The Washingtonienne (16 page)

Chapter 28

T
here was no good way to end my arrangement with Fred. I felt like I was abandoning him in some way. He obviously needed somebody to talk to, something to look forward to. Not only was I taking that away from him, I was taking that away from myself.

I couldn’t fuck Fred during my lunch hour anymore if I ever hoped to have a normal relationship with Marcus.

I would have liked to stay friends with Fred, but I doubted that he would have wanted a nonsexual relationship with me. He already had one with his wife.

“Fred, is this still working for you? I mean, do you still enjoy this?” I asked him one afternoon at my apartment.

“Of course,” he replied. “Why wouldn’t I?”

I shrugged as he sat down on the bed next to me.

“What is this about?” he wanted to know, sliding my bra straps off my shoulders.

I shrugged again.

“So how’s your new boyfriend?” he asked.

“I don’t know. How’s your wife?” I shot back, standing up from the bed.

He didn’t answer.

“Stop asking me about Marcus,” I said. “Don’t make me sorry that I told you about that.”

I stood there, hoping that he might want to give up on me if I started acting bitchy toward him.

“This isn’t any fun anymore, is it?” I finally asked him.

“You’re young,” he said. “You still get to fall in love with people, but I can’t.”

“I didn’t realize that you were paying me to stay single!”

I excused myself to the bathroom to get ahold of myself. Looking into the mirror, I thought to myself,
Jacqueline, you’re fine. It’s not your job to make other people happy.

At least, not anymore.

I came out of the bathroom, determined not to let Fred affect me in any way. I was finally going to end it.

He grabbed me by the waist and kissed the top of my head.

“Your birthday is coming up, isn’t it?” he asked.

I couldn’t believe that he had remembered.

“I bought you something,” he said, “but it’s a surprise.”

It
was
a surprise. I was impressed that he remembered my birthday. That meant I had to see him again, didn’t it? Wasn’t it the right thing to do? What had I decided on before? Fuck, I couldn’t tell right from wrong anymore. It was all getting so confusing.

I had to look at the bottom line: free gift (probably an expensive one), and another envelope of cash. I could let it go just awhile longer. What was one more week? We were both going to burn in hell anyway, right?

I agreed to meet him on the afternoon of my birthday, at our favorite place, the Hotel George. He said that we could get room service, with champagne and everything.

Who ever asked him to be so nice anyway?

I had dinner plans with Marcus for the night of my birthday, so April and Laura took me to the Palm the night before.

“I’m quitting my blog,” April announced over dessert. “I think it’s making me do crazy things just so I can write about them, like cheating on Tom.”

I knew exactly what she meant.

“Every time I do something, I think to myself,
Is this blog-worthy?
It’s a sickness,” she said.

“Yeah, I should probably quit, too,” Laura agreed. “I haven’t posted anything in weeks anyway. My new job is crazy. In the private sector, you actually have to
work
for a living. God, I miss the Hill!”

“But don’t quit your blog, Jackie! I need something to read when I’m bored,” April told me.

I frowned, resenting the idea that my life had become entertainment for people. What if I ever got serious about somebody and settled down? Then what would I write about? How fat my ass was getting and what TV shows we liked to watch? Boring life, boring blog.

“We should try to make money off of your blog somehow,” Laura suggested. “Like run ads on it or something.”

“I don’t know,” I told her. “It’s really not all that interesting, is it?”

“Sex sells,” April reminded me. “You know that!”

I rolled my eyes.

“Then we would have to promote it in some way to get hits and stuff,” I complained. “We’d have to prepare some sort of a business plan. I don’t really want to get into all of that right now.”

“But it could lead to other things!” Laura argued. “You could get your own newspaper column, or a job at a magazine. Do you really want to spend the rest of your life shoveling mail on the Hill?”

I shrugged. I hated my job, but if it meant that I got to see Marcus every day, then it didn’t seem so bad. Of course, I would never admit this to my girlfriends: I had an image to maintain.

“I guess that would be cool,” I said, “but I’d want to change it up a little first. It’s much too embarrassing for public consumption.”

“No, I think you should leave it exactly as is,” April argued. “I think that people would relate to its honesty.”

“Maybe, but wouldn’t I get in trouble at work? And what about Marcus?”

“Your name isn’t anywhere on it,” Laura said. “If anybody finds out that it’s you, just deny, deny, deny. Your office wouldn’t want to make any noise over this, either—bad publicity. You would have them between a rock and a hard place.”

“I can’t fuck over my office like that. Just forget this crazy idea.”

“Oh, come on! It would be fun!” Laura pleaded. “You should just go for it!”

“You’re the only one of us who has the balls to do something like this,” April told me. “What do you have to lose?”

