Another loud groan.
Dev laughed wickedly. "Phone call ended. Code: 18758OHIO6236ACA." She turned to Lauren, who was shaking her head and smiling at Dev's antics. She shrugged only somewhat guilty. "Sometimes it's great to be President."
CHAPTER V
May 2021
Monday, May 3
rd
DE
V WAS WHISTLING as she tucked a newspaper under her arm and gathered up two steaming coffee mugs. She strode out of her office with Liza trailing behind her. "I just need ten minutes alone, Liza."
"Can you live with five?"
"I'll settle for seven."
"Deal."
David met her in the hall. "Madam President?"
"Not now, David. I have a very important meeting."
Rust-colored brows furrowed. "With whom?" David's mind raced. Had he missed an appointment?
Dev flashed him a grin.
The tall man rolled his eyes. "Never mind. That silly smile says it all. How long will you be, Madam President? You have a meeting with the Secretary of Health and..."
"Yeah, I know. Liza has granted me a seven minute parole from my duties as President. Go talk to Jane. She's got the job until I get back."
David shook his head. "Have a good time."
"I intend to." She smirked.
Boy, I hope Lauren's in a good mood. She sounded like it when I asked her to meet me.
Dev walked quickly to her destination, waving off the small tribe that was following her. She pushed the door to her destination open with her hip and drew in an appreciative breath. The earliest of the spring roses were blooming in the Rose Garden, and their sweet aroma wafted over Dev.
Lauren was sitting on a bench with her arms across the back and her face turned towards the warm spring sunlight. Though Dev could see only her profile, she could tell that Lauren's eyes were closed but she was awake. She looked contented and happy. A grin tugged at Dev's lips at the sight.
"Morning, Mighty Mouse." Dev couldn't resist teasing the writer with her Secret Service name. She got a different reaction every time she used it.
Lauren's body remained perfectly still as she continued to soak in the morning sun and Dev's good-natured taunt. "It's amazing. I hear the words, but I know no one is talking to me," she drawled calmly. "Because there is no one here by that ridiculous name."
Dev chuckled and took a seat next to Lauren, nudging her over on the bench. "Do you luuuvv me, Lauren?" she asked in a playful voice. When a single, questioning, gray eyeball slowly opened and rolled in her direction, the President offered the blonde woman a cup of steaming coffee, which just happened to be in Lauren's very own red mug. It was prepared with two sugars and cream, just the way she liked it.
Lauren smiled coyly as she took the warm mug. "Thanks. And I love anyone who brings me coffee the way I like it."
Dev grabbed the neatly folded paper from under her arm and made a show of looking at it. "Huh." She set her mug on the bench and scratched her chin. "Looks like they're right then. You are cheap and easy." She handed the paper to the writer. "And cheating on me." Dev pulled a nonexistent knife from her chest. "Why am I always the last to know?" she moaned piteously.
Lauren reached for the paper. Using her hand to block the sun, she scanned the spot where Dev was pointing, which was the social column. "White House live-in, Lauren Strayer, was caught rendezvousing with her new love at Been Gi's last month." Her eyes scanned the rest of the short article, stopping on the small, unflattering photograph of her getting into Casey's car. Lauren wrinkled her nose. "God, I have no taste whatsoever. I'm cheating on you with a morgue attendant named 'Lacey'."
"It would appear so. Yes." Dev braced herself for the pending explosion. But it never came.
"Oh, well," Lauren casually tossed the paper aside and took a sip of coffee, hiding her smile behind the rim of the cup, "if you'd keep your woman satisfied, I wouldn't be forced to look elsewhere for romance."
"Ouch!" Dev clutched her heart. "And just so cold about it, too. Gee, I have all the popularity of the plague. I can't catch a damned break. My live-in lover
and
my date threw me over for this Casey/Lacey woman. Who knew the morgue had such appeal?" Dev shook her head, sending her dark hair spilling over one shoulder. "Maybe I should try the other team. I'm batting zero with my own."
Lauren burst out laughing. She bumped shoulders with the older woman. "Don't tell me something in the press finally got to you? They've been writing about us for months. And the other team has its faults, too. Trust me."
"I just didn't want you to see this and explode," Dev explained sincerely. "It's just another attempt to get a reaction out of us." She leaned back and tried to act nonchalant about putting her arm over the back of the bench and dropping it down to rest lightly on Lauren's shoulders.
I am
sooooo pathetic.
Lauren jerked away at the feeling of Dev's arm on her shoulder. "What is it? A bug?" She began slapping where Dev's arm had been, her eyes searching her pale green blouse.
Dev threw her head back and laughed. "Might as well have been, the way my luck is running lately." She sighed and this time, decisively wrapped her arm around Lauren's shoulders, pulling the younger woman closer to her. "No, it wasn't a bug." She grinned devilishly and added a belated, "Mighty Mouse."
I should just gather up my courage and ask her out. What's the worst she can say – no? That wouldn't be a big surprise either. I've got nothing to lose.
"Uh... Lauren?"
Lauren blushed when she realized what Dev had tried to do and what her response had been.
