least we know the name of somebody in his kitchen cabinet.” Then the president offered his hand-in-the-cookie-jar smile, waved, and climbed aboard.
A low blow, but Lilton had it coming, Jenna thought. Don’t his people vet what he says? To further hammer the “candidate as puppet” charge, the president’s supporters immediately debuted a YouTube video of Lilton and GreenSpirit, their statements roughly synced so that the audio track echoed “dog-and-pony show” as the words WHO’S THE LEADER HERE? crawled across the bottom of the screen.
One point three million views … and counting. Washington did love a wild and woolly sex scandal, and this one looked to have legs. Four of them, Jenna quipped to herself.
She waved off the bartender’s offer of more wine, wanting her wits about her when she saw Dafoe. She would have been scandalized if, in the wake of that run-in at the reservoir, anyone, especially Nicci, had suggested that Jenna would have ended up accepting a date from the armed and agitated stranger. On his turf, no less.
Yet, she had returned his call, on the theory—or so she had assured herself—that a few conciliatory words might save the network from a lawsuit and herself from endless depositions. Won’t take more than a minute or two. The call had turned into a two-and-a-half-hour conversation. What struck her most was the fluid ease of their give-and-take and the genuine interest that he’d shown in her, as opposed to the paint-by-number questions that so many guys felt obliged to ask before indulging in their favorite subject: themselves.
So it all came out: Jenna’s family-farm childhood in Vermont, which had included a Guernsey cow called Hoppy; two acres of vegetable garden; chickens; turkeys; rabbits; and two pigs, whose names and shapes changed, but whose number remained constant.
She’d talked so much about herself that she’d experienced a weird role reversal when she finally thought to offer her own queries.
Toward the end of the call, Dafoe revealed that he’d spent his boyhood summers on his grandparents’ farm in southern Illinois, and his early adulthood as a notorious computer hacker. Right then she remembered whom he looked like: Hugh Jackman in Australia, minus the star’s facial scruff.
Perhaps the memory of Jackman’s lean, alluring face prompted her to say yes, with nary a pause, when Dafoe asked if she’d like to go out. Almost as swiftly, he began to explain why it was tough for him to get down to the city this time of year. He needn’t have, not to a woman who’d grown up with the incessant demands of roots and leaves and livestock.
“So I’ll come up there,” she’d said, speaking quickly again.
Now she looked at the passing terrain—his turf, indeed—and wondered if she’d been a little rash. The answer came with the force of a heat wave: You sure were. What do you really know about him? Not much. No, not true: You know that he carries a frickin’ rifle and pistol when he goes for a hike. And your best friend had huge misgivings. “Are you crazy?” Nicci had blurted out. But her producer didn’t trust men on principle. Hey, you Googled him, right? Jenna insisted to herself. And he’s the president of the Organic Dairymen’s Association. That sounds reasonable, so chill.
She glanced at her watch. If the train was on time, he’d be meeting her at the station in less than five minutes.
Jenna took out her black leather case, the one that resembled a notebook, and used the small mirror to carefully reapply her lipstick; her wineglass bore mute testimony to the need. If you’re going to see this through, by God, see it through.
She wore little makeup away from the set of The Morning Show, and had kept her clothes to weekend getaway casual: jeans, powder blue top, and cream-colored ostrich leather cowboy boots. Modest. Nothing flashy. She’d had her more elegant outfits shipped to the hotel in Washington where she’d be staying.
But Jenna knew she would have looked striking in rags. With her white-blond hair and blue-eyed Icelandic heritage, she’d come up a winner at the genetic roulette wheel. And she was grateful. She had no illusions about the reason she’d succeeded so quickly in television, and it wasn’t spelled “P-h-D.” But she wouldn’t have minded an end to those phone calls from male viewers—With the possible exception of present company, she thought as the train slowed and she spied Dafoe on the waiting platform.