Eighteen Acres: A Novel (33 page)

“I’m sorry I missed the event last night,” Melanie said.

“You earned a night off. I heard you had a few cocktails,” Charlotte said, raising an eyebrow.

“Yes, a few too many,” Melanie said, rubbing her head.

“Want some Aleve?” Charlotte asked.

“I’ve taken five since I woke up.”

“Good. Have some coffee. Somehow, the advance guys got Starbucks to open early for us,” Charlotte said.

Melanie was always amazed by Charlotte’s wonder at occurrences like this. She refilled her cup.

“Is everything OK?” Charlotte asked.

“Yes. Why?” Melanie asked.

“You seem a little too calm. It’s not like you,” Charlotte said.

“I got an update from Tara’s personal assistant, and apparently your running mate’s skirt comes within inches of her knees and her bra isn’t showing, so I feel good today. Let’s go do this,” Melanie said, grinning at Charlotte. Charlotte stifled a laugh and nodded at her Secret Service agent, who also appeared to be stifling a snicker as he opened the door.

Tara was waiting for them in the hallway outside Charlotte’s suite. “Good morning,” Tara chirped.

If she’d heard Melanie’s crack about her outfit, she didn’t let on. She was wearing a bright pink suit that was at best a half-size too small for her, but at least it was longer than the skirts she usually wore. The blouse underneath was straining at her chest, but it was buttoned up over her cleavage, and her bra wasn’t showing. Melanie winked at Tara’s personal assistant, who smiled nervously and shrugged her shoulders.

“Good morning, Tara. You look lovely today. What are you hearing?” Charlotte asked.

Tara gave Charlotte a rambling report about all the people she’d heard from since Charlotte last saw her seven hours earlier. Tara’s friend in Denver had e-mailed to say she liked Charlotte’s speech
about national service. Tara’s hairdresser in Albany had suggested that Charlotte wear her hair down more often. Her former pollster had seen some promising poll numbers in New Jersey and New York, and her deputy in the attorney general’s office had a suggestion about a political ad Charlotte and Tara could run about crime.

“Isn’t this great information, Melanie?” Charlotte said, smiling at Melanie.

“Fantastic. It’s like a real-world focus group,” Melanie said with a laugh.

They piled into the limo, and Tara and Ralph kept interrupting each other to share their latest ideas for the final days of the campaign. Melanie could see that Charlotte was getting dizzy trying to follow the conversation. Melanie caught Charlotte’s eye and smiled. She raised her eyebrows and looked out the window. Charlotte laughed a little, and soon Melanie was laughing, too. By the time Tara and Ralph noticed that Charlotte wasn’t paying attention to them anymore, it was too late. Charlotte and Melanie were laughing so uncontrollably they were crying. Melanie took a sip of water, and before she could swallow it, she was hit by a giggling fit that caused the water to fly out of her nose. At this, Charlotte came undone and started taking deep breaths and wiping tears from her face.

“Ignore us. I think we’re a little punch-drunk,” Charlotte said to a mystified Ralph and Tara.

“Actually, I might still be technically drunk-drunk,” Melanie said, causing Charlotte to laugh even harder.

The two of them had barely recovered when the limo pulled up to the next event. They stepped out of the car and stood by the limo together.

“Do you believe it’s over in less than a week?” Charlotte said to Melanie.

“Thank God,” Melanie said.

“I’m with you. I don’t even remember when I was that excited to be out here,” Charlotte said, watching Tara as she signed autographs and took photos with the supporters who’d gathered backstage.

“I don’t think you were ever quite that excited,” Melanie said. “I mean, that is not normal, but it
is
impressive.”

“You’re right,” Charlotte said, squeezing her arm. “We’re going to be able to relax in a second term, Mel, you’ll see. It will be so much better. No pressure, no drama.”

Melanie nodded and smiled at her, but at that moment, they both knew that it wouldn’t happen. Their relationship had come full circle. They stood there, next to the limo, not as a president and her chief of staff but as two friends who’d been to hell and back.

“Go on, we’ll talk after the event,” Melanie said.

Charlotte was too intuitive to miss the significance of the moment. “Melanie, we’ll find a place where you can be your own boss. No Ralph, no seven-thirty senior staff meetings. We’ll find something cushy and wonderful,” Charlotte whispered.

