by Laura Hayden
That was also a feat her opponent, Charles Talbot, could never achieve—not only due to his ironclad stance on closed borders but because, even with coaching, he couldn’t speak Spanish, not even phonetically.
Talbot actually prided himself on writing his own speeches and made pointed and often insulting references to Emily’s many speechwriters. What he failed to realize was that Emily’s speeches might be written by some of the sharpest word slingers in the business—including a Pulitzer prize winner—but it was Emily’s pitch-perfect delivery of them that elevated those cleverly crafted words into oratorical splendor. And Emily made sure her policies and her politics were central in every speech she gave, no matter who wrote it. She was in charge of her presidential run, not the consultants and image burnishers who surrounded any serious candidate, and it showed in every word she spoke.
In fact, no other candidate—Republican, Democrat, or Independent; national or regional—could speak as eloquently or as effectively as Emily Benton. After all, it was in her blood. Emily came from a long line of silver-tongued politicos, living and dead.
They all had reason to be proud of her after this run through Dallas.
Kate consulted her laptop for the dozen or so evaluation reports, fed to her by junior staffers. “We got good reviews and good press from the Junior League appearance. They raised $125,000 for their community assistance fund and we had over two hundred new supporter sign-ups from the event, which sounds tame only until you consider that they represent some of the most influential women in the city.” She turned to Chip, whose milieu was the virtual campaign trail. “What sort of impact did you see online?”
He had his laptop open as well. “Besides the usual network and cable coverage, the in-depth releases were picked up in fourteen major online-only markets. We’ve seen almost two hundred new off-site blog references over the last eighteen hours and another 350 supporter sign-ups from the Dallas/Fort Worth area on the English site with almost a hundred new on-site blogs started. But that’s not all.” He paused for maximum effect. “We got 697 sign-ups on the Spanish site overnight. Of those sign-ups, almost two hundred requested and paid for campaign kits from the online store.”
Emily punched the armrest of her seat. “Now that, ladies and gentlemen, is the way to run a campaign. Remember, Kate, back in college, when we used to dream about making a White House run together, to bring the voice of women to the top spot in politics?”
“You bet,” Kate said, thinking of how young and naive they’d been. “We were going to save America, just the two of us.”
“Well, the day’s at hand. Now, let’s make sure every appearance I make has this sort of payback.” She turned to Kate. “You just earned that week off with good behavior, just in time for Christmas.”
Despite the sense of triumph, achievement, and momentum they attained from the postevent assessment, the three-word note she’d intercepted still continued to haunt Kate as they flew back to Reagan and then drove to the campaign headquarters. She decided that the distraction was understandable. As long as she didn’t allow it to derail her, she’d mitigated most of the damage.
She made herself take a calming breath. But it wasn’t until she stepped into her office and saw Buster the Wonder Dog waiting for her there that the ugly words faded from her memory. Kaleesa King, the staffer who always babysat Buster while Kate was on the road, had given him a bath and decked him out with a new bandanna embellished with the Benton campaign logo.
Kate sat on the floor of her office and allowed Buster to slobber all over her until he fell into her lap, an exhausted heap with the exception of the tip of his tail, which wiggled back and forth almost too fast to see.
She nuzzled his head. “You don’t know how much I missed you, Buster.”
His tail started a new oscillation.
She turned to his babysitter. “Was he really good?”
Kaleesa knelt beside them and patted Buster’s fuzzy snout. “He’s always good. But he always misses his momma something fierce. Don’t you, Buster-Boy? Gimme four.” She held out her hand and he lazily lifted his paw and dropped it into her palm.
Kate couldn’t help but grin. “Cool! A new trick. Gimme four, Buster.”
He stared at her, bedevilment in his eyes, staunchly refusing to move a muscle other than his perpetual tail motion.
“C’mon, Buster. Give me four.”
He continued to wag but otherwise stayed still.
“Please?”
Kaleesa leaned down and made eye contact with the dog. “Buster. Give her four.”
He eyed Kate, then Kaleesa; then with grave reluctance, he placed his paw in Kate’s outstretched hand.
“Good boy!” Kate reached over to her desk, pulled open the side drawer and fished around blindly until she found the jar of dog cookies. Buster jumped up in anticipation of the treat and proceeded to run himself through the various commands he knew—sit, sit up, lie down . . . hoping that one of them would result in the reward.
Kate held the treat up. “Give me four.” The dog clawed at her leg until she put her hand down low enough to accept his paw. “Good boy,” she said, feeding him and then stroking his clean fur. “Good Buster.”
Kate held out a twenty to the young woman, their usual fee for overnight dog-sitting services with pickup and drop. “Thanks so much for keeping him, Kaleesa. I always feel so bad when I have to leave without him, but knowing he’s with you helps me feel a little less guilty.”
As usual, the young woman hesitated but then took the money with a ready smile. “We really love having him around. He’s great with the kids.” She stooped to ruffle his ears. “And so well mannered. Right, Buster?” She fished a small calendar from her pocket. “Next week on Wednesday, right?”
