Our Short History

by Lauren Grodstein

  Upon my graduation, one of my poli-sci professors hooked me up with a barely paying job at Clinton’s DC campaign office, where I spent most of my time sending faxes (do they still have faxes in the future?) and ordering pizza. I lived with three other girls in a small house on Avenue U, near the Metro stop, and spent about fifteen hours a day at the Clinton office feeling enormously pleased with myself for working such an important job. I remember calling my parents back on Long Island on Sundays and acting as if I was in charge of Clinton’s entire campaign, and them being quite impressed and bragging to their friends.

  What was nice about that campaign—before Citizens United, before super PACs and superconsultants—was that there was a feeling of real camaraderie, and a feeling of belief in our candidate. It’s harder and harder to find that kind of belief in a national candidate these days. We’ve become jaded by the internet and by the things we now know and by Clinton himself, who, regardless of the fact that nobody seemed to care much (when he left office after his second term, his approvals were at 66 percent), did introduce blow jobs into the national conversation.

  (Sorry I just mentioned blow jobs.)

  (Jesus Christ, what did Ace do?)

  After Clinton won (the most incredible night, and I’ll never forget the way we gathered around the television and cried, all of us, as he gave his midnight speech) a contact from the campaign found me a job as an assistant at a political consulting firm, a small one that did regional work in Maryland and Virginia. It was called Harley Political Consulting, and it was there I met another barely paid assistant, a Georgetown grad named Chuck, who was both a devout Catholic and a homosexual and made up for his work in liberal causes by attending mass every Sunday and donating a small portion of his tiny earnings to the church.

  (I had a pretty big crush on Chuck back then. I liked boys who were self-abnegating and well dressed, and I didn’t find out he was gay for quite some time. I just thought he didn’t really like me.)

  I stayed at Harley for five years, at which point I did the math and realized I could make more money if I went out on my own—although I was not even quite twenty-nine yet, I was very self-assured. I knew that I could live on next to nothing, since that’s how I’d lived my entire life, and that I could work harder than anybody else I knew, since I’d done that too.

  I asked Chuck if he wanted to come with me. Chuck was sick of DC and had lots of family money; he agreed to my offer without taking nearly enough time to mull it over. We decided we’d be called Neulander Davis, because the firm was my idea. We also decided we’d be roommates, and we rented a very tiny apartment in Queens and used the kitchen as our initial headquarters. We would divide the place along the usual lines for a campaign consulting shop: Chuck would take on long-term projects for nonprofits and unions while I’d hold the hands of whatever candidates we took on. Meanwhile, his parents gave us the money we needed for things like letterhead and an accountant and direct-mail lists, and within two years Neulander Davis was a blooming company with a reputation for playing hardball. I traveled up and down the East Coast managing candidates, while Chuck met the man who would become his life’s partner, adopted a child, and formed very friendly relations with the teacher’s union, Greenpeace, and half a dozen other companies that hired us to promote their agendas.

  My relationship with Chuck was a bit funny: although I’d known him almost half my life, even though we’d lived together for a while, we’d never been super close. I’d never met his parents. I’d never met his siblings. The most I saw of his husband or their kids was on their annual holiday card, or the rare occasion when we decided it was time we really did get together and went out for family pizzas. But this happened maybe every eighteen months. Otherwise, Chuck and I were like the two axles of a car: when we were both rolling we made the thing go, but we never had to touch each other, or even speak.

  Which is all a long way of saying I was surprised when I got to the office for a long overdue visit to find that Chuck had ordered in breakfast from Murray’s, and Starbucks coffee. “Welcome back, Karen,” he said, and we hugged, which was another thing we did rarely. The air-conditioning was, as usual for the building, turned up way too high; I pulled a cardigan from the closet and checked out my workspace: dusty-looking and empty. Well, I’d been working remotely lately. And of course I hadn’t been able to take on as many clients.

  But the rest of the place looked sharp and busy: lots of papers and folders lying around, a few new workspaces crammed into corners. We had taken our decorating cue from the bull pen Bloomberg used as New York’s mayor: open spaces jammed with desks, open lines of communication (via yelling across the room), and a fridge in the office kitchen filled with snacks. Although it was only seven thirty, a young woman I didn’t know followed me into the office, nodded at me, then sat down at a workspace and started to type away.

  “Chuck, who’s that?”

  “Nina,” Chuck said. “I hired her to help me with the clean energy ballot initiative, remember?”

  Had he told me about Nina or about the ballot initiative? I couldn’t remember and I was embarrassed I couldn’t remember. I was feeling tired and wanted to sit down, but I didn’t want to admit to feeling tired or needing to sit.

  “Nina,” Chuck said, “this is Karen.” Nina looked over at me and nodded. “Karen Neulander.”

  “Oh!” she said, and jumped up. “Oh! I didn’t realize—I mean I thought you weren’t coming back in for a while.” She came, shook my hand. She had long dark hair and lovely skin. She was maybe twenty-three. She would look good, I thought, on MSNBC: I used to look good myself when I was a guest on MSNBC. Maybe Chuck had mentioned her, or someone with a master’s degree in something who he was going to hire as a contract worker, or maybe part-time, or maybe full-time, I couldn’t think.

