The List

by Karin Tanabe

  “Troops. Let’s join in the usual place in five minutes,” he said. The newsroom reverberated with murmurs of “why?” An all-editorial meeting usually meant we were tooting our own incredibly well-greased horn for something we’d done. Did we have a new big-name columnist? Did someone break a huge story? Or perhaps the Wall Street Journal had bought the Washington Post and everyone at the latter had been fired. Another thing we were all asked to celebrate as a group was the failure of other news outlets. So maybe the Post had accidentally published porn and we all were going to have a champagne toast in honor of their stupidity.

  Sadly, it had nothing to do with adult film. It had to do with a story about a politician’s shady trip to Eastern Europe, broken by one of our own.

  “And we salute Christine Lewis, who broke the story,” said Upton as all the reporters, producers, editors, and copy editors surrounded him and cheered. We craned our necks to look for the girl being heralded for her investigative skills. She popped up next to Upton with red cheeks and a big smile. “She happened to be online at three A.M. on Saturday when she noticed a tweet from an Albanian underground blogger,” said Upton with pride.

  While I had to put my hand over my mouth to stop either bile or laughter from exploding out, no one else seemed to be surprised at this Albanian blogger detail. I wanted to scream, “Only perverts and those obeying Singapore Standard Time should be on Twitter at three A.M.!” but I didn’t. At the Capitolist, what Christine did was not just normal: it was heavily applauded. We should all be looking to the former Eastern Bloc for sources.

  Still raising an imaginary glass, Upton kept babbling. “At the rate she’s going, Christine could become the next . . . ” He paused to think about it and then, letting his mouth spread into a slow smile, said, “. . . the next Olivia Campo!” Everyone around him started clapping encouragingly and I looked around for Olivia—who was now noticeably absent.

  “It takes a village called the Capitolist to get a story like this done, and you should all be thrilled to be a part of it,” Upton concluded, smoothing back his blond mane.

  It was really high time for scientists to discover the Capitolist. There were great experiments on mind control to be done.

  “What was she doing trolling Twitter at three A.M.? What a humongous loser,” said Isabelle. She had stayed at her desk to keep writing an article about how to choose a State Dinner menu. “You don’t even want to know what I was doing at three A.M.,” she said when we sat back down again. “Okay, I’ll tell you. I was having sex with a Wall Street Journal reporter with mild Asperger’s syndrome. There, I said it.”

  “Was it Charlie Stein?” asked Alison, naming one of the Journal’s Washington correspondents.

  “Obviously,” said Isabelle.

  “That’s repulsive,” said Julia, replying to emails on her BlackBerry while talking.

  “Repugnant,” added Libby.

  “What were you doing?” Isabelle asked Libby with a wounded look.

  “I was on a date with that petite man from Fox News. It sucked. We kissed and he called me by the wrong name, twice. But at least I wasn’t on Twitter. I really don’t envy that girl’s job, though,” said Libby. “She basically has to squash her bloodshot little eyeballs to a computer every second of the day, and then when she finds breaking White House news, she has to write it up, coherently, in five minutes. I would rather be an undertaker.”

  Libby looked at Christine, all twenty-four years of her, now having a tête-à-tête with Upton. “At my first company barbecue she poured an entire pitcher of Diet Sprite on her lap and she didn’t even flinch. She just sat there dripping while bugs landed on her and kept filing a story on her BlackBerry. It was amazing.”

  “I remember that,” said Julia. “I bet she gets an intense raise after this one.”

  “You think?” said Libby. “I’ve never gotten a raise.”

  “None of us have,” said Julia, sighing. “We’re not supposed to talk about money,” she added, looking at me. “It’s in our contracts. But we all do.”

  I nodded, pretending the List rules were pasted in my wallet like the Ten Commandments.

  “But she’s definitely going to get a raise. I heard that they’re not hiring anyone to fill Nicholas Wiik’s old job and that they’re just having Christine, Olivia, Mike, Tim, Jason, and the rest of the White House team ramp it up.”

