“Anyway,” LaLa said, grabbing her Coach shoulder bag, “I’d better get going. Long day ahead of us tomorrow, especially after that little run-in with the press.”
“Don’t even mention it,” Gina said, her smile shrinking directly in proportion to her thoughts of that encounter with those reporters.
“Don’t let those fools steal your joy,” LaLa warned. “Those reporters were as wrong as they could be to even suggest such a thing. And the way those cable news channels are playing it up now is shameful. They knew you were joking. Hell, you even laughed before you gave that answer. I even laughed.”
Gina nodded, although it didn’t assuage her concern. “I know.”
“Anyway, girl,” LaLa said, heading for the door, “see you tomorrow.” And then, thinking about that lonely, empty home she was heading to, she thought of something. “And G,” she said, turning back, her face now a little more circumspect, “don’t forget to ask Dutch about that man.”
This threw Gina. She frowned. “What man?”
“You know. The one we saw on TV with the president and Speaker of the House today. His point person on immigration reform. That guy from Florida.”
“You mean Crader McKenzie? The former senator from Florida?”
“Yeah, him. Although more like Hunk McKenzie to me,” LaLa said with a smile. “You said you’d find out more about him from Dutch. If he was married, that sort of thing.”
“I’ll find out, but I don’t know, girl. I heard Crader McKenzie was a tough nut to crack. He’s good looking, I’ll give him that, but he’s always been all business the few times I’ve been around him. I’ve heard he doesn’t suffer fools well and has about as much patience as a bull in a china shop.”
“But is he a married bull, that’s what I want to know? Does that bull have a steady lady?”
Gina smiled, waved her hand in the air. “I’ll find out.”
“Thanks G. Not that I want anything serious.” Then she frowned. “I don’t really know what I want, to tell you the truth. It’s just that after my breakup with Demps, after being with him for so long, it’s been hard to be alone. To go to bed alone. Know what I’m saying?”
Gina nodded. “I know. But why Crader? Especially how you said repeatedly that you have a preference for black men. Especially how you wouldn’t even entertain getting together with anybody I suggested for you. I’m surprised a man like Crader would catch your eye. He’s great looking and all that, even I can see he’s a very attractive man, but why a no-nonsense, button-down dude like him?”
“Maybe because he is no-nonsense,” LaLa said. “Maybe because Demps wasn’t button-down and you see where that got me.”
Gina looked at her friend. “Heard from Demps at all?”
“Not at all, girl,” LaLa replied. “And don’t want to, either. I heard he found him some skank from the Jersey Shores who had him twisted right around her little finger. But that’s his problem,” she said in a way that made Gina know the pain was still there. “And that’s the thing. When I saw that Crader person on TV with your husband, something just clicked in me. It was like he seemed familiar, like I knew him when I knew I didn’t know a thing about him.”
Gina looked at LaLa. “That sounds crazy, La.”
LaLa laughed. “I know it does. But it’s true. But gots to run, for real this time. Christian wants to take me to a movie tonight and I need to go home and change first.”
Gina looked at her. “But you’re going with him?”
“Of course I am. Christian makes me laugh for some reason. I enjoy his company.”
“And I’ll bet he enjoy yours.”
LaLa stared at her friend. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means what’s wrong with Christian?”
“As a friend or something else?”
“Something else.”
“Get real, G. I’ve got almost ten years on that boy. What I’ll look like dating some twenty-five year old, or however old he is?”
“You’ll look like an intelligent sister having the time of your life with an intelligent, caring, wonderful young man. That’s what you’ll look like.”
LaLa shook her head. “Bye, girl. See you when I see you.”
“Or see ya’, don’t wanna be ya’?” Gina asked, and LaLa laughed as she left.
Gina stood there momentarily, thinking about her best friend and how coming to DC was possibly the worst thing that had ever happened to her. Before Gina married Dutch and became First Lady, LaLa was her business partner at Block by Block Raiders, a social justice agency in Newark, New Jersey that helped gang bangers and prostitutes change their lives around. LaLa was happy and in love with Dempsey, another partner in the agency, and all seemed right with the world.
