She nodded, and waited.
“Oh,” he said.
She nodded.
“Can I come in for a while?” he asked.
She nodded.
33
HER MIDTERMS WENT reasonably well, and by one o’clock on Friday, she was packed and ready to go. Her parents had wanted to fly up to Albany International to meet her—her father had damn near insisted—and she had made an ineffective argument that she should just take a commercial flight, with a few of her agents, and not have everyone make such a fuss. The uneasy compromise was that a small military jet would pick her up at one of the tiny local airports, and then take her directly to Andrews Air Force Base, and home. It seemed like a significant waste of the taxpayers’ money, but—as her mother pointed out—firing up Air Force One and having the President, essentially, play hooky for a good chunk of the day was not terribly frugal, either.
A fair number of people from the dorm, including Juliana and Mary Elizabeth, had already left, so it was pretty quiet. Susan, to no one’s surprise, was planning to stay an extra day, in order to wait until the very last person in the entry was safely off on his or her journey home. Then, presumably, she would spend the next two weeks in a state of suspended animation, until she could get back to school, and resume being an authority figure again.
Jack, who was planning to take the afternoon bus to Boston to visit a friend at Tufts on his way to Los Angeles, carried her computer and leather Camp David duffel bag downstairs for her. They had exchanged phone numbers, although she wasn’t sure if either of them would get up sufficient nerve to call the other—she was sure she wouldn’t—since whatever it was that they were doing was still at such a delicate, early stage.
“So,” he said, once they were outside, near the cast iron gates by the street.
“Yeah,” she said.
They stood there.
Then, he leaned over to kiss her, and she heard a camera start clicking away—right across the road, telephoto lens, great—and dodged the kiss, moving so that her back would be to the photographer, but making sure that her expression stayed pleasant, in case she was still within range.
“Oh, sorry,” Jack said, and jumped back, staying at a distance. Then, he frowned. “Except, is this some big secret? Like, so what if they see us?”
He had a point. “Just not a public display of affection,” she said. “It’ll be the difference between being buried somewhere inside, or showing up on the cover.”
He grinned. “I like that phrase.”
Well, America was a free country, and he had every legal right to be—predictable. Pedestrian. “‘Public display of affection’?” she asked. “Or ‘showing up on the cover’?”
“‘Buried somewhere inside,’” he said.
On further reflection, that was even more predictable, but also kind of funny. Although still in the category of wishful thinking. Not that she couldn’t feel herself blushing furiously. Nellie was the nearest agent, and Meg glanced over, hoping like hell that she hadn’t overheard that one. Judging from her expression, she either hadn’t, or wanted it to seem that way.
“I’m not going to see you for two weeks,” he said. “I’d really like to kiss you good-bye.”
And she wouldn’t mind having him do so. She looked around until she caught Garth’s eye. “I need a couple of minutes, okay?”
He nodded, and gestured to the nearby agents to adjust their protective positions accordingly. Brian and Ed were already on their way over to the photographer, in, she assumed, an attempt to discourage him from remaining in the area.
She limped back towards the dorm, with Jack following her. Once they were through the main door and out of camera view, he kissed her intensely enough so that it occurred to her that it might be nice if she could postpone her flight for a few hours. But, she couldn’t, and he had his bus to catch, and—
“Hey, Taylor!” Andy said, coming down the stairs with a huge knapsack and his laptop. “You’d better be nice to her, dude.”
“Well, yeah,” Jack said. “I don’t want her agents to start shooting me.”
Right about now, she needed to be wearing her “The Queen Is Not Amused” sweatshirt.
Once Andy was gone—and the couple of agents who had come out of the security room had quickly turned around and gone back in there—they started kissing again, until they were both out of breath, and she was starting to think that two weeks was going to be a really long time.
“Jesus, get a room,” a guy—who was known around the dorm as “Clyde the Clod”—said, passing them on his way outside.
They moved apart, although she didn’t want to, and she could certainly feel that he didn’t want to, either.
“We, um, I should go,” she said.
Jack nodded, glanced down, and then untucked his shirt.
She checked the shirttails to make sure that everything was—obscured. “You need to stay in here for a few minutes, and maybe think about baseball?”
“Okay,” he said, and thought. “No. Sorry. All I’m getting is us, in the dugout, and I’m on top of you.”
But, of course. “Never mind,” she said. “Maybe you should just think of England.”
“Okay.” He thought. “We’re in England, in Trafalgar Square, and—oh, my God! I’m on top of you!”
Naturally.
He opened the dorm door, stepping aside to let her go first. “Now, we’re walking through Piccadilly Circus, we’re looking at the statue, and—oh, my God!”
Was he hilarious—or was he just a pain?
“Oh, no, not Westminster Abbey,” he said sadly. “Right there, in the middle of the Sanctuary? That’s just wrong.”
“Please stop thinking of England,” she said.
He grinned and walked her out to her car in a very gentlemanly way, keeping a couple of feet between them. It was quite a caravan, since so many of her regular agents were also going back to Washington, and there were also still some state and local police officers around, who had been handling extra protective-duty details since Wednesday.
