Her cell phone rang. She looked at Mike frantically after seeing the caller ID and answered the call. "Russell?" She noticed Mike watching her closely as she listened to the voice on the other end of the cell phone. He watched her features harden and the smile disappear from her face before she answered curtly and in a hard voice. "I don't get it, why ...?" She took a deep breath to calm her racing heart. "I'm on my way." When she hung up and placed the cell phone back on the table beside her, she responded to Mike's questioning face. "Russell scheduled an interview with me and Andrew to talk about our relationship. You know, the poll numbers..." She gestured wildly in the air as she put her dishes in the sink.
She was about to reach for a travel mug when she heard Mike's voice. "I don't know, but the Secretary of State in a jogger, which is not hers, coming out of a acquaintance's house in the morning isn't exactly uninteresting to the press." She froze in her motion and looked down at herself. "Um, yaaa..." she looked back up and gave him an amused smile. "I don't even know what you mean."
"No big deal. Go get ready. I'll do the dishes, you're my guest after all." Mike rose and began to clear the table. When, after a while, he still hadn't heard the stairs , he turned to her. "Come on, you're going to be late." She shook her head to sort out her thoughts and nodded gratefully at him, turning and disappearing up the stairs. "Thanks!" He smiled and returned his attention to the dishes.
Once upstairs in the bathroom, she closed the door quietly behind her, then leaned backwards against it. Thoughts were just buzzing in her head. She'd be talking to Andrew in public in a minute about their relationship, about how everything was great, how they loved each other, and how every night they weren't together because she was away they couldn't sleep because their thoughts were on each other. She sighed. Not only because that was all complete bullshit, but also because she wouldn't be coming out with him this morning, when the press was probably already lined up outside their house, but out of an acquaintance's house. Acquaintance. That's what Mike had said.
She had thought differently of their acquaintance. They had known each other for ages. She'd known him longer than she'd known Andrew. Even back when she had been in college, they had known each other. He had always been there for her. When her parents had died, when she'd had fights with her brother or her aunt, and when her very first horse had died. He had always been there, drying her tears and holding her and telling her that everything would be okay. And he had always been right. Somehow, everything always turned out all right when he promised her it would.
She let herself slide down the door. And now he was there for her again. Letting her sleep by him, taking considerable interest in how she was doing and offering to help her. She buried her face in her hands. Had she chosen the wrong one then?
When Mike had finished cleaning up the kitchen, he looked at the clock. It had been 30 minutes now and Elizabeth still hadn't reappeared. He decided that he would give her another 10 minutes before checking on her. He sat down on the sofa in the living room and opened today's newspaper. The headline 'Secretary of State live about relationship with CIA Director' he bristled. Then Elizabeth must have been informed beforehand about the planned interview. He had wondered why she had been informed on such short notice. He continued. 'Today is the first time the couple will publicly speak about their relationship.' He continued to skim the article. Exact time and transmission channels were mentioned and some guesses were made.
Before he could think about it further, he heard footsteps in the hallway above him. He folded the newspaper shut and stood up. Meeting her at the bottom of the steps, he looked at her. "You knew before. Why didn't you say anything? It's even in the paper." She avoided his gaze and an answer. While she looked down at the ground, she was whispering "Did I choose the wrong guy?"
"What?" He hadn't understood her. She repeated her question a little louder and continued to keep her eyes on the floor. "Did I choose the wrong guy?" He looked at her, puzzled. When her eyes finally met his, he spoke slowly but firmly. "Elizabeth, you had made your choice then and it was not and is not in my interest to make you unhappy." Her big blue eyes spoke volumes and asked the question her mouth could not. "But Yes, if you had chosen me, I would have welcomed you with open arms and never let you go. I don't know if I would have been the right one, though. Think about it, there were others. Others who have carried you through life on a platter of gold and would have loved to do so a lifetime long. But you had decided at that time. No, your heart had decided and we all accepted that and supported you as best we could. He as a husband and I as an acquaintance." He winked.
She couldn't help it. While he had been speaking, she had thrown on her coat, forced her heels over her feet, and grabbed her purse. Now, before picking up the doorbell, she turned to him. "Mike, what would I do without you! I'm so sorry. So many things would have been so different." She didn't dare say that so much would have been so much better because she wasn't even sure if it really would have been, but she wanted to believe it. "Thank you. Thank you for always being there for me." He took a step toward her, but immediately stopped his movement and backed away again. He looked down at the floor, embarrassed. Embarrassed by her words, her honesty, and his action. The next time he looked up, he saw her looking at him with sad eyes. She let go of the door handle and rushed forward. Forward into his arms. Her mouth pressed down on his. It took a moment for his mind to realize what had just happened, but then he returned her kiss. It was so familiar, he could feel every emotion she was feeling. The fear of him, of the interview, the regret of having made that decision then, and the gratitude for him.
