The Book of Fate

10

Hold it!” I yell, darting around the corner of the lobby and heading for the elevator’s closing doors. Inside the elevator, a blond woman looks away, pretending she didn’t hear me. That’s why I hate Palm Beach. As the doors are about to pucker in a tight kiss, I leap forward and squeeze through. Now stuck with me, the blonde turns to the floor selection panel and pretends she’s searching for Door Open. I should call her on it and tell her off.

“Thanks,” I say, bent over as I catch my breath.

“What floor?”

“Four.”

“Oh, you’re with—”

“Yeah,” I say, finally looking up to see her.

She stares at my face, then quickly glances up at the electronic floor indicator. If she could run and scream “Monster!” she would. But like the best Palm Beach hostesses, she’ll overlook anything if it means a good social climb. “Must be wild to work for him,” she adds, my new best friend, even though she refuses to make eye contact. I’m used to it by now. I haven’t had a date in two years. But every pretty girl wants to talk to the President.

“Wilder than you know,” I say as the doors open on the fourth floor. Heading left toward a set of closed double doors, I sprint out as fast as I can. Not because of the blonde, but because I’m already—

“Late!” a scratchy voice scolds behind me. I spin back toward the open double doors of the Secret Service’s suite, where a man with a neck as thick as my thigh sits behind a glass partition that looks like a bank teller’s window.

“How late?” I call out, turning back toward the closed doors on the opposite side of the beige-carpeted hallway. Along with the Service’s, they’re the only doors on the whole floor — and unlike the law firm or the mortgage company just below, these doors aren’t oak and stately. They’re black and steel-lined. Bulletproof. Just like our windows.

“Late enough,” he says as I pull my ID badge from my pocket. But just as I’m about to swipe it through the card reader, I hear a quiet thunk, and the closed doors unlock.

“Thanks, A.J.!” I call out, pulling the door open.

Inside, I check the left-hand wall for the Secret Service agent who usually stands guard. He’s not there, which means the President’s not in yet. Good. I check the reception desk. The receptionist is gone too. Bad.

Crap. That means they already…

Sprinting across the enormous presidential seal that’s woven into the bright blue carpet, I cut to my left, where the hallway is lined with bad paintings and poor sculptures of the President. They’ve arrived every single day since we left office — all from strangers, fans, supporters. They draw, paint, pencil, sketch, bronze, and sculpt him in every possible permutation. The newest ones are a set of Florida toothpicks with his profile carved into each one, and a bright yellow ceramic sculpture of the sun, with his face in the middle. And that’s not even including what the corporations send: every CD, every book, every DVD that’s released, they all want the former President to have it, though all we do is ship it to his Presidential Library. Knocking over a beechwood walking cane with his childhood photos glued to it, I trip down the hall and head for the second-to-last office that’s—

“Nice of you to join us,” a raspy female voice announces as the entire room turns at my arrival. I do a quick head count just to see if I’m last — two, three, four, five…

“You’re last,” Claudia Pacheco, our chief of staff, confirms as she leans back in her seat behind her messy mahogany desk. Claudia’s got brown, graying hair that’s pulled back in an almost military-tight bun and smoker’s lips that reveal exactly where the raspy voice comes from. “President with you?” she adds.

I shake my head, forgoing my one excuse for being late.

Out of the corner of my eye, I spot Bev and Oren smirking to themselves. Annoying and annoyinger. They both eye the small gold lapel pin that sits on the corner of Claudia’s desk. Sculpted in the shape of the White House, the gold pin was no bigger than a hotel piece from Monopoly, but what made it memorable were the two gold poorly sculpted heads of the President and First Lady, pressed together and joined by one connecting ear, that dangled like charms just below it. The President bought it for Claudia years ago as a gag gift from a street vendor in China. Today, it’s part of her leftover White House tradition: whoever’s the last to arrive at the Monday morning staff meeting wears the pin for the next week. If you miss the meeting, you wear it for a month. But to my surprise, Claudia doesn’t reach for it.

“What happened with the break-in backstage?” she asks in her barreling Massachusetts accent.

“Break-in?”

“In Malaysia… the guy in the President’s holding room… the shattered glass table. My speaking Spanish here?”

In high school, Claudia was the girl who organized all the extracurricular events but never had any fun at them. It was the same when she ran Oval Office Operations, easily one of the most thankless jobs in the White House. She’s not in it for the credit or the glory. She’s here because she’s dedicated. And she wants to make sure we are too.

“No… of course…” I stutter. “But it wasn’t— That wasn’t a break-in.”

“That’s not what the report said.”

“They sent you a report?”