  “I heard that, too,” added Libby.

  “I thought Nicholas Wiik still worked here? I saw him kicking the Coke machine last week,” I said. Nicholas was one of the only White House reporters familiar with the words please and thank you. He even apologized when he realized I was behind him during his soda machine attack.

  “Yeah, he worked here last week,” said Libby. “But they fired him last month. His last day was Friday.”

  They had fired a White House reporter? Fired? I didn’t remember him throwing tomatoes at the president or printing a love letter to North Korea in the paper. What cardinal sin had he committed to get the ax? I asked Libby and she just smiled at me like I was a child trying desperately to shove the square peg through the round hole.

  “He didn’t do anything,” she explained. “He just wasn’t aggressive enough for the White House beat. Nick never got great scoops and he didn’t produce as much as the rest of them, even Christine, and she’s the most junior.”

  “So they fired him?”

  “Suggested he leave,” said Libby. “They don’t like to say ‘fired’ here. They just tell people this isn’t the right place for them and ask them if they’re not better suited to another publication, like Tiger Beat magazine. Then they suggest they scat within a few weeks. Let’s call it fired, without the bad press.”

  Oh God. That was totally going to happen to me. It was like something out of sorority hazing where the house president, a girl who usually resembled my sister, told a hopeful freshman that she was better suited to the fat girl sorority.

  We all looked at Christine Lewis, ten years younger and willing to work harder and longer than Nicholas Wiik.

  “You know, that child probably makes double what we do, so she should be on Twitter at three o’clock in the morning,” Julia offered, spinning around. “If she wants to sacrifice her one-night-stand years for this machine, that’s her choice. I give fifteen hours a day to this place. I’m not working Saturdays.”

  Libby looked at her and laughed. “You work Saturdays every week! Even when Hardy tells you not to, you work. You hate it, but you love it really.”

  It was true. She did work every Saturday. And most Sundays. Her BlackBerry had a magenta loop on the back so she could attach it to her hand while she drove.

  “You know what he forgot to mention?” said Isabelle, tying back her freshly cut hair. “That it was her birthday on Saturday, too.”

  “It was not,” I said. If I ever had to look at Twitter during the deep dark hours on my day of birth, I think I would call for the executioner. I celebrated my last birthday scantily clad in Punta del Este. I was not going to go from naked bonfires to Twitter trolling in one short year.

  “I’m dead serious,” said Isabelle. “Our birthdays are two days apart, and last week I asked her what she was doing for hers, which happened to fall on a Saturday. She said, ‘Working late looking for 2012 copy.’ I said, ‘I bet Jason Horowitz can handle that on his own,’ and she said, ‘I’ve been doing it straight for thirty days. Why would I stop just because it’s the weekend and my birthday?’ I mean, why would you stop? Because it’s your freaking birthday! At least salute your mother for pushing you out of her loins. She’s not doing herself any favors. She should be working on her Match.com profile.”

  “And what was with the Olivia Campo reference?” I asked Isabelle when Libby and Alison were back at their desks. “Kind of random, no?”

  “No way. Upton likes to remind everyone that there’s a younger, hungrier, cheaper version of all of us nipping at our heels. Even with Nicholas. They could have kept his firing totally quiet,
but they let it leak out little by little.” The classic List attitude of forcing people to compete internally while living in fear of losing their jobs.

  “Upton’s been dangling the chief White House correspondent position in front of Olivia for the last year. Maybe he wants her to try harder for it.”

  “But they would never give that job to Christine,” I said incredulously. “She’s barely out of college! And Tim Schwartz, who has that job now, is forty.”

  “Of course they’re not going to give it to Christine. Well, probably not. They just like making people nervous, even queen Olivia. The New York Times is always trying to poach Tim Schwartz, which everyone knows, except you.”

  “Right, except me.”

  Isabelle laughed at my ignorance. “They are. Trust me. Of course, Upton keeps doing whatever it takes to keep Tim but we all know he’ll jump sometime soonish. Who wouldn’t? It’s the New York Times.”