But when Gina moved to DC and saw the sharks circling, she panicked. And wanted her best friend at her side. And that was why LaLa and her longtime beau Dempsey agreed to move to DC too and work on her staff.
But being around power of such high magnitude would either make your inner core stronger, or make you a prey to its lusts. Demps fell prey to its lusts and he and LaLa were on the skids within a few months of their arrival. When LaLa found out he was unfaithful, that was the end of that.
But it wasn’t the end of Gina’s guilt. She often wondered if her friends would still be together had they remained in Newark. LaLa didn’t think so. If he would cheat in DC with the bright glare of lights in a town like this, she reasoned, he’d cheat anywhere.
But whenever Gina saw that pain deep within LaLa’s eyes, it still gnawed at her. But she exhaled. Worrying about other people’s problems wasn’t helpful at all, especially now that she had her own major league problems to contend with.
And that was why she left the sitting room, in search of her husband.
She found him still in the Nursery, rocking the cradle as Little Walt began to fall asleep. The Nurse they hired to watch over their son, Penelope Riley, was seated in a rocker working quietly with her crochet needles, her dark-skinned, wrinkled hands long and thin.
What Gina liked most about Nurse Riley was that she never attempted to intrude herself into her and the president’s quiet times with their son. She made no suggestions nor gave any advice. They were the parents and she treated them as parents. She spoke when she was spoken to and every time Gina looked at the closed-circuit television monitors (which she could access with a code throughout the White House), the nurse was always appropriately and lovingly caring for their son.
And although Gina originally objected to hiring a nurse at all, certain that they wouldn’t need one, Dutch was firm and more realistic about it. They both had schedules they had to keep in their duties as POTUS AND FLOTUS, and there was no way they could comply with those duties and watch their son the way he deserved to be watched.
They, in fact, would often not even be at the White House to constantly keep watch. And since they both had already agreed that no way were they taking their son all over DC to be paraded in front of cameras, somebody had to be put in place.
Nurse Riley, a retired pediatric nursing supervisor in her mid-fifties, with impeccable credentials, seemed the perfect choice. She was calm, caring, and seemed to adore babies. Besides, she came highly recommended by Dutch’s best friend and chief of staff Max Brennan whom, Gina had to admit, always had Dutch’s best interest at heart. Max couldn’t stand Gina, but he loved Dutch. So Gina agreed to give Nurse Riley, a tall black woman with the sweetest smile you’d ever want to see, the job.
Gina stood beside Dutch as they both looked down at Little Walt. Dutch looked at Gina, saw that she was still flustered, and placed his arm around her waist. “How are you holding up?” he asked her.
She could only shake her head. “What they’re saying on the news is so not true, Dutch,” she said. “It was a joke. I didn’t mean it and they knew I didn’t mean it. I even laughed. Some of the reporters even laughed. How could they think I was serious?”
Dutch pulled her closer against hi
m. “It’s all right.”
“They knew I wasn’t serious.”
Dutch was dying to know the details, but he also wasn’t about to make her feel as if he doubted for a moment that the story itself was bogus. He knew it was.
“What did you say?” he asked her.
She looked at him. “You haven’t seen it?”
“Don’t intend to, either.”
“They’re replaying it every ten seconds on cable news. And the commentary, Dutch.” She shook her head again. “It’s just deplorable.”
“Tell me what happened.”
Gina exhaled. She knew everything she did or said always impacted him, and that in the end he would be the one taking the brunt of the criticisms. But she never seemed able to hold her tongue. Especially when they were spewing such nonsense at her.
“A reporter asked me if Roman Wilkes was the father of our child,” she said and looked at Dutch. As usual, he revealed nothing. “And as soon as he asked it I knew I shouldn’t have responded, I knew I shouldn’t have. But how could I let a thing like that stand? Roman Wilkes? Seriously? Yeah, we were kicking it back in the day, remain friends to this day, but they know good and well me and Roman aren’t down like that anymore. But to dredge him up and claim he may be our child’s father was just too much, Dutch. And I had to say something.”
