about to carry her over the threshold. “She’s lucky to have found love so young. It seems to get harder when you get older.”

  I was about to ask him if he’d like to offer me some cash so I could freeze my eggs and tattoo the word spinster on my arm, when he pulled up a close-up shot of Buck’s smiling face and my mood softened.

  My sister’s husband’s name was actually Tim Johnston, but everyone called him Buck. He was a linebacker for the University of Michigan in the late nineties, and in his first ever game wearing blue and gold, he was thrown out in the second quarter for kicking the Michigan State quarterback in the gut. Hence Buck Johnston. The name stuck, and even though fifteen years had passed since his freshman fall, his weight and ability to crush things had stuck, too.

  From the second we met, I preferred Buck to my sister. He never put live animals in my room. My sister was born to inflict cruel and unusual punishment, whereas Buck got that all out of his system by bashing wide receivers in college. Their future children were going to have a hoot of a good time.

  “Assure me again that we’re related,” I said to my father as we looked at a picture of Payton and Buck staring down a family of ocelots.

  “I’m afraid that’s the dirty truth,” he said, setting the photos to slide-show mode. “But she’s off living her life now, and you’ve given yours up to come back here. She’s the adventurer, and you’re our little homebody.”

  Screw my mom drying my tears—I had to move. I had to start pushing drugs on the side and save up the rent money. Or maybe I could covertly sell a horse on eBay. How did one ship a horse? Was there a flat rate? Whatever, I would figure it out.

  Unable to bear the slideshow, I looked at my phone. I had missed two calls from James, the man who had escorted me out of the Hay-Adams when I was sick. Having been preoccupied by dreams of a toothy Latin American man who had promised his mind, body, and soul to my despicable, adulterous colleague, I had forgotten that I was going out with James that night. But when I saw his name on my phone, a slight shiver ran down my spine, reminding me that I was still a sexual being, despite the Capitolist’s best efforts to kill off my libido. I kissed my father on the cheek and headed back to my animal quarters.

  It was a beautiful May day and the air was getting warmer; I no longer had to run between the barn and the house. Instead, I just walked lazily and let the too-long grass get my feet wet.

  “You buzzed?” I said as sexily as I could when James picked up the phone.

  “I did. Am I still seeing you tonight? You sent me your address when I begged for it but nothing else. Maybe you just want me to mail you a letter? Anyway, I hope I am seeing you,” he said. In the background I could hear traffic. A fire truck roared by, and then there was the syncopated sound of chanting, a group protesting something or other. “Sorry about the noise,” he said. “I’m driving around Dupont Circle with all the windows down. Liberals, everywhere. I hope you can hear me. Are we still on for tonight?”

  “Do you mind picking me up?” I asked sweetly.

  He laughed loudly over the sounds of the city. “You mean do I mind driving for two hours before we even get to the restaurant? Because you live on some plantation?”

  “Something like that . . . ”

  “For you, of course I don’t. I’ll just pack some flares and an emergency meal.”

  “Comedy is not your strong suit,” I said, laughing despite my best effort not to.

  By 7 P.M., my hair was curled, my eyes were brightened with some black-market potion I bought online in Canada, and my underwear was small and French. I went out and sat in the hammock by the fenced-in pasture to wait for him. The sun was starting to set and Jasper and two other white horses were busying themselves with the art of doing nothing. I was pretending to watch them when James’s car pulled up the drive.

  “Why hello there! You didn’t tell me that we’re practically neighbors,” he said, stepping out of his car in a dark beige suit jacket and jeans.

  “Sorry, did it take long?” I asked.

  “Thirty-eight minutes. I drove fast.”

  Thirty-eight minutes? He drove at Autobahn speed.

  Looking around at the gas lampposts and the white horses grazing near the barn, he whistled like a man looking up a girl’s skirt. “This sure is beautiful.”

  “Well, it’s not mine. It’s my parents’. But I did grow up here. And now I just squat in a room above the barn.”

  “Your parents still live here?” he asked. His golden curls made him look much younger than I imagined he was.

  “Sure, they’re in the house, in the kitchen. Want to say hi? You already met my father, after all.”

  He looked at me square in the face and said, “I absolutely do.”

  “Nah. Another time,” I said, grabbing his hand and heading toward his silver Porsche SUV.

  “Can you see out these windows?” I asked as he opened the door for me. They looked like they had blackout screens taped inside just in case there was a German air raid.

  “I had them darkened a bit,” he said, closing my door and heading to the driver’s side. “Lots of prying eyes in this city.” He looked out the window just as Jasper started to trot toward the back hill. “I mean, in the city. The one we now have to drive thirty-eight minutes to get to.”

  As we exited the town of Middleburg, past the small white sign that read “population 976,” James started squinting at the even, hilly road.

