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On the final day of the hearings, Greg stepped into the low chatter of the Senate proceedings chamber with the corporate backup team—two people he’d never met before. Someone directed him to his seat, a single chair at the central table facing the arrayed senators and advisers. He sat down, tried to avoid looking at the cameras clustered in front of him; he heard the incessant click of shutters as he brushed back his hair, straightened his belt.
Why had everyone else gotten to go in pairs? Tom and Gerri, Kendall and Uncle Logan. Teams of two: someone to be the magnanimous face, someone to brave the fall. Greg himself had sat loyally behind Tom during his shitshow of a testimony, and yet here he was all by himself, while everyone else had already fucked off to the Mediterranean.
“Mr. Hirsch, please rise. Raise your right hand,” Senator Gilliard instructed. He stood, hoping his raised hand, a shadow of a shy wave, looked more solemn than it felt. Thank god it was his right hand he had to raise, not his left.
“Do you swear that the testimony you’re about to give this committee is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”
Greg caught only every second or third word of that question, but it was probably a standard oath-of-honesty type of situation, right? “I do,” he said.
“Please take a seat. Senator Eavis, it’s your time.” Greg settled into his chair, glanced at the word scrawled on his hand in Tom’s handwriting: DUMB.
“Gregory Hirsch, executive assistant to Tom Wambsgans, correct?” Eavis asked. God, they were bringing Tom in right out of the gate. But Greg was ready for it—ready to own it, as he’d practiced. He couldn’t afford to make the same mistake Tom had. You’re a nobody little assistant, Tom had told him the night before. You know me, they know that.
“Yes.” Greg cleared his throat, shifted in his seat. “Yes . . . if it is to be said.”
Eavis paused, looking confused. “I’m sorry?” he said, as if Greg had spoken too quietly. But Greg had practiced leaning into the mic, practiced projecting his voice so he could be heard clearly on the record.
Play dumb, Greg, Tom had told him.
Greg leaned forward to elaborate: “Uh . . . if it is to be said, so it be, so it is.”
“Are you alright?” the senator asked.
“Uh . . . yes.” The thing was, Greg wasn’t a nobody, wasn’t just Tom’s assistant. He was a fucking Roy, in all but name.
“I merely wish to answer in the affirmative fashion,” Greg clarified. It was possible to be smart and innocent, somebody and innocent. He could own knowing Tom, but he didn’t need to put himself down in the process.
“You can speak to us normally,” Eavis said.
“Okay, no. Thank you, sir. Uh . . . so I shall.”
Eavis paused to look over his notes, and Greg replayed the way Tom had dragged him into a side room the night before, at the weird post-testimony reception. Tom had grasped his shoulder, apologized almost incoherently, babbled about their being under-resourced and under-prepped for the hearings.
Greg had been avoiding Tom all day, angry with him and embarrassed, frankly, about his outburst in the prep room after Tom had so terribly botched his own testimony. But Tom didn’t give him the chance to resist, or even to talk. They were two expendable outsiders who were duty-bound to stick together, Tom said, especially when the world was throwing shit at the Roy family fan, because they were the ones who’d get splattered.
Tom coached him hurriedly on how to comport himself, how to respond to the senators’ questions, and then, inconceivably, he’d grabbed Greg’s hand and kissed it. Tom clutched his hand, dug a permanent marker out of his jacket pocket, and scrawled DUMB on the stretch of skin between Greg’s thumb and forefinger.
Play dumb, Greg, Tom had told him, not letting go. You’re a nobody assistant to a nobody asshole, remember? You know me, they know that. You can’t deny it. But you can be a dumb little bitch who doesn’t know anything, and if you pull that off, then they can’t catch you out on anything. Yeah?
Tom had squeezed his hand, nodded at him solemnly, and darted off, sweaty and panicky, to catch up with Shiv at the airport.
Greg was sure Tom meant well, and he was relieved Tom had finally apologized for dragging him into this in the first place. The thing was, Greg had realized in the middle of the night, that given Tom’s performance the day before, maybe Tom wasn’t the best person to be taking testimony advice from. Greg would have to go his own way: all killer, no filler.
“Tell us about your tenure as Mr. Wambsgans’s assistant, Mr. Hirsch. Is he a good supervisor?”
“Yes, sir. He may in fact be better than anyone else, if I may be so bold as to declare. For, uh, the position as my superior, as it were.”
“Really?”
“No, absolutely—”
Greg had done well, he thought, and even if nobody had been there to see him kill it in person, he was sure at least some of them had watched on C-SPAN. He wished he’d been a bit sharper, a bit wittier.
He wished he’d been aggressive right off, to cut off any accusations: No woman, no cry, he might’ve said. It was like the ATN slogan he’d come up with for Tom, We hear for you. It would’ve worked, he reasoned, because the senators would’ve spent more time trying to figure out the implications and less time questioning him.
I volunteer as tribute, he might’ve said—he could’ve prostrated himself before the government and saved the whole family, the whole company. They would’ve loved him for that.
He just hadn’t quite gotten the chance. Still, it wasn't his fault, whatever happened. He'd done his best. Come what may.