The elevator door began to close between them, but Trump stuck out his hand to stop it. As the door slid back open, Trump turned to the stoic Secret Service agent flanking him on the left. The agent’s cleanly shaven dome glistened under the brilliant chandeliers. His eyebrows had been plucked to nonexistence. Jimmie wondered what he had against hair. Then he remembered who the guy had to guard all day. It made sense he might have developed some weird, obsessive behaviors regarding the maintenance of one’s hair.
Trump barked at the agent, “Are you going to just stand there, or are you going to shoot this loser?”
Chapter Nine
You’re Fired
Sweat beaded on Jimmie’s forehead and behind his ears. He hadn’t even been aware that he had sweat glands back there.
The Secret Service agent made no motion to pull a gun out, however. He simply stood there, hands clasped together. “Where would you like me to shoot him, sir? I could aim for the torso—put a bullet right through his stomach and then wait for him to bleed to death on the floor of the elevator.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” Trump said. “People need to use the elevator. Do it in the hallway.”
“On this carpet?” the Secret Service agent said.
Trump looked down at his feet, and so did Jimmie. The bright-red carpet had a golden pattern woven into it. It looked brand new, like it had just been laid down this morning.
Emma stepped out of the elevator. Jimmie had been so caught up in his own drama, he’d forgotten she was still standing behind him.
She loosened the president’s tie. Trump watched her work, a frown still plastered on his face.
“The first lady would not be happy if you ruined this carpet,” Emma said. “Can you afford a fifth divorce?”
“Fourth divorce,” Trump said. “My fourth marriage was annulled, remember?”
Emma used the tie to wipe off Trump’s suit. “Regardless, you don’t want to shoot your new ghostwriter. He wasn’t an easy get. And after what happened with the last one . . .”
Trump now eyed Jimmie through the elevator door, which was closing again. Trump held out his hand, and Jimmie cautiously shook it.
“I wasn’t shaking your hand,” Trump said as the elevator door slid back open. “I don’t need to catch whatever third-world Zima virus you picked up down in Mexico. I have a country to run.”
The hallway beyond them was empty, unlike the rest of the White House, which was buzzing with activity. There was a single set of double doors at the end of the corridor. The Boardroom.
“Would you still like me to kill him, sir?” the Secret Service agent asked.
“That won’t be necessary,” Trump said. “Just shoot him in the kneecaps.”
The Secret Service agent reached a hand inside his jacket. Before he could pull his handgun out, Trump held up a hand to call him off.
“I’m kidding,” Trump said. “Jesus Christ, you guys take everything so seriously.”
The agent produced a pack of Mentos from his jacket. “I wasn’t reaching for my gun. We’re not authorized to shoot anybody unless they’re a direct threat to your well-being. And this guy . . . well, look at him.”
“You’d take a bullet for me,” Trump said.
“Without a second thought.”
“You’d jump on a live grenade.”
“Of course, sir.”
“But you won’t shoot somebody when I tell you to?” Trump turned to Emma. “Can I fire this guy? Can I fire the entire Secret Service and replace them with my own security detail? Is that a thing I can do?”
“We’ve been over this before,” she said. “Not only are they authorized to protect you, but they are also compelled to by law. According to Title 18, Section 3056, neither you nor the vice president may decline their protection.”
Trump snorted. He turned to Jimmie, who still hadn’t spoken a word in the presence of his new boss. “Not only is she beautiful, but she’s brilliant as shit,” Trump said. “You ever watch the Miss Universe pageant?”
“Can’t say that I have,” Jimmie said.
It was, perhaps, not the right thing to say after what he’d just done. But Trump just laughed and shook his head. “Nobody watches TV anymore, do they? For the longest time, I kept that dying medium alive with The Apprentice. But nowadays, it’s all about steaming this, steaming that.”
“Streaming,” Emma said, gently correcting him.
“You know what I mean,” Trump said.
Emma turned to the Secret Service agent. “Page Chris Christie and have him send someone to clean this mess up.” She handed him Trump’s tie. “And do something with this.”
