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It’s just after dawn, and Jordan’s been awake for over an hour. Something kept her from a good sleep. This something could
have been the Dixie Cups of wine on top of two gin and tonics, but it could just as easily have been the presence of Scarlett,
who was not, as Natalie had claimed, a deep, motionless sleeper, but rather a thrasher, a cover thief, and an occasional whimperer.
Scarlett didn’t come as advertised at all.
Bernadette’s voicemails and texts from the day before total seven. They all say basically the same thing, in a variety of
ways: Jordan, call me back.
She will not! When she got the email from her father, Jordan put in for vacation time. She hasn’t taken a proper vacation
in years, not a full week—the last time she’d been out of touch for more than three days had been when Theresa died. She doesn’t
want to call Bernadette back. She’s resisting! Ever since Memorial Day she’s been wondering what her future is at the firm.
But Bernadette does have a hold over her that Jordan wishes she didn’t. She’s taught Jordan everything she knows about the
business; she’s paid her well; she’s let her sit at her knee during some of the most interesting cases the firm has had. Jordan
shudders. She doesn’t actually want to think about Bernadette’s knees.
A little while later Jordan slides out of bed, leaving Scarlett, who has her arms and legs starfished, her glorious dark hair spread out across both pillows.
(For a slender little girl she really does take up a remarkable amount of room.) She dresses quickly in the bathroom, congratulating herself on being so quiet that neither dog stirs, then tiptoes down the stairs, through the slider, across the patio, down the three stairs to the beach, and onto the sand, still cool, for now, from the night.
The tide is low, low, and the beach is absolutely enormous.
It feels like the biggest beach in the world.
Jordan starts south, with the water to her left. A few early-morning dogs and owners are up, and so are a couple of solitary
walkers, but this beach is so vast Jordan feels like they each have their own universe to themselves. The sun is newly risen
over the water, which is a sight that never gets old, no matter how many times Jordan has seen it—and she’s seen it a lot.
In the distance, near the new public bathrooms (not so new anymore, but they still seem new, because the old ones were so
very old), the majestic American flag is waving like a greeting. Surfers dot the water. Seaweed, flung by the tide, lies in clumps.
She faces the ocean, looking for strength and fortitude in its vastness, its—well, its relentless optimism, is one way to
look at it. Those waves just keep coming back; no matter how many times they’re sent away, they just keep coming and coming,
not taking no for an answer. Sort of like Bernadette.
Maybe she’ll just call Bernadette back to remind her that she’s on vacation.
She’ll just do it and get it over with. Bernadette will be up. Bernadette is always up! Bernadette operates a little like
a dolphin, resting one hemisphere of her brain at a time while allowing the other to continue to function.
“Hello?” Bernadette’s voice sounds . . . croaky. Almost like a person who has been . . . woken up unexpectedly?
But it’s almost seven o’clock. On a Monday!
The most important day of the workweek! Often crises pop up over the weekend, as sneaky as overnight dandelions, and people sit on them, stewing in them, chewing on them, enduring one or two dark nights of the soul, until Monday comes, and bam. The phone starts ringing.
“Oh my god, Bernadette, did I wake you?”
“No,” croaks Bernadette. “Well, sort of. Not really. The family is still away, so I went out with a couple of girlfriends
last night—”
Bernadette sounds almost like a regular person, a person who will let herself sleep in after a night out, a person with girlfriends!
Jordan has known Bernadette for a long time now. She’s heard her talk about colleagues, and journalists she has a good working
relationship with, and politicians whose kids’ birthday parties she might go to, but girlfriends? She’s never heard about
the girlfriends. She imagines Bernadette in college, out to breakfast with a hungover crew, reliving the shenanigans of the
night before. Bernadette, brushing her teeth next to someone in a dormitory bathroom. Borrowing a dress for a semiformal.
If she squints her mind’s eye hard enough, she can almost see it.
Jordan hardens her heart. She cannot let Bernadette be too human. Since Memorial Day, Bernadette has owed her an apology. And even if she gives it, Jordan is not sure how she’ll feel.
“You didn’t return any of my calls or texts yesterday,” says Bernadette, already playing offense. “That sort of lack of communication
is unacceptable.”
When Jordan started in crisis communications Bernadette imparted three rules. One: There are two sides to every story. If
we judge our clients, we can’t help them. Two: Communicate, communicate, communicate. And three: Your relationships with the
press are sacred. Don’t lie to the press.
