by Chris Hauty
This process of brutal self-appraisal, application of makeup, and then reversal of all her work is completed within only a few minutes and is clearly a familiar ritual. After a hurried light breakfast of fruit over instant oatmeal, Hayley catches the 38B bus a block from her building. The other commuters are bundled up with down jackets, scarves, and knit hats, but Hayley wears only a simple navy-blue peacoat. After disembarking at Farragut Square and making the short walk down Seventeenth Street to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building gate, Hayley presents her ID to Ned, the Park Police patrolman.
“Sorry about the weather, Hayley.” Ned’s crush on the intern really doesn’t know where to go.
Hayley rewards him with a generous smile. “Thanks, Ned, but I don’t mind it at all. You’ve obviously never spent a summer in central Texas.” Their brief exchange represents the only words spoken in the gatehouse. The other personnel in the queue, cowed by the change in weather, pass through security screening wordlessly.
The energy inside the West Wing on this cold morning is also muted and workmanlike. With no international incidents requiring a response from the leader of the free world and nothing on the president’s calendar rising above the routine, operations today are strictly paint-by-number. Peter Hall maintains an iron grip on administration staff and personnel. Naysayers, malcontents, and bunglers have all been long since expelled from the premises. The Monroe administration is a marvel of discipline, speaking with a single voice and operating at a high level of efficiency.
As Hayley makes her way along the ground-floor corridor, toward the CoS Support office, she sees the handsome Secret Service agent approaching from the opposite direction. There had been only rare occasions in the prior three weeks in which Hayley had seen him from afar—walking with other agents up the White House driveway or across the crowded commissary in the EEOB—but there was never opportunity to pursue what she has come to recognize as romantic interest in the man.
It has been more than a year since Hayley last had sex. She had two lovers while stationed at Fort Hood, neither of whom were anything but physical attachments. In the time since leaving the military, Hayley hasn’t found within herself that particular urge to become intimate with another human. But the Secret Service agent has awakened something in her. What draws her isn’t his obvious physical attractiveness but the simple connection with a lightness in his eyes and warm, unostentatious smile. She intuits in him a man in whose company she will feel safe and relaxed.
As Hayley and the Secret Service agent draw abreast, both stop, seemingly in tune with a mutual desire to connect again.
“You don’t seem lost anymore,” he observes.
“Guess I’m starting to get the hang of things.” She smiles easily. “Thanks for helping out the other morning.”
The suit-clad agent offers his hand. “Scott Billings.”
Hayley accepts his hand with hers. “Hayley Chill.” Their handshake lingers, as does their gaze.
“Ex-military, I understand.”
“Have you been asking around about me, Agent Billings?”
Scott smiles guiltily. Of course he’d asked around about her. In his defense, his inquiry into Hayley and her background could’ve taken far more invasive proportions with the investigative tools available to an agent of the US Secret Service.
“Nice to meet you, Hayley Chill. See you around the shop.” Reluctantly, they release hold of each other’s hand. Scott gives Hayley the briefest, flirty salute as he continues on his way.
* * *
A FEW MINUTES before ten in the morning, the interns in CoS Support have just about finished prepping briefing binders for a cabinet meeting, hastily called by Peter Hall only an hour earlier. Because of the short time frame, all four interns pitched in to finish the job in time for the meeting, scheduled to begin at 10:15 a.m. Disbursement of the binders is a desirable job, affording the lucky intern the opportunity to escape the janitorial closet and gain face time with administration bigwigs. As self-anointed queen of CoS Support, Becca decides who gets the disbursement job. No one is more surprised than Hayley when she gets the nod.
“It’s your turn, after all,” Becca rationalizes.
“Sure. Okay. Thank you.” Hayley hasn’t had an assignment outside of the janitorial closet in the whole time she’s been in the West Wing. Neither Sophia nor Luke is happy with Becca’s unexpected decision, but they don’t dare speak up.
Becca clocks Sophia and Luke’s unhappiness and artfully ignores them. “Did you double-check the contents of every binder?” she asks Hayley. “It’s your ass if they’re incomplete.”
Hayley had assembled the binders with the others and can attest to their completeness. “I went through them before my break.”
