Cover Girl Confidential

by Beverly Bartlett

  At least that is what he said. But I wondered if he just didn’t feel comfortable talking about our relationship yet. We were, after all, at a tender stage. We flirted like mad on air, but privately did no more than enjoy platonic and low-calorie dinners together. I would tell myself the dinners meant nothing, but we were eating together at least five nights a week. The staff at our favorite place, Emilio’s Café, would save a table for us near the back. (Not that they really had to work hard to save it, as we always ate at 4:30 PM. Hughes was embarrassed by this, because he thought it sounded positively Midwestern. But when you’ve been up since 3 AM, 4:30 PM counts as a late dinner.)

  We dined together even as our agents and publicists were setting us up on fantastic dates with hot young stars. I might be photographed on the arm of Orlando or Derek Jeter or that guy from the new show about ghosts, but Hughes and I kept having dinner together. Hughes might be linked to any of a series of scandalously young women—including a minor British princess or two—but we kept having dinner together. I was spotted dancing with Ty Pennington. Hughes was photographed holding hands with Kristen Bell and, to the delight of those fans rooting for him to be gay, holding a door open for Carson Kressley at a fashion show. But every worknight, or technically afternoon, we ate together at Emilio’s.

  The day LHJ came out, Hughes could talk about nothing other than Baxter’s comment—which is saying something, given the president’s remark. I should not have been surprised, though. I know he feels strongly about his first name. He hates it when people drop the s, so Hewey would naturally irritate him even more.

  “It’s just laziness,” Hughes said. “It’s as if Baxter can’t be bothered to pronounce my whole name.”

  I nodded sympathetically, although I didn’t really see his point. Hewey has more syllables than Hughes. So wouldn’t it take more effort to pronounce, not less?

  Besides, I don’t agree that nicknames are about laziness. Perhaps it’s because Slater Countians are big nicknamers, generally. I grew up with that. I understand it. My old classmates were forever calling me Addy, and when that “Hey Mickey” song came out in 1982, well, suddenly that was me, too. “Oh Mickey, you’re so fine.” It still makes me smile.

  I liked it that Baxter called me Ada. I found it endearing. Although Ada doesn’t even count as a nickname for me. It was my original name, the one that my parents and brother still use for me—the one I always assumed my husband would use as well. But I didn’t want to get into all that with Hughes, especially since I assumed his real concern was the more pertinent one—Baxter dissing our relationship. It upset me, too.

  So I just sprinkled more vinegar on my field greens and sighed in a vaguely supportive way.

  Hughes wasn’t looking at me. He was just aggressively picking at his hydroponic Bibb salad with lemon-infused salmon, which I noticed was loaded with dressing.

  “You know, that’s what’s wrong with America,” he continued, jabbing his fork at me for emphasis. “Laziness.”

  I could see that he was pretty riled up about this. He usually considers fork pointing vulgar. (Miss Liberty agrees.) Hughes launched into a full-blown Baxter impersonation.

  “Hey, Hewey,” Hughes said, shrugging in an Eeyore-esque way that he thought was a close approximation of Baxter’s casual weariness. “Hey, Ada. What’s up? Got anything in common?

  “I mean seriously,” Hughes concluded, back in his own voice.

  I smiled. See? He did notice the don’t-have-a-thing-in-common line. It did bother him.

  “Aren’t you irritated?” he asked. (Apparently smiling had been the wrong move.)

  “Oh, you know.” I waved my hand in a way that suggested just a little. “My mother calls me Ada,” I said. “So I’m used to it.”

  Hughes swallowed hard several times as he processed this. His eyes made an aha expression as he finally figured it out. He took another bite of buttermilk dressing with a bit of carrot in it. “Yeah, well, my mom sometimes calls me her little Pooh-bear. Doesn’t mean I want Baxter to!”

  I felt a surge of affection for Hughes. He always put on a show of superiority. (Well, it’s not a show, really. He is the most well-dressed, well-connected, well-educated, well-spoken man I have ever met.) But I think he feels threatened by people like Baxter and me. I suppose that’s the curse of being Hughes, when you think about it. He’s praised over and over for his sense of style and his fashion risk taking. But then he wears a lavender (excuse me, periwinkle) tie on television and loses his job. Women swoon over him for being so sensitive and sophisticated, but then get bent out of shape to see that he spends more on shoes than they do. Or that he knows more about Danish fashion.

