Empire (Empire 1)

“You know what, Cessy? I think LaMonte will want to talk to you himself.”

“No, I don’t want to bother him.”

“Your husband is the real thing, Cessy. Not that you aren’t, of course. But he’s a hero. Not just yesterday, but before. He’s the kind of soldier they make movies about.”

“I just don’t want the movie to be The Dreyfus Affair.”

“I don’t get to see any of the new movies.”

“It’s an old one. Jose Ferrer.”

“You’re thinking of / Accuse! From Zola’s famous article ‘J’Accuse.’ Jose Ferrer directed it, too. 1958.”

“Sandy, your memory astonishes me.”

“It’s not the memory, it’s the superb retrieval system. And I don’t think President Nielson wants your husband to spend years of his life fighting a false charge of treason, either. What number are you at?”

Cecily gave it to her.

Then the conversation was over. She flipped her phone closed.

“Just as I thought,” said Aunt Margaret. “The President himself is going to call back.”

“She thinks he might,” said Cecily. “But I think he won’t.”

“Then turn your phone off.”

“Okay, I think he might.”

“Are you going to tell him you switched parties?”

“I didn’t switch parties,” said Cecily. “I was a Democrat the whole time I worked for him.”

“But not much of a Democrat.”

“Moynihan worked for the Nixon White House and he was a Democrat.”

“A Democrat with a dark, dark stain on his tie.”

“I did a lot of good things with LaMonte. We got things done. Because he’s a practical politician. And I knew how to talk to liberals without sounding like a doctrinaire Republican so I could make friends with key aides on the other side of the aisle.”

“And then you gave it all up to have these beautiful babies,” said Margaret. “Including the one who currently has nothing on from the waist down.”

“I hope it’s J.P. you’re talking about.”

“Short? Smeary face and butt and hands?”

“That would be the one.” Cecily was out of her chair and in hot pursuit.

Aunt Margaret called after her. “Don’t let him sit down anywhere!”

“Too late!” Cecily called back.

By the time J.P. was bathed and dressed and the carpet more or less cleaned up from the fudgesicle that he had set down and sat upon, it had been forty-five minutes. Her cellphone chimed.

“Don’t you have a special ringtone for calls from the President?” asked Aunt Margaret.

“Hold please for the President,” said a voice on the line.