The List (19 page)

I walked down the slate steps and onto the soft, dewy grass. My heels sank right into
it. To avoid falling over, I slipped off my shoes and leaned my body against the stone
wall.

In a few short hours my brain had gone from obsessing over Olivia and the senator
to being consumed by Sandro, Olivia, and the senator. I couldn’t believe he was married
to her. Of all the men in the world, she had to be married to the beautiful hockey
fan. I took out the Flip camera and watched my footage of Sandro on mute. I watched
as he spoke to Isabelle, nodding politely and laughing at her jokes. His face was
smooth, but slightly square around the jaw. He had a small widow’s peak and bright,
easy expressions. He was perfect.

The feeling of grass on my flat feet and Sandro’s gorgeous image had brought me close
to nirvana when I heard a voice I recognized. From where, I wasn’t sure. I leaned
my head back against the wall until it started to hurt. When the voice got closer,
not louder, I realized it was from the movie where that guy saws off his own arm.
It was James Franco. Most definitely. That confused, intellectual stoner voice was
one of a kind. I peered around the wall to confirm. Franco was in the far corner of
the terrace, near my hiding spot, talking to Walter Birnbaum, a former aide to the
president who had just gotten the governor of New York reelected.

It was a perfect D.C.-meets-Hollywood moment. One that begged for me to walk up there,
obnoxiously interrupt their conversation, and ask for something on the record.

As I sat down on the grass to strap on my shoes, I heard Franco’s voice again.

“I’m done with it. I’m done sucking at the teat of phony power. I want to do something
real. That’s why I’m jumping into the Los Angeles mayoral race.”

“Are you really?” asked Birnbaum with excitement in his voice. People in Washington
are simply mesmerized by Hollywood stars. They find them as fascinating as talking
dogs.

“I’m dead serious,” said Franco. “It feels right. I plan to announce my exploratory
committee in late May.”

Was he really dead serious? I craned my neck around the wall to make sure Franco’s
face looked serious and not like he had just dropped PCP. I mean, this was the man
who chose to teach a college class on himself.

“I want you to help get me elected, Walt,” he said. He looked soberish. Sober enough
to be quoted. I pushed record on my BlackBerry, which had never left my hand.

“Do you really? Shouldn’t you talk to a few people first?” said Birnbaum. I was ready
to throw my phone and hit that naysayer on the head. Who was he to dissuade Franco?
The actor’s mind was made up! He wanted to change the course of history. Let the skinny
man soar. Plus, think of all the articles I could write. I would become a Franco campaign
expert and Upton would just waltz up to my desk all the time and casually ask me what
time we were having lunch with our buddy Mayor Franco. One
P.M.
, I would reply before I reminded him that Catherine Zeta-Jones was also lunching
with us. Then I would smirk at Olivia and ask if her husband was free to join us,
too.

“I have talked to people,” said Franco. “I’ve talked to plenty of trusted, quiet people
and I’ve made up my mind. I want to put my money where my heart is. Think about it,”
he said to Birnbaum, placing his hand on the latter’s shoulder. God, where was my
undercover video crew when I needed them? Why did everything have to be so by the
book at the
Capitolist
?

“I don’t have to think about it. I’ll do it. If you’re serious,” the wonk replied.
He looked down at Franco’s glass. “Is that”—he leaned over and sniffed the drink—“absinthe
you’re drinking?” The glass was filled with two inches of a light green liquid. Oh
crap. Could you quote a man drinking illegal Czech liquor?

“It is. It is. I always have a little with me. Fly the stuff in from Prague. Really
gets the job done,” Franco confirmed with a masculine chuckle. “But don’t think I’m
going all Toulouse Lautrec on you here. I’m not going to paint some tart in pantaloons
doing the cancan. I’m serious about what I said. And I’m holding you to your ‘yes.’ ”

Oh, that was so quotable. The man was sober as a judge! He was talking about French
artists. I could tell his mind was crystal clear. I pushed stop on my recorder and
typed out “HUGE SCOOP” in an email. I sent it directly to Hardy, followed by “James
Franco is leaving Hollywood. Dropping out of acting. Has plans to run for mayor of
Los Angeles. Asked Walter Birnbaum, THE Walter Birnbaum to advise him. Is announcing
exploratory committee in May. Said this while drinking absinthe, which he had flown
in from Prague, but swore he was serious. The two discussed alone in the backyard
of the French ambassador’s residence at the
Vanity Fair
party. I have the murmurings recorded on my BlackBerry. I hid behind a wall and listened.
Filing NOW.”