  I closed my eyes for a second longer than what probably seemed normal, perched on the edge of a desk. One of the lingering effects of chemo was that I still sometimes felt both forgetful and dizzy or, as Allie put it, elderly.

  “It’s nice to meet you,” I said to Nina after I opened my eyes. “Are you enjoying your work here?” Jesus, I sounded elderly.

  I saw Nina shoot what looked like a worried glance toward Chuck and wondered what on earth it was she had to be worried about—why would she worry?—and then she answered my questions and we chitchatted a little bit about the ballot initiative’s polling while I faked remembering what the hell the ballot initiative was, and then Chuck ushered me into the kitchen, where our Murray’s and our Starbucks was waiting. He had ordered me a skinny vanilla latte, which was what I used to drink before I got sick and my taste buds changed. I pretended to be grateful for the drink and the food.

  “She seems nice,” I said. “Is she smart?”

  Chuck stood and closed the kitchen door. “Very smart,” he said. “Very organized and creative too. I like her.”

  “Good,” I said. “I’m sorry I haven’t been able to be more involved in hiring,” I said. I tried to take a sip of the latte, but even the smell made me feel nauseated. I put it down, leaned my head against my hand. I hoped Chuck couldn’t tell just how worn out I was. I hadn’t told him I’d gotten out of the hospital four days ago or that even this morning I felt worried I wouldn’t be able to make the meeting, worried I was going to fall over or fall apart. Allie had to help me into the cab, and it took me way too long to get out. My abdomen was still bandaged. Tomorrow I was supposed to report back to Steiner at Sloan Kettering.

  “It’s fine. Obviously you’ve been dealing with a lot.”

  “I guess,” I said. “But at least the tumor seems to be behaving itself for now. I mean, it’s responding to the treatment. Well, it responded to the last treatment.”

  “Good,” Chuck said.

  “My team is optimistic.”

  “That’s great,” Chuck said with that note of sympathy and condescension I’d grown used to from doctors, and he reached out to pat my hand gently, awkwardly, and that’s when I r
ealized that Chuck had invited me here not to talk about business but to talk about me.

  “What’s going on?” I said, summoning my old ball buster voice. “Is there something I need to know about?”

  Chuck busied himself with a bagel, buttering it in his precise, counterclockwise way; I had eaten maybe one thousand bagels with him over the years and knew his procedure the way I knew how he signed his emails (“Best, Charles”). Chuck had the softening body of a married man in his forties, but his face was still handsome and his eyes were still gentle, and he still dressed very well. He had grown a little goatee to take some attention away from his bald spot, and started wearing glasses with interesting frames. And though I felt enormous affection for him, considering all we’d shared over the years, I also felt furious, because I knew he was about to betray me.

  “Chuck, what the hell.”

  “Karen—” He put down the bagel, put down his knife. For a moment he touched his hand to the top of my hand, the same spot where just the other day an IV had emerged. “I think we need to hire a new principal.”

  “We need to what?”

  “Look,” he said, “I’m not saying you shouldn’t work anymore, but we need reinforcements you’re not providing right now.”

  “Chuck, it’s not up to you whether I work or not.”

  “Right, but—” He managed to look me in the eye. “Karen, you know that recruiting clients was never really my bag. That was always what you brought to the table, but during the past several months—”

  “Did you just say your bag?”

  “—you have to admit you’ve been out of the office a lot, and we’re starting another election cycle, and there hasn’t been anyone around to bring in new clients or to work with the DSCC or the DCCC. I mean we have the ongoing stuff with the teacher’s union, but the coordinating committees are hiring again, and I don’t have anyone to talk to them. You know that’s not what I do . . .”

  “It’s what I do.”

  “Right,” Chuck said, looking relieved, as though his slow student was catching on.

  “So then why aren’t they calling me, Chuck? It’s not like I have to be in the office to be working—”

  “Right, I know,” he said. “But you’ve been so sick that I haven’t wanted to—”

  “Chuck, it’s not like I’m dying,” I said. We both let that hang in the air for a minute.

  He picked up his bagel and then put it back down. “Karen, this company needs more than you’re able to give.”

  “That’s not fair,” I said. “I know I’ve been sick, but I don’t think we need a new principal to take my place. You can’t penalize me because I’ve been sick, Chuck. You can’t try to force me out because I have health problems.”

  “Karen, I’m not forcing you anywhere. I’m just giving you the room you need to take care of yourself while our company continues to thrive.”

  Nice, Chuck. Make it like you’re doing this for me. “If you feel strongly about it, maybe we can hire a client management specialist or something—”

  “The thing is, though, without an active principal, I’m not sure we’re bringing in enough business. I mean we need another name to shore up our operations.”

  “This place is called Neulander Davis. Neulander. We can’t just bring in another name without calling this place something else. I’m the Neulander in Neulander Davis. This has been my shop for fifteen years—”

  “It’s been our shop,” Chuck said.

  I gritted my teeth, which hurt my jaw. The pain felt good. I gritted again.

