Dreamspinner Press Year Nine Greatest Hits

by Michael Murphy

  David took the news with a smile, because he was quite pleased with the answer he got. He did not want to accompany Gray on the trips. He already had a full-time job and couldn’t easily take time off from that job to go gallivanting around the country with his husband when he wouldn’t have any reason for being there. It wasn’t like the trips would be harmed by his absence.

  So Gray hit the road and was gone more than he was home for nearly a full month. It wasn’t nonstop, because there were the occasional nights when he came home between swings through different states, but it was basically a barnstorming trip each time he departed, with as many as a dozen stops through different regions of the country.

  One time he hit the Pacific Northwest. The next, he covered the Midwest. The trip after that took him all over the Northeast, and another took him all over the South. That was followed by the Midsouth, and finally the Southwest.

  David was hoping that after the final swing through the Southwest pressure might ease up on Gray a bit. He was concerned Gray was pushing himself beyond what was reasonable, and as a doctor, he had seen firsthand what stress could do to someone’s blood pressure and cardiac system, among other things.

  As much as David had hoped to get his husband back after his month of crisscrossing the country, when Gray got back, he was even busier than before he’d left. When David pressed him on the subject, Gray’s response was that he’d been on the road for a month and had a lot of catch-up work to do and people to meet with. There were also an unusually large number of formal state visits because many heads of state did not know Gray and wanted to develop a relationship with him and get him on their side about one issue or another.

  The demands on Gray did not stop in that next month in office. If anything, they continued to increase, and Gray kept going flat-out seven days a week. Whenever David saw him, it was typically in passing between meetings or phone calls or trips. Increasingly they were sleeping in the same bed, but David didn’t know when Gray came to bed, and he often had to be up and gone in the morning before Gray woke up, so he had no idea how much sleep Gray was getting.

  One of the hallmarks of their relationship had been that they always made time for each other, regardless of what was going on in their lives. But life in the White House seemed to throw this approach completely out the window in no time flat. David was increasingly desperate to talk with Gray about the issue, but the problem was that Gray was gone more than he was there, and when he was there, he was usually distracted by six other things simultaneously, so the issue never got the hearing David wanted it to have. In fact, most things between David and Gray did not happen. They rarely even had the opportunity to share a meal together.

  Chapter 7—First Lady Stuff

  DAVID WAS surprised when an aide from the chief of staff’s office asked to meet with him one morning that spring. He could not imagine what in the world they would want with him.

  “Good morning, Dr. Hammond,” the perky young male aide greeted him.

  “Good morning,” David answered cautiously. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m afraid I’ve been remiss about something. I should have met with you months ago, but as you know we had a few other things on our plate at that time. I apologize for letting this lapse from the top of my to-do list.”

  “I understand,” David said, remaining cautious.

  “I only need a few moments of your time to tell you about your office and staffing.”

  “My office? What does my office at the medical school have to do with—”

  “No. Your office here… in the White House.”

  “Okay,” David said, not knowing what else to say.

  “For several decades now, each First Lady has had an office on the second floor of the East Wing of the White House. You of course also have a small staff. We’ve unfortunately had to move one of the people who had been assigned to you to work in another, more important office.”

  David felt his hackles rise but said nothing. He needed to see where this conversation was going before he said anything. He didn’t know why he was upset, since he’d never been to the place and didn’t know any of the people who worked there. It was just something about the way this young man stated it—a more important office. Clearly the aide had a pecking order and the office and staff in question were not high on that order.

  “We’ve also had to take one of the rooms in your office suite for one of the President’s legal-counsel assistants, but that still leaves you with ample space to carry out your First… um, Spouse, I guess, activities.”

  “I’m sorry, but why do I need an office?”

  “To handle your First… Spouse duties.”

  “I’m afraid I need more detail. What is it that I would need to do?” David asked, since he honestly didn’t have a clue.

  “To handle correspondence, arrange for tours of the executive mansion, to host visiting heads of state, to deal with protocol around state dinners like seating charts and flower arrangements. I’m sure there are more things, but these are the ones that come to mind at the moment,” he said.

  “I already have a full-time job,” David commented.

  David had paid careful attention and had been respectful up to that point, but the aide lost any credibility in David’s eyes with his next comment. “No President’s wife has ever worked outside of the White House. Being married to the President is a full-time job. I was assuming that you would be taking a leave of absence from your job or simply resigning.”

  “No,” David said simply.

  “I advise you to put in your paperwork with your boss and start your leave as quickly as possible. It would not be proper for the President’s wi… spouse—”

  “Husband,” David corrected tersely.

  “Excuse me?” the aide asked.

