The Hopefuls (11 page)

“Yeah, but I mean, you think he would've e-mailed me or something. It's a huge job. It's like he was keeping it from me.”

“Really?”

“I don't know,” he said. “Maybe not.”

“Why would he do that?”

“I don't know,” Matt said again, but this time he sounded irritated. “I mean, to be honest, it's a job I would've loved. One that I'm probably better suited for than he is. And he knows I'm looking for a new position—I've been asking him for advice. I didn't even know David was leaving or I might have pursued it.”

“He probably didn't know that,” I said.

“Maybe. Probably not,” Matt said, although he didn't sound sure.

We walked the rest of the way home without talking, just watching our breath become little white puffs in the air. It was quiet, like the city was empty or everyone was already asleep. This wasn't the case—later, when DCLOVE did a special post on all of the couples who met during the blizzard, I realized that there must have been parties in every apartment we passed. We weren't the only ones celebrating the snow. But that night, it felt like we were the only people left in DC.

That was the only time Matt acknowledged that he was upset about what happened with Jimmy's job. Maybe he was embarrassed that he'd accused Jimmy of being sneaky or maybe he figured it just wasn't worth it. Whatever it was, from that point on he went out of his way to be enthusiastic about Jimmy's new position.

But at home, when it was just us, he talked more often about needing a new job, almost like it was a dire situation, like he wouldn't survive in the counsel's office much longer. And there were times when Jimmy would tell us about a trip he'd just taken and Matt would stiffen next to me—just for a second—and I had no doubt that he thought he deserved Jimmy's job, that he believed he could do it better.

Matt's jealousy no longer surprised me. I'd figured out that DC was a city that was crammed full of jealousy, that there was, in fact, a hierarchy of jealousy among the people we spent time with. Matt was jealous of Jimmy, who was jealous of Alan, because he got to spend every single minute with the President, got a Christmas present from him, got to walk alongside him in the West Wing. And Alan was jealous of Drew, who was the trip director and also one of Obama's favorite golf partners because he was such a great player. (Rumor had it that Alan played golf once with the President and was so bad that he stopped on the third hole after almost hitting Obama with a ball after a wild swing. He was so ashamed of this that no one ever mocked him, never made one joke about it, which was very telling. This was a group that taunted and made fun of each other with a sibling-like viciousness.) And almost everyone was jealous of Pete, a cranky thirtysomething who worked in the speechwriting office, who the President found hilarious and who was always asked to play Hearts with him on Air Force One.

The only person who didn't seem to be jealous of anyone was Drew, who was happy to golf with the President, was friendly to every person he met, helped anyone who asked him to, was always pleasant and kind, and truly just didn't seem to give a shit about any of the rest of it. But he was an anomaly.

It wasn't that I didn't understand it, this jealousy, because I did. It's just that it was hard sometimes to watch a group of grown people act like seventh graders trying to sit next to the coolest kid at the lunch table. Honestly, it just made you feel sad because you always thought people would outgrow this, thought that adulthood would be different. And it wasn't.

All I could do was listen, really, when Matt talked about the kind of job he was looking for, when he told me that he felt like he was wasting time. It started to consume him. “I know you'll find something,” I told him almost every day. And he'd look at me like he both was grateful for my support and knew I had no idea what I was talking about.

Everyone returned to work on Friday, and the snow took a while to melt but eventually did, making that lost week feel almost like a dream, like we'd all imagined the three feet of snow that had clobbered the city. I was busy at work, and if I wasn't wildly excited about what I was doing there, I was at least content. The site was expanding quickly, and Ellie put me in charge of several different sections, including one called “Query,” where we answered e-mail questions from readers. Some of them were silly, about the best places to get a sandwich around the White House or the best burger on Capitol Hill. And some were about the layout and logistics of the city. Why were there so many goddamn traffic circles? Where was J Street?

It was the J Street question that stuck with me, that I always remembered, because I'd wondered about it too. There is no J Street in DC—the streets skip right from I to K, and there's a rumor that L'Enfant did it on purpose when he designed the city, that he hated John Jay and left out J Street as a big fuck you. Some people say it's because John Jay was having an affair with L'Enfant's wife. Some say it's because John Jay insulted his design. And some people think it's Jefferson that L'Enfant was trying to snub.

