by Karin Tanabe
“How’s your inbox, by the way?” asked Upton. I could feel dozens of reporters’ eyes on me as I sat in that office, just as I had since the story broke. It was the way I used to look at the people who had been in Upton’s office before me—with a mix of terror and envy.
“My inbox is overflowing with hate mail,” I replied.
“I thought it might be. We’ve been getting a lot of phone calls for you. Don’t worry. We’re just taking down names. You don’t have to talk to anyone. But if you get a death threat, let us know.”
A death threat? Fantastic. I needed to buy a semiautomatic for my purse.
“Think about what I said,” Upton reminded me. “I think you have the right personality to really fly here.”
I stood up to leave and said, “Some might say I already have.”
“Right,” said Upton. “That was a hell of a scoop.” He looked down at his desk. It was covered in papers and printed out emails and little notes on crumpled Post-its. With a sigh, he looked up again. “Can you close the door on your way out? I don’t want to hear the noise. The newsroom is still roaring because of you.”
It was silent as ever, but I smiled and walked out, gently shutting the thick glass door as I left.
When I went to the Style area, my desk looked like it belonged to someone else. There was a cardboard box on it that said “Julia” in black Sharpie filled with old newspapers and printouts and a few unopened packages addressed to me from PR flacks. Isabelle was on the Hill but Libby, Alison, and Julia were all sitting quietly, researching and writing articles. No one was on the phone or talking to each other. They had their pretty faces plastered to their computer screens and didn’t look up at me when I approached them. When I went to move the box to one side, Julia looked up and muttered, “Sorry. It was under my desk and bugging me so I put it on yours because I didn’t think you were sitting here anymore.”
“It’s fine!” I said, trying to be perky. I slid the box over and turned on my computer, my left elbow smacking into the cardboard.
I typed my very long password to relog into my computer and listened as Libby and Alison started quietly chatting. They were talking about a list of some sort. A guest list. A birthday. Crap. Alison’s birthday. I vaguely remembered getting an invite to it when I was busy doing all the TV hits. Had I RSVP’d? I didn’t think so. And I certainly hadn’t wished Alison a happy birthday.
I walked over to her desk and apologized. She pulled her legs under her chair, her pinstriped skirt tight over her thighs, and smiled at me. “It’s okay,” she said. “You were super busy. We all went to Café Milano. It was great. Lionel Richie was there and Julia, Isabelle, and Libby bought three bottles of Moët White Star. It’s my favorite.”
“Oh! That’s so cool. I’m really sorry I missed it. Can I take you out to dinner to make it up to you?” I asked.
Alison nodded unenthusiastically. “I’d really like that, thanks,” she said with her face turned the other way. No one had told me they had seen Lionel Richie. Or texted me to remind me about Alison’s birthday dinner. In fact, I hadn’t really talked to any of the Style girls since their phone calls the night the Olivia story broke.
I returned to my desk and typed in silence for ten minutes, looking for a short Style item, something I hadn’t been required to do since the Tuesday before the story broke.
“Have you written about Mitt Romney jogging in khakis and loafers?” I asked Julia. Without looking up from her monitor, she answered, “We broke that yesterday. Our photog snapped the picture.”
I apologized and kept looking for an item.
After I found something on Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s hair care regimen, wrote it up and sent it to Hardy to edit, I saw Upton walking down the hall. It was the very first time since I had been at the List that he had ever walked back expressly to talk to us.
But he wasn’t coming back to talk to us. He was coming back to talk to me.
“Adrienne,” he said, smoothing his hair back. “Chris Matthews wants us on Hardball tonight, together. Can you come? We can drive from my house after work. They’ll send us a car.” I nodded my assent and thanked him again for letting me continuously crash on his couch.
When Upton left, Julia smiled at me and said dryly, “You and Upton have gotten awfully chummy. Sounds like you’re in line to be the next Olivia Campo. Little Christine Lewis better watch out.”
“Well, I worked with him on the story. The Olivia story. So I guess it was inevitable.” I stopped and waited for Julia to respond but she didn’t.
