Open Primary Page 8

  I email the second press release to Peter, figuring he'll have his staff edit it, slap it on company stationery, and send it out.

  After running it by Steph, who is already posting job openings all over the internet, I paste my press release onto Ameritocracy letterhead, which includes a stars and stripes flag logo. Once I'm happy, I send it to every contact I have in the news business, including Alex, Bird and the reporters and news executives I got to know over the years working at The Barker.

  I also share the release to Ameritocracy's email list, Facebook page, and Twitter account which, at the moment, has a measly two thousand followers. Next, I record a brief video, announcing the donation and walking viewers through our new offices, leaving out my bed and the salad that I still haven't cleaned up.

  By early evening, The Barker has already posted a short blog hit about the donation, and I've given quotes to a couple other websites that will be running features.

  Through a local agency, Steph has hired three office temps who start tomorrow, and placed ads for the three full-time positions we need to fill immediately: Office Manager, a role I am thrilled not to be filling myself, Chief Financial Officer, someone to keep the books and track the money, and Social Media Director, someone who will monitor every mention of Ameritocracy on social media, manage our accounts, and engage with users. With Benjamin and his team on loan from Peter, we'll save hundreds of thousands on tech help.

  Wiped out, Steph and I are about to head downstairs for an early dinner when Benjamin shouts like a madman. "Done! I'm done!"

  I walk around two of Benjamin's assistants, each hunched over a laptop in the middle of the floor, meeting Steph behind Benjamin's office chair. "Tell us everything," I say, but his eyes are on Steph, who's looking at him like a cartoon bear staring at a turkey.

  "Benjamin! Did you fix it?"

  This snaps him back in. "Fixed, locked down against future attacks, and a lot of those script kiddies are going to find their passwords posted in places they won't be happy about."

  He still hasn't looked directly at me, but he speaks with total confidence and a hint of badassery. Standing in the doorway earlier, he reminded me of Dustin Hoffman from Rain Man, but now he sounds like Arnold from T2. My working theory is that he only feels like himself when he's touching a computer.

  "What places?" I ask.

  "Places where much better hackers will open up their Steam and Netflix accounts and run up charges they'll have to explain to mom and dad. So, y'know, it ends up as a story they tell to the next little prick who tries to screw with Ameritocracy."

  I'm taken aback. I hadn't asked him to do…most of that. Not that I'm complaining. "Right, yes, okay. But are our top three candidates no longer cartoon characters? Is that fixed?"

  "Oh yeah, had that done hours ago. Deleted their candidate profiles, blocked the bots they were using to vote. Your homepage is fixed, and it doesn't look like any other candidates were affected. Your top twenty is back to normal. I spent the rest of the afternoon installing new security features so this can't happen again."

  "And their passwords?"

  "That was for fun. And, like I said, a deterrent." He finally faces me. "Keep in mind, what I've just installed brings your security up from a zero out of ten to maybe, like, a three. When we build out the site, we'll want to take that to a ten, or as close as we can get."

  I don't know what to say. I don't love the fact that I'm relying on a somewhat creepy guy who showed up on my doorstep with Peter's recommendation, and it doesn't help that he uses the same one-to-ten scale on which he was rated a Silicon Valley creeper the first night I met him. Further confusing the matter is that Steph appears to be interested in him. But right now, Benjamin is who I've got.

  His eyes drift back to the screen, and I lean in and hug him from behind. His back is rigid, his shoulders stiff, and I think he could use it.

  "Thanks," I say. "We've got to send the press releases and do a couple other things first, but do you want to come to dinner with us?"

  "Yeah," Steph says. "Come eat."

  "Nah. I gotta get some new security stuff going here. We need to start verifying the information users enter by using confirmatory data. IP addresses, browser versions, image searches on avatar pictures, and so on. I'm gonna stick around here and do that."

  "But you have to eat, too," Steph says.

  He turns and gives her a look I can't read. "Bring me something."

  "We will," Steph says.

  9

  We collapse into a booth in Baker's Dozen and order two glasses of wine—red for her, white for me—and I sigh with the satisfaction that only comes after a hard day at work doing something you love. "We're really doing it."

  Steph undoes the top button on her shirt. "We are."

  After Benjamin explained his fixes, we updated and sent out the first version of the press release, then made a half dozen calls each to contacts in the media, encouraging them to focus on the Colton donation and downplaying the significance of the hack.

  Now, I can finally ask Steph the question that nagged at me all day. "What made you change your mind?"

  "Biscuits. This is the place, right?"

  "I think they only serve them at breakfast. Seriously, though."

  "You really want to know?" Steph's face is ponderous, and I can tell she's about to tell me more than I expected to hear when I asked the question.

  "I do."

  "I went to one meeting at the super-PAC last week, Americans for Justice, they're called. It was just a get-to-know-you kind of thing. Everyone was all, 'Glad you're joining us!' and 'Can't wait for you to get started!' And—"

  "That sounds good."

