A week after I first laid eyes on her, I hadn’t been able to get her out of my mind. I scolded myself: the first year of law school is the year to buckle down, the year when you establish yourself. But no matter how hard I tried to focus on the minimum-contacts doctrine of personal jurisdiction or the elements of a negligence claim or the mirror-image rule of contract law, that girl in the third row of my federal jurisdiction elective kept popping into my head.
Danny gave me intel: Rachel Carson was from a small town in western Minnesota, went to Harvard undergrad, and was at UNC Law on a public-interest grant. She was editor in chief of the law review, first in her class, and had a job waiting for her at a nonprofit organization that provides legal assistance to the poor. She was sweet but quiet. She kept a low profile socially, tended to hang out with the older people in school who didn’t come straight from undergrad.
Well, shit, I thought to myself. I didn’t come straight from undergrad, either.
I eventually mustered my courage and found her in the library, sitting at a long table with several of her friends. I told myself again that this was a bad idea. My legs had a different notion, though, and suddenly I was standing by her table.
When she saw me coming, she put down the pen in her hand and stared.
I wanted to do this in private, but I was afraid that if I didn’t do it now, I’d never do it.
So go on, you dumb ass, before someone calls security.
I removed the piece of paper from my pocket, unfolded it, and cleared my throat. By now I had the entire table’s attention. I started reading:
The first two times you heard me speak, I sounded like a fool.
I made about as much sense as a top hat on a mule.
I wasn’t sure a third attempt would do me any better,
So I decided that I’d put my thoughts down in a letter.
I peeked at her, an amused smile flirting with her face. “She hasn’t walked away yet,” I said, getting a chuckle from one of her friends, a good start.
My name is Jon. I come from here, a town near Boomer.
I have good manners, listen well, a decent sense of humor.
I have no money, have no car, no talent as a poet,
But I do possess a working brain, though I often fail to show it.
That line got me another chuckle from her friends. “It’s true,” I said to Rachel. “I can read and write and all that junk.”
“I’m sure, I’m sure.”
“May I keep going?”
“By all means.” She swept her hand.
You’re here to study, says my buddy. Remember Professor Waite?
But for some reason I just can’t concentrate.
I’m reading the section on equal protection, the law and racial quotas, But instead I’m thinking of a green-eyed girl from Minnesota.
She couldn’t suppress her smile, her face coloring. The rest of the women at the table applauded.
I bowed at the waist. “Thank you very much,” I said, doing my best Elvis imitation. “I’ll be here all week.”
Rachel didn’t look at me.
“I mean, if nothing else, the fact that I rhymed Minnesota…”
“No, that was impressive,” she agreed, her eyes closed.
“All right, then. Ladies, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to pretend that this whole thing went well, and I’m going to leave while I’m ahead on points.”
I walked slowly enough for her to have caught up with me if she wanted.
Chapter
17
I snap out of my reverie and slide into the parking space, just where I was told it would be, not three miles from the White House. I park the car and kill the ignition. No one else is in sight.
I grab my bag and get out. The back entrance looks like a loading dock of some sort, with steps up to a large door that has no outside knob.
A voice through an intercom squawks at me. “Who is it, please?”
“Charles Kane,” I say.
A moment later, the thick door pops ajar. I reach in and pull it open.
Inside is a freight area, empty of people, cluttered with UPS and FedEx boxes, large crates and wheeled dollies. A large elevator is to the right, the doors open, the walls covered with thick padding.
I press the top button, and the doors close. I draw a sharp breath as the elevator reacts clumsily, dropping for a moment before lifting me, the grinding of the gears audible.
Another moment of light-headedness. I put my hand against the padded wall and wait it out while Dr. Lane’s words echo in my head.
When I reach the top and the doors open, I step out carefully into a well-appointed hallway, the walls painted a light yellow, Monet prints guiding me toward the only door on the top floor, the penthouse.
When I reach the door, it opens without my doing anything.
“Charles Kane, at your service,” I say.
Amanda Braidwood stands inside the penthouse, her arm fully extended as she holds the door open and appraises me. A thin sweater hangs loose over a fitted shirt. She’s wearing black stretch pants and nothing on her feet. Her hair is long these days, courtesy of the movie she wrapped a month ago, but tonight it’s pulled back into a ponytail, with a few strands hanging down to frame the contours of her face.
“Well, hello there, ‘Mr. Kane,’” she says. “Sorry about the subterfuge, but the doorman at the front entrance is a little busybodyish.”
Last year, an entertainment magazine named Mandy one of the twenty most beautiful women on the planet. Another dubbed her one of the top twenty highest-paid actors in Hollywood, less than a year after she took home her second Oscar.
She and Rachel lived together all four years at Harvard and stayed in touch over the years—as closely as a North Carolina lawyer and an international movie star can manage. The code name Charles Kane was Mandy’s idea: about eight years ago, over a bottle of wine in the backyard of the governor’s mansion, Rachel, Mandy, and I agreed that Orson Welles’s masterpiece was the finest movie ever made.
She shakes her head as a smile slowly blooms on her face.
“My, my,” she says. “Whiskers, scruff,” she adds as she kisses my cheek. “How rugged. Well, don’t just stand there looking all outdoorsy—come in.”
Her scent, the smell of a woman, lingers with me. Rachel wasn’t much for perfume, but her bath gel and body lotion—whatever you call all those creams and lotions and soaps—were both vanilla. I will never smell that scent again, as long as I live, without seeing the image of Rachel’s bare shoulder and imagining the softness of her neck.
They say there’s no manual for overcoming the death of a spouse. That’s truer still when the survivor is the president and all hell is breaking loose, because you have no time to grieve. There are too many decisions to make that won’t wait, constant security threats that, with even a momentary lapse in your attention, can have catastrophic consequences. As Rachel hit the end stages of her illness, we watched North Korea and Russia and China more closely than ever, knowing that the leaders of those countries were looking for any hint of vulnerability or inattention from the White House. I considered temporarily stepping down as president—I even had Danny draw up the papers—but Rachel would have none of it. She was determined that her illness would not cause any interruption in my presidency. It mattered to her, in an intense way that she never fully explained and I never fully understood.