Woman King (30 page)

“
Candidate’s Chief Fundraiser Rails
Against ‘Fat, Lazy Americans’ In Secret Video Recording By Internet
Journalist.”

“Oh, fuck,” I said, scanning the rest of the
story. JP, it seemed, had managed to get lucky last night after
all.

****

There is an old French saying one of my
teachers would use to scold us for misbehaving when she left the
room.
Quand le chat n’est pas là, les souris dansent
. When
the cat’s away the mice will dance. In other words, leave the
children alone, and they will get into mischief. The same holds
true for campaigns. There is no rest until the end, no moment when
you can let your guard down. Every word must be spoken with intent,
and every action must be carefully vetted to weigh its potential
impact. One step in the wrong direction can be the end. To be a
good candidate requires discipline. As with all things in life,
without discipline, you get chaos.

I let out a few more expletives as I scanned
the emails.

“Darlin, you sound like some of the men I’ve
heard in the trenches.”

“I assure you I can do worse,” I said.
“Listen, something happened last night after we left. I need to get
in touch with Gabriel. I will probably need to get out of here
quickly and go back to my house. I need my laptop and my phone
charger.” I dreaded dialing his number. I knew he would be furious
at me for being out of touch.
C’est la vie
, I thought. I
can’t take it back; I can only try to fix the mess.

“Olivia,” Gabriel said, his French accent
weighing down the first vowel of my name. “Call Levi, he will
explain everything. There is a video; that damn reporter Richard
invited took it. After you speak with Levi, call me back.”

I pressed the number on my speed-dial for
Levi. He picked up on the first ring.

“Where have you been?” was his only greeting.
“I have been trying to reach you for hours. The reporter, you know
the one Richard invited, he videotaped us…Richard and me …I don’t
know what happened. Last night I thought perhaps that he’d had too
much to drink. He said…some unfortunate things.”

“I know about the video,” I said, scanning my
email. “Let me take a look and I will call you back in five
minutes.”

William, who had walked out of the room,
returned with what looked like a brand new MacBook. We sat at his
desk, side by side, and called up YouTube to view the video. Even
before watching the video, my heart sank. The clip had already been
viewed 10,000 times. The video itself was shaky at best; JP had
clearly filmed it with his phone at a distance so the two men would
not see him.

They were standing on the deck at Richard’s
house, near the bar, illuminated by outside lights mounted to the
side of the house. Levi and Richard clearly were already in the
middle of a conversation. Richard looked agitated. He was holding a
glass of wine in his hand, but didn’t appear to be drunk.

“Come on, Levi. Do you honestly believe that
woman has a chance? She thinks the Bible should be the basis for
all of our laws, for the Supreme Court for Christ’s sake. She is
crazy and so are her few meager supporters. They’re pathetic, the
lot of them. Those fat, lazy high-school dropouts…Why on earth
should they forever have jobs building houses, or making cheap
American cars no one wants to buy? There is no room for them in
this new economy. What person in their right mind would support
someone who wants to ‘ask for a sign from God’ to fix immigration?
This is Silicon Valley, not the Beverly Hillbillies. People are
smart enough to know better.”

I watched the video five times in succession,
trying to memorize all of the words and gestures. The one thing
that stood out immediately was that Levi never said a word. He
never agreed with Richard. On the flip side, he didn’t try to stop
him either. At the end, when Richard had finished his tirade, Levi
said, “OK, Richard. Let’s go inside now. Let’s let the voters make
up their minds. I think they can be trusted to make good
choices.”

Levi’s faith in voters was something I could
use. It was a small thing, but it provided the foundation necessary
to build a plan for responding. The bitter irony of the moment
settled upon me as I prepared to conference in Gabriel and Levi. I
had assumed Stoner Halbert would try to do something directed at me
personally. Now, it appeared that either Halbert’s demon had come
in contact with Richard and egged on his outburst, or we’d been
walking around with a ticking time bomb inside the campaign for
weeks.

