The Hopefuls (12 page)

“So, anytime the President goes anywhere,” he started, “he meets with different political people. If he's going to Philly, then Ed Rendell will probably meet him at the airport. Things like that. So, I'm in charge of contacting those people, of figuring out who he should see in each city, and then setting it up. Does that make sense?”

I nodded, and he continued. “And then sometimes it's not politicians, sometimes it's celebrities that are coming to meet him in the photo line or attending an event. So I'm the contact for them, I facilitate that meeting.”

“And that's why Scarlett Johansson sends you texts?” I asked. This had happened while we were out to dinner not long ago, and Jimmy had left his phone on the table, so that we could all see when the name Scarlett popped up on his screen.

“Exactly,” he said. “That, and because I'm charming company.”

“Of course,” I said.

Through Matt, I knew that because Jimmy was Jimmy, he befriended almost every celebrity he met, would have drinks with them if they came to DC, offered them private West Wing tours. He showed up on the Instagrams of actresses, as they posed for selfies in front of the Rose Garden. Behind his back, all the people at work made fun of him a little bit, rolled their eyes as he held his phone and pretended to complain that another beautiful actress was texting him, that he'd been out for drinks with Bobby De Niro. But underneath it all was always, I think, a little current of jealousy.

Jimmy was often a ridiculous person, but that didn't stop us from wanting to hang out with him. He'd look at his reflection in the mirror, admire himself, striking dumb poses and saying, “Can you believe I'm this handsome?” When he walked into a party, he'd raise his hands and announce, “Hey-o! I'm here! The wait is over, everyone, Jimmy Dillon has arrived.” But to be fair, he also made everyone around him feel good—he was quick with compliments and conversation and (while I never would've said this to anyone because it sounded crazy) he had a nice energy about him.

He created a Wikipedia page for himself, complete with a head shot and a description of his career that made him sound incredibly successful, almost like he was just days away from running for president himself. His huge ego was made tolerable by his sense of humor, and even when you were rolling your eyes at him or in disbelief about something he said, it was hard to deny that there was something special about him. People wanted to be around him, I think, because it felt like he was going places.

In the meantime, Matt was getting frustrated with his job search, had been in constant contact with the Presidential Personnel Office, met people for drinks a few times a week to talk about different ideas, but still hadn't had a real interview or even figured out exactly what it was he wanted to do. All he knew was that he didn't want to be in the White House counsel's office anymore. And the contrast between his current job and Jimmy's didn't help—he was in an office all day while Jimmy was having drinks with famous people. It was just extra salt to rub in his wound.

“So, you like this job?” I asked Jimmy at the end of our lunch. “You're happy?”

He didn't even sound a little bit jokey as he said, “I feel like it's what I was born to do.”

That spring,
The New York Times Magazine
ran a story about all the young staffers working in the administration. The whole point of the article seemed to be, Look, our country is being run by children!

It wasn't breaking news by any means—actually it seemed about a year too late—but still, everyone was buzzing about it. The focus of the article was Benji, mostly because the reporter was a friend of his, was dating his roommate actually. She followed him around for a few days, at work and then at a party he hosted at the house in Logan Circle that he shared with three other young White House staffers. The theme of the party was “America,” which wasn't so much a theme as an excuse to make everyone dress up in American-flag-printed clothing. When the article came out, it was mentioned that a group of “higher-ranking” White House staff stopped by the party, and there was a half-page picture of Jimmy, wearing an American flag bandanna around his head, drinking a beer and standing next to Rahm Emanuel.

Jimmy pretended to be embarrassed, but was thrilled with the attention. “I didn't know I'd end up in the
Times
looking like a crazy person,” he said to us. But of course he knew that, it had been his whole reason for going. Somehow, he always managed to make it to the spotlight.

“This is exactly the kind of story we should've done,” Ellie said in the staff meeting that week. “We can't let the
Times
scoop us like this.” I almost burst out laughing at the fact that Ellie could compare DCLOVE to
The New York Times
with a straight face, but I looked down at my notebook and concentrated on doodling.

