The List (12 page)

I needed time to think. I also needed a mode of transportation with better wheel traction
than the Volvo. I had to back up
twice and make two loud attempts to get up the last hill to my parents’ house. When
I got close to the house I turned off the headlights and wheeled the car around to
the barn.

Jasper was lying, abandoned, in the outside riding ring. He looked excited and geared
up for Paul Revere’s midnight ride when I approached, but I had to bring him in. I
brushed his coat and thought about what to do next.

It was then that I looked up and saw the camera installed in the barn. We had put
it there to keep an eye on the horses, and if one was sick, to monitor it through
the night. I waved my hand back and forth in front of it, and the lens moved with
me.

I needed a camera.

I lay in bed as the clock crept toward 4
A.M.
I was unable to do anything but sit and chew my nails off thinking about them, a
United States senator on the rise and my evil colleague. What was I going to do? I
couldn’t exactly sneak around like a paparazzi with a telephoto lens, could I? Or
could
I? We ran pictures of celebs and politicians snapped by paparazzi around town. What
was the difference if I took the photo myself?

As dawn crept up on me, I reached under my bed for the box of electronics I never
had time to use. I found two different iPods, three Flip cameras, a Bose flat stereo,
and an alarm clock shaped like an eagle that a marine had given me after I hooked
up with him in a hotel room during Fleet Week. I think he had stolen it from the hotel,
but whatever. It still worked. I also had two disposable cameras containing never-printed
shots from the late nineties, a jumble of cords, and one of those giant roll-up piano
mats from the movie
Big.
But no camera. I realized I hadn’t taken anything but a cell-phone picture in the
last ten years.

I needed to quickly seduce a sports photographer and borrow his camera. Or find two
grand and buy one. Or rent one!
Could you rent those huge things? Probably. You could rent anything. You could rent
people by the hour and have sex with them. Surely I could rent a camera.

Before heading to the office just a few hours later on Sunday morning, I first went
to the hotel under the pretense of an early breakfast, just me and the
New York Times
and my cell-phone camera. But the car was gone. I would have to wait until the next
weekend. They couldn’t possibly skulk out here during the week.

Still, I checked. Every night that week I made the short drive to the east side of
the hotel through private property to see if I could spot the car. I had rented a
camera from B&H in New York, and with its
National Geographic
-style telephoto lens, I could see almost all the way to Canada. I was pretty sure
they wouldn’t chance staying in the main house of the hotel, so I concentrated on
the five guesthouses. But all week long, I didn’t see a single car parked in front
of any of the cottages.

Thanks to my nocturnal activities, my brain now had only five hours of sleep a night
to run on. I had stopped being able to process things besides basic human needs. My
life was now eat, sleep, write, report, drive, lurk around the Goodstone Inn, pet
horse, greet parents, repeat. What I wanted it to be was sleep eight hours, have sex
with brawny man, write at normal pace, report, drive Ferrari, have someone hand me
a videotape of Olivia and the senator having sex, slap them five, win Pulitzer, compete
on horse in Olympics, greet parents by phone, repeat. I was very far away from the
second scenario.

In my hazy state, I thought I saw a flash of Olivia’s red hair around every turn in
Middleburg. Every man I saw was the senator until I got close enough to realize that
my target was too short, too round, or too something else. Still, I couldn’t stop
looking for them. After work, I would drive down East Washington
Street and buy a few things from Baker’s general store, where I first saw Olivia.
Then I would walk past the clothing and antiques shops and pretend to be taking in
some air. “Refreshing!” I would exclaim as I did some deep abdominal breathing outside
a completely dark, locked store. And then I would walk the main street from the
Chronicle of the Horse
magazine office to the Presbyterian church with the tall white spire. I would, of
course, see absolutely nothing of interest. Once, in the early evening, I witnessed
a small girl fall off a bike and then eat a slice of turkey that her brother had produced,
unwrapped, from his pocket. It had lint on it, but it did make her stop crying. I
prayed she wouldn’t get Ebola. But that was all that happened. I walked, I loitered,
then I would give up, drive home, demand that my mother feed me, and fall asleep for
a few hours.

