THE PRESIDENT'S GIRLFRIEND Page 7

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  In the small hotel room LaLa opened her eyes to the sound of what she thought was a lot of furniture bumping. When she looked over at the bed across from hers, and saw that it wasn’t furniture moving around, but Gina, she relaxed.

  “Girl, what you doing this time of morning? What time is it?”

  “It’s six fifteen, and what does it look like I’m doing?”

  It was obvious to LaLa that she was packing. The question was why. “You’re packing,” LaLa said.

  “You, young lady, move to the head of the class.”

  “You’re only one year older than me, so don’t get ahead of yourself.” Then she sat up on her bed, her hands wrapped around her knees. “But for real, Gina, what’s going on?”

  “We’re leaving,” Gina said as she threw more clothes into her suitcase.

  “Leaving? But I thought we were going to spend the day lobbying some more congressmen.”

  “What do you mean lobbying more congressmen? Not one would see us yesterday. Not even our own congressman. Except to tell us that he can’t see us after the way I supposedly offended the president.”

  “He said he had a meeting.”

  “Yeah, right, he was able to spend time with all of his constituents ahead of us, but as soon as it was our turn, he has a meeting. Give me a break. I’m getting out of this town, you hear me? I hate it here! This place is soulless.”

  “Oh-oh,” LaLa said. “It didn’t go well with the Flying Dutchman.”

  Gina, already emotionally drained, stopped packing and plopped down on her bed. “It was awful, LaLa. It was worst than I ever would have imagined.”

  “What are you saying? He didn’t want to talk? He treated you like a whore, what?”

  “No!” Gina said, knowing she wasn’t making herself clear, but unable to be any clearer. “He was very kind to me. He listened to me for like for an hour straight. I’ve never met a man who was as attentive to me like that.”

  “Wait a minute, girl. This ain’t making no kind of sense. First you say it was the worst night of your life, now you say he was attentive and kind? You’re talking crazy, G!”

  “It wasn’t the worst night of my life. It was one of the best, actually.”

  LaLa stared at her friend. “Did he, did y’all, you know . . . sleep together?”

  Gina hesitated. There was no use hiding anything from LaLa, she knew her too well. “Yes,” she finally said.

  “But it was bad, hun? Imagine that big, strapping man don’t know how to please a woman.”

  “It was great. It was fantastic. The best sex I’ve ever had, and I mean the best.”

  LaLa frowned. “The best? Please explain yourself. So it wasn’t awful?”

  “Yes, it was. Not the sex. Not the night we spent together, that was priceless.” Then she paused, as a cloud of pain crossed her face. “It was afterwards. This morning.”

  LaLa’s heart dropped. “What happened?”

  “I woke up and Christian, that’s the young man who picked me up last night, he was standing over my bed.”

  “He did something to you?”

  “No, LaLa! Christian is wonderful, it had nothing to do with him. He was just doing his job. But it was five this morning and he told me I had to leave before the press people started arriving at the White House.”

  “Makes sense,” LaLa said. “They don’t want the rumor mill to start churning.”

  “I know that. I had no problem with that. But it was just that, Dutch, the president, wasn’t in bed when I woke up.”

  “Maybe he’s an early riser, maybe he works out, what’s the big deal?”

  “Christian said he was still asleep. In bed.”

  “But I thought you said he wasn’t in bed?”

  “In his own bed.”

  “Oh,” LaLa said when the point dawned. “So he puts you in his love shack, in his make-out room and then leave before you wake up so he don’t have to face you in the morning?”

  “So it would seem,” Gina said, looking away from her best friend in embarrassment. Then she exhaled. “But you know what was the worst part about it?”

  “What?”

  “When Christian said my leaving was protocol, that President Harber does this all the time, with his different, quote unquote, ‘overnight’ guests. That made it almost unbearable.”

  “Oh, Gina! Men are such dogs!”

  “Your man ain’t no dog. Dempsey ain’t like that.”

  “I know. But he’s the exception in my view. And so is Frank, if you’re give him half a chance.”

  “Don’t start, La,” Gina said, getting back up and continuing to pack.

  “That man loves you and you know it.”

  “Frank and I are friends, and that’s all we’ll ever be.”

  “But why? Because Frank’s white?”

  Gina stopped packing and looked at LaLa. “I just spend the night with the President of the United States, and guess what? He’s white, too. How do you sound? Do you ever listen to yourself?”

  “Well, whatever. But I still say you should give Frank a chance ‘cause it’s for damn sure the President of the United States, as you love to call him, ain’t giving one to you.”

  Gina playfully threw a pillow at LaLa and continued to pack. She tried to keep it light, joke it off as if she couldn’t care less about that man in the White House. But inwardly, where it counted, she couldn’t care more.

