Authors: Claire Adams
Over the following few weeks, I found
myself continually in the president’s presence. We’d built a rapport that
seemed so natural. We’d speak sincerely—with these small smiles on each other’s
faces—as we discussed the seriousness of the polls, of the employees. I’d fight
with him a bit, still feeling like we were playing this strange game—one that
had begun in earnest with that private lunch. I felt like every time I walked
away from him, back toward my desk, I could fee his eyes on my body, on my slim
waist. I shimmied this way, then that as I walked, playing to his wants. I
couldn’t help it; I just loved to win.
The lunches grew more frequent, as well.
And the late-night drinks in the office happened more and more. Often, other
people were there, complaining about the other party, wringing their hands
about the polls. But a few glasses of wine in, Xavier and I would be laughing,
holding our stomachs in such a way that looked nearly comical. I can say
honestly that I’ve never laughed that much, not in all my years. I’d always
been so serious. But I felt it fall away from me like a shadow whenever he was
around.
Of course, I tried to shake myself out of
it every evening when I arrived home. “What are you doing?” I’d whisper to
myself in the mirror, removing my shirt at nearly one in the morning, tired
from a full day of working and a full night of drinking. “Get a grip!”
A few weeks after our initial lunch, we
sat together in that same room off from the kitchen. Again, the light filled
it. But the light was different, illustrating a different time: the coming of
late summer, the coming of fall. By this time, the waiter had learned my name
and my tastes. He made me a beautiful green salad with strawberries,
blueberries, and spinach. “For the lady,” he said, winking at me once more.
I pierced my fork through a strawberry and
lifted it to my mouth. I looked up at Xavier, who hadn’t touched his food yet.
His eyebrows furrowed into his eyes. He was thinking about something that
troubled him.
“Are you all right, Xavier?” I asked him
softly. I’d grown to understand that he liked a soft touch, sometimes—that the
stresses of his presidential lifestyle didn’t allow for simple, easy
conversation. He was always concerned with the state of the world, and he
wasn’t allowed to look inwardly. Not often, at least.
He shook his head, trying to push beyond
the muddled nature of his brain. “Of course,” he said. “Of course.” He smiled
at me, shifting in his chair. “Can I ask you a personal question, Amanda?”
I raised my eyebrow at him, sensing a
serious issue fueling from his lips. “Sure.”
“I just. I wondered about your love life.
If you’re—if you’re seeing anyone.”
My face burned, suddenly. I shifted my
gaze out the window, where I saw a small, white bird floating through the easy,
late-summer breeze. The question felt innapropriate—as though it was leading to
something more.
I instantly told myself
I was silly; had I not asked him questions of a similar nature?
But I told myself that I had reason—his
personal life is his professional life, as far as the public is concerned.
What interest should he have in mine?
Though I was beginning to suspect that I
knew.
“I’m not seeing anyone,” I said,
disallowing myself from giving him another response, telling myself to not let
things go there/
He hung his head. “I shouldn’t be talking
about this, of course. I just feel like we’ve grown close over the weeks—that
you understand me, in a lot of ways.”
I nodded, biting my lip. God, I was
usually confident and commanding but every time I was around him he made me
nervous. “I feel the same way,” I said quietly and with more sincerity than I
had anticipated. “I don’t have many people to talk to.”
I still gazed out the window, uncertain
about the ways in which my words would affect our relationship, the very
beautiful friendship we had cultivated. And while I knew my feelings were
growing, surely it could go no further.
He cleared his throat for a moment. He
looked so gorgeous in the light. His dark hair curled perfectly on his head,
and his trimmed beard made him look so suave, so mysterious. I swallowed in the
tension.
“I need to ask your advice,” he said in a
humble tone.
“Relationship advice?” I asked him, then.
He nodded. “I need advice on how to fix
things with my wife. You see, I can’t tell anyone that we’re having problems.
We can’t even go see a counselor. This would be reported to the public. The
opposition would jump on it as a sign of weakness in my character—a moral flaw.