“Send! Send, send, send, send,” I willed my phone as I waited for the stupid check
mark to appear on the screen.

“How positive are you. Scale 1 to 100,” Hardy wrote back immediately.

“100. I have it all recorded. 110. Filing now.”

“Fine.” He wrote back. “You better not be wrong. If you are wrong, Upton will can
you. Will put up immediately. Will ask to have in F2 on home page. File now.”

F2! The second lead on the website’s main page. It wasn’t the top space, but it was
the next best thing. I’d take it.

I wanted to ask Franco to elaborate on the record, but if I approached him, he would
probably get his rep to keep me from running it. I decided to skip a direct comment,
file from the car, and then head for home.

I walked around the side of the wall to try to find a way into the house without looking
like I’d been eavesdropping, but I found myself looking directly at a wall of the
Chinese Embassy next door.

Crap. I forgot how close the two massive buildings were. I was going to disappear
into thin air like that peaceful flower protester in Tiananmen Square. Entire websites
would be dedicated to my whereabouts. I was going to be known as the disappearing
girl in the golden dress.

Instead, thanks to the annoyance that is the modern security camera, a French assistant
came out and escorted the poor confused reporter back into the house through a side
door after advising her to wear shoes. I thanked the assistant for his hospitality
and slipped out the double doors without any trouble.

The piece went up just before four. By eight the next morning, after I had been asleep
for two hours and had to cover a brunch at noon, my BlackBerry started to ring.

“Adrienne, it’s Jenny from media team,” an excited voice screamed in my ear. “Amazing
piece.” She caught her breath and kept talking. “Because of it, Franco released a
statement of intent this morning! You were totally right. Hardy emailed you twice
about it, but you didn’t respond.”

I looked at my phone and opened the first email from Hardy, which had come two hours
ago. It read, “You were right. Which is good, because if you were wrong, you would
be seeking other employment right now. Good job.”

Good job. Wow. I had never seen those words in a
Capitolist
email to me.

“Adrienne, Adrienne, are you listening to me?” said Jenny, more businesslike now.
I wasn’t, because I was so tired I had just hallucinated that a pig wearing a beret
was talking to me. “Adrienne, CNN wants you. They’ll send a car. Ten minutes on the
Franco stuff. Can you do it?”

“Uh, yeah,” I said, rattling off my address.

“You live
where
?” Jenny dropped the phone in shock. I heard it bang on her desk, followed by a slew
of curses. “Oh, Jesus, sorry, I . . . I didn’t know people actually lived there. I’ll
tell them to drive fast. Okay, they just texted back, they’re on their way now. After
CNN, you have a really quick C-SPAN hit and then a pretape for the CBS
Early Show
for Monday. I know you have the McLaughlin brunch at noon, so they’ll drop you off
there. How does that sound?”

“Err . . . fine?” I replied, scanning the floor for something to wear and ripping
the cap off a 5-hour Energy drink. I spilled half of it on the floor, which meant
I only got two and a half hours of energy. I would have to supplement by eating espresso
beans and a scoop of sugar-free sugar.

“I know you’re tired, but you really can’t say no,” said Jenny. “It’s CNN. The car
will be there in precisely forty-three minutes. The driver just wrote. Okay, that’s
all, bye.”

The rest of the morning was a tornado of sound bites and pancake makeup. I talked
animatedly at a black wall in the CNN cubicle in Northeast Washington, and somehow
that translated into a live television appearance. The host kept pronouncing my name
Alien. Alien Brown. But I was too tired to correct him. At the
Early Show
studio I tried to sound as upbeat as possible, which was possible thanks only to
three Excedrin and a diet Mountain Dew, which I stole from their break room. Then
I
found myself wandering around the Hay-Adams hotel with a notepad in my hand, trying
to cover the very last party of the week that would never end.

This, I told myself, was just a tiny taste of the exhausting whirlwind I would experience
if I decided to go public with the Olivia/Senator Stanton story. I would be making
media rounds in the back of town cars for months. But I would never be just another
reporter with a byline no one could connect with a face. And no one would call me
Alien Brown.

