The First Lady Escapes

by Verity Speeks

  “I’m fine. Just older.” Betty took the box of See’s candy he pulled from his backpack. “Thank you.” She eyed him suspiciously. “What do you want?”

  “C’mon, Mom, I just wanted to see you.”

  “That’s great. I’m happy to see you. What do you want?”

  Phil noted the wariness in his mother’s eyes, as if she knew the next thing out of his mouth would disappoint her. He had seen that look the day he dropped out of Pasadena City College, and a few years later when he brought her clippings of three National Enquirer articles featuring the paparazzi photos that had earned him a total of $15,000. He assured her that they would be the first of many lucrative celebrity photos in his paparazzo career.

  On his mother’s refrigerator, Phil eyed two yellowed Pasadena Daily clippings. One was from 1976: his then seventeen-year-old mother in a white drum-majorette uniform, with tasseled white boots and shiny baton, as she led the Pasadena High School marching band in the Rose Parade. The other newspaper clipping was from 2004: Phil at seventeen in his Eagle Scout uniform, holding the scout badge he’d won for taking photos of Pasadena’s famous historic buildings and landmarks, including the Craftsman house where they had lived. When Phil won the scout badge, his mother told Mr. Henderson, who gave them to his friend, the publisher of the Pasadena Daily. The newspaper ran two of Phil’s old Pasadena photos, including the one of the banker’s Craftsman house, and paid Phil $50. His mother never posted the National Enquirer clippings on her refrigerator in the place of honor, next to these. He wondered if she had saved them in a drawer or trashed them.

  “Okay, I do want something, Mom,” he said. “It’s really important and it could help both of us. I promise.” He sat down at the kitchen table.

  Betty sat down guardedly, across from him. She placed the box of See’s candy on the table between them. “Both of us?”

  Phil opened the box of candy and offered her one. “I have the chance to take a picture that will be beyond incredible. It will run in newspapers, magazines and on websites around the world.”

  “Really, Phillip?”

  He saw the wariness in her eyes again. “Cross my heart and hope to die!” He realized he hadn’t said that since he was a little boy. At the time his mother had scolded him. “It’s bad luck to say that, Phillip. Never say it again! Your father said, ‘Cross my heart and hope to die’ whenever he lied to me. He ended up dying in a car wreck on the Pasadena Freeway. He had promised me he stopped drinking, but he was driving drunk!”

  “Mom, listen to me, please,” said Phil. “I’ve discovered something that no one else knows. At least, not yet. It has to do with one of the most famous celebrities in the world. And if I get a great picture of her, or him—I can’t give away the celebrity’s gender—I can sell it for hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe more! You won’t have to live in this dump!”

  “This is not a dump!” she said. “It’s perfectly fine, and I can walk to work.”

  “You won’t have to work!”

  The paper wrappers of the See’s candies rustled as his mother selected a chocolate. He remembered the rustling sound, like a mouse making a nest, from the New Year’s Day mornings in their servants’ quarters when they treated themselves to See’s candy while watching the Rose Parade on TV.

  “So, about this photo that’s going to make you a millionaire.” Betty took a delicate bite of her chocolate. “What do you need from me?”

  As if he were making a chess move, he selected a white-chocolate See’s candy with lumps that he knew from experience were salted peanuts. As he chewed it, he pulled out his camera. “Okay, so this is the Nikon digital SLR camera I bought with the money I made thanks to my George Clooney photo.”

  “I remember you telling me,” she said.

  “I love this camera.” He reached into his camera bag and pulled out a lens. “This is the 70-200 millimeter zoom lens I bought with the money I made from the Beyoncé photo.”

  “You told me about that, too.”

  He attached the lens to the camera. “With this, I can shoot a close-up of someone 350 feet away. He held out the camera for her inspection.

  She shook her head. “I haven’t got a clue about cameras, Philip. Or about what you’re getting at.”

  He dug into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out a wadded-up brochure. He smoothed it out and laid it on the table. It featured a picture of a lens that was at least twice the length of his own. “Mom, this is the newest Nikon lens on the market. Talk about next gen. It’s got four extra-low dispersion elements that reduce aberrations in the aperture range, and nano-crystal and super-integrated coatings to suppress flare. Mom, the most amazing thing is it’s 600 millimeters, but it’s much lighter than your traditional 600-millimeter lens. You can get a great close-up of someone 700 feet away or more!”

