THE VOICE OF CHICAGO'S GAY, LESBIAN, BI, TRANS AND QUEER COMMUNITY SINCE 1985

From the journal of John 'Jack' Quincy Adams, Chief Secret Service Special Agent in Charge, The White House. Code Name: One.

Part 10. The Real Laura

Jack Adams, the Secret Service agent charged with assassinating President George W. Bush and being held for psychiatric evaluation, is telling about his ongoing affections for his high school sweetheart Laura Welch, who later became Laura Bush. In this scene Jack is telling the psychiatrist of being sent to Paris, the first of two fateful trips abroad with the First Lady that revealed to him just how unhappy she was. He starts with Paris.

The first night in Paris, after her welcome dinner with Chirac, we went back to her suite—after the two sweepers checked it over—and she kicked both shoes in the air and collapsed backwards onto the giant overstuffed sofa. 'Jack, we need champagne.' Now there was the old Laura I knew at SMU. I took off my lapel pin and secured it in the pillbox—just to be on the safe side. No surveillance center had been set up anywhere on the trip so far as I knew, but I have learned never to assume anything.

After I slipped the pillbox into my jacket pocket I poured her a glass.

'Jack, for God's sake, let your hair down. When will we ever get another chance like this? Pour yourself a glass and bring the bottle over here.'

She put her feet up on the sofa while I retrieved the champagne bucket and a glass for myself. I sat in the chair next to the sofa and for a couple minutes we drank champagne and looked through the glass balcony doors at the lights of Paris.

'Turn on the CD player, Jack. Let's have a cushioning end to a wretched day.'

I turned on the music and sat down again. 'You really hate this? Even getting to travel to Paris doesn't make things better?'

'Is this the way you think Paris should be seen?'

'Some people would take Paris in a wheelbarrow,' I said.

Laura kicked of her shoes and stretched her legs. 'What are you going to do when this is over, Jack?'

'When we get back to D.C.?'

'No, I mean all of this,' and she made a sweeping but halting gesture with her glass so as not to spill the champagne. 'When we're all booted out of 1600 what will you do?'

'Sometimes I think I'll buy a little place in the country and join Book of the Month Club.'

'When will you be able to retire?'

'I'm planning on leaving in six years.'

'I'd leave tonight if I could,' she said.

'Do you mind my asking why you dislike it so much? I'm sorry, I'm overstepping.'

She turned and frowned as if to say, Don't be ridiculous, then she went into the bedroom and came back with an envelope that she tossed into my lap. 'Here's one reason.'

It was addressed to her but had only a nine-digit zip code for a return address. 'Open it. Don't read it, but look at the signature.'

I hesitated. It was her personal mail, for God's sake. It was a letter of about six hand-written pages. It began, 'Dear Yankee'. I quickly found the last page and read the signature: 'Chin up, Molly.'

I didn't understand and my expression must have said as much.

'She's one of my best friends, Jack. Do you recognize the name?'

'No, I don't think so.'

'Do you know any Mollies?'

'Not personally. The only Molly I ever even heard of was ….' I looked at the signature again, then turned it over and read the letterhead on page one. 'Molly Ivins, 3497 Live Oak Road, Austin, Texas.'

'She's one of my best friends for years.'

'I don't understand.'

'Exactly.'

'But she's…I mean she's so….'

'Never the less. How would you like not to be able to go to lunch with your best friend? Never to be able to see your friends because people would talk?'

I folded the letter back into the envelope. I didn't know what to say.

She sat back down on the sofa. 'How did this happen? I mean how did it get to this point?' I asked.

She threw her head back and sighed. 'You ought to know the answer to that. You've paid for it as much as I have. I made a choice, Jack. I chose the brass ring.'

'I don't understand.'

'Of course you don't. You did what you wanted to do, not what people told you to do.'

I let out a sarcastic hiss of breath. If she only knew.

'It doesn't matter,' she said. 'What matters now is getting through it. And I'll have the ranch when it's over. He'll join the Carlyle Group and give speeches with his daddy and make lots of money. Maybe they'll make him baseball commissioner. That's all he's ever really wanted to do. That's what he should have done in the first place.' She raised her hands to her sides in a gesture of exasperation. 'We all compromise in some way, Jack.'

Follow this 44-part serialized book in Windy City Times for the next several months. See www.WindycityMediaGroup.com for past columns.