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.