DUTCH AND GINA: A SCANDAL IS BORN (6 page)

He even risked exposing his secret by taking a glance down at Dutch’s crotch, and wondering, as he often did, how Gina must feel whenever that massive rod slid inside of her.
 
Imagining, to his private shame, how he would feel, and how he could make Dutch feel.
 
But then he dismissed such damnable thoughts, he was no gotdamn sissy, he said to himself, and moved his eyes away from Dutch, and back to Allison.

“We expected it to be a one day story,” Allison was explaining to the president.
 
“Two days on the outside, sir.
 
Especially after MSNBC played the full interview that clearly showed how the First Lady was joking.
 
But it’s not the case.”

“They know she was joking,” Max said, “but it doesn’t matter to them anymore.
 
It’s as if the joke’s on her now.
 
This nothing of a story has legs, Dutch, unlike any story I’ve ever seen.
 
They won’t let it die.
 
You should hear them over on Fox.
 
And now the heavy hitters are taking a swing at the bat.
 
The Majority Leader is calling for your resignation and conservative groups are demanding that you divorce that sinful woman and find yourself a true lady.”

Dutch finally looked away from his grinning son, a son who had his tiny brown fingers pinching Dutch’s cheek.
 
“Is there anything else?” Dutch asked.

Allison glanced at Max, and then back at the president.
 
“I know you don’t want to dignify their nonsense, sir,” she started.

“And I’m not going to dignify it,” Dutch finished, his anger repressed for the sake of everybody in the room.
 
In truth, he was livid.

“But you have to respond, sir,” Max interjected.
 
“There’s no two ways about this.
 
You have to.
 
From Facebook to Twitter to every social media you can think of, this story is trending number one.”

“And the taglines are atrocious,” Allison said, flipping open her notebook and reading some of them:
 
“Why no photos of the First Child?
 
What are they hiding?
 
Is he black or is he white?
 
Is he human?”
 
Allison paused after that one, too embarrassed to even look up at the president.
 

Dutch, however, was staring at her.
 

She continued.
 
“What kind of child is this?
 
Word around the Beltway is that he doesn’t even look biracial.
 
Why is the First Lady ashamed of her son?
 
Why does he look so black?” Allison looked at the president. “And those are the kind ones, sir.”

Dutch could hardly believe it.
 
How could they think for a second that his son could belong to another man?
 

Dutch lifted his baby and laid the baby’s head on his broad shoulders.
 
Little Walter, confused by the sudden movement, clung to his father.
 
“Let me take him to the Nursery,” he said softly as he left the sitting room.
 

Allison looked at Max.
 
“You saw that look on his face?
 
He’s very upset.
 
I don’t think I’ve ever seen him this upset.”

“Wouldn’t you be?
 
After hearing those tags?”

“I know,” Allison said.
 
“And I hated to read them to him, but he has to understand the stakes.”

“He understands them,” Max said.
 
“He just refuses to accept them.”

Dutch returned and sat back down on the sofa.
 
Although he appeared relaxed, Max could just feel his tension.

“Anything else we need to discuss?” he asked them.

Max looked at Allison with that look she knew, and hated, so well.

“I’ll be in my office if you need me, Mr. President.”
 
She stood and left, hating the fact that Max always found a way to squeeze her out of the biggest decisions.

When she was gone, Max moved over and sat next to Dutch.
 
“Look,” he said, “I know this is a difficult time for you.
 
I know the last thing in this world you want to do is expose your child.”
 
He placed his hand on his friend’s arm.
 
“But it’s getting kind of critical.”

“This is nonsense, Max, and you know it.
 
I can take a lot, and I have taken a lot around this town, but this trumped-up scandal here, this show us the baby bullshit, is going too far.
 
Entirely too far!”

“If you could just release a photo---”

“No.”

“But why not?”

“Because a photo won’t be enough for those scavengers.
 
They’ll claim it’s doctored.
 
Or somebody else’s child.
 
Then they’ll want a video.
 
But they’ll claim it’s some actor, not our son at all.
 
Or, even better, I can parade my child out in front of their cameras so that they can castigate him and treat him, not like the beautiful, adorable child he is, but a political football strategically placed for them to deride and belittle and kick around at their pleasure.”
 
Dutch shook his head.
 
“That’s not going to happen.
 
Not to my son.”

Max began to rub Dutch’s shoulder in a massage Dutch actually needed.
 
His emotions were so tight and so near-explosive that he needed Max’s calmness.
 
“I understand what you’re saying, Dutch,” Max said.
 
“You know I do.
 
But it’s not just your political enemies.
 
That’s the problem.
 
We might have been able to ride this tide if it was just the opposition.
 
