"REPORT CARDS," CATHY said when Jack came into the bedroom.
"Good or bad?" her husband asked.
"See for yourself," his wife suggested.
Uh-oh, the President thought, taking them from her hand. For all that, it wasn't so bad. The attached commentary sheets—every teacher did a short paragraph to supplement the letter grade—noted that the quality of the homework turned in had improved in the past few weeks… so, the Secret Service agents were helping with that, Jack realized. At one level, it was amusing. At another— strangers were doing the father's job, and that thought made his stomach contract a little. The loyalty of the agents merely illustrated something that he was failing to do for his own kids.
"If Sally wants to get into Hopkins, she's going to have to pay more attention to her science courses," Cathy observed.
"She's just a kid." To her father she'd always be the little girl who—
"She's growing up, and guess what? She's interested in a young soccer player. Name of Kenny, and he's way cool," SURGEON reported. "Also needs a haircut. His is longer than mine."
"Oh, shit," SWORDSMAN replied.
"Surprised it took this long. I started dating when I was—"
"I don't want to hear about it—"
"I married you, didn't I?" Pause. "Mr. President…" Jack turned. "It has been a while."
"Any way we can get to the Lincoln Bedroom?" Cathy asked. Jack looked over and saw a glass on her night-stand. She'd had a drink or two. Tomorrow wouldn't be a surgery day. "He never slept there, babe. They call it that because—"
"The picture. I know. I asked. I like the bed," she explained with a smile. Cathy set her patient notes down and took off her reading glasses. Then she held her arms up, almost like a toddler soliciting a pickup and a hug. "You know, I've never made love to the most powerful man in the world before—at least not this week."
"What about the timing?" Cathy had never used the pill.
"What about the timing?" she replied. And she'd always been as regular as a metronome.
"You don't want another—"
"Maybe I don't especially care."
"You're forty," POTUS objected.
"Well, thank you! That's well short of the record. What are you worried about?"
Jack thought about that for a moment. "Nothing, I guess. Never did get that vasectomy, did I?"
"Nope, you never even talked to Pat about it like you said you would—and if you do it now," FLOTUS went on with a positively wicked grin, "it'll be in all the papers. Maybe even on live TV. Arnie might tell you that it'll set a good example for the Zero Population Growth people, and you'll cave on that. Except for the national security implications…"
" What?"
"President of the United States has his nuts cut, and they won't respect America anymore, will they?"
Jack almost started laughing, but stopped himself. The Detail people in the corridor might hear and—
"What got into you?"
"Maybe I'm finally getting comfortable with all this— or maybe I just want to get laid," she added.
That's when the phone next to the bed rang. Cathy's face made a noiseless snarl as she reached for it. "Hello? Yes, Dr. Sabo. Mrs. Emory? Okay… no, I don't think so… No, definitely not, I don't care if she's agitated or not, not till tomorrow. Get her something to help her sleep… whatever it takes. The bandages stay on till I say otherwise, and make sure that's on her chart, she's too good at whining. Yes. Night, Doctor." She replaced the phone and grumbled. "The lens replacement I did the other day. She doesn't like being blindfolded, but if we take the coverings off too soon—"
"Wait a minute, he called—"
"They have our number at Wilmer."
"The direct residence?" That one even bypassed Signals, though it, like all White House lines, was bugged. Or probably was. Ryan hadn't asked, and probably didn't want to know.
"They had it for home, didn't they?" Cathy asked. "Me surgeon, me treat patients, me professor, always on call when me have patients—especially the pain-in-the-ass ones."
"Interruptions." Jack lay down next to his wife. "You don't really want another baby, do you?"
"What I want is to make love to my husband. I can't be picky about timing anymore, can I?"
"Has it been that bad?" He kissed her gently.
"Yes, but I'm not mad about it. You're trying very hard. You remind me of my new residents— older, though." She touched his face and smiled. "If something happens, it happens. I like being a woman."
"I rather like it myself."
27 RESULTS
SOME OF THEM HAD DEgrees in psychology. It was a common and favored degree for law-enforcement officers. Some even had advanced degrees, and one member of the Detail had a doctorate, having done his dissertation on the sub-specialty of profiling criminals. All were at the least gifted amateurs in the science of reading minds; Andrea Price was one of these. SURGEON had a spring in her step as she walked out to her helicopter. SWORDSMAN walked her out to the ground-floor door and kissed her good-bye—the kiss was routine, the walk-out and the hand-holding were not, or hadn't been lately. Price shared a glance with two of her agents, and they read one another's minds, as cops can do, and they judged it to be good, except for Raman, who was as smart as the rest of them, but rather more straitlaced. He devoted more passion to sports than anything else, and Price imagined him in front of his TV every night. He probably knew even how to program his VCR. Well, there were many personality types in the Service.
"What's today look like?" POTUS asked, turning away when the Black Hawk lifted off.
"SURGEON is airborne," Andrea heard in her earpiece. "Everything's clear," the overwatch people reported from their perches on the government buildings around the White House. They'd been scanning the perimeter for the last hour, as they did every day. There were the usual people out there, the "regulars," known by sight to the Detail members. These were people who seemed to turn up a lot. Some were just fascinated by the First Family, whichever family it might be. For them, the White House was America's real soap opera, Dallas writ large, and the trappings, the mechanics, really, of life in this most famous of dwellings drew them for some reason that Service psychologists struggled to understand, because for the armed agents on the Detail, «regulars» were dangerous by their very existence. And so the snipers on the Old Executive Office Building—OEOB—and Treasury knew them all by sight through their powerful spotting glasses, and knew them all by name, too, because Detail members were out there, too, disguised as street rats or passersby. At one time or another, the «regulars» had all been trailed to whatever homes they might have, and identified, and investigated, quietly. Those with irregularities were profiled for personality type—they all had a few kinks— and then they'd be carefully scanned by the Detail members who worked outside for weapons—up to and including being bumped into by a «jogger» and expertly groped while being helped to their feet during the embarrassed apology. But that danger was past, for now.
"Didn't you check your schedule last night?" Price asked, distracted from her duties into asking a dumb question.
"No, decided to catch some TV," SWORDSMAN lied, not knowing that they spotted the lie. He didn't even blush, Price saw. For her part, she didn't allow her face to change. Even POTUS was allowed to have a secret or two, or at least the illusion of it.