Her phone rang and she glanced at the screen which may as well have been screaming the word MOM. She willed the phone to stop but it turned a deaf ear and hummed right along. As she watched the voice mail arrive, Natalie waited for the flood of texts.
MOM: I heard you were involved in a shooting. Are you alive?
MOM: I’m very worried. Don’t ignore me.
With a slow exhale, she started typing.
NATALIE: Hi, Mom. I’ve passed away and I’m texting from the great beyond. It’s okay, though, I’m happy here.
MOM: Don’t be glib about this. I don’t know what I would do if you died a week before the wedding.
Pulse flaring, Natalie imagined her mother’s outrage if she were forced to postpone her honeymoon for something as inconvenient as her child’s funeral.
Don’t take your mother’s bait, said her dad’s voice in her head.
She glanced over to the bedside table where she’d put the two little blue pills Matt had handed her. The Xanax seemed to beckon. She was starting to think that if she had many more days like today she could seriously crack up, possibly on air. Considering that prospect, maybe taking a pill would be the responsible choice. Maybe Xanax—like fake eyelashes and The Treatment—was just another necessary compromise for the job.
The phone vibrated and Natalie ignored it. Her mother would have to find someone else to bother for now. The phone vibrated again. And again. She let out an angry exhale and glared at the screen.
JAMES: Hi there.
JAMES: I’ve been watching your network.
Her heart leaped. James. Sweet James!
JAMES: Hope you don’t mind my saying this. On behalf of all men, I apologize for the naked guy.
Natalie’s gloom instantly lifted. She’d forgotten there was something to look forward to. She pushed herself up on her elbows, beaming at her phone.
NATALIE: At ATN we’re dedicated to exposing the naked truth.
JAMES: Stripping the story bare?
NATALIE: Yes, bringing our viewers true transparency.
JAMES: Does that mean you’re going to reveal all?
NATALIE: Not without dinner first.
JAMES: Then it’s a good thing I got us a reservation at a great place downtown. 7:30 p.m. Work for you?
Natalie’s breath caught. The date. It was tonight? She stared at the phone, frozen. You’ve screwed this up, too. The one nice thing and you botched it. She started typing, wishing she could give a different response.
NATALIE: I’m so sorry. I completely messed up. I’m stuck in Miami waiting to get our next assignment and not sure if we’re flying back to DC tonight. Would you be willing to reschedule?
She stared at the flashing cursor on her phone, damning a world in which she had to cancel dinner with a hot, age-appropriate cartographer to (possibly) dodge advances from her married fiftysomething boss. As she waited for James’s reply, her mind did a monologue of his thoughts. How rude. She’s a flake. She’s too self-obsessed to remember a date. She’s not worth the trouble. Her hair smells funny.
The Xanax caught her eye.
One Xanax can’t hurt.
She palmed one of the little blue pills and, before she could have second thoughts, downed it with water from a bottle by her bed. Feeling very grown up, she lay back on the pillow and waited for it to kick in.
It still hadn’t taken effect when the phone vibrated. Reaching for it, Natalie realized she’d been holding her breath.
JAMES: You really have a crazy job. How about Friday?
He’s not giving up! Natalie felt a dark cloud lift and was about to type Yes! when she remembered that Karima’s cocktail party was Friday night. She couldn’t miss it.
NATALIE: I’d love to see you Friday. I have to go to a cocktail party that night. It might be an interesting scene. Want to come to the party and get dinner after?
His reply arrived fast.
JAMES: I’d be honored to be your plus one.
JAMES: Does the ATN dress code require men to be shirtless? Not to brag but I think I can give this McChesty a run for his money.
Natalie broke out in a grin.
NATALIE: I’d like to be the judge of that.
JAMES: Deal. See you Friday.
Staring at the text, Natalie felt a calm wash over her. Maybe it was James or maybe the Xanax was doing its trick, but suddenly her body felt suffused with a cottony lightness. Let’s get some sleep, she thought.
