It must be one of Natalia’s favorites, she thought. Mine too.
Ellen had done wonders for the LGBTQ cause, Moon knew. But thanks to bigots like President Funck, this country had a long way to go. She pressed another button on the remote. Without a hint of a mechanical hum, the mattress glided up into an ideal position for watching TV: her head and back raised to a not-quite sitting position, a slight lift under her knees. All I need now is a margarita, she thought.
Moon wondered if Natalia was really an abstainer, like the teetotalitarian President, or if she kept a bottle stashed somewhere. Perhaps Funck Vodka. There must have been hundreds of leftover cases after the brand tanked a few years back. The reason it failed was obvious: Funck told everyone he met not to drink. “Alcohol will kill you like it killed my brother Billy when he was only twenty-five years old,” he always said. Moon didn’t know which was worse: That Rex Funck put his family’s name on vodka and sold it even though his brother drank himself to death, or that Americans elected a President who was so clueless, that he torpedoed his own brand of booze.
She climbed out of bed and walked over to Natalia’s desk. The antique was so highly polished that she was startled to glimpse her “Natalia face” in the burnished walnut. She rummaged through the drawers. Lipsticks, mascara wands, and a handful of white acrylic nails, like caterpillar cocoons, filled one drawer. A stack of Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and Town & Country magazines filled another. In the bottom drawer, behind a box of embossed FLOTUS stationery that looked untouched, she noticed a sliding panel. She imagined that whoever once owned this desk, maybe Dolley Madison, kept a pistol hidden here, or, she hoped, liquor. She slid the panel aside and discovered a half-empty bottle. She read the label: “Slivovika.”
Moon unscrewed the cap and took a whiff. The potent fermented-plum scent evoked memories of her mother. She had drowned herself in Bulgarian Slivovitz, a plum brandy like this Slovak one, when she was dying of breast cancer. At 150 proof, nearly twice as strong as 80-proof Russian vodka, Slivovitz was her go-to pain reliever. “Better than morphine,” she had claimed.
Moon cradled the bottle of Slivovika against her terrycloth bathrobe and climbed back into bed. She muted the TV volume; she didn’t need to hear Ellen to know what she was saying. She took a gulp of Slivovika. It burned, but in an invigorating way, as it slid down her throat.
Moon dreamed of her mother, young and beautiful. Moon was a little boy pretending to be a little girl. They were playing hide-and-seek in their favorite park in Miami. Her eyes were closed; it was her mother’s turn to hide. Suddenly she heard the wail of a siren, hurtling closer. Her heart beat faster as she ran to find her mother. She was nowhere. Gone. She noticed the play structures that had been filled with screaming children moments before were empty, and that the picnickers had disappeared from the grass. The only living things in the park were the fleshy orange-and-white-spotted koi in the fishpond. They floated in the water, motionless except for their obscenely plump lips, which opened and closed, as if to the beat of a ticking clock. The siren grew louder. Deafening.
Moon gasped and opened her eyes. She was lying in Dolley Madison’s bed; the phone on the nightstand beside her was ringing. Shaken from her dream, she reached over and picked up the receiver slowly, reminding herself to answer in Natalia’s voice. “Hello?”
“Madame Funck, your mother is calling,” said Sally-Ann on the phone.
“My mother?” Natalia had not given Moon instructions about how to deal with her mother. Moon didn’t even know her name.
“She says it’s urgent.”
“Urgent?” Moon paused, torn. If she spoke to Natalia’s mother, the woman would realize she was a fraud. Mothers know their own daughters.
“She says she’s got to talk to you. She’s worried about you.”
“Worried about me?”
“You want me to kiss her off? I can give her the headache excuse, or the food poisoning.”
Moon wondered why Natalia avoided talking to her mother. If it were her own mother, olav ha-sholom, she would talk to her for hours. “Tell her I’m resting. I’ll call her later. And tell her I love her.”
A long silence on the other end of the phone. “Seriously?” said Sally-Ann.
“Yes.” As she hung up the phone, Moon pictured her own mother’s young face, caring and worried. Whatever was going on between Natalia and her mother, she hoped her loving response would soothe things. That poor woman is going to go ballistic tomorrow when she learns her daughter escaped from the White House, she thought.