  SEVEN

  A week later, back in Newark, and Gina was doing all she could to stay busy and forget that trip to DC, the awards ceremony, that night with Dutch, all of it, when she heard a car pull up on her drive. She was curled up on her sofa, with her lap top on her lap, her reading glasses on her face, and a coffee mug in her hand, working frantically on yet another grant proposal even though she knew her chances of getting funding for it would be slim to none. Helping gang bangers and drug addicts and hookers were the lowest of the lowest priority in this time of economic crunch. But she still had to try.

  When she looked out of the window and saw Frank Rotelli jump from his BMW convertible and hurry towards the porch of her small house, she gave an audible sigh. She didn’t know why, Frank was one of the nicest guys around, a successful corporate accountant who volunteered so much of his time to BBR that some donors assumed he was a staff member. But she always got that eerie kind of queasy feeling whenever he would first appear. Within seconds it would pass, and she would always wonder where did it come from to begin with, but it never failed to come.

  “Hey, Frank, what’s up?” she said when she opened the door.

  “What’s up yourself,” he said with a grand smile and removed his sunglasses to reveal big, sparkling blue eyes. “Demps told me y’all were back. I just got back from a business trip myself.” He looked down the length of her. “I couldn’t wait to see you again.”

  Gina hated when he spoke that way, just hated it, but he always seemed to realize his error and would quickly move on. Which he did this time, too. “The reason why I couldn’t wait ,” he said, noticing her alarm, “was because I have some good news.”

  “I could use some good news.”

  “May I come in?”

  Gina really didn’t want to deal with him or anybody else right now, but it sounded as if it was business-related, so she let him in.

  Her house was neat and clean but extremely small, with a living room so tiny that Frank, the first time he had come over, mistakenly referred to it as her foyer.

  “Have a seat,” she said as he entered. “Want anything to drink?”

  “No, I’m good.” He sat down in the chair. She put her laptop on the coffee table and sat on the sofa, tucking her feet underneath her butt.

  Frank leaned back with that satisfied, snarky look on his face. He was an attractive man, and he knew how to turn on the charm, but it was a phony, forced charm to Gina. And although LaLa and Demps swore by the man, and wanted desperately for him and Gina to hook up, she wasn’t feeling him.

>   She tried to like him like that, she even went on a couple dates with him, but she finally had to end up telling him what they should have already known: they could be friends, and business associates, but that was all there would ever be between them. Frank agreed easily, as if it was no big deal to him, although Demps later told Gina that she had broken the man’s heart.

  “So what’s the big news?” she asked him when he seemed perfectly content to just sit there smiling and chillin’.

  “I know you aren’t asking me about big news. I saw you on MSNBC telling President Harber that he could take that award and shove it where the sun don’t shine.”

  Gina was horrified by his characterization. “That’s not what I said at all, Frank, why would you say something like that?”

  Frank laughed. “It was funny, though, you got to admit that.”

  Gina failed to see the humor, but she wasn’t about to go there with Frank. “So what’s up, you said you had some good news?”

  “Well, Miss Regina,” he finally said, “I do have good news. I’ve found a brand new sponsor for BBR.”

  At first Gina was thrilled. They needed every sponsor they could get, which would mean a new infusion of cash. But for some reason her hackles were up. “Who?” she asked him.

  “Who?” he said with that nervous smile of his that always made Gina think of a mad man. “Does the ‘who’ matter?”

  “Yes, it matters, Frank. Because I don’t want it to be you. You’ve given all you need to give to BBR. We won’t accept anymore favors from you.”

  “That’s ridiculous, Gina.”

  “So you’re the new sponsor?”

  “My firm, yes.”

  “No, Frank, no.”

  “We support many worthy causes every year. Why won’t you allow us to support BBR?”

  “Because you do support BBR. Your financial advice has been invaluable. Expert financial advice nearly every week, and you don’t charge us a dime, are you kidding me? I’m not taking your money, too.”

  But he wouldn’t let up. He talked about how he knew BBR was hurting financially, how that Congress was going to continue to cut programs that help the poor, how she would, in essence, be the fool of fools if she didn’t take his money. But Gina took the opposite view. She would be the fool of fools if she took money from a man even her best friend believed was nuts about her.

  What saved her from his unrelenting pitch was her cell phone. It began to ring. When she looked at her caller ID and saw that the call was coming from Christian Bale, she excused herself, went into her bedroom that was just off from her living room, and closed the door. Frank, immediately suspicious, stood up.

  “Hello, Christian,” she said into the phone.

  “Hi,” Christian said, and then added: “Just a moment.”

