The Details

It was looking like a late night at Prince and Prowling.  Former Senator Evermore Breadman was looking through the economic stimulus plan with a fine-toothed comb.  He had already spent six days in a row on the phone with clients about the impact of the machine-gun fire that was President Obama's first week of Executive Orders, and now it was time to see where the ship of state was sailing.  He knew how to make money in any Administration, but the devil was in the details.  His intestinal demon let out another low moan, and he headed out to the men's room.  

He passed the conference room, where last-minute reinforcements had been brought in to finish reviewing the production of documents for the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act investigation of multinational corporation Beeline Beverages.  There was Sonya the Russian reviewer, Chong Hu the Chinese reviewer, Sanjay Rao the Hindi reviewer, and five Japanese attorneys.  Laura Moreno was also in the conference room--retrieving binders that Chloe Cleavage had forgotten to bring downstairs to the sweatshop.  As she staggered out to the elevator under the weight of the box of binders, Breadman emerged from the men's room and recognized her as the girl who would let him in if he had forgotten his suite key.  He saw the elevator door shut just as his pocket fumble revealed that he had, indeed, forgotten his suite key on his desk.  

Downstairs, Moreno brought the box of binders to Cleavage, who was wearing a silk tank top in front of the only fan in the room (aimed at her, and away from the thirty attorneys on computers).  “Cool beans!” Cleavage said upon receipt of the box.  “Can you help that redhead with a technical question?”  She pointed to the corner of the sweatshop, then returned to text-messaging her occasional boyfriend Calico Johnson.  Moreno walked over to find that the nameless, flummoxed redhead had just spilled her bag of personal belongings, and Moreno bent over to help her pick up the things—lotion, earplugs, kleenex, asthma inhaler, hand sanitizer, gluten-free snack crackers, a map of Washington, snowboots, an umbrella, eye drops, vitamin water, cough syrup, and a brochure about lyme disease .  Another high-maintenance chick, Moreno fretted, knowing that Prince and Prowling had already fired the woman that asked for an ergonomic mouse last week and the man who had arrived at 10:30 this morning because his kids' school opened late.  (And they had both been replaced the next day.)  Moreno spoke in a soothing, maternal tone to the bleary-eyed girl, and showed her the correct menu sequence to get where she needed to go in the database.

Several floors above them:  Liv Cigemeier's husband was telephoning his wife to tell her he would be home late tonight, but he didn't want to tell her that it was because he was doing an online application for a federal attorney position in Afghanistan; Bridezilla was scanning E-Bay for antique necklaces and waiting for Wince to pick her up; and Breadman was still in the hallway by the elevators and restrooms, ringing the doorbell to get back in, not knowing that his first-ever phone call from President Obama's White House was about to end in a voicemail.

A couple of blocks away, an exhausted White House butler settled her twins into a bath and went to take her pills.  They had been home from preschool all day, and so had the Obama girls—and their paths had crossed many times.  Clio liked those Obama girls, and hoped they would be a good influence on Regina and Ferguson.  When she returned to get them out of the tub, water was splashed all over the floor.  “Reggie!  Fergie!”  They protested that it wasn't their fault, but she would hear none of it.  She stood them up and turned a cold shower on them while she toweled off the floor.  The White House ghost that had made the mess hovered near the window, still angry at what the twins had said about Sasha and Malia.  Clio opened up a large towel for her children to step into, already regretting the yelling.  Sometimes she just felt so confused.