The First Affair (25 page)

“I don’t know yet. I’m on my way in to the OIC. You need immunity or you won’t see daylight until your forties.”

She was brusque. But after actively tugging the grenade that was Paul into the foxhole with me, I was incapable of trusting anything warmer. I gave her my address and, hearing Erica stir, wiped my eyes. “How are you feeling?” I asked, going back to the living room.

She pushed herself to sit. “I can see,” she said drolly, her voice raspy. “So that’s something.” She looked out the glass doors as I waited to
learn which Erica I would be getting that morning—the one who would let me in or the one who would cut me off. “I thought it’d be like with my sponsees—knock the drugs out of your hand, stay the night, get you support, be back at work by sunup.” She spoke as her thoughts came, as if I weren’t there.

“Well, Elaine’s headed to the OIC. So we should know more soon—including how long you’re stuck here. With me.”

She nodded, her shoulders rising back from the defenseless position they’d been in last night. “I need coffee.”

“Or course. What else?”

“I’ll need to borrow clothes.”

“Everything’s with the doorman for UPS,” I remembered.

“I’ll buzz down.” She crossed to the intercom while I busied myself with straightening the couch.

“Erica,” I tentatively broached as she hung up with the lobby. “If Riddick called Mom, why didn’t they come?”

She dropped her head for a second, as if already exhausted by the conversation we hadn’t started.

“Erica?”

“He was too drunk to fly.” We stared at each other.

“Because he’s ashamed of me.”

“Because he’s an alcoholic,” she answered sharply, going to unpack her purse on the table. “He’s tried to control it rubbing a fucking rabbit’s foot, but he can’t handle stress. He can’t handle anything. Great. Lip gloss, a rubber band, and two Tampax. I’m set.” She shoved the leather sack aside in frustration.

“I can lend you things, really. And God knows Gail has things.” Limoges, Baccarat, possible recording devices.

“Things—great.” Her storm cloud started to spin, sucking what little air I’d found before she woke.

“Well, maybe Mom can tag you out,” I suggested.

Her expression set into the familiar rage. “Yeah, she’s up for that. Are you making coffee or not?”

She stalked to the bathroom, tugging the door shut. God, why did they send her? It would have been better to be trapped alone.

As the shower turned on my phone pinged with a text. I threw a
dish towel over it, uncertain whether it violated the quarantine. But, unable to control my curiosity, I stood directly over it and discreetly lifted a corner of the terry cloth. It was from Jean.
“Family emergency—please call.”
I dropped the towel—I had no idea what to do. I wanted desperately to help Greg, to see through what I had done by signing that affidavit.

Less than a mile away, his testimony would be starting within the hour.

Another text. I quickly lifted the towel’s corner again. From Lewis this time.
“Good news—please call.”
Fuck.
Fuckfuckfuck!

Jean re-sent her text.

Lewis re-sent his.

“Turn it off!” Erica shouted from the doorway, zipping up Gail’s bathrobe.

“What?”

She lunged for the phone, powering it down.

“Erica!”

“The only reason I’m not throwing it in the fucking garbage disposal is I think that would be tampering.” She grabbed her laptop from her bag. “What’s the Wi-Fi password?”

“Elephant.” She bent over the dining table, typing and scrolling while I watched. I flashed to when we were kids and I’d sit next to her playing video games for hours, never wanting to take the controls myself, to risk being up against her. I just liked how she was when she succeeded, suddenly generous, kind. “What are you doing?”

“Googling you . . . it’s just that article from the
Tribune
about your sixth-grade science fair prize.”

“That’s on there?”

“Shit. And this.” She swung it around so I could read the Drudge Report. A rumor “going around Washington” pertaining to the President and a “certain White House intern.” “That’s why they’re texting you,” she said, swiveling the computer back. “Every outlet will be covering this in minutes.”

We turned on the news. She was right.

Erica returned to her laptop. “I need to email work and tell them I’m not coming in. Tersely. Then I need to email Peter and tell him
I’m not coming home. Tersely.” She looked down at her sizable engagement ring.

“What about Mom and Dad?”

“Elaine will have to be our go-between.”