* * *
She woke up to the sight of Matt and Dasha staring down at her from the end of her bed.
“How many Xanax you give her?” Dasha asked, studying Natalie with concern.
“Not that much,” said Matt. “She’s a total lightweight.”
Natalie was staring up at them, bleary-eyed, wondering if they were apparitions. “What’s happening?” Natalie mumbled.
“We’ve been trying your cell. You’ve been dead asleep. Management gave us the key,” Matt said dismissively.
“Why’d they give you the key?” Natalie murmured, still foggy.
“The Chief is sending us to North Carolina,” Matt announced. “Guess your dinner’s off. Flight’s in two hours.”
It was like a thunderclap. Natalie jerked upright and reached for her iPhone. Scrolling, she found an officious email from the Chief’s assistant explaining that the boss’s wife and children had surprised him in Miami so they’d have to organize a meal for another time. Thank you for understanding.
Hallelujah! Dodged that bullet! She wanted to leap across the room and hug Matt for delivering the news. Only his back was to her and he was leaning over the hotel room refrigerator jimmying open the door. “You didn’t get it unlocked? You’re such an amateur!”
“What are you doing?” asked Natalie, gratitude replaced by Xanax-moderated irritation. “Leave the minibar alone. They’ll charge us and then ATN will charge me.”
“You don’t have any Funyuns.”
“What kind of minibar has Funyuns?”
“Ax!” Dasha nearly barked. “No time for this. Chief have assignment. You will be in story more. More action adventure.” She added forbiddingly, “He wants you in field.”
In her Xanax haze, Natalie thought Dasha’s words sounded ominous and she suddenly saw herself standing alone in a field—an actual field, like something out of Children of the Corn.
“What does that mean?” she asked warily.
“In the field,” corrected Matt. “He’s sending us to OpSec Solutions.”
“What’s—?” she started.
“OpSec is private security, ex-special forces. Experts in hostage and ransom.”
“I know these men,” Dasha elaborated. “Helmand Province massacre was very bad. But mostly they are okay.”
Concerned, Natalie looked to Matt for reassurance.
“The boss wants to play up the mystery of the disappearance of FLOTUS.” Matt started imitating the Chief’s voice. “What if FLOTUS has been kidnapped? Let’s look at what happens if she’s held hostage and needs a rescue.”
“Has she been kidnapped?” Natalie asked, certain she’d missed a key development.
“No!” Matt said, exasperated. “No one knows where she is. But the boss thinks it’s a good narrative. Great characters. Real drama. Yada yada.”
She squinted at him. “Shouldn’t we be trying to figure out where FLOTUS really is, at least why she’s left?” Freed of her dinner trap, she felt invigorated. “Isn’t that the story we should be on? Or figuring out why Rigo and the Lystras are creating all this trouble?”
Matt flashed her a look of utter impatience.
“Okay. Okay.” Natalie relented. “So he wants us to dramatize a fake kidnapping?”
“Yes,” Matt said. “And you are doing it in a tank top.”
19
Anita Shrugg
ed
Anita Crusoe stopped her hike and cast her eyes up the hill. It was a day of glittering sunshine and she marveled at the sight: blue sky, no clouds, a mountain alive with the sounds of spring coming to life.
She should be enjoying this, she knew. Holed up in the mountains with no commitments and all the time in the world to think. If only she could have calmed her mind. It was so noisy—replaying it all. Their history. Her blindness. Patrick’s empty promises.
How had she not seen it from the start?
Her early adulthood had been messy and uncertain and required constant vigilance, so it made sense, she reasoned, that she’d seek out the opposite in a husband. He was cool and contained and as rational and predictable as the laws of classical physics. She appreciated his logical approach to the world. He gathered data, analyzed circumstances before forming an opinion. Once formed, his confidence in his own correctness was almost awe-inspiring. He was the only politician she’d ever known who was free of bombast or hyperbole.
