by Karin Tanabe
I crossed the street and sat on the stairs of a ghastly bright red town house and tried to look natural. All the lights were off in the house, so it had to be empty. I wasn’t worried. In my dress, I even kind of blended in with the wall. Maybe no one would notice me.
Just before eight o’clock, when I was starting to get both uncomfortable and paranoid that I was going to get picked up for squatting, I saw Sandro. He was walking in from the north side of the church, and he was alone. He was carrying his suit jacket and wearing gray pants and a pink button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He looked handsome, but tired and certainly not in the mood to receive an unexpected visit from me.
When he was a block away from his elegant house, I walked down the steps of the house across the street and headed up the block toward him. I wanted him to see me, smile, walk over to me. I wanted it all to be natural. We would fall in love organically, and he would leave his cheating wife for me as if it were as inevitable as the ebb and flow of the tide.
But he didn’t even notice me. I had to call his name. He looked startled, like I had woken him out of a comforting daydream.
“Adrienne. What are you doing here?” he asked, not sounding particularly happy.
“I . . . ” What was I going to say? I had expected him to look a bit more excited. At Oyamel, he had said he liked talking to me, that we should do it again. And he said I was pretty and touched my hair! So here I was, ready and able to conversate and interrogate. Or procreate. Whatever he wanted.
“Do you know that I live on this street?” he asked. He sounded more curious than suspicious. I loved his voice. It was smooth and even and easy.
“Yes, I do. I know that you live here,” I admitted. “I was hoping to run into you.”
“You were?” he asked, surprised.
“Yes,” I admitted, stretching out the word.
“Were you waiting for me?”
“No,” I said, trying to make my lie sound convincing. “I wasn’t waiting for you. I was just hoping that I would run into you. And here you are.”
“Yes, here I am,” he said, flashing a minuscule hint of a smile. He looked at his locked front door, then back at me, and said, “Well, why don’t you come in.”
I was about to step into Olivia and Sandro’s house.
As soon as my feet hit the hardwood floor of the entryway, I felt like an intruder. This was Olivia’s house. Her marital home! Sure, she was having an affair in Middleburg, but she wasn’t getting biblical in my bed. I had no right to intrude on her space, on her life. But when Sandro put his hand on the small of my back and led me into the living room, my common sense decided to wait for me outside.
The wide, airy, light-filled room was full of dark wood furniture and low modern couches. A huge screen print of the Texas plains hung on the wall above a brick fireplace, which was dotted with framed photographs. In a large, thick silver frame, I noticed what must have been Olivia and Sandro’s wedding picture and looked quickly away.
I had not gone there to tell Sandro about Olivia’s affair—I just wanted to get a feel for how much he knew. But standing in his living room alone with him, I felt morally obligated to blurt out the torrid details. And after glimpsing the big wedding picture, I was starting to feel that any kind of relationship between his wife and Stanton would be news to him. He probably only knew the senator’s name from CNN or Olivia’s articles. Even if they were both working on immigration reform, I doubted Sandro was acquainted with Olivia’s style of work.
If I told him the details, maybe he would leave Olivia on the spot, shoot Stanton in the leg, and run into my waiting arms. That sounded fantastic. But first, he would probably tell his wife that he knew about Stanton, and my entire story would be blown. There would be no big article. No congratulatory handshakes from Upton. No payoff for my months of hard work. Did I really want love—or a chance at love—that badly?
He walked over to me as I weighed my options. His hands were in his pockets, and the top button of his pink dress shirt was undone.
“What do you want to tell me?” he asked. He was close to me now. “Is it about Olivia? Is she okay?”
He smelled like he did that night at the Hilton.
“It is about Olivia,” I said. “But it can wait.” I said, buying a little time. “How about a drink? A beer? I could use a beer.” That part was actually very true.
“Sure,” said Sandro, relaxing a little. “I’ll get us some beers. Come to the kitchen with me?”
