The List (27 page)

 • • • 

So how did a girl with no manners, skin pigment, or ethics land not only someone who
looked like a model and had the carriage of Cary Grant, but also a United States senator?
Was Olivia secretly reading
Cosmo
’s “The Secret to Getting Any Guy” articles in the White House bathroom? Was the girl
swaddled up in poly-cotton blends actually a tantric sex master?

I wanted to start LexisNexising Sandro and Olivia from a public computer. I didn’t
trust my laptop—IP addresses were too easy to trace—and work was obviously out of
the question. On Monday afternoon, I scheduled time at the Library of Congress. I
had no idea how I was going to get out of work for two hours and go to the library.
I was going to have to lie. Or pretend someone had sent me a tip that a celebrity
was at the library having an academic renaissance and I was going to check it out.

My karma took some major blows after I told Hardy that I was running to Union Station
because country singer Martina McBride was doing a whistle-stop tour. She actually
was, but I had zero intention of going. My friend John, the best paparazzo in D.C.,
was covering it and had promised to send me a few sound bites to get me through, no
questions asked. So I headed up the stairs of the beautiful marble library, knowing
I
had precisely one hundred and twenty minutes before I started getting a flood of BlackBerry
messages harassing me about my whereabouts.

I walked through the main reading room in the Thomas Jefferson Building, with the
half-moon windows and rows of mahogany desks and reference books, and headed toward
the newspaper and periodical reading room. The only starting points I had with Sandro,
beyond his name, were his studies at Texas A&M, his work at OAS, and his Mexican provenance.
Olivia, I figured, must have worked at the college paper.

I knew that she, like me, was twenty-eight, and he must be around the same age, which
would put them starting school around 2000.

Texas A&M’s newspaper was called the
Battalion
. On a microfilm reader, I searched every masthead since 1998 and never saw Olivia’s
name. Not even as a contributor. Could she really not have written for her college
paper? The girl who took a wrecking ball to her colleagues to come out on top? I had
expected to see her name in the editor-in-chief slot. From print, I moved to photos.
Maybe she had been photographed as part of an activity? Young Dictators Club? Future
Homewreckers of America? Or maybe Sandro had been voted sexiest man in A&M’s history?

I started in 1998 again and prepared to look at every sheet of every paper printed
for the next six years. Black-and-white photos with long captions shined brightly
under the light of the machine. Smiling face after smiling face looked up at me until
I was so numb to the unlined faces of youth that I doubted I would be able to recognize
my targets.

I needed to put myself back together, let my eyes readjust. I put my bag next to the
machine to lay claim to my space and walked toward the stacks to stretch my legs.
I was in the music
history section. I let my fingers drift on the leather-bound sheet music of Rachmaninov,
Benjamin Britten, Clara Schumann. I missed studying. Professional journalism was so
focused on quick hits, short bites that could be consumed in mere minutes while waiting
for the subway. No one assigned long pieces anymore because no one read them. My college
thesis on Edith Wharton’s and Henry James’s road trips was eighty-five pages long,
which now seemed like an impossible amount of pages. I’m sure if anyone at the
List
attempted to write more than two thousand words they were immediately let go for
having a poor grasp of the demands of new media. When I left
Town & Country,
I had grand visions of penning articles that would go through five drafts before
they went to press, sitting down with my editor for hours to make sure every piece
ended with a bon mot. Instead, I typed articles on a BlackBerry and all I did when
I reached the last line was cheer.

That was at least a sliver of the reason I was letting the Olivia/Stanton affair consume
me: it couldn’t be solved in an hour or less and then tweeted about immediately. It
was a steady stream of work, of pushing myself to do and think things that were difficult.

I went back to the microfiche machine, flipped through hundreds more photos, and stopped
on November 21, 2003. That was the date I finally saw Olivia’s picture in the paper.
And when I saw the caption, I decided it was worth the wait.

