Mounting Fears

26

WILL WAS WAKENED FROM A SOUND SLEEP BY A HEAVY OBJECT BEING DROPPED ON his abdomen from what seemed like a great height, making a whomp noise. "Huh?" he managed to say after he had gotten his breath back.

Kate was fully dressed. "Got your picture in the paper," she said. "Enjoy!" She slammed the bedroom door on her way out.

Will struggled to sit up in bed. The object that had struck him was the combined weights of The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the New York Daily News. A headline from the News screamed at him: PREXY PAWS STAR. This was accompanied by a half-page full-color photograph of him with his hand on Charlene Joiner's left breast. Will flung the newspaper across the room, just as the butler was entering with his breakfast on a tray.

The butler dodged the paper just in time. "Good morning, Mr. President," he said, setting the tray in Will's lap.

"Good morning," Will replied. "Sorry about the newspaper."

"Quite all right, sir. Will there be anything else?"

"No, thank you."

The man left, and Will began searching for the TV remote control among the covers. By the time he found it and turned on the set, his breakfast was getting cold. He looked at the tray: a single, poached egg on dry toast, a small glass of orange juice, and a pot of coffee. He began eating as the Today show popped onto the TV screen.

"… and the president managed to get himself photographed in a compromising situation with Charlene… "

Will switched to Good Morning America. "… Joiner, Hollywood's biggest sex symbol," the program continued. Will switched off the TV set and attacked the lonely egg.

WILL ENTERED the Oval Office at the stroke of eight o'clock. His top campaign staff were waiting, sipping coffee and eating Danish. Will grabbed a cheese Danish and poured himself some coffee. "Morning, everyone," he said.

"You've seen the papers?" Tom Black asked.

"You mean the picture of me with Charlene Joiner's breast in my hand?"

"That's the one."

"I put out my hand to hold her off," Will said. "She walked right into it."

"Funny there was a photographer on station at that very moment," Sam Meriwether said.

"Yeah, funny," Will said.

"I wouldn't worry about it," Moss Mallet said. "In the past, every time your name has been linked with Charlene's, your polls have gone up."

"This time my hand was linked with her breast," Will said. "That ought to make me the most popular man in the country."

"With men," Kitty Conroy said. "Women will want to kill both of you."

"I can't argue with that," Moss said.

"As long as they get Charlene first," Will said. "We're going to have to take further steps to see that she doesn't get near me again between now and the election."

"What sort of steps?" Sam asked.

"I ordered Kitty to tell the Secret Service to shoot her, but Kitty failed me."

"Mea culpa," Kitty said.

"Charlene has this new thing," Will said. "She wants me to pardon Larry Eugene Moody."

There was laughter in the room.

"It's funny to everybody but Charlene," Will said. "And when she wants something, it's very hard to stop her."

"What is it you want done?" Tom asked.

"The first thing is, we have to be sure she is not on the guest list for any White House dinner. If she turns up here, Kate will shoot her and save the Secret Service the trouble."

"Done," Kitty said, making a note.

"It's not enough just to screen the guest lists for her name," Will said. "She's perfectly capable of sneaking in here on the arm of some invited guest. In those circumstances it would be very hard to stop her."

"I think what we have to do," Tom said, "is to start a sort of Charlene Watch. If we know where she is at every moment, we can sound the alarm if she gets within a mile of you."

"Within a hundred miles of me," Will said. "But don't go hiring any private detectives. That would not look good on the campaign fund's reporting forms."

"We'll do it with volunteers," Tom said.

"That might work," Kitty said, "if they're male volunteers."

"Please, please," Will said, "don't let the press track this back to the campaign. Tell the volunteers that if they get caught, they'll have to plead to stalking her."

"I'll take care of it," Tom said. "If she gets close, we'll head her off at whatever pass she's riding in from."

"Thank you," Will said, "I feel better now."

Kitty held up a sheet of paper. "Here's the veep's statement." She read it aloud. "Vice President Martin Stanton and his wife, Elizabeth, announced today that they are divorcing after twenty-nine years of marriage because of irreconcilable differences. The parting is mutual and amicable, and Mr. and Mrs. Stanton request that the media respect their privacy in this matter."

"First question they'll ask," Tom interjected, "is, Why was the announcement not made during the hearings or before the swearing-in?"

"The delay was at the request of Elizabeth Stanton," Kitty said. "She didn't want their personal differences to overshadow an important time for the country."

"Is that true?" Will asked.

"I spoke with her myself," Kitty said. "She was very reasonable about requesting that, after I suggested she request it."

Moss spoke up. "I give the story one news cycle," he said. "Unless there's another woman."

"What about another man?" Kitty asked.

"Is Stanton gay?"

"You know what I mean: What if Betty Stanton has something on the side."

"That would be the very least of our problems," Moss said. "The question is still on the table: Does Stanton have something on the side?"

There was silence in the room.

Will broke it. "Surely, someone asked him."

"I asked him the more general question," Tom Black said. "You know: 'Is there anything in your life we should know about?' "

"Well," Moss said, "if it happens, it happens, and we'll just have to deal with it."

"I hope not," Will replied.

AT TEN O'CLOCK, a cast of media, congressional leaders, White House staff, and invited guests assembled in the East Room and watched as a Supreme Court justice swore in Martin Stanton as vice president of the United States. Hands were shaken all around, and, after the president and his new vice president and the justice had left the room and the president had walked the vice president to a waiting helicopter, the press secretary distributed the release concerning the divorce of the vice president.

There was, of course, a clamor of questions from the press, but the press secretary reminded them that the vice president and his wife had requested privacy, and that, anyway, the vice president was already in the air and unavailable for comment.