“It's just a rumor though,” I explained to Matt when I was writing the response for the site. “Most people think it has nothing to do with any drama or jealousy, that maybe it's just because
I
and
J
looked too similar.”

Matt tilted his head when I told him this. “Well that makes more sense,” he said. “It seems kind of far-fetched to alter the layout of a city just for revenge.”

“Really?” I said. “It seems to me that's exactly the kind of thing that would happen in this town.”

T
he truth about DCLOVE was that it was a little trashy, sort of like the
Us Weekly
of Washington, DC. We did plenty of restaurant reviews and things like that, but what really got Ellie and Miles excited was gossip and party pictures. All you had to say to get a story approved was “Well, no one knows this yet, but—” and Ellie would scream out, “Love it!” before you even finished.

They founded the website in 2009, when the whole world was obsessed with Obama's administration—Gawker couldn't get enough, writing about the hot young speechwriter and how he was maybe dating the twentysomething woman who worked in foreign policy and had also posed in
Maxim.
Even Jimmy was on Gawker a couple of times, once in an “Obama Hotties” roundup that named the most attractive staffers. But by 2010, the world was sort of over it and Gawker went back to writing about socialites and celebrities.

And DCLOVE picked up the slack, was committed to reporting every little bit of gossip in the District. Our most popular section was “Movin' On Up and Movin' On Out,” which reported notable hirings, firings, and job jumping. We weren't the only place to do this—Politico Playbook did it quite well, with snappy anecdotes and fresh language. But the difference between us and Politico was that they were classy about it and we weren't. We always trashed up the announcement with a takedown or a quote. We didn't mind printing anything. For example:

Regional Communications Director Bobby London is leaving his post at the White House and heading to PepsiCo, where he'll be Director of External Relations. Sources say he beat out co-worker and nemesis Maggie McDonnel, White House Director of Press Advance, for the job, mostly because of his family connections, and not because of any real qualifications. Co-workers say they won't miss his standing desk, which he constructed out of cases of Diet Coke (take note, Pepsi!), or his half-pack-a-day habit, which supposedly left a Pigpen-like cloud of smoke around him. “He judged the rest of us for sitting all day,” one officemate said, “but all he did was smoke cigarettes and eat bacon, so really, good luck to him.”

When I told people I worked at DCLOVE, especially people at the White House, they often gave me a condescending smile, and would say something like “Oh, I've heard of it,” while implying that they would never actually read it. Sometimes I wondered if Matt was embarrassed that his wife worked at a website that put out a monthly list of the “most datable” White House staffers. High-class journalism we were not.

But the thing is, they all read it. And I mean all of them. (Okay, not the President and probably not the other top people at the White House, but everyone else.) When Alan asked what I was up to at the Snowmageddon party, I knew he was just playing dumb, pretending he didn't know exactly where I worked so that I would think he was above reading such trash. But Jimmy told me that after Alan's golf incident with the President, he scoured the site every day, worried we were going to write something about it.

I was happy that Jimmy never pretended that he wasn't interested in DCLOVE—I'm not sure I would've liked him as much if he did. He always talked to me about the things we posted, let me know when everyone in the office was talking about a certain article, and even asked me if we were going to announce his new job in “Movin' On Up and Movin' On Out.” He said it in a joking way, but I knew he really wanted it in there. I told him I'd make sure they knew about his new position, and he covered his eyes and said, “Just be kind.”

Maybe I should've minded that I worked at a place that wasn't respected, but to be honest, I didn't really care. The website was interesting enough and it paid me more than I'd been making at
Vanity Fair.
Also, I was still a little shaken after getting laid off—I'd worked so hard at the magazine for so many years and then it was just gone. None of that mattered at the end. If jobs could be taken away so easily, maybe it wasn't worth investing so much of yourself into them; maybe working at a semi-trashy website was just fine.

