THE PRESIDENT 2 (27 page)

Gina was looking at a series of photographs, all showing Demps in Newark, New Jersey with a tall, bosomy blonde.

“Who took these?” Gina wanted to know as she watched, her brow wrinkled, her mind unwilling to conclude what these photographs, at first blush, obviously concluded.

“A friend of mine in Newark,” LaLa said.
 
“She saw him in a restaurant there with one of those females and they seemed so chummy that she decided to snap the picture.
 
She knew he was going to be in town on business, but this didn’t seem like any business meeting to her.
 
And when she saw him hug her as they waited for the valet to bring the car around, she decided to follow them.
 
And she followed them right to Demps old apartment.”
 

Gina stared at her friend.
 
“It looks bad, okay, I’m not going to even front.
 
But you need to talk to Demps first.
  
After all these years he at least deserves a hearing.”
 
Gina’s cell phone began to ring.
 

“After those pictures he doesn’t deserve a damn thing.”

“When is he due back in town?” Gina asked as she checked the caller ID.
 
It was the president.

“In a couple days.
 
But I’m thinking about going down there now.”

Gina held up her finger as she answered her phone.
 
“Hi,” she said into the phone.

“Hello there,” Dutch, now in the Oval Office, said.
 
“Max tells me you had to excuse yourself from my historic presser.”

“I saw your opening statement.
 
I’m real happy for you, Dutch.
 
And the hostages of course.”

“Of course.
 
And that press is fickle like you wouldn’t believe.
 
Yesterday I was a bumbling idiot who couldn’t get anything right.
 
Tonight, because those hostages are now safe, I’m a rock star.
 
That’s why I put zero stock in their opinions.”

“I hear that.”

“How’s Loretta?” he asked.

Gina sighed.
 
Looked at her friend, who looked lost, it seemed to her.
 
“Not good,” she said.

“What is it about?”
 
Gina didn’t say anything.
 
“Dempsey?” Dutch asked.

“Bingo,” Gina said.
 
“I think I’m going to stay here tonight, Dutch.
  
You don’t need me for anything, do you?”
 
Gina almost blushed as she listened to his answer. “Other than that,” she said with a smile.

“No, I’m good. I’m going to finish up a few staff briefings and then I’m going to bed.”

“What about our house guests?
 
Don’t forget about them.”

“Max has already notified them that I’ll see them in the morning.
 
Give my love to Loretta.
 
Prayerfully it’ll all work out for her and Demps.”

“Yes,” Gina said.
 
“I sure hope so.”

“Think you need me there with you?”

“No, no, I’m good.”
 
Then Gina smiled.
 
“Christian’s here with me.”

“Oh, well then,” Dutch said with a smile of his own.
 

“Goodbye, Walter,” Gina said with a grin and hung up before he could yell at her for calling him that name he hated.

“See what I’m talking about?” LaLa said to Gina as she hung up.

Gina, however, was confused.
 
“See what?”

“You and the president.
 
Y’all have a wonderful relationship.
 
The best relationship I’ve ever seen.
 
That’s all I’ve ever wanted for me and Demps.”

“LaLa, stop sounding so fatalistic.
 
All you have so far are a few photos of him with some female.
 
That’s it.
 
They aren’t kissing, they aren’t making love, they’re just laughing and talking.”

“And hugging, don’t forget that.”

“According to this friend of yours they were hugging.
 
But of course she conveniently forgot to snap that telling shot.
 
Are you sure this is a reliable friend?”

“Yes, G, she’s reliable.”

“What’s her name?”

“Ellen Fountroy, and stop acting like some attorney.
 
You can’t explain away the evidence here.”

“Look, La, I’m not saying these pictures aren’t bad.
 
They are. Especially the ones that have him going inside his apartment at night with this woman.
 
But the evidence is just too flimsy for you to be leaping to all kinds of conclusions just yet.
 
You need more information.
 
You need to talk to Demps.”

“So he can deny it?” LaLa asked.
 
“That’s a brilliant plan.”

Christian glanced at LaLa after her snide tone with the First Lady.
 
But Gina didn’t give it a second thought.
 
This was a man LaLa planned to spend the rest of her life with.
 
This was a love thing.
 
And Gina had been around long enough to know that love can make a fool out of the most reasonable of people.

Tears began to appear in LaLa’s eyes.
 
Gina had never seen her friend so unhinged.
 
“I thought he was in Newark on business.
 