“We don’t have any food,” I said, because other than making coffee, cooking was the only manageable task I could think of.

“Are you hungry?” She didn’t look up as she typed.

“No.”

“When we are, we’ll order in online.”

“I can’t afford that,” I answered from a mind stuck in a day ago.

“Next to the five hundred thousand we have to come up with, I think we can swing a bagel.”

“What are Mom and Dad gonna do?” I asked.

“Empty Mom’s 401(k), wipe out their savings, sell the house. Then there’s
my
savings.”

“Yours?” I was stunned.

“We don’t have a choice. I already asked Peter.”

“When?”

“On the way to the shuttle. Obviously Elaine was going to need a retainer.”

“How do you know all this?” I asked.

“
I
live in the real world,” she leveled at me.

“Seriously?” I glared, throwing my hand at the television. “How much realer could my world get right now?”

“Oh my God, Jamie, being the President’s girlfriend doesn’t make you a grown-up—it makes him a child.”

“Fuck you.”

“You already have! I’m your goddamned prisoner!”

“I didn’t ask you to come!”

“But I had to anyway, didn’t I? But if you’re expecting me to sit here and braid your hair, Jamie, it’s not going to fucking happen.”

“As you never fail to make abundantly clear, Erica. I got it.”

• • •

While Elaine’s oxblood suit was out of place in the gym, her intensity and focus put the lunch-hour lifters behind us to shame. Her nose,
cheekbones, and short blond haircut were all equally sharp, reminding me of an angry hen, and I wondered about women like Elaine. Would Brooke become an Elaine? Would Erica? Or had Elaine once been more like me, blurry, unsure? I doubted it. She sat us at the lone table in the corner intended for diagnostic sessions. If she was aware of the palpable wall between Erica and me, sitting as far from each other as the Formica allowed, she didn’t let on.

“Wouldn’t it be better to be in the apartment?” I asked, eyeing the guys on the treadmills twenty feet away.

“No.” Elaine pulled a yellow pad from her briefcase. “I made it clear to the OIC that I will fight any misuse of the Patriot Act. Any evidence acquired through wiretapping, et cetera. I pointedly let them know we would be up here. If they want to debug Gail’s place they can.”

“So what does Jamie need to do?” Erica asked.

Elaine looked squarely at me. “
If
you wear a wire, the special prosecutor is prepared to offer full immunity. That offer’s for real.”

“No.”

“Jamie.” She looked at me plainly. “This isn’t the moment to start having integrity.”

“Start?” However deserved, it smarted.

“He’s married. You talked. You
need
to cooperate.” But how could I? And in the same breath, how could I keep Erica trapped and bankrupt our family?

I looked up at the screens over the treadmills. Greg was about to start his press conference on the clean energy bill. He approached the podium while the commentator shared that the President had just come from giving his sworn testimony that he did not have a sexual relationship with Brianne or anyone else other than his wife—

In my tie.

The one with the little raccoons—he hadn’t declared it. He was standing there on national television, still trying to communicate that we were a team.

“What are you willing to tell them?” Elaine asked.

I watched him at the podium, my heart aching that I’d put him in jeopardy. I should
never
have told a single person. I should have had
the strength. He trusted me to handle it and I gave him away. “Nothing.” It was the right thing to do.

“Nothing?”

“Regardless of what Paul recorded me saying—”

“Paul?” Elaine asked.

“Paul Hoff—he made the recording Agent Riddick played for me at the hotel, I think—unless the apartment
is
bugged and this was all Gail and Brooke . . .” My head throbbed from trying to parse it. I couldn’t make myself hold the truth of the extent of Paul’s betrayal. It kept sliding off, like a coat you’re trying to hang up when you’re drunk.

Elaine flipped through her pages. “They didn’t mention anyone named Paul Hoff—”

Suddenly the two middle-aged guys on the treadmills both stumbled, their earbuds flying out.

“Give me the remote!” Elaine rushed to the screens. “What did he say?”

“Who the fuck is Jamie McAlister?”

It was as if someone had smashed my head between two cinder blocks.

“He’s gay?” The other guy looked puzzled.

“Well.” Elaine grabbed up her things. “That’s the end of your wire deal. I need to find out if you still have value.”