Melanie’s eyes were starting to tear up, and she didn’t want Charlotte to get emotional before the rally. “We’ll figure it out. I’m not going anywhere,” she said, smiling.

The advance woman led Charlotte to the place backstage where she’d hold until she was announced. With the music blaring and the crowd roaring, Charlotte took the stage. Melanie stood off to the side watching. Tears streamed down her face when the crowd erupted in a five-minute standing ovation for Charlotte after she ticked off her administration’s accomplishments in fighting terrorism. Charlotte caught Melanie’s eye a couple of times and smiled. Melanie kept clapping and tried to wipe her tears when Charlotte wasn’t looking.

Toward the end of the speech, Melanie looked down at her BlackBerry. Brian had e-mailed. “How are you feeling this morning?” he wrote.

She looked for him on the press platform at the back of the room. He was looking right at her and waved when she spotted him.

She wrote back: “I owe you for last night. Please let me take you to dinner to make up for it.”

“No way,” he replied.

“Am I that unforgivable, or is a meal insufficient penance?” she wrote.

“If you’re serious, meet me at DCA at nine
A.M.
the morning after the election,” he wrote.

She didn’t write back right away.

“P.S. Bring a passport and a bathing suit,” he wrote.

She smiled. “Deal,” she wrote.

Dale

It wasn’t glamorous, but Dale found comfort in the rigors of her new routine. She woke before sunrise for her morning live shots and compiled reports for the noon, five, and six
P.M.
newscasts. She stayed up—no matter the time zone—for a live shot for the station’s eleven
P.M.
newscast. Her forced exile from network news had renewed her appreciation for the basics. She took pleasure in the writing, reporting, and tracking of her packages and pushed out of her mind the indignity of doing it for a local station again. The bleakness of doing nothing while the campaign neared its dramatic end would have been more than she could take.

But covering the campaign for a San Francisco station was like stepping back in time. Instead of covering the alleged infighting between the president’s chief of staff and her top political advisor, Dale was assigned a feature story on the campaign’s bag handler. He grew up in Marin County and graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in political science. After the convention, he drove to Washington, D.C., and waited outside the White House until a staffer came out to talk to him about volunteering for the campaign. He’d been awarded a full-time position traveling on Tara Meyers’s plane and delivering the senior staff’s luggage to their rooms when they arrived in each new city.

The differences between working for a local affiliate and working
for the network didn’t stop with the stories she was assigned to cover. While the national press corps enjoyed hot breakfasts at the hotels where the president and Tara spent the night, the locals were “prepositioned” for the day’s major speech the night before. Many nights, Dale didn’t even sleep in the same city as the candidate.

Dale was relieved to travel separately from her former colleagues. Most of them still felt awkward around her. Brian was the one exception, and the two of them met for dinner when they were in the same city. Dale and Peter had barely spoken since she’d left San Francisco the week before. He sent flowers to her hotel room a couple of times and left her supportive voice-mails and texts, but they’d mostly avoided each other. She hated herself for hurting him, but she was also angry at him for making her feel there was something wrong with her for wanting to work so badly.

As usual, she found her professional responsibilities easier to master than her personal ones. The station was thrilled with her and had already asked to speak to her about being a full-time correspondent after the election.

Dale was so absorbed in updating her script for the next newscast that she hadn’t noticed that the vice-presidential nominee and her entire entourage had arrived. She looked up from her laptop and watched the aides place Tara’s remarks on the podium and check the sound system. The usual lineup of local elected officials stood in formation at the side of the stage for the “pre-program.”

“This seat taken?” she heard. Ralph had plopped down in the folding chair next to her.

“Hi, Ralph. How’s it going? Are you slumming, or is the national press being mean to you?” she teased.

She’d always had a decent rapport with Ralph. He was always helpful when she went through phases of being shut out by Melanie, and even when he couldn’t speak freely, he was good about waving her away from bad information.

“Dale, Dale, Dale. Do you know what day it is?” he asked, leaning back and revealing a large, round belly that was straining the button on his pants.

