Kate slammed her heel back into my desk, a clap of metal thunder. “What the fuck does that have to do with anything?” Coral flinched. My eyes found the carpet. “Do you even have a fucking personality, Reynolds? Or is it all just pointless virtue signaling and identity politics down to your empty fucking core?”
And Kate stormed out of the office. We heard the door to the stairs crash open and slowly settle shut.
Liza blew on her nails to dry them. “So meeting adjourned, I guess?”
When we reached Nashville in late summer 2017, Kate left me at a honky-tonk bar. She didn’t answer her phone, and it took me an hour to track her down at a greasy spoon where she’d joined a group of drunk partygoers. I remember thinking, This is Day 3, and you’re planning on a life with this woman? I got to thinking about this selfish side of Kate. Eleven years later, I could still feel the desperation of that night, searching the karaoke bars of Nashville.
I found Rekia in her office. The lights were off. There were tears on her cheeks and embarrassment as well. She was so self-assured that it was unnerving to see her cry.
“I wanted to apologize, Rekia,” I began. “That was my fault. I thought I was making an innocuous comment, and it exploded into this—”
“It’s not your fault, Matt.” Those words were followed by half a sob. She collected herself. “I swear. I feel like I’m going to have a nervous breakdown.”
“When Kate gets these threats,” I tried to explain, “those people don’t think she’s white.”
They were worse and more frequent than ever. Recently, we’d gotten a deepfake video of Kate being assaulted by multiple men.
“Then why doesn’t she feel this?” Rekia shot back. “You say that, Matt, but she doesn’t feel what this decade has been. She thinks I’m the one who doesn’t get it, but her only plan ever is to make nice with people who think I’m less than human.”
“I don’t think that’s fair, Rek. But we’re all stressed and exhausted. So is Kate.”
“And if Kate doesn’t get her way,” Rekia went on, “she can be so fucking mean.”
I left her alone and went to meet Tom and Coral. The closest bar was a sliver of stools and booths carved between D.C. row houses, with wood paneling and a handful of alcoholic regulars in suits. In those years, we did a lot of our drinking there.
“I was carrying Pelosi’s purse when the Republicans were trying to default on the debt ceiling,” said Tom. “I was around when Trump wanted to call the tax bill the ‘Cuts! Cuts! Cuts! Act’ but Paul Ryan wouldn’t let him. I don’t know what I’m still doing in this evil fucking city, but I know enough to know Rekia’s wrong.”
He downed an old fashioned and ordered another before I was a quarter of the way into my beer.
“She’s wrong about the endorsement?” I asked.
“If Randall loses and we’ve still got Hogan’s vindictive fat ass in the Oval Office?” said Tom. “Fuck that, Stanton. We’ve worked too long and hard to maneuver the GOP into confronting the carbon problem. Randall has the chance to be transformative. We can’t sit on the fucking fence now.”
I looked to Coral, who shrugged with their typical unexcitable neutrality.
“I see the merits to both arguments, honestly.” Tufts of their red hair stuck up in the back and several juicy zits crowded their temples and forehead, making Coral look even more like an awkward teenager than usual. Yet when they spoke, it was always with confidence and nuance. “The meeting got personal before we even took up other important issues.”
“More important than the fucking presidential election ten days away?” asked Tom.
I felt my pocket buzz. I thought it was going to be from Moniza Farooki, and if so, I wondered if I should float the Mackowski offer by a journalist who worked the climate politics angle professionally.
“Yeah,” said Coral. “Such as the New York office. We need a new director. The last three haven’t made it longer than five months apiece. The current one faked a case of Covid so she could walk away from the job for three weeks. I wanted to talk about Holly Pietrus.”
“What about her?” asked Tom.
But the text was from Kate: I calmed down a bit. Anyone at the bar with you? Katepologies forthcoming.
“She’s been angling for it,” said Coral. “Holly turned out crowds for those city council meetings, she’s hassling the mayor, she’s even got the Staten Island rep running scared that the Dem will pull an upset.”
“She’s ready for the big-girl job?” asked Tom. “The New York office eats people alive.”
“Not now,” said Kate, materializing behind us, dragging a stool to prop herself between me and Coral. I looked down at her text. She must have sent it from outside the door to the bar. “Holly’s father is still radioactive. Guy can’t stop himself from blaming affirmative action for climate change.” She pecked me on the cheek, her thick lips warm and wet and smelling of booze. “Just want to say sorry for the outburst. I’m what you might call ‘a white-hot ball of fucking nerves’ right now.”
“Holly’s not responsible for her father,” said Coral.
“Yeah, but we put her in the spotlight, and suddenly he’s the story,” said Tom. “We need to keep Tony Pietrus as far the fuck away from the movement as we can. He doesn’t put his foot in his mouth, he shoves in the whole leg up to the fucking hip socket.”
I wondered if Tom sat around thinking up these crude bon mots.
Kate said to Coral, “Let Holly keep doing good work.” She nabbed the bartender, ordered a whiskey ginger, then slipped her hand into mine, and this cue told me her heart had stopped racing from the fight with Rekia. “We’ll come back to it after the election.”
Kate used that voice she deployed to end all debates. Her final word could feel like a boulder being rolled up against a tomb, and I could see the small muscles of Coral’s face fall in disappointment. Rekia was right about one thing: Though FBF purported to be a democratic organization, there was one woman running the show. A pharaoh hiding in plain sight.
We had an early-morning drive to North Carolina, so we finished our drinks and left Coral and Tom at the bar. We walked through the lights of nighttime D.C., Kate pushing her bike along. Drunken twentysomethings in Halloween costumes were already streaking down the streets.
“Do you think I embarrassed myself today?” Kate asked.
“No more than you usually do.” I smiled at her.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Is Reynolds furious?”
“Maybe you both said stuff that you both needed to hear.” I could feel her looking at me as she rolled her bike along the sidewalk, like she was trying to decide something. I laughed and finally asked, “What?”
“Nothing, Tar Heel. Just trying to figure out what I did in another life to deserve you.”
“Probably charged a Confederate line, just you and your bayonet.”
“Ugh, such a masculine interpretation of heroism.”
“You’re a masculine interpretation of heroism!”
As we giggled, a group of loud, drunken women spilling out of a bar stopped me cold. “Holy shit,” I said, pointing to the five of them. They all wore hiking boots and cargo pants, along with sky-blue tank tops, their bare shoulders goose-pimpled in the cool October air. A few wore huge wigs, but others had permed and dyed their hair to get the proper color and volume. Kate burst out laughing.
“Are you fucking kidding? Look at these fire-hot bitches!”
They all turned to her. The first woman shrieked, screaming like in those VR worldes where Zeden showed up to surprise random fans at their sweet sixteens. Then the rest of them realized what was happening, and they too launched into a fit of screaming, gushing, and hugging. We were there for nearly twenty minutes while I held Kate’s bike and each of them got a selfie, followed by a group photo. I took a couple on my phone. They were drunk, emotions heightened, but a heavier white woman, who looked maybe all of a year out of college, started tearing up. She apologized to Kate, and the more she apologized, the harder she cried. She said, inexplicably, “This is better than meeting Cate Blanchett.”