The List (8 page)

I reached for my wool riding jacket. I could have just closed the window, but I liked
the feeling of the cold night wind on my tired face. By the time I slipped it on and
turned around in the worn leather seat again, the woman had turned her face to the
left and was looking at Baker’s old-fashioned sign.

I did know her—Olivia Campo. She worked at the
Capitolist
and sat within my line of sight in the newsroom. She had a big title and covered
the White House—the very top on the
List
’s pyramid of importance. We had never spoken, because I was in my Style section bubble,
and she didn’t waste her breath on anyone except the editors she was sucking up to.
But based on office layout, I did a lot of staring at the side of her head. And of
course, I also knew her as the girl who ruined Isabelle’s future in television. It
was definitely her. Her flame-colored hair and aggravated expression were visible
even in the dark.

I could only see her because her headlights were on, and what did I care if she saw
me? But my heart seemed to care; I
thought if I looked down I’d be able to see it bumping around underneath my sweater.

I rolled up my driver’s side window and slumped down in my seat. When my nose was
the same height as the steering wheel, I dared to turn around in the driver’s seat
and peek in her direction. She didn’t exactly look like she was trying to keep a low
profile, but in Middleburg at 1
A.M.
, there was no need to try.

Why was she out here in the middle of the night? I knew why I was out so late. I lived
here, and I was restless. I had no idea where Olivia lived, but my guess was that
it wasn’t Middleburg, Virginia. And if her parents lived in Middleburg, I would have
known. It was that kind of town. Unless they had a different name? Was it possible
that I was not the only
Capitolist
reporter crashing with her parents in the country? But no. No girl as hungry to get
ahead as Olivia would dare live outside the city. In Washington, after people looked
you up and down to determine if you were fat, smelly, or unimportant, they always
asked you the following three questions: what do you do, where did you go to college,
and where do you live. Based on your answers, they might ask your name.

Isabelle had mentioned that all the senior Congress and White House reporters made
twice our salaries, so Olivia probably lived in a town house in Georgetown or Capitol
Hill, not out here in hunt country. Maybe she had a country house? It was possible.
The real estate was sinfully expensive in Middleburg, but if she was married to someone
with money, she could.

I wanted to drive away and stop awkwardly staring at her, but I also didn’t want to
draw her attention. She was still reclining on her car, her arms crossed to stay warm,
looking out of place but strangely at home.

After five idle minutes, she took her phone out of her coat
pocket. If the
Capitolist
had taught me anything, it was how to drive and dial at the same time. But she didn’t
actually make a call. She just looked at her phone. Maybe she was reading a text?

Finally, Olivia got back into her expensive car. She looked at the phone again and
put her seat belt on. She then let out a groan, hit her steering wheel, and drove
off in the direction she had come.

I didn’t know what to think, except that it was weird for someone in their twenties
to be alone in Middleburg on a weekday. Someone besides me.

When I finally did collapse into bed, the soothing frog noises I turned on failed
to soothe me. I tossed around, wondering what to do the next day. Should I mention
to Olivia that I had seen her? I had never uttered a word to her, so it might be odd
to open with “Oh hey, I saw you casually kicking around horse country last night.
Were you lost? Or just in need of some fresh air fifty miles away from home?”

But the next day was Friday, and the president was traveling. She was probably escaping
the city, and I told myself it was unlikely she would even be in the office. And I
was right. Friday came without one Olivia sighting and I never mentioned seeing her
to Libby or Isabelle or anyone else.

Days at the paper went by at a gallop. Some days you worked every waking moment; others
allowed you an hour or two of downtime to frantically research future story ideas
for the paper. But all had you spinning at a pace that sitting world leaders would
look at and mutter, “You can’t be serious. No one can keep that schedule.” And some
people couldn’t. Like Rachel.

I
n most offices, there were employees who sprinted from task to task, happy to bring
their blood pressure up to heart attack levels, while others kicked back at their
desks like their cubicle was a tropical island. At the
List,
there was only one kind of employee, the kind that never stopped working. When a
person decided that they didn’t want to devote every brain cell to the
Capitolist
or they started overdosing on Washington, they left and left quickly.