They were serious about this. Did they not even care that I had a life here, too?

“I like my life just the way it is,” I told them. “Besides, if we were serious about doing this, we’d have to do it right: We’d sleep with as many people on the Hill as possible and make them do all sorts of pervy stuff to us. We’d get them to tell us their secrets, any fantasies they might have, and then we’d post the stories and embarrass the shit out of everyone!”

“It would be pandemonium,” April surmised. “The government might even have to shut down for a few days!”

“We totally have to do this!” Laura enthused.

“I was only kidding,” I told them, “but if you guys like the idea, please feel free to use it!”

Just then, my cell phone rang. It was Marcus, asking if I needed a ride home from the restaurant.

“He wants to come over tonight,” I clucked.

“You’re either going to marry him, or you’re going to end up quitting your job,” April surmised. “Those are really the only two foreseeable outcomes.”

“Don’t be such a Cassandra,” I told her, but I knew she was right.

I thanked the girls for dinner and waited outside, trying to imagine what married life would be like with Marcus, but I wasn’t getting any pictures. All I could see in my mind’s eye was the look on Mike’s face when I came home from my rendezvous with Kevin. It was an omen of disappointment in my future.

My phone rang again. It was Dan, of all people. We hadn’t spoken in weeks.

“What are you doing?” he asked. “Can I come over tonight?”

“Uh, I don’t think so,” I replied.

“Why not?”

“I don’t need to be fucking the same guy as another girl.”

I told him that I knew about Laura, the intern, and his bad reputation on the Hill.

“What, are you jealous?” he asked.

“Oh, Dan. Don’t be so provincial,” I sniffed.

He laughed at this, but I was serious.

“So we can’t hang out anymore?” he asked.

“Well, if we’re not fucking, then there’s really no point in hanging out, is there?” I replied. “Besides, I’m seeing somebody in my office.”

I explained what had transpired since our last conversation.

“Your office sounds really screwed up. You should be very careful about dating someone who you work with,” Dan warned me.

Of course, he would know.

We hung up as Marcus pulled up in his Jeep. As always, he got out of the vehicle, opened the passenger-side door for me, and we held hands the whole way to my apartment.

This
was the life I wanted to lead, but tomorrow, I was meeting Fred at the Hotel George.

HE HAD BOOKED THE
“Romance on Capitol Hill Package” that came with a bottle of Pol Roger Brut in the room. I owed him the courtesy of keeping this date, despite the fact that I had had morning sex with Marcus just a few hours earlier. This
had
to be the last time, because I couldn’t keep this up much longer.

Just one more time, and that’s it,
I told myself.

I had said this so many times, about so many different things in my life. But this was the first time I actually meant it.

“Is something wrong?” he asked while he stuck it in.

“No, it feels good,” I told him.

“Something seems different. I don’t think you’re getting wet.”

“I’m, like, fine,” I told him, but something
was
different.

I couldn’t stop thinking about Marcus and how
wrong
this was. I was doing Fred such a favor, wasn’t I? Drinking the champagne he bought me, letting him eat me out, taking his money afterward. Oh, and the Hermès scarf he bought me for my birthday? I only took it because I was just trying to do the right thing by
him.

I wished that things could have been different for us: We were both such unhappy people. But now I had Marcus, and Fred would always have plenty of new girls to choose from in this town.

Chapter 29

I
showered and went back to my office, ready to put in a solid afternoon of data entry. I sat down at my desk to find an Instant Message from April:

I immediately began to shit myself.

One mouse-click on Internet Explorer opened Blogette.com. (I had set it as my homepage.) This is what it said:

A Girl After Our Own Heart

(She’s So Getting a Book Deal Out of This)

This didn’t seem like such a bad thing. I read on:

Then I saw it in blue hypertext. The link to my blog.

Fuck.

One more mouse-click and I was staring at “The Washingtonienne” as I had never seen it before: through the eyes of a stranger.

These things that I had written in such humility for my closest friends were suddenly being read by all sorts of strangers and I couldn’t stop them. The spanking, the anal sex, the questionable exchange of money. My mind raced.

I had kept my Blogger Dashboard minimized for easy access, so I could post at will. One mouse-click on the “CHANGE SETTINGS” icon, then one mouse-click on the button that said “Delete This Blog” (
hell yes!
), and my blog was gone.

But it was too little, too late.

It was just a matter of time before some dutiful nerd took it upon himself to re-post the thing. That was a given. But then what?

Guessing the identity of “The Washingtonienne” and her male cohorts might turn into some Capitol Hill parlor game (played via Instant Messenger, of course), but
my
name would never come up: I was a nobody here. Maybe no one would find out, maybe nothing would happen.

