Read The Washingtonienne for Free Online Page B

with paint stains on them.
    GLORIA GAVE ME SOME paperwork to fill out when I got to the office, including a confidentiality agreement. I wondered what sort of stuff went on here that I had to keep on the D-L? Wasn’t this place on the up-and-up?
    Then Gloria took me and the other interns down to the Senate ID Office to have our photos taken for our security badges.
    “Sexy!” Dan said later when I showed him my finished ID photo. “You look like Catherine Zeta-Jones.”
    I was surprised that Dan would use the word
sexy.
It seemed kind of inappropriate, but I
did
look like CZJ in that picture. In person, I looked more like the Jessica Lovejoy character from that one episode of
The Simpsons.
But I knew something about posing for pictures: I watched
America’s Next Top Model
every week and I owned
Zoolander
on DVD.
    On my way back to the mailroom with the other interns, I was intercepted by Kate, the senator’s scheduler. Kate, a middle-aged woman who kept jars of candy all over her office, informed me that I would be helping her with “regrets” from now on.
    I grabbed my coat and handbag from the closet before leaving the room with her.
    “Is that real fur?” she asked.
    “It’s one of my mother’s,” I told her.
    She raised her eyebrows but said nothing further on the subject. We sat down in her office and she explained that the senator could not attend any events in Washington while he was running for president. So my job was to RSVP to these invitations and send the senator’s regrets. Easy enough.
    I would have preferred to lie low, sorting mail and goofing off with the other interns in the mailroom, but was nevertheless flattered that Kate had chosen me. I got my own cubicle right outside the senator’s office! I planned to buy a bud vase for my desk, just like Mary Tyler Moore.
    I noticed that a lot of people in the office kept a “Me Wall” in their cubicles, these little photo galleries of themselves standing next to Congressman So-and-So, Senator What’s-His-Face, and Governor Whoever. As if that was supposed to impress anyone. Like, “Wow! You got to stand next to some unrecognizable person who is way more important than you are! That’s awesome! Excuse me while I jizz all over myself!”
    Kate put a stack of invites on my desk.
    “If you see anything that looks interesting, you can ask if the invitation is transferable,” she told me. “I go to events on the senator’s behalf all the time.”
    That sounded like fun, but I was pretty disappointed when I saw the invitations. Senators got invited to a lot of lame parties, like receptions in honor of helicopters, and charity balls for revolting diseases I had never heard of (Blue Diaper Syndrome?). Being a congressman must have really sucked sometimes. I would have killed myself if I had to go to all these dumb things, even with all the free booze.
    So I was making phone calls, setting up my desk, and typing up a few cover letters for jobs that I was applying to, minding my own business. Then Dan stopped by my cubicle.
    “What’s up?” he asked. “What are you doing in here?”
    “Not much,” I replied, minimizing the cover letter that I was working on. “I’m just helping Kate.”
    “Doing what?”
    “Calling people and telling them that the senator can’t go to their parties.”
    Dan looked surprised.
    “I thought you were supposed to be working on appropriations,” he said.
    “Yeah, so did I. What happened?” I asked him, smiling.
    “Jacqueline,
sweetie
!” Kate called from her office. “Could I please see you?”
    I excused myself to see what she wanted.
    “Close the door,” she whispered.
    I shut the door, curious as to why we needed the privacy.
    “Have you finished that stack of regrets I just gave you?” she asked me.
    “I’m almost done,” I told her.
    “Jacqueline,” she began, “you are a very attractive young woman, and there are a lot of single guys in this office.”
    Oh, no.
    “But I cannot have