The Hopefuls (6 page)

W
hen Matt asked if I wanted to go to Alan Chu's birthday party, my first instinct was to say no. After a month or so of constant socializing with White House people, I felt like I needed a break. Could I really spend another night at a bar listening as Alan told me how many almonds the President had eaten that day?

“I don't know,” I said. “I might not be up for it.”

“Are you sure?” Matt asked. “It's just at that bar, Bobby Lew's on Eighteenth. It's really close to us. It'll be fun, I think.”

It was Friday night, and Matt was still in his suit and I was wearing the yoga pants I'd had on all day. (No yoga had been done.) I may as well have been in pajamas. I didn't especially feel like celebrating Alan, but I could see that Matt wanted me to go and thought it would be good to put on real clothes for at least a little while. So I agreed, telling myself that if the party was really awful I could just have one drink and be home within the hour.

Bobby Lew's was about as divey as you can get and already fairly crowded. Matt and I made our way to the bar to get a couple of beers and then Matt turned around and surveyed the crowd, which was a new habit of his that sort of disturbed me. It looked like he was searching for the most appealing person to talk to, like he was rating everyone.

“I'm glad you came,” Matt said, leaning down to kiss me.

“Me too,” I said.

Alan came over to us then, and I said happy birthday to him, and he gave me a look like I was familiar but he couldn't quite place me.

“Is Brett here?” I asked.

Alan blinked several times and then said stiffly, “Brett and I are no longer together.”

“Oh, I'm sorry,” I said, but really I was happy for Brett. He was free. He'd never again have to listen to Alan talk about the President before they fell asleep at night.

“Let's get you a birthday drink,” Matt said to Alan, turning to signal the bartender. I squeezed his arm, thankful for the change of subject, and he winked at me, quickly.

I heard Ashleigh Dillon before I met her. She was standing in the middle of a group of guys, and her voice carried across the bar as she laughed and said, “Y'all are so bad.” Even if she hadn't been so loud, I would've noticed her because of how she was dressed—in a belted red and white polka-dot dress with a full skirt. Her blond hair was curled and pinned back on the sides and she was wearing bright red lipstick and heels so high it made my feet ache just to look at them. Her whole look was a little old-fashioned, like she was trying to mimic an old-time movie star.

The guy standing next to her was tall with shaggy brown hair that curled at the ends, like he was in need of a haircut. He was wearing a suit like most of the other guys there (they'd all come right from work), but he'd taken off his tie and shoved it in one of his pockets, and it was hanging out in a careless way like it was going to be on the floor pretty soon. I noticed then that although Ashleigh was standing in the middle of the group, everyone was turned toward the guy with the shaggy hair, like they were orbiting around him. Matt saw me looking over at them, and leaned down to whisper to me, “That's Jimmy Dillon, he works in the White House travel office. He's from Texas. I'll introduce you.”

I blushed because I'd been caught staring at Jimmy, who was unquestionably handsome, but Matt didn't seem to think anything of it. He started over toward them and I followed, and when we got close, I saw Jimmy reach down and lightly pat Ashleigh's butt with his hand and then squeeze it. It surprised me so much that I said, “Oh!” and the two of them turned to look at us. I blushed again, like I was the one caught groping in public.

“Jimmy, this is my wife, Beth,” Matt said. I had my hand out ready to shake his, when he leaned down to hug me.

“Hey,” he said. He smiled like he'd been waiting to meet me all night, and instead of releasing me from the hug, he shifted me to his side and kept his arm around my shoulder. “Kelly,” he said to Matt. “This pretty young thing can't really be your wife.” He turned to me. “What are you doing with this guy?”

“Jimmy, good Lord, stop molesting the poor girl.” Ashleigh hit his arm and shook her head. “You're going to scare her away.”

“I'm Ashleigh, Jimmy's wife,” she said. And then she leaned forward to hug me too, pushing Jimmy's arm off my shoulder as she did. When she released me, she stood in front of me and squeezed my forearms. “I'm so happy to finally meet you. I just moved here too. Your hubby told me you were finally here, and I said to myself, She sounds like my kind of girl. I need to meet her now.”

