Press Release

“Tim, you are responsible for getting those letters out to the donors,” ordered Mr. Collins on the morning he left for yet another rubber chicken lunch.

“Of course,” Tim said. With a nod to his fellow summer intern, Sally, he said, “We’ll keep after Jason to do it.”

“I didn’t say you and Sally,” Mr. Collins snapped. “I said you. Sally’s got her own work to do.”

“And of course I’ll do it, Joseph!” Sally batted her eyes and gave every sign of welcoming his playful hand as it tousled her curls.

“Those letters are dated yesterday, Tim,” Mr. Collins said over his shoulder. “They can’t wait another day.”

As soon as the door had swung shut behind Mr. Collins, his scheduler, Linda, emerged from her tiny office. “Coast is clear?” she asked.

“Yes,” Tim said with a good natured chuckle. “Ray of sunshine as always, huh?”

“No one ever said people who run for Congress are prone to being easygoing, did they?” Linda said.

“Eh, I’m used to it,” Tim said with the diplomatic grin he’d been putting to so much use lately. “Last election I volunteered for a campaign out in Minnesota and the guy’s campaign slogan was ‘Minnesota Nice’ and, well, he wasn’t.”

“I think Joseph is perfectly friendly,” Sally countered. “You just have to know how to handle him.”

Tim and Linda shared yet another look of silent disbelief; they had both learned to accept that yes, Sally really was as naïve as she seemed. Linda knew the type all too well from her own experience. She did, though, say to Sally, “Before I forget, nice job with the planning for the phone bank.”

“Thank you,” Tim said over his shoulder.

“Oh, did you write that?” Linda asked. “Mr. Collins said Sally did it.”

“What’s a phone bank?” Sally asked.

Before either of them could answer her or commiserate over the silly question, Matthew, the campaign manager, burst in. “Sally, my office please,” he said with a saucy grin.

“Hey, Matthew, those donor letters need to go out today,” Tim called after Matthew.

“When I get to it,” Matthew said without even looking over his shoulder as he ushered Sally into his office.

“What’s a phone bank?” Linda said as soon as the door was shut behind them. “Has she ever worked on a campaign before?”

“She told me the other day, no,” Tim said as he discreetly pressed ‘record’ on his computer tape deck app. “But she did say, ‘I’m like, so pumped to learn!’”

Linda laughed. “Glad we’ve got one of you who knows what you’re doing. But I feel like I ought to warn you, Mr. Collins is only going to get grumpier from here. The newest poll showed him up by three.”

“Great!” Tim drummed his hands on the table. “But yeah, I get it. If there’s a real chance we win…”

“Then everything’s got to be just right or he’ll take it out on us,” Linda said with a nod. “Frankly, I’m a little worried Sally might get in the way. But her father gave Mr. Collins a lot of money, so…”

“I get it,” Tim said. “I saw the same thing in Minnesota.”

He pretended not to notice Sally’s dress was a bit askew when she emerged from Matthew’s office ten minutes later. When Matthew followed a minute or so after her, Tim reminded him, “The donor letters?”

“When I get to it.” He patted Linda on the rear end. “We’ve got that lunch meeting, remember?”

“Don’t do that, Matthew, I told you,” Linda said. “But yes, we’ve got the meeting.” Keeping her distance so he couldn’t touch her again, she followed him out the door.

As it was Sally’s turn to stay behind and mind the phones, Tim followed suit a few minutes later, after hastily emailing the latest sound file to himself.

He arrived back in the office forty minutes later to find the phone ringing and Sally nowhere in sight. He grabbed up the phone. “Collins for Congress!”

It was a high school teacher asking about letting some kids volunteer. Tim was more than happy to share the details of their next literature drop, and to be overheard by Matthew doing so. He was just wrapping up the call when Sally strolled in, sipping a smoothie from the café on the next block. Matthew noticed that as well, and said, “You didn’t get one for Tim while he was stuck here alone?”

“Oh, he wasn’t here,” Sally said.

“Tim!” Matthew’s grin vanished. “You know the rules about leaving the office unattended! You can stay in for the rest of the week!”

“But –”

“Don’t argue with me! We’re up in the polls for the first time, and what if someone had called while you were out?”

Tim sighed. He knew it was no use. “Fine,” he said. “But those donor letters…”

“When I get to it, Tim, for the last time!”

Tim held up his hands. “Okay. They’re dated yesterday, and Mr. Collins –”

“That’s okay!” Matthew slammed the office door.

Sally sat back down at her desk with a guilty grin. Linda glared at her. “You know, you could have told Matthew the truth.”

“Oh, he would’ve found some excuse to attack Tim anyway,” Sally said with a shrug, not looking up from her computer. “He always does.”

That night at dinner, Tim groused to his mother, “It sucks, but she’s right. He’d still find some excuse to blame it on me.”

“You still haven’t told Mr. Collins about it, have you?” Mom said with a stern look.

“That wouldn’t do any good. He’s just as bad as Matthew, and probably just as much in love with Sally.”

“Dammit, Timothy, you’re a victim, you know that? You always let people walk all over you!”

“It’s only another month or so to the election. I can take it until then, and he’ll need more than one aide. And then Matthew will be out of the picture, he won’t be going to DC.”

“That’s no reason to let this abuse go unchecked! You should tell him!”

