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instead of taking the verbal lashing and simply rescheduling him, I avoided the whole headache and threw him the one bone I knew he’d go running for. I was so damn smug about it too. Dangling the President in front of him just to make my job easier. That decision took Boyle’s life. And destroyed my own.
    The only good news, as always, came from Manning. When most aides leave the job, they have half a dozen job offers. I had none. Until Manning was kind enough to invite me back on board. Like I said, people don’t understand. Even out of the White House, this is still a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
    “By the way, Wes,” Mitchel interrupts, “you ever find out if they got the honey for the President’s tea? You know he needs it for his throat.”
    “Already on it,” I reply, wiping my forehead with the palm of my hand. Between the heat from the lights and my fever, I’m ready to pass out. Doesn’t matter. The President needs me. “It should be waiting in the car when we’re done.” Double-checking, I pull my satellite phone from my pocket and dial the number for our Secret Service driver outside. “Stevie, it’s Wes,” I say as he picks up. “That honey get there yet?”
    There’s a short pause on the other line. “You’re kidding, right?”
    “Is it there or not?” I say, deadly serious.
    “Yes, Wes—the all-important honey has arrived. I’m guarding it right now—I hear there’s a gang of bumblebees in the neighborhood.” He pauses, hoping I’ll join him in the joke.
    I stay silent.
    “Anything else, Wes?” he asks dryly.
    “No . . . that’s all for now.”
    I can practically hear his eyes rolling as I hang up the phone. I’m not an imbecile. I know what they say about me. But they’re not the ones who still see the puddle of blood under Boyle every time I hear an ambulance pass. Manning lost the presidency and his best friend. I lost something far more personal. It’s no different than a trapeze artist who takes a bad fall during a triple backflip. Even when the bones are healed and everything’s back in place . . . even when they put you back in the big top . . . you can swing as hard as you want, but it takes time before you’ll ever fly as high again.
    “. . . though I still make ’em call me
Mr. President
,” Manning jokes from onstage.
    A swell of laughter gushes up from the audience, which is comprised of seven hundred of the top employees of the Tengkolok Insurance Corporation, the forty-third largest company in Malaysia. The good news is, they’re paying $400,000 and private jet travel for the fifty-seven-minute speech . . . plus a short Q&A, of course. As a
Newsweek
reporter once told me, the post-presidency is like a prime-time hit in syndication: less visible, but far more profitable.
    “They like him,” the deputy prime minister tells me.
    “He’s had some practice in front of crowds,” I reply.
    He keeps his eyes locked on the President’s silhouetted profile, refusing to acknowledge the joke. From this angle, the way Manning jabs a determined finger out toward the audience, he looks like he’s back in fighting shape. The spotlight gives him an angelic glow . . . thinning out his extra fifteen pounds and softening every feature, from his sharp chin to his leathered skin. If I didn’t know better, I’d think I was back in the White House, watching him through the tiny peephole in the side door of the Oval. Just like he watched over me in my hospital room.
    I was there almost six months. For the first few, someone from the White House called every day. But when we lost the election, the staff disappeared, as did the phone calls. By then, Manning had every reason to do the same and forget about me. He knew what I’d done. He knew why Boyle was in the limo. Instead, he invited me back. As he taught me that day, loyalty mattered. It still does. Even after the White House. Even in Malaysia. Even at an insurance conference.
    A yawn leaps upward in my throat. I