And I just can’t—I can’t have it. I can’t have them thinking I have a single
weakness that they can exploit.”
“For the polls’ sake, please don’t,” I
said, smiling at him. I knew how it would look, however. The American people
wanted a firm marriage at the helm of their great country. They almost didn’t
trust that this president didn’t have children; it was a topic we often had to
deal with on the re-election campaign team. “But in terms of advice, I’m
honored that you came to me,” I began. “I honestly don’t know a great deal
about your situation. But I do know that women love to be treated like they’re
the only parts of your life you care about, you know? It’s just you and your
wife, against the world. If you make her feel like she’s the only woman you’ve
ever dreamed of—“
“And if that’s not true?” the president
asked me, then. His dark eyes forced mine toward him. The gaze caught me
off-guard. I dropped my fork onto the white tablecloth.
“Everyone has needs. Perhaps yours are
simply—not found in your relationship with your wife,” I said, knowing that I
was overstepping my boundaries. Could I come back from this? He continued to
gaze at me. I didn’t know what else to say; I certainly wanted to dissipate
that terrifying, completely passionate moment between us.
I ripped my eyes away, then. I formed the statement
easily, with precision: “You have to know that I am so envious of your
professional success,” I began, bringing my hands to my forehead. “It’s an
eternal burden to me. I am always searching for ways to get ahead, for ways to
enhance my relationship to my career. But I don’t know how, you know?”
Xavier looked down, toward his plate. He’d
hardly eaten anything. I knew what sadness did to the appetite. “Sure. Well.
You know all about success, after all.”
“Not like you, Mr. President—“ I began, a
bit of laughter laced on my tongue.
But he stopped me, his hand high in the
air. He shook his head vehemently. “It’s Xavier, Amanda. You know that.”
I bit my tongue in those moments, nearly
frightened of him and his sudden desire to tell me things, to make an intimate
connection with me. I didn’t know how to fit this information into my head; I
didn’t know how to comprehend it.
I swallowed and pulled myself back from
the table, tapping at my mouth with my napkin. My nearly uneaten salad sat
before me, gleaming in the light from the window. “I’m stuffed,” I said, even
as my stomach ate at me. “I think I’ll—I’ll head back up to the office. See
what those goons have messed up, now.”
I stood up and flung myself toward the
door, still feeling his eyes on me. The door to the kitchen swung back behind
me, delivering a real-life boundary between Xavier and me. I hustled up the
steps and found myself in a sea of work, of questions, of emails. Downstairs,
in that breakfast nook, Xavier and I were safe from the rest of the world. But
out here, in the madness, it was just a cacophony.
That evening, I gathered my supplies for
the night. It was strange; after our lunch, I hadn’t seen Xavier anywhere
throughout the west wing. I’d asked Jason about him, of course, but he’d been
far too busy to answer—flying from one end of the room to the other with a
phone strapped to his ear. He was a dutiful worker, this second in command. I
knew he hadn’t even noticed the tension between the president and I, despite
our many late-night drinks, despite our intimate sneak-aways during lunch time.
I shook my head over and over, trying to
refute these thoughts from my head. The president wasn’t anything to me; we
didn’t have anything intimate. We didn’t.
I followed my shadow away from the
well-lit room. I saw Dimitri off to the side, guarding the Oval Office once
more. I nodded to him. “Good night, Dimitri!”
Dimitri took a slight step forward, his
eyes eager. “If you wait a few moments, I can give you a ride home!”
But I shook my head, not wanting to alert
Xavier that I was leaving. I could nearly feel his presence in the other
room—such a continuous shadow. “No. I’ll catch a taxi, Dimitri. You shouldn’t
have to drive to Trinidad every day.” I winked at him and swung back around,
back toward the stairwell.
But suddenly, I heard a door spring open
behind me. The Oval Office. I kept walking, pretending I didn’t sense anything;
that I couldn’t hear his footfalls behind me. Keep walking, I thought to
myself. Keep going. No one can know about your attraction to him—especially not
him.