Walking out onto the terrace space called Top of the Hay, I was trembling. I was interviewing
Dennis Quaid, and the room started to spin like a carousel. Of course, I wasn’t in
a room, I was on an outdoor terrace overlooking the White House. But all of a sudden,
that started spinning, too. As soon as Quaid finished his sound bite, I excused myself
and lunged at a waiter with a tray of orange juice. “Sorry, but if you don’t mind,
I’ll take two,” I murmured. I pushed my way inside and found a bathroom.

Sitting on the floor of the handicap stall, I drank both glasses of juice and started
to file my report from the floor. It was terribly boring, but I didn’t care. The quotes
were right and there were going to be tons of photos to brighten up the blandness
of my copy.

Then I put my head on the toilet seat and threw up. Along with the orange juice, my
body was rejecting weeks of fear, exhaustion, frustration, obsession, and panic. I
dabbed my face with a wad of paper towels and tried to collect myself. I put lipstick
on my chapped, pale lips and walked out of the room with a forced smile on my face.

I was about to walk downstairs when I remembered that I had come into D.C. by town
car. Though I probably would have driven myself into a ravine if I had tried to operate
a car, I was an idiot for accepting that ride. Now I had no way to get
home. So, like a stranded fifteen-year-old, I called my father and begged him to come
pick me up. He said yes and told me to sit tight. I ran back to the bathroom to be
sick again.

Shakier than before, I cut through the south terrace to the service elevator that
would take me down to the back of Off the Record, the famous bar in the basement of
the hotel. I wanted to avoid small talk, celebrities, any conversation at all. But
when the doors of the elevator opened into the bar, which I thought would be empty
given the hour, I was confronted with a packed house. There was yet another Correspondents’
weekend brunch taking place in the popular watering hole.

The mere sight of the crowd weakened me. I plopped onto a red padded banquette. My
breath was short; I was exhausted. I needed the weekend sprint to end. I must have
looked pretty rough around the edges, because the man whose table I had collapsed
next to pushed his glass of water toward me, along with a napkin. I thanked him, touched
my upper lip, and realized it was covered in beads of sweat. Embarrassed, I quickly
wiped it off and explained that I was just a bit under the weather.

“Drink the water,” he urged. “I promise it’s untouched.” I didn’t care if it was toilet
water. It looked cold, and I was tempted to dump it on my head. I drank half of it,
thanked him, stood up, and said I needed to be outside.

“Here,” he said, standing and moving around the table to me. “Let me help you out.
There are too many people in here. It’s the overflow from the
National Journal
brunch up the road. It’s not a good idea to be stuck in a basement with this group
if you’re not feeling well.”

I let him take my arm and lead me up the back stairs and across the street to a bench
in front of St. John’s Church. The White House was to our left, and the flow of traffic
into the stone hotel in front of us was still heavy.

“Thank you, I really appreciate it,” I said, sitting down. I was ready to fall asleep
for a week on a city bench. As he stood over me, I smiled again and said, “You were
so nice to walk me out, but you don’t have to stay. Don’t feel obliged. You should
go back to the party, I’m really okay.”

“But what if I’d like to stay?” he asked.

I looked up at him through my haze of fatigue. Nice blue eyes. Decent suit. Blond
hair full of curls. He looked like a cherub with Tea Party tendencies. Not terrible,
not the best I’d ever seen. But who was I to be picky these days. I lived in the sticks
and worked every daylight hour and plenty of the dark ones, too. I didn’t have time
to meet men, at least ones who were not married to Olivia Campo. I should probably
jump on this one before succumbing to a sexual destiny of online chat rooms and anime
porn.

I asked him to sit down and join me. His name was James Reddenhurst. He did communications
for the Republican National Committee. And when he asked me if I would have dinner
with him next Saturday, I said yes, just to see the look on his face when I gave him
my address.

It took my father an hour to get downtown, and by the time he found me, I was a puddle
of sweat in a linen sundress with a soggy notepad, a tape recorder, and tears in my
bloodshot eyes. James shook my father’s hand, helped me into his car, and watched
us drive away, his number safely entered into my phone.