  “It’s hard to see with this sun setting in my eyes,” he said, putting on a pair of brown Ray-Bans and pulling the eyeshade down.

  “That’s the thing about Middleburg,” I said as we passed yard after yard of perfect horse fence. “You can actually see the sun.”

  “But you can’t do anything,” he replied. “Who cares if you can see the sun? It’s no fun to enjoy nature in nature. Unless you’re a big hippie, like you.” He laughed and put his hand on my t
high, then quickly removed it before I could do it for him.

  We stopped at the red light by the gas station with the Pegasus wings. The radio was playing an old Billy Joel song, and I realized that I was kind of excited to be going on my first real date since I had moved home seven months ago. Starting to feel more at ease, I looked out James’s deeply tinted window to watch the last of the sun disappear behind the Chrysalis winery on the hill. I saw the trees trimmed low to show off the stone buildings and the faint outlines of the rows of grapes. It was only there by the gas station that the road was four lanes wide. We pulled up as the light turned yellow, and James came to a smooth stop. As he fiddled with the radio, a white BMW pulled up next to us. As it came to a halt, I looked down at the two people inside, already sure of who I would see.

  Senator Stanton and Olivia Campo. He was driving. When she turned to him, I could see that she was very upset—and not in the cold, aggressive way she was in the newsroom. Her arms were moving, and she seemed to be trying to keep out of his reach. He grabbed her face in his hands and gave her a kiss, and she pushed him away forcefully. He sat stunned while she hit him on the shoulder and opened her mouth wide to yell. Despite her anger, she looked vulnerable—an emotion I didn’t think she had in her repertoire. When the light turned green, they had their heads together, and I heard a pickup truck honk impatiently behind them as James drove us toward the city. Looking in the rearview mirror, I watched as the white car turned right and climbed the hill toward the Goodstone Inn.

  I couldn’t make small talk after that. I sat in the front seat, quiet and still, trying to guess what they could be fighting like that about. Maybe they were ending things. Could Sandro have found out that his wife wasn’t tailing the president to China every weekend, but was actually the senator’s wanton woman instead? Could he have said, “Olivia. It’s him or me. Make a choice or I’m running off with Adrienne Brown.” That last part was unlikely, but suddenly I began wondering if things could have gone south for Olivia and Stanton and what that would mean for my exposé.

  During dinner with James at the Source, I was a nervous mess. I tried to make conversation, but I kept talking about horses because it was one of the only things I could babble about without much thought. I gave James an anatomy lesson, even drawing a foal on a cloth napkin along with arrows and technical phrases. I told him I had a passion for animal husbandry. At the end of the night, he tucked the drawing into his blazer pocket, like it was a totally normal first date memento.

  James, I decided, despite looking like a Fragonard cherub with a Ralph Lauren charge card, was a very nice guy. Medium height, medium build, blue eyes, a firm dimple in his left cheek. He was a little proud, a lot pompous, and way too Washington for me to swoon over, but he was good company, even for a girl in a neurotic state. And the lovely part was, he didn’t know me at all, so he couldn’t even ask me if I was acting weird. Which I was.

  When we walked out to his car, brought up from Pennsylvania Avenue by a valet in a red jacket, it became clear to both of us that I was fairly drunk. He suggested a bar, and when I declined, he suggested some Vitaminwater and an aspirin at his house. To that, I stupidly said yes.

  We drove through the straight grid of Washington streets with the windows down. He lent me his arm as we walked into his town house near Eastern Market. It had a window box full of flowers that I was sure he hadn’t planted himself.

  “How about a martini?” he said, walking to his oak and marble kitchen, which seemed to illuminate magically when he entered.

  “Didn’t I say water and aspirin?” I replied, my head still spinning.

  I waited in the living room while he opened bottles and filled crystal glasses with ice. There were absolutely no personal photos in his apartment. There were three large, colorful abstract paintings, which looked expensive and bland. In New York I went on a date with a Flemish man who spent his weekends painting enormous vaginas on canvas, so boring art didn’t bother me too much.

  “Did you do these?” I asked as he effortlessly fished a few olives out of a Whole Foods container with a tiny cocktail fork.

  “No,” he replied. “My decorator chose them. Xavier dos Santos.”

  Of course. I was actually mad at myself for not recognizing the style. Heaps of beige, reclaimed oak furniture, heavy marble tables, and red, colorful art. He decorated dozens of Washington apartments and houses in the same expensive, flavorless style.

  “Before you judge me too heavily, I’m single,” James pointed out defensively, after catching the sour look on my face. “And I don’t really like to spend my weekends buying lampshades. So I hired Xavier. He’s fast, and he doesn’t care about my opinion, so that worked out well for me.”

  I wasn’t judging. I lived in a barn.

