Eighteen Acres: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

he’d asked.
    “Because I was just assigned to cover her for the next four years, and if she hates me, I won’t be able to do my job.”
    “The next four years, huh?” he’d said, with a smile that started in the corners of his eyes and worked its way down his face.
    Dale had smiled back. “Easy for you to say.”
    “Listen, she scares the shit out of me sometimes, too. But she is trying to do right by everyone, so just, you know, don’t take it personally,” he’d said.
    Then he’d checked his watch and stood up and stretched his arms above his head, revealing a very flat, tanned stomach that Dale couldn’t peel her eyes away from. When she’d returned her gaze to his face, he was smiling at her again.
    “I’m glad you’re on the beat, Dale,” he’d said, and it was clear that the visit was over.
    Dale had gone back to the press cabin and thought about how to tell her boss that her exclusive interview had been pulled. They’d sent an extra crew over to shoot the interview, and now it was off. And to spite her, and the network, the White House would probably do an interview with one of her competitors.
Great start,
Dale had thought.
    The interview was never rescheduled during the overseas trip, but every time Dale had looked up from a live shot or during a press conference, Peter Kramer was looking in her direction. Sometimes he would smile at her or wave at her and the other reporters. Other times, he’d pause just long enough to catch her eye and mouth a quick “Hi.” Dale had found herself thinking about their chat in the conference room more often than she knew she should.
    After midnight in Budapest, where they had made their final stop of the five-day trip, Dale had finished taping a stand-up for a morning show package and walked back into the hotel where they were staying. The bar area was empty; the rest of the reporters must have hit the town on their expense accounts.
    “Still working?” a voice had asked from a booth near the back of the bar.
    She’d turned around and noticed the Secret Service agents first, and then she’d seen Peter Kramer sitting at a table with his wife’s deputy national security advisor and chief of staff. There were two others at the table whom Dale didn’t recognize.
    “Just finished,” she’d said.
    “Care to join us?” he’d asked.
    “Sure, that would be great.”
    Melanie had watched her suspiciously, but the others were nice enough. Dale had told them about the raunchy conditions on the press charter. The press charter was a leased commercial plane that followed Air Force One around the world carrying the press corps. On the flight from London to Budapest, a couple (both of them married, not to each other) had engaged in noisy sexual activity that had every one of the reporters angling for one of the twelve press seats on Air Force One.
    Three bottles of wine and two hours later, she and Peter had outlasted the others and sat in the booth talking about college football,the sorry state of skiing in the Northeast, and the downfall of the Tour de France from steroid abuse.
    “You are wasting your time covering the White House. You should be covering sports. No one cares about politics. Everyone loves sports,” he’d said, winking at the Secret Service agent standing a few feet away.
    If the agent had noticed Peter’s gesture, he didn’t let on. He’d stared directly ahead and seemed to try to fade into the wall.
    “But if I didn’t cover the White House, you wouldn’t get to buy me drinks at strange dark bars in foreign countries that you have to follow your wife to,” Dale had said. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she would have killed to pull them back.
    “So the truth comes out,” he’d said.
    “No, no, that’s not what I meant.”
    “It’s what everyone thinks, and no one says it out loud. I’m actually glad you did say it out loud. Especially if it’s what you’ve been thinking since our first meeting in Sacramento,”