THE PRESIDENT 2 Page 3

  “Not unless you want to be referred to as the Ghetto First Lady.”

  Gina could hardly believe her ears. And this was Nora Tatem, a reputable reporter from a reputable magazine, not some tabloid yellow journalist. “Because I’m visiting American citizens at an American Center in an American neighborhood that happens to be in a poverty-stricken area, I’m the Ghetto First Lady? Seriously?”

  “Don’t you think you’re behaving low class ghetto right now, ma’am? For a First Lady, I mean?”

  Gina’s anger flared. “Oh, so because I called your ass out I’m behaving ghetto?”

  “G,” LaLa started.

  But Gina would have none of it. “Because I didn’t let you get away with your racist hogwash I’m low class?”

  “Why are you dressed like that?” the same reporter asked.

  Gina frowned, looked down at her professional pantsuit tailored with African Kitenge cloth. Then looked back up at the reporter. “Why am I dressed like what?”

  “Like some African Jungle Lady.” Again, laughter from some in the press pool. “Is that an appropriate way for an American First Lady to dress?” the reporter added.

  “Come on, ma’am,” Christian intervened, certain that this could quickly get out of hand. If it hadn’t already.

  But Gina was too amazed by the nonsensicalness of it. “So I can’t wear an African outfit in America now?”

  “Not unless you want to be the African First Lady.”

  Gina stared at the reporter who had a dead serious look on her face. “You sound like a fool, you know that?”

  By now LaLa and Christian both had Gina well in hand, and was pushing, practically shoving her into the Center. A Center that erupted in applause as soon as the First Lady dawned its doors. But Gina, still reeling from her brief interplay with that reporter, once again couldn’t stop thinking about shoes.

  ***

  Dutch Harber entered the presidential limousine in a foul mood. Max, who got in behind him, and the president’s National Security Advisor Ed Drake, who got in behind Max, could barely contain their anger too. It was noontime and they were still on Capitol Hill, preparing to head back to the White House, after a long and exhausting grilling from Congressional Republicans.

  “Who do they think they are?” Max angrily wanted to know. “You’re the president, gotdammit, not some two-bit Representative from some two-bit backwater town, and it’s about time you let them know that, Dutch! I mean they wouldn’t let up, demanding that you do this, that you do that. I couldn’t believe it!”

  “Even when I told them there’s not enough credible evidence to officially link the abductions to Al-Qaeda,” Ed Drake said, “they were still insisting that the president go before the American people and make it clear that we will not negotiate with Al-Qaeda.”

  Ed’s cell phone began ringing.

  “When he’s already made clear that we won’t negotiate with Al-Qaeda or any other terrorists,” Max said as Ed answered his phone. “I tell you, Dutch, it took all I had not to slap the shit out of some of those Tea Party, tea-bagging conservative idiots!”

  Dutch waved his hand. “Don’t get your blood pressure up, Max, you know how the game is played. They’re just trying to get some traction off of criticizing me. I can handle it.”

  “Well I can’t,” Max said, pulling out a bottle of pills and popping two. “I wanted to slap them, I declare I did!”

  “Sir,” Ed said, his cell phone against his chest.

  “And if you would have slapped them, where would we be?” Dutch asked Max. Then he looked at Ed. “Yes, Eddie, what is it?”

  “Turn on the television.”

  Max frowned. “What kind of thing is that to tell the president?”

  “It’s Allison Shearer, sir,” Ed said. “She couldn’t get through to your cell phone, Max. She says the president should turn on the news.”

  Max, knowing what a statement like that truly meant, quickly pressed the button that would turn on the limo’s computerized television set, a set that allowed them to feed into cable channels as well. “Which channel?” he wanted to know.

  “Which channel, Ally?” Ed asked into his phone. Then he placed it back on his chest. “She says all of them.”

  Max glanced nervously at Dutch as the television set came on.

  And there was the First Lady of the United States, outside of some Center in what obviously was a rough part of DC, seeming to argue with well-known reporter Nora Tatem. Only it wasn’t their full interchange, none of Nora’s questions were shown, but only snippets of Gina’s more aggressive responses:

  “Oh, so because I called your ass out I’m behaving ghetto?” Gina was seen on television telling the reporter. And then another snippet:

  “So I can’t wear an African outfit in America now?”

  And then finally:

  “You sound like a fool.”

  And over and over those three snippets were being played.

  “Please tell me it’s not true,” Max said, shaking his head in disbelief. “Please tell me not to believe my lying eyes. Please tell me I am not witnessing your wife, our First Lady, arguing with a reporter.”