One sunny Tuesday morning, after our section meeting, Rachel announced to us that
she had given her two weeks’ notice to Upton and was ready to say goodbye to 5
A.M.
wake-up calls and wall-to-wall C-SPAN. She had only been my editor for forty-five
days.

I wanted to hug her ankles the way I did Mrs. Van Hollen’s on my last day of kindergarten,
but my pencil skirt really compromised my range of motion. So instead I nodded my
head encouragingly, trying to look brave but feeling the way I did just before my
sister shoved me off a ski lift in Gstaad. I had known her mitten-covered hand was
going for the small of my back before I felt the firm shove and heard the cackle of
joy, but there was nothing I could do about it. I flew through the crisp Swiss air
in my pink snowsuit complete with rabbit ears and crash-landed onto a family of five
frightened Germans. Unless
I drugged Rachel and shoved her in a filing cabinet, there was probably nothing I
could do about her departure, either.

Deep in mourning about the loss of Rachel, we stayed mum for much of the afternoon,
only looking up when someone stopped in front of our bank of desks in the very back.
Though there were five of us seated in the corner that I had dubbed the Outback, Upton
liked to use the space just in front of our desks as a little conference area, oblivious
that we were sitting there with working ears. There were plenty of glass-walled conference
rooms in the newsroom, but if given the chance, staffers preferred to have desk-side
chats with Upton to show their close personal relationships off to the rest of us.

A few hours after Rachel dropped her “ta-ta suckers!” bomb on us, Upton, Cushing,
two of the deputy editors, and Olivia Campo all gathered in front of our desks holding
Capitolist
coffee mugs. I hadn’t seen very much of Olivia since the night I spotted her in Middleburg.
I’d learned she was a senior White House reporter who spent most of her time on Pennsylvania
Avenue—and I had never been this close to her. I lifted my head, trying to look like
a girl casually engrossed in
The Situation Room,
playing on the TV closest to them.

“I think we go big with Hu Jintao,” Olivia said, getting into details about the Chinese
president’s imminent visit. She really was very thin, and her skin was kind of magical
looking. It was so pale that I was pretty convinced that with the help of a flashlight
and some reading glasses, I could actually see the blood coursing through her veins.

“Olivia’s right,” said Cushing. “That should be tomorrow’s lead. Olivia, their meeting
is open press?”

“It’s not,” she replied, shifting her thin legs to lean in closer to Cushing. “But
Kelson will give me ten minutes.”

“Are you sure?” asked Clark, the deputy managing editor for
online. “Why would POTUS’s press sec give you ten minutes on such a busy day?” Upton
and Olivia both smirked and looked at each other knowingly.

Gross. Was Olivia lap-dancing for the president’s press flack or was she really that
much better of a reporter than everyone else? I looked at her, all thin and pale with
her limp red hair and gray wool pantsuit, and didn’t see anything so extraordinary
about her. She didn’t look like she could bend kryptonite with her teeth; she just
looked like a girl who liked frowning. In a few months, I had learned that part of
making it big at the
List
was acting like you owned the building. Few had the temerity to do it, especially
the women and definitely not me. But Olivia did and it was kind of amazing to watch.

When it was all sorted that Olivia would save the day with her close, nearly familial
connection to the president’s press secretary, the little group broke up, leaving
only Upton and Olivia to finish their coffee and pretend the Style section didn’t
exist.

“Olivia, I’m sending Mike to follow the president and his delegation to India next
week. I know I’ve had you in a holding pattern for pool duty, so I wanted you to know
you can clear your schedule,” Upton said, draining his coffee and shifting his tall
slender frame.

Olivia’s pale face was suddenly not so pale anymore.

“Upton! You can’t put Mike on that trip. He doesn’t have the foreign policy experience,”
she replied at a perfectly audible level. “The only trip he’s been on for the paper
was with POTUS to Toronto, which is basically like going to upstate New York. He’s
not going to be able to cover.”

“Does she know Mike is sitting right behind her?” asked Alison quietly from her desk.