Dale looked away from his midsection. “No, but I’m guessing
you’re about to tell me,” she said, her eyes following the action on the stage.

“The White House wants to soften Tara’s image a little bit. They think she’s too feisty up there on the stump. The criticism is bullshit. I’m sure it comes from Melanie, who would hate anything Tara did up there because she can’t stand her. I mean, can you believe that it took a Democrat to fire up our base?”

“You want me to help you soften Tara Meyers?” she asked.

“No. I want you to interview her. I can’t pick from the sharks over there—they’ll go crazy if I pick one network over the other. I know you were supposed to get the first interview the night before she was announced, and I respect you for letting your new White House guy do it, but I think you and Tara would hit it off,” he said. “She likes you,” he added. “She admires the hell out of you for getting back out here.”

“What’s the hitch?” Dale asked.

“No hitch. No ground rules. I’ve only got twenty minutes, but you can ask her whatever you want.”

“I need thirty minutes,” Dale bargained.

“Twenty-five.”

“Twenty five plus a walk-and-talk,” she insisted.

“Done,” he said. “I’ll have one of the press advance folks call you with the time and place. We’ll do it later today or first thing tomorrow.”

“Thanks, Ralph,” she said.

“Welcome back.” He smiled.

The press staff arranged for Dale to interview Tara that night in Albuquerque. Dale worked up a list of questions and sent them to her news director. He added questions about gay marriage and global warming. Minutes before she was supposed to begin the interview, Peter called.

“Hey there,” she said.

“How are you?” he asked. He sounded far away.

“Good—about to interview Tara Meyers,” she boasted.

“Nice,” he said.

“So, how are you?” she asked.

“Good. Everything here is good.”

“I miss you,” she said.

“I miss you, too.”

She felt regret wash over her when she heard the sadness in his voice. “Can I call you after the interview?” she asked.

“Sure. I’ll talk to you later,” he said.

Dale hung up just as Tara entered the room.

“Good evening,” Tara said. She wore tight jeans and Uggs paired with a tight black jacket with a yellow silk tank top underneath. “We’re just filming from the waist up, right?” she asked, winking at the cameramen.

“Sure, no problem,” Dale said.

Throughout the interview, Tara gave crisp, rehearsed answers and refused Dale’s invitations to make news. Dale decided to try a new tactic.

“Let me switch topics, Madam Attorney General, and ask you what you think of Charlotte Kramer personally. In what ways are you similar, and in what ways are you different, from a style perspective and a substantive one?” Dale asked.

“That’s a great question, Dale, and one no one has asked me yet. Let’s see. I think the fact that we’re both juggling a lot of different roles has made us both aware of how our decisions affect different groups of people. And I think that we’ve both taken a more pragmatic approach to things. We care more about how things work than we do about politics or ideology,” she said, smiling at the camera and then looking back at Dale.

“And how are you different?” Dale asked, looking down at her notepad.

“I don’t know just yet, but I’d say that one difference is our focus. She has been governing on a national stage, and I’ve been working on issues affecting the great state of New York,” Tara said.

“There’s a lot of grumbling about the White House trying to rein you in and being overcontrolling. To what extent do you feel controlled by the White House?” Dale asked.

Tara shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “I don’t feel controlled at all. And I’ll tell you this much, I’m the one who stands before tens of thousands of screaming fans and gets them fired up for Charlotte Kramer. I’m the one they tune in to see, and I’m the one who turned the conversation toward the future.”

Dale didn’t look up from her notebook, a tactic she’d learned during a brief stint covering Congress. Members of Congress wanted to be liked so desperately that if you didn’t look at them, they would continue talking until you offered some visual cue of approval like a smile or a nod. Dale kept staring at the questions she’d scribbled on her notepad.

“And I know that the president’s team has been in Washington a long time, but all the wisdom in America does not reside in Washington, D.C. If there’s a meaningful way that we’re different, it’s that I get my advice from ordinary folks, and she turns to Washington insiders,” Tara said.

Dale looked up. “Thank you for your time today, Madam Attorney General,” she said, trying not to betray her excitement about evoking such a frank rebuke of Melanie from Tara. Maybe Ms. Meyers wasn’t as ready as she thought she was for the national spotlight.