The Washingtonienne Read Online Free PDF Page B

to find the place, and my phone didn’t work in the underground tunnels that connected the buildings. But I had come too far to leave empty-handed, so I ordered two triple-shot skim lattes before going back to the Hart Building, which took another fifteen minutes. No wonder government was so inefficient: It took forty-five minutes just to get a decent cup of coffee!
    The wait for an elevator took
forever,
which made no sense since the building only had nine floors. Finally, one arrived. Two men in suits got out. Everybody stared at them, but nobody moved to get into their elevator. A sign above the closing doors read SENATORS ONLY. So I guess those guys were senators or something? They didn’t
look
important. All I saw were a couple of old men.
    An elevator for us regular people arrived, and we all squeezed into it. When the doors shut, I could see that someone had scratched the words
FUCK YOU
on the inside of the doors. I wondered what misfit would do such a thing in a Senate office building, and if they still worked here.
    It was the kind of thing that I might do myself when I was high, but I would have to keep myself in check from now on, especially if I ended up working for some ultraconservative congressman or something. I had heard that Hill staffers could get fired for just about any made-up reason: There was always some flimsy language written into the employee code of conduct that gave congressional offices this sort of discretionary power. It was usually something like “any improper conduct reflecting upon the Senate office.”
    Of course, everyone knew the old adage “You don’t shit where you eat.” But if you worked on the Hill, you couldn’t shit
anywhere
. If I was serious about making a career here, I would have to hold it in from now on.
    APRIL PUT HER CALLER ON hold when I arrived with her coffee.
    “I am too hungover to deal with these crazy people,” she whined. “I’m forwarding all of my calls to voice mail for the rest of the day!”
    April and Laura were both “Front Office Staff Assistants.” They greeted visitors and answered phone calls from crazy people all day long, so basically, they were receptionists with college degrees.
    “So what happened to you last night?” I asked April.
    “Dude, you dissed me,” she said. “You left me alone with that creep at the bar!”
    She explained that she was out of cash, so she couldn’t take a cab home, and the Metro had shut down at midnight. The man she had met at the bar was a guest at the hotel, in town on business from Los Angeles.
    “I had no choice but to go back to his room with him,” she said. “I ended up fucking him just because I didn’t have a ride home!”
    “Shhh! Keep it down!” Laura warned from her desk on the other side of the room. “What if someone overhears you?”
    “Oh, nobody’s listening,” April said. “And if they are, they need to get a real job.”
    Laura took off her telephone headset and shook her hair out.
    “If you’re not taking calls, then I’m not either,” she said, hitting the
Call Fwd
button on her phone. “I can’t believe you guys went to the Four Seasons without me. What did you end up doing last night, Jackie?”
    “Jackie fucked that guy she left the bar with,” April said knowingly.
    “How do you know?” I asked.
    “You had the apartment to yourself, so I assumed that you might take advantage. I hope he didn’t jizz all over my sofa.”
    “April!” I squawked. “For your information, we did it on a conference table in his office.”
    “
What?
”
    “We’ll talk later,” I told the girls.
    “So where is Dan?” I asked. “I want to see what the office crush looks like!”
    “I’ll introduce you to him,” April said, “but don’t you dare say anything, not even kidding! I have a boyfriend!”
    “What about that guy at the Four Seasons last night?” Laura asked.
    “He didn’t count,” April said. “He works off the Hill.”
    “Just be careful. Fun is fun,