  “So if he leaves does Olivia get his job?” I asked, trying to sound as disinterested as possible while still keeping Isabelle talking.

  “Well, probably,” said Isabelle. “But there are plenty of other people here who want it. Mike on the White House team. And obviously Christine. And you know they love having wunderkinds here. They could just pay Tim a ridiculous salary for a few more years and then bump Christine into the job over Olivia’s head. I hope they do. She deserves it. Christine’s pretty dorky, but at least she’s nice.”

  I couldn’t believe it. Did Olivia Campo have to worry about other reporters nabbing her job? Maybe that’s what drove her to start sleeping with Stanton. Maybe she actually lived in a constant state of paranoia and that’s why she was so mean.

  “God, I love this place. You can just smell the pressure,” said Christine, the anointed one, with a grin on her eager little face as she walked away from the last of our colleagues toasting her and moved toward her desk. “There is no newsroom in America as exciting as this one,” she said to Tucker Cliff, who was walking with her.

  “You’re right,” he replied, clapping his hands together. The smack of his palms caused us all to look up. “We,” he said to Christine, “are on fire.”

  CHAPTER 12

  When Hardy and then Upton had saluted my work on the James Franco story, it was the first time I had ever gotten a pat on the back at the Capitolist. Most of the time, the higher-ups only talked to you if you had done something wrong, or as in Nicholas’s case, advising you to seek employment elsewhere. You were expected to put your nose to the grindstone and never come up for air, let alone compliments and praise.

  But when my first big story broke and I had my hand metaphorically shaken by the top brass, I felt my perspective on the place change. So what if they wanted to use up my youth and energy and spit me out? It’s not like they tried to pretend they were anything but a sweatshop. I knew that if I made it over a year, I would come out alive and with a bigger name than I had when I went in. But I began to see that if I decided to go forward with the Olivia story, and if the paper picked me and my scoop over her, my career would be set.

  I had never met a woman like Olivia before: one who pushed everyone and everything aside for the sake of success. Girls like her weren’t at sisterhood-loving Wellesley, and they certainly weren’t at Town & Country. She was either going to beat us all or crash and burn. And I had the power to make her burn. If I exposed her affair with Stanton, everyone in the Capitolist newsroom would actually know my name. I wouldn’t just be the tall blond girl in the back of the room who came from some fashion magazine and smiled too much. I, like Christine, would be the subject of one of Upton’s ridiculous staff-wide announcements.

  It was the end of spring, which meant Congress was constantly in session, the White House was buzzing and Olivia was almost never in the office. She passed through our building only for reporters’ meetings. When she came in, I tried to read her; but as far as I could tell, I was invisible to her.

  I had started writing some drafts of what I’d seen that night in Middleburg and the other times I’d spotted Olivia and Stanton together, but I still couldn’t fit the pieces of the puzzle together—and now I didn’t think I could without Sandro. I’d been avoiding this for the last month—I didn’t want to further fuel my obsession. But it was time for the cyber-stalk to begin. I entered his name into Google, took a deep breath, and smacked the return key.

  I found a mug shot, which luckily wasn’t his. I found a few genealogy trees and decided he was definitely Mexican. And then, after a few days of searching and being thankful to have a LexisNexis account and a telephone with a blocked number function, I saw his name and picture on a committee website for the Organization of American States, a group promoting security, democracy, and human rights with representatives from each of the countries in the Americas. On the site, there was no bio, and there were very few details, but it did disclose that Sandro’s next committee meeting was at a Chinatown restaurant called Oyamel on May 30.

  I typed the date into my phone and counted down the days.

  I had been going to Chinatown with my family since I was old enough to walk. When we were younger and the area had not yet been gentrified, we used to eat at a restaurant called Jun Chen’s. It had ducks hanging from the ceiling and smelled like spices and grease. When I was very young and Payton already seemed quite old and was able to command the attention of a whole room, I used to hide under the red and white checkered tablecloths and lean against my father’s legs. Everything was different now. I had lived in New York, I had Meryl Streep’s cell-phone number in my phone, and I had made it back home with my liver intact. In the meantime, Jun Chen’s had been replaced by Ann Taylor Loft.

