Page 59 of Kiss Me Now
She grinned and pushed the stick aside. “If you love it so much, why don’t you move there?” She said it in a schoolyard taunt voice, but I answered her seriously.
“I guess I feel needed in DC.”
“I had you pegged for a cynic, not an idealist.”
“Someone has to take out the trash.”
“Is that what it feels like you’re doing?”
I shrugged and sat on the fallen log she was peeling mushrooms from. “On a good day.”
“And on a bad one?”
I sighed. “On a bad one, I remember coming to the capital for field trips in grade school and thinking we live in the best country on Earth. I wanted to be part of things. Work in the important buildings. Maybe work for the FBI catching bad guys. Or give important speeches or something. And it’s depressing to realize there are so many of the bad guys. A lot of them pretending to be the good guys.”
She gave a small smile. “I miss Capitol field trips. Wandering through the Smithsonian when you’re a kid and being too dumb to appreciate the history but stoked to get out of school. I always liked that I got to buy lunch in the museum cafeteria, and I could spend the money on chips.”
“Let me guess, your favorite was the natural history museum?”
“Bingo.” She tilted her head to study me. “Yours was...the National Portrait Gallery?”
“For sure. Love me some boring paintings of old dead people.”
She laughed, and I was glad to feel us slipping back into a comfortable groove. “Okay, what was your actual favorite? Air and Space?”
“That one was pretty cool, but mine’s the International Spy Museum.”
“Okay, James Bond.”
“What do you mean, ‘okay’?”
“I mean you made that up, or I would have heard of it.”
“No, it’s real,” I said, laughing. “Google it. It opened when I was in high school.”
She waved her hand, like,Yeah, right.“If it’s not on Google, you owe me. You can pay up with coffee from Bixby’s every morning next week.”
“You got it. Too bad I won’t be buying you any coffee.”
She stared at me with a slightly more serious expression. “Spy museum, huh? I should have guessed that. So why not join the FBI or something?”
“I meant to,” I confessed. I plucked at the bark on the log. “That’s why I got my law degree. The FBI loves lawyers and accountants. But I guess I got impatient waiting for a chance to do my investigating, and I fell into it at the firm. And now...”
“Now?” she prompted, looking up from the mushroom she was examining when I didn’t finish my thought.
But I wasn’t going to, because how was I supposed to say,Now I don’t think they’d want me because I’ve had to skate an ethical line for so long that I’m not sure I haven’t crossed it a few times.Iwasn’tgoing to say that. I could barely make myself think it.
I pivoted. “And now it’s time for you to tell me how field trips to DC led an aspiring scientist to politics. Was it the field trips that planted the seed so that later you’d think, ‘I can solve this with the law’? What was the arc?”
“It’s partially that, yeah. They do a good job of making you think you can make a difference when you grow up.”
“And you did. Why do you think you ended up in politics when a lot of us think the same thing and never do?”
“I’m driven, I guess. A problem-solver. I saw a problem in the vape regulations that cost me a friend, and I wanted to fix it.”
“And you did.”
“And I did.” But she didn’t smile like she was proud of it. “Being driven isn’t great if you’re going the wrong direction.”