Becca shrugs and sits, checking her phone for messages. It’s apparent from her frustration that cell reception is an ongoing issue. “You’d think the most powerful country in the world could have halfway decent Wi-Fi.”
“Dead zones all over the building, but this office seems to be the worst,” Luke offers.
The NYU grad levels a sneer in Luke’s direction. “Thank you so much for that.”
Hayley wants no part of their sniping and points the pushcart toward the door.
There is more than bad cell coverage in explaining Becca’s persecuted mood. On a limited budget like Hayley, Becca was walking to work that morning when she saw Luke dropping off his Maserati at the W Hotel valet on F Street, as was his custom. The White House parking garage is off-limits to interns and clerical staff. The thirty-five-dollar charge at the W Hotel is chump change for the hedge fund scion, and the Salvadoran who delivers the car again in the late afternoon can always expect a hefty tip.
But it wasn’t Luke’s extreme wealth that was gnawing at Becca. She has surrounded herself with wealthy people since her first year at NYU. What galled her this morning was seeing Sophia sitting in the seat next to Luke, sufficient evidence she and Luke were fucking. Becca has no sexual desire whatsoever for Luke. Point in fact, the soccer-loving, Imagine Dragons fanatic with unrepentant cowlick and lingering odor of AXE White Label Dry Spray mildly disgusts her. Nevertheless, losing any contest, even one of such meager stakes, to a second-rate SoCal nitwit like Sophia is a burden too great to bear without retaliation, however indirect. Sophia and Luke are easy targets, and their usefulness has not yet been expended.
Hayley is another matter. Complete and total annihilation of her potential rival is just what Becca needs to brighten her day. Once Hayley has pushed the cart laden with briefing books out the door and disappeared, Becca withdraws a folder from under a pile of papers on her desk. “Oh, wait! You forgot an insert,” she calls after Hayley many moments too late.
After riding a service elevator up to the first floor, Hayley pushes the cart down the corridor, passes Peter Hall’s corner office, and approaches the hallowed grounds of the Oval Office. Several aides and uniformed military personnel are gathered in a clutch just outside the doorway. None of them except a wary Secret Service agent Hayley has never seen before pay any attention to her as she shuttles past with the mail cart.
She continues down the corridor a short distance, turning for the open doorway leading into the Cabinet Room. Entering, Hayley sees a few of the less important cabinet members standing at the far end of the room in a tight scrum, speaking in hushed voices. Respectfully minding her own business, Hayley begins to disperse the briefing binders. She takes care to place a binder exactly in the same position before each of the sixteen identical chairs at the table, one briefing book for heads of fifteen executive departments and the vice president. An extra-large chair is situated at the exact midway point of the table. Before the president’s seat, Hayley places a special, leather-bound briefing book.
As she is just finishing up her careful work, the remaining cabinet members filter into the room. Peter Hall herds the late arrivals inside with typical brusqueness. “Let’s go, people! The president needs to be on Marine One in forty-five minutes
. Time’s wasting.” No matter their prestige and importance, all cabinet members respond obediently to Hall’s badgering. Hayley moves to leave the room, pushing her cart toward the far door. Hall catches sight of her.
“Park that rig in the corridor and get back in here, Ms. Chill,” he bellows from the opposite end of the room. “Want you here in case we need anything.”
Hayley does as directed, depositing the mail cart outside and returning to take a position standing in the southwest corner of the room. A hush falls over those in attendance, as if everyone’s radar simultaneously picks up the imminent arrival of a Man of Significance. Those instincts are fantastically accurate, as within moments Richard Monroe enters through the north doorway with a gale force of extreme charisma, accompanied by his vice president, Vincent Landers.
As America’s warrior hero, Monroe carries a well-known résumé, having held rank everywhere from the army’s Second Battalion, Seventy-Eighth Field Artillery to US Army Pacific Command. A career soldier before winning his first and only political campaign as president of the United States, Monroe is a West Point graduate who led a thunderous tank charge across the sands of Kuwait in Operation Desert Storm and later, as a major general and commander of the First Armored Division, drove the tyrant Saddam Hussein from Fortress Baghdad in Operation Iraqi Freedom. With chiseled features and hawklike profile, Richard Monroe was then and continues to be an iconic presence, the natural born leader America sorely needs in rancorous and divisive times.
