CURTIS: In the book, the reason that Alice falls for Charlie is supposed to be that, you know, she’s a kind of calm, quiet, reserved person. And he makes her life more exciting. You know, if she had ended up with someone who was also quiet, you know it’s almost like they would have lived practically silent lives. But he likes to dance and he likes to go to parties and he likes to swim and, you know, he kind of flirts with her.

LESLEY: It is the "Music Man."

CURTIS: He’s fun. And they’re supposed to be, you know, attracted to each other. He’s good looking. So it’s just sort of, I think, that her life feels like it has wider possibilities around him.

LESLEY: You know, your physical description of George Bush is George Bush. His life really tracks. I mean, he drinks too much, and then she threatens to leave, and he finds a minister who helps him clean up, and he gets into a baseball team. Here’s something that’s intriguing to me. You make Alice, or hah – I’ll whisper this, Laura.

CURTIS: No, Alice. It’s Alice.

LESLEY: Alice. You make Alice, Laura, a closet liberal. She’s pro-choice. She’s not religious; she’s kind of an agnostic. She’s against the Iraq war. Is that what you think Laura Bush is? Is she hiding this sort of secret liberalism, do you think?

CURTIS: Well, there’s a lot of speculation about that. I mean, I think that she is pro-choice. Like I think that she has, you know, said that she doesn’t think Roe vs Wade should be overturned. And she does have – like her closest friends are women she went to elementary school with. And one of them, for example, is a midwife in Berkeley. And another is, I believe, a democratic state politician. So I think that, you know, there is speculation. But I definitely don’t pretend to know. And when Hillary Clinton was running, I remember seeing Laura Bush asked whether she was excited about having a possible woman candidate for president. And Laura Bush said, “Well, I would want the first woman president to be a Republican woman.” So I think we should take Laura Bush at her word and assume that she is a Republican.

LESLEY: But you think a liberal Republican?

CURTIS: Again, the reason I love fiction is you can do whatever you want in it.

LESLEY: Well, that’s true.

CURTIS: And, you know, you’re allowed the freedom to imagine things and make things up.

LESLEY: Make them the way you wish they were.

CURTIS: Well, perhaps. I mean, I would like to think that Laura Bush has liberal leanings. But I feel like it would be very, sort of, dishonest of me to say like, “Yeah, I feel pretty confident that she does.” I mean, I just have no idea. And I, again, I think my assumption should be that she doesn’t.

LESLEY: Now, do you have a message in this book? Is there a moral? Is there something you want your readers to come away with?