“He’s a really great editor, but I guess most editors in chief are. I just . . . I’d never worked with him before. I’d barely spoken to him. But now that I know him a little better, I can honestly say that he’s a lot nicer than he seems.”
It was only after I fell silent that I realized none of the Style girls, my only good friends at the paper, had actually congratulated me on my scoop. They had called me the day of, shrieked about seeing Olivia naked, but what they most wanted to know was why I didn’t confide in them. It was a fair question. After Upton’s staff-wide email about the story I had gotten plenty of way-to-gos from my List colleagues, but not from my friends.
“So is it true you’re sleeping on his couch? That’s what he meant when he said you could go to the studio together, right?” asked Julia.
“Yup. I am. It’s kind of weird, I know, but with all these TV hits, I couldn’t do the commute back and forth to Middleburg. It’s just . . . I’m so tired. I don’t think I’ve ever been this run-down in my life.”
Julia turned away from her screen and looked at my face. I had bags under my eyes, I needed to get my highlights redone, and my lips were cracking from constantly reapplying heavy TV makeup.
“You do look terrible,” said Julia. “If you weren’t a Style girl, I’d have to make fun of you.” She smiled and I sat silent and ugly.
“It was a big story,” said Julia quietly, her head bent down at her screen. “All that research you dug up is crazy. You should be proud of yourself.”
I was. But it was clear that she and the other Style girls weren’t.
“Do you think I shouldn’t have written it?” I asked Julia. “Is that what’s wrong? Because you don’t seem to be that into my presence right now.”
Julia laughed like I had accused her of abandonment. “It’s not that,” she said. “Of course I’m glad you wrote it and I’m glad you’re here. We’re friends, aren’t we? Very good friends. You might say I’m your best friend at the paper,” she said to me levelly. “But you still chose not to tell me anything about your major scoop.”
“I didn’t tell anyone at the paper,” I protested. “I was afraid it would get out.”
“Listen, Adrienne. I don’t want to stomp all over your accomplishment. It’s just . . . you’ve been here long enough. You know what’s wrong with this place, but now you’re just happily feeding the fire. More than that, you are the fire. You just gave the List the biggest story in its history.”
Seeing my hurt face, Julia backtracked a little.
“Look, I’m in awe of what you did. It’s a huge deal. Everyone was saying Stanton would run for president the next cycle. He could have been elected even. And now look at his career. It’s amazing what you did, and don’t think I’m not proud of you. I’m just surprised you didn’t do it for someone else. We always talk about how much we hate this place, how they treat us like ditzes. The other reporters act like we got naked and screwed the big boss to get in here and don’t belong. That’s why we’re shoved all the way back here.” We both looked at the wide hallway separating us from the rest of the newsroom.
“Even Upton admitted to not reading our section,” she continued. “And you once said yourself that in all the months you’ve been here, Justin Cushing never even said hello to you. That’s not normal behavior. Other publications wouldn’t tolerate it, but here they do. So what do you do when you have the biggest story of the year sitting in your lap? You deliver
it directly to Upton. And at his house of all places. You could have used it to land a huge New York Times job. I mean, don’t you detest this place?”
I hadn’t even thought about selling the story to another paper. I would have had to quit the List and then I guess I could have dangled the story as bait and parlayed it into a spot at the Times, but it had never crossed my mind.
“You hate it, don’t you?” asked Julia again.
Did I hate the publication that had just helped slingshot my career higher than I could have alone? I didn’t. I recognized that there were some deep flaws in the system, but everyone who worked there knew that. We didn’t have shackles on our feet. We had great bylines and great titles and could leave if we wanted to, for, as Julia said, a huge job at the New York Times or somewhere else. But we didn’t. We stayed. Because, as Elsa had said so many months ago, the Capitolist was the place to be right now. I knew that, and Julia, as irate as she was, knew that, too.
When my article broke, I saw what the List could give me, instead of me just feeding the beast with nothing in return. I had been on every major television network, interviewed by dozens of other papers, and talked about like I was some sort of seasoned veteran. And it’s what I had wanted, but I wasn’t going to admit that to Julia.