The result was that I was exhausted, getting uglier by the day, and making stupid
mistakes in my articles.

“What is this crap?” Hardy asked me as I was drawing a red X on my desk calendar.
It was eight o’clock in the morning on the last Monday in February. I had been out
looking for the senator and Olivia the night before. He looked down at his printout
and read aloud: “Senator Garland and his wife, Lauren, dressed like a John Singer
Sargent tableau vivant, perched casually on their leather arm hairs while the
Capitolist
chatted with them.”

Oh God. Had I really written that?

“Could you possibly have meant ‘arm
chairs
’?” Hardy asked, circling and recircling my idiot typo with his red pen. “Do you know
what this shows me?” he asked in his nasal voice as I tried to think up an acceptable
excuse.

I dunno. That I sashay around town looking for trouble and sleep for five minutes
every night before washing down three espresso shots with a Diet Red Bull every morning?

“That I made a stupid mistake that will never happen again?” I offered.

“Not at all,” he replied, rolling up the sleeves of his wrinkly yellow dress shirt.
“This shows me that you rely on spell-check rather than your own editing skills.”

Was he kidding? Of course I relied on spell-check. If I didn’t use spell-check, the
word
Massachusetts
would have been spelled
Masachewsettes
all my life. My generation couldn’t spell. We texted! And his generation could barely
even text. They communicated via Groupons and strange holograms, as far as I could
tell.

He sighed and dropped his red pen on my desk. “For you. Use the red pen and attempt
to discover your inner editor,” he said, moving away. “I know you can do better.”

He was right. I could. But I needed to rack up some REM sleep if I was going to write
about politicians rather than forearm fuzz. The day-to-day of my job had been nudged
aside by something out of the ordinary, something that might, despite my assignment
to Style, cover me in
Capitolist
glory. A possible affair between Olivia and the senator was a much bigger story than
a Kanye West sighting at the White House or a staid couple sitting on armchairs. Why
shouldn’t I concentrate all my energy on what could be one of the biggest scandals
of the year?

I just couldn’t get fired or caught in the process.

I needed to relax. I needed something to Zen me out. Something cheap and soul altering
that didn’t take more than fifteen minutes. That evening, after I finished interviewing
a few congressmen about their iPod playlists in the Capitol’s Speaker’s lobby, and
attended a cocktail party saluting congressional pets, I decided to find peace around
the domed building. “What a relaxing area!” I exclaimed to no one as I walked down
the Capitol’s marble steps. I smiled weakly at the stocky security guard
who moved the guard rope for me and headed down the south side of the Mall toward
the Washington Monument.

It was a beautiful view, one of the best in Washington, but I wasn’t in the mood for
worshiping buildings named after dead presidents. I had been working in the city for
five months but I had barely done anything for myself. Every party I went to I had
to cover, every person I met I had to interview. As soon as I crossed in from Virginia,
I lived only for the
List
. I felt like seeing something that had nothing to do with the laws of the land, like
a zebra, or a trapeze artist, or considering that I could see six different museums
from where I was standing, maybe some art. I looked at my watch; it was a few minutes
past 7
P.M.
All the museums, while gloriously free of charge, would be closed. I slipped on my
hat and gloves and pulled my scarf tighter around my neck. In just a few weeks the
paths linking all the monuments would be covered in puffy pink cherry blossoms and
people enjoying the warmth of spring, but right now, walking around in late February
still felt like scurrying on frozen dead earth.

Cutting through the Smithsonian sculpture garden, I walked past a sea of illuminated
bronze legs and boobs. “Rodin. Rooooodin!” I rolled the only sculptor’s name I could
think of off my tongue and walked slowly through the garden of art. When I reached
the end of the sculpture walk I took a deep breath and smiled. There! A four-minute
walk. I was totally rejuvenated. I was ready to head back toward the Capitol and find
my car when two young girls and their mother walked past me holding ice skates. Skating!
I didn’t realize the skating rink was still open. That would calm my nerves. I wasn’t
about to risk my life on two steel blades; whoever decided strapping knives to their
feet was a good idea anyway? But I still had eleven minutes in my allotted relaxation
time to kill. I could watch the kamikaze children go round and round in circles.

