eye contact. We bypassed the elevator, moving quickly down a cramped
stairwell. I could hear dress shoes clicking down the stairs behind us, the agents
trying to keep up. Malia gave me a devilish smirk. She wasn’t used to my flouting
the rules.
Reaching the State Floor, we made our way toward the tall set of doors
leading to the North Portico, when we heard a voice.
“Hello, ma’am! Can I help you?” It was Claire Faulkner, the usher on night
duty. She was a friendly, soft-spoken brunette who I assumed had been tipped off
by the agents whispering into their wrist pieces behind us.
I looked over my shoulder at her without breaking my stride. “Oh, we’re
just going outside,” I said, “to see the lights.”
Claire’s eyebrows lifted. We paid her no heed. Arriving at the door, I
grabbed its thick golden handle and pulled. But the door wouldn’t budge. Nine
months earlier, an intruder wielding a knife had somehow managed to jump a
fence and barge through this same door, running through the State Floor before
being tackled by a Secret Service officer. In response, security began locking the
door.
I turned to the group behind us, which had grown to include a uniformed
Secret Service officer in a white shirt and a black tie. “How do you open this
thing?” I said, to no one in particular. “There’s got to be a key.”
“Ma’am?” Claire said. “I’m not sure that’s the door you want. Every
network news camera is aimed at the north side of the White House right now.”
She did have a point. My hair was a mess and I was in flip-flops, shorts, and
a T-shirt. Not exactly dressed for a public appearance.
“Okay,” I said. “But can’t we get out there without being seen?”
Malia and I were now on a crusade. We weren’t going to relinquish our
goal. We were going to get ourselves outside.
Someone then suggested trying one of the out-of-the-way loading doors on
the ground floor, where trucks came to deliver food and office supplies. Our
band began moving that way. Malia hooked her arm with mine. We were giddy
now.
“We’re getting out!” I said.
“Yeah we are!” she said.
We made our way down a marble staircase and over red carpets, around the
busts of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin and past the kitchen until