I thought he was there juggling family business matters.
 
When he’s there juggling females instead.”

“There’s hardly evidence of all of that, LaLa, let’s not get it twisted.”

“He wasn’t like this when we were still living in Newark,” LaLa said and Gina looked at her.
 
“I never once thought of him as a cheater.
 
But as soon as you made him your deputy press secretary, and he got a taste of power and the big time, everything changed.
 
Now he thinks he’s some mack daddy.
 
Now he thinks he doesn’t need me anymore.”
 

LaLa began crying seriously and Gina hurried to her side.
 

“He doesn’t need me anymore, G,” LaLa cried as Gina wrapped her into her arms.
 
“After all these years, he doesn’t need me.”

Gina looked at Christian, who looked as scared and pathetic as LaLa.
 
And then she looked back at LaLa, who looked as if her world had shifted.
 
And the responsibility Gina felt, the burden she bore, was wrenching.
 
When she asked her friends to come and be a part of her White House staff, she never dreamed it would come to this.
 
She remembered LaLa and Demps joking about how they were going to ride into town like conquering heroes and change that place called Washington.
 
When, if truth be told, it was Washington that had managed to change them.
 
And Gina, no matter how hard she tried, just couldn’t divorce herself of some of that blame.

***

The White House residence was pin drop quiet later that night.
 
Dutch was in bed, sound asleep, and Gina was still at LaLa’s, wide awake, listening to her friend recount all of the dreams she had for a long-term relationship that now, the way LaLa saw it anyway, was near its end.
 
She behaved as if she was mourning a death, which caused Gina to have to behave as if she was comforting the bereaved.

Back at the White House, Victoria and Caroline were also wide awake, comforting each other with their plots and schemes.
 
Then eventually, when Victoria decided the time was right, Caroline made her way from Victoria’s room and carefully opened the door and entered Dutch’s.
 

As she moved across the floor, removed her robe and got in bed with the president, her heart was ramming against her chest.
 
But Victoria was right.
 
Once he got a load of her body again, he wouldn’t know what hit him.
 
The key for her was to make certain, when he woke up, that he was already inside of her.

He was lying on his back and she had just pulled his penis out of his boxer short’s opening, the side of it making her wet already, as she slid her naked body on top of him.
 
By the time his sleepy eyes began to open, she had already commandeered his lips and was kissing him, French style.
 

Dutch, at first, returned her kiss, thinking, in the fog of Caroline’s seduction, that it was Gina he was holding and kissing.
 
He even began to moan, as his penis began to expand in her hand.
 
But then he suddenly, just as she had his cock and was moving it toward her vagina, stopped.
 
He stopped all movement.

Caroline thought it was the fact that his penis was between her legs and ready for entry that stopped him cold.
 
But it wasn’t her point of entry that had stopped him.
 
It was her perfume.
 
Perfume, Dutch suddenly realized, that wasn’t his wife’s.

His eyes flew open.
 
When he realized that it was Caroline, not Gina, on top of him, he literally threw her off the bed, her bare backside dropping hard onto the floor.
 
He immediately pressed his alarm button and jumped out of bed, his penis dangling out of his boxer’s like some long, stiff rod.
 
He quickly pushed it back in.
 
But when he saw that it was Caroline pushing away from him, sliding on her butt across the floor as if she was the one under assault, his sleepy brain still couldn’t quite comprehend the scene.

Victoria, who had been looking out of the cracked door of her bedroom, was horrified to see Secret Service agents materialize, seemingly out of nowhere, and hurry to the president’s bedroom.
 
She hurried there too.
 
And there she saw Caroline, being lifted from the floor by an agent with a woman’s robe being thrown around her, and her son, standing there, tying his own robe.
 

“What’s happening here?” Victoria asked, moving further into the room.
 
“Caroline, what’s happened to you?”

Caroline was so distraught, so embarrassed, so everything that she could do nothing but cover her mouth, cry and point.
 
Victoria looked at her son.

“Dutch,” she said in her best voice of censure, “you should be ashamed of yourself!”

At first Dutch was certain he didn’t hear her correctly.
 
There was no way his mother, his own flesh and blood, was suggesting that he had orchestrated this get together.
 
But then he realized what was happening.
 
Caroline had gotten in his bed stark naked while he was fast asleep.
 
Had kissed him, had fondled his penis to excitement proportions.
 
And he was supposed to kiss his marriage, his love for Gina goodbye, just to get another taste of
her
?