Olivia Campo’s kitchen? Of course I would go to Olivia Campo’s kitchen. I was pretty sure it was filled with rows of sharp knives to bludgeon Christine Lewis with. But sadly, it was more Martha Stewart than Freddy Krueger. It was all white with pale marble countertops and a turquoise Smeg fridge.
“Cool fridge,” I said as Sandro reached for two Coronas. I ignored the picture of them tacked up on the freezer. They were in Mexico City in front of a Diego Rivera mural and looked mighty happy. No, he couldn’t know about her and Stanton. I hoped that picture got ripped in two when I broke the news. There was also a small American flag and a picture of Olivia and two older people who must have been her parents, in a large silver frame on the windowsill above the kitchen’s double sink. They were all smiling and sitting on the bleachers in Cowboys Stadium in Dallas. It almost looked like a fake backdrop. I knew she was from Texas but I couldn’t imagine her ever attending a sporting event. I was sure she considered sports just another opiate for the masses. But here she was, wearing white and blue, smiling with her parents. I tried to look at the picture without obviously looking at the picture and noticed that Olivia’s mother had red hair, too, but hers was a nice blondish red, not like Olivia’s.
It was confirmed. She had parents. Satan didn’t escort her to earth.
I walked to the other end of the kitchen where Sandro was standing, but the sight of a stainless steel Cuisinart mixer sidetracked me. And was that a cookbook on baking cakes and pies? Olivia baked? I would have been less surprised to see a huge pile of cocaine and condoms.
“Olivia bakes?” I asked Sandro, pumping my voice full of fake enthusiasm. “When she has time,” replied Sandro, looking at the mixer that had stopped me in my tracks. “Which isn’t often. But she likes to; it relaxes her. She makes an amazing passion fruit cheesecake. Hasn’t she ever brought any to the office?”
Olivia. Bring baked goods to the office. Maybe if Rachael Ray pointed a gun to her head and forced her to.
“I don’t think she ever has,” I replied. “I love to bake though,” I added, sucking up to Sandro. “You should taste my French frosted cherries jubilee à la mode. Award-winning family recipe.” Where did I get that? That was a completely made-up dish. Luckily Sandro didn’t present me with a baking tin and a bag of cherries; he just smiled and handed me my beer.
Sandro jumped up to sit on the marble-covered island in the middle of the kitchen and pointed at a stool for me to perch on. I could see his triceps rippling through his shirt. I wanted to die. I wanted to latch my jaw around his arm muscle like a piranha and never let go.
“Grab a seat,” he said, handing me a sliver of lime and then lightly smacking his bottle against mine. “I’m glad you ran into me on purpose. Sorry I was unpleasant earlier. I was just a little surprised to see you and I had a horrible day at work. I couldn’t get in touch with Olivia and I’m dealing with something messy in El Salvador. Anyway, I’m rambling. In short, sorry I was rude. I’m glad to see you.”
There, better. Now we were on the right track. I would go home and put celebrity wedding planner Mindy Weiss on my speed dial.
“I like what you’re wearing,” said Sandro as I repositioned my dress so that my butt wasn’t touching the counter. “You’re always wearing these bright colors when I see you. It’s rare for a reporter. And for Washington. You look like you should be on vacation. Ever been to Mexico?”
I had. I went to Cancún for spring break and let a basketball player from the University of Florida do tequila sho
ts off my stomach. But I might save that story for later on in our relationship.
“Not really,” I said. “Spring break, but that doesn’t count.”
“Tourism is tourism,” said Sandro, laughing. “But I’m from Mexico City. A highly underrated place.”
“If it’s such a magical place, then why do so many Mexicans want to come to the U.S.?” I was aware that my question sounded ignorant, but I didn’t know how else to bring up immigration, besides idiotically.
Sandro smiled and took a swig of his beer. “Oh, you want to get deep, do you?” he said, laughing. He didn’t seem cagey or even offended. Instead, he gave me a speech about family connections and job opportunities, and while he said he sympathized with the border crossers, he didn’t say anything scandalous. “In case you’re wondering, I’m here legally,” he added, winking at me. I melted and quickly asked him about college instead of sliding down the counter to rip off his pants.