Sorry, Devlyn. And
I'm glad it wasn't a bug
. She happily snuggled closer.
Is she going to? Oh, my God.
Lauren crossed her fingers and toes. "Yes, Devlyn?"
Ask me before I die!
"I was wondering... I mean... umm..."
I am
six feet of pure, unadulterated chicken shit. Good thing I don't run the government the way I run my love life. If I
had
a love life, that is.
Dev cleared her throat and lifted her chin. It was now or never. "Okay. What I wanted to know was-"
Liza opened the door to the rose garden looking slightly harried. She winced, clearly seeing she was interrupting something. "I'm sorry, Madam President..."
Lauren nearly groaned with disappointment, letting off a string of curse words in her mind.
Dev's mouth clicked shut, and her head dropped forward.
That was not seven minutes!
"There is an emergency phone call for Ms. Strayer."
Friday, May 7
th
The loudspeaker crackled, and the school auditorium was alight with excitement, when the school principal nervously announced, "Ladies and gentlemen, students, staff and faculty of Jefferson High School, the President of the United States!"
The high school band fired up 'Hail to the Chief', and Dev grinned at Liza as she stuck her notes in her jacket pocket. She tilted her head toward the drums. "Hey, they're not bad."
"No, Madam President. And they were very honored that you picked them to play for you."
Dev buttoned her jacket. "Well, for some of these kids it's a big deal." She shrugged. "Guess I'd better get out there, huh?"
This was another of Dev's many Community Visits. Her goal was to do at least one a month. They were already wildly popular, and requests from communities across the nation had come pouring in. Thus far, however, none of the visits had taken her too far from Washington. But she had plans to change that once she'd made a complete transition into office and things settled down.
These visits were held in high schools or community centers and were open to the public, but, at Dev's request, not televised. She wanted the most intimate setting and feeling possible, and she believed this was her chance to give something back and stay connected to the people.
"Bzzzz...." Liza sounded off like a cattle prod in action, just as Jane had taught her.
Dev laughed. "I'm ready. I'm ready. There's nothing after this, is there, Liza? I want to try and get home early tonight."
"No, Madam President." Pushing a few buttons, the tall assistant checked her electronic organizer and nodded. "This is it."
Dev leaned over to her assistant. "Don't suppose you've heard from Ms. Strayer."
"I'm sorry, Madam President. I haven't. I could call and have someone...?"
Dev's eyes strayed to her Secret Service agent, who was about to give her the cue to walk onto the stage. "No. That's okay. She'll call if she needs something."
Like me, for instance.
Dev inwardly cursed the cabinet meeting that morning that had kept her from flying out to Tennessee to check on Lauren herself.
Receiving a short nod from the dark-suited agent, the President strolled onto the stage of the high school auditorium. She smiled and waved to the crowd as a thousand cameras clicked furiously, their flickering flashes illuminating the room. Dev had learned to give everyone a moment or two before she tried to speak. This time she walked back and forth across the stage, waving and making eye contact with as many people as she could.
The last time she had done one of these Community Visits, she'd gone down into the audience, causing the Secret Service, and David, to go nuts. But after her Chief of Staff had lectured her incessantly, she did promise to be good.
Once the audience settled down, she took a seat in a high back, bar-like chair. She smiled at the crowd and said, "Hi."
The auditorium exploded into applause.
*
*
*
Lauren shifted in her chair as she watched her mother sleep. Dark circles ringed the older woman's eyes, and her fair hair looked thin and lifeless. They were in Nashville's St. Andrews hospital, in the same wing where Lauren had visited her mother on several other occasions. The very hallways stirred up dark memories she'd rather forget, and, at this moment, the writer was wishing herself anyplace but here.
Earlier in the week, Howard Strayer had called and calmly explained to his daughter that Anna's depression had taken a turn for the worse... that her mother had steadily been going down hill since Christmas, really. And that she had tried to take her own life.
Lauren's mother had gone grocery shopping and fed the cat before stripping naked and climbing into the cold, empty bathtub. Howard wasn't sure why, but for whatever reason, she didn't bother to fill it with any water. Using his razor sharp, fish scaling knife, she had slit both her wrists to the bone and closed her eyes, patiently waiting to die.
Anna had burst into uncontrollable, gut-wrenching sobs when Howard had come home in search of an aspirin and found her still alive, bleeding profusely.
Lauren stared bleakly at her mother's ghostly white figure. The sight of her, combined with the antiseptic smell of the hospital, and the stomach churning tension of the last day, made her shiver. But Lauren couldn't honestly say she was surprised by the suicide attempt. The older woman had fought nearly debilitating bouts of depression all of her adult life. This was the third suicide attempt that Lauren could remember, the other two haunting her otherwise unremarkable childhood like annoying, out of place specters.
When Lauren was eight she'd walked in on her mother trying to cut her wrists. The woman was weeping and fumbling helplessly with a safety razor, whose blades she'd somehow popped free of their plastic casing. Lauren had tried to calm her, but in the end was forced to wait until her mother actually passed out before she could get near enough to her to help.