78 - Washington, D.C.
“Joe, may I have a chat with you for a moment,” Catherine Quaid took Joe Bergantina, the head of her Secret Service detail, by the elbow and directed him to the balcony overlooking the Rose Garden behind the White House.
“What is it ma’am?” Bergantina asked. He liked Catherine Quaid. She had a mind of her own and didn’t take shit from anybody, including her husband, Bergantina thought. Under other circumstances, she was the kind of woman a guy could be friends with without things getting sexual or romantic. Wouldn’t want to be married to her, though, Bergantina thought. She’s more than I could handle.
The First Lady walked casually with the Secret Service agent to the far end of the balcony, then turned and stood directly in front of the agent, uncomfortably close. Her voice took on an uncharacteristically venomous tone that sent alarm bells clanging for the agent.
“Joe, you rat on me again and you’ll regret it for the rest of your life,” she said, glaring, her face inches from the man’s. “What goes on between me and my husband is between me and my husband. You work for me. If you don’t want to work for me, fine, tell me and I’ll get you a job guarding a bucket of frozen horse shit in Alaska.”
The Secret Service agent, trained to throw himself in front of this woman and take an assassin’s bullet in his own body, was shaken by her words.
“Do you know what I’m referring to, Joe?” Catherine Quaid asked. “A little matter involving Air Force One, does that refresh your memory, Joe?”
She poked him in the chest with one finger.
“Do you get my point, Joe?”
Another poke, harder this time.
He could barely collect himself enough to answer.
“Yes, ma’am, yes, absolutely, ma’am, I understand one hundred percent, ma’am,” he stuttered.
She was not finished.
“You cross me again, Joe and you know what happens? Let me tell you, Joe.” the First Lady leaned forward, standing on her tip toes, her lips inches from the quivering agent’s right ear. She whispered to him. There was sugar in her voice now, mixed with a lost kitten sadness.
“Joe, I would just hate to have to tell my husband, my husband the President, of the United States that is, Joe, in tears, oh I’d be so disturbed, that some Secret Service agent kept brushing up against me all the time, getting just so close to me, oh all the time, Joe, and, and his hand kept rubbing against, against, oh, Joe, I can hardly say it, his hand kept touching my breast. Oh how I would hate to have to tell that to my husband. He’d be so angry, don’t you think, Joe?”
The iron returned to her voice as she stepped back from the man.
“Tell me, Joe, what would they do to a Secret Service agent who copped a feel from the First Lady? It wouldn’t be pretty, would it, Joe?”
The poor man’s face was ashen.
“That would be an exceptionally ugly scene, Ma’am,” he said carefully.
“So, Joe, may I assume that we have a clear understanding, you and I? No more whispering to anybody about what I’m doing or who I’m doing it with, right Joe?”
“Yes, ma’am, yes we certainly do,” he answered.
”Wonderful,” Catherine Quaid said. “Now, let me tell you where we are going tomorrow.”