UNUSUALLY FOR A President’s entrance, if that’s what was about to happen, no one was applauding. Instead everyone was listening and watching. Waiting.
Spencer Prentice stood near the doors in edgy silence, almost on his toes. He swivelled back to the front and saw Isabel was also standing, leaning on her cane, her blank eyes fixed on the back of the Hall not far from him. She wasn’t unsteady, though there was something hard about her, pitiless. She was like a rock.
Spencer had never seen her like this. Sure, he’d seen her tough and resolute, but always tempered, with a softness to her edge. But he knew she’d been through a lot the last forty-eight hours, let alone the last eighteen months of her futile campaign. She was entitled to feel empty when the man she would easily have defeated, if she had been allowed to continue in the race, was about to deliver a speech that should have been hers. Just then, President Robert J. Foster swept through the doors into the Chamber.
To Spencer and everyone else Foster’s face, too, was set like week-old concrete. His usual glinting Kennedy smile was gone. His eyes, thought Spencer—turning his head to and fro a few times to check—were aimed right at Isabel as though he were trying to fix her to the spot, and her own glare in return coldly matched his.
The aisle swarming before Foster cleaved open as though he were a prophet parting the sea. His eyes kept locked ahead, never deflecting from Isabel’s, not acknowledging a single face to either side. Normally, a President would be smiling, chatting, shaking hands, hugging as he came down the aisle, but Foster did none of that, emitting a frigid shield that no one dared break into. The House didn’t know how to respond. Ordinarily, they’d be giving his entrance a standing ovation, but all they could do was stand, and gape. The few weak attempts at applause quickly petered out.
Foster had a slight lean, preferring one side as he walked, but he had not a hint of a smile; not even a smirk. Just cold poison. As he strode to the rostrum, there was now only silence and this time not even George would interrupt it.
Everyone was wondering the same thing. Isabel Diaz? Had she…? Politics and disbelief were suspended. Guts were knotted and lungs constricted by the dread of what they were about to hear. If hands weren’t glued to people’s sides as if taped there, they were covering their mouths.
President Foster stepped up to the podium, a little less slowly than Isabel had, and went for the lectern at the Clerk’s desk, just in front of the Speaker and the Senate President. He didn’t shake their hands or catch their eyes, and he didn’t follow the custom of handing them two manila envelopes containing his address.
To the majority of those present, familiar with House protocol, this made them even edgier. Faces around the Hall wrinkled, eyes blinked and eyebrows furrowed. Stomachs were clenched. Those watching in their homes were tipping on the edges of their sofas as the TV commentators explained the unexpected breaks with tradition. Bars were silenced as their customers stared at the TV screens hanging from the ceilings or on the walls.
Foster’s jaw was grim, Spencer could see that, and there seemed to be nothing physically ailing him, despite the slight lean Spencer had noticed as he’d walked through.
Suddenly, it dawned on Spencer, and on many of those watching. Foster hadn’t been recuperating… he had been in hiding.
But from Isabel? Surely not.
“Members of the Congress,” said Isabel, interrupting these thoughts, “I have the high privilege and the distinct honour of presenting to you… the President of the United States.”
Foster’s head bowed as in prayer and the House clapped lightly. When he raised his head back up, all he could see were heavy, worried eyes, not unlike his own. He arced left and right as if blessing the grand hall. His right hand patted the air to signal those before him to sit.
“Members of Congress,” he said, pausing until the tide of heads had subsided. “Distinguished guests and fellow citizens. Your eyes have not deceived you but your President has… and when you hear why, I pray you will forgive me.”
He paused to pour himself a glass of water from the crystal pitcher, and took a sip, taking particular care to wet his lips. Eyes, still puzzled, met all around the Chamber.