  "Lemme finish. The place was downtown, two whole floors in the White Crown Building. Probably fifty employees, and I'm the only black person in the room, the only black person at an organization trying to support politicians who'll fight poverty. All that is…it is what it is…it's not the point. The point is the offices, where we're supposed to work on poverty issues, were like Roman-emperor-level expensive. I'm about to make two hundred grand a year—and I'm only middle management—and everyone is sitting in eight-hundred-dollar chairs around this glass conference table that must have cost…I don't even know. They even had a goddamn vintage espresso machine in the center of the main office space. One of those gold metal ones from Italy."

  "Oooohhhh, I love those." After just three sips of wine, I'm tipsy and full of joy. For a moment at least, everything is great and the world is a wonderful place. "All the copper knobs and silver buttons and—"

  "Mia!" Steph gives me a look and takes a long swig of wine. "Look, I'm all for espresso, and I'm all for making money, but just standing in that room, I couldn't shake the thought: What the hell am I doing here? What are any of us doing here? I passed six homeless people on my walk through downtown Seattle. Sitting up in that high-rise, I couldn't help but think, how far removed from doing any actual good can I get? I'm gonna miss the salary, and I'll be a little pissed if this decision means my future-maybe-children have to eat peanut butter and jelly in public school cafeterias, but—"

  "You know you're a bit of an elitist snob, right?"

  "Hey! I wear the 'elite coastal liberal' badge with pride."

  I wait to see if she's going to say anything more, but she doesn't. Politically, Steph leans pretty far left, whereas I'm closer to the center. Even when we disagree, though, I admire the way she fights for what she believes in, and now I admire her decision to put her money where her mouth is, especially given the money-to-mouth ratio in this case.

  "I'm sleeping in the office for now," I say when I'm sure she's done. "Where are you gonna stay?"

  "Negotiated a weekly rate on a place fifteen minutes away. We're going to be working sixteen hour days, side by side, for the next…" She pauses to do the calculation in her head. "…Eleven months and thirteen days. Last thing I need in the remaining eight hours is to listen to you snore."

  "You really think we'l
l make it to the debate on July Fourth? I mean, we set up all these deadlines and schedules and plans but…something in me still expects this all to fall apart before then. I—"

  "Mia," she interrupts, "I think you may be suffering from imposter syndrome, so let me tell you something, as someone who's been in the political world—or at least the fringes of it—since I volunteered for the DNC back in my junior year at Georgetown. You belong in this world."

  She waits for me to look up, and when I do her brown eyes have a familiar look in them, like she's going to look at me as hard as she can until I agree with her. She usually reserves that look for when she's trying to convince me of something about the world, but now she's trying to convince me of something about myself.

  "You belong in this world," she repeats. "We have the money and soon we'll have the staff. This is happening. I don't know if we'll get a candidate who can win in 2020, but by July Fourth—eleven months and thirteen days from now—we will have built Ameritocracy into something everyone in America is following."

  The look in her eyes almost has me believing her, and I'm close to tears when my phone chirps with a text. "It's Bird."

  "Begging you to come back already?"

  "No it's…oh no."

  "What?"

  I don't respond because I'm too busy reading the first article openly mocking Ameritocracy.

  "Mia, what?"

  I scan the article, barely noticing when our food arrives, then read the headline to Steph. "It's a blog piece from The Washington Insider. The title reads Anybody for President?"

  "The Washington Insider is tiny. They're nothing."

  "But still, listen to this."

  "Come around."

  I slide into Steph's side of the booth and hand her the phone, reading over her shoulder and scoffing at the more insulting phrases.

  Anybody for President?

  In the zaniest development yet of an already-absurd 2020 election cycle, a Seattle office manager with no political experience wants to make it possible for anyone to run for president.

  And she means ANYONE.

  Her online political competition, Ameritocracy2020.org, allows users to run for president, and promises to donate a large sum of money to the eventual winners' campaign after the final debate, scheduled for July Fourth. Those of us at The Washington Insider doubt she'll make it that far.

  So far, her website has attracted about as much attention as any other stoned-college-freshman-level fringe political site. But this sideshow got a boost recently from eccentric tech mogul Peter Colton, who is ready to double down on the "eccentric" label. According to a press release emailed by Ms. Rhodes herself, the five million dollar donation will be used to "expand the platform, hire new staff, develop an app, and produce live events for the leading candidates."

  Rather than laugh at "develop an app" as a serious press-release phrase, since she brought up the "leading candidates," let's discuss them. Though screenshots circulating online indicate that, earlier today, the site was hacked so its leading candidates were obscene cartoon characters, the real leaderboard isn't much better.

  Made up of nutjobs from the fringes of American politics and others who appear to be using the platform to boost their own online presence, the top ten candidates make us here at The Washington Insider long for the days of party bosses in smoke-filled back rooms choosing the president.

  Don't believe us? Here's a sample:

  Coming in at number 10: Wendy Kahananui, a patchouli-scented guru with no political experience who joined the site twelve hours ago.

  At number 9: Asher Gull, a leftist activist so far out there he was disavowed by the Democratic Socialists as "too radical."

  And who's currently leading this debacle? Destiny O'Neill, a self-described "Second Amendment MILF," whose candidate videos could be used to audition for the leading role in an adult film.

  Candidates 2 through 8 aren't any better.

