“A Madeleine L’Engle.”
“Just now?”
“Earlier.” Alice frowned. “I didn’t realize it was so late.”
“Perhaps time has wrinkled a little. Have a good evening.”
“Yes, sir. Good night, Mr. Beale, Mrs. Beale.”
“Good night, Alice,” they both said, while Charles opened the door, and the umbrella, and they both walked out under it.
Only April could have such gentle rain. The colors of the watercolor streets ran together from the slate roofs, down the dun and brick buildings, picked up the bright daubs of flower boxes and dark brilliant doors in every joyful hue that was respectable, spread across the footways in their own hard solid wet colors, and pooled into shining reflections in the streets. These were the old buildings’ hidden colors that only came out in the rain, the shades of their youth buried under the dulling of their years.
“Do you remember…?”
They knew every square of the pavement, which ones held puddles, which ones had root-lifted corners.
“Remember what?” Dorothy’s voice was as soft as the rain.
“The open window.”
“Of course I do.”
The rain whispered.
“The rain makes me think of it,” Charles said. “I would take you back there.”
“It wouldn’t be the same.”
“It probably wasn’t even then.” They waited at a corner. The strolling water didn’t wait but passed on.
“Sometimes I wonder if it really was the way I remember,” she said. “But I would rather have the memory whether or not it’s true.”
“It is true. It’s not what actually happened, the memory we have of it is truer than that.”
“It’s an irony, isn’t it, Charles? Edmund Burke and now Thomas Paine, together on the shelf.”
“Perhaps you shouldn’t put them too close, Derek.”
“No, side by side. Two men, two revolutions, and what different and radical reactions they had.”
“ ‘Radical reaction.’ That’s a clever turn of phrase. Paine would have liked it.”
“He had no humor, Charles. Radicals don’t. Burke did. One of many contrasts between them.”
“They make a good contrast. Burke was such a strong voice in the British Parliament in favor of the American Revolution, but so strongly against the French.”
“And Paine never saw a revolution he didn’t like, even when it almost cost him his own head.”
“And I doubt, Derek, that you ever saw a revolution you did like.”
“Never, except that they make good literature. I was reading Pasternak the other night.”
“I agree that stable times are much more comfortable. But revolutions created the modern world.”
“You sound like Jefferson, Charles. A little blood, now and then, to keep liberty fresh?”
“Maybe just a bit of personal revolution, as a fresh start. Do you have anything in your life that you would want overthrown, Derek?”
“A personal revolution? No. Besides, it’s not a revolution unless there’s blood.”
WEDNESDAY MORNING
“Mr. Beale, Ms. Liu will see you now.”
“Thank you.”
Just 7:48.
The congresswoman liked flowers. They filled the waiting room in paintings and fresh-cut arrangements and pastel furniture.
The outer office was filled with people, at least photographs of them. It was an impressive cult of personality. Hundreds covered the walls, most of them of her and star-struck constituents, and hundreds of thank-you cards.
For surely the minuscule woman in the pictures celebrating the success of representative government service was the force driving the office and everyone in its fifty-yard vicinity. The face was a striking mix of features, Asian and African, which did not peacefully coexist but were proudly distinct.
The pictures hardly captured the vibrant energy that met him full force as he entered the inner office. The room was a sherbet bowl of lime, raspberry, orange and lemon, but the real brightness glowed from the dazzling smile and glittering eyes fixed on him.
Charles blinked.
“Mr. Beale! I am so glad to meet you.”
With both perfect dignity and thorough eagerness, Karen Liu strode forward from her desk toward him, her hand extended at about the level of his waist. He leaned a little down, bowing before the queen, to reach her.
“Ms. Liu. I’m honored.”
At this lower altitude he was chin to indomitable chin with her, and eye to mesmerizing eye.
“I am, too,” she said. “Sit down.”
Disobedience was unthinkable. He sat.
She did also, and they reached a middle-ground compromise to their vertical differences. It was a sign of favor; she didn’t seem likely to compromise often.
“You were a friend of Derek Bastien,” she said. “And that means you must be intriguing.”
Charles was momentarily stunned.
“Well, I’m not,” he said. “Not very.”
She didn’t believe him. “You must be. How did you know Derek?”
“I sold him books.” He was beginning to get his breath back.
“Books. He had a lot of them.”
Her eyes were disconcerting. He tried to concert.
“Antique books.” He managed to meet her stare. “I have a shop in Alexandria. Derek was a customer.” He tried to be intriguing. “And a friend.”
“He was my friend, too,” Karen Liu said. “And I was proud to be his friend.”
“You worked with him, didn’t you?”
Her stare shifted to distant horizons. “We accomplished so much. I could always count on his support at the Justice Department. What makes a book antique?” She suddenly returned.
“A long time.”
“How much do they cost?”
“A lot.”
She nodded. “Old and expensive. Derek must have loved them. And what can I do for you this morning?”
He smiled, his watts to her megawatts. “I just decided that I’d like to meet some of Derek’s other friends. I hope I’m not wasting your time.”
“No, you are not. He was a wonderful man, and we are all diminished by his loss.”
Judging by her stature, the congresswoman had had many such losses. “I only talked with him occasionally,” Charles said. “A few times a year when he came to the shop, or I delivered a book to him.”
“I talked with him every week. My staff worked with his staff every day.”
“Is that unusual? That’s not the picture one usually gets of cooperation between Congress and the executive departments.”
“It was unusual because Derek was unusual, and it has been quite different without him.”
“Who took his place?”
“I wouldn’t know.” A dark cloud suddenly obscured the sun. “We have been instructed that all communication will pass through the Deputy Assistant Attorney General personally from now on, and not his staff.” And the cloud became a thunderhead.
“I’m so sorry.” Saying the wrong thing could bring torrential downpours, and Charles didn’t have an umbrella.
“It is sorry. It is a disgrace for Mr. Borchard, who is an appointed official, to act this way.”
“But tell me about yourself,” he said. “If you don’t mind. Derek spoke of you often.”
Her smile flashed out like a lighthouse through the gloom, and the gloom went running for its life.
“Mr. Beale, I am living the most wonderful life in the world.”
Somehow, no less an answer would have been right. “Tell me how you got to Congress. It must not have been easy.”
Every sentence brought out a different light source. Now it was a laser. “Nothing has ever been easy.”
“But I think you don’t let that stop you. You must be quite a fighter.”
“I have always fought, Mr. Beale. I fought my way into college, and into law school, and into every place I’ve ever been.”
Charles had settled back into his chair. The conversation had turned into a stump speech, one that Karen Liu had given many times. But the passion was fresh and pungent.
“I fought my way out of an alcoholic mother and a father who disappeared when I was two, and out of poverty and racism and bigotry and I will keep fighting for the people who are still in chains to poverty and racism and bigotry. That is what I have been doing, and that is what I will continue to do. You can read my biography, Mr. Beale, it’s on my website.”