THE PRESIDENT'S GIRLFRIEND (11 page)

     Christian was surprised to see that the president had put her on one of his dress shirts.  In times past, with the president’s other overnight female guests that Christian had to make this early morning visit to, they were usually still naked.

     “It’s time to go, ma’am,” he said to Gina.

     Gina didn’t understand.  She quickly looked over, fully expecting Dutch to be asleep on the other side of the bed, but he wasn’t there.  She looked at Christian.  “Where’s . . ?”

     “He’s in bed,” Christian said.

     Gina frowned.  “In bed?  What do you mean he’s in bed?  Isn’t this his bed?”

     Christian hated to admit it.  “No, ma’am,” he said.

     Gina still wasn’t understanding.  “But . . . I mean. . .”  Then she frowned again, as fear began to grip her.  “What time is it?” she asked.

     “It’s seven minutes to five, ma’am.”

     “Five in the morning?  Why are you waking me up at five in the morning?”

     “Because,” Christian said slowly, “you have to leave before the press starts arriving.”  He hated this part of his job, and especially with somebody like Gina Lansing.  She was gutsy and had heart and the president didn’t deserve her. 

     “So, what you’re saying to me is that I can’t be seen leaving the White House?”

     There was a long pause.  “That’s correct,”  Christian admitted.  Then he added, as if that would help anything at all: “It’s protocol, ma’am.”

     “Protocol?  You mean this is how the president does all of the females who sleep with him, is that the protocol you’re talking about?”

     Again, Christian hated to admit it.  “Yes,” he said, to Gina’s shock. 

     She lay there numb.  This couldn’t be happening.  Not after that powerful connection they made last night.  How could he let this happen, and happen to
her
?  She wasn’t one of his booty calls, he couldn’t possibly think of her that way after the kind of love making they experienced.  She wasn’t one of his booty calls! 

     Or was she?

     “Can I see him before I leave?” she asked Christian, her eyes wide with anguish.

     “No, ma’am,” Christian said succinctly and without hesitation, so there would be no misunderstanding.

+++

In the small hotel room LaLa opened her eyes to the sound of what she thought was a lot of furniture bumping.  When she looked over at the bed across from hers, and saw that it wasn’t furniture moving around, but Gina, she relaxed. 

     “Girl, what you doing this time of morning?  What time is it?”

     “It’s six fifteen, and what does it look like I’m doing?”

     It was obvious to LaLa that she was packing.  The question was why.  “You’re packing,” LaLa said.

     “You, young lady, move to the head of the class.”

     “You’re only one year older than me, so don’t get ahead of yourself.”  Then she sat up on her bed, her hands wrapped around her knees.  “But for real, Gina, what’s going on?”

     “We’re leaving,” Gina said as she threw more clothes into her suitcase. 

     “Leaving?  But I thought we were going to spend the day lobbying some more congressmen.”

     “What do you mean lobbying more congressmen?  Not one would see us yesterday.  Not even our own congressman.  Except to tell us that he can’t see us after the way I supposedly offended the president.”

     “He said he had a meeting.”

     “Yeah, right, he was able to spend time with all of his constituents ahead of us, but as soon as it was our turn, he has a meeting.  Give me a break.  I’m getting out of this town, you hear me?  I hate it here!  This place is soulless.”

     “Oh-oh,” LaLa said.  “It didn’t go well with the Flying Dutchman.”

     Gina, already emotionally drained, stopped packing and plopped down on her bed.  “It was awful, LaLa.  It was worst than I ever would have imagined.”

     “What are you saying?  He didn’t want to talk?  He treated you like a whore, what?”

     “No!” Gina said, knowing she wasn’t making herself clear, but unable to be any clearer.  “He was very kind to me.  He listened to me for like for an hour straight.  I’ve never met a man who was as attentive to me like that.”

     “Wait a minute, girl.  This ain’t making no kind of sense.  First you say it was the worst night of your life, now you say he was attentive and kind?  You’re talking crazy, G!”

     “It wasn’t the worst night of my life.  It was one of the best, actually.”

     LaLa stared at her friend.  “Did he, did y’all, you know . . . sleep together?”

     Gina hesitated.  There was no use hiding anything from LaLa, she knew her too well.  “Yes,” she finally said.

