Total exclusive. The first lady’s transformation from white house fixture to eastern guru. Flips through the notes. Yellow lined paper flying everywhere. “Hey Morris you got a little ink on your face.” Don’t listen to them. They don’t know the story you’re riding. Strange, the feeling you have for the woman. Margaret. Used to be just another face behind the microphones and camera lenses. Now she might be – attractive? Enough Morris. Last thing you need is an unrealistic crush. Try the first line.
“The first lady, soon to be former first lady, hot from her impromptu press conference, spent the first minutes as a divorcee at a Barnes and Noble open mic poetry night last night.”
The old journalistic habits kicking in. Answer the five w’s in the opening paragraph. We’ve got who, what, when and where. But the why? Morris can feel that this is just the tip of an iceberg. What were those words she chanted at the microphone, strangely soothing to him. Hypnotic even.
She settles into the couch
Content with herself
Flips on the television
Funny how instinctual the act of raising the remote control and clicking is
Like it’s built into her DNA
Our DNA
Commercial. Click.
Sitcom. Click.
News station. Buzzing with her story.
Pauses for a bit of narcissism.
Turns off the television.
“Well don’t tell me this is all your going to do with yourself.”
“I had to pull quite a few strings to let you carry off this stunt.”
Her father standing in the archway.
Maybe a bad idea coming home.
But where else was she supposed to go?
Still, she feels eighteen now.
This lecture no different than the one coming home late from prom night.
“Well, I’ve got some contacts at Microsoft you can talk to tomorrow”
“Maybe do some PR work”
“You like to travel”
“Make sure you turn off the lights”
He leaves.
She breathes a sign of relief
She doesn’t mind.
She doesn’t care
Not about Microsoft
She had some sort of moment
Needs to find her true voice.
Jumps in the car
Turns the key
How novel this
Driving your own car
She puts the car in drive
Again
All of this machinery
Seems like a sort of second nature
But she’s not certain this is what she’s interested in
She liked the sound of her voice
The vibration
Casting it out to her own people
Not her husband’s
She drives across the city
Washington DC
She’ll need to leave here soon
Too many ghosts
New York City maybe
Or Los Angeles
She needs comfort now though
Something only family can offer
Blood
So her sister seems the logical choice
She has to rely on logic in a time of such upheaval
She speeds out of the city
Away from the monuments
Away from the streetlights
The glare of attention
The circus
The open landscape feels nice to her
She begins relaxing
Puts the car into cruise control
Barely doing any work now
A hurtling mass at eighty-five miles per hour
Controlled by the occasional flick of the wrist
There are ghosts out here
She’s sure of it
She’s trying to attune her senses to their voices
Feels like a prophet
Wandering into the desert to talk to God
She is looking forward to seeing her sister
Though she could never live the life herself
She enjoys the company
A house made of logs
Drinking from glasses and cups made by her sister’s hands
So she pulls up to the house
Her headlights dragging across the front facade
The stucco
A little microscopic fractal dance of light
Her body already awaking to the encounter
She exits and walks to the front door
Sis opens
Big hug
“Tea?”
The comfort of family
Letting yourself crash into the open arms of a loved one
You have to earn it
You have to strain and struggle against the Universe
For just a moment of impermanent peace
She finds it briefly here in the smell of bergamot
“So what made you leave him anyway?”
“He’s king of the world, isn’t he?”
“In certain circles, anyway”
Sis is already disturbing the peace
She can feel the next statement coming:
“Plus he’s still pretty good looking. In shape”
Susan was more like Jack than she was
No connection between them when she introduced them that first time, though
Like two magnets of the same polarity
Even less
Like two magnets with no polarity
“I didn’t marry the power. I married the man”
She’s not sure what she means
The words just tumble out
She loses her guard around her sister
Susan’s so frank
You there?
She’s picking at her teabag now
A little unsettled
Couldn’t find an anchor with Jack
Can’t find one with father, with sister
Maybe it’s not them
It’s her
“Say, I’m going to Los Angeles this weekend”
“You should come”
“I got an invite to a Hollywood shindig”
“They know how to throw a party over there”
Margaret feels the idea
Hits her like a shot of adrenaline
“Yes. Yes, that would be fine”
Air Force One touches down in the sands of Afghanistan
Jack steps out of the plane
An army buzzing around him
Peter is at his side
Clipboard in hand
“Like I was saying, I’m guessing this will be good for the polls”
“Getting in touch with the armed forces”
“We’re having a polling company test out new possibilities for you, post-divorce”
“They’ve been working around the clock all night”
“We may need to take the country in a more militaristic direction”
Jack’s taking in each bite-size bit of information
Peter rattling off percentages and statistics
No reason to doubt him now
Been right so far
Still Jack’s not so sure he likes the phrase “militaristic direction”
“Not that we have to go to war, you understand”
Peter’s reading his mind, like always
“But maybe a tougher stance on China would be welcome”
“Make some speeches”
“…”
Jack’s mind wandering again
He always prided himself as being a peacetime president
Bold moves in social reform
Healthcare bills
Law enforcement
That sort of thing
Not good enough for Margaret
“Goddammit, where’s Larry”
Lawrence Unsworth
Chief of Staff
On the ground of this godforsaken country
Somewhere
Was supposed to be meeting the plane
A figure emerging from the clouds of dust
You can barely think with the dust so thick from the rotors and engines
The figure approaches
Pulls up his visor
A little patch of flesh visible inside of that helmet
Surrounded by more dust
More dirt
“General Unsworth’s ETA is ten minutes, sir”
Jack feels Peter ready to suck up that ten minutes with more percentages
Cuts him
Cuts him off
“Pete, get me some water will you?”
