“Right. Well, I tried. You can lead a horse to water...” He shrugs like he’s gone to the ends of the earth for me and come up empty.
“Are you this rude to everyone, or just me?”
“I think it’s just you. You seem to bring it out of me.” Even he seems confused by this.
“If I behaved like you, I’d be out of a job,” I mutter. “Speaking of which, does Senator Hammond know the type of person he has working for him?”
His eyes sharpen. “And whattypeof person am I?”
“You’re a rude, offensive, patronizing...” I falter. God, I wish I were better at slinging insults. It goes against my nature. “Oaf.”Oh geez.
My insult seems to delight him. “Oaf?Are you making a reference to mybody, Ms. Adams? I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but hashtag time’s up on sexual harassment in the workplace.”
I have a brief hallucination as we face off. I’m launching myself over the desk and grabbing him by the ear the way my grandmother used to do to me. I’ll bring this fool to his knees. I’ll tan his hide like cheap leather. I’ll slap that smug grin off his face and it will besosatisfying.
I drop-kick the fantasy away. I have nothing to gain by continuing this. I spin around and head for the door, grateful to be leaving this chamber of horrors behind.
“I don’t think Hammond has any complaints about me.” His voice chases my back. “In fact, I’m pretty sure he wishes he had ten more of me.”
“I think you might need a bigger office. I’m surprised your head can fit through the door.” I yank it open.
“It wasverynice to meet you, Kate,” he calls.
“Wish I could say the same,” I toss back.
His laughter echoes over my shoulder as I slam the door behind me.
Chapter 2
I hightail it back to my office, anger and anxiety clashing in my stomach. I let that getwayout of hand. Grace under pressure is practically one of my job requirements. The fact that I failed so spectacularly in my missionandearned an enemy in the process makes me a little sick.
I breathe a little easier once I step through my doors.Ahh.Back to my domain.
Senator Warner’s suite of offices is located on the seventh floor of the Hart Building, one of three Senate buildings surrounding the US Capitol, or what’s known as the Capitol Complex. Hart houses about fifty senators and their staffs, the other fifty split between the Russell and Dirksen Buildings. All three are connected by long hallways and tunnels, which means a ton of walking, but I don’t mind. It’s a rare day when I don’t hit my ten thousand steps.
I actually prefer Russell to Hart—the domed ceiling, crystal chandeliers, and heavy wooden doors evoking the archetypalMr. Smith Goes to Washingtonversion of DC you see in the movies. That marble rotunda in the background of every cable news interview? That’s Russell. I’m there every day but I still get goose bumps every time I climb the grandstaircases. Hart is more of a modern office building, with speckled fiberboard ceilings and carpet that gives me static shocks.
But Hart is the center of everything, a building teeming with life—and these days, protesters—at all times. The glass-walled offices are laid out along the building’s outer perimeter, with an open atrium in the center where an immense sculpture installation entitledMountains and Cloudsresides. To me, it looks more like random black geometric shapes than mountains and clouds, but that’s art for you. Some people complain about the lack of privacy (and I get it; the building is basically a giant fishbowl), but I find it all entertaining—the constant commotion, the tribal camaraderie, the simmering resentments that boil over into passive-aggressive window-sign wars the week of a big vote. There’s an odd intimacy to it, a sense that we’re all in this together despite our differences; a big, dysfunctional family forced to sit across from each other at the Thanksgiving table.
When I walk into reception, the TV is blaring CNN, per usual. It’s one of the prerequisites of the job—the constant surveillance of cable news, like an IV drip that can’t be turned off. Sometimes I even dream in a headline scroll.
The first thing I do once I enter my office is whip off my blazer; I’m overheated and some days it feels like a straitjacket. I love fashion, but the stodgy political environment doesn’t exactly encourage sartorial expression. It’s business formal all the time, especially for meetings I attend with Senator Warner. There’s a strict dress code for appearing on the Senate floor and I follow it to the letter.
My only rebellion is my heels.
When I first moved to DC, it took a week of wearing monotonous, soul-killing suits before I decided sporting outlandish heels was going to be my rage against the machine. Now it’s my signature. No matter how conservative my attire, you better believe I’m wearing flamboyantfootwear, usually with some type of embellishment: a bow, a buckle, a tassel, a stud. Most of the time they’re hidden under a desk—but I know they’re there, and that’s just enough civil disobedience for me.
As I hang my jacket on the back of my chair, my eyes catch on the double photo frame I keep front and center on my desk. The left side displays a shot from my mom’s college graduation: she’s holding a pigtailed, chubby-cheeked version of me tight and beaming, her rolled diploma raised in victory. The picture on the right is similar but age-progressed—we’re hugging at my graduation, and this time I’m the one celebrating. It’s the best possible reminder of why I’m here, why I need to keep fighting—even if it means putting up with brutes like Ben Mackenzie.
I have my mom to thank for my career path. At just eighteen years old, she got pregnant with me at her senior prom. Yep, I’m that cliché. She was a teen mom before doing so meant landing your own MTV show.
She never married my dad—or more accurately, my dad never marriedher—and thankfully her parents offered to help raise me. When I was a toddler, she worked during the day and toiled away at night classes to get her degree in hospitality management while I got spoiled as my grandparents’ little angel. She currently works for a chain of luxury hotels in New York, where she moved from our small town outside Nashville as soon as I went off to college at UNC Chapel Hill. My paternal grandparents did their best to help too, not that paying for some dance classes could make up for their son’s absence in my life. My childhood wasn’t picture-perfect, but I didn’t want for anything—except a father, of course.
I open my laptop and sigh. It’s after five, but I hate leaving work with the equivalent of a seventy-car pileup in my inbox. I settle in to clear my emails, following up on some committee business, responding to a couple of constituent emails that have been passed my way, and compiling a list of talking points for an upcoming speech Carol will be giving. At six fifteen, I hear Stephen’s voice boom out from his desk.
“Candy time!”
Stephen Campbell is Carol’s scheduler, and his job is basically what you’re thinking. Like a glorified secretary, he keeps her calendar, arranges interviews, organizes travel, and keeps her on schedule, which, because of how sought after she is, is sometimes chopped into five-minute blocks.
