“Me, too.”
There was an awkward silence, and then they both spoke at once.
“Go ahead,” Peter said.
“I was just going to say that I’ll, uh, see you when I see you, and, um, I hope you have a good week. Penelope said you have a meeting in New York tomorrow…” Charlotte drifted off, not sure what else to say to the man she’d been married to for nineteen years.
“Yeah, I will be in New York tomorrow, and then I give a speech Wednesday in Chicago with two players from the Bears about the importance of staying in school, and then I’m in the San Francisco office for the rest of the week,” Peter said.
“That’s great. Anyone I would have heard of?” Charlotte asked.
“Two rookies—I’m sure you haven’t heard of them. I signed them last year while you were crazed with the midterms.”
“Oh, yeah. I’ve tried to block out that period in my life completely,” she said. Her party had lost twenty-four seats in the House and two Senate seats in the midterm elections the year before.
“A president’s party always loses seats in the midterm,” he said.
“I know, I know—the old ‘history was against you’ excuse. I’ve got that one down,” she said.
Peter laughed. “I will be at the state dinner next week,” he offered.
“Fantastic,” Charlotte said, a little too cheerfully to sound genuine. “Three hundred and fifty of our closest friends all gathered to honor the great nation of Panama,” she added.
He laughed. “Ralph wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Charlotte laughed, too. “Have a good week, Peter,” she said.
“Thanks, Charlotte.”
She hung up and felt lonelier than before. She wished she hadn’t called at all. Confronting your husband as the stranger he had become was a lot more depressing than remembering a time when he wasn’t a stranger at all.
She changed out of her clothes, now covered with dog hair, into an identical pair of black slacks and a black turtleneck. She slid into low heels and made her way downstairs. The three dogs walked a few steps ahead of her to where the twenty-car motorcade with flashing lights and men with automatic weapons hanging out of SUVs was waiting to escort her the two and a half miles to Roger and Stephanie’s house.
CHAPTER FOUR
Melanie
Melanie passed the motorcade and waved at the agents as she pulled into the White House. Sunday night work sessions were Melanie’s secret weapon. They allowed her to start Monday mornings on the offense, as they’d say during the campaigns. Late Sundays, she’d distribute what the staff called Melanie-grams.
To the White House press secretary, she sent an article from the Sunday paper about how calls seeking comment on Friday night went unanswered. Melanie circled the comment and wrote, “This is what interns and the night-duty officers are for!” To the domestic policy council, she sent an article from Science Times about organ transplants in cloned sheep, with a note asking them to schedule a policy time on medical ethics for the president. To the national security advisor, Melanie attached her own comments to Charlotte’s notes from a classified memo on the increased use of women and children as suicide bombers in Afghanistan. And to Vice President Neal McMillan, Melanie sent a recipe from Cooking Light for a jerk spice rub for ribs, which the vice president was famous for making at his ranch in New Mexico.
She had a separate stack for Ralph, most of it responses to things he’d sent in her direction. His strategy was to bury her in paper, but she didn’t have time to engage in the bureaucratic infighting Ralph had mastered in his fifteen years on the Hill. Ralph was a student of Lee Atwater, James Carville, and other great political gurus, and he saw in himself the same genius. All Melanie saw was his insecurity and overly partisan instincts. From Ralph’s perspective, Melanie monopolized Charlotte’s time and marginalized him. What Ralph didn’t understand was that Melanie didn’t need to monopolize the president’s time. She had something Ralph would never have: naked time in the steam room with the president.
Charlotte wasn’t a fan of the gym, but she loved the steam room. She said it helped her get out of her head and tap into her gut. It was there she told Melanie what she wanted done at the White House. The problem for Melanie, besides her aversion to nakedness and heat, was that it was impossible to take any notes in a steam room. Melanie was convinced that was why Charlotte gave her most important orders there.
Melanie glanced at her call log from the previous week. There were seventy-eight unreturned calls. She scanned the names. At least half of them were probably birthday calls, she thought.