“I’m using vacation days.”
“Even so, you need to answer when I call you. If you want me to make you partner, there are no vacations.”
“Ever?”
A pause. “Rarely.”
Jordan starts to apologize, then sits on the word sorry until it goes back to where it came from. When you need to apologize, do. When you don’t, don’t. A Theresa-ism.
“Irina always answers her phone,” says Bernadette.
Bernadette is baiting her. She may as well be loading bags of herring into a lobster trap. Irina is twenty-six, younger even
than Mae, and has only been working for Bernadette for three years. Jordan will not take the bait. She knows her own value; she knows
what she brings to the table. She knows the monsters that live under the table. She says, “You have me now. What’s going on?”
She hears Bernadette gulping something—probably her first of many daily cups of coffee. Bernadette has been known to sip cold
brew instead of water during a Peloton workout. In the afternoons, to relax, she switches to espresso. Someday, Jordan believes,
this habit will catch up with her, but it hasn’t yet. “I have a very important client that I want you to work with.” Jordan’s
heartbeat picks up. A very important client! Bernadette usually takes the VIPs for herself. Last year the firm was approached
by the family of a Qatari prince whose high jinks around the city were resulting in negative press for his family. Jordan
never even got to sit in on a meeting with the Qataris.
“Who is it?”
“I need you to call Samantha Braddock from the Times about a client. You have a good relationship with her, right?”
“I love Samantha Braddock,” says Jordan. Dammit! She feels herself getting pulled back into work, back into Bernadette’s orbit. She
wants to resist, she should resist, but she can’t resist.
“I know you do. And Samantha loves you.” Bernadette is flattering her, and Jordan, despite herself, is here for it.
“What am I calling Samantha Braddock about? Who’s the client?”
Another pause, more gulping, and now Bernadette sounds fully awake. Mae has explained to Jordan that a dog shakes to release
tension or energy, to reset itself. She imagines Bernadette shaking off the cobwebs of the night, morphing from a person with
girlfriends to her regular professional, witchy self. “There’s a story coming out that we need to get ahead of.”
“By get ahead of it, you mean . . . ?”
“I mean, you need to make sure Samantha Braddock knows there’s nothing to this story. So it doesn’t run.”
A common misconception about the crisis communications industry is that its practitioners do dishonorable things to protect
dishonorable people. But much of the job is giving context to a story, managing an inevitable reaction rather than making
sure the reaction doesn’t occur. The best people in their business pride themselves on keeping their moral compasses pointing
in the right direction.
Jordan clears her throat. In this case, it almost sounds like Bernadette wants her to kill a story. But that can’t be right.
“Is there nothing to the story?” she asks.
There’s a silence that, were you looking for a description, you might characterize as ominous.
“Correct,” says Bernadette finally.
“What’s the angle?” Jordan watches a sandpiper skitter across the sand, its little legs moving so fast. A brown Lab chases
a ball joyfully into the water. A gull flies overhead, dips down for breakfast.
With her degree in political science, Jordan’s first job had been working on a series of Senate campaigns. Nothing brings
out the best and the worst in people like a political campaign. Jordan has watched candidates snap at a spouse and then, ten
minutes later, bring a crowd to their knees with a story about an immigrant grandmother. She’s found a box of tissues when
someone was crying literal tears of exhaustion, and then helped that person reapply mascara so she could hit the Sunday-morning show circuit and talk Medicaid and Social
Security. Many of those skills translated readily into crisis comms.
“If you’re not up for it, I could ask Irina.”
Jordan bristles. There is no way she’s letting Irina pull ahead of her. Jordan can run crisis PR circles around Irina. She
watches a surfer catch a beautiful wave, and he looks so otherworldly, so utterly free, that Jordan’s heart lifts. No matter
what, there is always the ocean. There are always the waves. “I didn’t say I’m not up for it. I’m just trying to understand
the situation.”
“It’s a hit piece.”
“That can’t be right,” says Jordan. “Samantha Braddock doesn’t write hit pieces.”
“Well, in this case, she is. This client has been unfairly smeared by people who work for her. It’s a disgruntled-employee-gone-rogue
situation. Small things have been taken out of context, misunderstood.” Bernadette’s voice takes on a hard edge. “It’s a disgrace,