26
Stuart ignored me when I walked in the following morning, and it wasn’t until he went into Michael’s office and closed the door that Claire told me in a whisper about him storming out when they returned to the office after the event at the club.
“I thought the speech was great,” she said, her voice still low, an eye on Michael’s closed office door.
I patted her arm. “I did too. Don’t you mind him. He’ll come around.”
“Did you write that speech?”
I started to nod, and then I remembered. “Part of it. He ...” As tempted as I was to let Stuart take the fall for his behavior, it wasn’t smart. Or professional. “He veered off course though.”
Claire nodded. “The ‘respect’ part.”
“He and I had talked about that. I—I wasn’t expecting him to use it ... like that.”
She smiled shyly. “Well, he has my vote—or he would, if I was old enough to vote.”
I winked at her. “Don’t you worry. That’s on my list of issues for him. If eighteen-year-olds can go to war and drink, they should be able to vote.”
Her smile widened. “When Paul asked me about interning, I thought it was just going to be good experience. I didn’t expect to actually care.” She looked toward Paul, who was on the phone with someone.
I found myself nodding. Then I noticed the expression on her face as she gazed at Paul and suppressed a smile. A good experience, I thought, trying not to giggle. I’d have to give Paul a little nudge there.
“I’ll smooth Stuart down,” I said. “You don’t worry about that at all.”
Claire grinned again, and the phone at her desk rang. “I’d better get that. It’s been ringing all morning. Women are making donations,” she called to me over her shoulder. “And one asked if I thought Michael would go on a date with her daughter!”
I laughed as I made my way to Michael’s office door. I wasn’t sure if whoever asked that would vote for him when the answer was no. But it was a good sign that she liked him that much. Or her daughter was thirty and she was getting desperate.
Then again, it may have been my own mother.
I shook my head. Mama would wait and put the moves on him for me in person. A phone call to a secretary wasn’t her style any more than it was mine.
I fluffed my hair and then turned the knob. “Knock knock,” I called as I opened the door. Both men looked up. “Am I interrupting? Or is this something I should be here for?”
“Interrupting,” Stuart said at the same time Michael told me to come on in. “Normal people knock instead of saying ‘knock knock,’” Stuart added darkly.
“I wasn’t knocking, it was the start of a joke. Oh, I’m so sorry, where are my manners? You see, a joke is when someone says something funny, and the other party laughs. Do you need me to explain what laughing is too? Or is that something you’ve done at some point in your life?” So much for smoothing him down. He just reacted so strongly to my very existence that I couldn’t help but bait him. He either had a real issue working with a woman or was secretly in love with me.
He glared at me with utter disdain. The former, then. Probably for the best. I couldn’t have returned the feeling even if he didn’t treat me like I had run his cat over with a car.
“Who’s there?” Michael asked.
“It’s too late. The joke has died.”
“Pity,” Michael said. “What did you need?”
“We didn’t get to debrief about yesterday.”
“Yes, we did,” Stuart said.
“Well, I didn’t,” I said, sitting in the seat next to Stuart. “And we have a few kinks to iron out before the next women’s speech.”
“What next women’s speech? We did your little experiment. It’s over.”
“Stuart,” Michael said, a warning tone in his voice.
“Most women don’t vote,” Stuart said. “We’re wasting time, while Sam Gibson gets every actual voter on his side.”
For a moment I said nothing. “Have you talked to Claire today?” I asked quietly.
“Why would I talk to Claire?”
“Because she said the phone has been ringing off the hook all morning. People are donating money. One of them even wants Michael to meet her daughter. If they’re giving us money, they’re going to vote.”
“You can’t know that.”
“And you can’t know how marriage works,” I said, finally angry. “But take it from someone who has been married, women have a lot more sway in the home than you seem to think. Ever heard the expression ‘Happy wife, happy life’? If women want Michael in office badly enough, you’d better believe they’re going to wage a domestic war to make it happen.”
“I wouldn’t call you the marriage expert,” Stuart said.
I sprang out of my seat, ready to ... Well, I didn’t know what I was ready to do. But Michael stopped me.
“Enough,” he said, also standing, then slapping his hands down on his desk. “We need to work together, or we’re going to lose. Stuart, I get it. We’ve been friends since we were kids, and you feel like she’s taking your job. But we’re the underdogs. And we need an edge if we’re going to have a fighting chance.” He pointed to me. “Like it or not, she’s our edge. She knows what Sam’s campaign is up to. She’s seen her father’s campaigns. And she’s not wrong. We saw what our mothers did when they wanted something.” Stuart didn’t budge or say a word, but something passed between the two of them, and I felt the tension in the room begin to dissipate. “Can we all be adults now?”
Stuart nodded first, and I followed. Then I sat back down.
“I called Indian Spring Country Club this morning, and we could do next week there. Sometime after the Fourth of July. The manager said they were planning to call us—his wife was at the Woodmont speech and wanted to know why Indian Spring didn’t book you first.”
Michael looked to Stuart, who inclined his head but didn’t speak. “Okay,” he said, turning back to me. “Is that a room you can fill as well?”
“Doesn’t sound like I’ll need to. I think the manager’s wife will. But I’ll reach out to her and make sure. Word of mouth spreads quickly.”
Michael nodded.
“I do think we should do new pictures of you before that. Professional headshots. Ones where you’re actually smiling and that don’t look like they were taken with a Brownie box camera.”
Stuart sat up a little straighter. In addition to being Michael’s barber, he was his photographer. “We don’t have money to hire someone for something frivolous.”
“We do now—all those donations.”
“We need that money for the actual campaign.”
I started to argue that pictures were a part of the actual campaign—especially with how well Kennedy had done—but then I realized we didn’t need to spend a lot. “I can get them for cheap, if not free.”
Michael looked at me questioningly. “Are you also a photographer?”
“Me? No. But my cousin’s fiancé is.”
“Your cousin’s fiancé?”
“Yeah, she’s an author now, and you should see her headshot on her book—I swear she looks like a movie star.”
“Who’s your cousin?” Michael asked.
“Marilyn Kleinman. She wrote this book—”
Stuart cut me off. “Your cousin is Marilyn Kleinman?”
I turned to him in surprise. “You’ve heard of her?”
Michael laughed. “Everyone has heard of her. Her book is a bestseller, and they’re making a movie of it. She’s been in all the newspapers.”
“It knocked the latest Salinger out of the number one spot on all the lists,” Stuart said.
“Who knew you two were such readers?”
“I haven’t read the book,” Michael said. “But we read the news. We have to.”
“That’s true.” I hadn’t read it either, truth be told. Taking care of two small children while being the perfect wife was a full-time job. But maybe I’d start it now. “Anyway, I’ll give her a call. I’m sure her fiancé will do your pictures.”
I rose and turned to leave, then looked back over my shoulder. “Oh, and Michael—that speech?” He looked at me. “Don’t change a word.”
Neither of them said anything as I shut the door behind me and went to my desk. Marilyn split her time between Philadelphia, Key West, and the New Jersey shore these days, but my mother had all three numbers. We hadn’t spoken since Larry and I separated, but I was sure she would help.
I picked up the receiver at my desk and dialed the house, humming to myself as it rang.