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ChapterFourteen
Reese
Then
The last day of training dawns with a peal of thunder that shakes the walls of the dorm and a downpour that floods the track, the gun range, and the obstacle course.
We run the course anyway, and by the end, we’re more Swamp Thing than Secret Service agents. Henry’s pissed. He likes his comfort. Sheridan, though, seems to revel in the challenge.
Mud spatters us as we fast rope and rappel, slaps me in my face as I help heft and heave my fellow agents over the climbing wall. Some of the guys’ fingers slip on their triggers at the firing range, and they’re yanked off, told to go back and start over. I drop with them, shadow each, and help them clear their weapons before they try again.
I don’t finish until everyone else has cleared the course. Henry waits for me wearing a miserable expression, as soaked as a drowned rat and just as pleasant. Sheridan is beside him, beaming, covered from the tips of his hair to his toes in thick, sticky mud.
It’s the kind of disgusting that takes at least two showers to clean off. By the time we’re all washed and back into our class gear, we’re behind schedule, and the rest of the afternoon is a rush to finalize the last few re-quals and sign-offs. Plans are made for beers afterward. Henry tries to get me to tag along. Behind him, Sheridan looks hopeful.
But there’s a text on my phone from Brennan that says,If you haven’t eaten after you’re done today, swing by.
Like it’s the most casual offer in the world. The president asking me to drop in. To the Residence.
I’ve got a few extra meetings with the bigwigs to take care of, since I’m the head cookie at the White House. I’m late leaving Rowley, and it’s after six p.m. when I finally pull out.
I get as far as one left turn onto the parkway before I’m stuck in traffic. The rain is still coming down in sheets, and my wipers can barely keep up. Crimson brake lights fracture through the torrential downpour. My thoughts are rootless, like the rivers flowing down the gutters on the sides of the highway.
In New Orleans, rain makes the city shimmer, turns the streets into time warps and magic mirrors. Spanish moss gleams like crusted diamonds where it drapes overhead. Soaked brick and oleander, melons and magnolia, tickle your nose, and water collects and then overflows off the banana and the canna lily and the cypress into neon-lit puddles.
On those evenings after a good storm, the blues and the jazz and the rock and roll sound clearer. More vibrant. Like everything has been given a fresh slate. All the haze and humidity has been knocked away, and with it, the complications in your life have been banished, too. The streets, the city, even the music, feel renewed. Anything could happen.
Rain in DC is snarling traffic, horns blaring, and a thousand migraines railroading your brain at once. Moving the president in the rain raises the pucker factor to eleven. Someone’s brakes are going to slip, or someone is going to hydroplane. Timelines need to be extended, which pushes into other people’s schedules and pisses them off. Storms fuck with the radios, with how much you can hear, how much you can see. Here, rain obscures. Frustrates.
When I was young, I’d sleep on a hammock on my father’s porch and listen to the drops of rain pound the tin roof like I was on the inside of a drum. No time, no space, just me and the rain.
Where did that version of me go? Am I a man who can still listen to the rain and let my mind float?
For the moment, no. My teeth grind as I ride my brakes, my fender right up on the sedan in front of me. This rain isn’t meditative or peaceful. This rain is keeping me from Brennan.
Does he like storms? Is he doing yoga on the Truman Balcony? What would he look like rising into a handstand with spider-webbed lightning crackling across the sky?
He texts a few times, the first asking if I’m still interested in swinging by, and then, after I say I definitely am, he tells me not to rush, and to come on up whenever I arrive. That he’s in the kitchen.
I’m living in a splintered reality, in a place where the president talks to me like I’m someone special to him.
I knead the steering wheel down the entire parkway, until I’ve ground out the cartilage between my knuckles. My hands are bone white when I turn off New York Avenue onto Fifteenth Street and park beneath the Treasury Department.
It’s late enough that the East Wing is silent. Since Brennan doesn’t have a First Lady, the East Wing has the feel of an understaffed museum. My boots squeak on the tile floors. I’m in Rowley’s tactical classroom dress: cargo khakis belted tight, black polo with the gold Secret Service crest. Weapon on my hip, next to my cuffs, radio—which is off—and spare ammunition.
The East Wing leads me to the ground floor of the Residence, where tour guides lead parades of visitors twice a week past the Vermeil Room, the Map Room, and the Diplomatic Reception Room. These are the unused rooms, the show-off rooms, and at eight p.m., they’re the realm of ghosts.
The medical suites are at the end of the hallway, though, and those are staffed all hours.
There’s no real reason for me to be here, and though I could bullshit an excuse for being on the grounds, I can’t begin to formulate a rationale for why I’m badging into the president’s residence after hours.
When the elevator doors glide open on the West Sitting Hall, the pitter-patter of rain falling on the windows washes over me. That, and the smell of the holy trinity: onion, bell peppers, and celery, along with a mean dose of garlic, paprika, cayenne, and black pepper. Melted butter and warm cream, stewed tomatoes, and the unmistakable aroma of perfectly steamed crawfish.
The president’s private kitchen is at the far end of the hall, and my nose and my feet take me straight there. He’s at the stove, wearing slim jeans and a fitted T-shirt, his back to me as he makes lazy figure eights in a pan. A rouge-colored roux simmers on the stove.
It’s like he’s unlocked secret doors inside of me, found the keys to turn me inside out. The smells of my childhood, the sound of rain pattering on the windows. Him, at the center of everything: my past and my future and the confusion of now. He’s a part of it all, calm as can be, even though he’s taken my soul and shaken it loose from all my moorings.
“Ga lee, are you kidding me?” I lock both hands on the doorframe and lean into the kitchen. Breathe it all in, one giant sniff.