     “But it was bad, hun?  Imagine that big, strapping man don’t know how to please a woman.”

     “It was great.  It was fantastic.  The best sex I’ve ever had, and I mean the best.”

     LaLa frowned.  “The best?  Please explain yourself.  So it wasn’t awful?”

     “Yes, it was.  Not the sex.  Not the night we spent together, that was priceless.” Then she paused, as a cloud of pain crossed her face.  “It was afterwards.  This morning.”

     LaLa’s heart dropped.  “What happened?”

     “I woke up and Christian, that’s the young man who picked me up last night, he was standing over my bed.”

     “He did something to you?”

     “No, LaLa!  Christian is wonderful, it had nothing to do with him.  He was just doing his job.  But it was five this morning and he told me I had to leave before the press people started arriving at the White House.”

     “Makes sense,” LaLa said.  “They don’t want the rumor mill to start churning.”

     “I know that.  I had no problem with that.  But it was just that, Dutch, the president, wasn’t in bed when I woke up.”

     “Maybe he’s an early riser, maybe he works out, what’s the big deal?”

     “Christian said he was still asleep.  In bed.”

     “But I thought you said he wasn’t in bed?”

     “In his own bed.”

     “Oh,” LaLa said when the point dawned.  “So he puts you in his love shack, in his make-out room and then leave before you wake up so he don’t have to face you in the morning?”

     “So it would seem,” Gina said, looking away from her best friend in embarrassment.   Then she exhaled.  “But you know what was the worst part about it?”

     “What?”

     “When Christian said my leaving was protocol, that President Harber does this all the time, with his different, quote unquote, ‘overnight’ guests.  That made it almost unbearable.”

     “Oh, Gina!  Men are such dogs!”

     “Your man ain’t no dog.  Dempsey ain’t like that.”

     “I know.  But he’s the exception in my view.  And so is Frank, if you’re give him half a chance.”

     “Don’t start, La,” Gina said, getting back up and continuing to pack. 

     “That man loves you and you know it.”

     “Frank and I are friends, and that’s all we’ll ever be.” 

     “But why?  Because Frank’s white?”

     Gina stopped packing and looked at LaLa.  “I just spend the night with the President of the United States, and guess what?  He’s white, too.  How do you sound?  Do you ever listen to yourself?”

     “Well, whatever.  But I still say you should give Frank a chance ‘cause it’s for damn sure the President of the United States, as you love to call him, ain’t giving one to you.”

     Gina playfully threw a pillow at LaLa and continued to pack.  She tried to keep it light, joke it off as if she couldn’t care less about that man in the White House.  But inwardly, where it counted, she couldn’t care more.

SEVEN

A week later, back in Newark, and Gina was doing all she could to stay busy and forget that trip to DC, the awards ceremony, that night with Dutch, all of it, when she heard a car pull up on her drive.  She was curled up on her sofa, with her lap top on her lap, her reading glasses on her face, and a coffee mug in her hand, working frantically on yet another grant proposal even though she knew her chances of getting funding for it would be slim to none.  Helping gang bangers and drug addicts and hookers were the lowest of the lowest priority in this time of economic crunch.   But she still had to try.

     When she looked out of the window and saw Frank
Rotelli
jump from his BMW convertible and hurry towards the porch of her small house, she gave an audible sigh.  She didn’t know why, Frank was one of the nicest guys around, a successful corporate accountant who volunteered so much of his time to BBR that some donors assumed he was a staff member.  But she always got that eerie kind of queasy feeling whenever he would first appear.   Within seconds it would pass, and she would always wonder where did it come from to begin with, but it never failed to come.

     “Hey, Frank, what’s up?” she said when she opened the door.

     “What’s up yourself,” he said with a grand smile and removed his sunglasses to reveal big, sparkling blue eyes.  “
Demps
told me y’all were back.  I just got back from a business trip myself.”  He looked down the length of her.  “I couldn’t wait to see you again.”

     Gina hated when he spoke that way, just hated it, but he always seemed to realize his error and would quickly move on.  Which he did this time, too.   “The reason why I couldn’t wait ,” he said, noticing her alarm, “was because I have some good news.”

     “I could use some good news.”

     “May I come in?”