“He was so relaxed there,” Jimmy said. “Which was just really great to see.” He sighed like he was one of Obama’s besties and had been worried deeply about his stress levels.
Finally (finally!) we paid the check and left the restaurant. As soon as Jimmy and Ash jumped in a cab and we were alone on the sidewalk, I said to Matt, “You know, Jimmy makes it sound like they were all just hanging out in Hawaii together, like they were on a group vacation instead of being there to work.”
“It did sound pretty fun,” Matt said. He looked miserable. We started walking the few blocks back to our apartment, not talking much. I was worried that Jimmy was turning into Alan, that he was soon going to be incapable of having a discussion that didn’t revolve around the President. And if that was the case, it was going to be a long winter.
—
It wasn’t a coincidence that right after our dinner with the Dillons, Matt decided his New Year’s resolution would be to start looking for a new job. The counsel’s office wasn’t what he’d thought it would be and he told me he was mostly worried that he wasn’t visible enough. “What does that mean?” I asked.
“I just don’t think this is setting me up for any sort of run. It feels like I could still be working for the firm in New York, just sitting in a room and doing busywork.”
“Well, what do you think you want to do?” I asked. I felt for Matt in these moments. He was so clearly frustrated at how slowly things were moving in his career and I wanted him to succeed—not because I especially cared about it, but because I knew that’s what would make him happy.
“I don’t really know,” he said. “It’s not just about my résumé. I mean, part of it is. I just don’t feel like I’m getting the right experience. But that’s not all. Jimmy meets so many people, he gets face time with the President and the senior staff. Everyone knows him, everyone likes him. When he decides to run for office, he’s going to have that support, people to ask for advice to help him out. No one even knows who I am.”
“That’s not true,” I said, but my heart hurt just a little because I could tell he believed what he said.
—
In February, Snowmageddon (or Snowpocalypse, if you preferred) hit the East Coast. DC was in a panic and you couldn’t turn on the news without hearing the weather people screaming about the snow that was coming. I was pretty sure everyone was overreacting (even Obama had publicly mocked DC for its wimpy attitude toward snow after it shut down schools for a light flurry earlier that winter), but I also thought it was better to be safe than sorry, so I went to gather some supplies the day before the storm. Of course, I went to the Soviet Safeway and found that the shelves were empty and people were waiting ten deep at the registers with overflowing carts. I walked up and down the aisles, just to make sure I wasn’t missing anything, and finally grabbed the last bag of cheddar Goldfish and a package of Oreos that were haphazardly shoved on a shelf with paper towels and figured we’d have to make do.
“People are really freaking out,” I said that night. Everyone had been sent home early from work and school so that they could hunker down and wait for the snow, which was what we were doing too.
“It sounds like it might be really bad,” Matt said.
“DC is so weird about snow,” I said. “This storm probably won’t even happen. All this worry will be for nothing.”
But when we woke up the next morning, it wasn’t nothing. It was actually a pretty sizable amount of snow and it continued to come down through the weekend. Sunday night, Matt got an e-mail that the government would be closed, and immediately after, I got the same e-mail from DCLOVE. (That was how DC worked—once the government made a call about the weather, everyone followed.)
And it kept snowing all Tuesday and Wednesday, and even I was shocked at how much piled up outside. The whole world was white. “It feels like The Shining in here,” I said to Matt, and he replied, “That makes me sort of nervous to be housebound with you.”
I thought maybe this break would be good for Matt. He’d been so stressed about finding a new job that maybe a few days off would be relaxing, but he just seemed antsy. We were both doing a little bit of work—I covered a snowball fight between Georgetown and GW, and Matt answered some e-mails. But after a few days we were bored of sitting in front of the fire and had gone through everything on our DVR.