“So is that how it’s going to be?” the agent said, angrily snatching the tie from her. “This job keeps getting better and better. You know, we’re not even supposed to hold the president’s coat. We’re not supposed to—”
Trump cut him off. “Be careful, or I will find a way to fire you—all of you men in black. By God, I will find a way.” Trump paused. “And grow some fucking eyebrows.”
“Well,” Emma said, “if you will excuse us, Mr. President, we need to get to the Boardroom.”
Trump snorted. “I was just on the way there myself but had to head back up to the Oval Office to pick up my comb. Let the Security Council know I’ll be a few minutes late, would you?”
“It was a pleasure meeting you, Mr. President,” Jimmie said as Emma whisked him away.
“Wish I could say the same about you,” Trump called out after them.
When they were well out of earshot, Emma tore into Jimmie.
“What the bloody hell was that all about? You made me look like a bloody fool. Why didn’t you apologize?” she hissed. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“I heard he didn’t like it when people apologize,” Jimmie said. “That he sees it as a sign of weakness. He’s never apologized in his life.”
Emma paused in front of the double doors. “If, in the future, you throw up on somebody—especially if it’s the president of the United States of America—you apologize.”
She swiped her badge and waited for the light to go green. While he had never paid much attention to politics, he’d done some reading online to prepare for his first day on the job. The former Situation Room was the brainchild of John F. Kennedy. Although Trump had rechristened it the “Boardroom,” this was the same room where Bush had given the orders to invade Iraq. Where Obama had orchestrated SEAL Team Six’s assassination of bin Laden. Where Bill Clinton had probably gotten a handy or two.
Emma held the door open, and Jimmie stepped into the darkened room. Somehow, they’d beat Lewandowski down here. Jimmie ran his hand along the wall to the right. “Is there a light switch in—”
“SURPRISE!!!”
Chapter Ten
Surprise! You’re Dead!
At the sound of the party horns, Jimmie jumped a half foot into the air. If his shoes hadn’t been Velcroed on tight enough, he might have leapt right out of them.
Emma caught him as he fell backward and helped him stay upright. He stared with confusion at the assembled group of revelers who had thrown him for a loop. The looks of shock on their faces were in stark contrast to the pointed party hats on their heads.
“Who in Trump’s name is this bozo?” an old white guy asked. Jimmie was in the middle of a sea of old white guys. He blinked, trying to process what he was seeing. Eventually, the old white guys resolved into individual faces. There was Lewandowski, who’d already arrived after all. Secretary of Transportation Eastwood. Secretary of Defense Nugent. The newest members of the Supreme Court, Justices Giuliani and Philbin. The only person who didn’t fit the profile was Donald Trump Jr., a slightly younger white guy.
“This,” said Emma, “is Trump’s new ghostwriter, Jimmie Bernwood.”
“Did we ever find out what happened to the last guy?” some suit-and-tie said. “He went off backpacking the Pacific Crest Trail after reading Wild, and then . . .”
A sea o
f disapproving faces turned on the schmuck who’d asked the question. Jimmie was too panicked to really care about “the last guy” right now.
Emma guided Jimmie to a leather chair at the head of the long table, which filled the center of the room. He started breathing again. Oxygen was good. Oxygen was very, very good. He loved oxygen like A-list actors loved nannies.
“And here he is! President Donald Trump!” shouted Justice Philbin as Trump entered the room. Everyone again yelled, “SURPRISE!!!”
Jimmie was ready for it this time. He barely broke a sweat. How Trump had changed so fast, he had no idea. Perhaps he had a pit crew of stylists standing by at all times, ready to change him like a race car with a blown tire.
The room burst into song.
“FOR HE’S A JOLLY GOOD FELLOW, FOR HE’S A JOLLY GOOD FELLOW . . .”
Jimmie mouthed along. He was slightly distracted by the world map plastered on the giant video screen covering the far wall. There were a number of red dots inching their way across the Atlantic Ocean. To an untrained observer like Jimmie, it appeared that American battleships were converging just off British shores. It was a little disturbing, to say the least. He tuned back in to the song just in time for the second verse.