But suddenly, as I reached the steps, I
felt his hand on my shoulder. I looked up, feeling my heart rattle in my chest.
His fingers were strong, and he swung me around, forcing me to look at him. The
President of the United States was breathing heavily. A small vein pulsed in
his forehead.
“What is it?” I asked him in a whisper. My
eyes lurched left, noting that Dimitri was no longer in the hallway. What was
going on?
Xavier licked his lips for a moment,
visibly trying to calm himself down. He closed his eyes, shaking his head. “I
wondered if you’d go to dinner with me. Sometime. Tonight, even.” His eyes
pleaded with me.
My head spun for a moment. I could almost
hear myself saying yes. It was all I wanted in the world. But then I shook
myself out of it. This man—this man before me. He couldn’t be mine. He was
another woman’s already. He and Camille had married, for better or for worse.
He was just a stressed man with the entire nation at his feet, looking for
relief. It wouldn’t come from me. I had too much to do.
I couldn’t jeopardize my career.
Slowly but surely, I shook my head no. I
watched as his eyes sunk into his head with the realization. For the first time
in perhaps his entire life, someone had told him no. I bit my lip, trying to
make up for my decline. “Xavier. You know you’re a wonderful friend. But I just
can’t allow people to get the wrong impression about us; it would bring you far
too many problems.” I tipped my head to the right, trying to make him
understand with huge, glowing eyes. “Please. Your friendship means so much to
me and your presidency too much to this country.”
Xavier nodded, coughing a bit. His face
had reddened. His eyes skirted back down the hallway, where a few members from
the campaign re-election committee were walking companionably, eagerly
anticipating the comfort of their own homes. The president turned toward me
once more, only for an instant. “You get to leave this place. Remember that,”
he said. And then, he was gone. It happened so suddenly, leaving me in a sort
of desolate haze.
I spun back around on my heels and darted
down the steps, feeling my heart so fast in my chest. I thought surely I was
having a heart attack—surely it was all over. But as I burst into the
late-summer night, I breathed a sigh of relief. I had looked my destiny in the
face, and I’d turned back, refuting it. This, beyond anything else, made me
strong.
This is what I told myself, of course.
But as I tossed and turned throughout the
night, dreaming only of the sheer need brimming in the president’s face, I
didn’t know right from wrong. I didn’t care, either.
Chapter
8
A few days passed. I hardly saw the president
at all, but it didn’t seem to matter. I was caught up in the poll counting, in
the re-election procedure. It seemed strange. While the president continued
with his various meetings—one, I saw on the news, with the president of
France—I was working tirelessly to ensure that he would remain in office, able
to do these things year after year once more.
“I wondered if you’d go to dinner with
me.”
The
words still haunted me a bit, even as I stood in front of the television,
watching Xavier and the President of France walk together by the monuments.
Xavier gestured toward Abraham Lincoln’s statue and made a small joke, making
the French president scoff in a very Parisian way. I longed to hear the joke; I
longed to hear his voice.
That evening, I learned on the news,
Xavier and Camille were meant to have dinner with the French president and his
fiancé. I looked down, hearing the words. It bothered me how much the words got
to me—how much they altered the perception of my day. As the lead of his
reelection campaign, I knew it was the right move. Still, it stung. I skirted
back from the television and swept back to my desk, ready to busy myself with
anything and everything else.
Each night of that week, I returned to my
home in the back of Dimitris’ car, feeling the sadness creep up around my neck.
Sadness at losing my opportunity with him. In the front, Dimitri continued to
ramble on, cracking jokes. Why can’t I just love him, I thought to myself. God,
wouldn’t it be so much easier to be with Dimitri? Couldn’t I just want
something that was actually in my reach? I hadn’t wanted something and not
gotten it during my entire life. And now: here I was, faced with my ultimate
desire. And I couldn’t force myself to reach out and grab it. It went against
everything.