by Chris Hauty
Finally, just before noon, a tearful Karen Rey appears in the doorway. “That’s it. Everybody go home. Unless someone calls to tell you otherwise, come back tomorrow at the usual time.”
“Are we being let go?” This coming from Luke with a somewhat hopeful tone that he isn’t clever enough to hide.
“Internships are the last thing we’re trying to deal with up there,” Rey replies haughtily. Peter Hall had been her best and most cherished mentor. Losing him has created a mosh pit of emotions in Rey, the most impassioned of which are fear and bitter frustration. Few of her tears are shed out of sadness for a human life snuffed out at too young an age.
After Rey departs, the interns begin to gather their things. Sophia and Luke make a plan for lunch at Zaytinya. “Do you like Mediterranean?” the USC junior asks Becca.
Becca makes a face and shakes her head no. Actually, she absolutely loves roasted branzino but can’t afford splurging on such an extravagance. Her savings are running alarmingly low. Kept secret from the others is the fact that she goes to Taco Bell every day and fills up with a five-dollar Triple Melt Burrito Box. Many years later, after Becca has amassed a personal wealth of several million dollars as head of her own secular church, and before her incarceration in federal prison, she will occasionally slip away from her small army of assistants and sycophants, driving to a Taco Bell one town over from her own to briefly relive those delicious, bad old days.
Sophia looks to Hayley next but says nothing, refraining from extending a lunch invitation to the West Virginian. After these few weeks sharing a work space with Hayley, Sophia has decided that class divides really do exist in America. The naturally occurring barriers that segregate one income group from another actually matter. Hayley’s experiences growing up in near poverty and her time in the military are utterly foreign to the Los Angeles native, whose primary and college education will generate nearly a million dollars in tuition expenses. The army vet is so strange, so alien and unapproachable. The fact that Hayley is prettier than Sophia makes their incompatibility even more pronounced. Until this hillbilly showed up, Sophia ranked herself hottest female in the West Wing.
Rather than lunch at Taco Bell or Zaytinya, Hayley eats her peanut butter and jelly sandwich sitting on a bench on the Mall. By 12:30 p.m., the temperature has risen to the high forties or perhaps even the fifties. Hayley has spoken very little since her interview with the FBI agent, rebuffing the other interns’ gossipy inquiries regarding what she saw on Kalorama Road. Leaving the White House complex, Hayley had encountered Scott Billings. He was completely sympathetic to her circumstances and anxious to console her. But Hayley didn’t need comforting. Death was not an abstract and therefore did not disturb her all that much. Peter Hall was a man who had extended to her a measure of kindness and respect. Now he was dead, and only that. What Hayley did in fact require was time to think and devise her best course of action with the scant evidence in her possession.
There’s no question of telling Scott what she saw beneath Hall’s pantry window, no matter how good he is in bed. Ideas, not circumstances, right? By every measure, Scott Billings is pure circumstance. A man with a penis and the skill with which to use it is not a man whom she should automatically trust. That he’s a Secret Service agent doesn’t necessarily instill confidence, either. Plenty of conspiracy theories about JFK’s assassination suggest involvement by members of his Secret Service detail. “Trust no one,” Mr. Hall had cautioned. If there’s one thing Hayley has been trained to do, it’s to follow orders.
Eating her peanut butter and jelly sandwich on the Mall and studying the nation’s obelisk in the thin mid-Atlantic sunlight, Hayley recalls reading somewhere that between the years 1884, when it was completed, and 1889, the Washington Monument was the tallest man-made structure on Earth. It astounds her that such a world, where 555 feet was the pinnacle of man-made achievement, could have existed. Nothing lasts forever. People die and for all kinds of reasons. But what cannot change is her primary assignment, no matter the danger or risk involved. Service to country is a privilege, one that must be based on impeccable moral foundations. She will keep her own counsel for now. Only when she knows more will it be safe to approach the authorities. Hayley finishes her sandwich and decides against the bus, walking home instead.
