Peter's Christmas

by M. L. Buchman

Still, Genny would be terribly disappointed if she found it wasn’t decorated on her first, and probably only, visit here.

  It had been sweet of the President to invite her. But even if she were to trust that he had no ulterior motive, what possible reason could she have to be involved in any way with such a man? The American-proclaimed “Leader of the Free World” had much to answer for in many places. Though she had been pleasantly surprised that this one did not believe that a sound foreign policy was in direct conflict with a sound domestic one. So many of his predecessors had done just that.

  They walked along the driveway that circled the South Lawn. Clearly uncomfortable, she let him play guide by pointing out the Putting Green, which he never used, the Swimming Pool, which he often used, though he noted that he did that only in warmer weather, and several trees which even she knew he named completely wrong, but the effort was rather cute.

  The first glimmer of Christmas decoration hope came when she saw the two sweeping stairways leading up to the broad porch of the South Portico. White twinkle lights adorned the stair’s handrails and the porch’s stone balustrade. It was a delicate statement on such a massive structure but it cheered her nonetheless.

  His attempts to play guide wholly collapsed as they climbed the steps. He clearly knew less about the building’s history than the grounds. He huffed out a great cloud of frustrated breath, then spoke quickly, waving an arm to encompass the entire structure.

  “It was designed by aliens. The whole place. George and Martha Washington were pod people. Probably Dolly Madison too, though not James. At least according to the super-secret Area 51 files that the FBI did not give to me the day I was elected.”

  “And what did they give you?” The frustrated rant had been the most human thing she’d heard from the man. It was the first time Genny wondered if perhaps he had spoken truth, and really had no political motive for inviting her.

  “Frankly, they gave me a headache. It was a very disillusioning day. Do you know how many identified troublespots there are on this planet and how many of those are right in our country?”

  “This is not my country, Mr. President.”

  “Right, sorry. Of course it isn’t. Sorry. I really must learn to keep my mouth shut.”

  They climbed up the Portico’s stairs in awkward silence for several moments. She finally could take it no longer and attempted to rescue him.

  “The snow is so pretty. It was good of you to arrange that.” It would give him a chance to say, “Did it just for you.” Then she could dismiss the easy flattery and the man along with it. It was touching that he had been thinking of her when he’d altered his speech. Against expectation, he slowed and stared up at the fluttering flakes until a few began to accumulate on his cheeks and forehead for a brief moment before melting.

  “Snow? I’d guessed that they were tiny crystalline alien spaceships, still cold from the depths of outer space, come to take back the White House that George built.”

  Genny looked away to face the building so that he wouldn’t see her expression. She didn’t want him to know that he had confused her.

  Most men had one of two reactions to her, three actually.

  One, they assumed she’d made her career with her beauty and discounted her mind totally. A view they rarely maintained after even a single meeting in which they did not agree with her.

  Two, they saw her as a target for the bastioning of their male egos, because of course they could easily conquer her. All of the men with this type of response, she had gladly disillusioned. Only two had required a brief personal demonstration of her self-defense training to permanently convince them.

  The third type simply became tongue-tied around her which she never really understood, she had a mirror after all and knew she wasn’t nearly that level of extraordinary. But she had learned early on how to read and use all three reactions to her advantage. Genny occasionally felt guilty for doing this but, as she only used it to save precious Heritage Sites and not on her own behalf, she didn’t feel too guilty.

  With President of the United States Peter Matthews, she had apparently found a fourth response. Her presence did not stun him to silence nor fill him with avarice nor knot up his tongue, but it certainly did fluster him. Again the word “cute” came to mind, but she rather doubted that he’d appreciate the observation, so she kept it to herself.

  He also provided a wit and humor that he didn’t reveal to the nation. Charm? Yes. Quirky humor? Not that she had observed. He had more dimensions than Genny had anticipated.

  He led her up to the center of the Portico. They paused at the balcony rail. The South Lawn was spread before them, and off in the distance, the patriotic swirl of flag-colored lights climbed the glowing three-story tall tree. Beyond it, the brilliant needle of the Washington Monument soared into the night sky, clearly stating, “Here lies the source of America’s power. Here is rooted her mighty spear.”

  “Terribly phallic, no?” She teased.

  “Maybe the Founding Fathers had an inferiority complex.”

  He made it easy for her to laugh. “They did but you do not?”

  “Not until I met you.” In the soft light of the Portico, Genny could see that he actually blushed. “Did I really just say that out loud?”

  “Indeed you did.” Nor was she likely to forget it. While he wasn’t the first man she’d smitten, he was the first who was so honest about it.

  “Come,” he cleared his throat. “There is something I think you will enjoy before we go up to the Residence for a small gathering.”

  As he turned her by her hand still in the crook of his arm, she spotted the Secret Service agents, hers, his, and two others standing by the wall. The President did not appear flustered by their presence, so she did her best to not be as well. She’d felt alone with him for a moment, and been enjoying that feeling. Her attempts to hold onto that failed under the four agents’ roving gazes. Though they didn’t look at her, it was clear they were completely aware of her every move.