  “Come. Try the Noguchi chair. I just got it.” He came over from the kitchen, sat in it, and motioned to his knee.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way,” I said, walking closer to him. “But how do you have all this money? You’re a press flack.”

  He started laughing like I’d just asked him the exact measure of his genitals. “Wow, you really did just move here from New York, didn’t you. That is such a New York question.”

  “It is not!” I protested. “It’s a safety question. Maybe you launder money on the side. Maybe you’re busy scamming the elderly.”

  “It’s neither of those, I promise,” he said, running his hand over the smooth wood of the expensive chair. “I worked for Goldman Sachs for ten years. I guess I was pretty good at it.”

  An ex-banker in Washington? Quite the rarity.

  “Why on earth would you leave that job?” I asked, looking around his apartment. “Didn’t you take an eighty percent pay cut to work for the RNC?”

  “More like ninety. It hurt,” he admitted. “But I wanted to do something a little more meaningful with my life. Ten years on Wall Street and I felt a little bit soulless. Plus, I was sick of those petty New York girls.” He flashed me a perfect smile. “So I came down here and worked for Senator Estes for two years and then got this gig. But don’t worry,” he said, reaching up for my hand. “I’m not broke yet.”

  He tried to pull me down to the chair, but I pulled away and said, “I’ll sit in it if you stand up.”

  “But that wouldn’t be fun,” he said, rubbing his knees.

  “Have you ever been convicted of sexual harassment?” I asked, fishing the olive out of my glass and popping it and its vodka-soaked insides into my mouth. James had handed me both a Vitaminwater and a martini, which was a disgusting combination, but I was too drunk to care. Plus, the martini came with a side of marble-shaped ice cubes. In my state I found them fascinating and started rolling them around on his impeccable hardwood floors.

  “Not recently,” he said, smiling.

  “Well, that’s reassuring.”

  The two sips of vodka martini were a mistake. I was feeling awfully woozy. I was still speaking, but I had no idea what I was saying. James’s face looked like a bowl of pudding painted by Cubists. I felt sick and sleepy, and then, somehow, the world just went away.

  • • •

  When I came to, I was lying in a luxuriously fluffy bed with white sheets and thick down comforters up to my neck. The temperature felt like winter in Juneau, and long curtains hung over the windows. Was I in James’s house? It didn’t look a thing like it.

  Magically, my cell phone was on the nightstand. I grabbed it and called him.

  “Good morning, sunshine!” he laughed into the phone. “Yes, you are, you definitely are,” he assured me when I asked if I was in his apartment. “You’re in the guest room, fully clothed, as you might have noticed. I am such a gentleman.”

  Oh God. I must have passed out. That was the only explanation. I probably fell on the floor and drooled all over my face and he took a video and it was now on YouTube and I was going to get fired.

  But actually, when James explained what had happened, the reality was worse.

  “You tal
ked to my mother,” he said, laughing. “It wasn’t really your fault. My parents just moved to the West Coast and she can’t keep the time difference straight. She called, I answered, and you grabbed the phone from me, but she woke me up with a message for you this morning.” I conversed with his mother! I needed to check myself into AA for a day. I wondered if they had speed courses for working professionals.

  “Did I really? I didn’t. I’m so sorry . . . did I really talk to your mother?” I stuttered.

  “Did you ever. She says hello. She also sends her regards to Caroline and Winston-who-went-to-Princeton. Mind if I ask who they are?”

  “Those would be my parents,” I confessed.

  “Of course,” said James. “Most memorable date of my life. We should do it again. So, how is next Saturday?”

  “Sometimes I’m not great with my liquor,” I said, apologizing. “I just don’t drink very often anymore with this job. So when I do—”

  “You don’t need to explain,” said James, interrupting. “Like I said, most memorable date of my entire life.”

  I laughed at the fact that he wasn’t having me committed, and I agreed to go out with him again. And then, like the gentleman that he was proving to be, he let me shower and drove me all the way back to Middleburg, with the windows open and a painkiller floating in my stomach.

  CHAPTER 11

  It’s strange to learn about people without being close to them. I felt like I was watching an opera from the wings; I would have preferred the limited view from the cheap seats to all the backstage drama I was privy to now. Olivia, Sandro, and Stanton had been shoved to the back burner while I caught up with List work after the Correspondents’ Dinner. But now that I had filed some meatier pieces, including an exclusive interview with James Franco on his political agenda, I felt like my job was more secure and Hardy wasn’t going to fire me on a whim. I was also starting to understand what it took to inch a little higher at the List. Before I broke the Franco piece, most of my colleagues looked down at their phones when I walked past them in the newsroom. Now, they looked straight ahead. Maybe, if I decided to go ahead with the Olivia story, they would actually look at me. Perhaps try out an exotic greeting like “hello.”