American Rhapsody

by Joe Eszterhas

  “What are you doing here anyway?” he asked.

  She told him about the cigar she’d smoked the night before and how she had told Nelvis and how Nelvis was going to get her one of the president’s.

  “I’ll give you one.” He smiled. He led her to his stash and handed her one.

  “It’s big,” she said.

  “I like big cigars.”

  “So do I,” she said, looking into his eyes.

  He kissed her and lifted her sweater. He fondled her breasts with his mouth. She put her hands on Willard and empowered him. She knelt down . . . and after a while, he stopped her again. This time, at least, there had been no phone call.

  “Happy New Year,” he said, buttoning himself up. He gave her a long, soulful kiss.

  She gave him her unlisted phone number again.

  “This is the last time I’m giving it to you,” she said.

  He went into the bathroom. She started out. She saw him through the open door. Willard was in his hand. He was bringing Willard to closure over the bathroom sink.

  A week later, another Sunday afternoon, her phone rang at home. She picked it up, but there was no one on the line. It rang again minutes later, but her answering machine clicked on. The caller said nothing. She picked the phone up and said, “Hello?”

  “Ah. I guess you are there.”

  She thought it was a college friend. “Yeah, I am,” she said casually. “How are you? What’s goin’ on?”

  “I don’t know. You tell me.”

  “Holy shit!” she said. “It’s you!”

  He really laughed.

  “Where are you? What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Well, I’m going to work in about forty-five minutes.”

  “You want some company?”

  “That’d be great.” He laughed. She gave him her office extension number, and he said he’d call her. She drove through a blizzard to get there, then sat at her desk and waited. When he called, he said that she should pass by his office, casually carrying papers. He’d be out there and it would look like they’d bumped into each other.

  But when she got to the Oval Office door, he wasn’t there. A Secret Service agent was.

  “I’ve got some papers for the president,” she said.

  The Secret Service agent led her inside. He was sitting behind his desk, smiling.

  “You can close the door,” he said to the Secret Service agent. “She’ll be here awhile.”

  He asked her if she wanted something to drink. She knew what that meant by now—a move into his bathroom, off the hallway leading from the Oval Office to his private study.

  He led her into the bathroom, held her, and kissed her.

  “I want to go down on you,” he said.

  She felt as if she were going into shock. “No,” she said. “Please.”

  “I want to go down on you,” he said again, more insistently this time.

  Oh my God! Oh my God! This was s-o-o-o unreal! The president of the United States wanted to go down on her! Her! Big Mac and Pig Mac and all the other awful names they had called her. She knew from reading Gennifer Flowers’s book how good he was at cunnilingus.

  “You can’t,” she said to him.

  “Why not?”

  “I’ve got my period.”

  “Oh no!” he said.

  “I know,” she said. She knelt down . . . and after a while, he stopped her.

  Afterward, he was chewing on a cigar. Then he had the cigar in his hand and he was holding the wet cigar the way she’d seen him hold Willard when Willard was a little wet.

  She looked at the cigar and she looked at him and she said, “We can do that, too, sometime.”

  He smiled.

  Four or five days later, around midnight, he called.

  “What are you wearing?” he asked her.

  She knew what he wanted. Gennifer’s book recounted how much he liked phone sex . . . how much he liked Gennifer talking dirty to him.

  She talked dirty to him in her Marilyn Monroe voice. She started touching herself, and she knew he was playing with Willard. His breathing became heavier. She thought they almost came together.

  “Sweet dreams,” he said, and hung up.

  The Sunday after they’d had phone sex for the first time, she bumped into him by the elevator in a West Wing hallway. She was having a bad hair day and wore a black beret. He asked her to join him in the Oval Office.

  When they got there, she said, “Is this just about sex? Or do you have some interest in getting to know me as a person? If it’s just about sex, it’s okay. But you have to let me know.”

  He said, “What?” and laughed a little bit.

  “You never even ask me questions about myself.”

  He looked deep into her eyes and said, “I cherish the time I have with you.”

  He put his arm around her and said, “I love your beret. It frames your cute little face so beautifully.”

  He said, “You have no idea what a gift it is to me to spend time with you and talk to you. I cherish our time together, I really do. It’s very lonely here. People don’t understand that.”

  He told her how much pain he was in—his back was hurting again, but worse than that, he said, he had just been informed of the death of the first American serviceman in Bosnia.

  She felt suddenly reassured. He was such a caring and sensitive man, so obviously moved that a soldier had been killed as a result of an order he’d given.

  As he moved her toward the hallway and the bathroom, she started to tell him that. But he kissed her suddenly and passionately, before she could say anything.

  “I feel so stupid standing here in this dumb hat.”

  “It’s not a dumb hat. It’s a cute hat. I like it.”

  She knelt down . . . and then they heard someone in the Oval Office. He shoved Willard inside his pants, zipped up quickly, and hurried into the Oval Office. She had to laugh as she watched him go. Willard looked like the Alien, ready to burst through his clothes.

  He ducked back out of the Oval Office and said she had to leave because he had a meeting. He whisked her through a back door to his aide Nancy Hernreich’s office and gave her a deep and passionate kiss good-bye. She left and tried to go into the West Wing hallway, but the door was locked. She went back into Nancy Hernreich’s office.

