Private Politics (The Easy Part) (6 page)

He said, “Ah,” in case Alyse was waiting for him to acknowledge what she’d said, but no, that didn’t encourage her to continue. Not that she needed to, she’d answered his question.

“What...are the odds?” Alyse asked finally, when no one moved to fill the space between them all.

She had said almost exactly the same thing when they’d run into Ryan Scott on Friday. Not sure if she’d picked up on it, he repeated his line, “In this town, pretty darn good.”

At this, she smiled one of those broad, full smiles that hit him in every cell of his body at once. She turned the lights on inside him. Every time, it was a double punch to the gut, first because of her and then because of the statute of limitations on every positive feeling he had in her presence. How many seconds could he afford to delude himself this time? He sighed.

Just as quickly, he realized what he had done and tried to cover it with a cough. He doubted he had succeeded in hiding it from either of them. Fawning over a girl when you were on a date with someone else was a dick move and he instantly felt like the need to beg apologies from both of them. Molly was a nice girl and one he genuinely wanted to pursue a...well, at least to date. But his heart quite simply wasn’t free; he hadn’t burned through his infatuation yet.

Right now, in this moment, he felt unfaithful to Alyse, which was the stupidest thing he’d thought in at least a week. He needed to provoke her somehow, to get her to reject him and trigger the final, wallowing-in-self-pity stage.

He brought his hand up to the small of Molly’s back. All that was left was to try to end this charade with some dignity. “It was nice running into you,” he said to Alyse. “I’ll see you...around.”

“Sure. Yes. Have a good afternoon.” She stepped to the side to allow them to pass.

Neither he nor Molly spoke as they exited the theater and then turned to walk up Wisconsin Avenue. Two blocks filled with the city’s most expensive condos faded as the approached the heart of Georgetown, shuttered and subdued because of the crap weather.

Molly didn’t say anything, not that he’d been expecting her to berate him. As they walked, he hoped that maybe he’d been imagining the whole awkward thing. Maybe he could get out of this with a minimum of embarrassment to both of them.

“So,” she finally said, “how long have you been in love with her?” Oh hell. Another illusion shattered.

“Excuse me?” The words were more sputtered than spoken. It was all he could do not to trip on the sidewalk.

Molly, in contrast, was perfectly poised. “Alyse. How long have you been in love with her?”

He didn’t know Molly very well, hardly knew her at all actually, but she didn’t sound pissed. It was a curious, interested question. “I’m not in love with her,” he tried.

God, he was an ass.

“Okay.” A beat. “How long have you been carrying a big ole torch for her?”

Such an ass. There was no use dissembling. “Forever. Six months.”

“Does she know?”

That really was the heart of the matter, wasn’t it? How could she not? She had acknowledged it, or nearly so, at Cosi on Friday. But...it wasn’t like he’d ever come out and said it. No proposition where she was concerned had ever left his mouth. He had never made a move. It had been much more of the “pining away from across the room” variety of crush.

“I...I don’t know.”

“So you think it’s an unrequited thing?”

“It’s most definitely an unrequited thing.”

Molly stopped walking and scowled at him. “For a smart guy, you’re being really stupid. She—” she pointed down the hill toward the theater, “—was pissed.”

If she had been, it had nothing to do with him, but he felt like such a jerk he didn’t want to get into it with Molly. “Look, I’m sorry. I really like you.” It was the truth. Molly was adorable, smart and spirited. He should have met her six and a half months before.

“I really like you too,” Molly said. His heart lifted a bit; she liked him? “But so does she.”

He shook his head. “I don’t believe so.”

“It’s true. And while you may like me, you can’t let yourself
like
me because you’re wrapped up in her.”

He nodded, so damned embarrassed to have to admit it, but grateful she’d said it. He probably would have gone with a simple, classic, “it’s not you, it’s me” email a few days from now, but this might be better. Unless he was stomping on her heart and she was hiding it well.

He apologized again just in case. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know she was going to be there. And I thought...I thought I was ready.”

“If you ever get ready, you’ll call me?” she asked. They’d reached the stop for her bus.

“You won’t be single long,” he said. She wouldn’t; he wasn’t sure why she was single now.

