The Intern: Chasing Murderers, Hookers, and Senators Across DC Wasn't In The Job Description (4 page)

Joe was running toward the conference room. One of an
intern’s talents must be to talk very quickly and convey an entire message in
the size of a sound bite, thus allowing the boss to comprehend and not slow
down at the same time. I managed to cram the fact that I would be in and out of
the panel, because I was going to work on his project, into about five words
and two gestures, and he gave me a quick thumbs up and kept going. Then before
I had turned around, he turned on his heels and came back.

“Oh yeah. Mark Helper has some information in his office for
you. I’m so tired of all of this Regionarts shit,” he said to anyone who cared
to listen. He resumed his trot toward the panel, and I headed for my cozy
little office. After I ate my breakfast and returned two calls, I decided to
head down to Helper’s office. I walked around the corridor and took the
elevator to the fifth floor.

Helper was one of the big-wigs—the chief financial
officer—brought in by the Chairman at the beginning of her reign. He seemed
more competent than some of the other higher-ups, and he was quite a bit
younger, too; I couldn’t imagine he was too much over thirty. He looked like a
runner, short with practically zero body fat, and he was losing enough hair
that he was starting to do the comb-over. Even though he was younger, he was
just as snooty—or snootier—as the rest of the management types, unwilling to
smile at anyone who he felt wasn’t his equal.

Any time I got on the elevator with him, he would gander
longingly at his Rolex, pretending to look at it for so long that I wanted to
buy him a digital. Sometimes he would fix his gaze on the floor numbers or
examine his suit for lint, all so he wouldn’t have to make eye contact with
peasants like me. During those annoying moments, I always had the nearly
irresistible urge to punch him in the esophagus, but I had managed to keep
myself in check—so far, at least. I hoped he wouldn’t be around.

For once, my prayer was answered. Mr. Helper was gone,
leaving his secretary all alone. She was tall, redheaded, thin, and so pretty I
thought her face would break. I tried to flirt but she didn’t seem to care. She
frowned and told me that Helper knew someone would be coming and had left word
to give me everything I needed. He was obviously just as tired as Joe of the
whole Regionarts mess, and I was there to clean up. I walked into his pristine,
softly-lit office, filled with expensive plants and tasteful—but boring—artwork.
His desk was neat, which made me dislike him even more. Right in the middle,
there was a stack of papers with a sticky note marked “Joe,” which she handed
to me.

I smiled politely—something I figured she didn’t see too
much of from ol’ Helper—and was about to leave when she told me to wait. “I
need to run downstairs for five or ten minutes. Can you stay and watch the
phones?” As she said this, she touched my wrist and smiled. Now that she needed
me, she was a little more interested in flirting.

I shrugged my shoulders and told her yes. She thanked me and
swiftly exited. I walked around her desk and sat down. Her chair was even less
comfortable than mine. I scanned her desktop, interested to see what was going
on in Helper’s little world, but nothing caught my eye

Maybe I was moving up. I had previously answered phones in
several departments but never before for anyone on the Management Floor. I
half-expected to hear the Washington Symphony Orchestra signaling incoming
calls.

But when the phone rang, it sounded just like any other. It
was the third line from the top; I picked it up. The Caller ID screen said the
call was coming from the McHolland Foundation—interesting—maybe there was
Regionarts dirt. Before I could even speak, the person on the other line
started in, talking quickly, nervously, and hushed. “Sorry to call you here,
but I wanted you to know. I’ve gotta catch a plane because I’m getting out of
here. If he doesn’t hear differently, our friend at the Sheraton is going to
terminate the problem at the Capitol at 3:30.” I was writing furiously and
waiting for a moment to tell this guy that I wasn’t Helper and had no idea when
he would be back. He never gave me a chance. He gave me a phone number at the
Sheraton, said, “It’s out of my hands,” and hung up.

As I tried to make this into a comprehensible message, I
glanced at a piece of paper next to the phone. I noticed that the line that I
had just picked up was Helper’s private line. Oh shit. That was a bright thing
to do. I thought about apologizing for picking it up in my note but decided I’d
play ignorant—I do that very well; it’s what eastern people expect out of
southerners anyway. I was just finishing up the note as the secretary came back
in. She told me to put it on his desk.

