The Washingtonienne by Jessica Cutler Read Free Book Online Page B

or three times a week. At four hundred dollars per visit, I made twice what April took home in her paycheck. But I still needed to find a real job. I couldn’t count on Fred to keep giving me envelopes of cash for the rest of my life. This sort of thing was always finite.
    April and Laura helped me put together a resume and some writing samples, and they gave me some helpful career advice during Happy Hour.
    “You basically just want to kiss everybody’s ass so they’ll write you a good letter of recommendation for your grad school applications,” Laura told me, picking the olive out of her martini glass.
    “I don’t want to go to grad school,” I explained. “I just want to get a real job.”
    “I’ve been looking for a real job for months. I’m just biding my time on the Hill until I make my move to the private sector. I have a few interviews lined up on K Street.”
    Laura named some lobbying and public relations firms that I hadn’t heard of, but April seemed very impressed.
    “I hope you’ll help me get a job as soon as you get hired at one of these places,” she told Laura. “I am so sick of being poor all the time.”
    “Don’t you enjoy working on the Hill?” I asked them. “I mean, you didn’t come here to get rich, did you?”
    “It’s a great out-of-college job,” Laura explained, “and I love our office, but I’m just kind of over it.”
    “I’m not sure that we’re supposed to stay on the Hill forever,” April offered. “I mean, they can’t promote
everybody,
so somebody has to leave every so often. They know that we’ll get sick of making less than thirty thousand, and we’ll leave to make more money in the private sector after a few years. Then our office will promote whoever is still around.”
    “I’m convinced that it’s just a systemized way of restocking the office with new girls,” Laura said, gesturing toward me. “Just like our internship program.”
    What was I getting myself into? Maybe I should have gone back to school instead.
    “Talking to crazy people on the phone might
sound
like fun, like it’s one big episode of
Crank Yankers,
but trust me, it gets old fast!” April said.
    Was that really what April and Laura got paid to do? Counsel psychos over the telephone?
    “We get calls from mental patients with phone privileges all the time,” April confirmed. “Sometimes they make death threats against the senator, and then you have to get the Capitol Police involved. It’s
so
annoying.”
    “And then we get calls from lonely old people who just want to complain about
whatever
for hours,” Laura said. “Some of them call every day.”
    “Can’t you tell them to stop calling?” I asked.
    “We can’t tell them off, or we’ll get in trouble,” April explained. “The rule is, ‘Don’t say anything to a constituent that you wouldn’t want the senator to overhear.’”
    “Why? Does he listen in on the calls?” I asked.
    “No, he’s much too busy to deal with constituents on that level! It just means that we have to be supernice to everyone who calls the office, even if they’re completely insane. On Election Day, their votes count just as much as anyone else’s.”
    I imagined voting booths set up in mental hospitals, with patients in blue gowns, lined up to vote for the senator April and Laura worked for. A chill went up my spine.
    April hadn’t heard from her boyfriend, Tom, in over a week. Each of her phone calls had gone unreturned, as did the e-mails and Instant Messages that she had sent him over the last several days.
    “I know that he’s very busy with the campaign and everything, but he can’t be
that
busy,” April said. “I mean he has a fucking BlackBerry! There’s just no excuse for it. He could at least have the courtesy to break up with me via e-mail, but I guess even that’s too much to ask these days!”
    “I know that the senator won’t win the nomination, but what if he gets picked as the running mate?” Laura