Gina looked down at their son. “And then that reporter said that Roman was the reason why I was hiding our son, hiding our son, that’s how he put it. Like we have our child in a basement or something, geez. Those people! It just got to me. So I joked it off. It was so ridiculous that I couldn’t see how else to respond. I gave it the way they were giving it to me. It was a joke. They were a joke.”
Dutch studied her face. It was a wonderful face, he thought, with her big brown eyes that always told her story. She could tell him until she was blue in the face that she was okay, that he needn’t worry at all about her. But all he had to do was look in her expressive eyes to know if that was true. And right now, staring deep into those eyes, he knew that she was a long way from okay.
“What exactly did you say?” he asked her.
“I said something like ‘yeah, you figured it all out, you’ve got me now, you figured out the whole scheme.’ Something like that. But Dutch I was laughing. I was--”
“Just stop it right now,” he said with anger in his voice. “You hear me? You don’t have to justify anything to me or anybody else. You’re my wife and this is our son. We birth this child whether they can accept it or not. End of discussion.”
“But why would they even suggest something like that?”
“Who knows. Who the hell cares?”
Gina hesitated. “LaLa seems to think it’s because Little Walt’s skin tone is closer to my complexion than yours, which would be a ridiculous reason, but what else could it be? Maybe somebody described the baby to some reporter and that’s why they threw Roman’s name into the mix. Because he’s black too.”
“If they’re that ignorant,” Dutch said, “then that’s their problem. What we won’t do,” he said, as he saw that Walt was now asleep and he could therefore stop rocking the cradle, “is make their problem our problem. Understand?”
Gina nodded, although her eyes didn’t show reassurance. She was still stressed. That ludicrous accusation had her tense and unsure. And he knew exactly what she needed. What they both needed.
He glanced down, at her sizeable breasts, and then back up into her eyes. Only his look was now hooded, lustful.
“We need a serious stress reliever,” he said quietly, out of earshot of Nurse Riley.
At first Gina didn’t understand. Until she looked into his eyes. Then she understood perfectly. “And what kind of stress reliever do you propose?” she asked.
Dutch again looked down, at her breasts, imagining his mouth all over them. “I can show you better than I can tell you,” he said, his voice raspy. He looked up again. “Do you want me to show you?”
Gina’s heart began to pound in anticipation. “Yes,” she said, her voice by now a mere whisper itself. “I want you to show me.”
With his eyes remaining on hers, Dutch took her by the hand and walked her out of the Nursery.
Nurse Riley, who had been a non-entity in the room, suddenly became an almost animated life force. She looked up from her crocheting with what could only be described as disgust in her eyes.
Then she turned her gaze onto Little Walter in his cradle. And let out a harsh exhale.
THREE
Dutch slid his thick penis into her womanhood and began to gyrate her in a slow, steady rhythm. She was lying on her stomach, and he was on top of her, moving with ease in and out of her as she felt the sensual heat.
His hands were on either side of her, keeping his upper torso lifted off of her, as his naked, muscular body continued the rhythm, keeping it slow and easy, sliding his thick rod in and out of her with such a precision styled thrashing of her g-spot that it made her entire body feel as if it were being massaged.
Dutch closed his eyes as he fucked her, as he determined to forget all around him and focus on no one, on nothing but this wonderful feeling he always felt whenever he joined with his wife. It became so good to him, so wonderful to him that he lay down on top of her, kissing her bare back as his movements, his gyrations, began to increase.
“Gi-i-na,” he said out loud as the feelings intensified.
And Gina understood because she felt that intensity too. His rod was so long and so thick inside of her that she could feel his expansion against her shaft. And when it happened, when he made one hard push that took him all the way inside of her, her heart seemed to stop. The feeling was that intense.
And then he slid out again, resuscitating her.