  He led her to what appeared to be a large window in the center of the rounded wall behind the Portico that was the great signature bay of the White House. At some signal she didn’t see, two of the agents raised up the window sash until it was higher than her head. Then reaching down, they opened a pair of waist-high double doors. It was like a secret passage through a window and into an unknown world. She and the President were able to walk through the door or window or whatever it was and into…

  Her breath caught in her throat. A stunning tree of massive proportions filled the center of the room. The room was oval, but she was pretty sure the Oval Office wasn’t located in the Residence, but rather over in the West Wing. And the Oval Office was decorated in white whereas this room was all decorated in blue. Then she remembered a broadcast on shelters for the needy that the President had given three months earlier. It had been from this room, the Blue Room. That was it. While the room was gorgeous, it was the tree that dominated.

  “It must be six meters tall.”

  “Eighteen feet this year. They delivered it by a horse-drawn wagon, can you believe that in this day and age? And, no, the decorations this year are not on your behalf. I didn’t even think about that until today.”

  Genny focused on the ornaments, through the dazzle of the beautiful lighting. The lights themselves were flags, national flags. Made of Tiffany glass.

  “The flags of the U.N.?” This was becoming a little creepy. Genny almost felt as if the President were stalking her.

  “No. The League of Nations. I have been doing so much work with the U.N. this last year that it seemed appropriate to honor the first attempt to form a world government for peace. And it humbles me to remember that this nation, that worked so hard to create the League, was even then too divided to join it.”

  “Do you remember the name of the room where we first met?”

  “Not rea
lly. Wait, maybe I do. The Woodrow Wilson Reading Room.”

  “Which is filled with the card catalog for the League of Nations.”

  “Really? I guess this looks pretty bad?”

  “It doesn’t look good, Mr. President.”

  He turned back to inspect the tree. “I just meant it to honor the League.”

  Genny studied the profile of the man studying the tree. Here stood a thoughtful man, but perhaps also a humble one. He had little of the arrogance she expected from the senior official of the United States of America. He had used his own tree to remind himself that he could do better if he just kept trying. How rare such men were.

  She could feel this moment, this place somehow shifting around her. Genny always felt her way up to decision points, had learned to trust her instincts.

  Many of her instincts said that the proper action was to remove her grip from his elbow and ask the nice Secret Service lady to get her out of this room, this building, and off these premises. Quickly.

  There was no way in which she could keep her life, which she loved, and yet even consider staying in the room with this man due to the merest possibility of where it might lead.

  And then the oddest thing happened.

  Rather than letting go and allowing her to run, her gloved hand squeezed his arm. She leaned in and whispered, against all better judgment, “It is a beautiful tree.”

  She assessed her reaction for having acted so irrationally. And was intrigued to discover that it settled as lightly as the tiny spaceships, disguised as snow, fluttering down outside the bay window of the White House.

  Chapter 2

  The President’s idea of a “small reception” in the Residence was much in keeping with Genny’s idea of what it turned out to be. She had been to enough political receptions throughout her career not to be surprised by this one.

  Thirty or so guests, a half dozen waiters, and a trio of Secret Service agents milled about the Central Hall of the second floor of the Residence. Actually the Secret Service didn’t so much mill about as stand unobtrusively, looking like black-suited structural pillars in a room otherwise done in white, pale yellow, and abounding with Christmas décor.

  Small trees, not much taller than she was, were placed in three corners of the spacious room. A grand piano and harp stood in the fourth corner. The instruments did not intrude even halfway into the width of the space and had no impact at all upon its length. The musicians played Christmas carols, but softly enough that conversation was possible without raising your voice. Evergreen garlands draped above portraits of past Presidents and scenes of rural America.

  Tables laden with canapés, crudités, spiced nuts, and other hors d’oeuvres were scattered down the length of the hall. Each table sported a centerpiece of a Christmas scene done in elegant gingerbread complete with lights and sugared walkways. She was absolutely and completely charmed.

  Genny was also pleased to see that she had judged the attire appropriately. The President had said casual, and the White House Social Secretary had been able to translate that for her as, “The men will all be in suits. Though several will shed their ties after they get clear of the news cameras, the President will not. The women will not be in evening gowns, but most will wear designer slacks, tailored blouse, and a warm but attractive jacket for protection against the cold.” She’d opted for Weizmann boots, Dior pants, a dark silk blouse, and a silver satin Asian jacket with black dragon brocade. Her only jewelry, a thin silver chain about her neck bearing a small pendant of the Chinese ideogram for “Serenity” that no one had yet recognized nor asked the meaning.

  She was chatting pleasantly enough with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He might be the highest ranking officer in the U.S. military, but General Brett Rogers had also been an Army Private forty years earlier, while serving at the end of the Vietnam War.

  “By the time I arrived, Saigon was about as far north as a grunt could go. I was there less than a year before it was all over, spent most of it out on the Mekong Delta.”

  “I imagine that was not the most pleasant of assignments.” Genny was reminding herself to be civil. This man had been fighting in the Vietnamese swamps, while her family had retreated to the safety of their ancestral village in the Languedoc region of southern France. They had escaped in the early 1960s and had not returned to Vietnam until the mid-1970s after the war was over.