“I’m thinking of playing baseball, in England,” Jack said.
The agents and officers nearby who heard this looked baffled, but Meg laughed.
He shook her—left—hand in a dignified way, although his fingers stroked her palm so expertly that it made her shiver a little.
“Be careful,” he said.
Yeah. She nodded, and returned the hand caress as subtly as possible. “You, too.”
* * *
SECURITY AT THE airport seemed to be much higher than it needed to be, and she was wondering whether there might have been a new spate of threats when she recognized a couple of her father’s agents standing around on the tarmac near a C-20 with “United States of America” markings.
For a second, she was offended that her parents didn’t think she was strong enough to travel alone, but then again, maybe he was just worried about her.
Maybe he missed her, too.
She said hello to his agents, then made her way up—it was only about ten steps, but her knee was throbbing terribly and she was unsteady on her cane—into the small jet. One of the pilots was drinking a cup of coffee just outside the cockpit, and she scanned his rank and name tag—right before her mother took office, she and her brothers had spent a few hours with Preston studying military ranks and decorations for all of the branches of service, so that the three of them would be able to greet people properly and respectfully. It had been very discouraging when Steven and Neal instantly memorized even the most obscure details—while she had had to go over them repeatedly, and even use flash cards, before she stopped making embarrassing mistakes.
“Hello, Colonel Jefferson,” she said.
He smiled. “Good afternoon, Miss Powers. Happy to have you aboard.”
Her father was sitting in the private executive compartment, looking tense. He came out to give her a hug, clearly so happy to see her that she decided not to make any cranky remarks about ove
rprotectiveness or anything of that nature.
Yet.
The stewards must have been given a comprehensive briefing, because the small sofa across the table from the two executive chairs had been set up with extra pillows and a wide, well-padded leg rest. The plane was only designed to hold twelve to fourteen passengers, at the most, so only Garth came aboard after her, taking a seat in the main cabin with a group of her father’s agents, Barton, who was one of his personal aides, and Anthony, the new press secretary. The rest of her detail was going to be stuck traveling on a much less comfortable military plane, she assumed. Or else, flying commercial.
“A little clingy of me to show up?” her father asked.
More than a little. Meg grinned, in lieu of expressing her actual opinion.
His hug was gentle, but heartfelt, as though he really needed to see her in one piece.
“Are you as tired as you look?” he asked.
She nodded.
He hugged her more tightly. “But, you’re okay?”
She nodded again.
“All right. Thank God for that.” He kissed the top of her head, and then helped her onto the sofa.
It felt great to take her weight off her knee, and even though she wasn’t cold, she didn’t argue when he draped a small fleece blanket over her lap, and then got the steward on duty to bring her a Coke—to go along with the cheese, crackers, fruit, and cookies already set out on the small table.
Although if it weren’t going to be such a relatively short flight, she might have given some serious consideration to taking a nap.
Her father looked worn out, too, and it occurred to her that she might have a pretty good idea why.
“Did you go to Nebraska?” she asked, once they were up in the air.
“No, my former chief of staff dissuaded me,” he said, after a very long pause.
Indicating that his wife had not been able to do so effectively. “What did Mom think?” she asked.
“It really wasn’t her call, Meg,” he said, clenching his jaw.
Terrific. Just terrific. The wretched status quo continued at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, apparently. She might, just possibly, need to duck down and cover her head with her fleece blanket at any moment.
Then, her father sighed. “I think both of us would have given a great deal to be able to fly out there and give those punks absolute hell. But, at least Gabler says that his people and the FBI are putting the fear of God into them.”
As well they should. She had no use for the FBI—but, giving credit where credit was due, they had done a decent job this time. Her stomach was starting to hurt, and she was surprised to find herself having trouble swallowing, so she put down the glass of Coke. “Have they figured out why three tenth graders hate me that much?”
Her father reached across the table to touch her arm. “I don’t think they hate you, Meg. I suspect they weren’t responding to anything more than your being someone they’ve seen on television.”
Lots of people were on television, and didn’t necessarily end up receiving bomb threats from fifteen-year-old boys in the Midwest.
“Meg,” he started.
“I really don’t want to talk about it,” she said, “okay, Dad?”
He looked at her for a second, nodded, and then gave her arm a small squeeze before withdrawing.
During the rest of the flight, she sipped Coke, and told him that no, her knee wasn’t too bad, yes, she’d been eating, yes, she was glad her midterms were over, and that sort of thing.
“I’m very sorry about the whole situation with Susan,” he said.
Well, it was about time that the elephant crammed into the compartment with them got some attention. “Your former chief of staff tried really hard to take the fall,” she said.
Her father nodded. “I know. And I truly am sorry that your friend got caught up in all of this.”
“Susan and I aren’t really friends,” Meg said, “but, yeah, it screwed things up for her.”
“Didn’t do you much good, either,” her father said.
Nope.
He looked at her for a minute. “And I apologize for making it seem as though we were all doing something behind your back.”
Except that that’s exactly what they had done.
“Meg?” he asked, when she didn’t say anything.
