Long May She Reign

  “Really?” Meg said. “What’s that like?”

  Beth laughed, and drank some champagne.

  “How’s Sarah, anyway?” Meg asked. She had known Sarah Weinberger since they were about eight years old, but Sarah—like most of the people she had grown up with—started treating her so differently after her mother got nominated, that their friendship had gradually fallen apart. Thinking about it made Meg sad, so she rarely did.

  “She’s okay,” Beth said. “Pretty much the same.”

  Meg nodded. Strange to have grown up somewhere, and feel so far away from it. What with one thing and another, they had only gone back to Massachusetts a few times since the Inauguration, and Meg hadn’t really enjoyed it, although it was great to be in their own house again. The last time had been almost exactly a year ago, and except for Beth, the conversations she had with almost everyone she saw were pretty much of the “How you doing” and “Where’d you apply to school” variety.

  “You probably would have lost touch with most of them, anyway,” Beth said. “I mean, I’m surprised how fast I did.”

  The difference, of course, was that Beth had moved on and met new people.

  “Everyone thinks I have an attitude, because I hang out with you,” Beth said. “That I think I’m too cool to live, and all that.”

  “You already thought you were too cool to live,” Meg said.

  “Well, yeah, that’s what I said,” Beth agreed, “but it didn’t go over too well.”

  Meg grinned. No doubt. As she recalled, Beth had had an attitude in kindergarten. “What about people at school?” she asked, and gestured to indicate Camp David—and the White House, in general. “Do they care?”

  Beth shrugged. “If they make the connection. And then, I don’t know, everyone wonders if you’re really all right, or if you’ve gone around the bend or something.”

  “Swell,” Meg said.

  Beth winked at her. “I just tell them that you were always crazy.”

  Oh, well, that was much better, then. Both of their glasses were empty—again—and Meg filled them with what was left in the last bottle.

  “Do people drink a lot?” she asked, trying to sound very casual. “And stuff?”

  Beth nodded. “Yeah. And Ramon and his friends like to get high. Just, you know, pot, for the most part. Making ‘420’ jokes all the time.”

  And probably about “skiing,” too, although Meg thought it was close to an atrocity to abuse the best sport in the world by turning it into drug slang. “Um, what about you?” she asked, careful not to look at her.

  “Not really,” Beth said. “I maybe take a bong hit or whatever sometimes, to be polite, but I’d rather, I don’t know, sit in some jazz bar in the middle of the night, and get weird liqueur, and be kind of amused by it all.”

  Well, that was a tough one to picture.

  “What are you going to do?” Beth asked.

  With the exception of slugging scotch with a god-damned terrorist one long night—easily the single lowest and most disgraceful behavior of her entire life—Meg had never done much more than have a beer or two at a party, and even then, she’d always worried about publicity. She sighed. “I don’t know.”

  “It’s hard to avoid,” Beth said. “I mean, if you’re going to have any kind of a social life.”

  Definition of a dilemma. All of this was starting to make her feel pretty sorry for herself—which meant that she’d already broken her New Year’s resolution. “I don’t know,” Meg said. “I’m guessing I probably won’t have much of a social life, then.”

  Beth looked irritated. “I’m not saying you have to get knock-down staggering drunk every night, but I don’t think it would kill you to cut loose a little.”

  Meg shrugged, thinking about the guy. About sitting there in that windowless little room, already groggy from pain and starvation, letting her share of his bottle of scotch blur her mind even more. They’d talked, and it had been strange and scary and civilized all at the same time. Like being on a date with Ted Bundy, or something. Sitting there, drinking, handcuffed, with a guy who’d torn her knee apart, who’d held a gun in her face—more than once, who’d punched and kicked her—also more than once, who’d laughed at her jokes—again, more than once. A guy who both enjoyed her company, and enjoyed hurting her. Enjoyed her company while he was hurting her. It wasn’t anything she could really explain, and Beth was the only person with whom she’d ever tried.

  She looked up, acutely aware that Beth was watching her.

  “I know what’s bothering you,” Beth said.

