'I guess we should probably do some work now', Joe said reluctantly, once Tony was gone and the shopping was put away. Jill smiled. Secretly she had been looking forward to this. She loved when she and Joe could work together without pressures of time and staff hovering, when they could lay out the pages across the big wooden table in the kitchen and work at opposite ends, facing each other.
She set about preparing, cleaning down the surface of the polished wood. The same table where they had planned so much of the early campaign, where they planned for the next. Reading over speeches and schedules and timetables, she'd be able to work out the logistics with him and keep an eye on the stove, be at the saucepan of rich, red sauce in three steps. Or take the pan of water off the boil, pull open the oven on the tray of cookies she'd made with the grandkids. Move all of the poster paints and artwork, and later tablets and phones and chargers aside when the grandkids visited and it was time for dinner. Now, today, her husband, the president, had the most important speech of the year to prepare for, and she had important work to do too.
'Coffee?' she asked as he pulled out his chair and placed a pile of pages on the table. He looked up, smiled. 'Sounds good. You want me to make it?' 'Nah, but you can be my gentleman and carry over that other pile of books for me', she told him, indicating the collection Anthony had carried in for her last night. Some of them she'd brought back from Rome; the book Donatello had brought for Joe as a gift one night was placed on the top. Others she'd bought online, got from museum and gallery shops, purchased in the name of a staffer or a friend. Some Glen had collected for her, bought in person from shops and borrowed from libraries.
'That's quite a pile you've accumulated', Joe commented as he stacked them neatly at Jill's end of the long table. 'Yeah, it is', she said, pouring the hot drink into their mugs at the counter. 'I've got to start coming up with a logistical timeline. I don't really understand how these pieces are moved around the world. I mean, how do you move a priceless treasure without anyone seeing?' she asked aloud.
At the table, Joe grinned. 'Well you should know babe, you've already been privy to that happening', he reminded her. He watched, enraptured from across the room as she nibbled her lip, lost in thought, hands resting on the flat surface in front of her. She turned bright eyes towards him. 'I guess I have Mr. President', she admitted, the surprise clear in her voice. She picked up the mugs, came towards him, and continued outlining her work for the coming few hours.
'Gideon suggested I make myself aware of how the illegal trade works. He told me to look into Persian artifacts looted from Iran, into Roman items that managed to make their way into museums in Britain as the foundation for their displays. He said I'll need to have a basic understanding of how this all works before the conference Wednesday', she continued, placing the mug of steaming coffee to the left of his draft, careful not to spill anything.
'What do you need to do?' she asked, running her hand along his shoulder. 'Uugh, decide on the main points I want to get across. The big ticket issues that everyday folks are interested in and try to figure out the big pitfalls, the trigger points for the MAGA crowd. When we know what they are we need to figure out a way of delivering the speech so the whole thing doesn't go off the rails', he said with a sigh. 'It's a different ball game this year. I don't expect decorum to be high on the agenda'. She leaned down and kissed his cheek. 'You'll figure a way', she promised him. 'Thanks babe', he said, smiling at her in gratitude.
They settled into their respective tasks. The sound of books thumping on the table as Jill was rearranging them into her desired order, the clack of the lock on Joe's soft leather briefcase, the security tag slapping against the tabletop, the softer thud of the ring binder, adorned with the Seal of the President but with edges twisted, scuffed, the cover slightly strained, bearing so many signs of regular use, was all broken by the scrape of Joe's chair moving back on the timber floor.
