THE FIRST WEEK
Charlotte
I have restless dreams about the campaign, wondering who’ll win the primaries for the main political parties, and flashbacks of the day Matt’s father was killed.
It’s still dark when I wake. I take a hot bath, but I’m not that tired even though I didn’t sleep well. I’m still running on adrenaline from the excitement—stumbling half-naked around my kitchen, dressing while having breakfast.
I wear a khaki skirt, a plain white button-down shirt, and a pair of tan open-toed shoes with sensible three-inch heels. My hair is pulled back into a practical ponytail, not too tight, but tight enough that no wayward strands can escape.
The excitement in the room is palpable when I arrive at the building. Keyboards are clicking, phones are buzzing, people are maneuvering past the small halls, getting quickly from one place to the next. There’s respect in the air, gratitude for being here.
We want our candidate to win.
Matt asks us what we all desire for our next president, what we desire for our country. As the group mulls his questions over, that ridiculously sexy stare locks on me. “If you had a genie that granted you three wishes, what would they be?”
Every word he says is like an indecent proposal.
The women around me look a bit like perspiring.
I wonder if they’re all thinking of sleeping with him as their first wish and marrying him their last, like I am.
A woman raises her hand. “Jobs, health, and education. What every person wants. To feel validated, busy, like they’ve got something to offer. Love is impossible to grant, but if you make us busy, feel useful and validated, you give us self-love.”
“I’ll be your genie. You’re right; love is not something in my power to grant. But for those first three wishes, I’ll be your genie for everyone who knocks on my lamp.” He knocks on the table, and then he leaves us with all the things to do. Twittering with inspiration.
We all want to impress him. We all want to feel like we did something for this campaign. If Matt Hamilton is elected president, we’ll be making history.
I watch people putting together the slogans.
Hamilton is change
A new vision
Predestined to lead
The change we need. The voice we deserve
For the future
Slogans to capture what he represents.
Leadership for the people
The right man for the job
My favorite: Born for this
I settle in during the morning, and I’m happy to report that I’m settling in just fine.
The phone starts to ring more viciously from noon onward, and it doesn’t stop ringing from then on.
I answer so frantically I almost drop it. “Matt Hamilton Campaign headquarters.”
“Matt, please,” a male voice demands.
“May I ask who’s calling?”
“His father, Law.”
I was warned of this by the other aides, of course. It’s still hard to remain unfazed after a statement like that. “I’m sorry, state your name please.”
“This is George Afterlife, and I’m a psychic medium and his father is using me to communicate a message. It is imperative I talk to him now.”
It’s hard to ignore the sound of impending doom on the other side of the line.
“Mr. Afterlife, if you’d like to leave a message I will be sure he gets it.”
“Matt, it’s your father!” the man starts yelling, changing his voice.
“Matt is unavailable, but if you’d leave a message . . .”
“I must talk to Matt—I know the conspiracy behind my murder.”
For the next ten minutes I try to get the man to leave a message, and all he leaves is a number. I jot it down.
The phone rings again, and I have a mini heart attack.
“Yes? Matt Hamilton Campaign headquarters?”
A breathy voice says, “Matt. I need to speak to Matt.”
“Who’s calling?” I take my notepad out to jot down her info.
“His girlfriend.”
I hesitate. Girlfriend? My heart sinks a bit, but I ignore it.
“Your name, please.”
“Look. He knows my name—I’m his girlfriend.” At this point, I’m feeling suspicious. He doesn’t have a girlfriend. Does he?
“And this is in relation to . . .?”
“God, fuck you!” She hangs up.
Wow. I hang up too.
I stay until midnight, alternating between taking phone calls and working down the pile of letters.
It’s been less than a week, and I’ve already started getting silent phone calls and weird notes on my email from his “sister” and “wife” and his father from the “dead.” How does Matt sleep at all?
Am I really cut out for this?
* * *
Two days later, Carlisle calls a meeting.
It’s dog-eat-dog in this political race, and the competition is already taking a nip out of Matt.
It turns out President Jacobs is already taking stabs at him.
“He’s threatened?” Matt smiles and covers his expression with his hand when Carlisle summons us all to the TV room and rewinds a recording of the same day.
We watch a popular news channel interview the president about Matt’s candidacy.
I watch his body language, and it’s hard to tell anything with him looking so lifeless and stoic. “How can he effectively run the country without a First Lady?” He signals to his elegant First Lady, who’s smiling demurely.
The next day Matt Hamilton appears, on the same channel, looking even more presidential than the president did.
“I find it laughable that President Jacobs believes a single, independent man cannot effectively run the country.” He looks at the camera soberly, with a light smile on his lips and those strong but playful dark brown eyes lasering in on the camera lens. “The term and official role as First Lady wasn’t even properly coined when Lady Washington served in Mount Vernon during George Washington’s office. I have a wife”—his lips curl higher—“and her name is the United States of America.”
The flood of calls is unprecedented. Carlisle the campaign manager is hecticly getting new slogans to be produced.
Committed to you
Made in America
All American
Hewitt, Matt’s campaign press manager, is quoted during the week: “Matt Hamilton’s sole obligation is to you, the United States of America. We need it to be clear. His First Lady is his country.”
“I’ve got to say, the way Matthew Hamilton is representing America, it feels good to be American again,” a TV news anchor jokes with her male co-anchor the same evening.