  Yeah, she probably did. For all her goofiness, Beth might be the most astute person she had ever known. “I liked him,” Meg said. “What the hell’s the matter with me that I liked him?”

  Beth shrugged. “He was smart. You like smart people.”

  He was smart, and funny, and charming, and vicious, and sadistic—and she’d liked him. What kind of person was she, that she could like a sociopathic monster?

  “Meg.” Beth sighed. “So, you offered to sleep with him, so what?”

  Meg looked around, afraid that someone might have heard. She knew that there were security people all over the place, but she thought—hoped—not within earshot.

  “And even if he’d said yes, who cares?” Beth said. “I mean, Christ, you do what you have to do. Let go of it already.”

  They’d had this conversation before, and Meg had yet to be convinced. Had yet to be anything other than ashamed. She wrapped her good arm around herself, feeling cold suddenly. “It wasn’t very—brave.”

  “Brave?” Beth said, not quietly, then lowered her voice. “Christ, Meg, you were a freakin’ Amazon.”

  Meg frowned at her. “That’s flattering.”

  “Don’t twist it around—I hate it when you do that,” Beth said. “You know what I mean. You were a complete warrior, okay?”

  Hardly. Meg shivered, and looked out at the dark, shadowy trees. Scary trees.

  “You still having nightmares?” Beth asked.

  That was such a stupid question that Meg didn’t bother answering.

  “You’re right,” Beth said. “I’m sorry. Are they getting any better?”

  Meg shook her head. The ones with the guy were always pretty much the same—she’d be somewhere normal, like in her room, or back in Massachusetts or something, and he’d appear, out of nowhere, giving her that crooked grin, then pulling out the gun. She usually woke up just before he fired it into her face. Freud would have a field day.

  There were other nightmares, of course, most of them surreal, disorienting fragments she forgot before she even opened her eyes, but the one thing they had in common was that she was always completely terrified by them. “What do you think he thinks?” she asked. “About me not being dead?”

  “I don’t know,” Beth said. “He’s probably pissed off. And—bemused.”

  Sounded plausible. Meg looked at her. “You think he’s planning to come after me?”

  Beth shook her head. “No way. The one thing you know is that he’s not stupid.”

  True. But, still. “What if he’s really mad?” Meg asked. “I mean, you know, vengeance.”

  “I don’t think so,” Beth said. “As long as he hasn’t gotten caught, what does he care? I mean, when you get right down to it.”

  Well, yeah. It wasn’t like anything she’d told the FBI and counter-intelligence types had made much of a difference. “You know where I’d look?” Meg asked, and tapped her knee brace. “The guy’s an ironist. I bet he’s teaching skiing somewhere.”

  Beth laughed. “Do you really think that, or are you being a jerk?”

  “I really think that,” Meg said. “I think that’s the way he’d operate. Big Sky, or someplace, or maybe over in Europe.”

  “Well—that would be ironic,” Beth said.

  Meg nodded. To put it mildly.

  Beth looked at their empty glasses. “You know what I think? I think we need another bottle of champagne.” br />
  Even though her parents had probably gone to bed, Meg looked guiltily at the quiet cabin.

  “I think you should get good and drunk,” Beth said. “So you don’t go up to school worrying that if you have one beer too many, you’re going to—I don’t know—ask half the football team to sleep with you.”

  Meg wasn’t sure if she should be offended or amused, so she decided to be amused. “What if we drink more champagne, and I ask you to sleep with me?”

  “I would be amazed,” Beth said.

  “Amazed, and dazed—and completely fazed,” Meg said.

  Beth laughed. “I think you’re already drunk.”

  Meg nodded, quite seriously. “I’m a little buzzed, yeah. I’m just starting to notice this.”

  “So. You want to go for it?” Beth asked.

  Absolutely.

  9

  THEY WENT TO the kitchen and liberated a magnum of champagne, leaving behind an uneasy, albeit sleepy, Navy steward. Whenever she and her brothers wanted to do something questionable, the staff wasn’t sure whether they should let them—and risk getting into trouble, or refuse them—and risk getting into trouble. As a general rule, they erred on the side of letting First Family members do whatever the hell they wanted.