“Listen. I think I’ve gotten fifteen hours of sleep this week. I’m not in great shape, and honestly, I really need my friends. I need you,” I said, hoping that my voice wouldn’t crack.
“You’ve barely spoken to us these past couple of days,” said Julia. “Look, it just won’t be the same anymore. You’re going to leave the Style section and join what they deem to be a far more important team. And let’s be honest, we’re the only ones who have ever been nice to you, until now.”
That was true. The “until now” part was also accurate.
When Isabelle came back to her desk, she slapped me on the back with just a little too much strength and said, “Good story. Amazing stuff. Who knew a Style girl had it in her.”
Before I could answer she was talking to Alison about going on a wine-tasting limo ride the first Saturday in August. Soon they all had their heads down again, pounding out short piece after short piece that Upton wouldn’t read.
After an hour searching Twitter and three calls to Congress, Libby stood up and rolled her head in a circle. “Argh, that should hold Hardy for about ten minutes.”
She looked at my exhausted, pathetic face and smiled.
“You look tired,” she said, throwing a Diet Red Bull in my general direction. I opened the can and drank the whole thing down.
Isabelle watched me. “Remember when I said it was possible to have lunch with Upton and not cry?”
I nodded.
“Well,” she said, turning back to look at her computer, “I was right. Not only can you have lunch with him without shedding a tear, you can also sleep over at his house.”
Julia laughed before shaking her head apologetically. “It’s just too weird.”
“It’s a bit traitorous, really,” Libby chimed in. “It’s almost like you’ve run off to work for Al Qaeda or something.”
Al Qaeda! She was equating me breaking news for our place of employment to committing war crimes against my own country?
“I’m kidding, Adrienne,” she said, walking over and touching my ghost-white cheek. “Lighten up.” She sat on my desk and flicked through my notepad full of scribble and Arizona addresses. “I think we’re all just surprised. You not only just kissed List editor ass and became one of the chosen ones, you also turned on a colleague. She’s horrible—trust me, there’s no love lost—but she still works here.”
“Worked here,” Julia corrected Libby, not bothering to look in my direction.
“Libby, she’s a colleague but not like you are,” I said, swallowing back tears. “She murdered Isabelle’s TV career, she did everything in her power to keep Mike from moving up on the White House beat, she told the higher-ups that Julia was a moron within only weeks of starting—she’s terrible. I only did exactly what she would have done.”
“Yeah,” said Alison from her desk. “But since when do you want to be like Olivia Campo?”
I excused myself, walked to the quiet area by the bank of elevators where I had wiped Isabelle’s tears so many months ago, and cried alone. No one came after me.
Later that day I watched Isabelle, Libby, and Alison stand up to walk to Starbucks together, and they didn’t pause at my desk. After a few more minutes, Julia got up to join them. I just sat and stared at my empty section, trying to cover the page alone. At 3 P.M., I sent Upton and Hardy an email saying I was working from home for the rest of the day, and, surprisingly, Upton wrote me back and told me to take the rest of the day off to prep for a few evening TV appearances. It was the first time I had ever left the newsroom to go home during daylight hours.
I called Payton as I was driving to Middleburg. I hadn’t slept in my own bed since the Friday before we flew to Arizona. She listened as I told her about the Style girls snubbing me. “Isabelle and all my friends rejected me for feeding the beast, and Upton called me ruthless,” I said.
“Ruthless, no. I wouldn’t call you ruthless. But I would call you smart. And hungry. More determined than I ever thought you could be.” She took my silence as a cue to keep talking. “As for the Style girls, maybe they’ve just been there for too long. They’ve seen too much and have lost perspective. If you had been there for three years rather than nine months, you might have handled things differently. Maybe you would have quit your job and taken the story elsewhere.”
No, I didn’t think so. I understood the Capitolist for what it was. But to Payton, I just said “maybe.”
“I’m proud of you,” she repeated. “There were times when I didn’t think you had the balls to go through with publishing the story and the attention it would bring you. But look at you. You just decapitated two people’s careers. Not bad for the little sister.”