  Don’t get me wrong. Hughes enjoys being more suave—more dashing and dapper—than the rest of us. But I think he understood that there is a fine line for celebrities—especially male ones. You must be better than everyone else, but not that much better.

  Just that morning, there had been an on-air “incident” illustrating this problem. It came during a conversation about my Vanity Fair cover shot. You know, the one with the cotton balls. (When in doubt, Cal said more than once that month, talk about the cotton balls.)

  Baxter had obliged with jokes—asking for swabs to clean his map and so forth—but he had, until that morning, pretended not to have actually seen the cover. It was part of his Cal-mandated shtick. This cover may have been the talk of the country, but Baxter was too busy tracking the weather to actually check it out.

  But that morning he finished up his weather report, then turned to Hughes and me and acknowledged “finally” seeing me in the grocery line. “I was there picking up bread and milk—you know, preparing for the winter storms.” He smiled slyly. (Baxter puzzled me. I could never tell how much of his act was real.) “And there, between the Farmer’s Almanac and Organic Gardening, was Addison in this . . . this . . . this . . .”

  He didn’t come up with a word, but gestured in a way that suggested something light and fluffy and small.

  “You know,” he said, with mock amazement. “I’d heard about it, but actually seeing it? I have to say: Wow.”

  I obliged with a blush.

  “My blood,” Baxter continued, “ran cold.” And then he started whistling “Centerfold” by the J. Giles Band.

  I laughed. That was the cutest thing Baxter had ever said on air. It cracked me up. But Hughes just sat there primly, looking confused. “?‘Centerfold,’?” I said. “You know, the song about the guy who finds his high school crush in a girlie magazine.”

  Hughes looked blank and somewhat uncomfortable.

  “Oh, come on, Hughes,” I said. Baxter and I sang a few verses.

  “Ah well,” Hughes said. “I can see that it’s quite on point.”

  “You never heard the song ‘Centerfold’?” Baxter asked. “What did kids in your middle school listen to? Classical music?”

  “Of course not,” he said, bristling. “We were into ska.”

  Baxter rolled his eyes.

  “Oh, you were not,” I said, sure that he was mistaken. “Not in middle school. Ska made its comeback in the nineties.”

  Hughes gave me a withering look. “Maybe in Nebraska.” He glanced at Baxter. “Or California.”

  “Well,” I said, with mock outrage.

  “Well,” said Baxter, with outrage that was not quite so clearly mock.

  See, Hughes was smart enough to know those “common man” touches of Baxter’s—his off-the-rack clothes, his nicknames, his weary bemusement about topics Hughes considered vitally important (celebrity gossip, fashion, the geopolitical implications of the latest Schwarzenegger film, that kind of thing)—were dangerous. Not dangerous in the normal sense of the word, but in the sense of “Who’s the most popular guy on It’s Morning Now?”

  Suddenly, sitting there in the restaurant, Hughes looked, to me, fragile. He also looked to be taking solace in an overly generous portion of croutons—or, rather, what the menu called “herb-basted, dried whole wheat crumbs.
” Poor Hewey, I thought.

  Hughes did not need to feel threatened as far as I was concerned. Baxter’s common touches did not bother me, but they also did not impress me. I didn’t want a common guy. Common guys are, well, common. You can find one anywhere. But how was Hughes supposed to know I felt that way?

  I vowed to back Hughes up on this, to prove whose side I was on. I would not answer to Ada, I would not chuckle about ’80s rock hits, and I would not even speak to Baxter the next day—other than on the air. I would have to speak to him on air to remain professional. Hughes would understand that. And I supposed I would have to engage in the minimal conversation needed to appear polite during meetings around the office. If I didn’t speak at all, that would create an awkward scene. (Miss Liberty was very much against scenes.)

  I would be civil, but there would be no more idle gossip between Baxter and me. I wouldn’t ask about the weather or complain about the coffee. I would not even ask his opinion about whether my teacup matched my suit. (I love the Kate Spade Rutherford Circle pattern, but I find the green a very difficult shade to match.)

