Page 10 of Power Moves
‘Why thank you, Archibald,’ I say sweetly, my eyes like daggers. This is a game we’re used to playing. We each pretend we’re the picture of civility, but we both know that as soon as the other’s back is turned, we’ll have the machetes out ready to strike.
Boss hates Archie because Archie seems to target him. Archie hates Boss because he reckons he’s a wanker (and to this I’d say:Boss is not a wanker, but takes one to know one). I hate Archie on behalf of Boss, and also because Archie’s a smug-faced bonehead; and Archie hates me because I protect Boss. All in all, the hate balances out like a perfect mathematical equation.
I swallow a mouthful of salad and clear my throat. ‘If I have any good announcements coming up, you’ll find out about them when I send the media alert to you and every other journalist in the state. This election campaign, we’re not playing games. We’re working for the people of New South Wales.’
Archie snorts into his green juice. ‘You sound like such a tosser when you quote your own media releases.’
‘Must have been a good line if you can remember it so clearly,’ I retort.
Archie smirks. ‘I remember everything you say.’
‘Whereas I, on the other hand, go to great lengths to ignore you. Sometimes when you’re talking I recite the national anthem in my head.’ It’s not even a lie.
Archie grins because he’s annoying. ‘Have you heard I’ve left Channel Five?’
‘No!’ I exclaim. Immediately, a tiny conga-line of munchkins in my head starts singing,Ding-dong! The witch is dead.
‘I’m going freelance,’ he says.
‘What? Why?’ Political broadcast journalists don’t freelance. They’re tied to their networks like prize pooches, permitted to yap and prance around but never allowed to bite the hand that feeds them.
Archie shrugs. ‘I thought I may as well give it a shot. I’d had some calls from a few networks and I figured, rather than deciding on one, I might as well work for all of them. It means I can do some print journalism too and choose my hours a bit more.’
I gulp down another piece of pumpkin, the cogs in my mind starting to whir as I grasp the implications of what he’s just said. Archie’s career’s not dead! It’s alive! In the worst possible way! If I thought it was bad that he had a whole commercial network behind him, what’s it going to be like when he’s everywhere?
Archie stands up, slurping the last of his green juice. ‘Call me,’ he says.
I grip my fork harder and amp up the sugar in my voice. ‘I won’t!’ I sing.
‘You need to!’ Archie sings back with a wicked glint in his eyes. He waves and heads back across the road as I scowl into my salad and bring up the polling websites on my phone. The numbers are worse than I thought.
With a sinking thud in my stomach, I realise Archie is right. I do have to call him. If we’re going to win this election, we will need all the coverage we can get—even if it’s from the devil himself.
CHAPTER 5
‘Thanks for the lift,’ I say to Boss, texting furiously as he steers his Audi into the tunnel. ‘My car’s at the cleaners.’
‘Easy,’ says Boss. From the corner of my eye, I see him glance at the phones on my lap, which are bleating like a pair of hyperactive goats on heat. ‘Lots going on?’ he asks.
‘Yep,’ I reply, not looking up. ‘Larry from Channel Five keeps texting because he reckons there’s nowhere to park his van and the girls’ WhatsApp chat is going off too. But! In the biggest news, the Premier’s office is loving me sick because I made our exclusive with Archie into an all-in press conference and now heaps of journos are bypassing the opposition’s rally to come to us.’
I fire off a few heart emojis to the girls’ chat and send a thumbs-down to Larry. Bryan—the perennially communicative and therefore emotionally exhausting ex—has also texted. I force myself to send a thumbs-up in response to hisWe should catch up!
‘Who’s in the girls’ chat?’ asks Boss, not bothering to check his blind spot as he overtakes a van.
‘My uni mates,’ I reply, as I add aLegally Blondegif to our thread. ‘My best friend, Remi, finally got engaged to her long-term boyfriend, Tyler. I lived on campus in a uni residence with both of them. They used to joke I was their third wheel.’
‘That sounds like a fun threesome,’ muses Boss, as he merges back into the middle lane.
I shoot him a horrified look.
Boss laughs. ‘Sorry, not what I meant.’
I shake my head, trying not to smile at his hopelessness. Boss is almost twenty years older than me which is like a lifetime in millennial years. It’s not his fault he says dumb stuff. He grew up without phones or selfie sticks or the constant threat of people posting your worst moments online for the voyeuristic pleasure of others. That’s why no one in my generation wants to go into politics. We’re all too shit-scared that someone will unearth a photo of us with drunk eyes at a uni party doing the Soulja Boy dance. Could you imagine the headlines?
Fortunately, Boss hasn’t been tarnished by this cynicism, which is why he’s so good at his job. And if he stuffs up, I simply tell him that he sounds like a tone-deaf twat and instead of firing me, he takes it on board and learns from it.
One time he accidentally told Kendra from the ABC that single motherhood was ‘a women’s problem’. To be fair, most single mumsarewomen, but try arguing that these days. Then, rather than shying away from the backlash, Boss decided (aka, I decided) to pen a mea culpa and publish it on the most popular women’s media website in Australia. Withintwenty-four hours, his DMs—which I oversee—were overrun by women wanting his midweek meal reccos. I’m still not sure if that was an over-forties code for something kinky but regardless, I recommended spag bol. One must never miss a chance to remind the masses of one’s relatability.