“Value?” Erica asked.

“Jamie, I cannot impress this upon you hard enough—you’re
only
safe from prosecution so long as you’re useful.”

• • •

Within minutes the networks had my picture. Within hours they were on my parents’ lawn. By dinnertime a blonde in a pink coat was reporting live from Vassar, talking to some guy I’d never met who apparently recalled me as “always up for a good time.” I remembered too late that one of my old classmates from high school was an intern at Fox. My Facebook photos went national, what felt like endless images of me drunk at parties. A narrative of my promiscuity emerged
faster than I could change the channels, a handful of guys multiplying like gremlins into an imaginary horde.

Erica’s phone rang until she shut it off. She unplugged her laptop. I caught her eyes darting to Gail’s bar.

Elaine called us back up to the gym. I sat with Gail’s Lakers hat pulled low.

“They want you to swear, under oath, that you were given the job in New York in exchange for your silence.”

“But that’s just not true.”

“Jamie, they have your letter to Rutland.”

“What?” Lewis Franklin hadn’t mentioned that.

“They have a letter you messengered the President demanding a job.”

“How?”

“Someone gave them the messenger company records and they subpoenaed it.”

I had to shut my eyes for a second as I remembered how Paul had egged me on. I was a sucker; a tourist in Times Square duped at a card game, a retiree bilked out of her savings, an easy mark. Twenty-two and needing to be liked.

“That letter isn’t an admission of anything. I know what it sounded like”—crude and mercenary. “But it wasn’t like that at all between us.” Greg smiled when he told me I got the job. He wanted me to be happy. If he couldn’t be with me, he wanted to at least send me off to success. “This whole thing is insane. Brianne Rice brought a sexual harassment case against him,” I clarified. “I am not charging anyone with anything. If I fit their criteria it would mean the President propositioned me for sex, I turned him down and lost my job. I said yes and still lost my job.”

Elaine was momentarily silent for the first time since we’d met. “Let me be extremely clear, because you seem to be missing the scope.” She put her palms together and tapped the edge of her hands against the table as she spoke. “The Office of the Independent Counsel wants the President impeached. He lied under oath about having sexual relations with you. And they will come for you with everything they have until you confirm it.”

My mind reeled at what that meant. “But he didn’t offer me that job for silence. He was helping me because he—”

“Don’t say it,” Erica said to her lap.

“He likes me,” I finished.

“Sleep on it.” Elaine stood. “And give me the right fucking answer in the morning.”

• • •

“FBI! Open up!” Erica and I looked at each other, momentarily bridging our animosity because, without cooking meth or running guns, we had somehow crossed over into a world where this shit was actually happening.

My laptop and cell were seized. Followed by the computers and phones of everyone I’d emailed or texted since June ninth. Erica. Our parents. Lena. Gail. My friends from college. That asshole from the jazz concert on the lawn. But except for Lena and Gail, none of my high school or college friends had known about Greg.

They did now.

Elaine returned to repeat the OIC’s demands, but I clung to my last directive.

“I stand by my affidavit. He’ll stand by his testimony. When I texted Lena or Rachelle, I never used his name. That audiotape is inadmissible, right?”

“Technically, yes.”

“Then it’s our word against theirs. They have nothing.” I stood firm, my arms crossed. A President behind me.

• • •

The next morning, Erica shook me awake from the last tendrils of Ambien. “They have something,” she said, already returning to the living room.

“Who?” I asked, immediately up and following. On the TV was a coffee commercial—happy people excited to greet their day in fisherman sweaters, walking big dogs. Then the camera panned the
Today Show
crowd.

“They said coming up we were going to hear you talking about Greg.”

Confused, I shook my head as suddenly we heard sobbing incongruously layered over Savannah Guthrie’s listening face. My sobs. Then, “I d-don’t think I can take it anymore, I really don’t. But how could I have refused him? Pushed him away? God, it hurts so f—ing much.” That was bleeped.

“Oh my God.” It hit me when I’d said that—and to whom.

“What—what is it?” she asked as my hands flapped in front of my face like panicked butterflies. “Jamie, what is it—you’re scaring me.”

“They got to Rachelle.”