  “Gray is my husband, and I am Gray’s husband. The term ‘spouse’ is too… empty. Husband conveys the true nature of the relationship.” David could see the man squirming. “I have a full-time job, and I’m not leaving that job or taking a leave of absence or whatever else you might want to call it. I have a full-time job, one that I very much like and plan to keep doing because it is important to me and is very gratifying. Not to mention the fact that I incurred something on the order of two hundred thousand dollars of debt and spent eight years of my life to earn my medical degree and to get to the point I’m at now. You do not work that hard and spend that much time and money only to walk away from it, regardless of who shares your bed.

  “A doctor doesn’t stop practicing medicine for several years and then just decide to return to practice. You’ve got to keep your knowledge and skills constantly up-to-date. You have to keep your medical license in good standing in order to practice medicine, in order to have hospital privileges, in order to be able to prescribe medications. And if you don’t practice, you don’t keep your skills fresh. So I’m not stopping what I’m doing. It’s not going to happen.”

  “You have a staff in the East Wing awaiting your instruction.”

  “That’s nice,” David said with a smile.

  “They need your guidance to know what to do, what speaking engagements to accept on your behalf—”

  “None,” David said, cutting the adviser off.

  “And which interviews you should accept.”

  “None,” David repeated.

  “You have to, sir. It’s your job.”

  “Sorry. I have a full-time job. I wasn’t elected President, my husband was. I wasn’t elected to anything, and I’m not paid to do anything as part of this administration. I’m just along for the ride.”

  “With all due respect, sir, this will simply be an open invitation to the media to criticize both you and the President, and it is my job to make sure that we contain such things before they become issues. Let me assure you, the media in Washington are like piranhas just circling, waiting for something to be tossed their way. They will latch on to this and not let it go.”

  “As I said,” Dav
id told the man. “I have a full-time job already.”

  “But, sir—”

  “You can save your breath, because you know where I stand on the issue. I have a job, and in fact, I need to get to it now. I have a lecture to prepare for tomorrow. Thank you for coming up to talk with me. Have a great afternoon.”

  David was irritated but managed to hold his anger inside.

  Chapter 8—The Sanctuary of the Daily Workout at the Gym

  ONE THING David had always had as an escape, regardless of what else was going on in his life, was his daily workout at the gym. He’d been a member of the same gym for years and knew the staff there on a first-name basis. But in the first months in the White House, the escape he’d always treasured was unexpectedly threatened.

  The problem came not from any of the staff or the other members of the gym—they were all great people and were long-term acquaintances of David’s. The problem instead came from the media and some very strange people who started practically stalking David once they learned he was a member of that particular gym.

  When David arrived to start his workout, he almost immediately felt some of his outside concerns slipping away as he entered the mental workout zone. It was just him and his body and the machine or the weights he was on at the moment. He put earbud headphones into his ears and tried to tune out the world for the duration of his forty-five minutes in the gym.

  In those weeks, though, David was thrown off his stride by the number of people who wanted to talk with him, to ask him questions, or to give him advice. People had messages of one sort or another they wanted him to relay to his husband. Some of them were practical, some were comical, and some were just downright strange.

  In addition to his workout routine, David had worked every other day with a karate trainer and a small class of students. Over the years, he had worked his way up through the belt system to a level that was just one step away from his ultimate goal. He was an upper-level brown belt and his next step, which was imminent, was advancement to black belt. He was determined to earn that final belt.

  He had started training in karate years earlier following a mugging one night on his way home from the university. He’d hated the helplessness he’d felt during that experience and wanted to try to learn how to defend himself and keep himself safe, something short of carrying a weapon. Karate had been the answer to his fear and gave him some sense of security and safety. The fact that he knew how to handle himself in a potentially dangerous situation was a great comfort to him. And he found the practice katas and the sparring and training to be very peaceful, although he’d never been able to fully explain that to others when they’d asked.

  The unwanted visitors at the gym used every excuse in the book to get inside and to worm their way toward David. Some days he was constantly pulled out of his zone, sometimes quite rudely. Over and over again his workout was interrupted, making it next to impossible to accomplish the sustained level of effort he sought.

  He wasn’t even safe in the showers after his workout. Sweating, grungy, and dirty, each day he wanted nothing more than to wash away the layers of grime. But he’d quickly discovered that a number of unscrupulous photographers seemed to be determined to get a picture of him naked. Part of him was tempted to just whip off his towel and let them get their shot. He didn’t care—he had no body issues.

  David knew he had a great body. He worked hard to build it into what it was, and if someone wanted to see it, he was only too happy to accommodate. But the more rational side of his brain was screaming at him that such a move would be highly inappropriate, and that having naked pictures of the President’s husband floating around in the world would not be a good thing.

  His Secret Service team was on constant guard against such things, but the only way to completely ensure that it didn’t happen was to keep everyone else out of the locker room while he was changing or showering. Since that wasn’t really an option, he had to practically take an agent into the shower with him to make sure no one did anything stupid. A number of people tried, but in each case the agents intervened.