  She was startled to see him still there, sitting on Nancy Hernreich’s couch, alone, staring at nothing. He had Willard in his hand and was closuring himself. She watched him with Willard a moment and then she smiled and stepped to her Handsome and kissed him . . . as he kept moving Willard back and forth with his hand.

  The next Sunday, February 4, she was sitting at her desk when he called her from the White House residence and told her he’d be going to the Oval Office in an hour and a half.

  He said he’d call her when he was leaving the residence upstairs in the White House. She watched the clock. An hour and a half passed, then two, then two and a half . . . and just when she thought he’d blown her off, three hours later, he called.

  She suggested they bump into each other “accidentally on purpose,” like they had before. They “bumped into each other” in the hall and went through the Rose Garden and into the Oval Office. He walked her right back to his private study and kissed her. She was wearing a long dress that buttoned from neck to ankle. He unbuttoned all the buttons and took the dress off. She took her bra and panties off and was naked for the first time with him. But she still had her black combat boots on.

  “They’re just like Chelsea’s,” he said.

  He told her how beautiful she was and put his hand between her legs. She had an orgasm and then she knelt down . . . and after a while he stopped her. They got dressed and they went back to the Oval Office.

  “Are you sure this isn’t just about sex?” she asked him, smiling.

  His eyes seemed to her to tear up. He said, “I don’t ever want you to feel that way; that’s not what this is.”

  She told
him then about Andy Bleiler. She told him that Andy was married and that she sometimes felt he was just using her sexually.

  He listened closely as she talked about Andy, and when she was finished, he said, “He’s such a jerk.”

  She felt that he really cared, that he had really listened. Before she left, she went around the side of his desk and gave him a long hug. He kissed her arm and said he’d call her.

  She said, “Yeah, well, what’s my phone number?”

  He rattled off both her home and office numbers perfectly.

  “Okay,” she said, “you got an A,” and left.

  When she got back to her desk, her phone rang.

  “I just wanted to tell you,” he said, “you’re a really neat person.”

  She felt, for the first time, that they had become friends. So she didn’t understand, in the days afterward, why he didn’t glance at her or smile at her when he saw her. She felt something was wrong. She was hoping he’d call her on Valentine’s Day, but he didn’t. When he called her at her apartment on the Monday after Valentine’s Day, February 19, and she heard his voice, she knew for certain something was wrong.

  “Can I come and see you?” she asked.

  “I don’t know how long I’m going to be here.”

  She drove to the White House quickly, gathered a bunch of papers at her desk, and headed for the Oval Office. She told the Secret Service agent outside his door that she had papers for the president to sign.

  Handsome was sitting behind his desk. He looked pale and depressed.

  He said, “Sit down, dear.” She hated the word dear. It was a word, she thought, that only old people used.

  He said he had been thinking and that what was going on between them “wasn’t right.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t want to hurt Hillary and Chelsea. I want to work on my marriage.”

  She started to cry and plead with him, telling him how strongly she felt about him, telling him they were good for each other and needed each other.

  “No,” he repeated, “this isn’t right.” And then he said, “I don’t want to be like that schmuck in Oregon.”

  Andy Bleiler, she thought. Here was the president of the United States comparing himself to Andy Bleiler! She was sorry now she’d ever told him about Andy.

  “You know,” he said to her, “if I were twenty-five years old and not married, I would have you on the floor back there in three seconds.”

  “I don’t understand!” she cried.

  “You’ll understand when you’re older,” he said. “We can still be friends.” He gave her a hug and she tried to kiss him.

  “We can’t do that anymore,” he said.

  The telephone rang and he picked it up. “I’ve got to take this call,” he said to her.

  It was a sugar grower, he whispered to her, and he was about to sign legislation that would hurt the sugar industry.

  “When I screw somebody”—he smiled at her—“I like to tell ’em first.”

  She left then, crying. She’d knelt down for him three times, she’d let him play with her body, and now he’d dumped her. But she was in love with him! He was Andy Bleiler all over again, saying he felt guilty about cheating on his wife and child. But that gave her some hope, too. As many times as Andy Bleiler had broken up with her because he felt guilty about cheating, he’d always come back to her to cheat some more. Her only hope now was that the president of the United States would turn out to be like Andy, who’d treated her terribly for years.

  She told her mother and her aunt Debra that Handsome had ended their relationship, and, while they could plainly see her pain, they were relieved. She hadn’t said a word to them about Willard; all she’d mentioned was the flirting and kissing. But they’d seen the color photograph of the president of the United States next to her bed and were worried for her.

  A week after Handsome told her it was over, he called her at home. He had seen her in the hallway, he said.

  “You looked so skinny,” he said.

  She offered to drive down to the White House right away to see him.

  “I’ve got to help Chelsea with her homework,” he said.

  A week or two later, she saw him again as she was giving a girlfriend a White House tour. He was wearing blue jeans, a denim work shirt, and a baseball cap. He had been in the White House theater with Hillary. She introduced him to her girlfriend and picked pieces of popcorn off his shirt.