“Oh, you’re probably right,” she said, punching him on the arm with a moderate amount of force. It was quite possible she was hurting more than she let on. “But you’ll call anyway so I can reject you, right?”

“Yes.” He meant it. Molly was better for him than Alyse. On paper at least. In another lifetime, things might be different between them. But in this one, she...wasn’t Alyse. Attraction was such a cruel beast.

They hugged then. A simple, friendly hug, not a confusing, arousing paradox. He was now an expert on the differences.

“I’ll call you soon,” he said.

“I hope not.”

It was the nicest thing anyone had said to him in a long time.

Chapter Six

Alyse felt intensely sorry for all those brides who approached their nuptials without so much as putting on a dinner for fifty, let alone a reception for five hundred. If she ever planned a wedding it would be easy. Routine even.

On her desk leaned a stack of envelopes filled with invitations to a joint event YWR was hosting with several other international education groups. She was currently adhering stamps to each one and filling with simmering rage.

Somehow she’d done the first one precisely right—just enough space around the edges and perfectly straight. Her example sat there taunting her as each one since had been slightly crooked, or placed so the tines of the stamp hung off the envelope and caught on her fingers. It turned out there were lots of ways to screw up and she’d tried them all. No doubt the road to madness was paved in self-adhesive stamps.

She’d already dealt with most of the other details for the event, which was perhaps why the stamps nagged. Having addressed the larger issues, only those that couldn’t possibly matter remained.

The trick was to balance something people would want to attend with what would make them feel bad. Or not bad, but concerned and empowered. You wanted them to want to give, to feel like they could make a difference. The most important part of the evening was the transition from the statement of the problem to the call to arms. You had to end positively with a list of ways in which people could help.

What Alyse excelled at, what set her apart, was an ability to create the right conditions for The Ask. Others brought in leads, were involved in conversation, but the entire fundraising operation hinged on Geri and her. For all the teasing about centerpieces and hors d’oeuvres, the setting made The Ask possible. And whatever anyone else at YWR might think about it, Alyse knew that she brought in at least as much money as Geri. Maybe more.

That was what made whatever was going on so dangerous. There wasn’t any cover. However it had happened, she was involved.

She’d spent some time on Sunday night reexamining the photocopied receipt letters. There was something a bit off—perhaps that her signature looked too much the same.

She had signed her name ten times and compared. The signatures on the letters were far more uniform than those on her test strip. She was beginning to suspect that the letters looked unfamiliar not because she had been distracted but because she had never seen them at all.

Or not. Even the test strip was remarkably consistent, however. She had a fairly unvarying signature. She might be grasping at straws.

Maybe she’d just needed something to obsess over so that she wouldn’t contemplate Sunday afternoon. A quick exchange with Millie after she’d returned home had confirmed that Liam had just met Molly. They weren’t an established couple or anything.

When she’d asked casually, her roommate had said, “He called Parker yesterday. He apparently knows her a bit from work and Liam was concerned...”

“Parker might have hooked up with a girl he wanted to date?”

Parker’d had quite a reputation—a well-earned one—prior to his relationship with Millie.

“Something like that. Why do you ask?” Millie was trying to keep the hope out of her voice, Alyse could tell. Ever since she’d found a happy relationship, Millie had been encouraging her to date more. She and Parker hadn’t exactly tried to set her up with Liam—and Michael, and some other guys Parker knew—but they’d created opportunity. Because wouldn’t it be a perfect little Buena Vista Social Club if she paired up with one of Parker’s friends?

“No reason.” The words were thin and razor-sharp. She was trying to shut the door firmly before it flew all the way open. “I saw him at the movies and was surprised. I didn’t realize he was seeing anyone.”

Millie, who was putting away the groceries they’d purchased a few minutes before into the cupboard, said over her shoulder, “He...that is, you know how he feels about you?”

She spun the can of diced tomatoes around in her hand. Once. Twice. Three times. Did she know how he felt about her? Did she notice the way his eyes lingered on her legs? Had she picked up on the way he watched her when she talked and then frequently sighed? How he’d always end up next to her in a booth at a bar? Did everyone think she was an idiot? She was nearly thirty. She knew when a man was looking at her.

“I’m aware.”

Millie turned around and leaned against the counter. “It’s more than just a few longing glances.” She was in schoolmarm mode now, serious and didactic.