“Of course she knows! It’s all part of her warped power game,” hissed Julia, the resident
expert on analyzing Machiavellian
behavior at the
List
. It was true. Mike Bowles sat at the bank of desks just in front of us. There was
a wide hallway and a pillar between them, but from the expression on his face, he
could definitely hear her.

“Let’s talk about it at lunch,” said Upton in a low, quiet voice before rapping his
fingers on the top of a water cooler and walking back to his office.

Mike looked like he had just been told he had testicular cancer.

Standing alone by our back area, I saw Olivia’s face light up, not with a smile exactly,
but with a confident, satisfied expression. She must have finally realized that instead
of a wall next to her, there were actual people with eardrums and the ability to write
disparaging emails. She turned toward our group, looked directly at my terrified face,
and said, “Don’t you have something to do?” Too frozen to respond, I looked down at
my keyboard and Julia waved her away with an annoyed flick of the wrist.

“She’s having lunch with Upton?” hissed Libby when Olivia had left our area. “No way.
I could never eat lunch with him. I would be so nervous. I would spill everything
and probably start crying and call my mother.” Alison nodded in nervous agreement
and I tried to bring my pulse down, still shaken by my very first verbal interaction
with Olivia. Well, verbal on her part.

“You two would not cry,” said Isabelle, calmly fluffing her perky blond ponytail.
“I had lunch with him and Apolo once. It wasn’t that big a deal.”

Apolo Ohno! I loved when Isabelle talked about Apolo. It made me feel like his best
friend once removed.

“But you’re trained to handle stress,” Alison shot back. “You skied in front of like
ten million people. You probably had a stress coach and a team of sports psychiatrists.”

“I didn’t,” said Isabelle. “I had confidence in my craft and so
should you. We’re not idiots. Just because Olivia and people like Olivia treat us
like we’re the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders who happened to have gotten hold of some
laptops and press credentials does not mean we’re bad at our jobs. All our badges
around our necks say
Capitolist
reporter, just like Olivia’s.” Isabelle was right, but I bet that if I talked back
to Upton in the middle of the newsroom I would have been asked to give notice.

Though I hated to admit it to myself, the way I hated to admit that I listened to
Josh Groban’s
Noël
album in July, part of me was in awe of Olivia. What she said in earshot of Mike
was terribly mean, but she was so confident in her work, so vocal in her demands,
while I still felt guilty and unworthy when I took a
Capitolist
stamped envelope from the supply room. How, I wondered, did she learn to act like
that?

Seeing my puzzled face, Julia frowned and said, “Olivia Campo is actually the devil.
If her red hair doesn’t tip you off, then her egomaniacal personality and her ability
to shove her face up Upton’s ass will.” I nodded my understanding and got back to
writing a piece on football players with political aspirations.

After Rachel left, one of the older Congress editors stepped in for a few weeks. Our
copy was rewritten to sound like breaking legislation news. We got morning emails
written in all caps and were chided for not getting direct quotes from every lawmaker
we referenced. It was like having a gymnastics squad led by the curling coach. But
we knew it was temporary.

Just before Christmas, I woke up to a company-wide email announcing new hires. At
the top was a new tech reporter to replace the one who had smashed his computer and
moved to New Mexico. There was also a copy editor who came from
USA Today,
and then, listed last, was the new Style section editor. You would think we Style
reporters might have learned about our new boss before the mass email went out, but
no. After all,
Libby and Isabelle had once overheard Upton saying, “Honestly, I never read the Style
section.”

“We are very pleased to welcome Hardy Hamm, who will serve as our new Style editor,”
the email nod to him began. “Hardy, a 2010 graduate of Yale, was editor of the
Yale Daily News,
completed internships at the
Herald Tribune
in London and
Le Monde
in Paris and worked for the
New York Times
business section before coming to the
Capitolist
. He is the recipient of a William Randolph Hearst Foundation journalism award, the
College Press Freedom Award, and a Poynter award. A native of Minot, North Dakota,
he graduated from Yale in three years. In his spare time, he enjoys bass fishing,
following the stock market, coin collecting, and writing to the editors of
Bloomberg
to point out their mistakes.”