The Perfect Candidate Page 5

  “I will forgive a lot for a good sense of style, but that was over-the-top,” replied Hillary.

  “Warning us about things that might come out about BIB. Like she’s been hiding stuff all along or something?” I asked.

  “The only thing Nadia hides is her plastic surgery history,” said Hillary. “Which must be extensive. I can always see the scars.”

  “Disgusting,” Zeph dismissed. “Anyway. Seriously, was that chat with Nadia weird? That was . . . suspicious.”

  “Ugh. Conspiracy theorists, can we please make this day go away with bad reception food?” replied Hillary.

  “You’re right,” said Zeph. “We have to eat. And we haven’t yet introduced our friend Cameron to the fine art of intern reception crashing.”

  Hillary explained, “Every night, there are at least ten free buffets, happy hours, or receptions for interns and young staffers. It’s like soup kitchens, but in fancy buildings and with partially defrosted crab cakes and generic lime sodas.”

  “And you’re welcome, because I am on the Hungry Intern distro list,” Zeph said. “It’s a daily e-mail that rates that day’s receptions across town. The K Street ones are the most popular.”

  “And stay away from anything Cabinet-related,” warned Hillary. “They are cheap and gross. I heard some girl got a parasite from a pork skewer at the Department of Health and Human Services mixer. Health and Human Services!”

  “Friday nights are spotty,” said Zeph, as he scanned the his e-mail. “Looks like our best bet tonight is a reception at the National Press Club.”

  “Who’s speaking?” I asked.

  Hillary simultaneously clamored: “When is the food?”

  Zeph chose to answer my question: “A bunch of former ambassadors to Japan talking about Japanese-American trade relations over the years.”

  Hillary made a snoring noise.

  We opened the front door of the Rayburn building and felt a welcome blast of balmy evening air. They ran ahead as I looked back—and up—at the five stories of graying white that towered above me. The evening shadows started their crawl across the glistening blocks of marble. I walked backward, and the structure appeared to get bigger with each step. Like it was puffing its chest or something. Threatening that it could crush me with just one of its clean, sharp chunks of stone.

  6

  Though the name sounds impressive, the interior of the National Press Club building was not all that different from the ballroom of the Lagrima Red Lion Inn, where I attended Brett Bergsman’s bar mitzvah party five years earlier. Fluorescent lights shone down from ceiling panels overhead. And a polka- dot carpet spread across three adjacent conference rooms whose adjustable walls had been removed for the evening’s event to form one giant forum space. A group of five men relaxed in plush chairs on an elevated platform as a line of eager young Washingtonians chirped paragraph-long questions into a microphone.

  My eyes were immediately drawn to a girl in a yellow dress. . . .

  “Dude,” Zeph nudged me. “You’re thinking about Ariel. I can see it. I know it’s a shock, but just try to take your mind off it. I can guarantee you half the office is getting smashed at some happy hour right now. We can enjoy a civil intern reception.”

  “You’re right, I know,” I said. Zeph didn’t know that I had an outstanding message from Ariel. Something she needed to tell me. But he was right about moving on from the shock. And the regret.

  Per Hillary’s insistence, we had arrived late—just in time to hear the last few questions of the Q&A, though it was clear that she had no intention of listening. Upon entering the standing-room-only space, she was scanning the crowd.

  “She’s looking for trophy friends,” Zeph confided. “Out here in the wild, she likes to collect high-profile people and then call them her friends to everyone else. Ambassadors’ kids, rich junior lobbyists, and pretty much anyone with the last name ‘Kennedy.’ ”

  “Juliette!” whisper-shouted Hillary, in an accent that desperately wanted to be French, and to no apparent reciprocation from anyone in our proximity. She scampered off to the other side of the conference room as applause signaled that the Q&A was over.

  Though he called out Hillary, Zeph also seemed to size up the room, his squinted eyes asking: Who should I know here? “Let’s meet up a little later,” he said as he proceeded to join a large group that surrounded one of the speakers in the front. The conversation in the room got louder—punctuated by explosions of laughter and intense pats on backs.

