Jennifer Close - The Hopefuls

But the thing is, they all read it. And I mean all of them. (Okay, not the President and probably not the other top people at the White House, but everyone else.) When Alan asked what I was up to at the Snowmageddon party, I knew he was just playing dumb, pretending he didn’t know exactly where I worked so that I would think he was above reading such trash. But Jimmy told me that after Alan’s golf incident with the President, he scoured the site every day, worried we were going to write something about it.

I was happy that Jimmy never pretended that he wasn’t interested in DCLOVE — I’m not sure I would’ve liked him as much if he did. He always talked to me about the things we posted, let me know when everyone in the office was talking about a certain article, and even asked me if we were going to announce his new job in “Movin’ On Up and Movin’ On Out.” He said it in a joking way, but I knew he really wanted it in there. I told him I’d make sure they knew about his new position, and he covered his eyes and said, “Just be kind.”

Maybe I should’ve minded that I worked at a place that wasn’t respected, but to be honest, I didn’t really care. The website was interesting enough and it paid me more than I’d been making at Vanity Fair. Also, I was still a little shaken after getting laid off — I’d worked so hard at the magazine for so many years and then it was just gone. None of that mattered at the end. If jobs could be taken away so easily, maybe it wasn’t worth investing so much of yourself into them; maybe working at a semi-trashy website was just fine.

—

The following week, we posted Jimmy’s job announcement on the site:

Jimmy Dillon, former Director of the White House Travel Office, takes his colorful socks and moves just two doors down the hall today, to start his new post as Deputy Director of the White House Office of Political Strategy, where he’ll be the one arranging for important political folks to see the President wherever he visits. He’ll also be traveling with POTUS on domestic trips, where he will most likely continue to drink mass amounts of whiskey on Air Force One and occasionally play cards with the Boss. Officemates say they won’t miss him because they’ll still be able to hear his Texas twang from 400 feet away. Our source says this is the perfect job for Dillon, who loves hobnobbing with illustrious politicians or, as we call it, being a DC fame whore.

I was happy that someone else was assigned to write the post, not because I felt like it was a conflict of interest (I didn’t think the site actually had enough journalistic integrity for that) but because I didn’t think I could bring myself to write nasty things about Jimmy, even if they were supposed to be funny.

The day the announcement ran, Ellie stopped by my desk. “Beth, you’re friends with Jimmy Dillon, right?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “Why? Do you know him?”

“Everyone knows him, don’t they?” she asked and then laughed like she’d made a joke. I just gave her a little smile and didn’t say anything. “I mean, he gets around,” she continued. “A friend of mine worked on the Kerry campaign with him and she said it was hard to find someone on that campaign that he didn’t sleep with.”

“I doubt that,” I said. “He’s married, you know,” I said. “And they’ve been together for a long time, definitely during the Kerry campaign.”

Ellie tilted her head at me and said, “You’ve never worked on a campaign, have you?”

I shook my head. “That’s what I thought,” she said. She sounded triumphant, like she’d just won a debate.

“Anyway,” she said, “I was thinking we could interview him for ‘Working for the Weekend.’ ” “Working for the Weekend” was our section that interviewed one person in the administration each week and highlighted their job, explained what they did each day. It was pretty interesting, actually, and if it hadn’t been for the ridiculous name, I would’ve wanted to write more for it.

“We already did,” I said. “We interviewed him when he was in the travel office. I mean, I’m happy to do it again as long as you don’t mind having it be sort of a repeat.”

“Hmmm,” she said. She tilted her head, this time in the other direction. I could tell she was annoyed that she hadn’t remembered we’d already profiled him. “I think it’s okay. Same person, different job, right?”

“Right,” I said. “I’ll ask him about it today.”

My heart sank a little as she walked away and I realized I’d have to tell Matt we were interviewing Jimmy again. His first profile had been superinteresting. He’d told me about what went into planning an overseas trip for the President, and even though I’d never cared all that much before, I couldn’t help but be impressed as he described how thirty staffers would charter one of the “Blue and Whites” (the fleet of planes equipped to transport the President) to the countries that the President would be visiting.

“You mean, like Air Force One?” I asked, and Jimmy laughed.

“It’s only Air Force One if the Boss is on board,” he said. “Otherwise it’s just a regular plane.” He paused then and said, “And we take a smaller plane, not the 747s. Just so you don’t get the wrong idea about how awesome my job is.”

Jimmy told me how when the President went anywhere, a military team took over a whole floor of the hotel, set it up for secure communication. When they were overseas, the advance team had daily calls with the office in DC through videoconferencing, but to make sure it was completely secure, they had to do it in a tent that was constructed in one of the rooms, with white noise or loud music playing outside so no one could hear.

“You’re lying,” I told him. “You’re making that up so that I write about it and look like an idiot.” Jimmy was known for pulling pranks, but this time he held up his right hand and put his left on his heart.

“Hand to God,” he said. “It’s all true.”

“It sounds like a spy novel,” I told him.

He grinned at me. “That’s me. Jimmy Dillon, International Man of Mystery.”

That night, Matt picked up Chinese food on his way home and he seemed to be in a great mood as he unpacked the brown bag, taking the lids off the sesame chicken and lo mein, popping a dumpling in his mouth. His tie was loose and he whistled as he went into the kitchen, returning with two plates, silverware, and a beer for each of us. I was pretty sure that most people were appalled at how little we cooked, but Matt never seemed to mind, and whenever I was apologetic about it, he just shrugged and said, “I don’t like to cook either, so why would I expect you to?”

He opened my beer and handed it to me, then opened his own and held it up. “Cheers, Buzz,” he said, taking a long sip and finally sitting down. “I’m starving,” he said. We didn’t talk as we piled our plates high with food and took our first bites, but finally Matt put his fork down and picked up his beer.

“So, how was work?” he asked.

I’d been dreading having to tell him about the interview with Jimmy — after he’d read the last one, he’d said, “You should profile me…only no one would ever want to read about someone doing background checks for prospective hires.” And then he’d tried to laugh, but it was clear he didn’t think it was funny.

I decided instead to tell him first about my strange conversation with Ellie, where she implied that Jimmy was having affairs all over town. He listened as I went on and on, his eyebrows wrinkled as he chewed.

“It’s not true, right?” I asked when I was done. “I mean, we’d know if it was happening, wouldn’t we?”

“DC is full of rumors,” Matt said. “You know that.” I couldn’t tell if he was avoiding my question because he didn’t like to gossip or if there was another reason he didn’t want to discuss it.