“HE FINALLY OVERTURNED NAFTA, HE FINALLY OVERTURNED NAFTA, HE FINALLY OVERTURNED NAFTA, WHICH NOBODY CAN DENY!”
“Thank you, everyone, thank you! We did it!” shouted Trump over the hubbub. “Global warming—now that’s something we can all deny!”
The crowd roared with laughter. The Nuge set a large cake on the table. It had an image of Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes urinating on a crude drawing of the US Capitol Building. It was like one of those decals Jimmie had seen along the border, which had the cartoon character pissing onto the word “Mexico.”
As the crowd moved in on the cake and Giuliani’s shrill cries of “I want a corner! I want a corner!” grew louder, Jimmie’s attention drifted back to the video screen. Something was happening off the coast of the United Kingdom, all right. But as the graphic repeated itself over and over, Jimmie dismissed it as nothing he needed to be concerned with. Although relations between the United States and the United Kingdom had cooled off considerably since Trump took office, this was the former Situation Room. Trump and his Security Council ran through different situations at this table. Just because a graphic had been put together didn’t mean it was happening—or was even going to happen. It was just a situation. One of hundreds, perhaps.
Trump smacked John McCain on the back. “Hey there, Johnny boy! They let you out! Wait—can I say that?”
“Actually, Mr. President, I was hoping to ask you a quick question. It’s about a spending issue with—”
“What is it with you guys? Always politics,” Trump interrupted. “Come in for a meeting next week. I never talk business when there’s cake—rule fourteen in The Art of the Deal: The Expanded Coloring Book Edition. You gotta lighten up a little, Johnny.”
“Well, at least I tried,” said McCain with a good-natured laugh before sulking toward the exit. Trump didn’t notice; he’d already moved on to the owner of the Washington Wizards, Ted Leonsis.
“Ted. Teddy. Hope the NBA doesn’t mind—it’s going to take a little longer to expand into Mexico. Necessary evil. This is such a great, great move otherwise for our country. More jobs means more butts in the seats at your games, though, am I right?”
Jimmie kicked himself for leaving his notebook in Emma’s office. Some biographer he was. He was trying to jot down notes in frosting on the back of his hand but was concerned it would melt away before he could transcribe it. He would have to be better prepared tomorrow.
If he still had a job tomorrow. What was it that guy had said? Did we ever find out what happened to the last guy? Even if he wasn’t fired for throwing up on the president, Jimmie worried that he wouldn’t be holding onto this job for very long.
Chapter Eleven
The Whole Shack Shimmies
Somebody cranked up The B-52s’ “Love Shack” on the surround sound stereo system. The map on the video screen dissolved into an iTunes screen saver. For a meeting room, the Boardroom had some serious bass. Probably needed it for all the videos of explosions.
To Jimmie’s dismay, the cake was chocolate. Not really Jimmie’s thing. He was more of a vanilla guy, at least as far as desserts went. He’d accepted a piece, however. He didn’t want to be “that guy”—you know, the prissy coworker whose tastes are so specific that you’d probably catch them wanking at work before you caught them eating carbs.
Oh, who was he kidding? He already was “that guy”—the one who’d thrown up on the president on his first day on the job. If word hadn’t spread yet, it would soon. Not that he’d ever been one to mingle with his coworkers.
You’re a journalist, he told himself, trying to swallow the sponge cake without making a face. These aren’t your coworkers—these are your subjects. And then another thought crossed his mind: You’re not a journalist. Not any longer. Not when one of your subjects is bankrolling you.
A big-bottomed guido took the empty chair next to Jimmie. Chris Christie. Although the job title on his badge said he was the “chief janitor,” Christie wasn’t dressed like a janitor. His navy-blue suit and power-red tie were the same as every else’s in the Boardroom, albeit from the “big-and-tall” section. The really big-and-tall section.
“You look like you’re having fun,” Christie said, leering at Jimmie.
“Just some first-day jitters. And maybe a little food poisoning.”
“Been there before,” Christie said, shoving a fork right into what was left of the cake. “First day in the governor’s office, I was so nervous that I shit my drawers. It was a little bit of excitement, a little bit of Montezuma’s revenge.”
