The Seriousness of the Moment

The Seriousness of the Moment

Jill gently pushed her way through the crowd, heading for the west exit from the ballroom. She just wanted to get to the elevators and then she knew it would be a quick trip home at this hour. Her job required her to come to these big functions at times and, truth be told, it probably also meant she was supposed to use the networking opportunity of 500 of her colleagues all being in one room. Given that these were all news professionals, it was unlikely that any news was being made that had to be reported on. But it was at these sorts of functions where contacts were made and one’s next gig was likely to come. This was the Annual White House Correspondents Dinner.

The night was more endless than normal for Jill. She had been seated at a table sponsored by her cable news network. Being a senior reporter with her own weekday show from 9am to 11am, she was not yet at the top of the rankings like Morning Joe or Rachel Maddow, but she was highly regarded and a top substitute candidate for when they needed a prime-time fill-in. That meant she was at one of the two top tables and more or less liked and enjoyed the people she was seated with. She never took a date to these functions since it was alternately too boring or too busy.

Strangely enough, this year the organizers were not using a top-name comedian to roast the Washington elite, especially the President. Of course the President was not in attendance, nor was he ever expected to attend, but he had surprised everyone by formally forbidding his staff from attending. Among Jill’s cadre it was widely assumed that that move was designed to shield Sarah Huckabee-Sanders from having to admit that after last year’s merciless lambasting, and due to her admission of lying in the Mueller Report, she was unlikely to want to attend. In lieu of a comedian, the keynote was historian Ron Chernow, a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer and ex-journalist himself. Funny thing was that he was actually funny, not to mention poignant. So the evening was not only not boring, but also not particularly busy since there was less hob-bobbing with fewer celebrities than normal. Maybe they figured they were bigger targets without the Trump team.

Jill was anxious to get out of the generally celebratory crowd because of what she had heard by accident in the ladies room. It seemed like a cliche, but she had found over the years that tongues got looser in the seemingly protected environment of a place like the powder room. An unknown young lady of considerable attractiveness was a bit tipsy and was talking about how annoying her date was and how much more fun her date the prior night had been. It seemed that her prior date was a White House staffer and had taken her into the West Wing after hours to show off and she had gotten to see lots of interesting things. She said the most interesting things was a model of the White House with large barricades around it with tanks and big guns all over the lawn. It had been in the corner of Stephen Miller’s office. When she had asked what it was, the bragging aide said with great pride that at was the contingency plan.

Jill was rattled by this statement since she had picked up another piece of information that she hadn’t connected to anything until just then. Everyone knows that Randolph ‘Tex’ Alles had recently been pushed out of his job of running the Secret Service. He had been in the service for forty years and had only been in the job a short while, but after a reported bad meeting with Stephen Miller, Trump had issued a decree that Alles was to be replaced as a normal transition of leadership in the Homeland Security Department. Jill had heard from a longtime friend of Alles’ that he was upset about the dismissal, not because of the loss of the job (he was past retirement age) but because of the discussion he had had with Miller. From yet another source who had been in several meetings with Miller, he was supposedly asking questions about executive authority over the National Guard and when could the President take control of the guard and for how long. He did that in terms of border security, but had slipped in a few questions about the strength of Maryland and Virginia guard rosters and where they were located.

Jill was connecting the dots and was suddenly concerned that something of great significance was happening. A friend of hers who was partial to conspiracy theories had been filling her ears over the last year with cautions about how Trump was not above doing anything to stay in power. Just the other night she had dreamed that Trump was forced to go before Congress on a subpoena and when he had refused to answer a series of questions, the Chairman of the Committee had declared him in contempt of court and for him to be remanded. When the generally docile Congressional security force tentatively moved forward, the secret service sprang to the President’s aid with guns drawn and there had been a show-down in the capital building. That was a dream, but she had been rattled by the prospect. There was something realistically portentous about it all.

The President had starting using the terms “coup” and “attempted take-over” in his rallies is Wisconsin and elsewhere. He was becoming militant and defensive to the point of concern about what he might do in the event of anyone (Congress, a judge, a valid electorate) telling him he needed to leave office and face the music of whatever Federal or State legal actions awaited him.

Jill had gotten a troubling call at the office earlier in the day where some crank told her to “back off if you know what’s good for you.” She had assumed it was a general crank call into her network. Then, when she checked in for the gala, she saw that her name and several others on the list were highlighted in yellow. When she asked about it, a man behind the table who had a telltale earpiece stepped forward and asked sternly if there was a problem. Jill was experienced enough to just smile and say no. She walked into the ballroom with unease.

Now, as she went out the front door she consciously avoided the taxis at the door and walked up the street until she saw a passing cab and hailed it. She rode home with a general feeling of wariness. When she got to her apartment door and went in she felt better at last. Then, when she went down the hallway to her bedroom the lights suddenly turned off.