One name stuck out and gave her a job in the pit of her stomach: Michael Robbins. He was an investigative reporter at one of the newsmagazines. She had become well acquainted with Michael during the Harlow administration. His specialty was breaking the news when a high-ranking government official was about to get indicted. Every press secretary in Washington, D.C., cringed when his name showed up in the inbox. The message for Melanie simply said, “Call ASAP.”
Melanie looked at the Boston cell-phone number and recognized it as his personal number. She lifted the receiver of the phone on her desk and dialed. Her call went straight to voice-mail.
Of course. I called from a blocked number, she thought. Michael didn’t pick up his phone on Sundays unless he knew who was on the other end.
She dug her personal cell phone out of the Dior bag and entered his number quickly.
“There you are,” he answered on the first ring. “I knew you’d call.”
“Michael, is everything OK?” Melanie asked.
“I need to see you. Your girl’s in trouble, Melanie,” he said.
CHAPTER FIVE
Dale
Dale always knew when Charlotte was on the phone.
It was the only time Peter ever looked as if he felt guilty.
Charlotte was lonely, and if she wasn’t the president and he the first husband, they would have been the type of couple who would have divorced and remained friendly enough to meet for lunch once a month. But they were not a normal couple.
Dale jumped out of bed when she heard Peter speaking in the tones reserved for his wife. She pulled on a robe and started separating their tangled clothes from where they’d been flung hours earlier.
Dale and Peter never took stupid chances. They were careful not to tempt fate. She never traveled to Washington, Connecticut, when his kids planned to sleep at his rented house. She refused his pleas to stay with him at the residence when Charlotte was out of the country. He never went to her apartment or her hotel room. But they were both growing anxious. Charlotte hadn’t set up a reelection campaign yet, and Dale sometimes wondered if she knew about their affair. Part of her would be relieved to have things out in the open. Peter could move out of the White House. They could have more than secret meetings and private moments. They could have a life together.
As she stepped into the shower, she heard him laughing at something Charlotte said about the state dinner the following week. Dale had been invited. In itself, that wasn’t strange. The White House always invited one or two members of the press corps to each state dinner. But because of her aggressive reporting on several of Charlotte’s Cabinet appointees and a general unease with her frequent scoops, Dale wasn’t exactly high on their list of favorite reporters. She was invited to bring a guest, and she planned to invite Brian Watson, the new Pentagon reporter. Dale made a mental note to e-mail him first thing in the morning.
Just as she was starting to worry that Peter was still chatting with Charlotte, the shower door opened, and he joined her.
She smiled all the way back to the airport the next morning. She planned to spend her day off getting organized and shopping for a dress for the state dinner. Brian had replied immediately to her invitation and was thrilled about coming to the dinner.
She hoped he wouldn’t get the wrong impression. For the most part, her friends had stopped trying to set her up after their efforts all
ended without success. She often agreed to go on first dates—to dinners with other correspondents or producers on the White House beat or daytime dates to museums or baseball games. She felt she had to maintain some charade of life as a single girl, but she never accepted invitations to second dates. She had few female friends, so no one did much prying about her status. Her mother was the only person she’d confided in about her affair with Peter, and only because she’d begun to worry when she couldn’t reach Dale over the weekends. Her mother was so concerned about what would happen to Dale if word of her affair ever became public that she didn’t even share her daughter’s secret with Dale’s father.
On the night of the state dinner, Dale met Brian at the network’s Washington bureau. He was known as the “male Dale” for being just as much of a workaholic as she was, but that didn’t bother him.
Dale wore a long, sleeveless red silk dress with an open back—a little sexy for a night out in Washington, but everything else she’d seen at Neiman’s was black or beige and looked like mother-of-the-bride garb. The dinner was to honor the president of Panama, but it fell on Valentine’s Day, so Dale figured she could get away with wearing red.
