It is two hours prior to the women’s lunch. This will begin a series of meetings in which President Ahrens will assign compliments and roles. Places at the evolving table of rule. The lunches will be attended by old and worn confidantes and “the younger gullibles,” in the words of the President’s Advance, Felice. Some of the younger attendees will become confidantes later, and some will eventually be horrifically ruined and smashed up and banished from The District. Driven into madness or obscurity for no reason at all, as examples to frighten younger others. Or driven to worse with cause, for some infraction. It was probably an infraction that they had not recognized at the time was in any way material.

It was a combination of auditioners and auditioning, selected by Dr. Ahrens, now President Ahrens, via a process resembling mental skeet shooting.

She decided quickly and correctly. She rarely asked my opinion on who should be in these things, and when I gave it, I did so as a formality. I did not expect my opinion to be apparent when the final list had to be typed. Typing which I sometimes did myself, from dictation.

There were no dresses today, just suits as the chosen ladies of higher or still aspiring tiers filed in. Even I had on a suit today. It was black. Felice reminded me not to let the dogs brush past my skirt during the sweep.

“Last time, Arko got hair on you,” she said.

Which was true. Arko the German Shepherd likes me, and the feeling is mutual. Being that we cannot roll and play together considering his security job, the brush was all we had. One time he almost knocked me over in what I think he knew was a prohibited show of canine affection. He got away with it because no one but Felice saw.

I didn’t want Arko to be released from duty. I wasn’t sure what happened to sweep dogs released from duty, and I chose not to think about it.

Felice handled greeting and I oversaw staff. I had a note run upstairs to the Minister, to remind him that I was with the President, in case he had momentarily forgotten. Ahrens was arriving, perfectly on schedule, and I moved out front. She was with the Governor of Texas.

It is hard to miss the Governor of Texas. It is not just that she has her very ultrawhite hair done in a certain signature and heightened way, it is the expression on her face. She is an older lady, and resembles many other older ladies. But she has the face of a soldier.

Or a general.

She nodded at me. In acknowledgement. I nodded back in welcome, knowing that I was not supposed to start talking.

The menu cards, each calligraphied by hand, had arrived late. Ahrens knew this but she also knew that I had handled it.

The usual calligrapher was sick, in a contagious sort of way that made it impractical for her to be touching things, and I had to call a backup. It was the son of one of the hotel kitchen staff, whom I often sent some work. His penmanship was gorgeous. He also could draw. As it happened his truck was in use that day on a landscaping job with his father and he had to borrow a bicycle to get the menu cards to me. While he had taken exceptional care to let the ink all get dry, there had been a deadline, a close one, and the top one had a smudge.

“Are we good?” Asked Ahrens, already knowing that I had handled it.

“I ordered three extra,” I said.

“Good.”

She walked away. No facial expression. There would be guests to greet. Corporates and media and “this-one-who-knows-that-one.” And the bundlers.

She had memorized each one. Ash needs to be reminded of names at times.

The President never does.

She told me once that if she didn’t recall someone;s name, it was because they were already dead to her.

The Governor of Texas sat next to the President, as when the President inevitably or via foreordained stage direction left the room for something unexplained and important, the Governor could take over.

Though it was not as if she’d sit in for the President, directly and with deference as a substitute would.

She would give the same message, but differently.

Uncooked. Straight at you. Like a general.

During one of these moments when the President left the room and was in the hallway with Felice, I moved in toward the table, from my seat at the perimeter where I perch and await flattery or disaster, both of which I am supposed to deflect.

The Governor looked at me.

“This is fantastic.” She said, gesturing toward her plate.

“Thank you.” I said.

“But there’s just too many shrimps on it!”

Her twang got louder, as she made shrimp plural, and then she smiled, and winked. She was kidding. I was relieved. The President, much like the Minister, is never kidding. The Governor of Texas sometimes is.

Sensing a softer point in the agenda, one of the newly chosen, a few seats down the table, asked me for more wine. She has neat and tidy hair. A light brown bob with bangs. Her bracelet is too large for her tiny arm.

The Governor snorted lightly before I could reply to the request.

“She’s not a waitress!” she huffed.

The bobbed and banged new one made a pale sort of face. Like she planned to soon and quietly die in her chair. In a very subtle way that would not be noticed by the other guests.

Who amidst her demise would keep on eating.

“We don’t need more wine,” the Governor said to her.

She took the room’s sudden quiet as an opportunity for a shift in topic.

Or perhaps it was no such thing. Maybe it was planned. The President was still not back in the room.

I listened for her feet upstairs. Was she with the Minister? In the residence?

Were they talking about me?

Of course not. Now why would I dream of such a thing.

I looked up at the chandeliers. Unlit. Candlewicks cold. Just being sure.

The Governor’s voice lowered a bit. The twang along with it.

“You know, I used to drink wine too.”

The silence changed. It was no longer about the awkward woman who asked for a drink. It was now the kind of silence you feel, when people at a party all hear a funny crackling sound in the distance, and are anticipating an earthquake which will knock over the centerpiece and all the glassware.

Or even the house. I have seen that look.

“Now my brain still thinks I do drink. My brain will always think I drink. But I don’t.”