Moon checked the gilded antique clock on the nightstand. It was after 6:00 p.m. She had slept for three hours. She hoped that she could fall back to sleep for six more hours and dream about her mother again. Only this dream will end happily, with my mother at my side, she thought. It will be a good omen for my escape later tonight.
Chapter 20
Washington, D.C.
December 17, 5:00 p.m.
Phil Smith tucked his Nikon into his backpack and climbed the marble steps to the Funck International Hotel. He admired the four sets of double Doric columns that graced the facade of what was once the original Patent Office. Phil knew a lot about historic buildings. He photographed them when there was a dearth of celebrities at which to aim his camera. But he had no time for that now, he realized. Paparazzi were a definite no-no here.
A burly doorman in a green uniform tipped his bowler hat to the well-dressed men and women moving into and out of the brass-trimmed revolving door. The doorman glanced at Phil’s cheap jacket, worn-out jeans and sneakers, and blocked his way. “Sorry, buddy,” he growled softly so others couldn’t hear. “This is private property. No homeless allowed.”
“I’m not homeless. I live in NoMa.”
The doorman snickered. “You’re better off homeless.” He shot a thumb toward Pennsylvania Avenue. “Beat it!”
As Phil reluctantly turned to go, a team of Secret Service agents in black suits, Ray-Bans, and coiled-tube radio earpieces, exploded out of the hotel’s side doors. They took position on the landing, jaws set and legs wide, hands clasped over their crotches. The doorman rushed over to the revolving door as three men burst outside.
Phil recognized the President’s sons. Their ties loosened and laughing loudly, they were unsteady on their feet, as if they had spent the afternoon boozing it up in the Funck Hotel bar. Their Escalade awaited them below. Noticing that they were tipsy, the doorman guided them down the marble steps. As the doorman helped load the Funck brothers into the SUV, Phil had his opening to slip into the hotel.
He knew that he had no time to size up the carved ceilings and chandeliers in the marble-wrapped lobby. Fighting an urge to pull out his Nikon and snap photos, he walked down a hall, following a sign to the hair salon.
The receptionist at the desk was a twenty-something blonde Gretchen-Funck wannabe. “Excuse me, miss?”
She flashed a smile before she looked up. It faded the moment she laid eyes on him. “Can I help you?”
“Is Angel Garcia here? FLOTUS’s hairdresser? I need to see him.”
“He’s not here today.”
“Where is he?”
“I have no idea.”
Phil could see that the receptionist was rattled by his urgency. He spoke as calmly as he could. “I’ve got to see him.” He saw her hand move below the reception counter. No doubt she was pushing a button to summon security.
He recognized a slender young black woman with braided hair at a styling station. She was trimming the hair of an elderly female client, seemingly deaf to the client’s incessant chatter. He noticed the gold nameplate on her counter: “Jazz.” He had seen Jazz enter and leave the White House staff entrance a few times on days when he hadn’t seen Angel there. He figured that Jazz filled in as the First Lady’s hairdresser when Angel was out sick.
Phil spotted a hefty security guard striding toward the salon. He hurried over to Jazz. “Please! Angel is my friend! You must tell me where Angel is!”
“I know.”
To his surprise, it was the client in Jazz’s styling chair. He estimated that she was in her late seventies, but that a plastic surgeon had attempted to lock her face at sixty-five. He’d blown it. “Please, tell me where Angel is,” he said.
“Well, Angel does my hair every Wednesday at four. We’ve had a standing appointment since just before President Funck moved into the White House.” She paused, thinking. “Or maybe it was after he moved in.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Phil saw the security guard chatting with the receptionist. She pointed to him. “Where is Angel?” he asked the client.
“So, he calls me this morning and cancels,” she said. “I mean, he’s canceled before. That’s the downside of getting my hair done by FLOTUS’s hairdresser.”
“Do you know where he is?”
Ignoring him, she continued, “Usually he cancels because he’s flying off somewhere with her on Air Force One. But this time he said he had to leave town on personal business.” The client glanced in the mirror at the job Jazz was doing on her hair and scowled. “He damn well better be back at work next week, like he promised.”