  It all happened around me, in spite of me, and I wasn’t quite sure how to dive in. Kind of like when you show up to a high school dance with a hundred people to talk to, and you opt for the table of stale sugar cookies and the radioactively bright red punch instead. So, naturally, I worked my way to the food. A long table covered with a faded blue tablecloth featured trays of Japanese hors d’oeuvres. The extent of my experience with Japanese food in Lagrima was this restaurant where a bunch of Salvadoran ladies dressed up in kimonos and cooked shrimp on a big stove in front of your table. This sophisticated array of options was new and a little intimidating. Neat rows of sushi were flanked by crinkly dumplings. A kettle of soup steamed in the corner. The most familiar option seemed to be a bowl of big shiny green beans—I picked one up and chewed on the surprisingly slimy and increasingly fibrous bean sheath. With, oddly, no beans inside. I gulped it down and popped in a few more of this unusual food. As I munched away, I noticed a girl put a strand of the same food into the bowl that I had taken mine from. When her friend did the same thing, I realized that I wasn’t eating what was intended to be eaten. I had eaten what was left behind. A separate bowl of smooth, bulging green beans was situated nearby the “trash bowl,” and it became clear to me that you were supposed to eat the beans and then throw away the rest. I discreetly spit out the bean refuse into my napkin-covered hand as I looked around and hoped that no one had been paying attention. I locked eyes with a black-haired girl who was shaking her head as she walked toward me.

  “Well, you’re either extremely waste-conscious, or you just really happen to like eating other people’s edamame husks. Which one is it?” she inquired, with slight effort applied to each word that revealed her to be a native Spanish speaker.

  So that’s what edamame was.

  “The real answer is that I’m not from around here.” I shrugged.

  “Well, neither am I,” she said. “And I think edamame is kind of weird. But just the husks, however . . .”

  “I don’t recommend them either,” I assured her.

  “Ahh, good to know.” She laughed. “I’m Lena.” She reached out her hand.

  “I’m Cameron.” We shook.

  Lena’s dark hair was wrapped up in a bun, and her light brown eyes hid behind a pair of horn-rimmed glasses. She wore a black skirt and a tight buttoned-up blue shirt, with a colorful necklace made of small porcelain tiles. Before I could read her name tag, she covered it with her crossed arms and Moleskine notebook. Her smile revealed that one of her front teeth was slightly crooked, but it just kind of looked perfect to me. She looked like she could be eighteen or twenty-eight. I hoped for eighteen.

  “What brings you here, Cameron?” she asked.

  I pointed to Hillary, who was double-kiss greeting a row of people who weren’t double-kissing her back. “Her,” I said. “And him,” I added, gesturing to Zeph, who sported his best fake-captivated facial expression while talking with some old man. “They’re my roommates. We’re interning for the same congressman, and they said this is where you can get a free dinner. And network.”

  “Looks like you’re enjoying the dinner and they are enjoying the networking. So mission accomplished,” she dryly observed.

  “Uhhhhm.” I just looked straight into her eyes with a dumb smile.

  She smiled back.

  “Okay, well, it sounds like you’re new in town and could use a little explanation of the social map.” She cleared her throat. “This is a National Press Club Q&A and
reception, which is slightly more prestigious than your average DC happy hour, hence the slightly more prestigious crowd.” She began to signal around the room: “Here you have the congressional interns, like yourself. Usually first-timers in town, affluent and adequately connected in their home districts, which is why they got the gig . . .”

  “Affluent. Well, actually,” I began to correct her when she carried on.

  She pointed to a group of slightly better-dressed twentysomethings. “And here are the senate interns. They think they are superior to the congressional interns, as you can see by the way they dress. I suppose this reflects how senators think of congressmen generally.”

  She directed my attention to the front of the room, which was packed with hyper kids talking over one another and trying to get the attention of anyone who looked prestigious. “These are the think tank interns. They probably applied to intern on the Hill, but got rejected, so they tell everyone that they actually prefer to have”—finger-quote gesture—“ ‘a more academic experience.’