  “Think he’s going to report it?” Beth asked.

  Meg shook her head. “Not likely. Except for it showing up on the expense sheet.”

  “Do you care?” Beth asked.

  Hmmm. “Not much,” Meg said.

  The Secretary of State and his wife were staying over in Dogwood, and Meg was almost sure that there were guests in Birch, too—and probably most of the other cabins, so instead of trying to find someplace away from Aspen to drink undisturbed, they went back out to the patio. It would have been more private to sit down by the pool, but she wasn’t up for attempting the stairs—or risking a late-night fall into the water, so they stayed where they were.

  Beth opened the bottle, and the cork flew about ten feet away.

  “L’chaim,” she said, refilling their glasses.

  Meg nodded. “A ta sante.”

  Beth grinned. “Which just about sums up the difference between us, don’t you think?”

  Yes, the argument could be made.

  They sat outside for a long time, sipping champagne, and talking about nothing in particular. Their favorite very bad television shows, the dearth of decent modern rock-and-roll songs, things they had done when they were little, and the general state of the Boston Red Sox—the latter, pretty much being a rambling, unfocused monologue on Meg’s part.

  “Are the trees moving?” Beth asked.

  Meg studied the trees. They were bobbing. Weaving. Tilting. “Yes.”

  “Thought so,” Beth said, and topped off their glasses.

  Meg picked hers up, spilling most of it in the process, and then looked down at the large splotch on her sweatshirt. “I think I’m maybe a little tired.”

  “I know I am,” Beth said, and then laughed. “It’s a Happy New Year, though.”

  Very happy. Meg fumbled for her cane, locating it with some difficulty. It took her several tries to stand up, and when she did, she found one-legged balance unusually challenging.

  Which struck her as being terribly funny.

  Beth got up, equally clumsy, and motioned towards their glasses and the bottles. “Do we take this stuff to the kitchen?”

  Meg gestured so widely that she dropped her cane and lurched against her chair to keep from falling over. “The fairies,” she said. “The fairies will come get it.”

  Beth picked up the cane for her. “What if the fairies don’t come?”

  In the White House, the fairies always came. “Hmm,” Meg said. “I don’t know.”

  Beth gathered up the bottles and glasses, and they made their way into the cabin, reminding each other to be very, very quiet. As a result, every sound they made—like trying to open the door—seemed extremely loud, and they would have to struggle not to laugh.

  Beth pointed to a side table. “Will the fairies find them there?”

  Meg shrugged. When it came to fairies and sprites, who knew how their minds worked?

  Beth set the bottles and glasses down. One of the bottles started to topple onto the floor, and she caught it just in time, both of them laughing again.

  “Shhh,” Meg whispered.

  “You’re the one making the ruckus,” Beth whispered back.

  “No way.” Christ, she sounded like Steven now. “I mean, you are, too.” She stumbled against another table, knocking over two candlesticks.

  “Shhh,” Beth said.

  “You’re the one who—” Meg started.

  “Hey.” Beth picked up a pillow from the couch. “Let’s have a horrific cat fight, how about?”

  The image of the two of them brawling, right here in the Presidential cabin, was so funny that Meg started laughing again—and had trouble stopping.

  “Shhh,” Beth said.

  Oh. Right. They were being quiet.

  It was dark in the hallway leading to Meg’s bedroom, and they felt their way along, Meg planting her good leg cautiously with each step.

  Kirby came snuffling out from the room her brothers and Vinnie were sharing.

  “Is that a fairy?” Beth asked, and Meg laughed harder, since Kirby was quite possibly the most indelicate dog in the world.

  Then, suddenly, her father was standing in the hallway, tying the belt on his bathrobe and frowning at them.

  “Is that a fairy?” Beth asked, and they both broke up completely.

  Meg was the first one to get under control. “Hi, Dad,” she said, making an effort to stand up very straight and look utterly sober. “You’re up early.”

  He didn’t smile, but he didn’t really look mad, either. “Everything okay, Meg?”