But members of your own party are now demanding to see the child too.”

Dutch closed his eyes in disgust.
 
He was beginning to believe that no president in the history of this republic has had to put up with what he had to put up with.
 
And it was beginning to grate on his nerves.
 

“What do they want from me?” he asked with a kind of anguish exhale.

Max looked at Dutch, at the man who had been his best friend since childhood.
 
And he could feel his pain.
 
He reached over and removed a strand of that soft black hair of his that had fallen into his face.
 
And that face, that gorgeous face he knew, and loved so well.
 
And those lips.
 
And that muscular chest.
 
And further down, at those jewels in his pants.

Once, just after the marriage, Max had entered the Residence while Dutch was making love to Gina in the Billiards room of all places.
 
He could hear him pounding into her and could hear her screaming in delight, and he nearly came just listening to the two of them.
 
He looked down now, at Dutch’s midsection, and saw that bundle of joy that was so much a part of his dreams lately that he sometimes couldn’t grasp why.
  

He used to dream this way once a month maybe, whenever Dutch looked particularly adorable on any given day, and that look, that physique, stuck in his head.
 

But lately he couldn’t stop thinking about him, couldn’t stop dreaming about him.
 
About being in Gina’s place.
 
About imagining what Gina must have felt whenever she would reach out, like this, and rub her hand across Dutch’s powerful mound.
 
Just lightly at first, and then hard enough to feel every ridge and bump and ultimate smoothness.
 
Just like so.
 
Just like this.
 
And then to squeeze.
 

Dutch’s eyes flew open when he felt his best friend’s hand squeeze his penis.
 
He was so shocked, in fact, that he jumped from his seat.
 
Max jumped up too, opening eyes that he didn’t even realize had closed, suddenly terrified that the secret he had kept buried for so many years was now, at this very moment, exposed.
 

But even his terror couldn’t match Dutch’s astonishment.
 
He stared at his friend.
 
“What the hell was that about, Max?” he wanted to know.

Max knew he had no choice, no choice at all, but to deny all.
 
“What was what about?”

“Don’t you ever touch me like that again.”

Max frowned, deciding that he couldn’t, just couldn’t face that truth right now.
 
Especially not with such a disgusted look all over Dutch’s face.
 
“Touch you?” he asked with a nervous laugh in his voice.
 
“What are you talking about?”

Dutch continued to stare at his friend.
 
Never, not once, had he suspected it.
 
And it seemed too inexplicable for him to take it all in.
 
Too surreal.
 

They just stood there, the two friends, with each knowing that they stood on the precipice of something sad.
 

“As I was saying,” Max eventually said, choosing to just get back to normal rather than offering up any more denials and certainly no explanations, “members of your own party are jumping on the bandwagon too.
 
They want to dispel rumors about the child’s ethnicity.
 
Which, given the fact that Little Walt looks like a black boy, that could be problematic and play right into your critics’ hands.”

“What can be problematic?” Gina asked and both men turned in different directions as if they’d been caught in the act of something.
 
Dutch moved away, toward the window, unable to wrap his brain around what his best friend had actually just done to him.
 
Max moved toward her, smiling an almost painfully artificial smile.
 
Which Gina immediately noticed.

“We were still wrestling with the photo release issue.
 
I was just telling your husband that members of his own party were demanding something be released too.”
 
Max’s heart was pounding, as he wondered what Dutch must think of him, but he was determined to keep it together.

Gina looked at Dutch.
 
“And Dutch doesn’t want to release anything?”

“Right.”

“Neither do I,” Gina said, moving over to the sofa.
 
“But I don’t see where we have much choice, honey,” she said as she looked at her husband.
 
“They aren’t going to stop.”

Dutch turned around, his back against the window, his face devoid of its usual calm.
 
“And no matter what we release, it won’t be enough.”

“I know.
 
But maybe we can do some kind of a post card, with a picture of Little Walter and you and I.
 
Maybe---”

“No, Gina.
 
We aren’t turning our child into a collectable.”

Gina knew what he meant.
 
The way the Washington press corps treated them was enough to make anybody sour.
 
“But the fact still remains,” she said, “we’ve got to do something.”

Dutch exhaled, glanced at Max, and then nodded.
 
“We’ll release one photo of Little Walt, and that’s it.
 
I’ll not have my son paraded around like some guinea hen for all the world to see.
 
He’ll not be a political prop for the Democratic party or a source of derision for anybody else.”

And Dutch, glancing once again at Max, that disgust, as it all was beginning to sink in, even stronger on his face, left the room.

Max, mortified by the fact that he had allowed himself to be exposed so completely, made his apologies to Gina for disturbing her Saturday, and left too.