But it wasn’t Luke’s extreme wealth that was gnawing at Becca. She has surrounded herself with wealthy people since her first year at NYU. What galled her this morning was seeing Sophia sitting in the seat next to Luke, sufficient evidence she and Luke were fucking. Becca has no sexual desire whatsoever for Luke. Point in fact, the soccer-loving, Imagine Dragons fanatic with unrepentant cowlick and lingering odor of AXE White Label Dry Spray mildly disgusts her. Nevertheless, losing any contest, even one of such meager stakes, to a second-rate SoCal nitwit like Sophia is a burden too great to bear without retaliation, however indirect. Sophia and Luke are easy targets, and their usefulness has not yet been expended.
Hayley is another matter. Complete and total annihilation of her potential rival is just what Becca needs to brighten her day. Once Hayley has pushed the cart laden with briefing books out the door and disappeared, Becca withdraws a folder from under a pile of papers on her desk. “Oh, wait! You forgot an insert,” she calls after Hayley many moments too late.
After riding a service elevator up to the first floor, Hayley pushes the cart down the corridor, passes Peter Hall’s corner office, and approaches the hallowed grounds of the Oval Office. Several aides and uniformed military personnel are gathered in a clutch just outside the doorway. None of them except a wary Secret Service agent Hayley has never seen before pay any attention to her as she shuttles past with the mail cart.
She continues down the corridor a short distance, turning for the open doorway leading into the Cabinet Room. Entering, Hayley sees a few of the less important cabinet members standing at the far end of the room in a tight scrum, speaking in hushed voices. Respectfully minding her own business, Hayley begins to disperse the briefing binders. She takes care to place a binder exactly in the same position before each of the sixteen identical chairs at the table, one briefing book for heads of fifteen executive departments and the vice president. An extra-large chair is situated at the exact midway point of the table. Before the president’s seat, Hayley places a special, leather-bound briefing book.
As she is just finishing up her careful work, the remaining cabinet members filter into the room. Peter Hall herds the late arrivals inside with typical brusqueness. “Let’s go, people! The president needs to be on Marine One in forty-five minutes. Time’s wasting.” No matter their prestige and importance, all cabinet members respond obediently to Hall’s badgering. Hayley moves to leave the room, pushing her cart toward the far door. Hall catches sight of her.
“Park that rig in the corridor and get back in here, Ms. Chill,” he bellows from the opposite end of the room. “Want you here in case we need anything.”
Hayley does as directed, depositing the mail cart outside and returning to take a position standing in the southwest corner of the room. A hush falls over those in attendance, as if everyone’s radar simultaneously picks up the imminent arrival of a Man of Significance. Those instincts are fantastically accurate, as within moments Richard Monroe enters through the north doorway with a gale force of extreme charisma, accompanied by his vice president, Vincent Landers.
As America’s warrior hero, Monroe carries a well-known résumé, having held rank everywhere from the army’s Second Battalion, Seventy-Eighth Field Artillery to US Army Pacific Command. A career soldier before winning his first and only political campaign as president of the United States, Monroe is a West Point graduate who led a thunderous tank charge across the sands of Kuwait in Operation Desert Storm and later, as a major general and commander of the First Armored Division, drove the tyrant Saddam Hussein from Fortress Baghdad in Operation Iraqi Freedom. With chiseled features and hawklike profile, Richard Monroe was then and continues to be an iconic presence, the natural born leader America sorely needs in rancorous and divisive times.
Everyone stands in respect for the president’s entrance, the electricity in the room supercharged. Though nearly all members of the cabinet are themselves powerful and accomplished individuals, no one’s light comes even close to shining as brightly as Monroe’s. He offers only the slightest of gestures. “Thank you, everyone. Please, sit.”
All take their seats. None dare breathe a word until spoken to by the president, who pauses a moment to scan the papers on the table left for his attention. After a moment of silence as he reads, Monroe squares the pages and then looks up, addressing his cabinet.
“Thank you again, everyone, for coming on short notice. We’ve been under the gun here, getting our affairs in order for the upcoming trip. Excuse the disorder.” Few commentators would use the word “disorder” to describe Monroe’s administration. The West Wing runs with the steady beat of a Roman slave galley.
Vice President Landers, seated across the long table from POTUS, is perennially cast in the greater man’s shadow and is therefore eager to be heard. “As always, Mr. President, we are all so grateful for your leadership.” Other cabinet members start to talk all at once, similarly anxious to flatter the destroyer of tyrants. Monroe only grins slightly, benignly tolerant. Peter Hall loudly clears his voice. “Sir, you’ve got wheels up in less than an hour.”
Monroe nods and fingers the pages in front of him. “Our trade policy with China. I wanted to get everyone on the same page before I make my speech tonight in Columbus. Obviously, a unified voice in terms of these proposed tariffs would be best, yes? Let’s have a look.”
The cabinet members, the vice president, and POTUS all open briefing binders in near unison. Landers is the first to notice a problem with the briefing materials. “Hold on. Where’s the transcript of Yii’s address?”
Other cabinet members and Monroe are flipping through the pages and sections in their binders. Monroe looks to his chief of staff with eyes that don’t suggest leniency. Hall leans over the back of Landers’s chair, inspecting the binder for himself. “The translated transcript of Yii’s address, Peter? It seems to be missing.” The president’s cool agitation snaps like a whip, with Hall seeming to cringe from its lash. Sensing weakness, Landers leaps into the fray. “Jesus, Peter, without that transcript, this whole meeting is pointless!”
Hall is temporarily at a loss for words, a rare condition for the infamous verbal gladiator. Unaccustomed to making mistakes, he finds himself in the middle of a very public fuckup, and that exposure has paralyzed him. Hayley discreetly materializes at the chief of staff’s elbow. “Mr. Hall, you excluded the complete transcript because a Washington Post article under Tab Four summarizes President Yii’s speech with annotations, explaining some of the more arcane Chinese linguistic idiosyncrasies.”
“Yes,” the chief of staff manages to get out, “only so much time in the day.”
It’s not lost on Monroe what has just transpired. The president regards the young woman in the $49.99 blazer with frank admiration. “With interns like this one, we just might get something done in this goddamn city.”
Cabinet members voice their agreement. A few of them—secretaries of education, veterans affairs, and human services—even applaud. Hayley acknowledges their appreciation with bowed head and retreats to the far corner of the room, alert and ready for however next she might be of service.
Less than thirty minutes later, after the cabinet meeting has ended and POTUS is aloft in Marine One, Hayley pushes the mail cart back into the CoS Support office. The other three interns silently observe her entrance, studying Hayley for signs of emotional trauma or devastation. They are disappointed in that hope. Hayley is her usual confident, well-balanced self. Becca takes her failure to kill off Hayley particularly hard.