Kate entered the room surrounded by her entourage of Secret Service women. (All the men had proved to be too distracted to do their job.) All the women exclaimed over her beauty; the men were disappointed by the modesty of her floor-length green dress, but then their eyes moved up (slowly) to focus on her exquisite face.
“How did you manage that, Madame President?” Helen Thomas, craning her neck to see the president, asked.
Kate shrugged. “Ahmadinejad isn’t what I expected. He stuttered a lot—but maybe that’s just how Farsi sounds. He was very agreeable. In fact, everything would have been solved much sooner, but he and Hugo Chavez started gasping and then fighting every time I turned my back, so I always had to turn back around to calm them down. Our oil problems are now over too, by the way. Pretty cool, huh?” When she turned to address another reporter, the gleam from her silky bare back was almost enough to reflect Helen Thomas’s hawk nose.
“I convinced Michael Moore and George Soros to put their money where their mouths are and fund it. Bill Gates has education covered, but he has a few stipulations, like being sure that students are going to college because they want to, not because it’s the thing to do. Some people are just better off spending those years in their parents’ garage building something or in Japan teaching English and modeling, you know?”
“That’s what they’re deciding right now.” Kate nodded toward a large group of women surrounding a very good-looking, very desperate-looking man.
“Of course you love her,” Liz was saying to the poor man. “Who wouldn’t? But that’s not good enough.”
Ann Compton turned back to Kate. “You have someone screening the, uh, applicants for the position?”
Kate shrugged. “They say they worry about me and have to make sure he’s worthy.” She giggled a bit. “Doesn’t he look cute when he’s cornered?”
“Yo tengo una pregunta para ti,” Valerie told Neil. “What is your idea of a romantic evening?”
“Ummm . . . candlelight, roses, soft music and lighting . . . dancing close . . .”
“Ahhhhh,” sighed all the 20-somethings in the group.
“Hold it,” more-than-20-something Karen interjected. “Kate gets up at 5:00 a.m., has a breakfast meeting with her chief of staff, then meets with her cabinet, takes Air Force One to New York to meet with several heads of state at the UN building, has a protein shake for lunch between phone calls with members of Congress, greets a group of kindergartners who are at the White House on a field trip, works with her speech writers on a response to an attack on our facilities somewhere in the Middle East—which she has to deliver at 7:00 on national television—has five reports to read and respond to, and finally gets to the living quarters at 9:00. What’s your idea of romance then?”
Sweat was pouring down Neil’s face. “Uhhh . . . I greet her at the door with roses and . . . and . . . have dinner ready—with candlelight—and . . . and kiss her and tell her I love her.” Neil looked pleased with himself.
“You have to be kidding.”
His face fell. But then, inspired, he added, “Chocolate cheesecake for dessert.”
“No! You offer to run her a bath or give her a massage or make her something she can eat in front of the TV.” Karen offered a small, encouraging smile. “The chocolate cheesecake is a good idea, though.”
“So maybe she’ll want to eat it in bed, and then—“
“No! No ‘and then.’ It's possible that there may be no ‘and thens’ until a weekend at Camp David.”
“Only on the weekend???” He gulped. A glance at the incredible woman across the room restored his determination. “OK. She’s worth it.”
“Let’s talk about when you’re tired or have had a bad day,” Rachael said. “What do you expect of her then?”
“Nothing! Nothing, I swear! I-I’ll just be quiet and-and hide behind a newspaper.”
“Wrong!” Rachael and all the other women shook their heads. “You have the sweetest, most generous, most loving woman in the world, and you don’t want to let her soothe you? You—“
“’And then’?” he asked hopefully.
“Porco!” Marina exclaimed, shaking her head, as did many others.
“You lie down with your head in her lap,” suggested Francesca.
“And let her play with your hair,” added Tanja.
“You do have really great hair,” Ring said. Everyone nodded in agreement, and Neil relaxed a bit.
“Now tell us what you’re going to buy her for Christmas,” Heather said.
Kate, seeing the look of terror on her boyfriend’s face, glided over to join the group. “Hi, babe—how’s it going?” she asked, sitting down beside him.
He fell over, his head landing in her lap. Kate began playing with the thick dark locks. “How’s he doing, girls?” she asked her fans.
“He’s afraid of us,” Jen told her, “so that’s a good sign.”
Kate smiled down into the chocolate eyes. “They just want to make sure you’ll be good to me.” Caressing his cheek, she said, “After all this is over, we’ll go to the living quarters—“
“And then?” The words were no sooner out of his mouth than, trembling, he grabbed her around the waist, burying his face in her stomach.
Kate frowned down at him and then at the girls. “What’s wrong with him?”
Everyone shrugged.
Kate was exhausted when everyone had finally left, but she was eager for what awaited her in her living quarters. She brushed out her hair and changed into something pretty. Opening her bedroom door, she smiled and went to sit in the midst of her girlfriends. “Who has the remote?” she asked. “I don’t want to miss a second of ‘Mad Men.’”
Why are you up at 046 hours?
ReplyDeleteI don't have to get up early MWF!!!
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