“Only a sliver of the population watches cable news.”
“Cable sets the tone for the blogs, for print, for every kitchen conversation. It starts here.” He points to the TV.
“Sir, you’re a news maker, not a news consumer. Let them respond to you, not the other way around.” This is as bold as Stark has been on the topic by far, but he’s getting fed up and concerned.
Mason ignores the remark. He’s seated behind his massive desk in a half recline with a tie and no jacket. His arm is flopped across the desk with fingers loosely around the remote as though offering it to the TV. Stark is at attention in front of the desk in a charcoal suit. Mason flips to UBS-24. “Have you seen this hot new gal on 24? Samantha Davis?”
Stark turns to the TV as though hearing an order he knows is immoral but must be obeyed. He has not seen her before and is impressed right away. Samantha Davis is doing a walk-and-talk interview along the wall of the Vietnam Memorial with Senator Paul Schmidt, who is head of the Foreign Relations Committee. Cam Ranh Bay is in the news again. Schmidt would look like her father except Samantha doesn’t project daughter. She projects peer, though she’s far more pleasing to look at than the old senator. “That should help their ratings.”
“Absolutely.”
“Don’t even think about it, Mitchell.” He still uses the name when they’re alone and especially when they’re alone talking about women.
“I wasn’t thinking about it.”
“Yes, you were.”
“Not in a practical sense,” Mitchell says, sounding disappointed in himself.
“Good.”
“Ron, on that score”—he mutes the TV—“we need to keep things just to Susan.” Susan Fitzgerald had been appointed communications director just after Mitchell’s inauguration the month prior. “Anything more is too risky so I want you to keep women away. Just keep the young women away, I mean. You need to protect me.” He looks hard at Ron. “I’m serious. I don’t want to have to deal with the temptation. Don’t let any young, attractive women near me. Except Susan.”
“I think that’s a good idea, sir,” says Ron, feeling like he’s had the first bit of good news in a month. “I’ll see to it.”
Ron steps forward and places a binder on the president’s desk. It contains about fifty pages. The first two are an agenda for the day, broken into quarter-hour increments. The rest of the pages are summary information and copies of press clippings to inform the president on each of his meetings. Sometimes the president skims the binder the night before, sometimes he doesn’t get around to it.
The first meeting each day is at 8:30 a.m. and is with “staff,” which typically includes Chief of Staff Ron Stark, White House Press Secretary Ted Knowles, Senior White House Advisor Armando Gomez, and Communications Director Susan Fitzgerald.
Ted Knowles is five eight and skinny with glasses and is just as smart and geeky as he looks. He always stands to his full height with a rigid back the way tall people never do. But he’s the sort of geek who embraces his geekiness with good humor and so is liked by both geeks and nongeeks. He had been a politics beat journalist for the Washington Post, where he won the Gerald R. Ford Prize for Distinguished Reporting on the Presidency during the Hammermill administration. He has a wife, no kids, and is devoted to politics. Many, including Ted himself, anticipated he would rise to be editor of the paper but for reasons unknown to him, his upward climb stalled. He leveled off at politics beat journalist, though an award-winning and well-liked one.
Presidents tend to choose their press secretary from the press. Mason thought Ted’s nonthreatening manner and likability would play well. Mason had also heard from Stark that the little geek had managed a number of affairs with younger women and both Stark and Mason felt it was safer to take a person like that in as an intimate.
Armando Gomez, prior to the call from Mason, was CFO for Goldman Sachs and has a net worth of two hundred million dollars, making Mason the second-richest man in the room. Gomez was raised in Brooklyn with very little money and managed scholarships for most of his education, then worked his way up at Goldman as an investment banker. He’s fifty-two with young-looking skin and hair as black as ink. He’s six feet and trim and feels that suits off the rack cannot flatter his trimness well enough, so all shirts and suits are made by Saint Laurie Merchant Tailors on Thirty-Second Street in Manhattan, where he’s gone since before he could afford to. He’s the kind of man that both Democrats and Republicans want to claim can be the product of their policy. For Mason, he checks two boxes. First, he’s Hispanic. Second, he’s a Democrat capitalist success story, which undermines the critics of liberal economic policy.