Heads turned as Dale walked through the newsroom dressed for the formal affair. In a business suit or jeans and a T-shirt, Dale was a striking woman whose good looks rarely went unnoticed. With her hair swept off her face in a loose updo, her makeup expertly applied, and her elegant evening gown clinging to her petite curves, she was traffic-stopping gorgeous. She’d inherited the best of her mother’s Greek genes and her father’s Irish genes. She had olive skin, bright green eyes, and long, straight chestnut hair.
“You clean up pretty well,” Brian said to her.
“Thanks. You, too.” She laughed. “Ready?”
“Let’s do it.”
They entered the White House residence through the East Wing with the other dinner guests. As Dale and Brian passed through the entrance and walked toward the coat check, a military aide greeted them and directed them to the receiving line. Every guest was invited to have a picture taken with the president and Peter. Dale smiled at the members of Congress as they snapped pictures of the residence. Official White House functions had a way of turning even the most cynical Washingtonians into starry-eyed tourists. Dale spotted members of Charlotte’s Cabinet, a few Hispanic celebrities, and members of the diplomatic corps jockeying for spots in the photo line.
“Let’s get our picture taken,” Brian suggested.
“I’ve done it a million times. Let’s just get a drink and do some people watching,” Dale said.
Brian looked crushed. “Come on, Dale. Who knows when I’ll be invited back here? Come through the photo line with me,” he pleaded.
“I’m going to pass, but you should go through by yourself. Tell the president about your last trip to Afghanistan—she’d be really interested.”
“I can’t go through alone,” Brian whined.
“Sure you can.” Dale laughed.
“Please? I need the White House insider to introduce me to the Kramers.”
Dale reluctantly agreed to go through the receiving line with Brian. He looked like a little kid as he gazed at the well-known faces. As they neared the president and Peter, Dale grew anxious.
“When we get there, we should keep moving,” she said to Brian. “They have to do this all night.”
As soon as Peter turned to look at her, Dale realized her mistake. He stared at her with a mix of such blatant affection and possessiveness that Dale half expected Charlotte to smack him. She averted her eyes and said, “Good evening, Madam President, Mr. Kramer.” Charlotte didn’t look at her but instead took Brian warmly by the arm and stood between her cheating husband and Brian for a photo. Peter leaned in toward Dale before she could escape and said, “Meet me in the Family Theater in twenty minutes.” She spun around to face him to see if he was joking, but he’d turned his gaze to the couple behind her.
Dale knew instantly that it was a terrible idea to meet Peter in the Family Theater. She also knew that she would be there in exactly twenty minutes. Brian was giddy with excitement about being at the state dinner. He was taking pictures with his cell phone and sampling every appetizer offered to him. Dale made her escape.
“I’ve got to make a quick call,” she told him.
“No way. No work tonight. Not even you, Dale,” he protested.
“It’ll just be a second,” she said, sliding her cell phone out to see the messages that she knew would be there from Peter.
“Where r u,” he had texted.
She made her way down the stairs and walked quickly toward the theater. People were milling around outside the Library and the China Room, but the hall outside the Family Theater was empty. She nodded at Peter’s agent and walked into the theater. Her eyes were still adjusting to the darkness when Peter came up from behind and started kissing her neck and bare back.
“Not here!” she said.
“Why? Are you on a date?” Peter teased.
“Yes, I am on a fake date, so that people will stop debating whether I’m a lesbian workaholic or just a workaholic who can’t get laid.” She pushed him away. “Seriously, Peter, not here. Your wife is up there, my colleague is up there, and your guests are touring the residence. People could walk in at any moment. We shouldn’t even be in here.”
He looked amused. “I told the agents to gun down anyone who tried to come in.”
Dale shook her head. “You’re crazy!”
He put his arms around her and traced circles on her bare back. “Relax,” he said. She leaned her head against his chest and breathed in the smell of his shampoo and his deodorant and his toothpaste. She could smell that he’d been drinking. She looked up at him.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
His hands were still on her bare back. And then they slid her dress off her shoulders, and he was kissing her, and she gave in and kissed him back.