Sandro told me what a shock it was to move to Texas when he was eighteen, how jarring it was to go to school with fifty thousand people.
“But then I met Olivia and things got much better,” he explained. “She was beautiful, so different from anyone I knew at home and just very opinionated and motivated. A little like she is now, actually.”
Gross. That’s not what Olivia was like. She was a lot opinionated and motivated and unfaithful.
“Are you married?” he asked me after he jumped down from the counter and grabbed two more beers out of the fridge.
“Me? No, no, not close at all,” I said nervously. “I’m dating someone, I guess, but, nothing very serious.”
He pushed a lime wedge into my second beer with his thumb and handed it to me. When I grabbed it, he didn’t let go and I was left grasping his hand while he grinned. We stayed like that for what felt like minutes, until I pulled the beer away and he jumped back on the counter.
“You’re very quirky, you know. It’s pretty adorable,” he said, before taking a swig.
I was quirky? Quirky? Wasn’t that how you described girls with funky glasses and thunder thighs? I didn’t want to be quirky. I wanted to be seductive and mysterious. Everyone always called Payton seductive and mysterious. Even when she was sixteen. I was twenty-eight and I was still quirky.
“So, what was it you were going to say about Olivia?” said Sandro, scooting over to where I was sitting. “Some workplace gossip?”
“Well, kind of,” I said, my heart beating faster. Could I really do this? Was I really going to spill my story and ruin my chances of pole-vaulting to the top of the List just so I could make out with Sandro? And who knew if he would even lunge at me with an open mouth. Maybe hearing the worst news of his life wouldn’t inspire a make out session.
But I had confirmed what I wanted to confirm. He didn’t know about Olivia and Stanton. I was pretty sure of that. And now I had the chance to tell him.
But instead of continuing, I leaned into him and put my face up to his. I looked him in the eyes, closed mine, and fell closer. We were kissing. His lips were on mine, and his hands were on my back. I felt every inch of him against me. His breath, his body, the scruff of his stubbly face. I was completely wrapped up in his arms. He held on to me tightly. His hands moved up and down my back; the right one was in my hair again. We kissed harder, faster, he pulled me in even closer . . .
And then, suddenly, it stopped. He pushed me away from him and dropped his hands to his sides.
“What are you doing?” he said. “You kissed me. Jesus! Why did you kiss me?” And before I had a chance to answer, he shook his head and started walking toward the living room. “You can’t be here,” he said firmly. “I’m married. Very married. And you know my wife.”
“You . . . you! You called me adorable. You held my hand. And the other night at the restaurant, you ran your fingers through my hair!”
“I shouldn’t have done that and I’m sorry,” said Sandro, pacing nervously. “But I’m married. To your colleague!”
But she’s cheating on you.
Now I was absolutely sure that he had no idea what his wife was doing. He wouldn’t be reacting this way if he did. I wanted to blow up a photo of Olivia and the senator cavorting naked. What would he say then? Would he pull me back into his arms and kiss me like that again?
“I’m sorry,” I said, angry and more embarrassed than I had ever been in my life. I felt like I was standing naked in front of him with “I love you Sandro” tattooed across my chest. “I’m so sorry. You gave me signals; I thought you wanted that. I’m sorry,” I said, hesitating in the doorway. But he shut the green door so quickly that it almost clipped my heels.
I ran past the closed church, wishing it were open, rounded the corner, and headed down P Street toward the circle. Couples holding hands stepped to the side for me; young women just getting out of work pretended not to notice my red puffy face and I tried to keep myself from turning into a pathetic puddle of tears.
I slipped into the Kramerbooks store on the edge of the circle and sat down at a bar stool in the adjacent restaurant. I motioned to the bartender for a cup of coffee and let the steaming liquid burn every inch of the inside of my mouth. I didn’t deserve to have the lingering taste of Sandro’s tongue on my palate. He had tasted incredible. Like mint gum and espresso. But I wasn’t allowed to have that. I wasn’t allowed to have him. And if I kept up my acts of idiocy, I probably wouldn’t have a story, either, because Olivia would cremate me with a Bic lighter.