  In late March, she cut her hand on a file cabinet and went to see the White House doctor. Next morning, she saw the doctor with Handsome, who’d been jogging and was feeling nauseous. The doctor asked her how her hand was and Handsome asked what had happened to it. He called her that night at her desk and said, “I’m sorry you hurt your hand.”

  He asked her, over the phone, to join him and see a movie in the White House theater. It’d be too risky, she told him. There’d be other people there.

  “You’re right. It is too risky.”

  “What if I see you this weekend?” she asked.

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  That Sunday, he called her at her desk at lunchtime. The Secret Service agent led her inside the Oval Office. He wasn’t there. The agent poked his head into the hallway and they heard the toilet flush. They were embarrassed. Word around the White House was that the president was suffering from an intestinal flu. He came out of the bathroom sweating, wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt. The agent left.

  He kissed her as soon as the agent was gone. In his hand, he had an unlit cigar that he’d been chewing.

  “I’ve missed you so much,” he said. His fingers were deep inside her. He was still holding the chewed, unlit cigar in his other hand. He put the cigar inside her and began moving it up and down, back and forth. She had an orgasm.

  He took the cigar out of her and put it into his mouth.

  “It tastes good.” He smiled.

  He kissed and held her again. When she reached to unzip Willard, he stopped her.

  She had the feeling that he “wanted to focus on me sexually.” He also, of course, had the intestinal flu. She was elated as she went home that day.

  Their breakup had lasted six weeks. His guilt had lasted six weeks . . . until his appetite for her overcame it. The good news was that he was just like Andy Bleiler. The bad news was that he was just like Andy Bleiler.

  Five days later, on Friday, April 5, she was called into her boss’s office. Timothy Keating was staff director for Legislative Affairs. He told her she was fired. Her last day would be the following Monday.

  She would start Monday as an assistant at the Pentagon, writing press releases. Keating didn’t use the word fired. He said she was merely “being given a different opportunity.” But she knew what it meant.

  “You’re too sexy to be working here,” Keating said. “The Pentagon job is much sexier.”

  She felt as if her world were shattering. She knew why she was being “transferred.” She and Handsome had tried to be careful, tried to stay away from the windows in the Oval Office and the study, confining their fooling around to the hallway and the bathroom as much as possible. But word, she knew, always got around the White House quickly. She had been around him too much. Secret Service agents had seen her walking into and leaving his office, sometimes by the back door.

  And she knew there were women on the staff, many of them Hillary’s friends, some of them his former or present lovers, who were vigilant about observing who was going into his office. They were the women she called “the Meanies.” She knew, too, that these women—so unlike her in style and clothing, corporate and unsmiling, religiously professional—were especially vigilant at this moment, April 1996, seven months before the presidential election. She knew the close call he’d had with Gennifer during the last election. The Meanies would make sure there was no “bimbo eruption” this time, while he ran against Bob Dole, her next-door neighbor.

  And she knew how much he wanted to win against Bob Dole, who
, he said, was “an evil, evil man. He likes cutting food stamps—he likes it. He enjoys cutting Medicare. He relishes slashing education. He loves cutting immigrants. It’s how he gets his kicks.”

  She cried all weekend. He called her Sunday afternoon.

  “Can I come see you?” she whimpered.

  “Tell me what happened first,” he said. She told him.

  “I bet this has something to do with me,” he said. “Okay. Come on over.” He had just come back from attending Easter services with Hillary.

  She knew she looked like a wreck, but she went over right away. A Secret Service agent was standing at the door as she arrived with her sheaf of cover-story papers. He wouldn’t let her in. He said he’d have to check with a staff member, one of the Meanies. She said, “Please—I’ll only be a couple minutes,” and he relented.

  Handsome looked s-o-o-o sad when she saw him. His friend Commerce Secretary Ron Brown had been killed in a plane crash four days earlier. She started to cry. She told him about her “transfer” again and he got angry and upset.

  “Why did they have to take you away from me?” he said. “I trust you so much.” He got up and hugged her for a long moment and moved her to the hallway.

  “If I win in November, you can come back here just like that!” he said. He snapped his fingers. She felt a tiny bit better, smiling through her tears.

  “Really?” she asked.

  “I promise,” he said. “You can have any job you want.”

  “Can I be the special White House assistant for blow jobs?”

  He really laughed and she laughed a little bit—she was still crying, feeling “devastated.”

  He started kissing her and he took her sweater off. He fondled her breasts and took her breasts out of her bra. She took her bra off.

  “Mr. President, you have a phone call!” someone in the Oval Office said. He broke away from her quickly and went out into the Oval Office. She put her bra and sweater back on. Then he was back suddenly, and he saw that she’d gotten dressed.

  “Damn,” he said. “Why did you put your clothes back on?” He was smirking at her.

  He led her into the study and took the phone call. It was Dick Morris, his political adviser. As he spoke to Morris, he let his pants drop and pulled his underwear down. Handsome didn’t look at her, just gazed off as she knelt down . . . . She didn’t know exactly why, but this was the first time that she felt like a whore. Like she was “servicing” him. Handsome hung up and watched her with Willard. He said nothing.