I’d warned Levi not to jinx us.

I pulled out my phone, which was beeping
frantically, to see what the noise was about and ran smack into a
set of Twitter feeds from Lacy Smith’s campaign.

Barnes must quit campaign.

Intellectual elite have no place in
government

It’s of the people, by the people.

William leaned over my shoulder as I scanned
the tweets. “I call it Constitutional haiku,” I said. “It’s a
favorite of conservatives.”

“Smart,” William said. “They are striking
while the news cycle is hot.”

I nodded in agreement. I had to acknowledge
their discipline, but I had no intention of letting Levi resign, at
least not yet. I picked up the phone, resolved to put Humpty-Dumpty
back together again. I dialed Levi and conferenced Gabriel in to
the conversation.

“Levi, get Richard on the line,” I said, as I
rummaged around for a piece of paper in William’s desk. I found a
yellow legal pad and began to doodle as I spoke to relieve some of
my nervous energy.

“Richard isn’t answering his phone,” Levi
said, sounding apprehensive.

“I bet,” I said. “Listen, I’ve reviewed the
video, as well as the story JP wrote. I also reviewed Lacy’s tweets
calling for your resignation. It looks bad, but I think it can be
fixed.

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” I continued.
“First, Richard is going to issue a big, fat apology for his
thoughtless remarks, which I will write for him shortly. Next, we
will hold a press conference in Palo Alto tomorrow to discuss what
he said. We’re going to make sure everybody knows this is about him
at the moment and what Levi’s response is going to be.”

“That’s it?” Levi asked.

“No, there’s more. I will be leaving shortly
for Palo Alto to begin on-the-street interviews with voters, to
gauge what they really think about this situation. Patrick and
Maggie from the campaign will conduct a quick phone survey, using
some of the voters we identified in our poll.’

“While we do our work, Levi, you need to come
up with a gesture, a donation of some kind that will unequivocally
demonstrate your respect and belief that no one gets left behind in
this new economy. Unemployment is still high with blue-collar
voters; you must reassure them that you will help them find work.
We need a donation to a major foundation that funds job training
and career transition programs. Finally, both of you should plan on
being in Palo Alto later this evening. We’ll regroup then and put
all of these pieces of the puzzle together. Is everything
clear?”

“Sounds like a solid plan,” said Levi. “What
time is the conference tomorrow?”

“I’m recommending 3 pm; that way we can make
the 5 pm news cycle.”

“Will you let JP into the conference?” asked
Gabriel.

“Of course,” I said. “It won’t do at all to
shoot the messenger. I’m leaving now to pick up my gear and go. As
ritzy as it sounds, I will be checking into the Four Seasons by the
highway. I’ll see you later this evening.”

Time was ticking away… I was anxious to get
started. I put my phone away and gathered my things to leave.

“You’re as good as any general in the field,”
William said, standing in the doorway watching me.

“I don’t know about that,” I said. “I led our
troops right into this mess, this is my fault.”

“You think because you didn’t go out to
dinner, JP decided to write something negative?”

“Sure, isn’t it obvious?”

“Darlin, you’re a campaign manager, not an
escort. If JP was basing his favorable coverage on your affections,
then this was bound to happen, regardless. You were never going to
end up in his bed; you said so yourself.”

“I did. Shit. Why did Richard Lyon invite JP
in the first place? Before I knew you, I would often tell people
that reporters are a lot like vampires—you should never invite them
into your house because you can’t get them out.”

William laughed as we walked downstairs to
his garage. “That’s a bunch of folktale nonsense,” he said. “We can
come and go anywhere we please.”

William took me home and I quickly picked up
my gear and left for Palo Alto. I phoned my staff from my car and
asked them draw up a script to use in the phone interviews. My plan
was to conduct in-person interviews at the Stanford Shopping Mall
and among small businesses along University Avenue.

