Chapter Six
Yes. I had time in this new, unemployed future. But I had a friend, as well. I wasn’t alone. I opened the door to Rachel’s apartment and sat, drinking wine at the table and waiting for her to come home. I tapped my fingers against the table’s wood, sensing that the stress from the past few months was falling from my shoulders. I tried my hardest not to feel disappointed, not to feel like my entire world was crashing around me. I tried not to remember that being involved in the political spectrum was all I had ever dreamed of for my entire life. I didn’t have time for such sadness. Not now.
Finally, Rachel burst into the apartment. She took a single look at me, and she brought her hand to her heart. “What’s happened?” she whispered. She looked stricken.
“What do you mean, what’s happened?” I asked her. I shook my head, biting my lip. “Nothing’s happened!”
But Rachel stepped forward and placed her hand on my cheek, wiping at a tear I’d allowed to escape, unnoticed. “Honey.” She shook her head. “I don’t regret getting out of that political world for one second, I can tell you that. Look at what they’re doing to you!”
I wanted to tell her I was out—that I’d moved on as well. But it felt like such sacred knowledge. And so, instead I said, “Hey. Would you want to go for a run by the monuments tonight? It’s one of our nicer evenings—one of the last of the year, surely, before winter.” I swallowed, my eyes peering up toward her. “What do you say?”
She raised her eyebrow toward me. “It’s not such a bad idea, is it?” she said, tipping her hip to the right. She checked her watch. “We can get there before the sun falls away for good.” She winked at me.
We rushed into our separate rooms and pulled on our running clothes. I felt the running tights align so well with my taut muscles. I hadn’t been running in several weeks, I knew, but the strain of the past few weeks’ terror had initiated a great boost in my metabolism. I had actually lost weight.
We met in the kitchen, stretching our limbs and easing our arms into the air. I felt my back pop. Rachel wasn’t asking any further questions. It seemed that she understood: I wanted to stay away from the subject, at least for now.
We leaped into a taxi, and the man took us toward the monuments. They seemed to catch fire in the orange from the sunset. I grabbed both my kneecaps with my harsh fingers and felt the strain of my bones. I grinned into the sun, closing my eyes.
Naturally, with my eyes closed like this, I could only see Xavier; I could only imagine a life with Xavier. I nearly felt his fingers cup my breasts, play with my nipples. I could nearly feel his smile on me as we walked by each other in the White House, each fueled with the secret of our affair. That life had been so beautiful, so true.
“Hey! Amanda!” Rachel called to me, rattling against my shoulder. We had arrived at the monument park, and I was jostled out of my reverie.
I blinked toward her, finding a smile. “You ready?”
We rustled out into the cold sunset air and began an easy jog through the park. I liked the feeling of having a companion beside me, someone to run with. Someone who could hear the rattling of my breath as I moved forward. We were both natural runners; we used to run together when we’d both worked on the campaign for Xavier’s first reign. I remembered that we used to cackle together in the park, two slim, young women (just 25 years old!) with our futures looming ahead of us.
We whizzed past the Washington Monument. I stopped, watching as the stark sword shot into the orange sunset. I was breathing heavily. Rachel continued jogging, leaping ahead of me, until she understood that she’d left me behind. Because I’d been left behind so much lately, it seemed natural—natural to be the one falling behind. I brought my hand in the air and waved ahead, toward her. As if to say, “Jog on.”
But she didn’t. She walked back toward me, her neck bobbing this way, then that, stretching out. She frowned, a small patch of fear appearing in her eyes.
I spoke lightly, efficiently. “I’ve left the White House.” The orange wafted over my cheeks, over my lips. I heard the words echo over the water. “It’s over.”
Rachel nodded primly.
“I just need a bit of time to think about everything that’s happened,” I continued. I didn’t know why I felt I needed to verify myself to the woman before me; I didn’t know why I felt that she was my protector, she was my only savior. “Xavier and Jason—the whole spiel. It was all becoming far too much for me. So I took a step back.”
“I think you made a good choice,” Rachel whispered. She brought her hand to my shoulder and helped me right myself, helped me come out of my lean. Her eyes affirmed: you must stand up straight. You must live strongly. I knew what she meant. She’d ducked out of the political field so long ago, and yet her eyes still spoke of the harsh reality of what that world truly was. She knew the reality, and she knew how to stand in the aftermath, an affirmed woman.
