Chapter Thirty-Nine
What’s Our Vector, Victor?
For the second time in one week, Jimmie found himself pinned to the floor of the White House. The golden shag in the Oval Office was loads nicer than the worn, industrial carpet in the press corps pen.
Still, that didn’t make the experience any more pleasant. Corey Lewandowski had hit him squarely in the ribs with a football tackle. He’d heard about getting the wind knocked out of you but had never truly appreciated just how accurate of a description it was until his lungs went flat inside his chest.
His brain felt fuzzy. He was flat on his stomach on the floor, so how was he face-to-face with the Donald? He inhaled a shaky breath, and his surroundings swam into focus: He was lying on a picture of the Donald-shirtless, holding an olive branch in one hand and a bunch of arrows in the other-woven into the carpet on the Oval Office floor.
He tried to roll over, but Lewandowski had a foot on Jimmie’s back.
“I had an appointment,” Jimmie said.
“Shut up or you’re going to have an appointment with my fist,” Lewandowski said.
It sounded to Jimmie like the press secretary was ready to kill him here-no waiting until darkness and throwing him off the roof. Out of the corner of one eye, Jimmie could see Trump peeking his head out over the desk. Just the hedgehog-like hair and a pair of orange-rimmed, beady eyes were visible.
“Let him up,” Trump said, rising to his feet.
Lewandowski stared at the president. “Surely you must be joking.”
“Don’t call me Shirley,” Trump said.
“Sir?”
“It’s from Airplane!,” Trump said.
“Roger, Roger,” Jimmie squeaked out.
Lewandowski pressed his foot harder into Jimmie’s back. “Didn’t I tell you to keep quiet?”
“Let him up and hit the golden showers,” Trump said. “Give us a little private time.”
Gradually, the pressure on Jimmie’s back decreased as the press secretary lifted his foot as slowly as humanly possible. Jimmie thought he might give him a kick on the way out, but Lewandowski simply slammed the doors behind him.
Jimmie rolled over and again was face-to-face with Donald Trump. This time, in the form of the painting on the Oval Office ceiling-a version of Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam, except Adam’s face had been replaced by Trump’s.
And so had God’s.
Jimmie pulled himself to his feet and located the one real Trump in the room.
Jimmie was alone with the president.
The president of the United States of America.
The man who had made America great again.
“I would apologize for that, but you really should knock before entering,” Trump said, sitting down and inviting Jimmie to do the same. The president leaned back in his great leather chair and kicked his feet up onto the desk. A flattened hundred-dollar bill was stuck to the bottom of one of Trump’s shoes by a yellowish splotch of gum.
“The door was cracked open,” Jimmie said, sitting across from Trump. “But lesson learned. I thought there’d be Secret Service around, though?”
Trump shrugged. “You all settled into your office?”
“Getting there. Need to put up some posters and make it feel like home.”
“I need to do that around here. All I’ve got up now are these fancy works of art. Like that Rembrandt over there,” Trump said, pointing out the Mona Lisa. Probably the original. “A little stuffy, if you ask me. I can’t stand modern art, but some of this old crap is as boring as a national security briefing. Like, would it kill you to put a rack on that gal?”
“I’m not an art man myself.”
Trump sighed. “Least it’s better than the tacky shit in the vice president’s office. A wife like that and all the photos are of Gronkowski. Jumping Jesus on a pogo stick.
“You know,” Trump continued, “I like you. I’ve always liked your work. Your Daily Blabber column was one of the few sites I read. Just a shame what happened. You should have gotten a presidential Medal of Honor for what you did for the country.”
“I’ll settle for a Purple Heart,” Jimmie said, rubbing his cracked ribs.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Trump said. “I trust the Watergate is meeting your expectations? It’s a world-class property. One of my favorites.”
“I appreciate you setting me up there-it’s like night and day compared to the last place I stayed. No one’s broken into my room, at least.”
“You had a break-in at the Royal Linoleum?” Trump pulled his feet off the desk and invited Jimmie to follow him. “C’mon. Let’s get some exercise.”
As they exited the Oval Office, they passed a Secret Service agent. “Humble is on the move,” the agent said, speaking into his wrist. “Humble is on the move.”
Chapter Forty
Humble Is on the Move
“You’re not the first person to do this job,” Trump said as they strolled down the hall. A pair of Secret Service agents trailed them.
Jimmie considered feigning ignorance but decided to roll the dice. There was no sense playing stupid around the man who was the master at playing stupid.
“Lester Dorset,” Jimmie said. “We weren’t friends or anything, but I knew him.”
“I had a feeling you would find out about him,” Trump said. “You’re a good reporter-you can sniff stuff out. I’m a little concerned you may have the wrong idea about what happened to Lester.”
“I don’t have any idea, actually.”
“That’s good,” Trump said. “You know, the New York Times was never nice to me. My hometown paper, and they would say the most awful things about me! I should have bought them. I could have, you know. I had the money.”
“We’re often hardest on those closest to us. In my experience.”
Trump snorted. “Well, nobody was harder on me at that paper than Lester Dorset. One time, in the nineties, he wrote something personal about me-something about my first wife and the alimony. I called him up and chewed him a new asshole.”
“I’m sure he deserved it.”
“You know what he did, though? He stopped writing about me for six months. That was his punishment.”
Jimmie followed Trump up the Grand Staircase.
“I learned then that I’d rather have someone write something bad about me than write nothing at all,” Trump said. “If it’s painful, the hurt goes away in a day or two. But if there’s nothing there… just some void… the ache just grows and grows. I never liked Lester Dorset, but I respected him. That’s why I hired him when I had the chance.”
The Secret Service had stopped trailing them. Jimmie looked over his shoulder with worry. Trump must have seen the look on his face, because he said, “The Secret Service doesn’t come up to the second and third floors. They think the family quarters are haunted.”
“Are they?”
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” Trump said.
That didn’t necessarily answer the question, but Jimmie let it slide.
They entered the Lincoln Bedroom. “Are you carrying a phone? Anything electronic?” Trump asked. “Take it out and leave it on the dresser before we go outside.”
Jimmie’s phone was in the subbasement charging, but he’d brought the recorder with him-he didn’t trust Christie, not entirely. If Trump recognized it as Lester’s, he’d be screwed.
Jimmie set the recorder down. He watched Trump for a reaction. There was no sign of recognition on the president’s face. All audio recorders probably looked the same to him.
“One of the many upgrades I added around here,” Trump said, opening a great pair of double doors. “Private patios for the family quarters.”
He ushered Jimmie onto a deck overlooking the backyard-the same deck where he’d seen the first lady in her towel. Jimmie shielded his eyes from the glare of the gold-plated Washington Monument.