  I walked past groups of teenagers shopping along the strip of chain stores and headed to Seventh Street and Oyamel. The hostess told me that the OAS group was currently meeting in the Butterfly Room and that she would be delighted to escort me there. I said I was just going to the bar for a drink, not to worry, and headed alone to the back corner of the restaurant.

  I sat there for an hour and a half waiting for the meeting to end, watching people eat and laugh with their significant others. An hour and a half at a bar by yourself translates into becoming rather drunk and distracted. I filed a story sourced entirely from Twitter about a country singer obsessed with Newt Gingrich. She even wrote a song about his full head of hair. I called Elsa and apologized for being a ghost of a friend. She told me she hated me, but was in Miami anyway and forgave my vanishing act. I emailed my mother and suggested our family consume more raw fish. And I texted Payton nothing but a smiley face and didn’t bother waiting for a reply.

  I was on my third glass of wine and my second order of ceviche when Sandro finally walked out of the restaurant’s private room with his OAS colleagues. He looked flawless. Confident and handsome and happy and wearing a suit cut perfectly for his tall frame. I wondered if there was a way I could casually steal his jacket and keep it as a memento of our love. He said a few words to the two men he was with, waved in my direction, and walked over to me.

  “It’s you. From the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. It’s good to see you survived the party,” he said.

  “It’s nice to see you again,” I replied, trying not to froth at the mouth with sexual energy. Upon closer inspection, his clothes were very classic, very Washington. Creased beige pants, a white shirt tucked in, no tie, and the heavy linen sport jacket that would soon be mine. He wore loafers and had a thin gold wedding band right where it belonged.

  “We also met at the skating rink,” I said, trying to jog his memory. “You were watching your friend play hockey. You were heading to dinner.”

  “I remember,” he said, smiling. “You looked very wintry, very pretty standing by the rink.”

  He did? He remembered! And he called me pretty. We were one step closer to engaged.

  “Are you having dinner here?” I asked. What I really wanted to ask was “Do you know that your wife is having an affair? With a man twice her age
? No? Well she is. And he’s a senator. But lucky for you, I’m available.” Instead I just looked at him and smiled like a lovestruck idiot.

  “No, no, just killing some time before I head home,” he said. “I was here for a meeting.”

  After asking politely if he could join me, he motioned to the bartender to bring him a beer and took the empty seat next to mine.

  He took a long sip of Bohemia beer and let out a satisfied sigh. “I needed this,” he said with a smile.

  We talked about the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. We talked about his horrible wife.

  “Is she joining you?” I asked innocently. I looked into his handsome face and tried not to lose my cool. He had more stubble than he had had at the dinner. He looked a little tired and extremely sexy. I moved my arm past his and let his shirtsleeve glide across my skin. It felt perfect.

  “Oh, no, not Olivia,” he said, letting his arm linger next to mine. “She’s away for work. She travels a lot. But, sorry, you must know that already.”

  I nodded and explained that we all got the president’s and VP’s schedules emailed to us. The article alerts on my BlackBerry had let me know that as the traveling White House pool reporter, she was currently in Ulaanbaatar with the vice president.

  “Yes, she does love that about her job,” he replied. “I like to travel, too, we just—or I—just have different taste in traveling. I’m from Texas—”

  “Are you?” I interrupted him. “I love Texas.” This was a lie. I had never been to Texas and knew it only through Friday Night Lights reruns and stereotypes. But looking at Sandro, I decided I suddenly loved Texas.

  “I’m from the southern part,” he explained, “and I’ve never become much of a city person. But Olivia really wanted to move here. When the Capitolist launched, she became obsessed with getting a job there. She always wanted to come work in Washington, ever since we met, but when the Capitolist came on the scene, she said it was the only place she would work. I guess she just knew it would be a success; she has a sense about these things. She’s really taken to living here, but I still can’t get into it. Cities tend to suffocate me a little.”