When he could no longer breathe, he slowly pulled back from the kiss. He looked at her red and slightly swollen lips, then at her flushed cheeks, and finally into her eyes. "I'm afraid you have to go."
"I don't want to." He considered for a moment whether he should really say it. It might end her career and his with a loud bang... "You can come back. Your acquaintance is happy to have a visitor." She blushed slightly and lowered her gaze. "I don't know. It's not a good idea..." He lifted her chin with his fingers and leaned forward slightly again, she closed her eyes. When his lips left hers again, he whispered "You can think it over. It's certainly not a good idea, but it might be a right one." She looked at him and cheekily replied. "Let's see. After all, the bed at the Watergate Hotel is more comfortable than the sofa here."
He stifled a remark in response and looked at his watch instead. "You really have to get going. Otherwise you'll be late and weird questions will come." He hated that she had to leave. He would have loved to grab her now, throw her over his shoulder, and unwrap his present on his bed... She looked like she would clearly prefer that too, than to confessing her love for her husband on international television now after she had betrayed on him.
As he opened the door to the porch, she looked at him again questioningly. "You look great Bess. You're fine." She tugged her collar into place once more before stepping through the doors onto DC's streets. Her motorcade was already waiting and she slid into the back seat of the car. As she did so, she didn't even notice the sound of a camera clicking.
The whole drive, her thoughts were only about him. Had she really made the wrong choice? He had always been there for her, never abandoned her and never condemned her for her decision against him. On the other hand, she had not decided against him and for Andrew for no reason. With Andrew, she had a connection, one she hadn't felt with anyone else. The time together with him had been great, he had cared for her, until it started to crumble two years ago. But she could still just forget about the time before that. It had been perfect, he had been perfect. They had been perfect. She sighed. It was like that with so many things. The good times come and go. Some things are right for a time, but not for a lifetime.
As she hurried through the corridors of the White House, she thought about what this interview meant for her. She was playing the happy wife who had cheated on her husband with an acquaintance before the interview... A wave of guilt came over her. Calm down Elizabeth, you're not the first. He started it. That was true. He'd tried to take out his greed on other women when she'd taken the job and tried to keep the relationship in bed with her under control that way. She was only right about that. It had still been a shock when he came to her one evening and confessed his infidelities. On the other hand, it had also shown her that their relationship was important to him. That it was important to him that she was doing well. And now she had done it, too, only with the difference that she hadn't told him yet... What would they say in the interview to the question 'How has that job changed your relationship?' What would he say in response? Would she like what he had to say about it?
Suddenly spotting Russell out of the corner of her eye, disappearing into one of the many corridor doors, she kicked it up another notch and practically ran towards him. "Russell?" He stopped in the doorway and looked around to see where the voice that had called his name had come from. When he found the source, his mouth formed into a thin smile. "Elizabeth. The mask is already waiting for you. You're a little late."
"I know, I know. Traffic..." Traffic always went as an excuse in DC. No matter what time of day it was, it was pure horror. "Russell, where's Director Munsey, I need to talk to him." He walked into the room and motioned for her to follow him. While walking along a shelf wall full of folders and reading the order titles with narrowed eyes, he spoke again. "The meeting will be in my office in 30 minutes," he said. "I need to talk to him now, though." She closed the door behind her for more privacy. "In private. Please, Russell. It's urgent."
"Did someone die?" She confused shock her head "No."
"Then the meeting is in 30 minutes. Now, let's go. Two rooms down, the makeup artist is waiting for you." Elizabeth slapped her hands together in exasperation. "God Russell! Five minutes. I need five minutes with my husband. Alone. Please!" Without taking his eyes off the folders, Russell replied "If you leave now, they'll finish faster and you might make it to talk to Director Munsey before then." She was getting nowhere like this. Turning on her heel, she threw him another grumpy comment that it wouldn't be too much to ask for 5 minutes alone with her husband, and then briskly left the room.
"Andrew!" She was relieved to have finally found him. After she had finished in makeup, she had immediately jumped up and gone in search of him. Now she had finally found him outside the door to Russell's office. "Elizabeth, there you are. I've been looking for you." He turned his head and his eyes glittered as he spotted her. "Can we talk?"
"Yes, that's what the meeting is for, isn't it?" His comment, sounding a bit mocking, annoyed her. "I mean two of us, in private." He shrugged. "I don't know. What's there to talk about. I faced the cameras in front of our house alone this morning because you slept somewhere else and didn't think it necessary to at least show up at our place or let me know... I'm anxious to see that headline."
