Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [253]
Neither Monica nor her mother was able to sleep. Instead, they crept back into the SUV and drove, out of pure impulse, to the Four Seasons Hotel in Georgetown, figuring that the phones there would be safe. One possible candidate for a late-night call was Betty Currie. Monica also wanted to call her dad in California just to hear his voice. As they entered the lobby at around 2:30 A.M., a couple trailed behind them. The two women looked at each other in panic, as if to communicate: “Oh my God, they’re agents!” In desperation, mother and daughter discussed whether they should flee the country. Monica concluded, “They probably have all the borders covered,” and “my name’s on the list at the airport.” She later realized that her thought processes were impaired, yet there was no stopping the flood of doomsday scenarios. “Your mind sort of goes to the things that happen in the movies and on TV,” she would later say, “because that’s the only point of reference.” Assuming the worst, Monica and her mother turned around and headed for the hotel exit.
The last time Monica had seen Bill Clinton was on December 28 when he had given her “all those Christmas presents and we had a nice Christmas kiss.” After New Year’s, Monica had sent the president “a book and this mushy note.” They had also had a “weird discussion” about a mishmash of topics the day before she signed the affidavit. Other than that, the relationship with “Handsome” was virtually dead, without a pulse or a heartbeat. All of a sudden, Bill Clinton was again looming front and center in her mind. As she and her mother pulled out of the Four Seasons parking lot and drove back into the cold night, Monica was thinking about three things: Bill Clinton, her family, and whether everyone would be spared this nightmare if she could figure out an efficient way to kill herself.
Marcia Lewis could intuit that her daughter was teetering on the brink of mental collapse. When they were safely inside the Watergate condo, Marcia waited for Monica to use the bathroom, listening for any unusual sounds that might indicate she was trying to harm herself. “And then I had her lie down and I just sat there next to the bed,” Marcia recalled. “I was really afraid.”
During the night, the phone rang. Bernie Lewinsky had taken the risk and called his daughter directly. Marcia said, “We’re home now. Monica is not doing well. She’s very shaken up.” Bernie told his ex-wife, “Don’t leave her alone. Just stay with her and be sure if you hear anything that you go in there immediately.” Both parents recognized that Monica was extremely “unstable.” They might need to seek intervention.
Marcia later acknowledged that in hindsight, it sounded paranoiac that she would worry about who might be watching them inside Monica’s apartment. Still, she couldn’t escape these terrible, racing thoughts. “My thinking was that they were going to come and get us. I figured if they didn’t come that night, they would come the next day.… It was that simple.”
All Marcia could remember of the next few days and nights, as Monica lay on her bed sobbing as if consumed with fever and drifting in and out of a troubled sleep, was that it turned into “a very strange sort of twilight zone time.”
CHAPTER
30
CLINTON TAKES AN OATH
President Bill Clinton, heading into the deposition that would forever change his presidency, did not take kindly to Paula Jones’s allegations. Nor was he pleased that she had turned down what