“Thank you.” Phil turned to face the approaching security guard, knowing it was no use resisting him.
“You’re coming with me.” The guard grabbed his arm and led him out of the salon, down a long vitrine-filled hallway, and through the kitchen to a staff exit.
Thirty minutes later, Phil was back in his apartment on his laptop, reading an online People article about Angel Garcia that had run last year. FLOTUS Is Besties with Her Barber was the cutesy headline. Phil had read the piece when it came out. Now he planned to study every word and every picture in it, and anything else he could google about Angel. His mind was flooded with bizarre, perhaps preposterous, scenarios about the First Lady, her hairdresser, and the trans woman with Angel this morning, each one more impossible than the last. Either my brain is in meltdown, he thought, or I’m onto something amazing.
Chapter 21
Knoxville, TN
December 17, 10:00 p.m.
“Here ya go, hon!” An ungainly waitress in her sixties, with a TGIF nametag that said “Charlene,” set down an armful of plates on the table where Angel sat across from Natalia.
“Thanks,” he said. “Better bring us coffee too. Long night ahead.”
“You got it.” Charlene cracked her gum and walked away.
Natalia leaned forward in the red-plastic-upholstered booth and took in the pungent feast: barbequed pork ribs dripping with sauce; a mountain of coleslaw; deep-fried onion rings. She scooped a spoonful of coleslaw onto her plate.
Angel dug into the ribs. “Not as good as in Baja,” he mumbled with his mouth full. “But here we got Wi-Fi.” He checked his iPhone, which was recharging on a cord from a wall socket.
Natalia picked at the duct tape covering a rip in her seat. “I’m too nervous to eat.”
“Leaves more for me.” He hoisted a golden onion ring and admired it. “This thing’s got more bling than your so-called LOVE bracelets.” He could see that she wasn’t listening. She bit her lip. “Chica, chill! Vaclav will call from Prague any minute. It’s que chido, all cool!” He devoured the onion ring.
The waitress returned with two cups of coffee. “I don’t feel sorry for her, do you?”
“Who?” said Angel.
Charlene plunked down the cups and nodded to the TV over the bar. The photo of the unsmiling First Lady with the Funck children at the Presidential Christmas-card shoot was on FOX News. Under it, a chyron read: “Why did POTUS bow out?” She cracked her gum. “I mean, she looks like she wants to blow her brains out. All that money, all them clothes, and she’s got a fly up her ass? Lots of husbands are shits!” She walked off.
Natalia folded her hands on the table. “Angel, the truth. Was I crazy to leave Rex?”
“Un poco, a little,” he teased. Seeing her eyes widen, he quickly added, “No, you did the right thing.”
She nervously rubbed her thumbs together. “You’re sure?”
To distract her, Angel nodded at the photo on the TV screen. “Check out Moon. She’s crushing it!”
Natalia looked up at the photo on TV. “She looks depressed, like the waitress said.”
“Moon is just being you.”
“Poor Moon.”
“Yo, this has gotta be a real high for her to pull you off in front of those fucking Funck fuckers.” He sipped his coffee, grimacing from the bitter taste. “Maybe it’s better Rex didn’t show up today. You’d think, like, a husband would know his wife from a fake.”
“If he looked into her eyes, maybe,” she said. “But Rex doesn’t spend a lot of time looking into anyone’s eyes but his own.” FOX News cut away to commercial. “I hope Moon manages to escape tonight, so she won’t have to risk meeting him tomorrow.”
“She’ll be outta there by, like, 2:00 a.m.” He knocked on the Formica-topped table. “Toco madera.”
Natalia knocked on the table. “Klopať na drevo.”
Angel’s iPhone shimmied on the table, playing La Cucaracha.
She grabbed his hand. “Ohmygod, ohmygod!”
“You sound like you-know-who!” He scooped up his phone. “Hola!” He listened, then said, “She’s right here.” He held out the phone to her. “Tu amor.” As she cautiously took it, he started to slide out of the booth. “I’ll give you privacy.”
She wrenched him back down onto his seat. “Stay with me! Please!”
