Birds in Paradise by Dorothy McFalls Page B

lose my mind.
    I pushed aside one of the large display boards I’d made for this morning’s presentation and grabbed my backpack. The display was ready. I was ready. There was really nothing left for me to do before the meeting. In three hours I would give my first presentation to the First Lady, which was the reason I’d been struck by this sudden manic need to make Lafayette Square perfect. When I got nervous, I gardened.
    “Just don’t show up with mud on your skirt,” Gordon called after me as I rushed down the passageway, past the chocolate shop shrouded in rich, dark cocoa scents, and into the basement hallway that led away from the workshops and offices buried beneath the North Portico of the White House. I hurried, not toward the main building, but to the double doors on my right that opened into the sunken courtyard and the North Lawn.
    It was still drizzling. A freezing wind rushed in from the north, pelting my face with the cold rain from one of winter’s last gasps. Fresh green buds had already set on the trees. Cherry blossoms were just starting to brighten the capital city with their festive shades of pink. I smiled and waved at Fredrick, the bulky guard on duty at the northwest gate.
    “Keep an eye out for the new batch of crazies,” Fredrick stuck his head out of the guard hut to warn me. He had a head of bright red hair and cute round cheeks that were in conflict with his massive arms and broad chest. “They showed up last night and started harassing anyone they could find. We broke it up, but we expect they’ll be back.”
    “What are they protesting now?” I liked to be prepared in case one of them started lecturing me while my hands were half-buried in a flowerbed. Some protesters viewed any member of the White House staff as part of the problem. That’s free speech for you. I’m all for it as long as no one tramples my flowers.
    “Apparently they’re against the President’s meeting with the bankers this week.” He scratched his chin and shrugged. “Didn’t read their literature.”
    I spotted about a dozen protesters setting up at the edge of Lafayette Square, the seven-acre public park situated across the street from the White House’s iron gates. The protesters had arrived dressed in drab rags and burlap sacks. Several placards were scattered on the ground around them as they stood under streetlamps chatting and sipping their Starbucks coffees.
    I made my way through the security gate and crossed Pennsylvania Avenue, passing by the group without incident. At this early hour, most of Lafayette Square was still empty and shrouded in deep shadows and fog.
    Beyond the banking protesters, a sleeping woman hunched down in her makeshift tent. That was Connie, a nuclear arms protester who for the past three decades had lived in front of the White House among her large handmade poster board signs.
    In no time, I arrived at the far side of the park and the flowerbed where the mile-a-minute weeds with their distinctive triangular leaves had taken root. They’d wrapped their tentacles and curved barbs around the long ribbon leaves of the newly planted pink ruffled tulips. Like tiny hands, the weeds were slowly but surely choking the life out of the showy flowers.
    I unzipped my backpack and placed it on the ground so I could rummage through it. After pulling on my work gloves, I unwound the vines from the tulip leaves and teased their spider-vein roots from the soft, black earth. Ever mindful of my upcoming meeting, I took extra care to keep from splashing mud on my suit or pantyhose.
    The steady motion of my hands, along with the sounds of the city slowly coming awake, soothed my nerves. Soon, I was one with the flowers, trees, and chilly rain still falling from the ebbing storm. I was so totally lost in my work that I barely noticed the man dashing in the direction of Pennsylvania Avenue and the White House.
    Everyone in Washington, D.C., always seems to be in a hurry running here or there.