Despite the fancier clothes, Gomez is only a few decades removed from the younger Armando Gomez who fought on Brooklyn street corners, broke into restaurants overnight to steal food, and dealt marijuana and cocaine his last two years of high school, right up to the day his scholarship letter from Columbia arrived in the mail.
He’s tough and opinionated. His background made him what he is without making him angry. Mason, he could take or leave. He accepted the position because the office of the president called upon him and he knows America is the only country where he could have gone from dealing on the street to two hundred million in personal assets as the CFO of the most prestigious bank in the world. His advice is good and unafraid, but he’s not treated as an intimate.
Susan Fitzgerald is thirty-eight with blond hair and green eyes. She’s not beautiful but is nice-looking and can make herself up to look close to beautiful and so she seeks affirmations of beauty from others by dressing in a seductive way and then is just good-looking enough to attract attention from the wrong sort. A man like Mitchell Mason, who has affairs.
She was a theater major at Vassar. After one year serving coffee in the West Village and failing auditions all over Manhattan, she took a job with a PR firm. She is five ten, which always made her feel awkward until she was thirty-four and met Mason for the first time in his office in Albany. He loved her height and coaxed an assuredness from her that theater directors had failed to do. She has a husband she likes and a five-year-old daughter she loves.
The affair with Mason gives her power beyond Evelyn and puts her second only to Mason himself. She has full knowledge of this power which gives her a strength that she carries around the White House like a badge. Those who know of the affair are slightly less intimidated than those who only suspect. Those who know feel that as a matter of survival they have some leverage in the knowledge they could use to defend themselves. Those who suspect are left to fear a force of unknown strength.
Stark opens the side door and the staff walk in to their seats. Mason comes around from his desk to sit in a cushioned chair at the head of a pod of furniture around a square coffee table. Across from Mason is a sofa where Ted Knowles and Armando Gomez sit. To Mason’s right, Ron Stark sits in a chair. To Mason’s left, Susan Fitzgerald sits in a chair.
Stark runs the meeting. “Sir, you’re in the White House all day. No travel.”
“I see that,” says Mason reviewing the binder. “Looks like a lot of glad-handing and Boy Scout visits today.”
“You have Edmund Tasker at two p.m.” Tasker is the billionaire chief executive of a luxury hotel empire founded by his father. He’s been an acquaintance of Mason for decades and was a large campaign donor.
“Right. Remind me. He wants France or Italy?”
“I suspect he’ll settle for ambassadorship of either one. He opened hotels in Paris and Rome in the last three years. It’s in your binder.”
“I met Tasker about a month ago,” says Gomez, “at a dinner party in Rye. You know he drives a Volvo? About a twelve-year-old Volvo.”
“Isn’t he worth a billion?” asks Ted Knowles.
“Five billion,” says Gomez. “I like it. Shows a guy doesn’t have to surround himself with toys. He can still be down to
earth.”
“Down to earth?” shouts Mason. “You think it’s down to earth of him to drive a beat-up Volvo? A rich guy should drive a nice car. It’s ostentatious for him to think he’s great enough to permit himself that crappy car. He’s making a statement just as much as if he were driving a Lamborghini. It’s something in the extreme.” The president smiles. “You have a lot to learn about snobs, Armando. I know about them, I come from a long line of snobs.”
Coming from the streets of Brooklyn, Gomez is uncertain about snobs. He smiles while deciding and Stark gets them back on agenda.
“Italy and France are equally available. Both would require recalling one of Hammermill’s men. Both have been in for about eight years and did little for your campaign. Easy transitions.”
“Fine. I’ll flip a coin,” says Mason. Susan Fitzgerald laughs, finding the casualness with such power to be amusing.
