“Is that teriyaki?” she asked aloud as they stepped into the foyer.

The scene confronting her was not at all what she’d expected. This was no sedate gathering of aging elected officials and policy analysts trading favors over canapés and champagne with chamber music in the background. It was more like a frat party for homely drunk accountants. Meatloaf was belting out, “I’ll do anything for love,” while men in rumpled suits and women with frizzy hair were screaming to be heard over the music. And of course there was the teriyaki smell.

“Intense, right?” Matt hollered over the din, once they were inside. “The political establishment, legacy media, influence peddlers, and Professional-Know-It-Alls-R-Us!” He extended his arms wide. “Welcome.”

It was a lot to take in. Every other person was vaguely familiar: a member of Congress, a spokesperson, a pundit. Then Natalie started to pick out faces deeply familiar: Wolf Blitzer, John Dickerson, Katy Tur. DC’s most famous reporters were everywhere.

Matt led the way into a living room wallpapered in deep red, watermarked silk fabric. Tucker Carlson—and she felt slightly overwhelmed—Chris Matthews—like she was getting smacked in the face with the heat and noise of hundreds of people’s ambition on the move. Gloria Borger, Bret Baier, Andrea Mitchell, Nicolle Wallace, Dana Perino, Judy Woodruff, Kasie Hunt, Hallie Jackson, Jeff Zeleny.

This was the DC version of the champagne room—Newt Gingrich—the VVIP section inside the VIP section—eeew, Newt Gingrich?—the secret lounge inside the first-class lounge, the place where DC power players went to let their hair down. It was like being upgraded from American Airlines to Emirates, only with bad food.

Never, never think of Newt Gingrich and the champagne room at the same time again, she admonished herself.

Matt broke away, giving her the universal pantomime for I’m finding the bar, leaving her on the threshold of the next room. Clearly this party was not dry.

She began to catch snippets of the conversations around her for the first time. Everyone, it seemed, was talking about Rigo.

“The neighbors are freaking out. The music goes all night.”

“He had the chef from Nobu in to cook for the whole embassy!”

“I was there!”

“Oh shit, check this out,” a woman in a Tory Burch dress shouted, holding up her iPhone for the group around her to see. Like dancers in a ballet, they all lifted their iPhones in unison and began nodding as they read the latest alert.

Following suit, Natalie found an AP alert that read, Sonia Barbaro gives statement on arrival at Los Angeles premiere.

According to the Associated Press, Barbaro had just arrived at the LA premiere of Trafficked and given a statement expressing support for other victims of sexual violence. She said, in part, “We do not need to hide any longer.”