  Max was staring at the television as he spoke. Dutch was staring too, but gave no comment. He, instead, changed the channel. From cable news outlet to cable news outlet, they were re-looping those same three snippets. Until he turned onto MSNBC, who played the entire interchange, including what Dutch could see were the reporters purposely inflammatory questions.

  “That’s what I thought,” Dutch said.

  “That’s what you thought?” an increasingly perturbed Max Brennan said to his best friend. “What did you think?”

  “I knew Gina wouldn’t sprout out responses like that unless she was provoked.”

  “Who the hell cares about her provocation?” Max asked. “Look at her, Dutch! She’s the First Lady of the United States! What First Lady in recent memory ever stood on national television and argued with a reporter? Name me one.” He stared at his friend, his gray eyes troubled. “And she wonders why they treat her like some hood rat.”

  “Careful, Max,” Dutch warned.

  “But she acts like one, Dutch, I’m sorry but she does. Going to some rundown Center in the ghetto. What’s she going there for anyway? What if there had been a drive-by shooting or something, and the First Lady gets caught in the crossfire?”

  “Ronald Reagan wasn’t in the hood when he was shot, so knock it off,” Dutch said.

  “And all of that African shit she’s wearing--”

  “Knock it off, Max,” Dutch made clear, “or I’ll knock the shit out of you!” He looked his old friend dead in the eye. “Understand me?”

  Max glanced at Ed Drake, who was looking at him as if he could not believe he was talking to the president that way, best friend or no best friend. And then Max exhaled. “Yes, sir,” he said. “I apologize, sir. But all I’m saying, sir, is that no matter how we try to spin this, no matter how we try to make that reporter the issue or that magazine she works for the issue or whatever: this looks bad.”

  Dutch didn’t say a word. He didn’t need Max or anybody else to tell him that. And then he turned the whole thing off.

  ***

  Gina turned it on and watched reruns of those same three snippets over and over, until she could hardly bear it. She was back in the White House, in the East Sitting Hall of the residence, seated on the sofa with her feet tucked underneath her. With her were LaLa and LaLa’s longtime boyfriend Dempsey Cooper, a tall, handsome, dark-skinned attorney who once was on the Block by Block Raiders board of directors. Gina had appointed him, as she had LaLa, to her White House staff. Demps, as they called him, was her deputy press secretary.

  They all had drinks, with Gina nursing a Gin and bitters, as they watched the snippets over and over.

  Finally LaLa had had enough. “Stop torturing yourself,” she said as she grabbed the remote and turned the television off. “I was there. I know that’s not how it wen
t down.”

  “They make it seem like I was just snapping at that reporter for no reason,” Gina said, her drink to her forehead as a low grain headache began to throb.

  “The angry black woman,” LaLa said. “Surprise, surprise.”

  “That’s why you can’t play into their hands,” Dempsey said.

  LaLa looked at him. “Play into their hands? Who’s playing into their hands?”

  “What I’m saying is--”

  “No, I wanna know where you get off accusing G of playing into those assholes hands--”

  “LaLa,” Gina said, looking at her friend. “Just cool it, all right?”

  “I’m sorry, G, but for him to say something like that. What’s his problem?”

  “What’s your problem?” Dempsey wanted to know.

  “I don’t have a problem.”

  “And neither do I,” Dempsey proclaimed.

  “Stop it,” Gina implored. “Please! I asked y’all to come to DC with me because you two are my closest friends and I knew y’all would have my back. But ever since we’ve been in this crazy town we’ve become stressed and tensed and I don’t like what’s happening to us. It’s like we came here, determined to change this town, but this town is changing us.”

  Dempsey shook his head. “It’s so much crap we have to take, G. You gave me the greatest job of my life, as your deputy press secretary, but the foolishness we have to respond to is unbelievable.”

  Gina agreed. “I know.”

  “We get Freedom of Information requests all the time about you, from all kinds of organizations, but you wouldn’t believe the things they want. They want proof of your deceased parents’ birth, as if they believe you never had any parents but was hatched from under some rock somewhere. One group wanted to see your high school transcripts, you, an accomplished attorney, as if you might not have graduated high school. It’s ludicrous! And damned embarrassing too.”

  “You know what it’s about,” LaLa said. “Their great white father has married a black mother and some of them can’t deal with that.” Gina gave LaLa that look. Everything, in LaLa’s world, seemed to trace back to race. Some of it did, Gina was no idiot, but everything? “I’m sorry, G,” LaLa continued, “but even you know in this case it’s true. So they bring on the dogs, sniffing for stuff. Like that reporter over at that Center. Now that’s a problem.”