I hung up the phone and drove toward the old gas station where James had surprised me and past Baker’s store, where I had first spotted Olivia. That all seemed so long ago. I thought of myself huddled in my car looking curiously at her as she leaned back on her expensive BMW in her red down coat. I knew nothing about Olivia then. I didn’t even know she was married. And now I had been in her home, had seen the house she grew up in, had kissed her husband. What if I hadn’t been restless that night? Would I ever have put the pieces of her affair with Stanton together? Call it luck, or fate, I was glad it had happened. And I was happy that after nine months of putting in my dues at the Capitolist, I was no longer the nervous girl afraid to get branded envelopes from the supply closet. Isabelle was right. I could have lunch with Upton without shedding a tear. I could also sit in his glass office and listen to him laud my abilities without feeling unworthy.
I drove slowly up to the gate, letting the sensors take a moment to register my car. It was the first time I had ever arrived home from the List during daylight hours. It was almost August now and everything moved slower. I loved the long summer days in Virginia, the way people lived outdoors and just relaxed, even me.
Three horses were grazing in the field behind the barn when I pulled up next to it. I got out of the car and walked over to the fence to call Jasper over. More interested in eating than in greeting me, he ignored my whistles and I gave up and turned the corner to climb up the barn stairs to my little refuge. My heels sunk into the worn wood and I pushed my weight against the unlocked door and smiled at the rows of family pictures on the wall and an old blanket in a pile on the floor. After being stuck in the city for a week sleeping on a couch, I was very happy to be home. I kicked off my shoes, changed into shorts and flip-flops, and collapsed on the sofa. I closed my eyes. The world was quiet and still, something I hadn’t felt in a long time.
I must have fallen asleep for a few minutes because when my BlackBerry rang, I was jolted awake, my neck cracking loudly as I straightened my head. I missed the call but it started
ringing again, right away. I looked down at the blocked number on the caller ID. Not many people called my work phone from blocked numbers except the White House. Suddenly reality came sprinting back. I still had a job. I couldn’t just spend my days napping now that I broke the Stanton story. I had to keep going, keep breaking news, writing bigger articles, and proving myself to be ruthless, just like Upton said. I picked up the phone and tried to sound like I hadn’t just woken up.
“Adrienne,” said a voice I instantly recognized. “I need to see you.”
CHAPTER 21
Sandro. I was listening to him breathe. I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to ask him a million questions, bury my face in his arms. But I could barely respond.
“Let’s meet at the Goodstone Inn,” he said after I managed a weak hello. “I’d like to see it. I’ve never been and clearly, I’ve been missing out.”
“You’re calling me because you want to see the hotel . . . ” I repeated softly.
“And because I want to talk. There’s a lot I have to say to you.”
A lot to say? He was going to leave her. I knew it. But the Goodstone? Could I really meet Sandro there? What was he going to do, walk around the Bull Barn screaming with rage while I twiddled my thumbs hoping for him to ravage me? The Goodstone was a bad idea. We needed to meet somewhere more neutral, like on my bed.
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea, Sandro,” I said hesitantly. “There’s just a lot of weird energy there—I don’t think that’s the best place for us to talk. But if you want to see Middleburg, you could come here. To my house.”
“Fine,” he said in a monotone voice. “I’ll see you in an hour. Text me your address.”
The phone went dead. An hour. He was going to be in my house—well, barn—in one hour. How was I going to take myself from looking like a bedraggled lunatic to a silver screen starlet in one hour? I texted him my address, casually mentioned that I happened to live on the second floor of the barn, not the really nice house next to it, ripped off my clothes, ran to my dresser, and grabbed my super-boosting water bra and a teeny pair of underwear that screamed “I’m here for the taking.” A quick shower, a cup of dry shampoo, a heavy spray of Insta-Tan, a mélange of three kinds of lip gloss, a set of twenty sit-ups, and a bath of organic perfume later and I looked nearly human. I wasn’t going to stop traffic but at least I wasn’t a lying adulteress like his wife.