“Thanks for understanding,” I whispered. The park around us was eerily quiet. Everyone in D.C. had given up on summer officially, and wafted into their homes for the duration. We’d see them again in April.
“You know you always have a place to stay with me,” Rachel continued. “You don’t have to go back to your apartment ever again, as far as I’m concerned.” She swallowed. “I was ever so lonely without you, before you came. I didn’t have a friend in the world.”
I bowed my chin. “With everything going on at the White House—with everything falling apart in other aspects of my life, I couldn’t be happier to have a friend and a place to feel safe right now,” I admitted.
The tension between us was great. All too often, we’d been drinking buddies, just girls who got together and gabbed, gossiped, talked about boys and sex and getting ahead in the world. But we were getting older, then. We were discovering the wisdom of the world. We were discovering what kinds of friends we had to be in order to get each other through.
Rachel interrupted the tense silence, finally. She chortled before saying it. “Do you want to go grab a drink somewhere? I know this great wine bar.” She raised her eyebrow. “I think we should celebrate you making these active choices in your life. Don’t you?”
I brought my hand over my stomach, feeling the anxiety dissipate. “God. A drink. Yes.”
We stretched our legs and ran back to the apartment. We showered and changed quickly, feeling the vitality come back into our hearts, our muscles. I wore a slim, black dress, one I knew made my breasts grow so high on my chest. They seemed to glow beneath my chin. My hair coursed down over my shoulders, and my eyes blinked, big and wide. I half-heartedly thought about meeting a man at the bar that evening, but the only person I could think about was Xavier. I imagined meeting him with this look. How he would grab my waist and pull me on top of him, ready to kiss me, to make love to me. I shivered in the bathroom, finally hearing Rachel out in the kitchen.
“Amanda? You almost ready?”
We burst into the bar only 20 minutes later, both of us looking stunning, sensual. The wine bar was quite ritzy, with this suave-looking bartender leaning against the counter, a bow tie tied beneath his chin. “Ladies,” he began in a French accent. “Please. Zee corner table.”
The corner table was already well-lit with candles. The wine menus were draped over the fine wood. I eyed the wines: from France, from Argentina, from Australia, bringing my finger down the long list. I knew that Xavier knew the texture, the feel of each of these wines. But I was a bit lost on my own.
Rachel leaned toward me, a bit of gleam initiated in her eyes. “Argentina. 1977. You game?”
I raised my eyebrow. Aged wine had never been a part of my regime. “Do you remember college, when we’d buy the cheapest wine possible? I think I bought bottles for three, four dollars.” I laughed, taking a sip of water. The candlelight wafted from the glass.
She nodded, returning a giggle. “We’re high-class broads now.” She turned toward the waiter and pointed at the wine, unable to pronounce it.
“Very good, my lady,” he murmured, bowing his head. “And I suppose you ladies would enjoy a cheese plate, as well?”
I nodded voraciously, my stomach rumbling beneath my dress. “Oh, yes please,” I murmured. Rachel smiled at me across the table.
“You look happier,” she said as the man skirted back toward the wine cellar.
I shrugged. “Maybe just the endorphins from the run. Maybe just from quitting today. I don’t know!” I allowed my hands to fling back, blasé.
She shook her head. “I can’t believe you finally did it. Are you feeling—relieved in any way?”
I shrugged my shoulders, nodding a bit. “Falling in love was quite an experience. Perhaps it was wonderful, sometimes. But more often than not, it was stressful, far too much to handle while also trying to run the president’s campaign. I don’t know. Maybe I was far too young for the job.” I shrugged my shoulders, blinking up toward the sky.
Suddenly, the server was back, presenting the 1977 wine to us at the table. A different server placed the cheese plate before us, allowing the smell to emanate into our noses. I closed my eyes and nodded to the first server, who twisted the cork from the top and poured the deep red drink into my glass. Rachel and I turned toward each other and clinked our glasses, allowing the noise to flow throughout the near-empty wine bar.
The wine drizzled down our tongues, making our bodies warm and loose. I placed my hand on the table and peered at it, wondering what to say next. All this time, my mind was whirring with thoughts of Xavier, with thoughts of what I was meant to do next.
Rachel cleared her throat. “Listen, Amanda,” she began.
My eyes darted up, blinking toward her. I was removing myself from my tense thoughts.
“I was thinking about what you’ve said about everything, about your relationship with Xavier. And I just wanted to tell you that I think—I think that his reaction to what you told him about Jason really sucks, of course. It was completely unconventional, and you have every right to be upset. In fact, you know that I would have been upset, as well.”
