Sleeper Cell

This story comes with a disclaimer: it was 2017 and I was feeling desperate.

Anna wanted to be famous.  Ever since she was a little girl she’d dreamt of having power.  Not for her the contentment of leafing through copies of Hello! in some mid-range spa.  She wanted to be in them.  She leaned into the tilted mirror and touched up her lipstick.  The colour was perfect; not too tan, not too red, the right mix of shading and bold to give her definition.  Her stylist had recommended keeping her hair simple, something swept back and effortless that would say self-possessed without screaming.  Auburn with highlights of sunshine, it fell below her shoulders and stayed in place as she moved about the plush, silent room, returning every minute to the mirror where she inspected her outfit for the thousandth time; blue, fitted, demure, it still showed off her figure.  The names the press had called her: trophy wife, air head, decoration; the mean, awful slander.  She couldn’t help that she was good looking.  Men like him wanted trophies.  Trophies was what they were all about.  When she’d met him there’d been no talk of politics.  It was luck, luck and a bit of nudging that had done it.  When he’d thrown his hat in the ring her people had said, “are you sure?” but she’d said yes, she was sure.  Her father had taught her that politics was business and she’d watched her mother be the wife who makes a husband shine; she’d thought, I can do that.  She touched the diamond that hung on a silver chain about her neck.  Her mother had given it to her.  She pressed it between thumb and forefinger.  There were butterflies in her stomach, it felt exactly like that; a fluttering excitement that made her teeth clench.  She took a breath, ran her hands over the waistband of her skirt and relaxed her face.  Worry did no favours to the forehead.  She didn’t need wrinkles.  Out there beyond the lawns lay the world’s press, thousands of people and a marker in time that would change her life forever.  This was happening.  She walked over to the window and lent her head against the glass.

Thirteen years ago she was a girl on the circuit looking for her mark and he was a businessman looking for a fuck.  She’d googled him the night they’d met.  She’d done her homework, he was exactly what she was looking for. A right-wing alpha male, he got what he wanted by force.  He’d said on their first date, “I don’t need experts.  I am the expert,” and she’d been satisfied to know that he wasn’t the kind of guy who researched anything.  She’d flattered him through dinner, listened to his bullshit stories that described his rise to fame, his list of accomplishments, the dreams he’d crushed, the hopes he’d stamped on, the other men he’d left behind eating his dust, men not as clever nor as brilliant.  Perfect, she’d thought as he led her to the dance floor where other couples waltzed with lazy power.  He smelled awful.  She would fix that too. 

On their second date he took her to his golf club.  “Wow,” her arm looped through his she’d let him show her the club room and restaurant, admiring the sixteen-foot mahogany bar, the gold backed chairs, the every chance to brag.  In the foyer he’d smiled up at his own portrait.  She’d said, “now aren’t you the handsomest,” and pretended to be shy by looking at her shoes.

“We put in villas last year,” he’d whistled for a golf cart and insisted on driving it himself but when they’d drawn up outside The Presidential Suite, a monstrous Grecian bungalow hidden from the first tee by bullrushes and a lake she’d said, “only for Presidents,” and loosed herself from his grip, stumbled over wet grass in her heels and leant against a newly planted tree.  She wasn’t going to be just another easy lay.  One he could discard.  Oh no. 

It had taken work.  It hadn’t been easy.  She’d strategized and put in calls and played every trick in the book.  There’d been plenty of others ready to replace her, beautiful others who’d waggled in front of him catching his eye but she’d made herself the best of them, indispensable, the ideal adjunct to a man on the up.  Her friends had whispered in his ear “she’s just what you need,” while she was off powdering her nose; she’d made sure the message got through.  He’d proposed on the fifteenth green, the ring drawn out of the hole, his caddy a distance away.  It was a relief; she wouldn’t have to pretend to like golf anymore and she could get on with the next stage expected.

Their wedding was as ostentatious as she could make it.  Her dress a lace and crystal armour, the church embedded with unreasonable flowers, everyone had wanted to be there.  At the party she’d drank too much, enough to be thought of as silly.  She’d made him wait until they were married to let his stubby hands undress her; it hadn’t been easy but it had mattered.  It had kept her reputation unblemished.  When he lay down on top of her she bit her lip but he was too drunk to notice.  She’d let him plough on, she’d be pregnant soon enough and she was.  A son, then a daughter.  He was happy and so was she. 

All that time ago.  They’d moved from spacious town house to country mansion to this, today, the biggest house of all; an hour from now she’d be the wife of a President yet what had she achieved?  Fame as the woman who said nothing, did nothing, sat gagged and chained behind a vicious oaf.  She’d spent years on him but he’d only got worse.  In training they’d said, “only you will know how much more damaging they’d be without you,” and when she’d had her doubts her mother had said, “We are Trojan Anna.  We attack from within,” but she hadn’t tempered him at all. She’d tried and tried to make him shine but he’d got worse, not better.  She wasn’t a killer.  She’d wanted him to improve.  Through every rally and oppressive dinner she’d dug her nails into her palm and afterwards, in bed she’d say, “what if it was our daughter?” but he’d reply, “I’m not talking about girls like her,” and fall into a snoring rage of fat-soaked sleep.

It was her own fault.  The others were content to carry out operations at lower levels; the calming of a pig-headed journalist, the emasculation of a CEO but she was ambitious.  There weren’t many who could hold the faith while surrounded by jewels and not forget just for a minute.  She knew she wouldn’t break like the Trojan who’d ignored her activation, who’d used her vial to save her husband’s pride instead of using it to stop the murder of the millions he’d killed.  She breathed on the window. With the tip of her nail she drew the letter T in the mist; a stick woman in handstand with legs spread and toes pointing down. It had come in her morning post; a letter T that had fluttered from an envelope.  Activation wasn’t a failure.  It was a last resort.  But today was his day, today he would be crowned.  Tomorrow - she touched the diamond again.  An invisible catch, a lever the size of a human hair, a diamond hollowed, a vial of poison, a necklace given her by her mother.  “Think ahead,” they’d said in training.  “Every corner of your lives must be designed by you, your influence must be everywhere,” so she’d made an unbreakable habit of bringing him his tea in the morning, a tray collected at the door of their bedroom, a pretence that she’d been down to the kitchen, a joke between them, a little, touching, tradition.  Today, Inauguration.  Tomorrow, breakfast in bed, his tea in his favourite cup, her sitting beside him playing with the empty diamond around her neck.