I felt a little uneasy as I left. What did “terminate the
problem” mean? Was Helper trying to sabotage Regionarts? That just didn’t make
any sense. Especially if someone from the McHolland Foundation was in on it
too. But there were probably a million other things it could be related to, and
I wasn’t going to mention it to anyone else. I went back to my office space,
settled in, and after a game of Tetris, I sorted through my newest pile of
information. Most of it was background, lists of grantees, quotes from happy
artists, stuff that really wasn’t going to help much. But I did need the hard
cash figures; I’d have to work them in someplace. I separated those papers from
the PR stuff and went back to the panel.

I slipped in next to Ann, as yet another grant was
discussed. Everything seemed to be more peaceful, and the panel was obviously
in the second-day groove. By tomorrow they would be dreadfully tired of all of
this, but they were having fun—comparatively, anyway—right now.

It didn’t take me long to fall into a reverie, wondering
about the strange message I had taken and thinking about Stephanie. Should I
call her today, or should I wait? Should I send her anything? No, still too
early. And last night ended too weird. Don’t get going too fast. Should I get
up out of this boring panel and work on my report? No, wait a little while at
least. Helper may be sabotaging the whole thing anyway. I performed mental
variations on these themes for the next hour.

Finally, we took a break, and I let Joe know I had gotten
everything I needed to get the report done, trying not to betray the fact I had
new, possibly pertinent information. Since he was standing there, I asked him
exactly what he wanted, and he shrugged his shoulders; he hadn’t ever been in
this position before of having to defend one of our projects. “Just make it
look good,” he said.

After a few more false starts and much handwringing, I
finally began to come up with something worthwhile. I produced a semi-coherent
three-page document and knew it wouldn’t take long to get to four. Noon came,
and I decided to go to lunch early since things were going so well.

The Pavilion is a very quiet building, and once you hit the
door, you notice a change as you reenter the asphalt world of the city. Still
muggy, even on that cloudy, late-September day, DC seemed to me to always be
either hot or cold, and I pitied the suit-wearers as I ventured down the street
to lunch. Sometimes I went to eat with Lori, who was an NEA “fellow,” which is
just like an intern, but you get paid, and it sounds better. But she was out of
town, so I decided to indulge myself in some fast-food grease for lunch. When
she was around, I had to eat more hoity-toity since she was a former dancer,
and I just sort of got the impression she disapproved of fast-food.

On my way back to work, I saw a huge crowd gathering. I was
perplexed for a moment and then remembered that Tuesday was the beginning of
the “Right to Bear Arms” rally, which would bring lovers of the AK-47 from far
and wide to the seat of government. I could see a long line of marchers heading
toward the Capitol, parading with what I really hoped were toy weapons in an
attempt to show the collective strength of those who refused to relinquish
their arms. There were the stereotypes—burly men, who looked like hunters,
carrying placards and chanting alongside scary little bean-eyed guys, who wore
their mustaches as disguises—but there were also women and children joining
their voices, and men in Armani suits who marched right along. They had a
determination in their eyes that all marchers have, the same look that gay
rights protesters or animal activists have when they march the same route, the
look of those who truly mean business. I did not want to disturb them.

I stopped by the panel for a bit, but headed back to my
office. Joe followed me into my space, and I let him take a look at what I had.
He suggested a couple of changes, and I printed it out again. “This may work,”
he said. “I’ll take it down to Helper. You just sit tight and we’ll see.”

I have always been very good at sitting tight. That’s
another trait an intern needs. I picked up an old NEA brochure and flipped
through it while I waited. I didn’t think Joe would take long, since he needed
to get back to the panel, but fifteen minutes had gone by, and I was still
sitting as tightly as ever.

After half an hour, mostly spent thinking about Stephanie
and whether Helper was ruining the NEA, Joe walked by, looking sallow and mad.
He walked straight by my space and into his own, then yelled, “Trent, can you
come here?”