Her hair was shorter then. Just above her shoulders. But she was with Sandro, clutching
hands with him and another student. The caption of the photo read, “Olivia Campo,
Sandro Pena and Paul Martinez lead students in a march for the Students for Immigration
Solidarity Campaign,” which Google quickly confirmed was a college branch of a national
immigrants’ rights organization.

So maybe Olivia was indeed the Mata Hari of a left-wing immigrants’ rights group,
trying to sway the opposition’s policy by giving Stanton access to her naked body.
It was possible. But it was also possible that it was just a coincidence. Plenty of
Wellesley girls I knew had protested against the World Bank and eaten vegan chicken
for every meal in college, and now they worked at Credit Suisse and demanded that
their beef be from Kobe. People changed.

The other intriguing article I found was from 2005, the year Sandro and Olivia graduated
from A&M. It was their wedding announcement. Maybe in Texas it was normal to get married
before graduation, but to my East Coast eyes it looked like time travel. It also would
have kept him on U.S. soil.

“Seniors Sandro Pena and Olivia Campo were married on March 29 in the All Faiths Chapel.
The couple met during orientation week freshman year in Neeley Hall. The two plan
to live in Corpus Christi after graduation.” There was no picture, which was good,
because I think my heart might have broken if I had seen their wedding day.

I forced myself to go to sleep that night without looking at Sandro’s smooth, tan
face on my computer screen. And when James texted me and asked me to meet him at Union
Station Friday after work, I said yes.

 • • • 

As the workweek came to a close, I walked up Constitution Avenue toward Union Station
with confidence. James was a very nice, very normal, and totally single guy. I could
like him. I should like him. For some crazy reason, he seemed to like me.

When I arrived, he was already in line for the Old Town Trolley, the green and orange
relic that took tourists around the city and pumped out historical information in
a dozen different
languages. “Look who it is,” he said, pulling me over to him by the hand and giving
me a kiss on the cheek as if we were about to pose for a prom photo. He was wearing
a crisp spring suit and a light green Vineyard Vines tie and looked happy to be standing
in what was left of the day’s sunshine. He moved a strand of my hair out of my face,
pushed my aviator sunglasses down my nose, and said, “I’m glad you said yes.”

I laughed, grateful for a moment of levity. I had ignored three calls from James that
week and wasn’t sure how to proceed. But this was good. He felt easy and friendly
and unmarried. “You know, I’ve never been on one of these things before,” I said.

“And why would you have,” said James, motioning to the ticket salesman. “You grew
up around here. You never had to pay attention to the city.”

Five minutes later, we were installed on a small wooden bench, chugging toward the
Capitol. I looked at the building with its perfect dome covering an iron frame, and
for the first time since I had started working at the
Capitolist,
I saw it through the eyes of a tourist.

“What’s it like to work in politics?” I asked James as the historic building disappeared
behind us.

“It’s fun,” he said honestly. “Lots of smart people. I’ve always been a Republican,
so it’s nice to have that continuity in life. And you feel like you’re making a difference.
I like helping to shape our message, fixing misperceptions about us and bringing the
attention to our great candidates.”

“Never mind, let’s not talk about politics,” I said, putting my arm on the side of
the bench and letting the wind turn my hair into a tangled mess.

“It’s not that bad a city, is it,” said James.

“No, it’s not so bad when you look at it like this,” I replied. I turned to smile
at him and before I could protest, he took my
face in his hands and kissed me. “I like you,” he said, still cradling my cheeks in
his palms. “I don’t know if you like me, since I haven’t seen you since our amazing
first date and you haven’t answered any of my calls until two days ago. But I like
you anyway. Thanks for coming with me.”

A kiss in a trolley with the Capitol behind us. There were worse things. I let James
talk about work and his friends and his summer plans and let my mind clear for a while.
I hadn’t felt this relaxed since the day I drove down the long stretch of highway
from New York to Virginia.

When we got out of the trolley, it was drizzling, and he walked me to my car while
holding his suit jacket over my head. He kissed me again and held on to my waist until
I smiled, squirmed away, and promised I would see him soon.

