Midnight by Anna Dove (books for new readers .TXT) 📕

promise that she would see them again soon, she and Maurice disappeared from view back into the West Wing. Gone, in an instant, and the air moved after her as if even it wanted to be near to her. The room suddenly felt empty and insufficient.

Peter took a deep breath, held it, and then exhaled slowly.

Carlos had heard of this sort of thing happening. He had heard the boys in his university talk, in terms either vulgar or romantic, about this woman, this woman whose eyes could melt a soul and whose voice sounded like a thousand songs. I couldn’t work in the White House, joked his friends. I wouldn’t get anything done. See her walking in the corridors--you’d forget about everything else, wouldn’t you? Sailors to the sound of the sirens, were his friends. He preferred to be Odysseus, chained to his profession, restrained against his impulses.

Back in his office, and free from Peter, Carlos returned to his charts and graphs; he buried his head in his work and the outside world faded for a while, until glancing at his watch he saw that it was eight pm. This startling him out of his work, he packed some files into his leather bag, slung it over his shoulder, and went from the Eisenhower building into the streets, catching a cab to arrive at his house, a small brick row house in NE Washington, where he made himself a sandwich and read a news update--Syria, what a mess--and then went to bed. However, he found himself staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep, his mind a jumble of numbers and equations. It was two in the morning before he finally drifted off to sleep, and when he did, he found himself in a strange dream, in which he was trying to carry several books, his favorite economic books, and their weight bogged him down. Drop them, said a voice, a woman’s voice. Although it sounded strangely familiar he could not tell to whom it belonged, and though he looked about him wildly in the shifting scenes, he could see no one, and then it all faded as dreams do, wisping away into the forgotten corners of the mind where all the memories are kept hidden, never to see the light of day.

Over the next few months, Carlos found himself in the presence of the first lady more and more often, although unintentionally. He would run into her at the mess hall in the West Wing, or walking the halls of the Eisenhower Building. He admired her beauty but would always try to stay somewhat aloof during their conversations. He knew better than to make a fool of himself.

One Tuesday evening after these encounters began to happen, Carlos was packing up his office for the day when he heard a soft knock on the door.

“Come in,” he said, not looking up from his bag.

The door opened and shut and no one said anything, and Carlos looked up to find the first lady standing there alone with a very strange and somber expression on her exquisite face. They stood in silence for a few moments and then he started forward abruptly, stepping towards her.

“Hello, can I - how are you? Are you alright?”

She looked at him wordlessly, his finely shaped jaw and aquiline nose, and without saying anything she sat down wordlessly on the chair across from his desk. Sensing that something was not right, he pulled out the chair next to her and sat down. Her lashes swooped down over the eyes, and she averted her face a little. Carlos sat quietly, and after a minute or two, she broke the silence.

“It is sometimes very difficult,” she said softly, her voice sending a strange shiver to his heart, “to be in the position that I am in. If you would just indulge me a moment.”

“It is no bother at all,” quickly said Carlos, the words escaping his lips before he could even think. “None at all. You are welcome here.”

“Thank you,” she murmured.

“Would you like anything? Water? A bourbon? Are you feeling alright?”

“Bourbon? You have bourbon?”

“Yes. I was - I was given some as a gift. I have it here in my office.”

“I’d like a bourbon.”

“I don’t have ice.”

“That’s alright.”

Carlos stood up and went behind his desk, and reaching into a bottom cabinet, he pulled out a bottle of Four Roses bourbon. Then, he paused, and reddened a little.

“I don’t have glasses. Want me to get paper cups?”

“No,” she said, and put out her hand for the bottle. “We can drink it straight.”

Carlos hesitated and then put the bottle into her hand. Her eyes were still hidden under the half-lowered eyelids. She twisted off the top and raised it to her lips. Carlos watched as she drank, and then as she lowered the bottle, she shuddered and handed it back to him. Her brilliant eyes raised to his, still wrapped in a shroud of strange calmness and lacking their usual light. Taking the bottle, he seated himself next to her.

“I hope you don’t think I’m being ridiculous,” she said, staring at the desk in front of her. “I’ve just had such a day.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yes,” she said absently.

Carlos looked around the room furtively.

“Please, take a drink,” she said. “You know what they say about drinking alone.”

He felt obligated to acquiesce. The bottle in his hand was a gift from a group that had met with him the previous week to talk about something that he couldn’t remember at the moment. He lifted it to his lips. It was a smooth bourbon but still bit the back of his mouth, leaving a smoky yet sharp aftertaste.

“Sometimes I think that it’s too much,” Adela began. “Too much. Three hundred and fifty million people. And my husband is the leader of them all. That,” and she