Dutch was the only man who could ever make her feel this way. Just looking at his naked body. Just knowing that his long, thick rod was going to be fucking her. Just feeling his touch whenever they went to be together gave her a kind of calm, relaxing, floating sensation that no other man had ever come close to giving to her.
But that was exactly how she felt. As if she was levitating. As if his thrusts that caused her juices to flow in an almost out of control saturation were the very air she breathe. And as his penis continued to thrash into her vagina, increasing to a point where her body began to tighten in mere anticipation of climaxing, she squeezed their silk sheets as she released, as she just let it all go. She held nothing back.
Dutch didn’t hold back either as his manhood engorged to such a thickness that it felt momentarily stuck in place within the deep depths of her tightening walls. He released inside of her with a shutter, pouring into her, his penis now mobile, now excited, now turning a gradually increasing rhythm into a pound.
He pounded her, his balls slapping against her ass, his rod sunk so deep into her that he had to tighten his buttocks as the final push left every muscle in his body strained. And he couldn’t do it anymore. He collapsed on top of her. He had nothing left to give.
Within a few minutes of his collapse, however, he received word that Crader McKenzie was downstairs requesting to see him. If it had been anyone else, Dutch would have been upset by the disturbance. But it was Crader, a man he perhaps respected above any other man. He told his assistant to bring him to the Residence.
Gina remained collapsed as Dutch freshened up in the bathroom, put on a long, silk robe, and walked to the area known as the West Sitting Hall, but was in actuality their living room.
“Crader, how are you?” he asked as he extended his hand to his friend.
“You tell me,” Crader said, shaking his hand.
“What’s happened?”
“Jed Brightman,” Crader said.
“Sit down, sit down,” Dutch insisted as Crader took a seat on the sofa. Dutch sat on the second sofa opposite Crader. “Would you care for something to drink?”
“Anything strong would be greatly appreciated,” Crader said.
Dutch pressed the intercom that ret
rieved an aide for him. He gave the order and then he and Crader small-talked as the aide hurried over to the bar and prepared drinks. Dutch slouched down on the sofa, that sexual work-out with Gina causing his already exhausted body to desperately want sleep, but he knew Crader would not have come if it wasn’t serious.
Once the aide served them, and then left the room, he was ready to hear what he knew in the end would be more gamesmanship and political bickering that was beginning to define his second term.
“Now,” Dutch said after sipping from his glass of wine and sitting it on the sideboard, “what has our illustrious Speaker done this time?”
“Illustrious my ass,” Crader said, his drink still in his hand. “If I would have had a mallet on me when I saw him at dinner tonight, I declare I would have taken it and bitch-slapped that motherfucker.”
Dutch often forgot how Crader refused to change his bombastic personality despite spending six years in the Senate and later becoming a very successful businessman. “What happened?” he asked him.
“I was over at Marcel’s for dinner. Saw the Speaker there with one of his girlfriends, or excuse me, one of his staffers.” Dutch smiled. The very married Jed Brightman was known for tipping out a time or two with the ladies.
Crader continued. “I spoke to the man, said ‘hello, Mr. Speaker, how are things going with you this pleasant evening?’ I figure no problem, he’s a Democrat like us; he essentially wants what we want for America. I mean I know he’s a so-called blue-dog Democrat, a conservative from a conservative place, but he’s still a Democrat, right? So I just thanked him for agreeing to work with us on immigration reform. That’s all I did. And then all hell broke loose. He started ripping into me like you wouldn’t believe, telling me he didn’t care if I was the point man for the pope.”
Dutch frowned. “What?”
“That’s what he said, I declare he did.”
“Did he have too much to drink?”
“I refuse to blame his stupidity on his liquor. It was already in him or it wouldn’t have come out of him. The good book says that out of the abundance of the heart does the mouth speak and that man was speaking up a storm tonight. So he keeps on needling me, right, telling me he didn’t know why we were bowing to some Hispanic caucus with this White House conference on immigration because any immigration reform package would be dead on arrival as long as he ran the House of Representatives.”
DUTCH AND GINA: A SCANDAL IS BORN Page 2