The following week, we posted Jimmy's job announcement on the site:

Jimmy Dillon, former Director of the White House Travel Office, takes his colorful socks and moves just two doors down the hall today, to start his new post as Deputy Director of the White House Office of Political Strategy, where he'll be the one arranging for important political folks to see the President wherever he visits. He'll also be traveling with POTUS on domestic trips, where he will most likely continue to drink mass amounts of whiskey on Air Force One and occasionally play cards with the Boss. Officemates say they won't miss him because they'll still be able to hear his Texas twang from 400 feet away. Our source says this is the perfect job for Dillon, who loves hobnobbing with illustrious politicians or, as we call it, being a DC fame whore.

I was happy that someone else was assigned to write the post, not because I felt like it was a conflict of interest (I didn't think the site actually had enough journalistic integrity for that) but because I didn't think I could bring myself to write nasty things about Jimmy, even if they were supposed to be funny.

The day the announcement ran, Ellie stopped by my desk. “Beth, you're friends with Jimmy Dillon, right?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “Why? Do you know him?”

“Everyone knows him, don't they?” she asked and then laughed like she'd made a joke. I just gave her a little smile and didn't say anything. “I mean, he gets around,” she continued. “A friend of mine worked on the Kerry campaign with him and she said it was hard to find someone on that campaign that he didn't sleep with.”

“I doubt that,” I said. “He's married, you know,” I said. “And they've been together for a long time, definitely during the Kerry campaign.”

Ellie tilted her head at me and said, “You've never worked on a campaign, have you?”

I shook my head. “That's what I thought,” she said. She sounded triumphant, like she'd just won a debate.

“Anyway,” she said, “I was thinking we could interview him for ‘Working for the Weekend.' ” “Working for the Weekend” was our section that interviewed one person in the administration each week and highlighted their job, explained what they did each day. It was pretty interesting, actually, and if it hadn't been for the ridiculous name, I would've wanted to write more for it.

“We already did,” I said. “We interviewed him when he was in the travel office. I mean, I'm happy to do it again as long as you don't mind having it be sort of a repeat.”

“Hmmm,” she said. She tilted her head, this time in the other direction. I could tell she was annoyed that she hadn't remembered we'd already profiled him. “I think it's okay. Same person, different job, right?”

“Right,” I said. “I'll ask him about it today.”

My heart sank a little as she walked away and I realized I'd have to tell Matt we were interviewing Jimmy again. His first profile had been superinteresting. He'd told me about what went into planning an overseas trip for the President, and even though I'd never cared all that much before, I couldn't help but be impressed as he described how thirty staffers would charter one of the “Blue and Whites” (the fleet of planes equipped to transport the President) to the countries that the President would be visiting.

“You mean, like Air Force One?” I asked, and Jimmy laughed.

“It's only Air Force One if the Boss is on board,” he said. “Otherwise it's just a regular plane.” He paused then and said, “And we take a smaller plane, not the 747s. Just so you don't get the wrong idea about how awesome my job is.”

Jimmy told me how when the President went anywhere, a military team took over a whole floor of the hotel, set it up for secure communication. When they were overseas, the advance team had daily calls with the office in DC through videoconferencing, but to make sure it was completely secure, they had to do it in a tent that was constructed in one of the rooms, with white noise or loud music playing outside so no one could hear.

“You're lying,” I told him. “You're making that up so that I write about it and look like an idiot.” Jimmy was known for pulling pranks, but this time he held up his right hand and put his left on his heart.

“Hand to God,” he said. “It's all true.”

“It sounds like a spy novel,” I told him.

He grinned at me. “That's me. Jimmy Dillon, International Man of Mystery.”

That night, Matt picked up Chinese food on his way home and he seemed to be in a great mood as he unpacked the brown bag, taking the lids off the sesame chicken and lo mein, popping a dumpling in his mouth. His tie was loose and he whistled as he went into the kitchen, returning with two plates, silverware, and a beer for each of us. I was pretty sure that most people were appalled at how little we cooked, but Matt never seemed to mind, and whenever I was apologetic about it, he just shrugged and said, “I don't like to cook either, so why would I expect you to?”

He opened my beer and handed it to me, then opened his own and held it up. “Cheers, Buzz,” he said, taking a long sip and finally sitting down. “I'm starving,” he said. We didn't talk as we piled our plates high with food and took our first bites, but finally Matt put his fork down and picked up his beer.