She sighed. “It made me look like a helpless, incompetent, arrogant jerk.” And, of course, a self-obsessed asshole.
“All of which is the last thing I think,” he said.
Maybe. “Next time,” she said, “if it involves me, I should be part of the decision.”
Her father nodded.
But she definitely didn’t want to spend her entire spring break fighting with him. Besides, fair was fair. “Although if you had,” she said, “I might have just shrugged and said, ‘yeah, whatever,’ and not really listened.” Which was how she had reacted to most of the many details revolving around the misbegotten decision to go away to school.
“Even so,” he said.
Yeah.
But the compartment still seemed too small, and she was glad to see Anthony appear in the doorway with a couple of questions and updates for him, since they were going to land soon.
She had only met the guy a couple of times—he had been a deputy press aide over at State before coming over to work for her father, but based upon the way the two of them were interacting, as well as the efficient phone conversation she’d had with him after Ginette had gone back to Washington, he seemed to have been a smart choice for the job. Pretty young, and with a sense of humor that veered on the edge of being goofy, but he carried himself confidently, and so far, he didn’t seem like the familiar Washingtonian type who went out of his way to curry favor, at the expense of competence.
Although he was a lot taller than she remembered—downright strapping, even—and since her father wasn’t exactly tiny himself, it felt a little bit like being crammed into a football locker-room. Especially when Garth, and Ryan, the head of her father’s detail, came in to go over a few logistical details, too.
Did her mother ever get tired of being surrounded? Yeah, there were a lot of women on the staff, but it was still a predominantly male atmosphere. But at this stage of her life, her mother might not even be aware of it anymore, although Meg had noticed that, while always elegant and dignified, she sometimes wore rather aggressive colors, especially on various world platforms, where there was inevitably a splash of red or bright blue or yellow in the midst of a row of dull grey suits, as though the President—who was not without vanity—wanted to make very sure that the focus of people’s attention was precisely where she wanted it to be. There had actually been three female world leaders at a major summit meeting the previous year, and while watching a press availability, Meg had been left with the impression that, in a friendly sort of way, they were all making a strong effort to out-chic one another—and that her mother had won by a landslide.
“Are you really as exhausted as you look?” her father asked, once everyone else had stepped out and the two of them were alone again.
Which made her wonder exactly how exhausted she looked. “Rough week,” she said. A rough six weeks.
Once they landed at Andrews, it felt like taking another midterm, as she had to greet—in rapid succession—the base commander, a first lieutenant, a senior airman, a technical sergeant, an airman first class, a master sergeant, a captain, another senior airman, a lieutenant colonel, a few more airmen, and a full colonel. And she almost got faked out by a Navy commander who ended up in the mix somehow.
“What?” she asked, aware that her father was smiling as they got into their car.
He shook his head. “You three are very cute when you do that. You’re so scrupulous.”
She immediately flashed on Neal, during a campaign stop, saying, happily, “Hi there, Sailor!” —to a two-star Army general. Then, when he was gently corrected by someone, he snapped off a damn-near perfect salute, and said, “Hi there,
Major General! Airborne, sir!” They had been at Fort Bragg at the time, and when everyone unsurprisingly cheered, she heard Linda mutter, “The walking vote machine strikes again,” to one of her aides.
And when they pulled up in front of the South Portico, the walking vote machine himself was sitting on a black wrought iron bench near the stairs, throwing a tennis ball for Kirby to fetch while he waited for them. It was a little dislocating to see Maureen there with him, instead of Preston. Naturally, there were also plenty of agents, Marine guards, and White House staff people around, as well as some reporters and what appeared to be a few civilians waiting behind a rope line.
“Please don’t help me out,” she said in a low voice to her father, as he extended his hand. “I don’t want them to photograph me that way.”
He nodded, and she took a deep breath to force herself to concentrate on suppressing any pain grimaces, and then got out of the car, making a conscious point of smiling in the direction of the cameras.
Neal ran over to hug her, forceful enough to knock her off-balance. “Hi, Meggie!”
It was good to see him. Good to see Kirby. And even good to see the damn White House, and all that that involved. Kirby’s greeting was equally rambunctious, and she had to lean extra-hard on her cane to keep from toppling over.
Which was going to look awful, on film.
She wanted to fall back on the dismissive wave-and-duck-inside strategy, and she knew her father would have preferred that she do just that, but they were already asking questions, and if she didn’t pause, they might read too much into it.
So, she gave a few dull “yes, it’s great to be home” responses, nodding slightly at Hannah Goldman, who was standing at the outskirts of the crowd. Maureen was right behind her the whole time, but didn’t interfere otherwise, because they didn’t know each other very well, and she was probably trying to read her body language and figure out whether to help her out—or keep her distance.
“What can you tell us about the threats you received this week?” someone asked.
Hannah looked very alert, and she felt Maureen’s posture stiffen slightly.
She and her father maybe should have practiced for that one, on the plane. “I don’t know,” she said, and shrugged. “I was pretty busy with midterms, so the entire Eastern seaboard could have been consumed by locusts, and I probably wouldn’t have heard about it.”
Long May She Reign Page 43