“He’s a nice guy, you know,” Millie’s refrain started.

Alyse rolled her eyes. There was no worse compliment on earth. “That’s a ringing endorsement. What else is there, really? You’ve convinced me. We’re getting married and having lots and lots of babies.”

Even Millie couldn’t resist grinning sheepishly, but she pressed on undeterred. “He’s smart. He’s funny. He’s not even a little bit arrogant. I’ve rarely met a guy in DC who’s more genuine.” All of those things were true, so Alyse didn’t argue.

Her roommate continued, “I know he’s...”

“Schlubby? Immature? Unserious?”

Millie shrugged off the accusations. Surely she was on solid ground with the first one: Liam was schlubby. His shoes were always scuffed, his hair was a mess and he dressed like an adolescent without any sense of how to mix colors or patterns, but he wasn’t immature or unserious. She had thought so, but the last week had proved her wrong.

She kept talking, “Remember, he dropped everything and came over here to help you the second Parker asked. He tasked his staff to investigate. He’s met with you since then too. More than anyone else, he’s helping you.”

True again. Maybe Millie should have gone to law school instead of becoming a union organizer. But she had skipped over a logical step, which Alyse intended to point out. “And therefore I owe him what precisely?”

“Nothing. You don’t owe him a thing. Liam would never think about it that way. I’m just saying...be fair. And be honest. With yourself at least, if not with me.”

Millie had let the subject go at that, but the damage was already done. Alyse wasn’t being fair to Liam, not even a little bit, but she had absolutely no idea how to fix it. Being fair would require her to figure out the hug and the irrational, date-related anger and she wasn’t ready to do that.

Back to her envelopes it was! Only four hundred more or so to do. This was a task for an intern, but new ones wouldn’t arrive until summer. At present, there was just the one and he only worked part-time.

Menial tasks didn’t bother her. They never had. Perhaps because she’d found her ambition in Washington, rather than bringing it with her, she never resented getting coffee or pushing papers. As far as she could tell, those things greased the wheels and someone had to do them. It might as well be her.

Because she was absorbed in trying to replicate the perfection that first stamp, she didn’t hear anyone entering her cube. There was only the cream of the envelopes and the white tines of the stamp that simply wouldn’t line up correctly...until a knee materialized in her line of sight. What was that doing there?

A knee meant a person. A person in her cube. A person who was now watching her struggle with stamps. She whipped around, facing Geri three-quarters of the way on. “Holy cow! How long have you been standing there?”

“Not long.” She sniffed a little and stretched up on her toes to look at the papers on Alyse’s desk. Gesturing at the envelopes, she said, “I didn’t think we were sending those until next week.”

“Just working ahead.”

Geri shrugged. “I wanted to follow up on our conversation last week.”

“Oh?” She knitted her fingers together in lap in case they should started shaking and tried to make her face neutral. For the moment, she felt calm, but if she had learned anything last week, it was that subterfuge did not become her.

“I looked through the receipt letters for the last few years and I didn’t see anything odd.” On the other hand, subterfuge suited Geri just fine. She wasn’t nervous or unsettled. She didn’t look down or away. As far as Alyse could discern, she didn’t exhibit any of the “tells” the Internet was convinced accompanied a lie. Unless every exchange she’d ever had with the woman had been a lie—okay, a distinct possibility—this wasn’t a lie. Except that it probably was.

“Fantastic. Thanks.”
Yes
,
that’s it.
Thanks for lying to me.
That was awesome
. “I had actually forgotten about it but, yeah, I feel lots better knowing you investigated.” About her own lie, she felt not the slightest compunction. Tit for tat and whatnot. She just hoped it was delivered as convincingly as Geri’s.

“Good.” Geri took two steps forward, way past the boundary of personal space Alyse liked to maintain, straight up to the boundary of weird. She was now very definitely looming. “Because I’d hate to see you wasting your time chasing ghosts and getting distracted.”

Alyse swallowed. Not creepy. This wasn’t creepy. It wasn’t a threat. It just sounded like one. Yup, nothing to see here.

Geri didn’t back up.

Oh, because she needed to answer. With astonishing nonchalance, Alyse said, “Yeah, me too.”