“So, how was work?” he asked.

I'd been dreading having to tell him about the interview with Jimmy—after he'd read the last one, he'd said, “You should profile me…only no one would ever want to read about someone doing background checks for prospective hires.” And then he'd tried to laugh, but it was clear he didn't think it was funny.

I decided instead to tell him first about my strange conversation with Ellie, where she implied that Jimmy was having affairs all over town. He listened as I went on and on, his eyebrows wrinkled as he chewed.

“It's not true, right?” I asked when I was done. “I mean, we'd know if it was happening, wouldn't we?”

“DC is full of rumors,” Matt said. “You know that.” I couldn't tell if he was avoiding my question because he didn't like to gossip or if there was another reason he didn't want to discuss it.

“Yeah, but do you think it's true? Have you ever heard anyone else talk about it?”

“I've heard people joke about some things,” he said. “But I have no idea if any of it's true. I've never asked him about it.”

“But you must have an opinion. I mean, really, what do you think?”

He sighed. “Does it matter what I think?”

“They're our friends,” I said. “It's just weird. What if he really did cheat on Ash or he does it again? Don't you think we have some sort of responsibility to her?”

Matt dunked one of his dumplings into the dish of soy sauce and then chewed thoughtfully for what seemed like a long time before swallowing and saying, “I think no matter what, it's not really any of our business.”

I told Matt about the interview later that night, as we were brushing our teeth. He'd had two more beers after dinner and still seemed to be in a cheery mood, so it seemed silly to delay it any longer.

“That'll be good,” he said. “His new job is sort of crazy. It'll be an interesting interview.”

“Yeah,” I said, keeping my voice neutral. “I'm sure it'll be fine. I don't think anyone ever reads that section.”

Matt wiped his mouth on a hand towel and then rolled it up and aimed it at my butt, making me jump in the air and laugh as it hit me. “With you writing it, Buzzy,” he said, “I'm sure it will win awards.”

It took us a while to actually schedule the interview, since Jimmy was now always traveling alongside the President. Finally, almost two months after he started his new job, we found a time to meet for lunch. I made reservations at Old Ebbitt, which was a restaurant right by the White House that was known for being the city's oldest bar and serving good oysters. It was always noisy and crowded, which was part of the reason I picked it, so that it wouldn't feel like people were listening in on our conversation. Plus, Jimmy loved oysters.

I got to the restaurant first and was sitting there daydreaming when he slid into the other side of the booth, startling me.

“Gotcha,” he said, laughing.

“God, you scared me,” I said, my hand over my heart.

“I waved at you, but you were in a different world. I'm assuming you were just thinking about how excited you were to have lunch with me?”

I laughed weakly and nodded. “That's it,” I said.

I couldn't help but look at Jimmy differently after my conversation with Ellie. I studied him when we were out to dinner with the Dillons, like he was going to do or say something to the waitress that would reveal him as a philanderer, but he was just the same as always. He adored Ash (or seemed to, at least) and was always touching her, always giving her compliments, and I didn't want to believe any of the things Ellie said.

Jimmy waved down the waiter and ordered a DC Brau, and I said I'd have one too, which made him raise his eyebrows at me and say, “Drinking on the job?”

“You are too,” I said, but this time I laughed for real.

“We'll take a dozen oysters too,” he said, not bothering to ask me if I wanted any. We'd eaten so many dinners with the Dillons at that point that we all knew each other's likes and dislikes.

We talked about random things for a few minutes before I said, “Okay, so tell me. Before you get called away on a presidential emergency. Tell me everything you do as the deputy director of political strategy.” I said his title with exaggerated awe.

“Everything?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.

“Everything.”

I let Jimmy talk for almost twenty minutes. I had some sort of idea about what he was doing, from things Matt had said to me or conversations we'd had when we were out—I knew he always traveled with the President, that whenever Obama was photographed, you almost always saw Jimmy standing just to the right of him. Sometimes you'd just see half of his face or one arm, but if you looked for him (which I always did) you could find him. It was like a presidential Where's Waldo? game. But I didn't completely understand what his responsibilities were, what it was he actually did.