“We need to be edgier,” she went on, “we need to be ahead of the curve.” (Sometimes I imagined that Ellie spent her weekends watching marathons of movies that featured unrealistic journalists as characters—
The Devil Wears Prada, 13 Going on 30, The Paper
—and wrote down different ridiculous catchphrases to say at work.)

The takeaway from that meeting was that DCLOVE started running blind items about White House and Hill staffers. I'm not sure why Ellie thought this would bring us closer to
The New York Times,
but I didn't ask any questions. “I'm counting on you to bring us some good stuff,” she said to me after it was announced. “Make sure to use all your connections.”

Our first blind item at DCLOVE was this:

Which two White House staffers are secretly dating? One has to schedule herself into her wordy lover's life, and rumor has it they're keeping their relationship on the down low for reasons other than workplace decorum.

“This is mortifying,” I said, showing it to Matt. “It's like ‘Page Six' and Politico had a baby that's not quite right in the head.”

Matt just laughed. “They really think people will get into this, huh?”

“Ellie said she was so excited about the new section she couldn't sleep. She asked us all to pump our most ‘in the know' friends for information we could use.”

Matt looked nervous for a minute. “You're not going to repeat anything I tell you, are you?”

“No,” I said. “I'd never do that. And anyway, you're just not good at gossip. You know that, right?”

“I do,” he said. “And that's my burden to live with.”

A week or so later, this blind item ran:

Which talkative southern man is renowned for his amorous ways on campaign trails? No one is off-limits, not a Biden niece or a Gore daughter or even a close and personal friend of the Obamas. The number of campaign staffers that saw the inside of this cowboy's hotel rooms is “too high to count,” says our source. “It would be like trying to guess how many jelly beans are in the jar, how many stars are in the sky.”

I showed it to Matt that night. “Is this Jimmy?” I asked. Matt read it and laughed. “Jesus,” he said. “That is the dumbest thing I've ever read. Can they print this stuff? They're naming real people now.”

“I don't know,” I said. “Ellie doesn't seem worried about it at all.” I noticed he didn't answer my question.

“So is it?” I asked. “Do you think they're talking about Jimmy? Really? It's almost exactly what Ellie said about him before.”

Matt looked more serious for a minute. “I don't know,” he said. “Like I said, I've heard people joke about things, but, Beth? These are just rumors. That's the whole point of it.”

“I know,” I said. But it left me unsettled.

On the first truly warm Saturday of spring, we went to have afternoon drinks with Jimmy and Ash at American Ice, an outdoor bar near U Street that Jimmy loved because of its extensive whiskey menu. It was sunny and pleasant and felt great to be day-drinking outside for no real reason.

We'd only been there about an hour when Benji showed up with two of his roommates. “Oh, look who's here,” he said loudly. “My favorite old married couple.”

He was referring to Matt and Jimmy when he said this and it wasn't the first time I'd heard someone call them that. They were friendly with a large group, but I knew that people saw how tight the two of them were, sometimes felt left out of their friendship. “What are you two up to?” he asked. “Plotting to take over the world?”

“Always,” Jimmy said.

Benji turned to me. “Beth, I met your college roommate the other day.”

“Colleen?” I asked.

“That's the one. We were in Sidecar and she was there with a girl I used to know who works at Bloomberg now.”

“Funny,” I said. “How'd you guys put it together?”

“Oh, you know. I told her I worked at the White House and she asked if I knew Matt—or really what she said was ‘You must know my friend Dogpants.' ” He turned to give a wicked smile to Matt.

“Don't y'all just love that story?” Ash asked him. “It's the cutest New York love story I've ever heard.”

Matt sighed and put his arm around me. “I know. Imagine I'd just worn jeans that day. It's possible I wouldn't have ever caught this one's eye.”