From his tone, I could tell I didn’t want to, but I went. I
wondered if Helper had found out about me answering his private line. “Did he
like it?” I asked.

“Helper wasn’t even there. But I talked to the Chairman.
They’re canning it,” he said bitterly.

“That’s okay. I’ll just start over.” I tried to sound as
pleasant as I could be after losing another day’s work.

“No. They’re canning Regionarts. As of the next fiscal
year.”

I blinked. A lot. I started to say something and stopped.
Even though I half-expected it, I still didn’t know what to say now that it was
officially dead. “I thought …”

“Everybody thought.”

I didn’t say anything more. Joe slumped in his chair. “Now
I’ve gotta tell all those people that we’ve been lying to them for the past six
months.”

Joe looked slowly around his office space, as if anything
there could somehow give him some help. “Listen,” he said. “I’m sorry for all
the work you’ve done for nothing. Can you set up a conference call for the
Regionarts board, so I can tell them myself?”

“Did they give any reason?” I asked.

“She said something about some kind of mismanagement, but I
know she just wants to pass the buck.”

“Who decided this?”

“The Chairman did it on her own. She didn’t ask anyone.”

No peppy musical numbers
, I thought.

And I thought about that morning’s phone call in Mark
Helper’s office. Was he involved in canning Regionarts after all? Was the
“friend” the caller had spoken of the NEA’s own Chairman? It didn’t make any
sense. But it did make me mad.

I asked Joe some quick questions about the whens and whos of
the conference call, and then I left him alone. I was sick about the work I had
done, but Damon and some of the others must’ve been absolutely nauseous. They
had been running interference for months, only to find they were doling out
lies. I wondered if they knew yet but realized they were in the panel and
probably had no idea.

It took about half an hour to call everyone and set up a
conference call. All of the important people were nervous when I told them what
the topic was, and they probably knew their fight was over. But I tried not to
give anything away and got everyone on board for Thursday afternoon. It was
almost four by then, and I had four more items on my agenda.

First, I called home, hoping Angie was still there. She was
going back home to Iowa for a short vacation, and I had thought about calling
her earlier but got busy. This was my first experience having a female
roommate, and it had taken months to begin to learn that it really helped if
you asked, “How was your day?” and said, “Have fun on your trip,” things which
were utterly unnecessary when dealing with other guys, but headed off enormous
trouble when dealing with women. But she wasn’t there and was probably already
headed toward the airport.

Secondly, I needed to go to the NEA library. It was situated
on the second floor, and I took the stairs down just to be different. It was
small and filled with a smattering of books on any topic, a broad but utterly
random selection. I found two books on Delta blues and a couple of magazines
with job listings and went to check them out. I received a stern lecture from
the librarian because my last books had been late, late, late, but was
eventually allowed to admit my guilt and shame, make an attempt at an apology,
and take my books. I went back up to the office and put the books on my desk
next to the Regionarts stuff. I thought again about Helper, our office’s own
Judas.

But now, there were only two things left to do before I
could go home and forget all this crap.

Kurt had in his desk two blue caps with “Fire Inspector” on
them, for use during the semi-annual fire drills around the place. At least one
person in every department had one, and they were in charge of counting the
employees and reporting to the fire marshals if a fire were to ever occur. For
whatever reason, Kurt had ended up with two, and I knew darn well he only
needed one. I had already tried it on; it was way too small for me, but I
wanted it anyway, though I wasn’t sure why. I had always collected strange
items. From high school, I had volleyball trophies from the early seventies,
math plaques, and seat cushions. From college, I had a phone and a potted
plant. Kurt had told me he couldn’t give the hat to me, although he had hinted
that I could “take” it if I really wanted it.

I really wanted it. I figured that most everyone was at the
panel, but I checked to make sure no one was looking, bent over in his desk and
found it, third drawer down. I pulled it out and considered what would be the
most nonchalant way to carry it, but I still couldn’t see anyone around, so I
just rushed back over to my space, picked up the whole pile where the books
were, and put everything in a big plastic bag I had brought the day before just
for this hat-stealing occasion.