  Chuck said, “I’m not telling you to leave.”

  “You can’t tell me to leave.”

  “But,” Chuck said, “I’m just saying that it’s clear you’re indisposed. The whole world knows you’re indisposed.”

  “The whole world, Chuck?”

  “We need someone who can do some of the high-energy work right now that you’re not able to do. We’ve gotten calls from the Sunday shows and I’ve got nobody right now. When the Anthony Weiner thing broke we had nobody to go on camera. We’re not keeping our name in the conversation.”

  “Jesus, I could have talked about Weiner,” I said.

  “You were in treatment, Karen. You didn’t have any hair. You couldn’t get out of bed.”

  “I have a fucking wig, Chuck—” I said, and then there was a knock on the door and lovely Nina walked in, smiled at us, pulled a Luna bar from a basket on the countertop and smiled again at us as she left. She must have heard everything we were saying. The walls in the office were paper thin.

  “Chuck, this is my company. This is my living!”

  “Nobody’s taking your living from you, Karen. But you’re no longer in any position to be the principal of the firm. You have to see that.”

  “My health insurance, Chuck, Jesus Christ! I need my health insurance!”

  “Karen, nobody’s firing you.”

  “You can’t fire me!” Dave, Chuck, all these men trying to take what was mine!

  “Karen, I need to hire someone and I need to do it soon.”

  “You need to?”

  “The firm needs to,” he said. “I’m setting up interviews with a few people,” Chuck said. “If you’d like to sit in on them—”

  “You cannot make these decisions unilaterally.”

  “We need to plan for the future.”

  “You think I’m not planning for the future?” Because I didn’t want lovely Nina to overhear, I lowered my voice but was still seething. “That’s all I’m doing! That’s all I do! I plan for my son’s future, I plan for my own future, I plan for my client’s future.”

  “The firm, Karen. I’m talking about the firm. At least till you get better.”

  “Fuck you. You know I’m not getting better.”

  We were quiet. The elevator clanged somewhere in the building’s depths.

  “And you should know I fucking hate lattes now.”

  Chuck nodded. “We can switch drinks if you want,” he said.

  I stood up, rubbed my eyes, wondered where I was going. My cell phone buzzed and I hoped it was Amani, but it was Allie, checking in the way she did in the morning, to tell me everything was fine. They were going to the park.

  I sat back down.

  “How’s Ace doing?” Chuck said tentatively.

  “He’s doing fine,” I said. “Because I’m his campaign manager.”

  “Of course,” he said. “I know.”

  We both stared miserably at the plate of bagels in between us. I don’t know why Chuck and I weren’t closer, why we’d never become better friends. I think there was always the fragility of political life between us, the fact that things could change on a dime: winds and fortunes and so forth. Or health. Paul Tsongas, the candidate I admired back in 1992, before I jumped on the Clinton bandwagon—Paul Tsongas lied about the recurrence of his cancer. He said, in 1992, that he’d been cancer-free since a bone marrow transplant in 1986. It came out later that the doctors had discovered more cancer in a lymph node in 1987. And then, soon after Clinton won the election, he announced that the cancer was back. And then he died five years later. He was a diminished man.

  Political winds, political fortune. Winds of War. Have you read that book, Jacob?

  “My name is on the lease of this place, Chuck,” I said. “So I’m going to stick around and do some work this morning. Are you okay with that?”

  Finally, Chuck had the manners to look ashamed of himself. “Of course,” he said.

  Sagging, I went to my computer and thought about calling Ace again, or Amani, but instead I wrote a few pages of this book—these pages, actually—and then I thought about the truth, which was that Ace didn’t really need me. He didn’t need me. My last client ever, and I was running the barest shell of a campaign, utterly hollow. He’d win by a landslide even without a campaign manager—that’s the way these elections went. And the rumors about Ace were just hearsay, because if there had been anything to them, I would have alre
ady known. So therefore, he didn’t need me. And Chuck didn’t need me. I had no work left. There was no longer any point. But just before I could jump out the window my phone rang: Ace’s office. Thank God.

  “You want to schedule a forum with Beverly Hernandez?” Amani said.

  “Amani, what have you been hearing about Ace’s extracurriculars? And where is he? And why won’t he call me back? We were supposed to have a meeting.”

  “I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” Amani said. “Right now he has most of October free.”

  “Where is he, Amani? I’ve heard some disturbing reports and I just need to make sure they’re not true.”

  “I’m supposed to speak to him later today—”

  “Amani—”

  “And I’ll have him call you. I’ll ask him about the meeting, and put the forum in tentatively for October 14. If that doesn’t work for the Hernandez campaign, let me know.”

  With that, we hung up. I felt dizzy and a little bit nauseated and was afraid, for the tiniest moment, that I might throw up on the floor. Jesus! To throw up on the floor in front of Chuck. I decided right then not to get too sentimental about leaving our crappy office in Chelsea—what was it anyway but some grimy carpeting and particleboard partitions?—and hobbled to the elevator to take a cab home. I’d be back when I felt better. I still had a campaign to run. As I left the office, Chuck tried to smile at me, but I did myself a favor and didn’t return it.