Walking to the far side of the rink, I placed my hands on the wall built to keep spectators
off the ice and skaters on the ice and was gravely disappointed by the sight of a
group of grown men in red ski parkas having a hockey shoot-out. Where were the children?
The future Kristi Yamaguchis of tomorrow? Those two little girls I passed were probably
crying in despair right now.

I put my hands in my pockets and watched a group of testosterone-crazed guys with
hockey sticks screaming out to each other as they slapped a few pucks around. Disappointed,
I checked my BlackBerry and readjusted my white cashmere beret. There was one man
in a hooded Patagonia parka who was really good. He was making a series of shots from
between his legs, finding the goal every time. Applause filled the area and the man
next to me started whistling his approval. I turned instinctively and realized that
the gentleman in question was not only a skilled whistler but incredibly handsome.
Like Hollywood heartthrob handsome. With deep tan skin and thick black hair, he looked
like a cross between Andy Garcia and Montgomery Clift. Or a cigar model come to life.
Did men in Washington look like this? Non-
Capitolist
employed hockey fans, that is? He clapped his hands, covered in elegant brown leather
gloves, together for warmth and smiled at me. I took a small step away from him, afraid
that if I was too close I’d do something irrational like lick his beautiful face.

“That’s my friend Marty,” he said, gesturing toward the really good hockey player.
“The Canadian Embassy rented the rink out tonight. Some of them are really bad, but
Marty’s amazing.” Marty hit a puck with his friend’s hands covering his eyes and it
went smoothly into the goal. Everyone cheered and Marty did a celebratory lap around
the rink. “He’s also well aware of how amazing he is,” my gorgeous hockey fan said
with a deep laugh.

It was like hearing an American version of Pavarotti speak.
His voice was a song: Smooth, animated, but manly. God, he would sound amazing reciting
our wedding vows. I hadn’t seen a man like this since I left New York City, and those
had usually been money-grubbing dickheads. But this guy was friendly and hadn’t said
the words Morgan Stanley! He was also gorgeous and just happened to be talking to
sex-starved me. I had to introduce myself. Maybe get an address and some identifying
information like his mother’s maiden name. No, no. Bad. Overzealous. I had to play
it cool.

We watched Marty the Canadian make yet another shot and start pounding his chest in
celebration. I clapped, suddenly full of light and optimism and joie de vivre. I loved
hockey! What an underrated sport. What was our team in Washington called again? The
Penguins? The Geese?

“He is very good!” I replied. I sounded hysterical. And loud. Why was I shouting?

The gorgeous man kindly didn’t recoil from my megaphone voice. Instead, with his straight
white teeth and perfectly shaped lips, he explained that his friend had played professional
hockey in Calgary before retiring and going to work at the Canadian Embassy.

“Of course,” I nodded knowingly. “I love Canada. All those lakes and moose.” Wait.
Was that grammatically correct? Moose? Mooses? Meese?

Perfect Guy laughed, looked deeply into my eyes, and pointed to the rink. “Did you
come here to skate? They should be off the rink soon,” he said apologetically.

“No,” I replied, shaking my head. “I just like to watch. It helps me relax.” Slick.
I sounded like someone with a neurological disorder.

“Yeah,” he replied, putting his glove-covered hands in the pockets of his light gray
cashmere overcoat. He turned his head
away from me and looked around for his friend, who had left the rink. “I don’t skate,
either. I’m from the South, so not really our thing down there. I’m actually pretty
ready to grab some dinner as soon as Brian Boitano here is finished shaking a leg.”

I smiled as warmly as I could. I wanted to give off a vibe of domestic bliss, of homemade
cookies and plates full of angel food cake. But maybe that wasn’t his thing. I changed
my kind smile to a sexy pout. Before I could see his reaction his tall Canadian friend
bounced over, having changed his skates for sneakers and smacked my future husband
on the back.