The effect this is having on women voters is almost naughty.
Primaries aren’t over until a few months from now, but I can already tell that his most formidable adversary will be the current president. On the other hand, the leading Republican candidate is so radical and people are so sick of things, he’s gaining traction too.
From one fundraising political event to the next, Matt is fielding two hundred to five hundred speaking invitations a week.
Today, we’re all sitting at Matt’s round table, and the tension in palpable. Matt’s creative design and marketing people have been pitching ideas, hoping to answer the big question on the docket for the day: “How should we market Matt’s campaign?”
The basics have been nailed down by Carlisle, who said simply that the efforts of the campaign should center around Matt’s strengths: his father’s successful presidency and his incredible popularity as president, Matt’s popularity among the people (especially those ready for real change), and Matt’s singleness.
However, the campaign has yet to come up with a real campaign strategy to bring Matt’s ideas for change to the public.
Matt looks exasperated, running his fingers through his dark hair and rubbing his knuckles across the slight stubble on his chin.
I want to speak up, give a suggestion, but the silence is intimidating . . . he is intimidating. His unreadable expression seems to make everyone in the room shift nervously.
He raises his gaze and sweeps it across everyone, meeting each and every gaze. “We can do better.”
His gaze only passes me, but it definitely connects, and for that second, suddenly I’m eleven again, awed and confused by the effect he has.
I bite my lip, and I think about the letter from a young boy. I’ve been able to answer every letter, even some pretty crazy ones proposing marriage, but I can’t figure out what to tell this one fan. Every time I think of him I ache, but I don’t have the courage yet to go directly to Matt and ask him about it.
“Come on, guys.” He sighs. “Is this really all we have?”
Papers shuffle and I can hear an awkward cough or sigh every now and then. We all look at each other, silently pleading with our eyes for someone, anyone, to speak up.
I feel myself itching to dare and pitch my idea, but Carlisle beats me to it, and I feel my heart sink in my chest.
Carlisle suggests that Matt market his campaign as the “next step” or “continuation” of his father’s presidential plan. Calling it a Hamilton 2.0 of sorts, the new-and-improved Hamilton plan.
Matt immediately shoots it down. “I want the people to know that I will continue my father’s legacy, but that I also have ideas of my own.”
Carlisle sighs and exasperatedly raises his hands in defeat. “Does anyone else have any ideas?”
Matt looks at us all and his piercing gaze settles on me. I feel my breath catch in my chest. He quirks an eyebrow at me, silently beckoning me to speak up. To take a risk and speak my mind.
Unable to take his unsettling gaze anymore, I clear my throat, and immediately everyone looks at me.
“What do you guys think of something that brings home the fact that we are working on everything—down to the fundamentals?” I nervously begin. “We can call it the alphabet campaign. We’re fixing, working, and improving everything from A to Z in this country. Arts. Bureaucracy. Culture. Debt. Education. Foreign relation policies . . .”
The table is quiet. I turn to Matt and I see his eyes shimmering in approval.
Carlisle is the first to speak up, cracking a smile and turning to Matt. “That’s actually really good.”
Matt doesn’t turn to look at him, just keeps his gaze on me. “It is,” he says simply. He nods and stands, buttoning his jacket. “We’re doing that. I want to have a full alphabet of campaign issues tomorrow first thing,” he announces as he keeps walking. Immediately, everyone leaves the table, relieved to have something to do now that Matt chose an idea.
An idea that just so happened to be mine.
I turn to join them, a deep sense of pride bubbling up inside me and warming my chest. I keep walking but before I get to my cubicle, Matt speaks again.
“Charlotte, come to my office, please.”
I swallow the lump in my throat and manage a “Sure” before following Matt there.
He sits down and gestures for me to take the seat across from him.
I sit down and start to twist the rings on my fingers.
“You did well in there, Charlotte,” he says, looking at me with warm eyes. I can’t tell if he wants to pat me on the back and tell me “good game” or kiss the hell out of me and tell me “come for me.”
I shake my head, because that thought brought warmth between my legs.
“Thank you.” I smile.
He smiles back and rubs the stubble on his jaw, saying more to himself than me, “I knew I brought you on this campaign for a reason . . .”
I cock my eyebrow at him. “And what reason would that be?” I ask.
He looks me up and down, a devilish smile on his face. “Your looks, of course.”
I laugh, and he laughs with me, but his laughter fades. “I brought you on because something told me you are just as passionate about this country and about real change as I am.”
I feel myself blush. And he eyes me curiously.
“I didn’t think you would say yes, you know,” he confesses to me, and then prods, “Why did you?”
“Why did I what?” I ask, lost by the look in his eyes, and how I feel like the only woman in the world when they are looking at me so intently.
“Say yes.”
I pause and think about his question. Actually think about it for a moment.
Why did I say yes to him?
I feel my mental wheels turning and before I know it, I’m answering him confidently. “I couldn’t let my chance to do something great pass me up.”
He stares at me. I stare back.
And in that moment, I feel the air shift. I feel like I just earned something Matthew Hamilton does not give out easily or frequently: admiration.
“If you don’t need my help anymore—I should get to work myself,” I say.
He nods.
Nervous about the connection I feel, I hurry off and get back to my desk. The phones haven’t stopped ringing, the piles of letters distributed on my and Mark’s (another aide’s) table mounting by the second.