  ‘It wouldn’t have been a problem if you would have done your job,” Dempsey said.

  LaLa looked at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You should have gotten her away from that reporter, kicking and screaming if you had to, as soon as she made that first comment.”

  “How could you say something like that?” LaLa asked as she stared at her longtime boyfriend. She had always feared that DC would change Gina, but now she realized that her fear was misdirected. She and Dempsey, who could not have been more in love and closer before they came to DC to work for Gina, were now growing miles apart. “How could you fix your mouth to say something like that to me?”

  “I’m just pointing out the obvious, La,” Dempsey said. “It’s your job to protect the First Lady from herself.”

  “Oh, I see. And how exactly was I supposed to do that? Drag her away from that reporter? Put her on my back and run down the road with her?”

  “You dropped the ball, La,” Dempsey made clear. “Don’t try to act like you don’t realize that.”

  “So it’s my fault now? What that reporter did to G is on me?”

  “That’s enough,” Gina said, too exhausted to even argue with them. “It’s not on you or anybody else. I should have seen it coming. Now it’s big news when Dutch has so much to deal with already. Now he has to deal with me and my blunders too. Everything I do he has to answer for, and I hate that.”

  The door to the sitting room opened and the topic of Gina’s conversation walked in. Both LaLa and Dempsey stood to their feet as Dutch headed for the sofa.

  “Good evening, Mr. President,” Dempsey said.

  “Hey, Demps, how you doing?”

  “Great, sir.”

  “Mr. President,” LaLa said.

  “Hello, Loretta. You guys sit down, please.”

  “Thank-you, sir,” Dempsey said just as LaLa was about to sit back down, “but we’d better run.” Dempsey walked over to Gina, gave her a peck on the cheek. “Get you some rest, G,” he urged.

  “Thanks, Demps, you take care.”

  “You too.”

  Gina and LaLa hugged. “I’ll call you later,” she said, and then she and Dempsey, reigniting their argument, to Gina’s dismay, were gone.

  “Hey,” Dutch said, staring down at his wife.

  “Hey,” Gina said, looking up at him. “I guess you saw the sound bites.”

  Dutch nodded. “I saw them.”

  “Max suggesting you divorce me?”

  Dutch smiled weakly, unbuttoned his suit coat, and sat down beside her on the sofa. She immediately laid her head on his shoulder. He placed his arm around her waist.

  “I felt so blindsided, Dutch. I thought she wanted to know about the Center. I mean, Nora Tatem doesn’t have a reputation as an ambush reporter. But she sure ambushed me.”

  “You did nothing wrong, Regina.”

  Gina lifted her head and looked up at him. “What are you talking about? Every news outlet is criticizing me, saying I should have had more control of my emotions. Even the black press is upset with me. I just lived up to the angry black woman stereotype, they’re saying. And you’re saying I did nothing wrong? You don’t think I behaved in a manner that wasn’t befitting a First Lady, as CNN and FOX keep insisting?”

  “I think you behaved fine under the circumstances. She provoked that altercation with her ridiculous questions. And the fact that you, as you put it, called her ass out, is what made it a story.”

  Gina stared at him. Could this man really be this good to her? “You mean you aren’t upset?”

  “With you? No. I’m glad you stood up for yourself, and I want you to continue to take a stand. Don’t let this town ever take that away from you.”

  This town, Gina thought, and laid her head back on his shoulder. “Dutch, I was thinking,” she started.

  “Put it out of your mind, honey.”

  “Not what happened with that reporter. But about us.”

  Dutch’s heart began to pound. “What about us?”

  Gina hesitated, and then plunged on in. “I think it might be better if I was to leave Washington.”

  Dutch hesitated, fear gripping him. “Leave?” he said.

  “Just until after your term in office is over. I was thinking about getting LaLa and Dempsey and going back to Newark, with the three of us running Block by Block Raiders again.”

  Dutch lifted her face up to his, his eyes staring into hers. “You want to leave me, is that what you’re saying to me?”

  “No, Dutch, not leave you. Just leave the situation for now. Just leave this town. I don’t like it here. It’s tearing my two best friends apart. It makes everything I do some kind of indictment of you. If I’m out of the fishbowl, at least the Washington version of it, maybe things will ease up for you. And then when your term is over we can try and live a normal life.”