Client 09-31, Day Nine

What a surprise: Emily F. hasn't returned my phone call. Asked Dorothy to trying calling her sorority sisters. Not sure why I’m focusing on this; just a gut feeling.

Another gut feeling is about Mrs. X, and not just because she’s attractive. She's got to be a key source; I called the campaign consultants and made my case for consulting her, just to cross all the t's and dot the i's. Fifteen minutes, the lady herself called: last-minute lunch cancellation. Could I meet her? Oh, yes.

I met her at the Mayflower; that is, she met me, because I was early and she was late. It was us and a bunch of tourists, but that's no bad thing -- no one to recognize us.

No reason to be coy, so I asked straight out what the name Emily F. meant to her. "Nothing," she said, and appeared to be telling the truth. Then she wrecked it: “My husband can be an idiot, but he’s a good man.” "How much do you know about where he is at any given time?" I asked. She said she gets the daily schedule, doesn't see much opportunity for straying from it. But then she hedged again: "I know everything I need to."

Got back to the office to find that Dorothy, that magician, had come up with a phone number for Emily F. I called it, got an answering machine instead of voice mail. (Who still uses an answering machine?) Noise in the background, maybe a baby. "Did she get married?" I asked Dorothy. "Nobody said so," she said. "Her last name hasn't changed."

Hit Capitol Hill after work, looking for places Senator X's staff might go after work. A guy I used to work with always said the most beautiful women in the world work for the United States Senate, and that is the truth.

On the way home, realized who Mrs. X reminded me of: Angela Lansbury in The Manchurian Candidate. There goes the attraction ... maybe.