I glanced over at Matt wondering when this conversation had taken place, but he was leaning over and giving Ashleigh a kiss on her cheek. She puckered her lips and gave him an air kiss in return, then smiled at me.

“I like the manners on this one,” she said. “I've never lived anywhere but Texas, and I have to say, the people up north are not what I'm used to.”

It was weird to hear Ashleigh say “up north.” We were still below the Mason-Dixon Line, a fact that I swear I could feel in the air. DC seemed so southern to me, mostly because it was hot and everyone moved slowly. The first time we went to a deli here, the man behind the counter took so long to assemble the sandwiches, I wanted to jump over the counter and do it myself. DC made me feel so impatient, so fidgety. More than once—when we got annoyed waiting at a restaurant, or speed-walked past a group of people—Matt would say, “Maybe we lived in New York too long.”

“Jimmy works across the hall from me,” Matt explained. “Ashleigh came in last week to visit and we started talking.”

“Correction,” Ashleigh said. “Jimmy works across the hall when he's in town, which is almost never.” She squeezed my arm. “Girl, I can just tell we're going to be best friends. We're in the same boat—we both moved here kicking and screaming, am I right?” She winked at Jimmy and the four of us laughed.

“Something like that,” I said.

Ashleigh corrected me when I said her name. “It's actually ‘Ash-lay,' not ‘Ash-lee.' ” I tried again and she shook her head, although I couldn't hear any difference in how I was saying it. “Don't feel bad, people get it wrong all the time. That's what my mother gets for trying to be all fancy with my name. You can just call me Ash.”

Ash was twenty-eight but seemed younger. She was sweet—I hadn't had anyone claim me as a best friend since Deborah Long on the first day of kindergarten, and I was pretty sure that was only because she wanted the Fruit Roll-Up in my lunch. But Ash was almost too sweet. It took me off guard. She was nothing like my other friends—the fact that she kept calling me girl was weird enough. My initial reaction was that we'd have nothing in common, but as the four of us stood there, the conversation flowed easily.

It took me a while to notice that we were talking about regular things. (That is, things other than the campaign and the President.) We talked about the Dillons' place, which wasn't too far from ours, about the neighborhood in between us and which restaurants we'd tried. There was never a lull or a beat of silence when everyone looked around and tried to think of something else to say. Matt and Jimmy left to get us more drinks, and when they got back, Jimmy asked where I was from. When I told him Wisconsin, Ash gasped. “Oh, Wisconsin! I've never been, but I've heard it's lovely.” I sort of wondered if she was full of shit—I'd never heard someone talk about Wisconsin in such a way. But she looked completely sincere.

“It's nice,” I said. “But maybe I only think that because it's where I'm from.”

“Do you miss it?” she asked.

“I do, sometimes. I haven't lived there in a while.”

“Is your family still there?” she asked.

“My parents are. I'm an only child.”

“So is Jimmy,” Ash said, turning to him like this was the most delightful coincidence.

“But it's interesting,” Jimmy said, “because it's this one who acts like she was raised an only child.” He reached out and cupped Ash's chin. “You should see our bathroom—she has all her potions laid out, taking up the whole counter. I can barely find a place for my toothbrush in there. And she took all the closets in the house for herself, leaving me with just a half of one.”

“It's more than half,” Ash said. She rolled her eyes at him, but you could tell she was amused.

“Listen,” Jimmy said. “Do you guys want to try to sneak out of here and get something to eat? This one will be three sheets to the wind if we don't get her some food soon.” As if on cue, Ash teetered a little on her heels.

We all looked across the room at Alan, who was talking intently to another White House staffer that I recognized but didn't know. The guy looked bored, probably because it wasn't really a back-and-forth conversation. Alan just kept talking at him. I felt Matt look over at me, like he was sure I was going to make an excuse for why we couldn't go. But I answered so quickly that I surprised even myself. “That sounds great.”

Jimmy suggested we go to a wine bar on Fourteenth Street called Cork. It wasn't that far away, but Ash insisted we take a cab. “I won't make it one block in these heels,” she said.