Kate nodded. “Just the one night. Then, after that trip, he and I are headed to my parents’ house for Christmas. Mom and Dad have two cats that he loves to terrorize. It’s just not Christmas for me unless it’s accompanied by the sound of hissing cats and a crazy, howling dog.”
After saying their good-byes, Kaleesa left and Buster stood at the door, perplexed. After a moment, he let out a howl of what sounded like abandonment.
“Buster? What’s wrong? C’mere.”
The dog stood at the door, obviously pining for Kaleesa. He wants her. Not me. The revelation slammed into Kate, leaving her with a queasy feeling in her stomach, worse than hitting an air pocket at twenty thousand feet. Was Buster forgetting her and throwing his affections to the person who spent more time actually caring for him?
Kate remained on the floor in her office, trying to combat the sudden sense of doubt and fear that ran through her. Her brain insisted that, of course, the threat had been meant for Emily, the very public candidate, not her behind-the-scenes campaign manager whom few people recognized. And Buster was just an animal with a temporary sense of loyalty to the person who fed him last.
But it was her secret heart that worried the threat was real and Buster now preferred someone else over her.
Forever.
She felt a twinge of pain, low in her gut, and even as the first tear threatened to slide down her cheek, she smiled. Aha, she thought. She wasn’t losing it. Her tears were perfectly normal. PMS, she told herself. It’s nothing more than PMS. She scrambled to her feet, found her Palm Treo, and pulled up her calendar.
The dates coincided.
Hormones, not insanity.
A sense of relief washed over her. She opened the bottom desk drawer, pulled out her candy jar, and placed it next to the telephone. It was a visible warning to all who entered that the next few days might be a little rockier than usual, but that she was self-administering the best medicine she could find to counteract the symptoms of PMS. It was one of those situations where sharing her medication benefited everyone around her.
Chocolate for everybody!
She reached in and unwrapped a Hershey’s Kiss, and as she ate it, she felt some of the day’s tensions slide away. And then her cell
phone chirped that she’d received an incoming text message.
L. McCormick: NEWS!
Kate stared at the word on the screen. LuAnn McCormick only sent text messages when she couldn’t bring herself to speak face-to-face or ear to ear. A text message from her was never a good sign.
She dialed LuAnn’s cell and the young woman answered on the third ring.
And she had a ready complaint.
“Don’t call when I text you,” she whined. “You’re supposed to text me back.”
“I don’t like getting bad news via text. I want to hear either the sympathy or the sorrow in your voice,” Kate said.
“How do you know what I’ve got isn’t good?”
“You only text when it’s bad. So stop stalling. What’s going on?”
“Okay, okay.” The young woman drew in a deep breath. “My friend called.”
Kate sighed. Everybody was LuAnn’s friend. The young woman had an uncanny knack for charming every man she ever met, which in the District wasn’t an easy task. However, for whatever unfathomable reason, men would meet her, fall madly in love with her, and—for years following the meeting that had initially converted them to her minions—do anything she wanted. And yet she didn’t flirt, didn’t make untoward promises, and certainly didn’t deliver in a way that you’d think necessary to keep a platoon of men on the hook.
“Which friend, Lu?”
“Ricardo from data research.”
The sounds in the room swelled as Kate’s senses grew acute—the murmuring fountain on her credenza, the squeaky wheels of her desk chair. That’s what always happened when she prepared for bad news. Her eyesight sharpened. Hearing sharpened. And bad news? It had a bitter tang.
And bad news leaked from CNN by one of their prime data crunchers in the Washington bureau had the worst taste of all.
“The latest poll?”
“Yes,” LuAnn whispered as if worried about being overheard. When the girl swallowed hard, it was like the rumble of thunder in Kate’s ears. “You’ve dropped twelve points.”
Kate closed her eyes and drew in a sharp breath. They’d anticipated a small loss as the holidays drew near but not twelve percentage points. She glanced out the door at Emily, holding court among the staffers with her usual engaging smile, probably regaling them with tales of the current fashions in the Junior League set.
Emily wasn’t going to like this one bit, which meant that that cozy little domestic scene outside Kate’s office door was about to fall apart.
And the world as they knew it was going to collapse in on itself.
AS EXPECTED, their world imploded; their sense of accomplishment shattered into a million little pieces.
It was Kate’s job to reassemble those pieces into a viable and effective campaign plan. This time, despite Kate’s best efforts, the staffers hadn’t been quite so insulated from the fallout. Sure, they knew their candidate had feet of clay—all candidates did—but they’d never seen Emily in a full tirade, and Kate was bound and determined to limit their exposure.
After Emily’s initial outburst, Kate calmed her long enough to hustle her into her own office, where they could continue the explosion in private, behind heavily soundproofed walls. Kate had anticipated the eventual outing of her friend’s temper and had spent extra money to increase the insulation in Emily’s office, which muted her loud rants to a mild murmur.