  I would not even say yes when Baxter asked if he could fetch the news stories I sent to the printer. (I always made copies of the best pop-culture reports each morning so that I could keep them in a folder on the coffee table and study them during commercial breaks or, truthfully, the weather reports.) In fact, I thought, that would be a good way to rack up a few more steps on my pedometer. Every little bit helped!

  I imagined with satisfaction that Baxter would poke his head into my office and offer to stop by the printer for me—it was on his way to the coffee machine. But I would say No, no, I’ll get them myself.

  I was wondering if I should tell Hughes about my plan for Baxter when my cell phone broke into song, embarrassing me. (Miss Liberty did not address cell phones, needless to say. But I’m quite sure she would not approve of them interrupting dinner.)

  I dug my phone out to quickly silence it, but out of habit glanced at the caller ID. It said: “White House.” I furrowed my brow, made a motion of apology to Hughes—who had started studying some art over my shoulder anyway—and said, “Hello?”

  “White House operator. May I speak to Addison McGhee?”

  “This is she,” I said, fiddling nervously with my fork. I mouthed White House to Hughes, who marked his surprise by sitting up even straighter than usual, something I would not have thought possible if I’d not seen it with my own eyes.

  “Yes, Ms. McGhee, please hold for the president.”

  I fumbled for a pen in my purse, grabbed a tissue, then a gum wrapper, and finally the wine list from Hughes’s side of the table. I had no idea what was coming, but a good journalist has a pen in her hand and paper at her disposal when she talks to the president.

  “Addison, Addison, Addison,” the familiar voice said in his best just-folks accent. “Great little show you’ve got. The senator and I watch it every morning now, every single morning.”

  “I’m flattered, Mr. President,” I said. (I wrote “great little show” on the wine list.)

  Hughes grew another quarter inch at the words “Mr. President.”

  “It’s on so early,” I added.

  “Yes, well, we don’t always catch the beginning . . .” The president’s voice trailed off. “Though I do like hearing you say ‘Wake up, honey.’”

  I’m ashamed to admit that I giggled at that. I mean, really. Giggling to the president? Especially after he’d insulted Hughes! Still, I wasn’t sure what else I should do. Oblige him with a wake up, honey? Giggling seemed as good a move as any. He apparently agreed because he moved on without comment.

  “So Mag and I—I mean, the senator and I—are having a little barbecue on Friday. Very casual, last-minute sort of thing. Telephone invites only. The etiquette experts are having fits. But I say if you can’t call your friends up and say come on over for a burger, what’s the point of being president?”

  Was this a joke? First of all, it was hardly barbecue weather. It was the middle of winter. I glanced out the window and saw that, just as Baxter had predicted, there were flurries.

  More to the point, I was not—by any stretch—a friend of the president. My four-minute interview with him before the wedding was the only contact I’d ever had with him, and his clumsy attempts to compliment me had always seemed more grating than anything. And did I mention that he’d insulted Hughes? I’m not even much of a fan of the president’s politics, truth be told. But of course I never said so on the show.

  I looked around the room. Could I be on Punk’d? (I’d suspected Ashton was out to get me ever since I went to a housewarming for him and Demi and we got into a debate about whether corn produced in Nebraska really was sweeter than that grown in his native Iowa.)

  I couldn’t think of a polite way to ask if this was a joke, so I decided to focus on the more obvious issue. “Barbecue?” I asked.

  “Indoor barbecue, of course,” the president said quickly. “Taste of summer in the winter. That kind of thing.”

  “Oh,” I said. I glanced at Hughes and then said, “Ah.”

  “You know, Addison,” the president continued. He paused. “You don’t mind if I call you Addison, do you?”

  “Of course not, Mr. President.”

  “You know, Addison, I thought your role on ER was groundbreaking for women.”

  “Really?” I said. I’d never heard that before. I think the word I had heard the most was disgraceful. Although that may have just been from my mother.

  “Oh yes,” he said. “It was inspiring to see a woman who wasn’t hemmed in by society’s sexual double standards, a woman who enjoyed sex as much as a man.”