“They send us everything,” Bev says from the two-person love seat perpendicular to Claudia’s desk. She should know. As head of correspondence, she answers all the President’s personal mail and even knows what inside jokes to put at the bottom of his friends’ birthday cards. For a man with a good ten thousand “friends,” it’s tougher than it sounds, and the only reason Bev pulls it off is because she’s been with the President since his first run for Congress almost twenty-five years ago.

“And they called it a break-in?” I ask.

Claudia holds up the report as Bev pulls the lapel pin from the corner of the desk. “Break. In,” Claudia says, pointing to the words.

My eyes stay with the pin as Bev fidgets with it, running her thumb over the President’s and First Lady’s faces.

“Was there anything even worth stealing in the holding room?” Bev asks, brushing her dyed-black hair over her shoulder and revealing a V-neck sweater that shows off decade-old breast implants, which she got, along with the name Busty Bev, the year we won the White House. In high school, Bev was the girl voted Fabulous Face, and even now, at sixty-two, it’s clear that appearances still matter.

“No one stole anyth— Trust me, it wasn’t a break-in,” I say, rolling my eyes to downplay. “The guy was drunk. He thought he was in the bathroom.”

“And the broken glass table?” Claudia asks.

“We’re lucky it was just broken. Imagine if he thought it was a urinal,” Oren interrupts, already laughing at his own joke and scratching at his messy-prep eight a.m. shadow. At 6'1", Oren is the tallest, handsomest, toughest-looking gay man I’ve ever met in my life, and the only one close to my age in the office. From his seat across from Claudia’s desk, it’s clear he was the first one here. No surprise. If Bev was Fabulous Face, Oren was the smart kid who sent the dumb ones to buy beer. A born instigator, as well as our director of travel, he’s also got the softest political touch in the entire office, which is why, with one simple joke, the room quickly forgets its obsession with the table.

I nod him a thank-you and—

“What about the table?” Bev asks, still fidgeting with the pin.

“That was me,” I say way too defensively. “Read the report — I tripped into it as he was running out.”

“Wes, relax,” Claudia offers in her chief of staff monotone. “No one’s accusing you of—”

“I’m just saying… if I thought it was serious, I’d still be hunting for the guy myself. Even the Service thought he was just a wanderer.” On my left, Oren playfully taps his own lapel, hoping I don’t notice. Motioning to Bev, he’s trying to get her attention. He’s only worn the pin once — on a day I told him, “Wait in your office, the President wants to see you.” The President wasn’t even in the building. It was an easy trick. This is just fourth-grade payback. He again motions to Bev. Lucky me, she doesn’t notice.

“Listen, I’m sorry to do this, but are we done?” I ask, looking down at my watch and realizing I’m already late. “The President wants me to—”

“Go, go, go,” Claudia says, closing her datebook. “Just do me a favor, Wes. When you’re at tonight’s cystic fibrosis event — I know you’re always careful — but with the break-in…”

“It wasn’t a break-in.”

“… just keep your eyes open a little bit wider, okay?”

“I always do,” I say, dashing for the door and narrowly escaping the—

“What about the pin?” a rusty voice interrupts from his usual swivel chair in the back corner.

“Aaaaand you’re screwed,” Oren says.

“Red light, red light!” Claudia calls out. It’s the same thing she yells at her kids. I stop right there. “Thanks, B.B.,” she adds.

“Jes’ doin’ mah duty,” B.B. says, the words tumbling out of the side of his mouth in a slow Southern crawl. With a shock of messy white hair and a rumpled button-down shirt with the President’s faded monogrammed initials on the cuffs, B.B. Shaye has been by the President’s side even longer than the First Lady. Some say he’s Manning’s distant cousin… others say he’s his senile old sergeant from Vietnam. Either way, he’s been the President’s shadow for almost forty years — and like any shadow, he’ll creep you out if you stare at him too long. “Sorry, kiddo,” he offers with a yellow-toothed grin as Bev hands me the gold White House with the dangling heads.

For authenticity, the sculptor used two flakes of green glitter for the First Lady’s eye color. Since gray glitter is harder to come by, the President’s eyes are blank.

“Just tell people they’re your grandchildren,” Oren says as I open the clasp and slide it into my lapel. Shoving too hard, I feel a sharp bite in my fingertip as the pin punctures my skin. A drop of blood bubbles upward. I’ve taken much worse.

“By the way, Wes,” Claudia adds, “one of the curators from the library said he wants to talk to you about some exhibit he’s working on, so be nice when he calls…”

“I’m on my cell if you need me!” I call out with a wave. Rushing to the door, I lick the drop of blood from my finger.

“Careful,” B.B. calls out behind me. “It’s the small cuts that’ll kill ya.”

He’s right about that. Out in the hallway, I blow past an oversize oil painting of President Manning dressed as a circus ringmaster. Dreidel said he had info on Boyle. Time to finally find out what it is.