Chapter 25
The White House
December 18, 2:15 a.m.
Moon picked up Natalia’s 15-karat diamond engagement ring and slipped it on her finger, then the matching diamond wedding band. She had been scrupulous about leaving them in plain sight here on the counter in the First Lady’s bathroom before sneaking down to the staff-cafeteria kitchen, so that she wouldn’t be accused of stealing them after she fled tonight. She had never expected to see them again. Now it felt like the diamond rings were burning a hole in her finger.
Ten minutes earlier, on their way upstairs, Pricker had handed her his cell phone. President Funck was on the line. “Where the fuck are you?” He shouted so loudly that Pricker flinched. Before she could answer, he barked, “The Jew doctor says your ‘ripe’ period could still be a go tonight. We’ve got to fuck again! He stabbed my butt with a mega-dose of testosterone to get my sperm off their asses. So get yours up here!”
Moon had needed to buy some time. “I’ve been down in the kitchen,” she said in her Natalia voice. “The staff-cafeteria kitchen.” Natalia had mentioned that the President never went to the staff cafeteria or the staff-cafeteria kitchen because the staff was mostly African-American. “You know I hate that. Makes you smell like fucking Africa!” Rex shouted over the phone. “Take a shower. You’ve got twenty fucking minutes!”
Moon’s life flashed before her eyes as she stepped into Natalia’s closet. She unrolled the cuffs on the First Lady’s $10,000 black Escada jeans, peeled them off, and carried them over to the motorized garment rack. On the rack’s control pad, she punched in the number she located on an inside-back label of the jeans: “402.” The motor hummed as the rack started to move, the hundreds of plastic-and-tissue-wrapped designer clothes gliding by. It stopped at position “402.” “Goodbye beautiful, precious, ridiculously overpriced jeans that could have been mine,” she said, and hung the jeans on the waiting hanger.
Next, she took off Natalia’s $2,000 black Bottega Veneta cashmere sweater. She stroked it, as if it were a Persian cat. “Thank you for being the softest sweater I’ve ever worn in my entire life.” She carried it into a mahogany-lined closet-within-a-closet; it smelled like Chanel Number 5, not mothballs. She neatly folded it and added it to a pile of cashmere sweaters on one of a dozen shelves.
Finally, Moon stepped over to a corner of the closet that Natalia called the “lingerie alcove.” Here, flanking a three-way, full-length mirror were row after row of drawers. She opened one at a time, trying not to gasp at the multitude of exquisite silk and satin designer underwear, brassieres, and nightgowns they held. Her hands trembling, she carefully sorted through a selection of neatly folded nighties. They came in only three colors: white, peach, and black. Too bad Natalia doesn’t have a red nightgown I can wear when I climb into the President’s bed tonight, she thought. It will hide the blood when he shoots me.
As she removed Natalia’s bra and tucked it into its proper drawer, she felt the tingle of her nipples hardening. Not from the cold—it was a good 72 degrees in here—but from fear. She wondered if Joan of Arc’s tits hardened like this when she felt the heat of the flames around her stake.
She pulled a gossamer peach Prada nightgown over her head, careful not to muss her Natalia wig, then reached down to remove her tucking-gaff “thong from hell.” She touched the smooth elasticized fabric and glanced at her image in the three-way mirror. It never ceased to amaze her that when she was wearing this “magic” garment, the bulge at her crotch was no more obvious than a woman’s pubic bone. Maybe it was perverse, but at that moment she made a decision: She would not remove the tucking-gaff. She would leave it on for a reason that also might be perverse: to reserve a huge surprise for the President until the very last moment tonight.
She removed her hand from her crotch. Then, as if for old time’s sake, she posed seductively, evocatively narrowing her eyes, forcing a fish-gape smile, and gracefully brushing her hair from her face, 100 percent Natalia. At her Cross Queen show in South Beach, the pose sent the audience onto their feet every time.
