Chapter 20 #2
But she felt no relief. No comfort. Not even the blanket of numbness that cushioned her from the excruciating pain after her mother died.
She felt this loss every day, every hour.
She thought about texting Simone to ask if she’d made a mistake, or even calling Gabe to say how much she missed him.
But then she’d see him on CNN, or quoted in The New York Times, the face of Andrew Wheeler’s campaign.
The press around the campaign had died down for a while after Jo withdrew, but now they were only a week out from the Democratic convention in Chicago, so it was all kicking back into gear.
Every time Anya saw Gabe on TV, she’d be furious with him all over again, and inconsolable for Jo all over again, and she’d track the growth of his beard or the look in his eyes and try to glean absolutely anything about what it might mean, how he might be doing, whether she had harmed the person she’d loved most in her life beyond repair.
But he always looked fine, exactly like his old self.
She didn’t understand how he could look so happy when she didn’t even feel like a human being anymore—just an amorphous blob of misery and regret, attempting to emulate human form for enough hours to do her job, to partake in any form of distraction, until the pain overwhelmed her again and all she could do was crawl into bed and cry until she fell asleep.
“Hey, kiddo.” It was good to hear her dad’s voice. Watching baseball on the phone with him was the only thing she currently liked about her life.
“Hi, Dad.” Anya smiled at the bartender as she topped off Anya’s glass of red. Her name was Eleanor, and she’d taken kindly to the sad woman who always sat in the corner of the bar. “How was your day?”
“Eh, not too bad,” Walt answered. “The hydrangeas are already getting brown.”
“You need more rain.”
“And less heat! You know it was ninety-seven degrees on the golf course last Saturday? That’s reason enough to leave Chicago.”
“I’m not sure the golf courses are so much cooler in New York,” Anya joked. “What’s the update on that?”
“My brothers are all highly in favor of me moving, no surprise. And the firm has a Manhattan office, so I could work there if I wanted, or I could think about retirement.”
“You? Retire?” Anya scoffed.
“Would give me more time to get back to spying,” Walt reasoned. “We could open a father-daughter outfit. Become hard-boiled PIs in our old age.”
“So now I’m moving to New York too?”
“Come on, Anya, the clients are counting on you,” Walt goaded her. “We’ll wear pinstripe suits and fedoras and catch ball games on the weekends.”
“When crime takes a break, so do we.”
“Precisely.”
Anya laughed, then her phone started buzzing against her ear. She looked and saw Simone’s name flashing. “Oh, actually, Dad, can I call you right back? Simone’s on the other line. Just want to make sure it’s nothing urgent.”
“Sure thing. Tell her I say hi.”
Anya pressed the button on her phone to switch calls. “Hey! What’s up?”
“Are you watching the news?” Simone’s voice was tense.
“No, I’m at a bar watching baseball. What’s going on?”
“Tell them to turn on the news.”
“What channel?” Anya asked.
“Every channel!” Simone huffed impatiently.
“Hey, Eleanor?” Anya put her hand over the phone. “Would you mind turning on the news?”
Eleanor looked at Anya like she was being insane. “The Dodgers are on.”
“I know, I’m so sorry,” Anya apologized. “Just for a second?”
Eleanor clicked over to CNN. Ruth Minkow was talking in one box as they ran footage of FBI agents carrying cardboard boxes out of a mansion. The chyron on the lower third of the screen read, Breaking News: Andrew Wheeler Indicted on Federal Corruption Charges.
“Oh my god,” Anya gasped.
“I know.” Simone sounded grave, but also a little excited. “How soon can you get to Chicago?”
Democrats in Disarray on Eve of National Convention
by the Associated Press
CHICAGO, IL—The political world is still reeling from this week’s bombshell developments and attendant fallout.
First, presumptive Democratic nominee Senator Andrew Wheeler was indicted on a series of charges alleging misuse of campaign funds, including embezzling money from his PAC to buy a lavish horse farm in western Maryland.
Initially, Wheeler professed his innocence and vowed to remain in the race, but after swift and furious backlash from Democratic voters and party leaders alike, Wheeler formally ended his candidacy and released his delegates less than 48 hours later.
Now, the remaining candidates—as well as nearly every major figure in the party, and thousands of delegates, staffers, and activists—have gathered in Chicago for the first contested convention since 1976.
