“Damage control,” Max said. And he didn’t need to say more.
Dutch, with his bouncing baby boy in his arms, sat on the sofa in the Residence, with Max and Allison on the opposite couch. Although Dutch, who was playful with his son, seemed to be only mildly paying attention to Allison’s resuscitation of the facts, Max was paying complete attention to Dutch.
Things were getting crucial for Max now and he saw in this latest scandal his chance, perhaps his only chance, to prove to Dutch that he doesn’t need the likes of that wife of his. She didn’t deserve a man like him, and Max was determined to make him see the light.
For the longest time Max could make no inroads. He tried, oh how he tried to get Dutch to see his point of view. But nothing worked.
And then that mutt of a child of theirs was born, and with his birth a scandal that now gave Max the one chance he needed. Now that questions were being raised, now that the media was determined to paint Gina as some kind of White House slut, Max wanted to take advantage of the opportunity. Because if she became discredited, if somehow Dutch could believe that she was sleeping around on him, things would truly change. Dutch would finally see the error of his ways and dump her like the trash she was. And Max would be right there, the way he usually was, to pick up the pieces.
Dutch was casually dressed in jeans and a Boston Red Sox jersey and he looked, it seemed to Max, ten years younger and just as adorable as he looked when Max first saw him on the soccer field at their prep school all those years ago. Back then Max was the smallest boy in the entire school and Dutch looked out for him. Now, he was determined to look out for Dutch.
He even risked exposing his secret by taking a glance down at Dutch’s crotch, and wondering, as he often did, how Gina must feel whenever that massive rod slid inside of her. Imagining, to his private shame, how he would feel, and how he could make Dutch feel. But then he dismissed such damnable thoughts, he was no gotdamn sissy, he said to himself, and moved his eyes away from Dutch, and back to Allison.
“We expected it to be a one day story,” Allison was explaining to the president. “Two days on the outside, sir. Especially after MSNBC played the full interview that clearly showed how the First Lady was joking. But it’s not the case.”
“They know she was joking,” Max said, “but it doesn’t matter to them anymore. It’s as if the joke’s on her now. This nothing of a story has legs, Dutch, unlike any story I’ve ever seen. They won’t let it die. You should hear them over on Fox. And now the heavy hitters are taking a swing at the bat. The Majority Leader is calling for your resignation and conservative groups are demanding that you divorce that sinful woman and find yourself a true lady.”
Dutch finally looked away from his grinning son, a son who had his tiny brown fingers pinching Dutch’s cheek. “Is there anything else?” Dutch asked.
Allison glanced at Max, and then back at the president. “I know you don’t want to dignify their nonsense, sir,” she started.
“And I’m not going to dignify it,” Dutch finished, his anger repressed for the sake of everybody in the room. In truth, he was livid.
“But you have to respond, sir,” Max interjected. “There’s no two ways about this. You have to. From Facebook to Twitter to every social media you can think of, this story is trending number one.”
“And the taglines are atrocious,” Allison said, flipping open her notebook and reading some of them: “Why no photos of the First Child? What are they hiding? Is he black or is he white? Is he human?” Allison paused after that one, too embarrassed to even look up at the president.
Dutch, however, was staring at her.
She continued. “What kind of child is this? Word around the Beltway is that he doesn’t even look biracial. Why is the First Lady ashamed of her son? Why does he look so black?” Allison looked at the president. “And those are the kind ones, sir.”
Dutch could hardly believe it. How could they think for a second that his son could belong to another man?
Dutch lifted his baby and laid the baby’s head on his broad shoulders. Little Walter, confused by the sudden movement, clung to his father. “Let me take him to the Nursery,” he said softly as he left the sitting room.
Allison looked at Max. “You saw that look on his face? He’s very upset. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him this upset.”
“Wouldn’t you be? After hearing those tags?”
“I know,” Allison said. “And I hated to read them to him, but he has to understand the stakes.”
“He understands them,” Max said. “He just refuses to accept them.”
Dutch returned and sat back down on the sofa. Although he appeared relaxed, Max could just feel his tension.
“Anything else we need to discuss?” he asked them.
Max looked at Allison with that look she knew, and hated, so well.
“I’ll be in my office if you need me, Mr. President.” She stood and left, hating the fact that Max always found a way to squeeze her out of the biggest decisions.
When she was gone, Max moved over and sat next to Dutch. “Look,” he said, “I know this is a difficult time for you. I know the last thing in this world you want to do is expose your child.” He placed his hand on his friend’s arm. “But it’s getting kind of critical.”
“This is nonsense, Max, and you know it. I can take a lot, and I have taken a lot around this town, but this trumped-up scandal here, this show us the baby bullshit, is going too far. Entirely too far!”
“If you could just release a photo---”
“No.”
“But why not?”
“Because a photo won’t be enough for those scavengers. They’ll claim it’s doctored. Or somebody else’s child. Then they’ll want a video. But they’ll claim it’s some actor, not our son at all. Or, even better, I can parade my child out in front of their cameras so that they can castigate him and treat him, not like the beautiful, adorable child he is, but a political football strategically placed for them to deride and belittle and kick around at their pleasure.” Dutch shook his head. “That’s not going to happen. Not to my son.”