  A mouse-nest rustling made Phil realize that his mother was burrowing in the See’s box. “Mom, you’re not listening.”

  “I am listening, but I don’t understand. What do you want?”

  He slapped his palm on the brochure. “I want this lens! I need this lens!”

  “How much does it cost?”

  Phil hesitated, debating how truthful to be. He had spent most of his meager savings on the plane ticket from Washington to L.A. and he needed whatever was left to rent a car and pay expenses on his trip to Tijuana. “It retails for between $8,000 and $11,000,” he blurted out. His mother stopped chewing. “Mom, they know me at Samy’s Camera. I’ve been going there since I was a kid. I’m pretty sure I can get a discount.”

  “How sure?” Before Phil could answer, his mother shook her head and stood up from the table, brushing her palms together to get rid of the candy crumbs. “Never mind. If you are half as convincing with the guys at Samy’s as you are with me, I’m sure you’ll get a great deal!”

  “Mom, thank you, thank you, thank you!” He stood up and came around to her side of the table, reaching out to grab her in a bear hug.

  “Jeez, Philip, you want the money or what?” She avoided his arms and headed into the bedroom.

  “You keep $11,000 in cash?”

  “Bankers are cheats!”

  Phil followed her into the tiny bedroom. The single bed was impeccably made, with not a wrinkle in the bedspread. He remembered that it was the way the banker’s wife liked it. The bedspread was embroidered with red roses surrounding a red banner with the words, “Rose Parade 1976.”

  Betty pulled aside a makeshift curtain and rummaged on a shelf above a pole where her clothes hung. He had never seen the black cardboard box that she pulled down and placed on her bed. She opened the box slowly, as if afraid the memories it held would escape. Inside were her white drum-majorette boots from high school, their white tassels now yellowed. His mother had often told him that the day she led the marching band in the Rose Parade was the happiest day of her life. She reached into one boot, dug out a wad of cash that was secured with a rubber band and handed it to him. “Take what you need.”

  He hugged her. “Mom, I want to make you proud of me.”

  “I know you do, Philip.” She slowly and softly petted the back of his head, the way she did when he was a little boy home from school and sick in bed with a fever. “And I want you to have a chance, like I did, to do something very special,” she continued. “Something you will always remember.”

  Chapter 31

  El Paso, TX

  December 18, 12:00 p.m.

  The blazing sky turned the front window of Cody’s Pawn Shop into a mirror. Natalia regarded her reflection: She was wearing Moon’s fuchsia polyester nurses’ scrubs and skid-resistant plastic nurses’ clogs; they were white with little fuchsia hearts. She had discovered them under Moon’s FLOTUS-impersonator dresses in the garment bag. Natalia had also discovered half a dozen bandanas that Moon used to hide her Adam’s apple. She had tied a few together to bind her breasts. It wasn’t comfortable, but she didn’t want her big boobs to give her away. Glimpsing her size B bosom, she chuckle
d to herself. Now I know how Moon feels when she wears that thong from hell to hide her vták, she thought.

  Natalia also had shed Moon’s nose and ear studs, Buddha tattoo, and false eyelashes, and the wadded-up Frette washcloth with which she had created the man bulge at her crotch. Thanks to Angel’s artistry, her makeup was subtle: a little lipstick and a touch of blush, what a flat-chested RN, not an over-the-top trans woman trying to make a statement, would wear. She had ditched Moon’s pink-streaked black wig too. To hide her baldness, she was wearing an old gray-knit winter cap that Angel had found in his trunk.

  Angel climbed out of the Mustang and walked toward the pawn shop. It was too bad they had found nothing in Moon’s garment bag to help him change his appearance, she thought. He had shaved his stubble, cut his hair short, and removed the silver studs from his left ear. Still, she wasn’t certain that what she had worn leaving the White House now worked on him: Moon’s white wife-beater T-shirt was so big that it sagged on his chest, revealing his nipples. “No way am I wearing Moon’s ginormous motorcycle boots,” Angel had said. “With my camarón feet, I’ll trip and fall on my ass.” She suspected that Angel refused to wear them because he was obsessed with his red-alligator cowboy boots. He claimed Moon’s jeans were so long on him, that they would droop down and cover them.

