“Let me see your paperwork,” she snaps.
Hayley complies, retrieving the pertinent documents from her backpack. Rey briefly peruses the paperwork, arching her eyes in mild surprise.
“Military veteran?”
Hayley is used to such reaction to her military status. With her trim build and pretty face, she could easily be mistaken for a performer with Disney On Ice or a retired beauty queen. “Third Cavalry Regiment, ma’am. Forty-Third Combat Engineer Company,” she informs the White House aide and intern wrangler.
“No college degree?”
“Two years at Central Texas College, ma’am, on the Active Duty Montgomery GI Bill.”
Rey looks up from Hayley’s paperwork and offers it back as if it were drenched in biohazard.
“The West Wing operates at a grueling pace, Ms. Chill, especially with this administration. No disrespect to your community college, but perhaps the First Lady’s office would be a better fit.” Her condescension is not gratuitous. Peter Hall’s persecution of the slightest incompetence is of DC lore. Hayley’s first significant flub would be on Rey’s head.
“Thank you, ma’am, but I believe I’m up to the task. Mr. Hall must think so, too.” Hayley flips to the last page of her sheaf of papers and offers it for Rey to see. “That’s his signature right there.”
Karen Rey’s expression goes flat. She silently leads Hayley back into the reception room and to the entry door. Stepping out into the corridor, she points toward the near stairwell as if casting a fallen angel from the heavens. “Interns live, work, and die downstairs.” Pronouncement issued, Rey turns and retreats back inside Hall’s office suite, closing the door behind her with an emphatic push.
* * *
HAYLEY ARRIVES BACK where she started, on the West Wing’s ground floor, and locates the correct office door, a handwritten sign designating it as “CoS Support.” Entering, Hayley discovers a room not much bigger than a janitorial closet, which in fact it was until only a few months before. Peter Hall wanted his interns close at hand, located in the West Wing, and being the chief of staff, that’s exactly what he got. Four desks are jigsawed into the claustrophobic space, three of which are occupied with sharply dressed young people. The fourth desk, Hayley’s apparent work space, is heaped with files and binders, an impressive and disorderly pile two feet high.
The other interns, two-week veterans of the West Wing, regard Hayley with cold suspicion. CoS Support has been their exclusive domain, and Hayley is an unwelcome addition. What possible good could come of her joining the team? At best, the blue-eyed, blond-haired young woman wearing an off-the-rack Dressbarn cardigan represents an annoyance. At worst, she is potential competition. The goal of any White House intern is to be noticed, achieving special recognition at the expense of the several dozen other young people toiling there. A glowing personal recommendation from a powerful DC player is of incalculable value in scoring admission to Ivy League graduate programs, entry positions at Goldman Sachs, or further advancement in Washington.
Luke Charles, the only male in CoS Support, is a junior at Georgetown with the obligatory major in political science. His father, a fantastically wealthy hedge fund manager, hopes Luke’s interest in politics is a phase his son will soon leave behind. In the elder Charles’s view, politicians follow while money leads. Luke will indeed come to this same conclusion in the coming year. The grubbiness and panhandling that defines every politician’s life doesn’t escape the notice of the sufficiently bright Luke. After graduation from Georgetown and an MBA from Harvard, he will join his father’s firm and notch his first seven-figure annual bonus before he’s thirty.
Sophia Watts, her desk abutting Hayley’s, is barely receiving the required grade point average to avoid expulsion from USC, having spent much of her first two college years trolling Los Angeles’s hottest clubs. In Sophia’s second sophomore semester and still an undeclared major, she had a two-week-long Tinder fling with an aide of a Los Angeles councilperson. Landon was a sweet and fun-loving boy who infused an impressionable Sophia with a passion for government. Given this newfound purpose, her father, a successful film producer of cacophonous superhero movies, used his clout to score his only daughter a highly coveted internship at the White House. Sophia’s future love child with a Senate minority leader will result in moderate infamy and a best-selling memoir, a literary sensation that, synergistically, will be adapted by her movie-producing father into a scorching independent film. Daughter will join father onstage at the Oscar ceremony for a Best Picture acceptance speech.
The third intern in the room, commanding the biggest and best-positioned desk, is Becca Byran. With a lion’s mane of dirty-blond hair, she is a recent graduate from NYU under an accelerated program. Her father owns a small print shop in Queens, on Myrtle Avenue. Her mother is stay-at-home, taking in neighborhood toddlers for day care. Burning deep within Becca is an obsession to rise above these modest origins and apply her fierce drive to amassing power in whatever form it might exist. In seven years’ time, she will be the founder of a rapidly expanding, quasi-religious “commune” located in Vermont. Within the decade, Becca Byran will begin an eight-year stretch at FCI Danbury for bank fraud, money laundering, and tax evasion.
“What’s your name?” Becca demands of the newcomer, weaponizing that brief, normally innocuous sentence.
“Hayley Chill.”
Becca slides a look toward the other two interns seated at their respective desks. Her expression is difficult to gauge. Sophia takes a stab at decoding the alpha intern’s judgment of the new addition to CoS Support.
“Can’t be for real, right?” Sophia asks. Becca shrugs in response.
“Where is that accent from? Kentucky?” Luke asks Hayley.
“West Virginia.” Hayley indicates the desk nearest to the door, currently being used as a file dumping ground. “Guessing this is where I sit?”
Becca is again regarding Hayley with cool, analytic precision, taking measure of the threat level posed by the newcomer and how she might be manipulated to personal advantage. “We’re under a lot of pressure, if you didn’t notice. Sit there if you must, but don’t mess any of that stuff up.”
Hayley doesn’t respond. The unfriendly and unwelcoming attitude of the other interns doesn’t much bother her. The other interns just seem to be kids, not worth her time or energy. Hayley places her bag on the floor and, ignoring Becca’s admonition, begins to organize the mess of folders and papers on the desk.
“You look kinda old,” Sophia tells Hayley. “Where do you go to school?”
Hayley continues to work as she answers Sophia’s prying question. “Two-year community college in Texas, near where I was stationed.” Their blank faces prompt her to add, “Believe me, you’ve never heard of this place.”
The three other interns exchange a communal look of bewilderment.
“Stationed?” Becca demands clarification with distaste.
Like most civilian Americans, none of the other interns have had any personal interaction with an actual serviceperson, let alone set foot on a military installation. That ignorance does not stop them from forming the near-universal bias against military personnel. This prejudice prompts all three college-educated interns to share an opinion that a US Army veteran, particularly one who enlisted, is of subpar intelligence, backward thinking, and perhaps psychopathic. Why else join the military if not a hopeless loser with mental issues?