The rain stopped by the time I was through the city traffic. The days were getting
longer, and it was easier to navigate the two small, hilly roads that led into town.
I saw the lights of East Washington Street in the distance and I opened all the car
windows and the sunroof and let the wind continue to ruin my hair.

As I drove slowly past the historic gas station on the Middleburg line, I saw someone
familiar sitting on the hood of a pale SUV. He motioned with his hands, trying to
wave me in, and I laughed when I saw it was James. I did a U-turn on the damp road
and pulled my car in next to his.

The gas station was faintly illuminated. I got out and stood in front of him. He stayed
where he was, leaning back on his hood and smiling. “I decided I wasn’t quite ready
for our date to end,” he said, pushing himself off the car.

“Are you serious?” I replied, amused and genuinely surprised.

“I thought you needed to know just how patient and persistent I am. You’ve seen patient;
now I’m showing you persistent.
And I figured I could catch you here, since everyone has to stop at this light.”

“Late-night gas station stalking is normal to you,” I said.

“I’m not gas station stalking. I’m Adrienne stalking. Adrienne who is a very, very
slow driver stalking. I thought you might find it charming.”

“I don’t,” I replied. It was a little charming, but I wasn’t ready to admit it.

The wind started blowing again. By now, instead of looking chic and polished, I looked
like I was auditioning for the musical
Hair
.

“You have very nice hair. I like the way it flies around your face,” said James, looking
at me standing there in the wind. I had to keep my hands on the hem of my dress to
keep it from flying up. Without skipping a beat, he said, “Judging from how you almost
never return my messages and have only gone out with me twice since I saved you at
the Hay-Adams, I’m getting the vibe that you’re not in love with me yet. And I think
you should be. I’m a great guy, which you’ll realize soon enough.”

“I will?”

“Oh yeah. And until then, I thought I would just convince you by being incredibly
romantic and driving to your quaint little town. Clearly, it’s working. I can tell
that I’m wooing you.”

“It might be working a little,” I said, walking closer. “But take me away from the
empty gas station and I might be a little more wooable.”

“Okay,” he said, reaching for my hand. “Let’s go to the Red Fox Inn.”

“You know what that is?” I laughed.

“Sure. I’ve been doing my research. I plan on spending a lot more time out here.”

He opened his car door, promising we would come back later for mine, and we headed
down the slick road to the stone inn. He had his radio on C-SPAN, but I changed it
immediately to the Coffee House station and hummed along to the strum of an acoustic
guitar.

James turned to me at the next stop sign. “You should like me,” he declared. “I can
feel you hesitating. Maybe you think I’m too good-looking for you. Too successful.”

He smiled as I raised my eyebrows as high as they could go without causing my forehead
to wrinkle.

“But really. Seriously. I’m a very nice guy. Call my sister, she can vouch for me.
I never lit her hair on fire or tore off her dolls’ heads. I’m a great big brother.”

That was more than I could say for my sister, pyro extraordinaire.

“I like you,” he said again, looking down into my embarrassed face before he put his
foot back on the gas. “A lot. I will do my best to make you ludicrously happy if you
just give me a chance.”

I turned up Jackson Browne’s “Running on Empty,” now playing on the radio.

“Okay,” I said evenly under Danny Kortchmar’s guitar strums.

“Okay?”

“Sure. Why not. I’ve already kissed you on a tourist trolley. I might as well go out
with you a few more times.”

When we pulled up to the hotel, we parked on the street outside and he walked around
to open my door. He put his hand on the small of my back to help me down and led me
out the door and into the hotel.

When he ordered red wine, and I asked for tea, he looked at me with surprise.

“You might not believe me—and considering the one-woman
show I put on in your apartment, I would understand why—but I really am sober most
of the time.”

“I believe you,” he replied. “I know what you do for a living. I doubt you would be
good at your job if you were a raging drunk.”

No, instead I had the kind of job that turned you into a raging drunk when all was
said and done. I imagined that my post-
Capitolist
years would be filled with a wine cooler addiction and lots of Jungian psychoanalysis.