Max began to rub Dutch’s shoulder in a massage Dutch actually needed. His emotions were so tight and so near-explosive that he needed Max’s calmness. “I understand what you’re saying, Dutch,” Max said. “You know I do. But it’s not just your political enemies. That’s the problem. We might have been able to ride this tide if it was just the opposition. But members of your own party are now demanding to see the child too.”
Dutch closed his eyes in disgust. He was beginning to believe that no president in the history of this republic has had to put up with what he had to put up with. And it was beginning to grate on his nerves.
“What do they want from me?” he asked with a kind of anguish exhale.
Max looked at Dutch, at the man who had been his best friend since childhood. And he could feel his pain. He reached over and removed a strand of that soft black hair of his that had fallen into his face. And that face, that gorgeous face he knew, and loved so well. And those lips. And that muscular chest. And further down, at those jewels in his pants.
Once, just after the marriage, Max had entered the Residence while Dutch was making love to Gina in the Billiards room of all places. He could hear him pounding into her and could hear her screaming in delight, and he nearly came just listening to the two of them. He looked down now, at Dutch’s midsection, and saw that bundle of joy that was so much a part of his dreams lately that he sometimes couldn’t grasp why.
He used to dream this way once a month maybe, whenever Dutch looked particularly adorable on any given day, and that look, that physique, stuck in his head.
But lately he couldn’t stop thinking about him, couldn’t stop dreaming about him. About being in Gina’s place. About imagining what Gina must have felt whenever she would reach out, like this, and rub her hand across Dutch’s powerful mound. Just lightly at first, and then hard enough to feel every ridge and bump and ult
imate smoothness. Just like so. Just like this. And then to squeeze.
Dutch’s eyes flew open when he felt his best friend’s hand squeeze his penis. He was so shocked, in fact, that he jumped from his seat. Max jumped up too, opening eyes that he didn’t even realize had closed, suddenly terrified that the secret he had kept buried for so many years was now, at this very moment, exposed.
But even his terror couldn’t match Dutch’s astonishment. He stared at his friend. “What the hell was that about, Max?” he wanted to know.
Max knew he had no choice, no choice at all, but to deny all. “What was what about?”
“Don’t you ever touch me like that again.”
Max frowned, deciding that he couldn’t, just couldn’t face that truth right now. Especially not with such a disgusted look all over Dutch’s face. “Touch you?” he asked with a nervous laugh in his voice. “What are you talking about?”
Dutch continued to stare at his friend. Never, not once, had he suspected it. And it seemed too inexplicable for him to take it all in. Too surreal.
They just stood there, the two friends, with each knowing that they stood on the precipice of something sad.
“As I was saying,” Max eventually said, choosing to just get back to normal rather than offering up any more denials and certainly no explanations, “members of your own party are jumping on the bandwagon too. They want to dispel rumors about the child’s ethnicity. Which, given the fact that Little Walt looks like a black boy, that could be problematic and play right into your critics’ hands.”
“What can be problematic?” Gina asked and both men turned in different directions as if they’d been caught in the act of something. Dutch moved away, toward the window, unable to wrap his brain around what his best friend had actually just done to him. Max moved toward her, smiling an almost painfully artificial smile. Which Gina immediately noticed.
“We were still wrestling with the photo release issue. I was just telling your husband that members of his own party were demanding something be released too.” Max’s heart was pounding, as he wondered what Dutch must think of him, but he was determined to keep it together.
Gina looked at Dutch. “And Dutch doesn’t want to release anything?”
“Right.”
“Neither do I,” Gina said, moving over to the sofa. “But I don’t see where we have much choice, honey,” she said as she looked at her husband. “They aren’t going to stop.”
Dutch turned around, his back against the window, his face devoid of its usual calm. “And no matter what we release, it won’t be enough.”
“I know. But maybe we can do some kind of a post card, with a picture of Little Walter and you and I. Maybe---”
“No, Gina. We aren’t turning our child into a collectable.”
Gina knew what he meant. The way the Washington press corps treated them was enough to make anybody sour. “But the fact still remains,” she said, “we’ve got to do something.”
Dutch exhaled, glanced at Max, and then nodded. “We’ll release one photo of Little Walt, and that’s it. I’ll not have my son paraded around like some guinea hen for all the world to see. He’ll not be a political prop for the Democratic party or a source of derision for anybody else.”
And Dutch, glancing once again at Max, that disgust, as it all was beginning to sink in, even stronger on his face, left the room.
Max, mortified by the fact that he had allowed himself to be exposed so completely, made his apologies to Gina for disturbing her Saturday, and left too.
Gina leaned back in a state of puzzlement, as she wondered what in the world that was all about.
SIX
Monday morning, as the first photo of the First Son was being released for the entire world to see, Gina lay in bed watching that very son on the Nursery’s CCTV. He was still asleep in bed, which meant, she thought with a smile, that he kept his mother’s hours. Unlike Daddy, who had already been to the White House gym and was now coming out of the shower freshly scrubbed and raring to go, looking ever so tanned and fit in his nakedness, while she was just turning over.