That evening, after a long run, Hayley makes a pot of spaghetti and meat sauce, a meal she had prepared for her siblings hundreds of times. After cleaning up the kitchen, she sits down at the dinner table and opens her laptop. A television across the room is tuned to CNN, which reports heightened tensions over Russia’s buildup of forces on its border with Estonia. She accesses her phone and brings to its screen the photo she had snapped that morning of the boot print. The particular details of its sole—linear x’s and dashes above an array of squares—are extensively visible in the dusting of snow on brick pavers.
Placing the phone on the table next to the laptop, Hayley begins cruising the web, entering search requests until she arrives at a page she desires. It strikes her as faintly ridiculous to be engaged in this futile Internet search, but to do something—anything—feels good all the same. An army surplus website favored by ex-military types and survivalists offers dozens and dozens of special tactic boots, listed with photographic renderings of their soles. Hayley carefully scans each selection, page after page, in meditative search of a match of the boot print in her cell phone photograph. What she would do with a match, she really has no idea, but in this way she slows her racing thoughts and begins to think of sleep as a real possibility.
* * *
ON THE FOLLOWING morning, Hayley arrives at the White House complex at her regular time of exactly 7:45 a.m. Typically, the other interns in the CoS Support office report later, drifting in sometime between nine and ten a.m. Sophia didn’t come in until after lunch twice in the last month, citing doctor appointments. Hayley finds these hours before her coworkers arrive to be her most productive. Within fifteen minutes of settling down at her desk, a little more than twenty-four hours after Peter Hall’s shocking death, Karen Rey appears in the doorway.
“Minute of your time?” the White House aide inquires flatly. Rey doesn’t seem happy about whatever business is at hand. As Hayley gets up to follow her supervisor out the door, she wonders who she has managed to piss off. Maybe in some outrageously unfair way, she is being blamed for Peter Hall’s death. If only Hayley had arrived a few minutes earlier, Hall would have risen from the kitchen chair and answered the doorbell. He may have collapsed in front of her, allowing for possible medical intervention. Has the FBI already determined Hayley had spent the night before at Scott’s house? Outlandish speculation might suggest that had Hayley not had sex with the Secret Service agent, the White House chief of staff would be alive today, recuperating in a hospital bed at Walter Reed hospital.
“Is there a problem, ma’am?” she inquires, following Rey up the corridor. But the intern wrangler is mute, pointing for Hayley to enter the cafeteria.
Though the Navy Mess and CoS Support office share the same floor in the White House’s West Wing, interns are not supposed to eat at that exceedingly convenient location. Instead, they and other low-ranking support staff are directed to use the much larger and more utilitarian cafeteria in the Executive Office Building. Until this moment, Hayley had never set foot inside the cozy, well-appointed Navy Mess, reminiscent of a country club dining room. Rey gestures to Hayley, indicating a table across the room where a bespectacled black man in his late thirties sits. Kyle Rodgers, the deputy chief of staff, has just started eating a breakfast of fruit salad, Denver omelet, and coffee infused with sugar-free Red Bull.
He gestures to a chair. “Have a seat, Hayley.”
“Thank you, sir,” she says, sitting. Rey also takes a seat.
“Hungry? Can I order you something?”
“No, thank you, sir.”
“Coffee? Red Bull?” Rodgers motions to a passing waitperson for more coffee in his own cup.
“I’m go
od, sir. Thank you.”
Rodgers doesn’t ask Karen Rey if she wants anything. Gunning for Rodgers’s job as deputy chief of staff, Rey has engaged in guerrilla warfare to further that goal. Rodgers is well aware of her pedestrian machinations—floating rumors, talking to the press, critiquing Rodgers to his boss—but doesn’t really consider her much of a threat. A gladiatorial in-fighter with a dozen scalps hanging from his blood-soaked shield, the deputy chief of staff can handle Karen Rey.
“Do you know who I am, Hayley?”