The Cross Queen show image in her mind stimulated an idea. It was an idea that was so off-the-wall, brazen, and shameless, she pictured the Cross Queen audience not just applauding her, but going ape-shit bonkers, whooping and cheering like never before. She vowed to clutch that image during her last moments in the President’s bedroom tonight. When Rex Funck realized that the person in his bed was not his wife, but a trans woman, would he shoot her, strangle her, or have her dragged off to prison? Whatever he did, she knew she wouldn’t find it amusing. Unless…
Suddenly, Moon’s fear dissipated; she didn’t give a shit about what the Funck fucker would do to her. She focused on what she would do to him first. Shock? Check. Humiliation? Check. Maybe she would even give the bastard a well-deserved stroke, or, more painful, a heart attack. Emboldened, she expanded the image beyond the Cross Queen audience. Tonight, Moon thought, I’m going to picture the whole world watching me when I go out in a blaze of Funck-fucking glory.
Chapter 26
Between Jackson and Memphis, TN
December 18, 3:30 a.m.
Natalia’s face glowed with joy in the dim light from the Mustang dashboard, like a kid playing with a Christmas gift, thought Angel. She put the pedal to the metal and the car varoomed ahead. “Chica, you’re crushing it,” he said.
“No big deal!” Natalia glanced over at him and turned her hands on the steering wheel at the same time. The Mustang veered right and screeched onto the gravel shoulder. He reached out and twisted the wheel back to the left, just in time. “Sorry about that!” she said.
“Ojos en el camino!”
“Eyes on the road! Got it!” She chuckled. “I think this whole driving lesson thing is an excuse to teach me Spanish.”
“You’re gonna live in Baja, you gotta learn Spanish.”
“Hey, I learned French in Paris.” She turned to him again, realized she was turning the wheel too, and quickly corrected herself.
“Chica, before I sign off and catch some zzzs, there’s one thing I gotta make sure you can do.”
“Name it?”
“See that tanker?” He pointed to a truck up ahead, its shiny metal tailgate reflecting the Mustang’s headlights.
“I see it.”
“There might be a time, like when I’m asleep, that the highway narrows to only one lane each way.”
“So?”
“If this was any other night, I’d say stay behind the slow-ass truck, don’t risk trying to pass, but—”
“This isn’t any other night,” she said, as if reading his mind. “We’ve got to kick butt to make it to Tijuana before—”
“The shit hits the White House fan.”
“Right.”
“So I need you to show me you can pass a truck like that pinche monster ahead of us even if there’s only two lanes.” He pointed to a yellow road sign that indicated the road was narrowing. “Like what’s about to happen right pinche now.”
“I can do that.” Natalia hunched closer to the wheel and pressed the pedal until the Mustang crept up close behind the tanker. She steered the car to the left, pulled slightly into the oncoming lane and flicked on her brights. No sign of oncoming headlights. “Now?”
Angel nodded. “Now!”
Natalia twisted the wheel until their car was in the center of the oncoming lane, then floored it. The Mustang lurched forward, the speedometer shooting from 60 to 70, then 80. They pulled up next to the tanker, the Mustang’s red reflection like a garish smear of lipstick on its shiny metal side.
“What do they carry in tankers?” she asked, her eyes on the road.
“Sometimes leche, milk, but mostly…” He shut up when he spotted the headlights of an oncoming truck. It was moving fast. There wasn’t a lot of time left for Natalia to finish passing before it would be on top of them.
She strangled the wheel, pressing harder on the pedal. “Hovvvvvvno!”
The Mustan
g hurtled out in front of the tanker, then swerved to the right, safely in front of the tanker and back into their own lane. Seconds afterward, the truck roared past. A flurry of white feathers plastered their windshield, then blew away, like snowflakes.
“Pinche chickens!” said Angel.
Natalia focused on her breathing, slowing it down as she had learned in yoga. “So what was the ‘mostly’?”
“What ‘mostly’?”
She nodded toward the receding image of the tanker in the rear-view mirror. “What do tanker trucks carry most of time, instead of leche?”
“Gasolina.”
“Gasoline. I knew that.” She eased up on the pedal. She turned to Angel with a big grin, this time without turning the wheel at the same time. “I sure hope Moon is having as much fun right now as we are.”
Chapter 27
The White House
December 18, 3:00 a.m.