“Otherwise, a light day, sir,” says Stark.
“Good.”
“Latest poll numbers have you at seventy-one percent approval,” Stark adds, no longer waiting for Mason to ask. “That’s a great number.”
“It’s down eight points from inauguration.”
“That’s typical as the honeymoon period ends. We can lose another ten and you’re still doing great.”
“We’re not going to lose another ten damn points.”
“Obviously that’s not the plan, sir. I’m only saying an approval in the low sixties is historically a good number.”
“Ron, don’t underestimate the momentum of reputation.” Mason takes the tone of a teacher barely keeping his patience as he tries multiple ways to explain a thing to a kid who just won’t get it. He always takes this tone in meetings though, the same way he takes the chair at the head of the table to show who’s the senior man in the room. “A man is never as good as his good reputation and never as bad as his bad reputation. Momentum carries it farther in either given direction.”
Nobody in the room cares for this lecture, but they have to endure it. Only Stark could stop it by claiming a time constraint but this isn’t the battle he wants to choose this morning.
Mason continues, “Take Lincoln. Revered now and beyond reproach. The Emancipator. Did he believe throughout his career that to free the slaves was a moral imperative and did he make that the keystone of his policy at great peril? No. Did he think it was a good thing? Sure. Was his timing expedient? Of course.” Mason turns his head in a half circle, making eye contact with Stark, Knowles, Gomez, and finally Fitzgerald. “Lincoln’s presidency is as old as the founding of the Mormon church. In the same way, his presidency has developed a myth and mystery so that people can’t penetrate to the raw facts, nor do they want to. People want religion.”
Mason’s body language signals he’s done and that he feels he’s shared excellent wisdom. The staff is uncomfortable breaking the silence because they’re so far off the agenda it seems impossible to speak without acknowledging the distance.
It’s up to Stark, who actually forgives his boss and friend these moments. Mason’s day is so jammed full of business with strangers that he needs these respites with his team to bullshit around a little. “Sir, momentum aside, we should accept now that this administration will see numbers in the sixties and fifties. And probably forties.”
“We don’t have to accept anything, Ron. Steve Jobs didn’t accept that the iPhone had to be the size of a shoebox. It’s time to get on the move.” Mason also stands up. He steps behind Susan’s chair then circles the staffers and goes back behind his desk and looks out the window with his hands on his hips. It’s a pose that reminds him of a photograph of Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis and he likes to stand that way. “Susan and I have discussed an overseas tour.” He says her name while looking out the window so any eye contact with anyone is impossible. “I’m a month in office now and it’s time. A two-week trip, starting in London. We’ll make stops through Western Europe.” He turns from the window to the group. “And I want to make a stop in Pakistan. The American people need to see me there.”
It’s a good plan, though the mention of Susan Fitzgerald felt gratuitous to everyone. Stark of course knows of the affair. Knowles has never been told but is certain of it. Gomez has sensed a flirtation but is still of the mind that there is no affair.
Susan takes this as a cue. She opens a folder on her lap and suggests to the team a two-week period to block out and a list of countries to visit and in what order, and that details will be forthcoming.
“Thank you, Susan.” Mason gives a job-well-done smile. He’s looking forward to two weeks in hotels with her and the lingerie he’s already requested. Evelyn will not be making this trip.
23
All that day Mason is looking forward to his 3:30 p.m. meeting with Susan Fitzgerald to review the plan for the overseas trip. Mason has instructed Stark to schedule a few one-on-one meetings with Fitzgerald each week. Not enough to satisfy him and not enough to draw too much attention.
Mason has a 3:15 p.m. meeting with the ambassador from Spain which he ends five minutes early by blurting out his thanks to the ambassador for stopping by. Stark shows the ambassador out and knows Mason will want to be left alone. This also gives Stark the time he needs to make sure the security cameras in the Oval Office are temporarily turned off.