  Frank made his way to her bedroom door, careful not to be heard, and leaned his ear against it. Gina was seated on her bed Indian-style and was leaned forward. She hadn’t expected to hear from Christian or anybody related to the president ever again. But now, a week later, Christian calls. To no doubt do Dutch’s bidding. She really felt bad for Christian. He was treated more like a pimp than a political aide, it seemed to her.

  Christian came back onto the line. “Sorry about that,” he said. “I had to give some information to Max Brennan. But how are you, first of all?”

  “I’m good,” Gina said, “how are you?”

  “I was phoning, I’m good, too, but I was phoning because the president is scheduled to be in your city on Saturday night.”

  There was a pause, as if he was expecting Gina to say something. She simply sat mute. “He’s touring some of the more successful urban renewal projects in the city and afterwards he was going to attend a private fund raiser with Mayor Booker, the Governor, and some big money donors from across the state.” Another pause. Gina wondered why was he telling her all of this.

  “The thing is, Miss Lansing,” he finally said, “the president would like for you to come and see him while he’s in town.”

  Nearly a whole week and not a word from him. He comes to town for some fundraiser and expects her to drop everything and go and see him? “Sorry, no, I can’t make it.”

  “I can pick you up around ten,” Christian said, as if she had accepted wholeheartedly.

  “I said no, Christian, I can’t make it.”

  “You have to make it, ma’am.”

  “Excuse me?” Gina said, astounded by his comment. “Why do I have to make it?”

  “Because he’s the President of the United States and he’s asking you to. You have to make it, ma’am.”

  Gina closed her eyes. What on earth had she gotten herself into? She had slept with the President of the United States. The president! She opened her eyes. “Did he say what it is he wants to see me about?” As if it wasn’t as obvious as the nose on her face.

  Even Christian hesitated on that one. Sex, duh, she could imagine him saying. “No, ma’am,” he said, instead. “He didn’t say.”

  Gina felt trapped. Any other man and she would have told him what he could do with his invitation. But it wasn’t any other man they were talking about. It was the President of the United States, a man who had the power to veto any legislation that would defund the very program that was her life blood. Besides, Christian was right. You don’t say no to the president. “I’ll see,” Gina decided to say. “Call me back Friday morning. I’ll let you know if I can make it.” And she clicked off.

  When it was clear to Frank that the call was over, he hurried back down into the living room. He had been only able to hear her side of the conversation, but that was enough to anger him nearly beyond reason. And although, when she returned to the living room, he smiled and continued to convince her how foolish she was not to take his money, inwardly he raged.

  “That bitch!” he kept saying to himself. “Out of my sight one night, she spent just one night in DC, and already spread her legs for some joker! Probably some Mandingo nigger with a dick longer than a gotdamn telegram pole! That’s what she likes. That’s why she won’t bother with me. I’m not good enough for her, not big enough for her. But that’s cool, that’s all right. I’ll get mine. And when I get finished with her the last thing on the face of this earth she’s going to want is some dick, Mandingo or otherwise!”

  And he kept smiling, kept trying to convince her that BBR needed all the financial backing it could get and his firm was willing and more than able, while he kept inwardly calling her a bitch, over and over, like a mantra.

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  Block by Block Raiders was a large, converted warehouse on a dead-end street. The staff consisted of eighteen workers, mostly social workers and counselors, with half in the field and the other half in the office doing the paperwork that would get a gang banger relocated away from his community, or a prostitute a legitimate job, or a drug addict some treatment. Any legal issues, and there were usually many, were referred to Gina or Dempsey.

  The board of directors, Gina, LaLa, Dempsey Cooper and Frank Rotelli, were in the office in the back, seated around a conference table, reviewing the organization’s financial records. It wasn’t a pretty sight. Their private donations were so few that the dollars just weren’t there.

  “How long?” Gina asked and everybody looked at Frank.

  Frank pinched the bridge of his nose and then looked up, revealing tired, blue eyes. “Two months, three if we’re lucky.”

  LaLa was astounded. “That’s all? Damn!”

  Gina was astounded too, but she was more interested in answers. “Any word from the Crader Foundation, Demps?”

  Dempsey was LaLa’s old man, a handsome, smart, corporate attorney who was also their best fundraiser. “Yes, there’s a word, and the word is still no.”

  Gina leaned her head back in frustration. Frank stared admiringly at her long neck.

  Demps rubbed the top of his low-cut fade. “It’s just a fact of life these days, Tor,” he said. “Everybody’s broke. They want to give, t
hey just don’t have it to give anymore.”

  “And if the president doesn’t veto that appropriations bill, we’re done for,” LaLa said. “For real this time.”

  Earlier, exactly one week and one day after Gina laid in bed with Dutch Harber and told him about that very budget bill, it squeaked through the House of Representatives largely on a party line vote. The Senate had already passed the measure. Now it was up to Dutch.

  “Is the bill still in conference?” Frank asked Gina.