She’d met her husband at one of the excruciating dinners she was expected to attend with university donors. It wasn’t lost on her that she was included in these meals far more often than the others in her PhD program. She had no illusions it was because of her fine engineering skills. Inevitably she would be seated next to a wealthy older donor who’d bang on about his philanthropy or his tennis game, then confess that he’d heard she was once Miss Venezuela. How delightful! She’d sleepwalk through the dinners smiling, prompting, and pretending not to notice the way their gaze kept falling on her chest, or how they’d confide that their marriages were loveless, their bodies in need of attention. “How long will you be in the country?” they’d want to know.
She became expert at the delicate art of dodging the advances without scaring away the donor. After all, she was at the university on a grant, in the US on a visa. Both could be revoked. Enduring mawkish, dirty old men for a few hours over dinner each month seemed a tolerable price to pay to continue her work.
Patrick had been different. Substantive, intense. Looking back, she now saw that she’d mistaken his lack of humor for sincerity, maybe even integrity. She’d met plenty of wealthy men, men who could have provided her the security and stability she craved, but she could never imagine giving herself to the others. In Patrick, she saw a sense of purpose. He’d reaped billions extracting oil, gas, and minerals from Latin America; he succeeded where many others had failed. “I won’t pretend it was charity work. I was there to make a profit, and many people profited,” he’d said with unexpected candor. But he maintained that he always wanted to give something back.
“I create value and promote values,” he’d explained that night, as he told her about the schools and hospitals he’d built across Latin America.
Later it would become his campaign message. “Building Value, Strengthening Our Values. The American Way.”
Now it seemed so empty. So dishonest.
“If you think you can rebuild without private investment, you’ve got your head up your ass,” he’d said after the salad was served.
“I beg your pardon?” she’d replied, amused.
“I looked into your research. No matter how low cost you make the infrastructure rebuild you’re proposing, no matter how promising Venezuela’s push to ‘democracy’—” he used air quotes around the word “—there is no way you can turn your country around without private corporate buy in.”
She’d disagreed vehemently, but was dazzled by his knowledge, taken by his brisk questioning.
By dessert he’d made an offer. If she’d join him for dinner the following night, he’d consider funding her research. To her surprise, she’d said yes. On their third date, he’d flown her to rural Colombia to give her a tour of the hospital he’d built there, his commitment to giving back to the communities where he made his fortune. “I do as I say. Building value, and values,” he said.
That day trip had slipped into a weekend and within three months they were engaged. They married quickly; it was the logical way to speed her application for citizenship. Then he’d entered the race for governor and she’d put her research on hold. She was needed on the campaign trail. Later she delayed her return to school because as Colorado’s First Lady, there were ribbon cuttings and working groups and endless interviews. She finally withdrew from the PhD program altogether when Patrick’s presidential campaign began. Life on the road was too demanding.
“I need you,” he’d said early on. And from him, it was better than I love you. “We are great together,” he’d insisted with a fervor she believed was reserved only for her. It meant he would reach for her hand under the table at campaign rallies where no one could see. It meant that he would show up three or even five minutes late to meetings just so he could kiss her one more time. It meant that she alone could make him laugh when he didn’t mean to, she alone could coax from him the sudden explosions of heat and passion that had surprised him and dazzled her. It meant she was his weakness and he was her strength. Being needed by a man who was so fiercely independent felt like power and a guarantee of stability.
That was before the White House.
She and Patrick had made a deal. If he won the presidency, he’d make life better for her people. There was a new democracy in Venezuela, a president committed to human rights. She told herself that as First Lady of the United States, she could do far more to help Venezuelans than she could as a PhD student in engineering. Patrick had promised her that if he won, he’d ease sanctions on her country, make it possible for the economy to strengthen and democracy to grow.
She laughed at the memory. His self-righteousness, her naïveté.