  “You can see that we have a few White House interns in our midst,” she continued, pointing to a guy and girl who both looked very sophisticated and proud. “They have found the Holy Grail of all internships, and they like to think it’s because of their résumés and leadership abilities, but in reality it’s because their parents’ super PACs favored the president.”

  “Is that legal?” I asked.

  “People ask that question all the time in this town. I guess the answer is ‘legal enough.’ ” She shrugged. “Anyway, moving on, you have the congressional pages. They are like the . . . the elfos . . . how do you say that?”

  “Elves?” I asked.

  “Yes, of course, the elves. They are the little elves of the city. Vulnerable sixteen-year-olds by themselves, but an elusive army of privilege as a group . . .”

  Who is this girl and how does she know about everyone in the room?

  “And finally”—she pointed to a group of girls in noticeably short skirts—“the Skinterns. Girls who mistake their internships for a fashion show, and in some cases, a day at the beach. Easy to spot for both the obvious reasons as well as for their subconscious Monica Lewinsky kinship.”

  “Good to know,” I said.

  “You’ll note that most conversation revolves around who people are working for and, well, gossiping about one another. In whispers,” she added. “You know no one ever whispers a compliment. So who are you working for, anyway?”

  “Congressman Billy Beck—fifty-seventh congressional district of California,” I said.

  “House minority leader,” she observed. “And probably the next Speaker of the House, if all goes well in November.”

  “Well, I guess he is kind of a celebrity in town,” I said, surprised by her instant recognition. “So what brings you to Washington?”

  “Well, you know what they say about DC. It’s Hollywood for ugly people,” she mused, not answering my question.

  “Yeah, I guess that’s kind of true,” I said. “Except for you.”

  If I were back at the high school dance, I would have walked away and wished I hadn’t said those last three words for the rest of the night. But not with her. Something about her made me feel like it was okay to say them. Something about her made me want her to know that’s how I felt.

  She wasn’t wearing much makeup, which made her slight blushing clearly perceptible. “Listen, I’ve gotta run, but I’ll see you around, okay? Probably another Q&A/reception plus food?” she suggested. “Ciao.” And she headed out, apparently alone.

  Not four seconds had passed when Hillary grabbed my shoulders and said, “OMG, do you know who you were just talking with?”

  “Lena,” I said.

  “That was Marielena Cruz, the Mexican ambassador’s daughter! She’s been living in Washington for eight years with her parents and just graduated high school. Early admit to Princeton in the fall. And if I read the room right—I’m really good at doing that—she totally has a crush on you.”

  7

  You would never have thought there was a death in the office the next week, had it not been for Jigar’s mass e-mail about Ariel’s memorial service details (Friday evening in Virginia Beach, plus some charming fine print: “Invitation limited to full-time staff,” aka no interns, aka Classy, Nadia). There was barely any mention of our fallen coworker. Katie rushed BIB out the door for votes. Nadia and Jigar did whatever PR voodoo they did behind closed doors. LAs did their best to calm down Very Concerned constituents with conversations ranging from farming subsidies to my neighbor’s a meth cook. Zeph and Hillary conducted tours of the Capitol for eager tourists from home, reminding me that someday soon I’d be able to lead a tour group. And I stuffed envelopes with fund-raising flyers, while practicing my forgery of BIB’s signature. (Sorry, district: That personalized letter you got from him was actually signed by a kid barely out of high school.)

  In an unexpected turn of events, I got upgraded from the card table that was halfway lodged into a closet. My new desk was Ariel’s old one, and as I sat down in her chair for the first time, it felt like moving into a house where someone had died. As if her apparition would visit me regularly or something. I opened one of the desk drawers, which was still filled with Ariel’s things. There was a faded Post-it note with an all-caps reminder to “SEND RENT.” A stack of ripped movie theater tickets, which revealed an eclectic fondness for both science fiction and art house. And a framed picture of a teenage Ariel, arm around a girlfriend and smiling like you only can during a high school summer. The same picture that had been cropped for the news reports. It all started to feel a bit voyeuristic, so I closed the drawer, even as I wished Ariel could have made good on her promise for us to be friends. Or at least to work on that project she had mentioned.