  She sized him up as he joined her in front of the pawn shop. “Moon’s jeans are definitely too long and I hate to break it to you, Angel. They don’t totally conceal your cowboy boots.” She pointed to the red boot tips that were sticking out.

  Ignoring her, he said, “Okay, so what’s the plan?”

  “Well, we know Moon didn’t escape from the White House last night. She was there this morning, impersonating me in the White House Christmas photo.”

  “Which means they caught her ass and now Rex Funck is forcing her to impersonate you until they find your ass.”

  “Or Gretchen is forcing Moon.”

  “Either way, if they know Moon’s the First Lady in the White House, they know you walked outta there yesterday looking like the tranny Moon really is and I was the pinche dude with you,” he said. “We gotta, like, dump our IDs, my credit cards, and my Mustang, and get to TJ looking like people the Secret Service and FBI aren’t expecting.”

  “Rex won’t get the FBI involved. He thinks they’re out to get him. They probably are,” she said. “As for the Secret Service, he can’t send them all after us. Too many moving parts. The press could find out.”

  “Can you see the pinche headlines? ‘FLOTUS Flees the White House!’”

  “The only Secret Service agent Rex trusts is his personal bodyguard, a guy with a last name…” She tried to remember. “It sounds obscene… ‘Pricker.’ Rex’s got, like, a ‘bromance’ going with Pricker.”

  “So that leaves just Pricker the prick looking for us,” he said. “That’s, like, a good thing, right?”

  “Don’t forget Gretchen.”

  “Shit, Gretchen will be all over this, like a pit bull on a rooster!”

  “That’s a bad thing.” Natalia sighed. “I’m glad we didn’t tell Moon where we were going. They’d pull out her fingernails to get the info from her. Not her acrylics, her real ones!”

  “Doesn’t matter. They can trace my credit card records,” he said. “I’ve been using my VISA for gas and food since we left D.C. They will see we drove through the south and into Texas. It’s an easy guess that from Texas we’re heading to, like, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, and from there, why not Mexico, where I’m from? FLOTUS will be safe there. The Mexican government has no love for Funck. They won’t build his pinche border wall. They sure as hell won’t return his wife!”

  “So, what do we do now?” She glanced at the pistols, rifles, and machine guns mounted in the pawn-shop window. “Don’t tell me we’re buying guns to hold them off.”

  “No pinche way!”

  “Angel, I was kidding.”

  He gently touched her arm. “Chica, I know we are both freaked out about this thing with Moon being stuck in the White House and them knowing—”

  “We didn’t see it coming.”

  “We’re gonna be okay. We’re gonna make it to TJ.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise. I’ve got, like, $20 left.” He pulled up his pant leg and braced his foot against the bottom rim of the store window. “Let’s see how much we can get for these babies.” He used his car key to wedge open the secret compartment in the silver heel of his cowboy boot. He carefully retrieved the six unset diamonds. “Vamanos!”

  Angel opened the door to the pawn shop for Natalia, then followed her inside.

  Behind the counter was a middle-aged cowboy-wannabe wearing a Stetson hat and a faded plaid cowboy shirt, his bloated belly resting on the top of the glass case, like a sleeping cat. “What can I do you for?”

  “I’ve got a few stones,” Angel said. “I’d like to know what they’re worth.”

  “You betcha.” The pawnbroker looked Natalia up and down. She saw his eyes glaze over. How refreshing to be checked out by a man and see he has no desire to jump my bones, she thought, relieved that her flat-chested nurse disguise was working.

  The pawnbroker reached under the counter and retrieved a blue-velvet-lined tray. Angel carefully let the diamonds fall from his palm onto the velvet, as if he were throwing dice in a game he had to win.

  Pulling a jeweler’s eyepiece from his shirt pocket, the pawnbroker extended his hand. “I’m Cody, by the way. This is my place.”

  Angel shook Cody’s hand, but didn’t offer his name. “Pleased to meet you.”