“Good morning,” she said as he moved toward his underwear drawer, his rod bouncing and seemingly expanding with his every movement.
“Awake?” he asked, staring at her as he moved.
“Just,” she said with a smile. She glanced down, at his thickness, and back up into his face. And it was that look on her face, that sincere, almost sensual-without-meaning-to-be-sensual look, which always did it for him. He walked past the drawer and toward the bed. Gina’s body began to relax in anticipation, because she knew what was coming next.
He got in bed with her, pulling the covers down and then back over both of them, as he drew her into his arms. She was in her sheer, silk nightgown, but it didn’t interfere with any plans of Dutch’s. He reached underneath it and placed one hand on her bare back, and the other hand on her bare backside, massaging it.
But instead of kissing her and then, as was usually his way, putting her underneath him, he just lay on his side holding her, inhaling her sweet smell, and staring into her eyes with a troubled look in his.
“You okay?” he asked her.
“Yes. Why?”
“You worried me last night.”
This surprised Gina. “Me? How?”
“You tossed and turned most of the night. You mumbled in your sleep.”
“Did I? I wasn’t aware of anything like that. I thought I slept well. What was I mumbling?”
“I couldn’t make it out.” Then he exhaled. “I know this photo release is difficult for you. For both of us. But I can’t have you obsessing on this nonsense, Gina. It’ll do neither one of us any good.”
Gina nodded. “I know, but . . . I should have ignored that reporter.” She looked up at Dutch, her eyes now troubled too. “Why didn’t I just ignore that reporter? Why didn’t I just ignore him when he asked me that ridiculous question? I know how they are. I knew I was probably walking into a trap. But I answered anyway. Even had the gall to jokingly answer. I mean, I was laughing for crying out loud, Dutch! I was laughing as I answered. But they still took my answer and ran with it as if I was as serious as a heart attack.”
“What did you expect them to do?” Dutch asked.
Gina looked at him more closely. For the first time in a long time she could see that her antics, as the press enjoyed calling them, was beginning to take a toll on him. And she realized, to her horror, that while she was beating herself up, he was probably inwardly beating her up too.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked him.
Dutch removed his hand from her butt and laid flat on his back. He was disturbed, and she knew it, and she was dying for him to be straight with her.
“What?” she asked, anxious for him to just spit it out.
“You said it yourself. You know how they are.” He looked at her. “I need you to understand that, Gina.”
“I do understand it.”
“No, you don’t. You keep saying you do, but you don’t. Not the way you have to understand it.”
“Dutch, what are you talking about?”
Dutch sat up and on the edge of the bed, his feet once again touching down, his naked body barely covered. He ran his hand through his silky black hair. Gina had never seen him so agitated.
“What is it, Dutch?”
He turned to face her, moving so swiftly that his penis whipped against her thigh. “You can’t keep doing this, you understand me? Every time those vultures ask you a controversial question, you can’t keep answering it.”
“I was joking, Dutch!”
“Yeah, you were joking. But that joke, Gina, just got our child exposed!” He stood up, as if too agitated to sit any longer, and then moved toward his underwear drawer.
Gina, surprised by his display, sat up in bed, her hands around her legs, her chest beginning to pound. She looked at her husband. He wasn’t the kind of man who angered easily, especially when it came to her, b
ut his anger this morning was almost life-like.
“It’s just one photograph,” she said in a conciliatory tone.
“It’s exactly what we said it wasn’t going to be,” he said as he grabbed a pair of boxer’s and angrily slipped them on. “I agreed to stay in this fishbowl of a town, with my family by my side, only on our terms, Gina, not the terms of some gotdamn press corps!”
“But why are you acting like I have a say in what the press does?”
“Because you keep giving them the hammer to hammer you with!” he said explosively. “I told you to keep your answers on point, didn’t I tell you that? If you’re attending a ribbon cutting ceremony, you answer questions only related to that ceremony, not about our child, Gina, geez! Not about our son. I can’t believe you did that!”
Gina was floored. She had never seen Dutch so animated. She stared at him, as he ripped open the new dress shirt that was laid out for him each day. Watched him as he slung on his dress pants, zipped, and then buckled his belt. Stared into his stormy green eyes as he sat on the edge of the dressing table chair and put on his shoes.
Where in the world all of this emotion was coming from, she wondered. He was angry, there was no doubt about that. But she was detecting something else, too. Something just as palpable. She almost wanted to call it fear, although she couldn’t imagine what a man like Dutch, the strongest man she’d ever known, would be fearful of.
“What’s wrong?” she asked him.
Dutch stopped fumbling with his shoes and looked at Gina, the disappointment in his eyes paining her. “You have got to learn to zip it and not keep letting the press push your buttons. I don’t want you and our son hurt. It’s my job to protect you and Walt and it’s the last thing that I’ve been able to do. And I’m tired of it. I’m tired of the fights.”
“But you act as if I’m the one fighting? I didn’t start any of this, Dutch. I didn’t ask for any fights from anybody. But I damn sure won’t back down when they come at me, either.”
DUTCH AND GINA: A SCANDAL IS BORN Page 5