Moon eyed the box of latex gloves on the side table outside the President’s bedroom. So this is what Natalia meant about her acrylic nails breaking when she had sex with him, she thought. The germophobic ghoul makes her wear latex gloves. Moon was more than willing to sacrifice her own acrylics for her grand-finale performance tonight. She slipped her left hand into a glove. The 15-karat diamond on Natalia’s engagement ring punched a hole in the latex. She peeled off the glove, trashed it, and tried again, this time more delicately. All good.
She nodded to Agent Pricker that she was ready to enter Rex’s bedroom. He shook his head and nodded toward another box on the table by the door. It held a stack of sanitary face masks. Moon was surprised that Natalia hadn’t mentioned them. She felt a twinge of disappointment as she put one on. The mask would keep her cooties off the President, but it would hide part of her unable-to-tell-its-not-really-Natalia face from him.
Pricker touched the coiled-plastic tubing on his radio earpiece: “Trophy is ready, sir.” He took a seat outside the President’s bedroom door. She supposed that it was a signal she could knock. She slipped her fingers under her black-satin robe and adjusted the straps of her black-silk negligée underneath. She was glad that she had ditched peach for black.
Taking a deep breath to fortify herself, Moon yanked open the bedroom door and walked inside. Blinking in the bright light from the crystal chandeliers, she lowered the dimmer switch on the wall until they glowed softly. She saw that Funck was wearing a terrycloth bathrobe and sitting in the red-velvet “throne” that Natalia had mentioned. He was sipping Diet Coke and watching FOX News, just as she had said. Moon slammed the door behind her. Funck didn’t flinch.
“Rex, darling, first I’m going to suck you,” she said in her softest, sexiest Natalia voice. “And then you’re going to fuck me once to make a baby, and once, just for fun, in the ass.”
That did it. The President turned around and gaped at her. “Huh?”
She untied her robe and let it fall to the white carpet. In her black-silk negligée, she struck her best sexy Natalia pose, complete with fish-gape smile. “You heard me. Now turn off fucking FOX News! I can’t wait to put my lips around your stiff, swollen dick!”
He stood up and stared at her, his mouth hanging open. She wondered if he had ever been speechless like this before.
“Take off your fucking bathrobe!” she commanded.
He fumbled with the belt, finally untied it, and pulled off the bathrobe.
Seeing the President naked, Moon forced herself to keep a straight face. His man-breasts sagged like an old woman’s. Folds of fat padded his waist and hips, like skinfolds on a rhino, and drooped over his crotch. His pecker looked like a thumbs-up poking up from a sparse tangle of dyed-orange pubic hair.
“Natalia, baby, is this really you?” For a moment she feared that he had seen through her ruse. Until a lascivious smirk erupted on his face. “You never talk dirty to me like that.” He reached for her. “Tell me more!”
She shoved his hand aside—the President’s fingers really do look like pencil stubs, she thought—and leaned into him. She sucked his flaccid turkey neck and gave it a few quick love bites. It tasted foul, like a combination of man sweat, rancid cologne, and hamburger grease.
Funck reached inside her nightie, grabbed her left breast, and squeezed. She held her breath, hoping her “Natalia breast” would stand the test. He made a sound that was half squeal, half snort, like a horny bulldog.
She pushed him back down into his chair. In a sitting position, his dork disappeared under his belly flesh, like a snail hiding in its shell. He reached down and fumbled around for it. Moon realized that this could go on for hours. She wasn’t sure how long she could continue without laughing. She reached under her nightie, pulled off her “thong from hell,” and kicked it aside. She checked that the tape was still in place, securing her “Mr. Happy” to her ass crack.
Hips swaying invitingly, she sashayed over to his bed. It was twice the size of a king-sized bed, its carved Baroque black-and-gold wooden headboard even tackier than Natalia had described. “Rex thinks he’s the Sun King of France reincarnated,” she had explained.
Moon climbed onto the bed, the satin bedspread slippery beneath her knees. She scanned the nightstand, located the red button that Natalia had mentioned, and pushed it. With a hum, the headboard sank below the bed, revealing a massive gold-tinted wall mirror. She positioned herself on her knees, her hands pressed against the mirror.
“Fuck me in the ass,” she called over her shoulder.
“What about making a baby?”
