The aide tapped me. “But, Ms. Stone, Anita wants to speak to you. She saw you through the window and said to bring you in.”
“The governor’s pollster?”
Grover Mane cared so much about keeping his finger on the pulse of public opinion that he’d hired a pollster in a permanent position on his staff. Anita Jones was a legend, too—she had an incredible track record of capturing the way the winds were shifting ahead of everyone else. I’d always wanted to talk to her, but this was curious indeed.
“Yep.” The aide opened the office door and beckoned. “Come on.”
Inside the governor’s office—which was really a hub of smaller offices, united by a big, open reception area—the mood was jovial. People waved and smiled as the aide led me to a door with a plaque that read Anita Jones, Director of Research. I squelched the urge to hunt through the offices until I found the one that said Ben Laderman, Director of Policy. If they hadn’t already chiseled his name off, that is.
“Ah,” said a voice, so deep and gravelly it could only belong to a smoker. “If it isn’t the Sex Club Spokeswoman, in the flesh.”
Anita Jones sat behind her desk. She was maybe in her sixties, with close-cut white hair and steely eyes. “Sit,” she said, and pointed to the single chair in front of her desk. She turned her gaze to the aide. “You. Leave.”
He scampered away and I took my seat, looking around at her walls. She had copies of awards and magazine stories hung everywhere, with titles like, “Texas Pollster Pro on Ten-Year Streak Predicting District Races” and “Betting against Her Peers, Anita Jones Comes Out on Top Yet Again.”
Okay. So the woman was impressive.
“The whole office loves you, much to Grover’s chagrin.” Anita pulled a pack of Marlboros out of her desk drawer. “You enjoying the fame?”
“Not really.” I squinted at the cigarettes. “Are you actually going to light one of those in here? Isn’t it illegal?”
“Eh.” Anita waved a hand at the door. “The stakes are low. These fuckers need me. Shut that, then crack the window. Or are you too precious to handle a little cigarette smoke?”
Iwastoo precious, but I was also a little intimidated. So I got up, shut the door and pushed the window up as far as it would go.
Anita lit her cigarette and took a drag. “Mmm. Just like the good old days. Now sit down again. Ben said you’d be by, so I got everything ready for you.”
What was she talking about? I cleared my throat. “You talked to Ben?”
“Course.” Anita cracked open a folder to reveal a printed page, filled with rows and rows of numbers. “He rang me up right after your little press conference. Called in a favor.” She gave me a level stare. “Though, between us gals, there’s no favor that man could ask for that I wouldn’t oblige. No favor at all, if you catch my drift.”
I gulped. “I feel like this is that locker room talk I keep hearing about.”
She waved a hand. “After working in Texas politics for thirty years, I’ve got a laundry list of grievances to repay. And if I choose to sexually objectify a delicious gubernatorial staffer every once in a while, the male body politic should count itself lucky that’s all I’m doing. You feel me?”
“Your energy is intense,” I said, swatting away cigarette smoke. “But I do feel you.”
“Good. After your speech yesterday, I had a feeling we’d get along. So, here it is.” She jabbed a finger at the piece of paper in her folder. “Put short, you did it.”
I blinked. “Did what?”
She eyed me. “You saved the bill. Yesterday at nine a.m., nobody in Texas outside a small circle of politically connected people had even heard about the bill. No offense,” she added. “I know it was your job to publicize it.”
“We chose a targeted approach,” I said defensively.
“Well, in that case, you failed, because as of noon today, Dakota’s trending, you’re trending,Eyes Wide Shutis trending and the Green Machine bill is trending. Everyone’s talking about it.”
I drew a shaky breath. “And? What are they saying?”
“The bill’s favorables are through the roof. My team polled thousands of people—” She cocked a brow. “What? We work fast to match the news cycle. We polled thousands—made sure to get an even bipartisan split—and combined that data with analytics from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.”
This was almost dizzying. “TikTok?”
“Don’t discount TikTok. The bill’s most popular there. It’s the younger demographic. They care about climate.”
I didn’t want to hope, only to be disappointed. “What exactly are you saying?”
Anita harrumphed and blew a ring of smoke. “I’m saying that thanks to your speeches yesterday—Dakota’s, yes, but especially your wild roller coaster—the Green Machine bill is enormously popular. I just sent copies of this opinion research to every rep and senator in the Texas legislature, like Ben asked. You’ve got ’em on the hook. Janus and Wayne are in the Unity room—that’s the old Alamo room—as we speak, meeting with the governor.”