“Stop,” she said halfheartedly as they moved to the floor. “We really should not be doing this here,” she tried one last time.
As was always the case with Peter, he got what he wanted with her. Afterward, Dale pulled her hair into a ponytail and smoothed her dress down.
“You are out of control,” she said, “and you ruined my hair.”
“Your hair looks better like that,” he said, leaning over to kiss her while he tucked in his shirt with one hand and reached for his jacket with the other.
“That was the dumbest thing we have ever done,” Dale told him. She was furious at herself for letting it happen.
She put her hand on the door to go out the way she’d come in, but just before she opened it, she heard voices in the hall outside the theater.
It sounded like Charlotte.
She couldn’t tell whom she was talking to, but if Peter was in the Family Theater with her, it was a safe bet that Charlotte was no longer in the receiving line.
CHAPTER SIX
Charlotte
Charlotte cornered Roger in the hallway outside the Family Theater. Since the state dinner fell on Valentine’s Day, the residence was covered with red roses. Charlotte hated red.
“Roger, I’m not asking you to come with me to Afghanistan, I’m telling you. I still have that authority, don’t I?” she asked playfully.
“Yes, you do, Charlotte, and usually, I take my orders from you, but right now, I have a higher calling,” Roger said.
“There’s a higher calling than visiting the troops and being there for the election?” Charlotte asked.
“Yes. My wife. Stephanie found a lump in her breast, and we’re waiting to find out if it’s cancer.”
“Oh, my God! I’m so sorry. Is that why she isn’t here tonight? I feel awful. What can we do? Are you seeing the best doctors? Let’s go call her!”
Charlotte felt like an idiot for being demanding. She relied on Roger for so much that she felt a flash of anxiety that the center of his universe would be somewhere other than the work
they were doing together.
“God, Roger, what are you doing here? Go home to Stephanie. Please. I need to go find my husband, anyway. We are supposed to pretend that we enjoy each other’s company on nights like tonight.”
“Charlotte, don’t,” Roger said.
“Don’t what?” Charlotte asked.
“Don’t act like I’ve rejected you and you don’t care. I have not rejected you, and I can see on your face that I have disappointed you, and I hate it. There is nowhere I’d rather be than with those guys—and with you—and you know it. But I need to be there for her. She was there for me, and I need to be there for her now.”
“Of course you do. I completely understand. I would do the same,” Charlotte said, forcing a smile.
He reached to pull her into a bear hug. She hugged him back.
“And that’s why I love you, Roger—you’re so decent. You always do the right thing. Stephanie is lucky.”
“So is Peter,” Roger said, but even as he said it, he knew it wasn’t a plausible statement.
Charlotte laughed. Roger just smiled at her and hugged her closer than he would have if anyone had been watching.
Charlotte took a deep breath and hugged him back for a few seconds before releasing him and pushing him away. “Go home. I insist. If I can’t handle the Panamanians on my own, we’ve got a very serious problem on our hands,” she said.
Roger laughed. “Are you sure you don’t mind?”
“Yes. And I can’t believe you didn’t tell me right away. Please tell Stephanie that I’d like to come see her whenever she’s in the mood for a visitor.”
“Thanks, Charlotte. As soon as we get through this, you know I’ll be back one thousand percent.”
“I know.”
Roger turned to go, and she stood in the hall watching him walk toward the West Wing. Charlotte noticed that her guests had all migrated to the floor above, so she hurried upstairs to take her seat at the head table for dinner. She had no idea what was on the menu or who would provide the evening’s entertainment. Formal dinners were typically the responsibility of first ladies, but since she didn’t have anyone to fill that role, the White House social secretary made all the decisions. As she entered the Cross Hall at the top of the stairs, Sam appeared and gently directed her to her seat.
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