“You’re Kyle Rodgers, deputy chief of staff. You worked in Mr. Hall’s congressional office before following him here to the West Wing. Your White House telephone extension is seven-four-four-three.”
Rodgers exchanges a look with Karen Rey, then turns his focus back on Hayley. “I get it now.”
“What’s that, sir?”
“Why POTUS knows you exist,” Rodgers explains, spearing a fat mushroom with his fork and popping it into his mouth.
A modest Hayley says nothing.
Karen Rey finally speaks, abruptly. “Given these unfortunate events, it’s been decided that CoS internships will be terminated for this quarter. The new chief wants only paid staff in his office.”
Kyle Rodgers clears his throat like cocking a shotgun, dissuading further interruption. He looks to the intern again, privately relieved Hayley isn’t the one gunning for his job. “The president is keen to keep you on, Ms. Chill.”
“Apparently, helping save his life is a way of getting on his good side,” Rey adds snidely.
Hayley looks to her supervisor with a mild expression, utterly unnerving. “Thank you, ma’am, but the only life I saved that day was the intruder’s.”
Rodgers cannot fathom why Karen Rey is making this more complicated than it needs to be. He gestures with his fork in Hayley’s direction. “White House Operations. How does that suit you?”
Hayley nods. “Thank you, sir. It would be an honor.”
White House Operations is easily the best posting inside the West Wing an intern can possibly obtain. Adjacent to the Outer Oval Office, where the president’s personal secretary controls access into the inner sanctum, it is at the epicenter of West Wing activity. The primary role of WHO is serving the clerical needs of POTUS and his personal assistant. Typically, low-paid, junior aides are assigned White House Operations, not interns.
Before reporting for duty up on the first floor, Hayley stops back in the office of CoS Support to retrieve her backpack. The other three interns have arrived by this time and are packing up more extensive personal belongings.
“That’s it. We’ve been let go,” Sophia announces to Hayley.
“No biggie. We can still put the internship on our résumés and B-school applications,” Luke reminds the others.
“What’s that?” Becca demands to know, pointing at a WHO orientation packet Karen Rey had given Hayley.
She tells them what the folder contains. The news Hayley has been assigned to WHO is met by stunned silence. The military veteran has not only prevailed but sailed higher than they could have ever dreamed for themselves. Becca makes the only assumption her brain can possibly formulate. “Who the hell did you blow to land White House Operations?” she asks.
“It’s the military thing,” Luke theorizes. “Welcome to Fort Monroe.”
Hayley finishes the short work of collecting her things. Hooking the backpack over her shoulder, she turns to face her fellow interns. “Thanks, guys. It was fun.”
Only Sophia can muster the social graces to stand and give Hayley a companionable hug. “Good luck up there, Hayley.” Luke is already staring into his phone, muttering about the lack of Wi-Fi signal. Becca stares long knives at her nemesis. It’s not easy admitting defeat. “Fuck off,” she tells Hayley, more out of resignation than anything else.
* * *
WHITE HOUSE OPERATIONS is at least three times as large as the CoS Support office, with higher quality furnishings and lighting. But, like the ground-floor work space, it’s still a windowless box. A young man with sandy-blond hair, wearing a starched white shirt, tie, gray suit pants, and black Aldo oxford dress shoes, sits on the floor with a large moving box before him. The box is filled with new-in-the-package smartphones. More phones, removed from their boxes, sit in a small pile next to him. Asher Danes is on his personal phone when Hayley appears in the doorway, backpack slung over her shoulder. Smiling, he waves her inside. Hayley enters and, with another gesture from Asher, sits on the floor opposite him.
“She’s here. I’ve gotta go,” he announces to whoever is on the other end of the call, disconnecting. Asher, looking younger than his midtwenties, holds his arms out wide. “Yes! Our hero arrives! You have no idea how much fun you’re going to have!”
Hayley smiles, appreciating a much friendlier reception than she ever enjoyed downstairs. She gestures at the dozens of boxed and unboxed cell phones. “What’s with the phones?”