Her chin tipped upwards as she said this. She was proclaiming victory in a war. A very horrible sort of war. So horrible she wasn’t going to tell us about it.

The group was utterly compliant, but not at ease. The posture in the room had noticeably improved.

For some reason, I was not nervous at all.

The Governor looked at me.

“Do you drink?” she asked.

“No.” I replied

“Well good one for you. Does your Gramma drink?”

“No.”

“Does your Papa?”

I paused. “Yes.”

“And what does he say to you about that?”

“Well nothin’ now. He’s all gone from us.” I dropped the g off of nothing. That happens to me when I talk to other people who drop the g off of words ending that way. It was inadvertent.

The Governor looked right into my eyes. She was going to ask me something. I forgot that anyone was watching.

I felt a strange calm cover my body. Not a peaceful one, but a necessary one. One that envelops the front lines just before the moment of battle. A readiness.

A recognition that when one is a warrior, one is different.

“And how praytell did that happen?”

I answered without hesitation or flinch. As if I was giving the time of day and looking at a watch.

“He was drinking.”

I paused.

“He ate his own shotgun.”

She didn’t flinch either. I think everyone else did. But I was not looking.

“Well, well! Now that’s a decisive man!” She said, with a laugh that was macabre and ugly and a little bit psychotic, but at the same time made me feel like we were good friends.

An image flashed into my mind. A series of images. Of the bar on J Street with the shamrock that had the sign “Open 7am.” Of the day at the heart hospital when a nurse, too busy to check or know one Holy Saint’s name from another, told Papa mistakenly that my Gramma had died when she’d actually just changed rooms. Of the yellow police tape around the playground sandbox. Of blood that had dried dark on the sand and his hair.

Of matter-of-factly telling my music history teacher, the one that said that little me “just wasn’t built right” to have the range or the pipes to render the National Anthem, that I had to leave school.

“My Papa is in a sandbox. I have to leave”

“Why is he in a sandbox?”

“He ate his own shotgun.”

No expression. I turned around to go. The teacher just stared. His jaw dropped, and I can still see his face, his wide eyes behind his glasses. A man of gift and intellect, but no response to curt news of suicide. I don’t know if it was about the shotgun or the sandbox or my complete lack of emotional affect in saying what I’d said. But an eloquent man was speechless.

I just knew I had to leave immediately, to be on time. To be with my mother. For the priests and the law and the newspapers and all that.

Remembering that moment, I had to stifle a laugh. Could President Ahrens have done that? I inquired silently of myself.

What was she like when she was in tenth grade?

I’d walked out of the classroom before the kindly but shocked Ph.D. of music history said I could or could not. He didn’t try to stop me. He was too busy writing a note that I should see the counselor. Immediately.

There was no way I could be that perfectly composed.

But I was.

So was the Governor, right now. Though differently.

She slapped her hand down on the perfectly white tablecloth. It had a soft pad under it, to protect the table from spilt liquids, and there was an impression left of her hand, which in proof of her slap’s force took several seconds to rise away, disappearing and bringing the tablecloth’s appearance back to normal.

“You’re a decisive one too.” She looked to me as if she expected a reply.

“Thank you,” I said.

The Governor turned to the group.

“Ladies. Listen here.

This is no ordinary time. You are present, you are here. Here in history for the first woman President. Of the United States.

There is no moment when you get to say, I can’t decide.

There’s no moment when you get to say, I don’t have a plan.”

She smiled and shook her head slowly.

“It just don’ work that way.”

She turned to the one that thought I was a waitress. She raised her voice. Not that she needed to.

“And this is NO time to be havin’ too much wine.”

The room nodded. In a sort of slowly suspended fear. I looked around at those at the table. Corporates and corporate wives. Media, and bundlers. And people who knew certain people.

Somehow, I couldn’t see any of these ladies deciding anything beyond which pale pink suit they were going to wear to a very exclusive luncheon with the President.

And as I thought this, we all looked up.

The President had burst back into the room, opening the double doors herself, one with each hand, causing her arms to open as well. She actually looked rather welcoming.

She smiled.

“Are we all ready to chat?”

She sounded bubbly. When she wants to, she can do that. Well.

The Governor of Texas smiled as well, eyeing the table.

“We are.”

I stepped back to the perimeter, and turned to pick up my notebooks. The meeting was beginning.

I would now step outside and wait with Felice.

“Miss Daniel?” The Governor of Texas was speaking to me. She elongated my name a little bit when she said it.

“Yes, Governor.”

“I think you should stay here. I think you should listen.”

She said it as if it was an order. Not loudly, but conclusively.

She did not mention Felice.

I looked at the President. I saw, for a split second, an unanticipated look pass across her face.

What it meant surprised me.

It wasn’t planned. I wasn’t supposed to stay.

Then her face recovered immediately. Brilliantly.

How does she do that? Maybe the same way I do that.

I could almost see the cogs moving in her mind. Plot twist. Plan rework.

“Certainly,” she said, exhaling as she did.

She paused and raised her hand to gesture to me.

“Please sit down.”

I did. I wanted so much to open my notebook. To take notes. As I always do for the Minister.

But I wasn’t supposed to do that. Not this time.

I wasn’t even supposed to be here.