  On Friday, most of the permanent staff cleared out of the office for the memorial service. It was a pretty quiet day—Zeph read every page of every national newspaper, while Hillary changed the reception desk TV channel from C-SPAN to a reality show about rival social media stars, with the volume so low she thought we couldn’t hear. And I, of course, was diligently typing away and researching public school funding for Marcus. And by that I mean: I was chatting with Lena, the secretive and very resourceful Mexican ambassador’s daughter who had somehow tracked down my MessageNow account. It was a welcome distraction. Aside from a couple questions about Ariel’s memorial service, we mostly just IMed about nothing: emojis and links to photo galleries of unflattering pictures of politicians eating. And bad jokes.

  LENA: How many interns does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

  ME: Ummm . . .

  LENA: It doesn’t matter, you’ll have to do it again anyway.

  ME: That is hurtful. I could totally screw in the lightbulb right.

  LENA: Is that a euphemism?

  ME: You are disgusting.

  LENA: And you are spending your whole Friday on Message Now with me. Is this what you meant by all that “hard work” you said you were going to do this summer in your interview?

  ME: Well, I’d be able to get something done if a certain stalker would leave me alone.

  LENA: I wouldn’t say stalker. More like guardian who doesn’t think you’re ready for an hordurves table, let alone a big city. And a little bit of a stalker.

  ME: It’s hors d’oeuvres, Miss Princeton. I guess you missed that one on the TOEFL.

  LENA: How did you know I’m going to Princeton?

  Caught. Hillary’s intel. I’d let it slip. My face burned and my heart thumped quietly and quickly.

  But I was quite proud of my comeback: You’re not the only one who is allowed to be a stalker.

  LENA: Touché. So if you are like most interns on their second week in DC, you still have nothing to do tonight, right?

  ME: I have a very fulfilling night of Scandal binge watching ahead with the roommates. Hillary claims the show is educational. “A second internship.”

  LENA: Okay. Well, I can�
�t handle another night of my dad’s nerdy diplomat friends. And that is why you and I are going to meet at Kramerbooks.

  ME: I wonder if that place has anything to do with books.

  LENA: It’s only the best bookstore in the city and probably this country and maybe the universe. They have books AND pies.

  ME: Well, then I guess we have to go.

  Bonus: Pie was about all I could afford for a Friday night out. It would be a nice break from my alternating schedule of PB&Js and Top Ramen. I thought I might even be able to pay for her slice. . . .

  LENA: 7:30 p.m.

  When I told Hillary I wanted to check out a bookstore that night instead of watching Scandal with her and Zeph, she replied, “Just know that I will not be rewatching any episodes with you. And I cannot keep myself from revealing spoilers. Remember that this is your choice.”

  I gladly accepted her verbal waiver, and we parted ways at six p.m. And I headed to what I think was my first date of the summer.

  • • •

  I found myself emerging once again from the Dupont Circle metro station—exactly eight days after the first time I came out of that extremely deep hole. As I watched the cars chase each other on the roundabout, I wondered if Ariel and that guy passed through here on their way to their appointment with a tree and a guardrail. If maybe I could have prevented the doomed ride had I just talked with her that night like she’d wanted. When you’re one of the last people someone talks to before they die, you’re linked to that person. You’re connected. There’s a little groove in your brain that they nestle into and never leave. I knew this because of my mom. And I was already feeling it again with Ariel.

  Kramerbooks was just off the Circle, on Connecticut. An odd crowd of hipsters and grandparents and hipster grandparents hovered around the entrance. In an outdoor dining area, at least two girls’ nights out leaned into small tables dressed with picked-over paninis and already-drained wine glasses. I entered and smelled a combination of that dull, sawdusty old book smell and perfectly cooked chicken, with a whiff of melting chocolate and coffee. A man in a suit and tie tuned a violin on a stage in the corner, apparently having come straight from work to play a gig. The distant cacophony of a busy restaurant kitchen competed with some soft European techno music.