Cork was crowded, but there was one open table in the corner and we were seated right away. “Thanks, Chloe,” Jimmy said to the hostess.

Ash turned to me. “Jimmy knows every hostess in every restaurant on this block. Before I moved here, I'm pretty sure he went out to eat every night.”

“I put on fifteen pounds,” Jimmy said, and then he smiled at me. “And I also know all the bartenders.”

“This looks great,” I said, looking at the menu. “We haven't really been over this way.”

“To be honest, Fourteenth Street is still a little sketchy,” Ash said in a low voice. She put her napkin on her lap. “I don't love walking around here at night.”

“It's perfectly safe,” Jimmy said. “It's changing quickly. Mark my words, in another year, you won't even recognize this street.”

The waitress came over then and Jimmy ordered a bottle of wine and a few of the dishes. “You don't mind, do you?” he asked, although the waitress was already gone. “It's all small plates, so we can share. We can order more, I just wanted to get some food this way, quickly.”

“Sounds good to me,” Matt said.

Jimmy turned to me. “Beth, did your husband tell you how we met on the campaign?” I shook my head.

“We are not,” Ash said, “spending the whole night talking about the campaign. I'll give you five minutes and then we're talking about something else,” which made me like her even more.

“What else is there?” Jimmy asked, and Ash just shook her head.

We spent much longer than five minutes talking about the campaign, mostly because Jimmy just kept talking. But he was a great storyteller—funny and irreverent—and we all listened closely, even Ash, who must have heard them all before.

The way Jimmy and Matt met, I learned, was that Matt was helping with a fund-raising dinner in the town house of a donor in New York. He walked in a few hours before it was supposed to start and found Jimmy sleeping on a bench in the front hall.

“I woke up to him shaking me,” Jimmy said. “He was so polite. ‘Excuse me, sir? Sir? Can I get you something?' He had no idea who I was or he would've been hitting me across the head and yelling at me to get up.”

Matt laughed. “For all I knew, you were the son of the host or maybe some drunk donor that showed up early.”

“I hadn't slept in two days,” Jimmy said. “I was exhausted.”

The waitress came then with our bottle of wine and Jimmy tasted it and nodded and shortly after that, our food started arriving. It was funny how Jimmy had taken control of our table and how happy we were to let him—he ordered a few more dishes and none of us suggested anything else.

It was hard to explain what it was about Jimmy that was so appealing. He wasn't the loudest person in the room—he certainly wasn't quiet, but he didn't have that obnoxious slapstick personality that some attention seekers have, when they're desperate to have all the eyes in the room on them. He did talk the most that night, but it didn't feel like he was dominating the conversation, or at least not in a way that was annoying. There was a pull about him, and I remember thinking that first night that he was magnetic, which wasn't a word I'd ever used to describe someone before. When Matt told me later that Jimmy (like him) wanted to run for office someday, I wasn't the least bit surprised. It seemed almost obvious, really.

Jimmy had done advance for the most recent campaign and for Kerry in 2004 and Gore in 2000. “Let me tell you,” he said, “you think you know what depressing is, but there's nothing like working on a campaign that ends like that.” I didn't know what advance was, and Jimmy explained that he traveled ahead of the President, made sure that everything was set up in the venue, from the lighting to the stage. “Down to the location of the flag,” he said. “I'm basically a traveling wedding planner.” He said this in a self-deprecating way that I knew was an act, but after months of listening to people brag about their jobs, I found it refreshing.

“Did you always know you wanted to do this?” I asked.

“I fell into it by accident,” he said. “I met some advance people right after college, some people my dad knew, and I thought it sounded fun. And once I started, I didn't want to stop. I was supposed to start law school in the fall of '07. I was enrolled at UT, all set to go. My dad told me that enough was enough, that it was time to stop jumping on campaigns and settle into something more serious. But then I did a couple trips that summer for the Obama campaign, and I knew right away this was different. I knew as soon as I met him that I wasn't going to go to law school. My dad was so pissed.”