Obviously, this was just my wishful thinking: I did not want to believe that my life could slip away from me like this, over something so fucking stupid.

Then the office door flew open.

It was Janet.

She stood in the doorway, glaring at me.

Suddenly, I was confronted with a hard copy of my blog. Janet held it up in front of me, scowling.

I stared at it in disbelief. I had never seen it printed out on paper like this before. How weird was it that
Janet
had a copy and I didn’t? It was like something out of a bad dream, like the ones we all had about going to school and realizing that you’re naked.

I couldn’t even look at it, I was so ashamed.

“YOU PIECE OF SHIT!” she began yelling. “YOU ARE THE SORRIEST EXCUSE FOR A HUMAN BEING I HAVE EVER MET! YOU BETTER HOPE I
NEVER
CATCH YOU OUTSIDE OF THESE BUILDINGS!”

I didn’t dare laugh at the idea of Janet jumping me on the street. It was obvious that Janet hadn’t come in here to talk—she came in here to scream at me, but the least I could do was cooperate with the office and help with damage control.

“Janet, what should I do?” I asked.

“IF I WERE YOU, I WOULD START PACKING MY SHIT NOW BECAUSE I AM GOING TO MAKE DAMN SURE THAT YOU GET THROWN OUT OF HERE ON YOUR ASS! YOU WILL NEVER WORK IN THIS TOWN AGAIN!”

Well.

I wasn’t waiting around for
that
to happen.

I picked up my cell phone and dropped it into my handbag.

And that was it. My shit was packed, so to speak.

I gave my office a chance. If this was how they wanted to handle it, by sending Janet in here to curse me out, then that was their mistake.

They could take everything from my desk and put it in the Smithsonian, because I was going forward with the plan that the girls and I had drawn out yesterday.

Those fucking bitches.

I click-clacked my way down the marble corridor toward the nearest exit, half-expecting somebody (please God, not Marcus) to come running after me, but that didn’t happen.

Marcus. I could not even imagine what he must have thought of me. He was probably reading my blog right now, feeling as if he’d been duped. Surely, everyone I knew felt that way about me, because I really was a liar and a whore, and now I was exposed.

I was surprised that they would just let me walk out of here like this. I imagined this potentially turning into a
No Way Out
type of situation where “henchmen” might hunt me down to ensure my silence. At that moment I would have been highly susceptible to intimidation. I would have moved out of the country, changed my name, whatever they wanted. You would think they might have had some sort of protocol for these things, but I guess not. They let me walk out of there without so much as a word.

Right now, I was hardly the trash-talking bitch on wheels who wrote the blog. I was a frightened, lonely girl who was all dressed up with nowhere to go.

SO WHAT TO DO NOW?
I’d go find April, since she was one of the evil geniuses behind all this.

I re-entered the Senate office buildings, wondering if there might be an APB out on me, but it didn’t seem like it. The security guards flirted with me, as usual. Despite this life-shattering emotional trauma, it was nice to know that I still looked hot.

I stepped into the elevator, wondering if the people around me knew anything about my blog. I mean, not everyone on the Hill read Blogette as obsessively as my friends and I did. Maybe this was just a dirty little secret that my office would try to cover up. Couldn’t they do that sort of thing? Wasn’t a Senate office supposed to be powerful or something?

“FUCK YOU,” the elevator doors read as they closed.

Ah. The same elevator I had taken up to April’s office on my first day on the Hill. I should have known.

April looked very worried to see me standing in the doorway. I felt uneasy here, so I waved her over to the door.

“Oh, my God, April,” I whimpered. “I’ve been fired.”

Her face fell.

“They know already?” she asked, realizing what had happened.

I nodded, unable to speak.

“You need a drink,” she said, walking me out of the building.

I needed about
seven
drinks that afternoon.

“Where will I go? What will I do?” I asked April at the nearest bar.

I don’t know why I was asking her this question again. She was the one who suggested I should move to Washington in the first place.

“This is the craziest thing that has ever happened to anyone I know,” April said. “I’m amazed at how well you’re handling it. If it was me, I’d be in the hospital right now.”

“Maybe I’m still in shock or something,” I guessed. “I just don’t know how to feel about any of it yet.”

“It’s probably a good thing that you’ve had a lot of fucked-up experiences behind you, or else you’d be totally unprepared for this level of trauma. But look on the bright side: This might turn into a great opportunity for you. You should be happy!”

“Are you serious, April? Call me crazy, but I’m not. I lost my job, my boyfriend,
and
it’s my birthday. I am so
over.
”

I looked at her, waiting for a confession.

“Was it you?” I finally asked.

“
What?
”

“Did you send Blogette the link?”