Everyone stands in respect for the president’s entrance, the electricity in the room supercharged. Though nearly all members of the cabinet are themselves powerful and accomplished individuals, no one’s light comes even close to shining as brightly as Monroe’s. He offers only the slightest of gestures. “Thank you, everyone. Please, sit.”
All take their seats. None dare breathe a word until spoken to by the president, who pauses a moment to scan the papers on the table left for his attention. After a moment of silence as he reads, Monroe squares the pages and then looks up, addressing his cabinet.
“Thank you again, everyone, for coming on short notice. We’ve been under the gun here, getting our affairs in order for the upcoming trip. Excuse the disorder.” Few commentators would use the word “disorder” to describe Monroe’s administration. The West Wing runs with the steady beat of a Roman slave galley.
Vice President Landers, seated across the long table from POTUS, is perennially cast in the greater man’s shadow and is therefore eager to be heard. “As always, Mr. President, we are all so grateful for your leadership.” Other cabinet members start to talk all at once, similarly anxious to flatter the destroyer of tyrants. Monroe only grins slightly, benignly tolerant. Peter Hall loudly clears his voice. “Sir, you’ve got wheels up in less than an hour.”
Monroe nods and fingers the pages in front of him. “Our trade policy with China. I wanted to get everyone on the same page before I make my speech tonight in Columbus. Obviously, a unified voice in terms of these proposed tariffs would be best, yes? Let’s have a look.”
The cabinet members, the vice president, and POTUS all open briefing binders in near unison. Landers is the first to notice a problem with the briefing materials. “Hold on. Where’s the transcript of Yii’s address?”
Other cabinet members and Monroe are flipping through the pages and sections in their binders. Monroe looks to his chief of staff with eyes that don’t suggest leniency. Hall leans over the back of Landers’s chair, inspecting the binder for himself. “The translated transcript of Yii’s address, Peter? It seems to be missing.” The president’s cool agitation snaps like a whip, with Hall seeming to cringe from its lash. Sensing weakness, Landers leaps into the fray. “Jesus, Peter, without that transcript, this whole meeting is pointless!”
Hall is temporarily at a loss for words, a rare condition for the infamous verbal gladiator. Unaccustomed to making mistakes, he finds himself in the middle of a very public fuckup, and that exposure has paralyzed him. Hayley discreetly materializes at the chief of staff’s elbow. “Mr. Hall, you excluded the complete transcript because a Washington Post article under Tab Four summarizes President Yii’s speech with annotations, explaining some of the more arcane Chinese linguistic idiosyncrasies.”
“Yes,” the chief of staff manages to get out, “only so much time in the day.”
It’s not lost on Monroe what has just transpired. The president regards the young woman in the $49.99 blazer with frank admiration. “With interns like this one, we just might get something done in this goddamn city.”
Cabinet members voice their agreement. A few of them—secretaries of education, veterans affairs, and human services—even applaud. Hayley acknowledges their appreciation with bowed head and retreats to the far corner of the room, alert and ready for however next she might be of service.
Less than thirty minutes later, after the cabinet meeting has ended and POTUS is aloft in Marine One, Hayley pushes the mail cart back into the CoS Support office. The other three interns silently observe her entrance, studying Hayley for signs of emotional trauma or devastation. They are disappointed in that hope. Hayley is her usual confident, well-balanced self. Becca takes her failure to kill off Hayley particularly hard.
“Where have you been?” the NYU grad asks. “You’ve been gone almost an hour.”
“Mr. Hall asked me to stay after I’d distributed the briefing binders,” Hayley tells her matter-of-factly.
“You stood in at the cabinet meeting,” Luke asks incredulously, “for, like, the whole time?”
“It was a pretty short meeting,” Hayley offers as modest comfort to the other interns.
Before Becca, Luke, and Sophia have had the time to regain equilibrium, the door is pushed open, and for only the second time in his tenure as White House chief of staff, Peter Hall pokes his head inside the repurposed janitorial closet. “Nice recovery, Miss Chill.” Hall then turns to address the other interns. “Can’t have any more screwups like that.”
