“On tour?! What?!” I wondered. “Where?”
“Put her out on the talk shows. She’s done Oprah before. Put her on the late night shows. Are you telling me she couldn’t wow them on Leno or Letterman?”
“Could we get her on? It seems awfully sudden…” The thought of Marilyn on a talk show was a new one.
Frank rolled his eyes. “Mister President, she’s the First Lady! They would all kill to have her on!”
I shrugged. “When you put it that way… What would she do?”
“Simple, talk to them,” finished Mindy. “About whatever they want to talk about. Where’s the downside? She’s not going to get into politics, since she doesn’t get into politics here. She’s a stay at home mom without any agenda other than taking care of her husband and children. What could she possibly say that would be harmful to you?”
“Huh.” I had to scratch my head at that. “She’ll never go for it. She’s never even campaigned for me on her own.”
“Have you ever asked her?” Mindy pushed back.
“You’re getting pushy in your old age, Mindy!” I replied with a smile. She didn’t look overly sorrowful at my characterization; she was only in her late-thirties. I looked at Will. “Could we do it?”
“Piece of cake. Frank is right. Any of the shows would love to have the First Lady of the United States on as a guest. They’d probably have her as the only guest.”
I shrugged again. “What’s the worst that could happen? She could say no, I suppose.” I grabbed the phone and asked that they track down my wife. Hanging up I added, “It’s not like she knows the nuclear launch codes. I just hope she doesn’t say something like I have a two inch…” I was about to say dick when I remembered I had a lady in the room. I just snapped my mouth shut.
“I don’t think you have to worry about that, Mister President,” answered Mindy with a smile.
“What!?”
“Girl talk, Mister President.”
I groaned loudly. “No… you and Marilyn… no!”
Mindy giggled and nodded, “You don’t have to worry.”
I just groaned, as Frank and Will laughed at me. I was rescued from this line of questioning with the announcement over the intercom that my wife was on the line. I hit the button and then punched another to put it on speaker. “Marilyn, you there? I have you on speaker with my staff.”
“Hello.”
“Good morning, Mrs. Buckman. How’s Charlie?” asked Frank.
Marilyn gave us a rundown on my son’s condition. He was improving, his condition had been upgraded to Fair, and once his ribs healed further would move up to Good. They were scheduling his next operation for Tuesday, to begin working on his leg.
“That’s good Marilyn. Make sure you give him my best, both him and Megan.” The others looked at me curiously, but I waved that off. “Honey, the reason that I called is that we want to talk to you about doing a publicity tour, sort of.”
“A tour?”
“Yes, it’s actually Mindy’s idea. Here, I’ll let her explain it.”
Mindy spoke up, and she and Marilyn talked for a few minutes. After a bit, Marilyn said, “I’ve never done anything like that!”
Will responded, “I’ll have one of my top people on this, traveling with you the entire time. Mindy, will have somebody, too.” Mindy nodded in agreement.
“But Charlie, I can’t leave him…”
I snorted at that. “Honey, I love you dearly, but you are probably driving him bonkers. He has Megan with him. She can drive him bonkers. It will be good practice for the future.”
“CARL!”
“Come home this afternoon and we’ll talk about it.”
Marilyn groused some more, but agreed to come back to D.C. for a few days. We hung up, and I had some curious faces looking at me. “Megan… I think you all met her at the wedding… Charlie asked her to marry him and she said yes.”
“Congratulations, Mister President,” replied Frank. “At least he’s your son. You won’t have to pay.”
I snorted. “Don’t bet on it!” The others all congratulated me as well.
My wife made it back to the White House by mid-afternoon, grousing to me that Charlie had sent her packing with a bit too big of a smile. I just promised her that we would head back up for the weekend, at which she mentioned that Megan had managed to get in touch with her parents, and they would also visit for the weekend. I nodded and made sure that we told Frank and the Secret Service about our plans. I had a new lead agent on my detail by now, also.
Marilyn reluctantly agreed to make a few appearances, and Will promptly ran into his office and began making phone calls. Half an hour later he came back to announce he had Marilyn on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on Wednesday, and The Late Show with David Letterman on Thursday. I blinked at that. Leno did his show in L.A., and Letterman did his in New York. Marilyn was going to have to criss-cross the country to do this. She might be able to fly to California Wednesday morning, since she would pick up three hours going west, but she’d lose them again heading back east, so it would be long couple of days for her. Mindy and Will both would have somebody with her.
“What if I screw this up?” she asked me later, when we were alone.
“Well, it will probably be the end of my Presidency. I’ll be impeached and imprisoned, and you and the children will lose your citizenship and be forced to flee from Inspector Javert…”
“Carl!”
“Marilyn, don’t worry! Everybody likes you. They don’t like me, which is why we are sending you out, not me. Just act like yourself. You’ll be fine,” I reassured her.
“You’re no help!”
I wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “I wasn’t hired to be helpful. I was hired to…” At that point I smiled at her and waggled my eyebrows.
“Forget it! I want my money back!” I just laughed.
Marilyn flew out to Los Angeles Tuesday afternoon. She spent the night and did a little sightseeing and shopping the next morning. Taping would be in the afternoon. She called me afterwards to say it had gone well, but they were heading to the airport to fly to New York City. I promised I would watch it that night.
I don’t normally watch Leno, but tonight I made sure I did. He came out and did his normal routine of an opening monologue. Then he did a quick ‘Jaywalking’ segment, where he asked random people on the street questions about the President. A few were:
“Who is the President?” — Most people got it right, but a couple were blank stares.
“What is the name of the First Lady?” — He got a couple of ‘Mrs. Buckman’ answers, usually from people who knew my name. One person, who knew my name, answered ‘Hillary Clinton.’ Oh, brother!
“What color is the White House?” — He actually got a few wrong answers on this one.
Then he took a commercial break, and after that, introduced “… tonight’s guest, the First lady of the United States, Marilyn Buckman!” There was huge applause, and a group of the biggest guys I had ever seen, as in pro basketball big, all dressed in suits with dark sunglasses on, came out in a shoulder-to-shoulder tight group, completely surrounding Marilyn on all sides, and they trudged across the stage. All you could see was Marilyn’s hand sticking out from the front and waving to people. They stopped a few feet from Leno, who shook the exposed hand and commented about how security had really been beefed up. Then her ‘bodyguards’ all peeled away, leaving Marilyn standing there in her clothing, a skirt suit, but also wearing a K-pot helmet and a bullet-proof vest! The audience was laughing their asses off at all of this.