The White House

Burton Pearce, chief of staff to President Madeline Wright, stands behind the desk in his West Wing office. What goddamn lousy timing! he thinks as he slowly puts down the receiver.

His earlier call with one of the fifty-two congressional representatives from the state of California had been productive. The topic was confidential—a complicated piece of legislation that Pearce and the president semi-jokingly call the Grand Bargain. But now the day has gone south in a big way.

Pearce glances down at his wide, neatly kept desk to check President Wright’s daily schedule. He looks up at the wall clock, then picks up the phone and presses a single key.

This can’t wait.

The call is immediately answered by Dana Cox, the president’s efficient, hard-as-nails private secretary, seated right outside the Oval Office. It’s “Mrs. Cox,” not “Dana,” to everybody. Including the president herself.

“Yes, Mr. Pearce, how can I help you?”

“I see the president is meeting with a Sierra Club delegation. Can you get them out now, five minutes early? I need to get in there.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” says Mrs. Cox.

And, apparently, she does it.

The last members of the delegation are walking out as Pearce enters. He closes the door behind them. President Wright looks impatient. “You’re not on my schedule, Burton. What’s on your mind?”

“How did the Sierra Club visit go, Madam President?” he asks.

The two have known each other since college, but Pearce hasn’t called her Maddy since just before noon on Inauguration Day.

He flashes back to the ramshackle off-campus student residence in Hanover that he, Cole, and Maddy had all once lived in. Of the three of them, only Cole had his future mapped out. With his college football record, he was one of the few Ivy League players likely to get a big NFL contract.

Pearce had always had more in common with Maddy Parson than with Cole Wright. Sometimes he’s still a bit stunned that the wild parties and the all-night talk sessions—the usual college bull about dreams and ambitions and the conviction that theirs was the generation that would finally make a difference in politics—led them both to this room. And now he spends day and night trying to forge their youthful bond into a two-term presidency for Maddy.

She brings him back to the present. “I finally convinced the Sierra Club to stop protesting against the Energy Department’s modular nuclear reactor program,” she says with a confident smile. “They still oppose it—no big surprise—but when it comes up for a vote, they’ll keep their mass emails and phone banks quiet. That’ll give us a solid in with the trade unions as we move ahead.” The president takes off her reading glasses and puts them on the Resolute desk. “Burton, what’s going on that justifies breaking into my morning?”