Lesson one: Don’t get the candidate angry.
Lesson two: If she does blow a cork, soundproof rooms are important, as are shiny objects to distract her. But it was critical to make sure those shiny objects didn’t have any sharp edges or points.
To Emily’s credit, once she calmed down, she took the blame herself—for the drop in the polls and for her unseemly reaction.
“Sorry, Kate. I didn’t mean to let fly in front of the troops.”
“It’s understandable. I know to take what you scream with a grain of salt the size of a salt lick. But they haven’t learned that.”
“You did warn me it was too early to switch our attention to the other party, but I thought you were wrong.” Emily shook her head. “I should have listened to you.”
As much as Kate wanted to say it, I told you so was not and would never be the right response. Instead, Kate offered a better interpretation of the situation. “Look at it this way. No effort we made was wasted. Maybe a bit premature but not wasted.”
“True, but it also means we have to work twice as hard, twice as fast, to recover lost ground. Henderson can’t hold the party together against Talbot—he’s not strong enough. He’ll crumble like the sand castle he lives in. We have to regain that ground as soon as possible.”
Mark Henderson had many of the same qualities Emily did—he came from a political family with a long, successful history, had a circle of strong advisers guiding him, and possessed good looks and even better health. Their basic political views even paralleled each other.
Closely.
The biggest difference between the two of them was their gender. And that small genetic disparity had provided an easy detour around the electorate’s speed-bump reaction to the concept of a woman in the White House.
Have two candidates with similar politics?
Vote for the man!
Emily paced the room. “Forget Talbot for right now. We concentrate on Henderson.” She stopped suddenly. Then she stared at Kate. “Whatever ammunition you have on Talbot, I want twice that much on Henderson. Look in every shadow; track his every footstep. He can’t be as clean as he pretends—nobody is. Go back to his college days. We all slipped up in college, once or twice.”
Kate held her tongue. On a normal day, that would be her cue to remind Emily that they both screwed up far more than once or twice in college, but she knew this wasn’t the right time or place for such humor.
Emily continued, unaware of Kate’s restraint. “In any case, there’s got to be something out there that can expose his weaknesses and disrupt his campaign. Find it and bring it to me.”
She stalked toward the door and stopped, turning around. “Mark my words, Kate. If anyone is going to break the glass ceiling in the Oval Office, it’s going to be me. And after I make the history books for being the first female president, the next chapter will be about all the great things I did in office. And no one—not Henderson, not any other man—is going to stop me.”
She took a deep breath, opened the door, and made one of her miraculous emotional changes, joking with the aides and volunteers.
It wasn’t a mask; it was just how Emily worked through things—getting everything off her chest in a private powwow with Kate, where Emily could rant and rave but do no harm. Once the worst of the upset and shock bled away, she was back to normal, ready to cope and, better yet, succeed.
Dismissed, Kate returned to her office and stared at her computer screen. She could hear Emily giving the staffers assurances that she was fine, she’d just suffered a momentary upset.
Kate knew that Emily’s congenial side was firmly back in control. She’d apologize to the campaign workers, then either have pizza or pastries brought in as part of the apology or go to the kitchen herself and whip up a batch of cookies.
Yes, alert the media. The candidate could cook, thanks to her mother, who had tried to expose her only child to a world outside of politics, including a six-month stint at a Parisian gourmet cooking school as a teen. Emily’s mom had lost a husband to politics long before he’d been assassinated, and she’d had every intention of making sure her daughter wasn’t sucked into the family business.
Emily had returned from France with some basic cooking skills but also with even more determination to follow in her father’s political footsteps.
As far as Emily’s mother was concerned, the whole French excursion was a total bust. Even if Emily did learn to cook.
One of those lingering skills Emily had learned in that long ago summer was a particularly good cookie recipe that she’d worked to perfect. Sure, a pan full of c
hocolate chip cookies might not heal the world, but it would pacify a group of staffers and make them forget any concerns about the emotional status of their candidate.
It seemed trite and an obvious ploy, but Kate had seen it in action often enough to know it generally worked.
And it would work again.
Except on Kate.
Emily hadn’t actually apologized to Kate.
And Kate was the one who had to go digging for dirt on their opponent. She hated that part of her job. Given the guy’s squeaky clean surface reputation, it was going to take serious digging to rattle the skeletons in the closet. She always felt a bit dirty when she started the process. She knew that by judging others she was putting herself in a position to be judged. Never mind the Golden Rule. . . . Politics generally played by its own golden rule: do unto others as they would do unto you—but do it first.
She took no delight in finding anything awful on the other candidates. But typically, the depth and breadth of what she had found and would find always made it easier for her to place even more faith in Emily. Kate knew all of Emily’s deepest, darkest secrets. Compared to the other candidates of either party, Emily clearly stood above the rest.
“The cream of the scum,” her friend often joked.
But the more Kate learned about the others, the more strongly she was convinced that the country needed Emily.