Chapter 5

Jennifer was just finishing attaching her second earring when Renee emerged from her adjoining room and breathlessly asked how she looked.

"You're good," Jennifer admitted, although a more objective answer might have been "outstanding" or "superb." Renee's bust wasn't in Jennifer's league, but it perfectly complemented her slender hips and long torso.

"The gown, she is gorgeous, non?" She twirled around. "I still do not understand 'ow you are affording all of this."

"I told you. Mother Marie-Elaine gave us some cash."

"I assumed it was a few hundred euros."

"Yeah. Well, it was a little bit more than that. Enough for us to buy clothes and put on this dinner anyway."

"Are the Gores really here?"

"Julie just phoned. They're down the hall."

"And you 'ave your speech all prepared?"

"Oh, yeah. Blah, blah, blah, family values. Blah, blah, blah, evil influence of rock music. Here's the ring. Thanks for coming on behalf of the Children Are Our Future Coalition. All the people burst into applause."

"People?"

"It would be a pretty poor awards dinner if we didn't have a crowd, honeybunch. Don't worry, Julie's got it all taken care of."

Julie Astin might not have been much help in escaping from a foreign country, but when it came to planning a party, the girl had few peers. Even from her home in California, where her mother had been forced to extend her grounding, the girl was perfectly capable of setting up a lavish dinner at a posh hotel in New York. The crowd in question - the other "members" of the "Coalition" - were being drafted from the Metropolitan Opera's matinee performance of Rigoletto. If they behaved, and nobody booed, they would all get another two hundred dollars when the dinner was over.

"Then Tipper speaks. People clap again. The world is saved from environmental disaster. Thank you, Jennifer Jackson."

"So you 'ave the ring?"

"Right here on my finger, Renee. Didn't want to take a chance on losing this baby." Jennifer held up her right hand. "No pockets in the gown, either. Shit. It won't come off. Shit. Help me get it off. Shit, shit, shit."

"The bathroom!" Renee pointed. "Let's get some soap. Merde! It is really stuck, Zhenifer. Maybe some lotion. Non. Let me think. Ah, I 'ave it."

She ran back to her room and returned with a tube.

"K-Y jelly?" Jennifer raised an eyebrow. "What the hell have you been doing in there, Renee?"

"Quiet. I'm trying to get off your ring, Zhenifer."

"It's not my ring, babe."

"It is if I can't get it off, isn't it?" The two women worked furiously, but to no avail. It was almost as if the ring had decided that the responsibility to save the planet was Jennifer's alone.

"What do we do?" Renee asked.

"Okay, first off, we don't panic, okay? Okay?"

"Oui. Yes. I am sorry."

"Good. Now, it's too late to cancel the dinner. I'll call Jules and tell her what's going down. But we'll have to keep the Gores from showing up."

"Why do we have to cancel the dinner?"

"And give her what? A pen from the Waldorf-Astoria? All we have is the ring."

"C'est vrai," Renee admitted with a shrug.

Jennifer made a quick call, and two minutes later, they were knocking on the doors of the suite occupied by Al and Tipper Gore.

"Yes?" The former vice president answered the door with his bow tie in his hand.

"Mr. Gore, I'm Jennifer Jackson, the executive assistant to Mrs. Barton, the president of the coalition. I'm afraid there's been a terrible accident."

"What's wrong?" Tipper Gore joined her husband at the door in a glorious brown evening gown.

"Mrs. Gore, I am so sorry. I'm afraid we're going to have to postpone the dinner. Our president, Felicity Barton, um..."

"Yes?" Tipper asked, genuine concern furrowing her brow.

"Died," blurted out Renee.

"She died?" the Gores asked in unison. "Just now?"

"Yes," Jennifer said slowly, her eyes narrowing as she stared at Renee. "Of a horrible French disease. My colleague, Renee, um, Paris, can fill you in."

Renee returned Jennifer's glare before she turned back to the Gores.

"Meuniere's syndrome," she said smoothly. "It does strike very quickly sometimes."

"Goodness," Tipper said. "I am so sorry."

"Really," Al added in his well-known two-note baritone. "Such a tragedy."

"Yes, well, perhaps we could reschedule it."