Being able to read people’s emotions put me
in a good position to conduct voter interviews. It’s common
knowledge in the industry that people often lie, or minimize things
when they participate in surveys, especially on the phone. No one
wants to tell a stranger they drink four cocktails a night, or eat
red meat five days a week. It’s the same with their views on
candidates and political issues. Most people don’t want to tell you
they don’t like someone when they have to look you in the eye. None
of that would matter for me, though, because I would know their
true emotions whether they shared them or not.

Thankfully, traffic was light and I made it
to Palo Alto quickly. As I pulled into the parking lot of the
shopping center, I readied myself for an afternoon of reading
people.

After several hours of speaking with voters,
I took refuge in a café on University Avenue to rest my tired feet
and type up my notes. I ordered a chai latte. Elsa’s love of all
things tea rubbing off on me. I sipped the frothy, fragrant milk
feeling both exhausted and exhilarated after my conversations. I
couldn’t wait to relay the results of my discussion with the
team.

I had been typing for about an hour when
Stoner Halbert suddenly appeared in front of me. It was a shock to
see him; we’d managed to sidestep each other for months. I’d
avoided him when he was in the midst of stealing all of my clients.
Later, when I joined the Council and had given up any work
connected to him, I became too busy to care.

Halbert took the chair directly in front of
me. A changed man stood before me. It was difficult to fathom this
was the person who’d ruined so many of my days months ago. Now his
aura was hollow, as if someone had stolen his very essence. The
blue eyes peering into me were flat and dark.

Sitting in silence, regarding each another
across the table, it struck me that I should have been more
intimidated to face such a creature, this weasel that stole from
the nests of others to feed himself. But I was no longer flying
blind; I could read people’s intentions, see their true colors. It
hadn’t been easy, but I’d come to trust my instincts and my
intuition, two powerful forces that have served women for
centuries. Elsa had prepared me for a moment like this, when I
could sit face-to-face with an old nemesis and breathe a sigh of
relief.

“Look what the cat dragged in,” I said. “What
brings you here?”

Halbert licked his lips and sat for a moment
before replying. His gestures were human enough to keep people from
noticing, but to me, his air of decay was unmistakable, as if he
would peel open at any moment and allow some malevolent beast to
come pouring out of his center.

“I came to discuss the terms of your
surrender,” he said. “You must have known I would be the one to
take you down. I felt I should deliver the message in person.”

As odd as it may sound, I was delighted by
his remarks because it showed that he didn’t know what I knew: that
the majority of local voters cared very little about Richard’s
comments. My interviews had revealed that most people were too busy
living their lives to tune in to these kinds of petty clashes. And
the few who had heard about the video were more interested in
Levi’s words and actions than those of his friends. Everyone, it
turns out, can relate to being at a party where someone you know
says something embarrassing. Halbert, meanwhile, had to stick with
the media and their views on controversy—something that didn’t
necessarily indicate voter interest.

“Why should I surrender, as you put it?”

“To avoid humiliating yourself,” he said,
clearly enjoying the conversation.

“I see,” I said, nodding as if it was the
most logical thing in the world. “So you would like us to resign
and let your boss run unopposed with six weeks to go in the
election?”

“Exactly,” he said with a sense of
satisfaction.

His comments were designed to enrage me, but
I knew that keeping my temper in check was crucial. Halbert had no
gift to read thoughts or emotions. He was one-dimensional. If
people looked like losers, then they were. Some in the press might
already have made up their minds that our campaign was about to
collapse under the weight of Richard’s comments, but I knew better.
Tomorrow we would put the campaign back on its rightful course, but
I didn’t want Halbert to know it. That secret was all mine, and for
once I had something he couldn’t steal. Now it was my turn to
prolong the reply, and I sat back savoring the silence that
stretched before us.

“I’ll think about it,” I said. “You had
better ask Lacy to pray that I make the right decision.”

Having failed to get the response he was
expecting from me, Halbert’s face twisted into a grimace. I was
tempted to taunt him further, but realized it was time to end our
discussion. His overt waves of hostility were starting to alarm the
other café patrons.