"Will you stop that!" "With what? With saying the thing you don't want to hear?" She looked around, the people who were corridor were staring at her. She sighed and took a deep breath. "Can we please not talk about it here?" He looked at her uncomprehendingly. "I don't know what you have Elizabeth..." "Please, just do this for me."
She didn't even wait for his response to that, but immediately stomped off past him across the hall to the door across the hall into a rarely used conference room. Once he was through the door, she closed it and looked at him. She had been afraid of this moment. She didn't know what to say, how to start the conversation. 'I spent the night at Mike's tonight.' No, he didn't bring that to know now, that was unfair before the interview. She dropped into a chair across from him and scrunched her eyebrows together. "It's not going that well right now. What are we going to tell them?" He looked at her for a long time before saying anything. "I don't know. Honestly, I don't. I don't know what went so so wrong with us that it's the way it is now, either. I'm just so terribly sorry for everything. Really!"
She hadn't expected that. Where had he gotten the idea to be so empathetic now? She had been determined that he had turned into an asshole within the last two years... but now the Andrew she had fallen in love with so many years ago was shining through again. "Andrew,..." She struggled for words, for the right words. "I..." She swallowed. "I..., I..." Now he knelt in front of her and put a hand on her knee. "What do you say we handle the interview now the way we've been handling it all lately. Not too much private stuff, we're happy the way things are right now. Of course, a marriage has ups and downs, but we're okay. Can you live with that?" She looked at him. It took so much strength to hold back her tears. "I think so." For now it sounded like a good strategy, how she would feel about it afterwards she would see.
The same thoughts came to her as before and she looked at him. "What will you say when they ask you if my job has changed our marriage?" He thought for a moment and then smiled back at her. "I say that while it has sent us into a tough time that has tested our relationship, we have come out of it stronger and happier." She pondered his words for a moment. In principle, he was right. But what he probably didn't understand yet was that their relationship wasn't okay for her yet. But there was time for that, it was not an issue to be resolved here in such a short time.
In the meeting, all the details were clarified. At the beginning, she could still concentrate on it. But when it came up who was sitting where and how, her mind shut down. Her thoughts drifted and only when she heard her name was she back in the here and now. She looked up and saw the questioning looks. "Excuse me. Can you repeat the question again?" Andrew leaned over to her and murmured "Do you have anything else to say? Any more objections?"
She shook her head briefly, recapping what was still on her mind. "The interview will be live. So nothing can be edited out or re-recorded. The only breaks we can take are would be commercials and the questions are not work related but are intended to give the citizens of the United States an insight into the relationship between myself and CIA Director Munsey. Oh, and we don't know the questions yet. So we have to be precise and careful in our wording. Anything forgotten?" she raised her eyebrows questioningly and looked around. "Not quite right. Part of the questions, they already have in front of them," a White House press person, whose name she didn't know, pointed to the sheet in front of her "the last few minutes of the interview, the reporter has requested free question time."
She looked at the sheet in front of her and nodded devoutly as she went through question after question. "Okay, that looks fine. Right?" She looked to her left for Andrew's approval. "About the free question time, how long is the entire interview scheduled for?" "Ninety minutes."
"Okay, and only three minutes of free time at the end?" Skepticism sounded from her voice. There was something fishy going on. There were definitely too few questions on the sheet to fill such a long time. "Um, yeah." Now Russell sounded embarrassed. "Subtract 6 times about 3 minutes of commercials. Then it's 69 minutes..."
"Russell, what are you trying to say?" Elizabeth interrupted him briskly. The few questions on the paper here never, ever filled a scant 70 minutes. The press person raised his voice again. "There will be a live chat going along where people can ask questions that will be asked in between." Elizabeth looked puzzled and folded her hands on the table. "And what's so bad about that that Russell would want to sink into the floor?"
"We have no way to filter these questions, let alone stop the reporter from asking them. When push comes to shove, weird question comes up, we've got the problem." Elizabeth, took her glasses off her nose and rubbed the bridge of her nose. "So we're completely jumping in at the deep end." She was annoyed that this interview seemed so unmediated. To her, it felt like she was just the pretty starfish that they were dying to present, no matter if pulling it out of the water caused three prongs to break off. She looked desperately at Andrew before returning her gaze to the round. "Don't worry, ma'am. If you'll answer honestly and thoughtfully, you have nothing to worry about." If only it were that simple. If she were to answer truthfully, when asked if her job had changed her marriage, she would have to answer that Andrew had never since been the man she fell in love with at the very beginning. She would have to explain that he was in therapy for it. But she still didn't sleep at home…