I picked up my phone and called Elsa. She answered quickly, sounding out of breath.
“Elsa, please don’t analyze the question I’m about to ask you. Would you say that I’m of sound mind? I mean, I haven’t done too many stupid things in my life, have I?”
“Sure you have,” Elsa said, huffing and puffing. She explained that she was on a treadmill at the Ritz-Carlton gym.
“I’ve never been arrested, committed tax fraud, or slept with a married man,” I said. But I had kissed one. I had just kissed a married man. He was partially to blame, but still. I was a worthless individual.
“Well, let’s think back on your history of colorful mistakes,” said Elsa while her feet smacked the rubber treadmill track. “You nearly drowned while skinny-dipping, you called your mother and said you were going to die the first time you took ecstasy, you lost Wellesley student council president to a girl with green hair, and you jumped off your barn roof with nothing but a pillowcase as a parachute because Payton told you to. And . . . oh! You slept with that frat guy just to make him stop talking.”
Elsa was right. I was not of sound mind. I was a true idiot. No wonder I had just thrown myself at Sandro. An entire life history of poor decisions had led me to his perfectly shaped mouth.
When Elsa asked if I needed her to come pick me up, because I sounded “a touch upset,” I said no. I was afraid I’d crumble under the soothing hand of friendship and tell her everything, and I still couldn’t confide in anyone who lived in the Northern Hemisphere.
I stayed in Kramerbooks for two more hours, drinking so much coffee that I went from petrified and repentant to paranoid, shaky, petrified, and repentant.
When I got home, I showered, brushed my teeth three times, and got ready to not sleep a wink because of the caffeine. I did not pull up the video of Sandro, but when my phone rang and I saw that it was James, not Sandro or his enraged wife, I answered.
James was a perfectly charming thirty-three-year-old man who had set new standards for chivalry every time we were together. I should have thrown myself at him. He would love me despite my clear shortcomings, and he wouldn’t have to cheat on his wife to do so. But I wasn’t there. I was completely torn up with stupid schoolgirl emotions for Sandro.
So when James asked me if he could see me again soon, told me that he hadn’t stopped thinking about that night in the car, I had no choice but to say no.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said honestly.
“You don’t?” he said, take
n aback. “Do you feel strange about what happened? Because that doesn’t have to happen again.”
Really? The man would forgo sex and still hang out with me? He was a saint. A young Republican saint.
“Of course I would like it to happen again,” he clarified. “It was amazing. A little rushed, I admit, but that was my fault.”
I assured him that our backseat copulating had been delightful.
“But if you’re not ready, not comfortable, we don’t have to. We can wait. I just like you. I miss you and want to see you again, but I’m beginning to think you don’t agree.”
“It’s not that,” I said. “That was great. You are great.”
“Okay,” he said, hesitating. “I’m great, but you don’t want to go out with me again.”
“I think I’m in love with someone else,” I said flatly.
The gushing stopped right there.
“James?” I asked after a long, awkward silence.
“You slept with me while debating whether you’re in love with someone else? That’s pretty despicable.”
It certainly was. My voice quivered, and his rose in anger. Finally he promised not to bother me anymore and hung up the phone.
I went to the bathroom and washed my face, desperately trying to soap away tears and humiliation. I looked at myself in the mirror. I had no idea how I had allowed just eight months at a Washington job to transform me into a terrible person.
CHAPTER 14
One thing the bigwigs at the Capitolist loved to do was talk about how awesome the Capitolist was. They sent out staff-wide emails that were grammatically correct love letters to themselves and saluted each other like they were all saving the world one very quickly written article at a time. But they were just warm-ups for the Capitolist’s fourth anniversary celebration. Forget the Fourth of July—the real red, white, and blue came out for the List’s oh so cleverly named “Read, White, and Blue” party held in the middle of June.