I nodded, peering toward her. I didn’t know what was coming next. Her voice was so hesitant, like she didn’t want to hurt my feelings in any way. “Yeah?”
“But I have to say. This is a tricky situation, one that doesn’t warrant an appropriate response all the time. I think his reaction might make sense, in a way. Just like us, the president worked hard for his position. It’s not like he just sloughed into office, like so many of our other presidents with important daddies. He is a prestigious man with good ideas for this country. But he had to elbow his way to the top.”
I swirled the wine in my mouth, listening to the words. I nodded a bit. The taste was bitter.
“And he risked so much to be with you,” Rachel continued. “I know you risked a great deal to be with him, as well. But please consider his side.”
“I did, sometimes,” I murmured. “I didn’t want to tell his wife about us, for fear that she would leave him and create a presidential scandal. I didn’t want to be ‘that girl’ who became famous, only for sleeping with the president—“
“But don’t you see? Already, your thoughts have diverged back into thoughts of only yourself,” Rachel whispered. She swallowed, knowing how she came off. My heart burned, but only because I knew that she was my only friend—that she was trying to help me, not to hurt me. “I’m not trying to reprimand you,” Rachel whispered. “It’s just that after everything you’ve been through, I don’t think you can blame Xavier for being upset with you, just the first time you tell him that he’s this close from allowing everything to fall apart. Can you imagine, living on a precipice like that—and also being the most powerful man in the entire world?” Her voice was breathless, almost pleading with me.
I nodded, feeling a bit ashamed. “I just wanted everything to be perfect,” I whispered.
“I just think you have to give him a bit more time to comprehend something as big as this,” Rachel whispered. “You kept this from him for many, many weeks. Perhaps, in many ways, he feels betrayed by you? He has told you so much about himself, about his marriage. And you’ve kept your troubles on the sidelines.” She shrugged, peering down at the untouched cheese plate. “Perhaps you could talk to him once more. Perhaps you could give him a chance.”
I cleared my throat, taking a small piece of Brie into my mouth. The creamy cheese glided across my tongue. So savory, it made my eyes water. “Perhaps you’re right,” I whispered. I began to understand that perhaps not all was lost, that perhaps I could still have the man I loved, I could still have the career I’d always dreamed of. Everything could fall into place, if I just worked for it. If I just gave Xavier time to come to reason.
“You know that I envy you,” Rachel began again, pouring another layer of wine into my wine glass. “I admire the way you take action, the way you get what you want, no matter what.” She shrugged. “When the President of the United States gave you grief, you essentially told him to fuck off. That is powerful, Amanda. That is more than many of us can ever say we’ve done.”
I looked down at the cheese platter once more, my mind spinning. I had quit the White House that day, and I needed to find a way back in—a way back in to see if I could reason with Xavier, to needle my way back into the position. Only if I did it appropriately, with a sense of tact, would I feel right about it. “I’m never going to be stupid about anything ever again,” I whispered toward Rachel, laughing a bit. A slight jazz had begun over the loudspeaker, making me speak in time with the music.
Rachel nodded. “If only we could all say that and truly mean it. But alas: I’ll definitely make a mistake today, tomorrow, the next day. I’ll look stupid at least three more times this evening. That’s life, isn’t it? No preparing for it, I suppose. We trip. We fall. We get back up.”
“I’m just lucky I had you there to catch me when I fell down, down, down—all the way,” I said to her. We clinked our glasses once more, feeling the camaraderie initiated with this true, effortless friendship.
But I knew I would take the weekend off, to fume, to understand what was going on inside my mind. I couldn’t go rushing back to the president’s arms. Not yet. Perhaps if I spent enough days away from the White House, they’d pull me back to help them. I was the only one with any clue back on the campaign team. Jason’s actions during my last absence had been orchestrated to him by a series of notes he’d found in my desk—notes that I had meant to involve a long-term strategy, not a one-year-before-the-election strategy. But all was not lost. I had ideas brimming up to my ears.
After another bottle of wine, after allowing drunkenness to pummel through us, Rachel and I both stood up, woozily. We sauntered toward the door and gave a hearty goodbye to the bartender. The bartender pointed, telling us that a taxi was waiting outside. We rustled into it and cackled, bringing the window open so that we could see the glinting stars from the October night sky. It seemed like things were both beginning and ending, all at once. Everything was up in the air.