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to win it. Call Larry.
    —Nat
    t h e n e w s b r o k e the next day. Dr. Chin had called just as I was reaching for the morning papers to tell me that he was very pleased with my initial progress. At each checkup, he monitored my cell count, and the very preliminary reports pointed to signs that the chemo—despite its horrid side effects, despite the jack-hammer headaches that came in the late evenings and the occasional loss of feeling in my hands—was indeed frying these fuckers.
    I thanked him for the call, clicked good-bye, and frantically ran my eyes over the headlines.
    The New York Post ran dueling captions: “Taylor Hooked!”
    read the top half of the page, while the bottom read, “Dupris Duplicitous!” “At least we’re at the bottom,” I muttered to my empty apartment.
    I plodded over to the couch, dropped the Post beside me, and tore through the Times . Okay, not bad: Our escalating scandal was older news so it landed on page sixteen. No one, except for political junkies like myself, has the time to read to page sixteen, anyway. Regular people scan the headlines, ensure themselves that their world isn’t coming to an immediate end, then flip to the sports The Department of Lost & Found
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    section or the gossip tidbits. Taylor made the front page of the Metro section, which wasn’t quite as prestigious as the front section, but was certainly more visible. I nodded my head—one point to us.
    I put my bare feet up on the coffee table and began to read. The good news was that Taylor came off like a philandering scumbag.
    “What sort of husband does this when his wife is sick?” a woman on the street was quoted as saying. The bad news was that the senator still wasn’t coming off much better. “The rich keep getting richer,” read the Post ’s lead to the story.
    Picking up the phone, I called Kyle but was shot straight to voice mail, so I made my way to the kitchen to pour a glass of water, then tried him again. And then again, and then again. The embarrassing truth was that nearly two hours later, by not even 11
    o’clock, I had desperately and frantically and shamelessly called him over twenty times. Not even The Price Is Right proved to be much of a distraction. I could feel my shoulders tightening up and my core temperature rising; I pictured Kyle and his smarmy, weasely smile basking in the glory of my work, my due, and I simply couldn’t stand it one second longer.
    I suddenly felt compelled to drop my robe on my taupe Pottery Barn rug, grab the stand-by tweed suit off the lid to my hamper, and hail a taxi, despite an increasingly dizzy feeling. For my second trip into the office in less than a week, I wasn’t quite as presentable. I’d pulled my hair back into a pseudobun, but my nonwashed, ratty ends poked out of it like chopsticks. And let’s not even talk about my face: I’d tried to apply some under-eye concealer and mascara in the cab, but my driver appeared to be auditioning for the Indy 500; thus, with every lurch or sudden break, the wand painted black stripes all over my eyelid. I spit on my finger and tried to rub it off, but really, that just sort of grayed it and left bruiselike splotches just below my eyebrow.
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    a l l i s o n w i n n s c o t c h
    The cab screeched to the curb at Fifty-fifth Street. I staggered through the revolving glass door, and the security guard asked me if I was okay when I flashed him my ID, but I waved him off with an “I’m fine.”
    “Holy crap, Natalie, should you be here?” Blair asked me when I got off the elevator. “You look paler than a ghost.” Evidently, my decision to forgo any blush was a mistake.
    “Fine. I’m fine. Where’s Kyle? Where’s Dupris? Is she back from Nashville yet?” I cocked my head looking around for them.
    He better not be stealing my damn glory .
    Blair nodded toward the senator’s office. “Yep, she’s back, and he’s in there.” She lowered her eyes. “I’m not sure if you want to go