"Of course," Tipper agreed.

"Although it will have to wait a while this time," Al said. "It was our good luck that we had today open on such short notice when you called last week."

"Oh?" Jennifer asked. She could not imagine that the life of a former vice president was that complicated. After all, it wasn't like the current vice president did anything.

"Yes," Al explained. "Tipper and I will be in Japan for the next three weeks, at a spiritual retreat to promote awareness of global warming. And then after that, we'll be representing the United States at the Olympic opening ceremony in Beijing. I think that's on the ninth of August."

"The eighth," Tipper gently corrected him.

The two girls traded alarmed looks.

"August eighth?" Renee asked.

Two-thousand eight?" Jennifer chimed in.

"Yes." Al nodded slowly. "It is this year."

"Merde," Renee whispered under her breath.

"Shit," Jennifer added.

"Well, since the dinner is cancelled," Mrs. Gore said, "would you like to join us? We can order something from room service."

"Great." Jennifer reached a quick decision and pushed past the Gores into their suite. "I am starved. Renee, how 'bout you order us a bottle of champagne to start?"

"Champagne?" Al asked. "Do you think that's appropriate? I mean, with Mrs. Barton's death?"

"She would have wanted us to entertain you properly," Jennifer lied. "And to toast her wonderful life and all her magnificent achievements."

Two hours later, the two girls were still sitting on the couch in the Gore's hotel suite. They had amiably helped their hosts drink two bottles of champagne, and had not yet gotten around to ordering dinner, when Jennifer realized that the conversation was winding down.

"So, Mr. Gore," she said, "tell me about this global heating thingy."

"Warming," Renee said with a hiss.

"Whatever," Jennifer whispered before turning back to Al with a smile. "Global warming. It can't be as bad as everyone says." She batted her eyelashes a few times. "Can it?"

"Are you sure?" Al asked. He had had more than his share of the champagne, to the point of unbuttoning the top button on his shirt.

"We would love to know more," Jennifer purred.

"Well, I don't have my PowerPoint slides with me..."

"Oh, Al," Tipper said with a laugh as she whacked him on the arm. "Just tell them. I'm gonna order some more champagne. Does anyone want dinner? No? Okee-dokee."

"Basically," Al began, "no responsible scientist would argue with the proposition that global temperatures have been increasing over the last half-century, or that this period has corresponded with man's increased use of fossil fuels - oil, gas, coal - to drive the economies of the industrialized nations."

"Fascinating," Jennifer said. "Isn't it Renee?

The French girl answered with a hiccup.

"So the issue becomes the extent to which scientists are willing to conclude that the two are related. In other words, has our use of fossil fuel contributed to the production of so-called 'greenhouse gases.' So called because they act as a greenhouse. Just as a greenhouse keeps the plants inside warm, so these gases prevent the planet from dissipating its heat. And as that heat remains, the earth begins to warm. Slowly at first, but the better science believes that the rate of increase will itself increase exponentially over the next half-century."

Renee opened her mouth and hiccupped again, but decided she should still try to support her friend with some appropriate devil's advocacy.

"But couldn't that warming be caused by natural events," she asked. "Volcanoes, solar variations, climate cycles?"

"Farting cows?" Tipper blurted out with a guffaw.

Al smiled.

"That's an excellent question, Renee. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, with which I shared the Nobel Prize, concluded that the main source was anthropogenic greenhouse gases. In other words, man-made. Although it's actually quite humorous. The term "anthropogenic" actually means "producing humans." The term for "produced by humans" is actually "anthropogenous." So in fact the IPCC concluded that the greenhouse gases were caused by the act of producing humans, which as we all know is sexual activity."

"That is funny," Jennifer agreed after she realized that Al had paused for laughter and that Tipper was giggling uncontrollably. "Isn't it, Renee?"

"Mais oui," Renee agreed. "Although such a serious subject."

"Exactly." Al was off again. "Far too many people these days take the whole situation much too lightly, expecting that their children will..."

"Renee!"

The French girl felt her shoulder shaken violently and came awake with a start.

"Thank God," Renee said. "I was afraid I was going to have to do the whole fucking thing myself. Take off your clothes."