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 celebrity magazines in some mid-range spa. She wanted to be in them. She leaned into the tilted mirror and applied another layer of 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 it along with everything else that Anna saw; auburn highlights swept back and sprayed into effortless style that said self-possessed without screaming, her suit, dusty pink, it showed off her figure, jewellery, expensive, platinum hoops and the necklace her mother had given her, a diamond that tucked beneath the buttons of her shirt. She drifted from the mirror across the plush, silent room, the thrum from outside muted like she was, as she had learnt to be. The names the press had called her: trophy wife, air head; the mean and awful slander. She’d put up with all of it. The whole point was to be good looking. Trophies were what men like her husband were all about.
Her people had said, “are you sure?” but she’d said yes, she was sure. She’d watched her mother, she’d said I can do it. She touched the diamond about her neck. Lifted it from her shirt and pressed it between thumb and forefinger. Worry wouldn’t help. She was in it now. Out there beyond the lawns lay the world’s press, millions 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 already knew who he was on the night they met. He was exactly what she was looking for. On their first date he said, “I don’t need experts. I am the expert,” and she’d thought perfect and flattered him through dinner. When he led her to the dance floor where other couples waltzed with lazy power, she giggled and whispered something stupid in his ear, pretending to be nervous. He gripped her tighter. 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 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 smiled up at his own portrait. She said, “now aren’t you the handsomest,” and pretended to be shy while looking at her shoes.
“We put in villas last year,” he whistled for a golf cart.
But when they drew up to the The Presidential Suite, a monstrous Grecian bungalow hidden from the first tee by bullrushes and a lake she said, “only for Presidents,” and loosed herself from his grip, stumbled over wet grass in her heels and leant against a tree. She regretted it now, the idea that had bloomed between them, but all she’d been thinking at the time was that she wasn’t going to be an easy lay, one he could discard. Oh no.
It hadn’t been easy. She’d strategized and put in calls, played every trick; there were plenty of others to replace her. But Anna was the best of the best, they’d said so in training. She made herself indispensable, she kept her legs shut. His friends back-slapped can you get me one, their wives nodded their approval. They were blinded. None of them could see.
Their wedding was as ostentatious as she could make it. Her dress a lace and crystal armour, the church embedded with unreasonable flowers, everyone wanted to be there. At the party she drank too much so that when the moment came for his stubby hands to undress her, she was ready to blot it out. She let him plough on, she’d be pregnant soon enough, and she was; a son and then a daughter.
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 monster. Vicious and mad, she hadn’t tempered him at all. In training they’d said, “only you will know,” and her mother had said, “We are Trojan Anna. We attack from within,” but he’d only got worse. Through every rally and oppressive dinner she’d dug her nails into her palm and afterwards, in bed say, “what if they were our children?” but he’d reply, “They’re vermin,” and fall into 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 and not lose their heads. She knew she wouldn’t break like the Trojan who’d ignored her activation, who’d saved her vial, used it when it was far too late, administered poison to stop justice instead of the murder of millions.
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.
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 a habit of bringing him tea in the morning, a tray collected at the door of their bedroom, a pretence that she’d been to the kitchen, made it herself, a joke between them, a little, touching, tradition. Today, Inauguration. Tomorrow, breakfast in bed, his tea in his favourite cup, her beside him watching him drink it, her hand playing with the empty diamond around her neck.