Chapter Eight

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The president stood tall and proud, as if expecting the vomit to apologize and leave on its own. Donald J. Trump wasn’t one to faze easily. Most presidents’ hair turned gray after eighteen months in office. If Trump’s hair had changed at all, Jimmie would have to say it hadn’t grayed but bronzed.

Dueling scents reached Jimmie’s nose. The smell of his own stomach acid was being forced into submission by the president’s cologne, which was unmistakably Success by Trump.

Jimmie took a rapid assessment of the situation to determine if things were really as bad as they seemed.

The good news was that President Trump could shower, change, and be back at work with only a minimal interruption to his day. That was one of the benefits of working in one’s own home.

The bad news, at least for Jimmie, was that his status as a fly on the wall had been blown. Big time.

During the primary campaign, a female reporter had gotten a little too aggressive with her questioning of Trump and was manhandled by Lewandowski. There was video of the incident online, which showed the reporter wielding a pen—a “potentially dangerous weapon,” according to Trump. As if a reporter could ever be a threat to somebody’s welfare using just a pen. Years of sitting hunched over computer keyboards meant that it was usually a pain just to bend over and look into a fridge, let alone have the range of motion and athletic dexterity necessary to ram a ballpoint pen into somebody’s throat.

If a reporter simply asking questions of a presidential candidate could be manhandled for being a threat, what was about to happen to a reporter who threw up on the president?

Jimmie Bernwood was about to find out.

Trump, who stood six foot three, towered over Jimmie as if he were twice that. The white circles under Trump’s glaring eyes made Jimmie feel like he was pinned in a prison searchlight. Jimmie’s shame was only seconds old, and already its weight was unbearable. He thought he’d reached the bottom of his shame spiral in Mexico, but clearly he was still circling the drain.

The elevator door began to close between them, but Trump stuck out his hand to stop it. As the door slid back open, Trump turned to the stoic Secret Service agent flanking him on the left. The agent’s cleanly shaven dome glistened under the brilliant chandeliers. His eyebrows had been plucked to nonexistence. Jimmie wondered what he had against hair. Then he remembered who the guy had to guard all day. It made sense he might have developed some weird, obsessive behaviors regarding the maintenance of one’s hair.

Trump barked at the agent, “Are you going to just stand there, or are you going to shoot this loser?”