“Sorry, sir. Won’t happen again,” Hayley assures the chief of staff.
Hall disappears again, as abruptly as he’d materialized. Hayley sits down at her desk to resume work, seemingly ignoring Becca, Sophia, and Luke as they gape at her. Only after a loaded pause does the West Virginia native slide a quick glance in Becca’s direction, just to let her know she’s fooling no one. As an accomplished boxer, the West Virginian recognizes a well-delivered body blow. Hayley’s opponent is still standing, but the fight has been knocked out of her.
Dejected and defeated, Becca requests to leave work early, soon after lunch. She cites an upset stomach as the reason. Karen Rey is displeased, but Becca is her favorite intern in the complex, and so she reluctantly acquiesces. With the coast clear, Luke and Sophia take turns revealing to Hayley not only Becca’s sabotaging of the briefing binders, but also her numerous other transgressions and general abusiveness. Hayley expresses no interest in the gossip, working quietly as the others talk. Failing to make an alliance with the new queen of the CoS Support office, Luke and Sophia turn to making their dinner plans. They depart at four thirty p.m. and, as is their custom, leave Hayley to complete their half-finished tasks.
* * *
NOT LONG BEFORE seven p.m., Hayley finishes all CoS work and leaves the office, turning off the lights as she does so. A short walk up the corridor of less than thirty seconds takes her to the ground-floor exit and out onto the exterior grounds. Dusk has fallen, and the air temperature is below freezing. Hayley has neglected to retrieve her coat from a hook on the back of the office door and is considering returning for it when she hears a voice.
“Cabinet-level save. Pretty heady stuff for a hillbilly from West Virginia.”
Scott Billings has just finished his shift and was about to head over to the garage to retrieve his vehicle when he caught sight of Hayley exiting the building. In order to intercept her with his quip, he had to backtrack nearly twenty-five yards. Despite her many physical attributes and
obvious intelligence, Scott is surprised by the intensity of his attraction for Hayley. Seducing women has always been a trivial matter for the handsome Secret Service agent, with the real problem being choosing one or two from the several.
Hayley stops and turns toward the approaching Secret Service agent. “Kind of ironic, coming from a Division Three quarterback who bombed his combine.”
Scott is momentarily thrown for acceptable comeback. The sensation of being one-upped by a female is neither familiar nor pleasant. Intelligence and wit is one thing, but how the hell did she learn about his disappointing performance in Indianapolis? Clocking his distress, Hayley simply grins.
“Interns know shit, too, Mr. Billings.”
Her smile has its intended effect. Whatever hurt feelings Scott may have suffered are vanquished by the glow of Hayley’s countenance. The collision of emotions she engenders in him is a new experience. Scott struggles to regain footing and deploys a tried-and-true bit of charm.
“I’m armed, you know. Call me Mr. Billings again and I might have to shoot you.”
Again that smile and a nod of her head in agreement, but Scott is no longer looking toward Hayley but intently off, over her shoulder and beyond. She pivots to see what has distracted him, when Scott starts running in that direction.
Two figures—too distant to ascertain race, gender, or age—are running across the North Lawn, toward the White House. Video surveillance tapes reviewed after the fact will reveal the “jumpers” scaled a fence in the northwest corner of the Treasury Building, immediately adjacent to the White House, and activated a sensor alarm in the Treasury moat. But the Park Police officer in charge of monitoring that particular alarm, among others, had stepped away from his station to use the restroom without securing a replacement. Consequently, the two intruders were able to trespass on White House grounds without being noticed.
Numerous individuals have illegally entered the White House grounds by scaling the fence in recent decades. They rarely venture far, although there have been significant exceptions. In November 1975, Gerald Gainous roamed the grounds for more than two hours and approached President Ford’s daughter outside her car. The year of 1991 saw the highest number of jumpers, with a total of seven intruders. Between 1995 and 2005, there were none. In 2017, Curtis Combs jumped a concrete barrier on the outer perimeter of the south grounds and was arrested. He was dressed in a Pikachu suit. It’s easy to forget that until the Second World War anyone could enter the premises and knock on the front door.