“No!”

I searched April for some sign of guilt, but was too drunk to pick up on it if there was one.

“If you tell me the truth, I’m not going to hate you,” I promised. “I mean, I need all the friends I can get right now.”

I didn’t know what to think as I watched April’s eyes fill with tears. She obviously felt sorry about
something.
I was tempted to grab her and say, “It was you, April! I know it was you. You broke my heart. You broke my heart!” like Michael Corleone in
The Godfather II.

“Jackie, I’m serious. I wasn’t the one,” she lied.

I suspected that she wasn’t being truthful, but it didn’t really matter anymore, did it? This was my problem—
I
had created it. And I deserved everything—good or bad—that happened to me as a result.

“You know what, April? I don’t care who did it. I am going to live through this,” I said, “and as God is my witness, I’ll never be sober again.”

Then April hugged me, and I knew it was her. I also knew that she hadn’t been trying to destroy me: She thought she was acting as my fairy godmother, that this would be my Cinderella story. But did she ever stop to think?

No, of course not. And neither did I.

“What are you going to do now?” April asked.

“I have no idea,” I said.

“Should I go back to the office, or do you want me to stay with you?”

“Go back to the office,” I told her. “Find out what’s going on, and call me if you see my name mentioned anywhere. Hopefully, it won’t come to that.”

“Will do. And I’m coming over to your place after work. I don’t think you should be alone.”

“Why?” I asked. “Do you think someone might try to kill me?”

“I’m not trying to scare you, but you just don’t know what people are capable of.”

I had just made more enemies in one afternoon than most people made in a lifetime—it seemed anything was possible.

APRIL WENT BACK TO THE
office, and I walked down to the Mall, which did nothing to improve my mood. The Mall looked so much prettier from the Capitol steps, away from the crowds of tourists on the ground. Where did this fat, classless segment of the American population with no fashion sense or sex appeal come from? I suspected they were the same people writing all those fuck-wit letters to the senator. I hoped they’d all die in a hotel fire.

My phone rang and I sat down on a bench to take the call. It was from an area code back home, probably from someone who wanted to wish me a happy birthday.

It was my mother.

“Did you get the birthday check I sent you?” she asked when I picked up.

“No, I haven’t yet,” I told her. “Did you know where to send it?”

“Lee gave me your address. She tells me that you’re working for a senator in Washington.”

“Yeah,” I told her.

That was all I could come up with. I didn’t know how to begin explaining what had happened to me today.

“Jackie,” my mother began, “your father and I—”

“Yeah, I know,” I said, cutting her off. “You’re divorcing.”

“I’m packing right now.”

“Where are you going?”

“Jackie, I’m sorry to tell you this,” she began.

I felt a stinging sensation growing inside my head as she told me that she was moving in with her boyfriend and that they were getting married in Nantucket this summer.

“You already have a boyfriend? And you’re
marrying
him?” I asked. “Are you sure this isn’t a rebound thing?”

My mother explained that she had been having an affair with this man for the last three years. Part of me was disgusted with her, but more so, I was disgusted with myself because I realized that I was just like her: I had become my mother.

Or maybe she was trying to be like me—I couldn’t tell anymore. It was like the chicken and the egg in our case.

“What about Dad?” I asked.

My poor father. How could she do this to him?

“Jacqueline, your father is the one who threw
me
out,” she told me.

“So I’m supposed to feel bad for you?” I balked. “You cheated on him!”

“You’re not
supposed
to feel bad for anyone, Jackie! The only two people who really understand what happened are your father and I.”

“I want to come home,” I said. “I want to see you.”

“Jackie, I’m going to the Cape for a few weeks, but I’ll call you when I get back, darling. And then I’ll visit you in Washington, and we can go shopping.”

“Shopping? No, Mom, I want to come home.”

“This is between me and your father, Jackie. You stay in DC, go to your job, and have a good time with your friends. We want you to be happy, okay?”

I wanted to tell her that my life in DC was over, but she had enough problems of her own. I didn’t know what else to say, so I said, “Okay,” just for the sake of ending the conversation.

I had never been the homesick type. I felt like I was going backward whenever I went home, so I always avoided it. But now that I wanted to go back, I couldn’t.

It was worse than Twilo closing.

I leaned back on the bench and closed my eyes. The sun shone orange through my eyelids.

How rude,
I thought.
I hate the fucking sun.

IT WAS DARK OUT WHEN
I awoke. I jumped to see a homeless man sitting next to me on the bench.

“Can I tell people that we slept together?” he cackled.

I ignored him, as I often did the bums in my neighborhood. There was one on every bench and every street corner, begging for money. It was worse than New York because the homeless in DC were so belligerent.