“No shit.”
“Yes shit,” Christie said.
Jimmie watched as Christie shoveled the cake into his gullet like a bank robber stuffing bundles of cash into a duffle bag.
“So what did you do?” Jimmie asked. “After you . . . shit your drawers.”
Christie wiped the yellow frosting from around his mouth. “I ordered up a traffic study in Fort Lee, put the kybosh on a new tunnel to Manhattan, and then cleaned myself up in the bathroom of Jerry Jones’s G5 en route to the Super Bowl. The bathroom in that plane is nicer than anything on the ground in Trenton.”
“So the moral of the story is . . .”
“There is no moral to the story,” Christie said. “Morals are for putzes. You understand what I’m saying, Jimmie?”
“I think so,” Jimmie said. He really had no idea what the hell Christie’s point was, other than the fact that you couldn’t count on anyone who worked for you to tell you when your shit stank. “Say . . . do you know anything about this ‘nuclear’ situation? The press secretary mentioned there was an emergency that rhymed with ‘muclear.’”
Christie snorted. “That’s just the Security Council code we use when there’s dessert in the Boardroom.”
“So what’s the code when there’s a real nuclear emergency?”
“Same thing.”
Jimmie felt his eyes go wide. “Isn’t that . . . dangerous?”
Christie narrowed his eyes to the point where his pupils were crushed into two tiny, black coals. “I see those hamsters running on those wheels in your head,” he said. “You’re not an idiot. Not like half the reporters upstairs in the White House press corps. The president wanted you for this job, though—Lord knows why, but he did. I know you’re dangerous. A wise guy like you, around here? You could hurt people, real easily, with that pen of yours. I’m talking about your words, of course. You writers and your weak stabbing motions. Just remember: You could also get hurt . . . real easily. And we wouldn’t want that. Trust me—I do a lot of ‘cleaning up’ for President Trump, if you know what I mean. Ask yourself, are you the froster? Or the frosting?”
Christie crammed the last of the cake into his gaping maw. “See you around, kid,” he
mumbled.
Jimmie sat in stunned silence. If he didn’t know any better, he’d have thought the former governor of New Jersey had just threatened him. In his line of work, he’d been used to being threatened—by lawyers, usually. Never by a janitor.
Jimmie was beginning to sense that something . . . untoward might have happened to this mysterious predecessor. The ghostwriter who had left behind “big shoes to fill,” according to the press secretary. Big . . . concrete shoes?
Chapter Twelve
A Hard Bed Is Good to Find
Jimmie Bernwood returned to the Royal Linoleum Hotel—“VACUUMED DAILY,” according to the neon sign—well after dark. He’d gone suit shopping, which meant forgoing the chauffeured car he’d arrived at work in for public transportation. He’d spent an extra forty-five minutes waiting on the Metro, which had stopped running during yet another electrical blackout. So far, he’d learned that when the trains did run on time, you could be sure the buses wouldn’t. And good luck hailing a taxi—Uber had put most of them out of business, just before getting put out of business themselves by Bikinibus. Washington’s entire traffic system was a mess . . . which, he supposed, was a good analogy for the government. Nothing prepared you better for working in DC like living in DC. Even when things were rolling along smoothly, you sensed there was a wreck just around the corner.
He fumbled with his keys. A prostitute passed by with a john. Jimmie should have taken Emma’s offer to put him up in a Trump hotel last week. At least the hookers there would be high-class—the kind that accepted Bitcoin instead of Starbucks gift cards.
But it hadn’t felt right to him. Even though he knew this was the lowest of the low in journalistic gigs—a celebrity ghostwriter who’d signed a nondisclosure agreement (a gag order, basically)—he needed some measure of independence. He was drawing the line at the daily allowance for food. The whole situation reminded him of when he’d dated Cat while working under her at the Daily Blabber. Time apart was a good thing. A healthy thing. Even if you didn’t think you needed it, you needed it. Well, until one of you goes off and screws some guy from the New York Times.
The Day of the Donald Page 4