Geri rocked back on her heels, lessening the weird a shade. With the extra half inch, she managed to spin her chair all the way around toward her boss and square her shoulders. She didn’t feel quite so much like a butterfly pinned to a board this way. How could she get out of this conversation?

“Do you want me to tell you about the latest...stuff with the event?” She indicated the envelopes. Obviously no one rational would ask questions if the answer would include five hundred envelopes. They were her envelopes and even she didn’t want to talk about them.

Geri shook her head. “Why were you talking with a journalist?”

How did she know? Had she been following her?

“Ex-excuse me?” Alyse sputtered.

Her boss’s eyes were dark and very dangerous. “Ryan said you were meeting with a journalist.”

That’s how. Not good. They’d been talking about her, about this. So not good. “I didn’t. That is, oh, that was just Liam. He’s not a journalist. He writes a blog. He’s a blogger. I wasn’t meeting him. We’re in a wedding together. He’s the groom’s college roommate. We were talking about the wedding.”

Never in her life, not even when her mother had caught her with half a bottle of Beaujolais in her room when she was seventeen, had she ever been so incoherent. Then again, the stakes were far higher in this conversation.

It seemed to work in her favor, however. Geri already thought she was frivolous and easily manipulated. This wouldn’t surprise or challenge that assumption.

“Oh.” Geri nodded as if Alyse’s babble made sense. “But he wants to do a story on Ryan?”

“I guess. I mean, I don’t really know. He’s always talking about something or other. But I think Ryan would make a great spotlight subject, don’t you?” Geri wasn’t a narcissist like Ryan, but maybe she was where her boyfriend was concerned.

“It was this guy’s idea?” Geri asked. An edge of suspicion clung to the words, even as most of it had left her face.

“Totally.” She didn’t trust herself to gesture with her hands or move her body in any way, but her voice wasn’t betraying her.

“Okay then. Yeah, sounds good.” She nodded, finally relaxing all the way, and turned to go. Alyse had escaped and maybe convinced Geri that she wasn’t up to anything.

“A spotlight on Ryan
would
be great,” her boss muttered walking out into the office. “Oh and Alyse?”

What now? “Uh-huh?”

“I gave Fred all the stuff he requested,” Geri said, mostly over her shoulder.

With surprise, Alyse asked, “Really?”

“Yeah, I didn’t want you to get distracted.”

“Right. That was really thoughtful. Thank you.” The words came automatically. She didn’t think about them, even as they left a tinny residue in her mouth.

For a long time she stared into space and then back at the pile of envelopes. Smooth and creamy, they were printed on heavy paper. Unnecessary quality, probably, but she liked the way they felt in her hands and so would the recipients. Detail though it might be, she knew deep in her soul that it mattered, that three extra cents per invitation paid off.

She unwound her hands from each other and reached out for the next envelope. She peeled a stamp from the book and adhered it to the corner gently, except her finger gave a violent tremble midway through the gesture that folded the stupid thing in half.

“Shit,” she whispered, knowing that she spoke of several matters. A folded stamp was the least of her worries.

Things were worse, so much worse, than she had known. If Geri and Ryan were talking, they were worried. If they were worried, then they were absolutely, unequivocally up to something. Something malevolent.

If they were worried and up to something, then she and Liam were...no, they were not in trouble. Not in the bodily sense. But her job, her professional reputation, those were absolutely on the line. And she didn’t have the slightest idea how to handle it.

Hello
,
is this the District Police?
My boss just told me not to look into something and then assumed responsibility for the most annoying part of my job.
Can you help me?
Yeah, that wouldn’t be happening.

No, she had to give herself a deadline. Three or four days, say. If she couldn’t figure out what was going to happen and how to handle it in that time frame, then she would have to tell her father and bring in the
deus ex machina
. She hoped she could handle how much it would cost her pride. It was the only reasonable course of action.

She worked slowly, not caring about getting the stamps right, only wanting more of the afternoon to dribble away before she could leave. Shortly after five, she gathered up her things and bundled herself up, preparing for the walk home.

When she arrived, Millie and Parker were cooking in the kitchen. The apartment was filled with light and music and laughter.

“Hey, you forgot to lock the door this morning,” Millie called to her.