Chapter Thirty-One

The Birds and the Bees

Jimmie watched from the sidelines as the president fielded questions from the pool of reporters.

“So what if England was our friend? Think how boring it would be if the Yankees and Red Sox were friends. Snoozefest. People like a healthy rivalry. Though I wouldn’t call England the Red Sox. Maybe more like the Twins.”

That got a surprisingly large laugh from the press corps. Jimmie surveyed the journalists, all of whom were fenced inside a wire pen. He recognized a couple. Keith Olbermann, who was on his sixth time around with ESPN. Joe Buck, from Fox Sports. Vin Scully, the former Dodgers play-by-play announcer. In fact, more than half of the journalists appeared to be from the world of sports. This was, apparently, standard practice for days when the Donald took the podium. They didn’t want questions from anyone who’d done too much research.

Jimmie smiled as a feeling of superiority swelled in his chest. Not because he was better than them, but because he was probably making twice what they were making. Maybe that was the same thing—it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that amongst the fifty or so reporters of varying degrees of triviality was Cat Diaz, whose hand was held high.

Trump called on her.

“Mr. President, do you plan to respond to Prince Charles’s latest comments?” Cat asked. She had her clear thick-rimmed glasses on today, the ones that did funny things to Jimmie.

“I assume you mean that clown’s speech before Parliament, where he called me an embarrassment to swine,” Trump said. “We’re meeting to determine a really primo insult to send back across the pond.”

“Could you give us a preview of some of the names being discussed?” Cat asked.

“That’s classified, sorry,” Trump said. “You gotta keep an eye on my Twitter feed. I will say this, though. He’s a very ugly man—I mean, I’ve seen elephants with smaller ears. He’s an ugly man who married way, way above his station in the looks department, married a total fox, and then he cheated on her. So the man’s clearly an idiot. I would never have cheated on Lady Di. Never. And I cheat on everybody.”

There was more laughter from the sports reporters as Trump ended the session and left the room.

Jimmie hopped into the press corps pen and waded through the sea of journalists, who were packing their notebooks away. He made a beeline for Cat. Come to think of it, though, he’d never seen a bee fly in a straight line. Usually they zigzagged around, looking for the right flower to bang.

Cat took one look at Jimmie and turned the other way.

She had no interest in being his flower.

Or maybe—just maybe—she was playing hard to get.

“Wait up,” he said, reaching out for her. His hand landed on her shoulder. Immediately, he realized this was a poor decision on his part. She dropped her notebook and gripped his wrist with both hands. She gave his arm a twist, which he felt all the way up to his shoulder. He spun down to the ground and found himself pinned to the floor with his arm bent unnaturally back in a kimura lock.

“You’ve been working out,” he said through the pain.

“You haven’t been,” she said.

That much was true. He wasn’t going to turn the tables on her. None of the other journalists seemed to even take notice that she had him writhing in pain on the carpet. Working in the Trump White House, they’d probably seen violent outbursts before. Rumor was, on Wednesday nights, the Bush Room transformed into a fight club.

Jimmie had no choice but to say his safeword: “E. L. James.”