  “It wasn’t,” General Rogers agreed. “But I did love the countryside. I come from Fargo, North Dakota, one of our Great Plains states, and had never seen anything else like it. Amazing places and people, at least the ones not trying to kill a nineteen-year-old punk kid who wet his pants in his first battle.”

  People in the Matthews’ White House kept not being what she expected. She’d expected a grizzled warrior who despised her country, yet he didn’t. And the highest-rank soldier in their country had just confessed to being afraid.

  “Are you monopolizing the second prettiest woman in the room, Brett?” Daniel Drake Darlington, the White House Chief of Staff, joined them. Speaking of beautiful men, he was quite the most beautiful one in the room. He looked like the magazine ad for blond surfers rather than the most powerful non-elected person in the country. Her little sister would go crazy if she ever met him, he was exactly her type.

  “Second?” Genny hadn’t meant it to sound borderline petty. There were a number of astonishingly well-maintained women here.

  “Well, my apologies, but I do have a bias for my wife. Alice is here somewhere.”

  Brett harrumphed, “Damn woman knows more about my troop movements than I do.”

  “She’s an analyst for the CIA,” Daniel explained to Genny, a point that clearly gave him great pride.

  “Good one too,” the General agreed. Then he spotted someone over Genny’s shoulder. “Oh no! Well, there goes the neighborhood.” But the General’s smile, the first she’d seen on his face, appeared quite genuine. “Emily, over here.”

  She turned in time to see a stunning blond walking beside President Matthews. They were similar in height. The woman’s posture was impeccable, her walk so perfectly balanced that Genny knew she was exceptionally trained even without the green dress-uniform she wore. And she and the President moved with an easy familiarity that went far beyond mere friendship.

  If he had a woman like this at his side, what in all the world was she doing here? Was that a stab of jealousy she felt? It was like meeting Lauren Bacall, who she had, or Meryl Streep, who she hadn’t, and finding them on the arm of the man she had thought… Where those thoughts had arisen, she didn’t know. Genny focused on kicking them back beneath the metaphoric jungle foliage of her mind. Even as she did so, she knew one thing for certain, she’d just been totally outclassed.

  The President had invited her to Washington, D.C. for a tree-lighting ceremony and a drink. No more. Remets-t’en! She had surely been put in her place. She waited a heartbeat or two and checked in with herself. Nope, she wasn’t over it yet.

  The woman saluted the General.

  “None of that here,” Brett Rogers grumbled, but returned the salute so sharply that there was no mistaking how much he liked the woman.

  “Major Emily Beale, Geneviève Beauchamp of UNESCO.” The President introduced them. “Emily is presently on leave. She’s the best friend from my childhood and perhaps of my present. And…” He turned to apply an introductory label to Genny and found—nothing.

  Genny refused to be embarrassed, but found that choice very difficult to uphold. The swirl of her constantly shifting emotions over the last hour was making her head hurt.

  Emily watched the President for a merciless second before extending her hand. “Well, you have totally flustered him, which is actually hard to do. He must be very attracted to you. Therefore, you and I had better start right off with first names. Call me Emily.”

  “Genny.” The woman’s handsh
ake was warm and genuine and went a long way to easing Genny’s nerves.

  “Genny?” the President protested. “You’re making me call you Geneviève.”

  “And that requirement, it remains not changed.”

  Emily laughed while the President sputtered. “I like you, Genny Beauchamp. I think we’re going to become good friends. Keep him on his toes, it’s good for him.”

  Genny nodded her agreement uncertainly. Emily was close to the President, but perhaps not with him? She needed a guidebook.

  “Where did a UNESCO senior manager acquire those calluses?”

  “How do you know I am a senior manager?” Genny clenched her hands, feeling the comfort of the hard-won calluses. Had this woman, this friend of the President been briefed on Genny’s background along with who knew how many others?

  “The way you carry yourself. Poise and calm in this setting,” Emily’s circling finger indicated the present company of the President, his Chief of Staff, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Then a nod toward the dozen or more Washington elite scattered about the room.

  Genny nodded, feeling only a little foolish. It made sense. Emily Beale was simply a trained, perceptive woman. So, seeing no reason to evade, Genny held out her hand and turned it palm up. The President leaned forward in surprise to inspect it.

  “Vovinam Việt Võ Đạo,” Genny pointed to the primary calluses that Emily had noticed in a simple handshake. “Vietnamese martial arts. Those calluses are mostly from staff. I like staff.”

  “What degree?”

  “Yellow, third Dan.”

  Emily faced Peter and then laughed right in the President’s face. It seemed disrespectful, but his friend was clearly enjoying the President’s perplexity. She took his shoulder and shook him easily. None of the Secret Service reacted, so this wasn’t anything unusual between them. A part of Genny still wondered what was usual.

  “What’s so funny?” A big, broad-shouldered man arrived beside Emily Beale and slipped a hand around her waist. He also wore Dress Greens, saluted the General in a friendly fashion far less formal than Emily’s had been, then clapped the White House Chief of Staff solidly on the shoulder in greeting. His eyes were as strikingly gray as Emily’s were blue.