For his part, Stark would prefer that the president didn’t have this distraction and vulnerability, but Stark is a realist. He knows Mason can’t be more than human. With that much power comes sexual entitlement and if he wants one extra girl on the side, so be it. At least he’s discreet and measured. He was an effective governor for New York and he can be an effective chief executive for the nation. He’s certainly doing great things for Stark’s career.
Fitzgerald enters the office from the main door, passing the three secretaries. Nothing clandestine. Her arms are crossed and full of binders and she looks very important. The head secretary closes the door behind Fitzgerald who walks forward and drops the binders in the chair where she had sat during the morning staff meeting.
She lifts her right heel out of her pump so that the shoe dangles from her toes and she kicks it over the president’s desk at Mason, then does the same with the left. She steps up on the square coffee table in stockinged feet and turns her back to Mason. With her feet in place she swings her hips side to side while she lifts her black skirt over her waist to show off a red thong. “I’m here for my three thirty, Mr. President.” Susan does this routine as much for herself as for Mason. Every woman should know what it feels like to do a striptease in the Oval Office, she thinks.
“We have only fifteen minutes, darlin’. Come on over here and don’t adjust that skirt on your way.”
She steps off the table in the direction of his desk. She feels like a cat. Her walk is more exaggerated than just foot over foot, and with the placement of each step her foot crosses her center line which gives a pleasant motion to her ass.
She comes around behind the desk and rolls Mason’s chair back by pushing on the armrests. She sits her ass, which is bare but for the thong so it’s only ass touching anything, where a pad of paper might go.
Mason rolls forward. She’s above him and he reaches to grab the flesh of her behind and rests his face against the cashmere sweater covering her breasts. She embraces his head and massages his neck, careful not to mess his hair beyond what can be fixed by 3:45 p.m. The intensity of their hasty fondling increases until they’re like teens at a drive-in.
Stark stands in the hallway outside the office next to two Secret Service agents, which is where he’ll spend the full fifteen minutes. All three know exactly what’s happening. It feels like a sad moment. Stark hopes the other two also feel this is a small price to pay.
24
Mitchell sits behind his desk in the Oval Office feeling very comfortable. He’s already learned how to make the most of his home court advantage. He doesn
’t overplay his hand by looking cocky or too relaxed. He just looks in control.
Across from him sit Ron Stark and Jason Warren, the Senate majority leader and a Republican. Mason remembers Obama didn’t invite the opposition party leaders in for a meeting until a year and a half into his administration. He was supposed to be the postpartisan president but this was a snub to Republicans and the press hit him for it. Mason isn’t going to give something like that to the media or to any loudmouths in the Republican Party.
Mason is six weeks into his term and it was his idea to extend the invitation. Stark agrees it’s a smart move. Mason is a damn good politician, thinks Stark. Mason and his team are set to leave for their overseas trip the following day, which has the president in an excellent mood.
“Jason, thank you for coming.” Mason doesn’t know Jason Warren well at all but knows that he and Hammermill had a good relationship. Hammermill governed as a moderate Democrat, even managing some entitlement reform including raising the social security retirement age to sixty-eight. The final two years of his administration had balanced budgets, something not achieved since Clinton, so the political frenzy around deficits and debt ceilings has abated. The last balanced budgets in decades were both under Democratic presidents, an effective sound bite for public consumption when Democrats paint Republicans as ridiculous for their key tenet of fiscal responsibility. Mason and Warren know it’s more complicated.
“Thank you for inviting me, Mr. President. We look forward to continuing a close relationship with the White House.”
“Of course, and I hope this meeting will set the tone for that.”
“I hope so too.” Warren is pleasant but cautious. He’s heard the new president is a politician through and through, which could be made to be a good thing. Warren is a sixty-one-year-old senator from Arizona. The hair he has left is only around the sides and is gray. He’s average height, average build, and he always wears a black suit, white shirt, and red tie. He’s a conservative and proper man that nobody in the Senate dislikes.
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