  “Ah,” I said. I was at a bit of a loss. I looked around the room again for the hidden camera. “Well,” I said, “it was an interesting role.”

  “And that gauze bikini . . .” The president’s voice trailed off, but then he suddenly found it again. “Yes, interesting.”

  I wondered if someone had just entered the room.

  “So,” said the president. “Bring that guy you’re dating—Baxter, isn’t it?”

  I hesitated, looked across the table, simply froze. I could not, in good faith, say No, no, I’m dating Hughes. Because at that point, I was not at all sure that I was. Just friendly co-workers eating dinner together every single night of the workweek, that’s all we were. At the same time, Hughes was staring at me, hanging on every word of this phone call, so I couldn’t very well say: I’m not dating anyone. Because, well, I wasn’t sure that I wasn’t.

  And did this mean that the president had misunderstood the question that LHJ put to him? Did he know which of the male co-hosts was Baxter and which was Hughes? Should I try in some way to correct him?

  I swallowed again.

  “Baxter is a good friend,” I said, going with the safest option. “And I’ll be happy to ask him if he’s free to join me.”

  Hughes’s eyebrows shot up at that.

  I smiled weakly, being at a loss for any appropriate, silent expression. Not that I would have done much better if I’d been free to speak.

  “Friend,” the president said. “Gotcha. Well, we’ll see you both Friday at eight. I’ll put someone on with the security details.”

  He did so, and after I got the detailed instructions from the Secret Service, I clicked off and laid the phone down gently on the table. Hughes was watching me with stunned interest.

  “That was the president,” I said.

  Hughes stared at me, raised an eyebrow again. “I gathered.”

  “He wants Baxter and me to come over for a barbecue Friday.”

  Hughes took a long sip, dare I say, a swig of wine.

  “Baxter and you,” he said finally.

  I shrugged. Leaned forward. “Do you think this is some sort of joke?”

  Hughes smiled then in a familiar way. I think he appreciated my recognition of how odd it was. That the president would call me, rather than the child of a former chief
justice, that the president suggested bringing Baxter rather than the man I flirted with every day in front of a nation of viewers. That the phone call had happened at all, frankly.

  “No, no,” he said. “I mean . . .” His voice trailed off. “Did it sound like him?”

  I nodded. “It did.”

  “You’re a star, honey,” Hughes said. (And don’t think I didn’t notice the honey.) “People in power love stars.”

  “Yes, well . . .” There were a lot of ellipses in this conversation. “But Baxter and me? Why just the two of us?”

  Hughes shrugged. He had his game face on now, I guess. “Oh, you know. The president probably hasn’t gotten over my dad’s vote on that constitutional crisis back in the eighties. For a guy who wasn’t even in office at the time, he seemed to take that awfully personally.”

  (That was true. The president had mentioned Hughes’s dad several times in his campaign, calling him “Ol’ Sinister Sinclair” as often as not.)

  Hughes took another bite of salad. “That’s probably what his comment in the magazine was about, too. Man enough? Hrrmph. He just feels threatened by anyone with a sense of style.”

  “Well,” I said again, and then paused awkwardly. “I suppose I’d better call Baxter.”

  “By all means,” Hughes said. And then he excused himself to the men’s room, a decent thing to do, allowing Baxter and me to golly and gee-whiz ourselves through the conversation without feeling uncomfortable about Hughes’s uninvited presence listening to the whole thing. (Baxter gollied and gee-whizzed so much that he absolutely forgot to be grumpy. I still intended to be cold to Baxter, but this did not seem the right time to start.)

  The next morning, Baxter and I were barely able to focus on the show—as we went on and on about why the president would have invited us. (I did not share with Baxter the president’s incorrect assessment of our relationship.) And we further went on about what we should wear. The president had classified this as a casual, almost impromptu event, but we wondered if White House casual was the same as regular casual. I assumed that for Baxter the entire conversation was academic, because I thought it went without saying that he would wear one of his seersucker suits and his most patriotic bow tie—a star-spangled blue number. But I saw my decision, by contrast, as deeply, personally, exceptionally important. It was, I felt, a decision that would determine my entire future. And I guess in a way it did.