We all laughed, but what I really felt was a sense of claustrophobia, something that had been happening more and more. It was like the city was getting smaller the longer we were there. It was incestuous, the way everyone knew everything about people. There was no such thing as a secret in this town, and I thought that if any of the rumors about Jimmy were true, it would only be a matter of time before Ash found out—or I found out and had to tell her.

Benji joined our table, leaving his other friends to go inside and get drinks. “So, is Alan on his way here?” I asked, half joking.

“I think he might actually meet us later,” Benji said. “And a few other people from work, too.”

“Great,” I said.

Ever since Matt had made the strange bedfellows comment about Benji and Alan, I couldn't stop thinking about their friendship. Was it real? Or was it more a marriage of convenience? They each got different things out of it, both benefited from the pairing, and sometimes I wondered if that was the only reason they were friends, if they even liked each other at all.

And I asked myself the same thing about Matt and Jimmy—Jimmy introduced Matt to people, made him more social, more fun. And Matt grounded Jimmy, gave him an air of gravitas. But that wasn't why they were friends, was it? Or at least, it wasn't the only reason. I watched them that day, Jimmy laughing loudly, smacking Matt on the back, my stomach twisting just a little.

A new spinning studio opened on Fourteenth Street and Ellie asked me to review it. The name was (no joke) the United States of Spinning. “It's brand-new,” Ellie told me. “Based only in DC.”

“I figured,” I said.

The walls of the studio were covered with pictures of all the presidents, and everything was red, white, and blue. The spinning shoes were white, the bikes were blue, the walls were red and white striped, the towels were blue with white stars. It made you kind of dizzy to be in there.

When I interviewed the owner, Andy, a fit and handsome man in his early thirties, he told me that while he loved SoulCycle, he felt it lacked personality. “I wanted this studio to reflect DC. This has been my home for twelve years, and it's such a special place.”

“It really is,” I said. (I wasn't being sarcastic—
special
can mean different things to different people.)

“My husband and I had this idea a few years ago and we knew we had to take the leap. We wanted to combine our love of politics and spinning.”

Andy told me that each ride would be dedicated to a different president. “But it will be a surprise,” he told me. “You'll have to come to class to see which president we're honoring that day!”

He sounded so excited, and I said, “I can't wait.”

Ash came with me for the inaugural ride—I could always count on her to accompany me to random places and events that I was covering for the website. I think she looked at it as a free Groupon.

The ride started with “Proud to Be an American” blasting through the speakers and ended with a funky version of “Sea to Shining Sea,” but fortunately had normal pop music in between, like any regular spin class. Reagan was the President of the Day, and his picture hung up front, so that you had to look at him the whole time, which I found slightly uncomfortable. Andy wore American flag kneesocks and yelled out motivational things to the class. “Let's be grateful,” he shouted. “Let's give thanks that we have two legs and two arms to spin, and that we live in the greatest country in the world!” The class cheered and I panted, trying to keep up.

“This is the dorkiest thing I've ever seen,” I whispered to Ash as we stretched after class.

“Oh, I don't know. I kind of like it,” she said.

As I toweled off and changed out of my spinning shoes, I saw Ash talking to Andy. “I'll be back for sure,” I heard her tell him.

It was 7:00 p.m. when we left, but still light outside, and we decided to walk to Sweetgreen to grab salads for dinner.

“Did you know that Andy had Jimmy's job under Bush?” Ash asked me as we walked down the block.

“Really?” I asked. I was more shocked that our gay spinning teacher was a Republican than I was that he'd had the same job as Jimmy. (Although when I thought about the choice of Reagan as the first “honored president,” it made more sense.)

“They met during the transition. It's such a small world,” Ash said. And there it was again, that claustrophobia, the feeling that you were always being watched. I wondered what Andy knew about Jimmy, if he'd met Matt, what he thought about me. And maybe I was being paranoid; maybe he didn't care enough about any of us to even form an opinion.