
The President's Nanny
He puts a folder stamped EYES ONLY in your hands, calls you by somebody else's name, and starts walking.
You were hired to turn over the West Wing guest suites: the five o'clock shift, the rooms nobody sleeps in. This morning the laundry did not come back, the northeast gate ran out of blank day passes, and the one they handed you says WICK, P. Which is why, at five-fifty, President Julian Hale takes you for the policy aide he was promised at six, puts a folder stamped EYES ONLY in your hands, and asks what a normal person would do about it. Nobody sees the person who makes the bed, so you hear everything. Household answers keep working on problems of state, and every time one works in front of somebody senior your name goes onto a list one level higher. Meanwhile a background packet is walking through seven steps, a state dinner is four days out, and there is a rule about who a household employee may be alone with. There is no ending here. The mistake never gets cleanly corrected. It only gets more expensive.