  Though we certainly respect Ms. Rhodes' passion for democracy, the verdict of The Washington Insiders: leave presidential politics to the grown-ups.

  By the time Steph finishes reading, I'm fuming. But to my surprise, she's not hurt at all.

  In fact, she's laughing. "You have to admit, 'patchouli-scented' is a pretty good phrase."

  I whack her arm, then return to my side of the booth. "That's not the type of emotional support I was looking for."

  "Eat your dinner. There will be a lot of these. We're going to have to grow thick skins. Did you see what FiveThirtyEight wrote?"

  I cringe. FiveThirtyEight.com is one of the most-respected polling analysis sites in the business since their founder predicted fifty out of fifty states correctly in the 2012 election. "At least they wrote an article about us," I say weakly. "That's good news, right?"

  "Not an article," Steph says. "But they sent a Tweet. Well, actually a reply to someone else's Tweet. They said that Ameritocracy isn't even worth polling about."

  For a few minutes, I dig into my Cobb salad, always a favorite but one I usually can't afford. Baker's Dozen makes the best I've ever tasted, but even my comfort food is no comfort. The emotions well up and I know that Steph can handle them.

  She's halfway through a ribeye steak when I say, "The hack, the article, the move. That damn cat…well the cat is cute but destructive to my Post-it-note system. Anyway, I just can't."

  I haven't cried, but I'm in the emotional place just before tears.

  "Mia, calm down. We've had a rough first day. And, okay, it's gonna get worse, but—"

  "Worse?"

  "Sure, but do you know why it's gonna get worse?"

  "Hold on, let me chug this wine before you tell me."

  I'm only half-joking. I take a long sip of my wine as Steph gives me a quizzical look that I take to mean "How concerned should I be?"

  I hold back the tears, reassured by the authority Steph brings to every situation. "I'm okay," I say. "I'm better. Now, tell me why it's going to get worse."

  "Because you're going to be famous."

  "Famous?"

  "Mo' money, mo' problems."

  "I'm gonna be just as broke at the end of this thing as I was at the beginning."

  "Yeah, but everyone will be talking about Ameritocracy. Everyone. And, like it or not, you're going to be the face of it. That comes with a lot of crap from all directions."

  Steph's words don't help. "I barely know what I'm doing. We got hacked on day one."

  "You'll need to find some sanity, Mia. There will be problems. Little ones and big ones. You're going to have to learn to delegate and trust the people around you. If Benjamin is the best Peter has, that means he's one of the best on earth. He'll make sure this doesn't happen again and, in a few weeks, this will be a tiny bump on the track of the runaway train that is Ameritocracy and Mia Rhodes."

  I raise an eyebrow. "You come up with that line yourself?"

  "It's true. Mia, look at me."

  My eyes trace the wood grain on the table before I look up.

  "You need to get your shit together, Mia. We just went from pee-wee football to the NFL playoffs overnight. We're headed for the Super Bowl."

  "What's with all the analogies?"

  "I just quit a job that paid two hundred grand a year to work for an idealistic startup. Poetry is all I've got."

  "Okay, but trains and football? Better to stick to one metaphor at a time."

  "You're gonna write the press releases, okay?"

  "Okay."

  "Plus…" She trails off and digs back into her steak.

  "Plus what?"

  "Wouldn't hurt you to…find a man."

  "I don't need a man to—"

  "I'm not saying you need a man. You're an amazing woman, kicking ass and taking names."

  "A hobo cat brought me to tears today. I'm not feeling like much of a superhero."

  "You're gonna have to fake it 'til you make it. But my point is, of course you don't need a man, but don't you want one? Someone to get away from the offic
e with? Someone to…you know."

  She raises her eyebrows and rubs her hands together in a gesture I assume I'm supposed to associate with sex.

  "I don't have time for that."

  "Okay," she says, "but it might help keep you sane."

  We eat in silence as I ponder her suggestion. The more I think about it, the more I suspect that it's less a suggestion and more a warning of something she's going to do.

  I'm about to ask her, but I think better of it. Steph has always had an ease with men that I don't. She gets them, and gets what she wants from them. Whether it's a one-night-stand, a cocktail party full of doctors and lawyers, or a lust-at-first-site interaction with my tech guy, she knows what she's doing with men.

  Me…not so much.

  And, even if she's right, I have other things to think about. As we finish our meal, my mind races forward to the first big Ameritocracy rally.

  Since the moment I started the site, I envisioned a rally at which I'd introduce the candidates to America. TV stations from around the country would be there, along with frumpy print reporters scribbling in the front row.

  Until recently, it seemed an absurd fantasy. Now it takes on the air of real possibility, and I quell my anxiety like I always do—by making plans.

  When Steph excuses herself to the restroom, I open the Notes app on my phone and start a new note, smiling inside at the fact that Post-it has no chance to destroy this one.

  I start typing:

  Ameritocracy: The Rally

  Introduce the idea.

  Introduce the candidates.

  November, 2019

  Los Angeles, CA

  Typing it makes it feel real, and I stare at the screen for a good three minutes, letting Steph's confidence in the success of Ameritocracy wash over me.

  I must be in some kind of trance, because Steph is sitting across from me again before I know it.