Senator Jo Sessego of Nevada currently leads in the delegate count with 1,072 pledged delegates, but that still puts her far short of the 1,983 delegates she’d need to secure the nomination.
Governor Brian Liddy has 77 pledged delegates, and Congressman Frank Nathan has 41, but the vast majority of delegates—nearly three thousand—were committed to Senator Wheeler until four days ago.
When the convention is gaveled into order tomorrow morning, Democrats are prepared for an all-out brawl.
Will Senator Sessego secure her party’s nomination?
Will one of the other candidates (whose moderate policy stances track more closely with Wheeler’s) win out?
Or will one of the major party figures who sat this race out swoop in with their own coalition?
Only one thing’s for certain: It’s going to be a very exciting week.
——Forwarded Message——
FROM: Lev Chlebek
TO: Hal Robbins
SENT: July 25, 11:34 am
SUBJECT: I told you
We never should have hired that fucking kid.
——Forwarded Message——
FROM: Hal Robbins
TO: Lev Chlebek
SENT: July 25, 11:36 am
SUBJECT: RE: I told you
Keep your head down. We’ll be fine. But Jesus, Lev, stop putting things in writing.
“Where are we on the delegate count?” Kira yelled.
“Hold on!” Dale had something like fourteen different spreadsheets open and kept tabbing between them every time new information came in.
“I have Time holding for the senator, and requests for comment from NBC News, The Washington Post, CNN, and FOX News, and Vogue wants to know what she’s wearing for her floor speech?
” Preethi shuffled through a stack of Post-its where she’d scribbled various reporters’ names and numbers. “Does anyone know where she is?”
“She’s upstairs practicing said speech,” Anya said. “And no, I don’t know what she’s wearing.”
“Do we have that education policy language approved for the website?” Hugo asked.
“Not yet!” Simone shouted. “I’m on hold with the teachers’ union right now, I want to get the language exactly right so they have zero excuses not to endorse.”
“Oh! Speaking of teachers,” Anya interrupted, “we need to get as many of the senator’s former students as we can here by Wednesday. Nicole, can you run point on that?”
Nicole frowned. “All of her students, or—”
“No, the ones from the class that convinced her to run for office,” Anya clarified. “We have a section about them in the speech, we want them here to talk to delegates and do press avails. Dale can get you their names if you can’t find them.”
“Not before he gets me the delegate count,” Kira interjected.
“Working on it!” Dale looked like he might be nearing a panic attack.
“Will all those former students need to be briefed before they speak to press?” Preethi asked.
“No, I’ll write their talking points,” Anya assured her. “It should be pretty straightforward: Jo changed my life, the nation would be lucky to have her, blah blah blah.”
“Who wants bratwurst?” Walt sauntered into the living room carrying a giant tray of sausages from the grill outside. “And veggie-wurst for Preethi!”
“Walt, you prince among men.” Kira leapt up and ran over to him.
“I live to serve.” Walt gave a little bow as the staff lined up to grab their dinners.
Every hotel in Chicago had been booked up months before the convention, which meant the Sessego campaign was both sleeping in and operating out of Anya’s childhood home.
It was easily the wildest week of Anya’s life—and after this campaign, that was really saying something.
Anya was in her own bedroom, Walt was in his, and Jo and her husband, Chase, were in the guest room.
Every other couch and floor space was occupied by exhausted and elated Sessego staffers who’d been working nearly twenty-four hours a day since they arrived, sleeping only when they absolutely had to.
None of them could believe they really had another chance to help Jo become president—and they had no intention of wasting the opportunity.
Walt was having the time of his life, cooking for everyone, cleaning up behind them, telling anyone who would listen about every protest Judy had ever been to, showing them her photos and the framed letter Jo had written about her.
Anya was feeling too many things at once to feel any one of them for long.
She was thrilled to have this chance, but also terrified of letting the nomination slip through her fingers a second time, that she might personally make another recommendation that would harm Jo’s odds of winning—and, by extension, harm all the Americans who so badly needed Jo in the White House.
Anya felt more like herself than she had since April, like she’d been dug out of an early grave and brought back to life to be with Kira and Simone and everyone else from the campaign.
She was busy, and she was exhausted, and she couldn’t make any mistakes—she couldn’t stop working for one second to think.
Which was all for the best, because anytime she did, the only thing she could think about was Gabe.