  Chapter 9—Punched in the Face (Literally) and Kicked in the Gonads (Figuratively)

  A FEW weeks later, David was sparring with a woman who was a relative newcomer to karate training.

  “David! David!” someone called, waving and aggressively trying to get his attention.

  As David turned to see the person, his sparring partner wasn’t distracted and clobbered him in the face. Stunned, David stumbled back.

  “Oh my God! I am so sorry.” The poor student was mortified and stood pale and visibly shaking. Everything in the gym seemed to come to a complete halt, and everyone turned to see what he would do next.

  David quickly smiled and said, “Not a problem. You did the right thing. My attention was distracted, and you took advantage of the opening. That was precisely what you should do when you’re trying to defend yourself. You usually don’t get a second chance, so when an opening happens, you take advantage of it. So don’t apologize.”

  “But your face,” the young woman said.

  “What about it,” David asked.

  “Um, I think it’s going to swell and… and you might have a black eye.”

  “Oh, cool,” David said, even though it wasn’t what he was thinking. “I’ve never had one before. I can tell everyone, ‘You should see the other guy!’” He tried laughing to help put the student at ease, but clearly those efforts were not working.

  The agents had dealt with the person who’d caused the distraction, but David decided it was time to call it a day. He bid farewell to his sensei and headed to the locker room. He got out of his clothes with no problem and headed toward the shower. With a towel wrapped around his waist, he stopped at the huge mirror in the locker room to check his face. Sure enough, it was already swelling a bit and might change color.

  “Crap,” he muttered to himself.

  After stepping into an open shower, he pulled the curtain across the doorway and removed his towel, then turned to adjust the water to the proper temperature before stepping under the spray. Suddenly David spotted movement from somewhere upward and to his right. Instinctively he gave something of a startled cry, something between a yell and a curse as he backed away from the movement he’d seen. Of course that meant he banged his head into the shower wall that prevented him from moving very far. The movement he had spotted was one of those damned tabloid photographers. The man had somehow perched himself in the adjoining shower in such a way that he could snap a picture of David once he was naked and showering.

  Practically before he finished vocalizing his surprise, he had an agent in the shower stall with him, standing, fully dressed, in the shower spray between David and the photographer. David heard lots of calls for help and heard lots of scuffling and many complaints, presumably from the photographer as he was hauled away. Only when he was confident the threat had been eliminated did the agent step back away from David.

  “We need to get you out of here,” his agent told him briskly.

  “You’re soaked. I’m so sorry. Do you have other clothes here with you?”

  “Please, sir,” he said, turning off the shower and handing David his towel. “We are leaving now. Get dressed quickly.”

  “But I’m wet,” David said.

  “Now,” the agent said in a tone of voice that told him to shut up and do as he was told.

  Without argument and without leaving the shower stall, David quickly dried himself the best he could and dressed in something another agent handed to him. He had no idea where it had come from. Still another agent already had his gym bag and the contents of his locker. Practically lifting him from the ground, the array of agents encircled him and whisked him briskly out of the locker room and through the crowded gym and into his car. Almost before the last agent was in, the car started to move. They were most definitely treating this seriously. So much had happened so quickly, David wasn’t even able to process it yet.

 
In the residence, David shed his clothes and took the shower he hadn’t been able to take at the gym. Feeling much cleaner, he pulled on sweatpants and a T-shirt before wandering out into the living room, intending to get a bottle of water out of the refrigerator in the kitchen.

  The number of times David had come home from work and found Gray in the living room could be counted on one hand, leaving five fingers unused. So David was shocked to find the living room was occupied. Gray, tie loosened and looking haggard, was seated with the head of the Secret Service on his right and his chief of staff on his left.

  “David, come, sit,” Gray ordered tersely, a look of irritation and determination on his face.

  David wanted to complain about Gray’s tone but decided to hold that comment for a time when they were alone—not that he ever was alone with Gray these days.

  “I’ve just been briefed on the incident at the gym. I understand that it is just the latest in a long string of incidents. Why didn’t you tell me about these?” Gray demanded.

  “When?” David asked.

  Ignoring David’s question, Gray continued, “The Secret Service has recommended, and I concur, that the public gym is not working from a security point of view. It is unreasonable to think that it can be made workable. There are simply too many people and too many places where danger could be lurking. So we need another solution.”

  “Not to mention photographers determined to get a picture of your naked ass,” the chief of staff said.

  “It was actually my dick they were going for this time,” David said, trying desperately to lighten the moment just a bit.

  “David!” Gray snapped at him. “This is serious. You can no longer train at the gym.”

  “Oh?” David said. “Do you have an alternative that I don’t know about?” he asked with more calm than he was feeling inside.