And the world thinks I’m the one betraying this marriage? What a joke.
Anita took a deep breath, savoring the taste of the wet spring air with its earthy, cleansing scent. She’d been walking for a good thirty minutes and was starting to feel her blood flow. The terrain here was untouched except for a single line of footprints ahead. Usually her detail didn’t bother her. They had a job to do, she was used to it.
Today for some reason their presence was enraging. Was it really necessary to have snipers ahead and armed agents behind while they were in the middle of nowhere? Wasn’t it possible for her to have the illusion of privacy here? The sense of being a lone explorer? The whole point of getting away from the White House was getting away—leaving the trappings of the presidency behind. She might as well go surrender herself at a prison.
Childish. I’m being childish, she scolded herself. The team was giving her as much space as they could, more than they were supposed to. She knew that. What if some lone wolf lunatic was hiding in the woods waiting to assassinate her?
“Ma’am?” It was Beth, the head of her security detail, from behind her. “If you wouldn’t mind, ma’am, I’d suggest we return to the house. It is beginning to get dark. Makes the team nervous.”
Anita nodded. “Ten more minutes,” she said.
She closed her eyes and tipped her head back and slowly breathed in three more lungfuls of the crisp, tingling air. Silently she dared any snipers to take a shot. Go on, hit me, she challenged.
Not a one. Too bad. Would have saved everyone a lot of trouble.
THE EARLYBIRD™/ WEDNESDAY / 6:46 A.M.
THE E-NEWSLETTER TRUSTED BY WASHINGTON'S POLITICAL ELITE
Good morning, EarlyBirders™. Here are the morning’s need-to-know stories:
WHITE HOUSE MYSTERY: One story will dominate the day. WHERE IS THE FIRST LADY?
CRUSOE SHOCK: FLOTUS hasn’t been seen with POTUS since the Fashion Fights Fascism gala honoring Tory Burch ten days ago. Time to ask the obvious: IS FLOTUS LEAVING POTUS?
VENEZUELA PRAYS: Makeshift shrines are popping up across Venezuela. In FLOTUS’s hometown of Maracaibo, hundreds hold vigil praying for her safety.
EarlyTipsters SHARE THEIR THEORIES ABOUT FLOTUS: She could b
e sick with cancer. Recovering from plastic surgery. On a sensitive diplomatic mission. Helping a loved one through a tragedy. EarlyFact: No president has ever gotten divorced while in office!
Spotted: Pentagon officials seen entering Colombian embassy. If they’re negotiating safe passage for Rigo, why isn’t State Department present? No comment from Foggy Bottom.
**EarlySponsor™: GlobalCom’s QuickLaw™ International. From Tricky International Partnerships to Quickie Divorces, Our Global Network of Lawyers Can Help You.**
20
Manufacturing Content
Wedged in a middle seat on board a flight back to DC, Natalie was sitting with her eyes closed trying to deep breathe. Her piece with the OpSec guys was scheduled to air at the top of the hour and she was expecting the worst.
As soon as they’d finished the shoot, Matt had hustled them into the rental car insisting it was time to get to the airport. “But what about the script?” she’d asked naively. She wanted to write the script and oversee the edit.
You know at heart I’m a stairs person, part of her protested.
Her input wasn’t needed, said Matt. The script and edit had been left “in the trusted hands of the network,” a phrase that had caused her to start hyperventilating. “This is good news,” he continued. “You don’t have to bother with the work part, like Ryan.”
You’re an elevator person now, she thought, and hated herself for it.
Eyes still closed, she felt something knocking on her skull.
“Hello? I know you’re in there.” It was Matt, from the seat behind her.
She opened her eyes and checked her watch. Two more minutes till the piece aired. “I feel sick,” Natalie said.
“At least get to the bathroom first,” Matt said, prompting the woman next to Natalie to scoot slightly away.
“It was a figure of speech,” she assured the woman, who still looked suspicious.
Savage News Page 18