Executive Pink (excerpt)

It was about eight o’clock this morning and I was experiencing my usual ambivalence during what some might consider a peculiar exercise, with one foot on the pinnacle of my power and the other in the nadir of depravity. I was alone in my office snooping through the White House email. It is something I do sporadically throughout each day and, I might add, is not historically unprecedented in this job. I had begun my idle browsing habit quite casually while looking to retrieve a memo I’d lost to a slip of a finger on the keyboard. Once inside “purgatory,” which is what we call the directory that holds all email output for three days before dumping it presumably into oblivion, I succumbed to the temptation of a slugline that boldly asked, “nooner?” Calling up the file I learned a new word for vagina and the day’s trysting place for Tonga Cooke and someone named Julayne in the data processing pool.

I didn’t know who the sender and recipient were until I called the message up on my screen. All I could learn from the slugline was that the memo had originated in Tech Support. Once on my screen I had the complete message including both its addresses. Tonga, who heads the White House Technical Support Team, had assured me that besides himself only me, Adele Schwammel and the President could call up anything from purgatory. This is probably why Tonga had slugged his note to Julayne as he did, trusting that neither the President nor me, his friend, would have the time or inclination to do what I had just done. Schwammel, on the other hand, gave off that she was not computer friendly, and she never answered email sent to her. The President’s political rabbi, Schwammel preferred to conduct her business in person or on the telephone.

Yet, it was stumbling upon a juicy note from Schwammel to an officer manager in Treasury shortly after experiencing the sophomoric thrill of discovering Tonga’s note to Julayne that addicted me to daily fishing in purgatory. That Schwammel’s email-documented pursuit of the office manager constituted the most titillating intelligence I’d found in my two years in the White House did not dampen my enthusiasm for these secret little expeditions. For Schwammel, the President’s closest political aide - by title, Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy - was clearly someone to keep an eye on.

What the fuck? I take an almost perverse pleasure in writing the exact words born in my fore brain when I stumbled upon the ambiguous message. I was alone in the office and not in any circumstance inclined to auto confabulation. I denied it voice. But the bafflement was real. It pushed and burgeoned, taunting me with squirming alternations of drollery and menace. I shoved back from the desk and stood up. I would pace if I had to, which is how I usually deal with cerebral stress when alone. But for now I didn’t wish to break eye contact with the screen on my computer monitor where the smattering of words glowed with perplexing ambiguity. They were either innocent - foolish beyond belief yet quite innocent - or they carried unthinkable implications. At the moment, I was drawn to the latter interpretation and I felt a chill at the back of my neck. As I pondered, the chill extended down over my shoulders making me hunch them and hug myself.

THIS IS A TEST. You with us or what? Out.com’s off unless you stay. THIS IS A TEST.

Test, my ass, was my first unspoken reaction...

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