“White House Operations is essentially ‘floater’ support, assisting any office needing an extra pair of hands. Today we’re helping the Scheduling and Advance team, who leave tomorrow for Japan to prep the president’s trip next week. Staff’s existing phones don’t work internationally. Therefore, somebody has to program seventy-five new smartphones each with seventy-five new phone numbers.”
Hayley retrieves one of the boxed devices from the moving carton and examines the packaging.
“Blackphone? Never heard of it.”
“Most secure phone on the market. So secure no one can figure out how it migrates data,” he grumbles, reaching for another boxed phone.
Many hours later, Asher and Hayley are still programming smartphones. Conversation between them is easy. “My dad contributed five million bucks to Monroe’s campaign. How dare you get this gig by sheer dint of your exceptional competency and work ethic?” he asks Hayley in mock outrage.
“I’m an intern. You’re an actual, paid White House aide.”
“Who will need more than one hundred and sixty-three years to repay his father,” Asher rejoins. “Money only means something in terms of campaigning. No one comes to the West Wing to get paid.”
“So why are you here? You don’t seem like the résumé-polishing type.”
“Political aspirations. I plan to be the first gay president,” Asher confides. “Openly gay president, that is.”
“And you just wanted to try the Oval Office on before buying?”
“Exactly. Imagine enduring the dreary humiliations and eternal horseshit of a presidential campaign only to realize all of your ties clash with the wallpaper?”
“Very sensible,” Hayley has to agree.
Asher pulls another boxed Blackphone from the shipping carton for programming.
“Have you seen it yet? The Oval?”
Hayley shakes her head no.
“You wanna?” Asher asks, smiling.
“Yes, I do,” Hayley manages through her grin.
Asher tosses the unprogrammed Blackphone aside and pops to his feet. “C’mon.”
Hayley remains seated cross-legged on the floor. “We can’t!” she protests.
“Of course we can. We’re White House Operations, dammit!”
Hayley doesn’t budge. “You’re talking about just barging into the Oval Office, Asher!”
He just grins, heading for the door. “POTUS left for Camp David two hours ago.”
Without further debate, Asher exits the room through the doorway that connects with the Outer Oval Office. Hayley jumps to her feet to follow after her new coworker.
In the Oval Office, Asher is seated in the president’s chair with his feet insouciantly up on the Resolute desk when Hayley enters. She is horrified to see him there.
“Asher!”
Laughing, he gets up out of the seat and brushes off the desk where his feet had been.
“Good as new.”
Hayley stops in the middle of the room and spins 360 degrees on the balls of her feet. “It’s bigger than
it looks in the movies and on TV.” She is in awe.
Asher indicates the phone console on the president’s desk. “You want to call the British prime minister? Or the space station?”
Hayley approaches the desk, a piece of furniture of considerable historical significance. She traces her fingers across its polished surface.
“Try not to bomb Moscow or someplace,” Asher warns her.
Hayley smiles out of politeness. She privately muses on the unlikelihood of a person with her background finding herself in a place such as this. When she was twelve years old, Hayley wrote a report on the White House for school. Her teacher liked it so much he had it published in the school newspaper. A spiteful Tyler Johnson, who had considered himself something of an authority on politics and was the class president from grades four through eight before drowning in an abandoned mine pit, punched her on the playground during recess. Hayley won that fight, too. A little more than thirteen years later, she’s standing in the real Oval Office recalling that funny little school paper.
Hayley walks past Asher, to the floor-to-ceiling windows just behind the desk. Through the trees on the North Lawn, she can just barely make out demonstrators in Lafayette Square. Asher joins her at the window.
“Resist!” He mockingly raises his fist.
“I saw one of them try to kill another, using an American flag like a spear.”
Asher shrugs. “What passes for political discourse these days.”
“You shouldn’t treat the country’s flag that way,” she reminds him.
Asher levels Hayley with a flat look. “You’re kind of intense, you know that?”