“I know him well enough to know he won’t listen, Mom.”

“How can you know if you don’t try?”

“Because I know him!”

“I just don’t understand why you feel the need to let people walk all over you like that.” Mom stood up from the table in a huff. “Your whole life’ll be like that if you don’t learn to fight back!”

Tim was used to his mother’s attitude. Not for the first time, he was nearly convinced she would approve if he told her the whole story. But once again he opted not to.

Next morning, he hoped to persuade Matthew to sign the donor letters before Mr. Collins showed up. But he arrived at nine o’clock to find both men glaring at him from Matthew’s office doorway. “Timothy,” Mr. Collins seethed, “Didn’t I tell you to get those letters signed and sent yesterday?”

“I reminded him until he yelled at me!” Tim said, pointing at Matthew.

“I don’t remember that.” Matthew stroked his beard as if deep in thought.

“Well, now you know,” Mr. Collins grumbled at him and swung his suit coat on. “You also know what you need to tell Tim here, correct, while I’m at the VFW?”

“That I do,” Matthew said. “Tim, come in here.” He stood aside and beckoned for Tim while Mr. Collins bolted out the door.

Tim’s heart pounded as he walked into Matthew’s office. When he got there, he found Sally brushing her hair in the mirror. “Morning, Tim,” she said. “I think I’ll need to talk to you about your work schedule later.”

“Never you worry about that, little lady,” Matthew said. “I’ll take care of him. You take care of your new portfolio.”

“New portfolio?” Tim felt hopeful through his outrage as he watched Sally head back to her desk. “Do I get one too?”

“Well, that’s what I’ve got to talk to you about,” Matthew said. “First of all, you really let the ball drop with those letters.”

“But I reminded you again and again! And you said, ‘for the last time’, remember?”

“That’s just my point, Tim. You’re not a team player, you’re not commanding respect among the rest of us like Sally does. That’s why I’ve decided to promote Sally to deputy campaign manager and office director.”

Tim was aghast, and speechless.

“Of course, we’ll have to make sacrifices to pay her salary,” Matthew went on. “And frankly, I don’t think we need your services full time anyway. So I’m going to have to ask you to only work until lunchtime from now on.”

“That’s only two hundred dollars a week! I can’t live on that and you know it.”

“We’ve all got to make sacrifices if we’re going to win this campaign, Tim.” Matthew picked up a sheet of paper and handed it to him. “Now, I’ve got a press release here announcing Sally’s promotion. It wouldn’t be appropriate for her to send it out herself, so I’m going to ask you to do it.

Matthew smirked as he pointed Tim back to his desk. “Chin up, Tim. It’s for the best.”

“Yes,” Tim said as he skimmed the press release. “Yes, I suppose it is.”

“Glad you’ve got the team spirit for a change. Now get back to your desk.”

On the walk back across the office, Tim confirmed what he thought he’d seen on his first perusal of the press release. “Miss McNulty brings past experience from a campaign in Minnesota…” A more careful reading revealed that wasn’t even the only case of his experience they were passing off as hers. But he kept his cool as he sat down at his desk and set about typing every lie about Sally.

“You sent it?!” his mother seethed when he arrived home scarcely an hour later.

“I sent out an email, and then I walked out and didn’t go back. And I won’t.”

“You’re even dumber than your father, you know that? You should’ve told Mr. Collins!”

“That wouldn’t have done any good at all, I told you.”

“How can you know if you didn’t try, Tim? You never try! You always let people walk all over you! Now he just might win the election and Sally will get your dream job! Isn’t that worth fighting against?”

For once, Tim wasn’t cowed by his mother’s temper. “Mr. Collins isn’t going to win. Not after what I sent to the press this morning.”

“You think the press release introducing that bitch Sally is going to cost him the election?”

“Nope. I mean, look, I almost did the adult and honest thing and sent it, but –”

“There you go again, pure as the driven snow, you naïve little–”

“I said ‘almost’, Mom. I mean, I did have the option of playing along and accepting that I got screwed. Politics ain’t beanbag.”

“Exactly what did you do if not that, Timothy?”

“Well, I did send out an email to everyone on our media list, with an attachment. But the attachment wasn’t the press release.”

“Timothy, I’m not going to play twenty questions with you.”

“I’m not asking you to.” He strode over to the television and turned it on. “Look, it’s almost time for the lunchtime news on Channel Six.”

He had to fight off his mother’s impatience through two commercials. But she was still there when the well-coiffed anchorwoman appeared onscreen. “This morning, an explosive revelation from Joseph Collins’ campaign,” she said. “An anonymous source has sent NewsSix an audio file of Mr. Collins’ campaign manager having sex with a junior staffer in his office. Scuttlebutt is that same staffer was just promoted to deputy campaign manager. I have with us, Channel Six’s political correspondent, Sean Peterson. Sean, just what does this mean for the Collins campaign?”

The camera cut to Sean Peterson. “In a word, Mandy, disaster! Joe Collins had just pulled ahead in the polls, and he’s running on a platform of reform and integrity. Now his team has been shown to be desperately in need of both, and there are already rumors that other staffers are heading for the door.”

There was more, but Tim couldn’t hear it because his mother was laughing too hard. “I taught you better than I thought I did,” she said, patting him on the back.