“Later! Fuck me in the ass right fucking now!”
In the mirror, Moon could see Funck’s face reddening, perspiration beading his forehead. He bent over with a groan and rummaged in a box under his chair. He picked out a small flesh-colored device and lowered it towards his private parts. It took Moon a moment, but she recognized it from a display she had seen at her favorite erotic-toy boutique in South Beach: a penis sheath. He awkwardly attempted to squeeze his flaccid, miniscule member into it. Whoa, she thought. It’s like trying to force toothpaste back into a tube.
When the deed was finally accomplished, he walked over and climbed slowly onto the bed. He winced and rubbed his left knee. Arthritis? Moon thought she could hear his bones creak as he took up position behind her. He forced her head to the left so that he could see his own reflection in the giant mirror. Grabbing one of her breasts with his left hand and pulling up her black nightie with his right, he leaned closer to the mirror and peered dreamily into the reflection of his own watery blue eyes.
Moon felt a tickle at the moment when his penis sleeve came into contact with her taped-down “Mr. Happy,” which was blocking the entrance to her only bodily orifice in that location. Rex grunted, attempting penetration. No go.
A rush that was part excitement, part fear, gripped Moon as she followed Funck’s next move in the mirror: He grudgingly took his eyes off of his own reflection and glanced down at her ass, to help improve his aim. His eyes widened in horror.
“What the fuck?”
Moon had once used a mirror to see the image that she knew the President of the United States was gaping at right now: With her member taped to her butt-crack, it had reminded her of a hot dog nestled in a bun. She stifled a giggle, wishing that her Cross Queen fans were actually watching the horror and humiliation on Rex Funck’s face right now, as they were in her imagination.
“What the shitass, motherfucking hell?”
Enraged, Funck backed away from her. He lurched off the bed…
Lost his balance…
Toppled…
Bashing his head on the sharp gilt-edged corner of the antique nightstand as he plunged to the floor.
Blood gushed from under his comb-over, like lava from a mini-volcano, onto the white carpet.
Moon scrambled off the bed. “Ohmygod, ohmygod!”
Rex struggled to his knees. “You motherfucking…!” Spotting the blood on the rug, he touched his head. When he saw that his fingers were wet with blood, his anger sw
itched to panic and he collapsed on the floor. “Fuck me! I’m dying!”
Moon suddenly morphed into Registered Nurse mode. She knelt beside him. “You’re going to be okay, Mr. President!” She grabbed a pillow from the bed and yanked off the pillowcase.
Funck wiped blood from his eyes. “Who the fuck are you?”
She hastily ripped the pillowcase into strips. “Stay calm, sir!” She wadded them up and pressed them against his head wound.
He shoved her away. “Don’t fucking touch me!” He reached up and fumbled to open the nightstand drawer. With shaky fingers he groped inside and pulled out a .45 Magnum. “I’m gonna fucking kill you!”
Moon raised her hands. “Don’t shoot! I’m an RN!”
“I’m gonna fucking blow you away!” Funck aimed the gun at her with one wobbly hand, wiped the blood streaming down his head into his eyes with the other.
Terrified, she scrambled backward on her knees across the carpet, away from him. “Sir, please! I need to apply pressure to that wound!”
Suddenly, a muscular forearm yanked Moon’s neck back and a meaty hand shoved her head forward. “Got her!” She couldn’t turn to look, but she knew it was Secret Service Agent Pricker.
“You’re hurting me!”
“Good!” He tightened his chokehold on her.
Wild-eyed, Funck lay back on the rug, dropped his gun, and picked up the bloody wad of torn pillowcase. “Get my fucking doctor!” He pressed the wad to his wound, then removed it and checked again. It was soaked with more blood. “Fuck!”
“Sir, you must apply pressure!” called Moon.
“Fuck you!”
Pricker shoved Moon down onto the rug. Her wig slid off, taking her sanitary face mask along with it onto the floor. “Don’t fucking move, pervert!” He pressed his gun against her shaved head, planted his boot on her back, and spoke into his radio walkie-talkie: “The King’s down! Code red!”
“King.” So that’s the Secret-Service code name for the President, she thought.
The First Lady Escapes Page 13