He shrugged his shoulders, then grabbed another barbequed rib.
Natalia spoke softly in English. “Hello?” She listened, then launched into excited, loud Slovak. “Vaclav, Vaclav!” was all Angel understood. She wept with joy as the words tumbled out. He felt a rush of tenderness for her, like he did the day she cried on his shoulder when the National Enquirer ran a story about a Pilates teacher at the Puerto Rico Funck International Hotel who confessed she slept with Rex while Rex and Natalia were there on their honeymoon.
Ten minutes later, as he polished off his umpteenth onion ring, he heard smooching sounds and looked up. Natalia was kissing his cell phone, tears streaming down her face. “Vaclav, Vaclav, L’úbim t’a! L’úbim t’a!” She hung up, then buried her face in her hands.
“Yo, earth to Natalia?”
Natalia shook her head, as if forcing herself to return to reality. “I can’t believe it. Vaclav still loves me! And I love him!”
“Beautiful!”
“He said he married a Slovak woman he thought looked like me, but he couldn’t love her the way she needed. He got a divorce and moved to Prague. That’s when he joined a band. He said if I could live my dream and become a model, he wanted to live his dream and play music.”
“Que chido! You inspired him.”
“Then he saw in the news I married Rex. It killed him.” She fought back tears. “And then I became First Lady. He was sure I forgot about him.”
“Yo, it’s all good, chica!” He handed her a paper napkin. She dabbed at her eyes with it.
“Vaclav is flying to San Diego tomorrow. He’s renting a car and driving across the border. He said he’ll meet us at that hotel you told him about in Rosarito Beach.”
“Hotel Paraiso. It means ‘paradise.’”
Natalia blew her nose into the napkin and laughed. “He wanted to Facetime with me, but I said no way.” In the mirrored wall behind Angel, she glimpsed her pink-streaked black wig and drooping forehead. “If he saw me like this, he’d stay home!”
“No worries! Before you meet, I promise to turn you back into Natalia.” He patted the red Gucci satchel on the seat beside him. “I got my bag of tricks.” He pushed the plate of ribs toward her. “Eat.”
She hungrily eyed the ribs and onion rings, then put her hands on her stomach and frowned. “I haven’t worked out or taken a yoga class in two days. Angel, tell me the truth. Do I look fat?”
“Chica, you’re outta the White House, outta the public eye. You don’t have to look pinche perfect anymore!”
“I DO look fat!” She pressed her fingers into her stomach. “Hovno!”
“This is the real world! You gotta get over your food hang-up!”
“What food hang-up?”
“C’mon, Natalia. You feel, like, guilty about every scrap of food you pop in your mouth.”
“For models, that’s not a hang-up. That’s reality!”
“Chica, today you had the cajones to walk out on a life where you gotta look like a supermodel for your husband, and for, like, millions of people who know you for what you are, not who you are.”
“Who am I?”
“That’s for you to find out. In your new life, you can look any way you want, be anything you want, and pinche eat anything you want!” He picked up the last onion ring and held it out to her.
She eyed it hungrily. “Will Vaclav still love me if I get fat?”
“He’s loved you since you were fourteen.”
“I was innocent when I was fourteen, plus I had a firm zadok.”
“And I bet you ate, like, whatever you wanted, right?”
“My mother told me halushkies would make me fat, but I ate them anyway.”
“What’s halushkies?”
“Slovak potato dumplings. They come in this sauce made with fried cabbage, fried onions, and bacon. I pigged out on halushkies whenever I went to Babika’s farm, just to spite Mamina.”
“Did you get fat?”
“No.”
“Was that when you were fucking Vaclav?”
“Every day, sometimes twice a day.” Her eyes gleamed. “We met at secret places.” She leaned closer to him. “Sometimes we did it in Babika’s barn!”
“So eat whatever you want. In two days, you and Vaclav will be going at it like crazed Chihuahuas!”
A smile spread on her face, as if she were picturing the image. Angel pushed the plate of ribs closer to her. She dug in. “My babika made the best ribs,” she said, her mouth full. “She cooked them for hours in a sauce with tons of paprika. Slovaks love paprika.”
The First Lady Escapes Page 11