  “Absolu’ly, Dad,” Meg said, then looked at Beth. “Damn, you hear me drop that ‘t’?”

  Beth nodded. “Wait a minute.” She bent down. “There it is, I see it.”

  This time, her father smiled. Slightly. “You two help yourselves to some champagne?”

  Beth stood up and pretended to hand Meg a tiny object. “Your ‘t’.”

  “Thank you,” Meg said, and looked at her father. “Absolutely, Dad.”

  Which she and Beth found pretty hilarious.

  “Try not to wake up the whole house,” her father said, “okay?”

  So, would he mind if they woke up half of the house? Meg knew she should be worried about this—that he was going to yell at her or something, but it all seemed too funny.

  “Well. We can talk about it another time,” he said.

  Meg nodded, and laughed. “Yeah.” Whatever. “Good night.”

  “Right.” He started to go back into the Presidential bedroom suite, then paused. “Just tell me one thing, Meg. Tell me you weren’t in golf carts.”

  “We weren’t in golf carts,” Meg said, although now that he mentioned it, it would be really fun to—

  “Don’t get any bright ideas,” her father said quickly.

  “No ideas,” Meg agreed, and limped towards her room.

  * * *

  THEY SLEPT LATE. Real late. In fact, Meg only woke up because she heard Beth groaning and saying, “Oh my God.” She forced her eyes open, the inside of her mouth feeling as though she’d eaten about a bale and a half of cotton. Hulls and all.

  “Jesus Christ,” she said, once she’d noticed what a tremendous headache she had.

  “Happy fucking New Year,” Beth said, looking as though her headache was even worse.

  Lifting her eyebrow would hurt, so Meg didn’t bother. “That’s a nice way to start off the year.”

  Beth mumbled something quite a bit more profane, then draped her arm over her eyes. “What time is it?”

  Meg frowned at her clock. For a while. “Almost one.”

  “Oh.” Beth lowered her arm, winced, and covered her eyes again. “I hate this year. I can already tell.”

  At the mo
ment, Meg wasn’t too fond of it, either. Vanessa stretched and walked up to her pillow, and Meg patted her, even though the sound of purring was too much for her ears.

  “You think we’re in trouble?” Beth asked.

  Upon which, Meg remembered their late-night encounter with her father. “I hope not.” She could be pretty sure that he was already occupied by the Bowl games, but that didn’t mean that he wouldn’t be able to find time to yell at them. At her, anyway.

  “We probably are,” Beth said grimly.

  “Yeah.” It took even more effort than usual to sit up, and once she managed it, she was tempted to lie right back down again. “God, I feel terrible.”

  “I bet I feel worse,” Beth said.

  “I bet you don’t,” Meg said. Her eyes hurt, her head hurt, everything hurt. But it had been a long time since the pain in her knee and hand weren’t the first things she noticed on any given day—which was either progress, or a setback.

  In the other twin bed, Beth lifted herself up onto her elbows. “I guess we’d better go out there looking god-damn bandbox fresh.”

  “Yeah.” Best defense was a good offense. Meg rubbed her eyes. “You want to go first?”

  “Gee.” Beth stood up lethargically. “Thanks.”

  After Beth had showered and gotten dressed, Meg went in to take a bath. Even her good hand and leg felt uncoordinated, and when she finally made her way back out, it was past two.

  Beth, her—blond—hair still wet and spiky, was lying on her bed, staring at the wooden beams running across the ceiling.

  “Time to make our move,” Meg said.

  Beth sat up, slowly.

  “There’s aspirin and stuff in the medicine cabinet, if you want some,” Meg said.

  Beth nodded. “I found it before.”

  Out in the living room, one of the Bowl Games was on, loudly, and her father, brothers, and Vinnie were watching, along with Preston, and a bunch of White House staffers, Marines, and Navy stewards, mostly male. Trudy, who very much stuck out in the group, was sitting at the end of the couch with her crocheting. A fire had been lit in the fireplace, and the room was very warm. Hot, even.

  Preston, who must have driven up bright and early, grinned when he saw them. “Good morning.”