Oath of Office

brandy. There was also a bottle of rubbing alcohol, a cigarette lighter, several ice packs, and a pile of gauze pads.

Smiling excitedly, she set the pills on her tongue and washed them down with the brandy.

This is it.

The knife she selected for starters had a thick and meaty blade. It was deeply curved. Her excited expression reflected off its shiny surface. She grabbed the sterilization kit, a lighter, and some rubbing alcohol.

“I’m going to be thin!” she sang, testing the sharpness of the huge knife against the pad of her thumb. The tremor usually present in her hands actually seemed less than usual. Still, she applied only the slightest pressure and opened a thin sliver that promptly began oozing blood.

“I’m gonna be the biggest loser. The biggest loser is what I’m gonna be.…”

Roberta sucked the blood from her thumb.

Li-po-suc-tion.

She sang the word in her mind as she admired herself again in the knife’s gleaming blade.

The brandy and Percocets were kicking in faster than she had anticipated, and she realized she was having trouble controlling her tongue. Best to hurry.

She placed a kitchen chair on the bedsheet, grabbed a blue Rubbermaid bucket, and set it at the foot of the chair. “Be prepared for something of a mess,” one set of Internet instructions had warned. A few towels and some gauze, and she was all set. On the towel beside the X-Acto knife were several threaded needles.

Ready.

Oh, I wish Terry could see me, Roberta lamented as she set a bath towel across her lap, unbuttoned her blouse, and pressed an ice pack against her belly to numb up the skin and constrict the blood vessels.

“Getting ready,” Roberta announced, though her speech now was quite thick and slurred.

She sat down on the chair and picked up the knife.

“I can do this,” she said, pressing the knife against her massive belly. “I can make it all go away.”

The huge blade easily sliced through skin. It hurt-more than she expected it to, and she cried out at the pain. But then, just as quickly, it went away. Roberta pressed on.

Her eyes rolled back. She cried out again as she forced the blade through half a foot of saffron-colored fat. Blood began to spray out onto the towel, the floor, and into the blue bucket.

I’m getting thinner already, she thought.

She dug the knife in deeper, and began slicing away huge chunks of fatty tissue and dropping them to the floor and into the bucket. Her hands and arms were slimy with a shimmering mix of blood and grease. The terrible hurt accompanying each jab gave way to a dreamy light-headedness.

Barely looking down at what she was doing, Roberta widened the incision and continued carving away fistfuls of fat. Her dizziness intensified. The floor around her chair was awash in the slick mix of blood and adipose tissue.

Terry Jennings, wait until you see me. I’m going to be so beautiful … so thin and so beautiful.

Her vision began to blur. Still, she could make out the massive incision, and the intestines that had now slid out onto the blood-soaked towel. She felt confused-lost and uncertain what she had done or why. The large knife clattered to the floor. That was the problem, she realized. She had forgotten to sterilize the knife.

Oh, Terry, what have I done? Roberta thought as the darkness enveloped her. What have I done to myself?

Moaning, she lost her strength and tipped over with her chair.

Then, abruptly, her moaning stopped.

CHAPTER 40

Darlene instructed Victor to pull into a largely deserted area of Fairmount Park’s verdant Belmont Plateau and asked that he keep as far away from the other parked cars as possible. Another Secret Service transport vehicle, part of her usual escort group, parked on the opposite side of the lot to avoid attracting unwanted attention.

Victor shut off the engine and opened the moonroof. “I’ll wait outside,” he said. “Keep an eye on things, check for photographers.”

“Thank you, my friend,” Darlene replied. “We won’t be long.”

It was the second time Victor had driven her and Lou Welcome to a park after peak hours. She knew it was the agent’s job to protect her with his life, but she also knew that ultimately his responsibility-everyone’s responsibility, for that matter, was to her husband. If he reported to the president on her growing friendship with Lou, and on their trip together outside of Washington, the tension that had been developing between her and Martin might well explode.

But she felt a connection with Lou, and wanted to get to know him better, and that was that. It said a lot for the status of her marriage that she had given precious little thought to asking Martin’s permission for the trip. After all, he had made the decision to start his reelection campaign without discussing it with her.

With Victor gone, she and Lou spent a quiet couple of minutes gazing out the town car’s bulletproof front windshield at the twinkling skyline of downtown Philadelphia, in the distance. She sighed deeply.

“Are you all right?” Lou asked.

Darlene nodded emphatically, but sensed she wasn’t convincing. Good doctors, and Lou certainly seemed to be one of those, often possessed the ability to get more out of a facial expression than they could out of lab tests. Martin, though a lawyer, had a knack for reading faces as well. Lately, though, his concerns seemed more global than with any individual, including her and Lisa. Darlene knew she was enjoying Lou too much to try to be an enigma.

“I used to come here with Martin whenever we had a campaign stop in Philadelphia,” she said. “I fell in the love with the view. I think the Philadelphia skyline is one of the most beautiful anywhere.”

“I’m glad you brought me to see it,” Lou said. “You’re right. It’s spectacular.”

“I probably shouldn’t have done this,” she said.

“Nonsense. We’ve got an hour to kill before our meeting with Humphries.”

That’s not what I meant, and you know it, she thought.

“It’s silly, really,” she said, “but I’ve never come to Philadelphia without stopping here. Martin and I would look out at the skyline and each make a wish.”

“So it’s a tradition.”

“It started off as that, but it’s morphed into more of a superstition-like a chain letter that warns you of a curse unless you continue it. If you don’t wish upon the Philadelphia skyline, something bad is going to happen. Pass it on.”

Lou laughed. What surprised her was not the warmth of his laugh so much as how much she enjoyed hearing it. She could barely believe it, but Dr. Darlene Mallory, caretaker of thousands of children over the years, First Lady of the United States, woman of the year in countless magazines around the globe, was feeling giddy-schoolgirl giddy.

“Well,” he said, “I see this as a hell of a lot healthier superstition than coming up here to eat a Philly cheesesteak sandwich.”

“Mmmmm, now me want cheesesteak sandwich,” she said in the imitation of Grover from Sesame Street that her patients loved to hear her use.

She added Lou’s grin to the things she liked about him, and tried to remember the last time she and Martin had sat alone together laughing at anything.

“So what did you wish for?” Lou asked.

“I can’t tell you that,” she said with indignation. “Have you not ever studied anything about the art of wishing?”

“The farthest I’ve gone was when I was in my second month of rehab, writing four pages of Wishing for Dummies. I must have learned something from it, because after the third