  “No worries. I’ll give you the best price.” He picked up one of the diamonds and looked at it through his loupe.

  Cody must deal with people like us all the time, thought Natalia. No-name losers on the run. She stared at the floor while he examined the diamonds.

  Cody removed the loupe from his eye and moved the smallest diamond to the edge of the tray. “Five of your diamonds are fake,” he said. “Sorry about that.” He tapped the small diamond. “This one’s real. I can give you fifty bucks for it.”

  Natalia saw Angel’s jaw tighten. She forced herself to stay calm.

  “Let me talk to my, like, partner,” Angel said. He led her to a corner.

  “Take your time,” Cody called after them.

  “Is he telling truth?” she whispered.

  “Maybe. If the dude thinks he can only sell one small-ass diamond to the trailer trash that comes in here, he’ll only buy one. And he’ll say the others are, like, fake, so we’ll think we won the lottery to get $50 for it because the others aren’t worth jack shit.” He thought for a moment. “Unless—”

  “What?”

  “Unless one of Funck’s first three wives scammed him after their divorce, returned fake diamonds to him, and kept the real ones.”

  “Maybe Rex scammed his wives and gave them fake diamonds to begin with.” She laughed. “I wouldn’t put it past him.”

  Angel led her back to the counter and scooped up the rejected diamonds. “Okay, Cody, we’ll take the $50. We appreciate your generosity.”

  “Sure thing.” The pawnbroker put the velvet tray with the diamond on the back counter, unlocked a cash drawer and counted out $50 in tens. He handed it to Angel. “I can see you folks are disappointed not to leave here with more. Tell you what, how about I give you another fifty bucks for your boots?”

  Angel glanced down. The red tips of his cowboy boots were sticking out from under his drooping cuffs. He hitched up his jeans. It didn’t help. “Dude, I can’t part with my boots.” He flashed the Rolex watch that Natalia had given him for Christmas. “But how much for this?”

  Cody pondered Angel’s question, then burped. “The thing is, there are a lot of fake Rolexes out there. Diamonds I can tell, but how do I know that Rolex’s not fake?”

  “It’s not fake!” said Natalia. “I paid $9,000 for it!”

  Cody looked from her to Angel. “The truth is, the folks w
ho come in here can’t afford a Rolex, even if it’s fake. I’ve got no use for it. But them red boots. I can sell them in a heartbeat.”

  Angel looked down at his boots and sighed. “$150.”

  Cody held out his hand. “$100.” Angel reluctantly shook it.

  Chapter 32

  The White House

  December 18, 3:00 p.m.

  “Christmas came early for President Funck today!” gushed Brandon Brighton on FOX TV. “His approval ratings soared fifteen points!”

  “Amazing,” said co-anchor Shana Wiley, pointing to the official Christmas photo of the President, his admiring First Lady and his family.

  “All because of this picture!” Brighton said. “And this picture says POTUS and FLOTUS are lovebirds once again!”

  In Natalia’s White House bedroom, Moon clicked off the TV, disgruntled about the news and feeling guilty about her part in it. She rubbed her hand over her bald head, as if brushing back unruly hair, and slumped against the pile of goose-down pillows on the bed. She reached under the terrycloth bathrobe she was wearing—Natalia’s peach Prada—and scratched her balls.

  “Way to go, Moon. Daddy and I can’t thank you enough!” she said in a high voice and accent that imitated the First Daughter’s. Then, in her own voice: “Oh, it was my pleasure, Gretchen. Anything to keep you and Big Daddy in the White House for another four years.”

  She leaned toward a crystal bowl of fresh fruit on the nightstand and selected a strawberry. She popped it into her mouth, then frowned. She had no appetite. She was about to take another bite anyway, but noticed Hilda peering out at her from the servant’s alcove. A cautious smile creased the Slovak maid’s square face.

  Moon tossed the half-eaten strawberry across the room, toward the wastebasket. It missed by inches, landing on the thick white carpet. Hilda scurried over, with a sound that reminded Moon of rustling leaves. It was the sound of Hilda’s support-panty-hosed thighs rubbing together as she walked. The lardo nurses at Good Samaritan Hospital in Miami sounded like that. Hilda stiffly bent over, grunting, and scooped up the offending strawberry.