“Still trying to get me to be your housewife, huh?”
God, did I hate the way she fought. How small she could make me feel with a single turn of phrase.
“I want to start a family with you, yes,” I said. “Hell, I’ll breastfeed while you chop wood—I don’t care. We said that was in the cards, that a plan like that would… emerge sometime soon. And yet every year it seems further away.” She hunched forward, chin on her knuckles, and looked infuriatingly bored with me. “We can go wherever we want,” I repeated.
“Has nothing changed with you, man?” she demanded. “You still buy into the same fantasy that any of this is going to be okay, that there’s anywhere to hide.”
“So that’s your answer?”
She looked behind her like she was wondering who I was talking to. “Dude, what other answer did you think I would have? This is happening.”
“If that’s the way you feel, then maybe I need to go.”
“Oh yeah? Where are you going?”
“Back home. Back to Carolina.”
I could see her trying to estimate how serious a threat this was. Even in that moment, I wasn’t sure.
“And do what?”
“I got into an MFA program. At UNC Greensboro.” Because this sounded so, so, so stupid when I said it out loud, I had to preempt her. “And before you get sanctimonious—‘Oh, Tar Heel, you’re gonna write your little book while the world falls apart?’—I am demanding that you just keep it the fuck to yourself. This was what I wanted before I met you. Understand? I didn’t want any of this shit. The fame, the endless work, the humiliation, none of it. I wanted you. I loved you.”
“And you’re saying you don’t anymore?”
“No.” And that lump pushed the tears right past my defenses because I’d issued a threat I now had to make good on. “Of course I do. I love you so fucking desperately, it’s ruining my life. Because I can’t compete with your mission. I’ve always been such a distant fucking second. Hell, maybe not even second, depending on who else you’re seeing.”
“Don’t go there,” she warned.
And I nodded because that was only fair. We looked away from each other for a moment, but I could feel it coming off her: Her fury burned through her skin. She bit a cuticle, and her face was racked with cold calm. I wanted her to slap me like she had years ago.
“Say something,” I demanded.
“I think you said it.” Her voice was even. “What are you waiting for, Matt? Go. Don’t let me stop you.”
I clenched my fists as the darkest wave washed over me. I felt twenty-two again. “Goddamnit, Kate, are you actually fucking serious right now?”
“Take the car. Take the dog.”
I dropped to my knees and grabbed her by one warm cheek. I forced her to look me in the eye. “This is not how this goes. It just isn’t.”
“How does it go then?”
“Call this off. Show me you care for me even a fraction of how much I’ve cared for you. If I’ve ever meant anything to you, you won’t go through with this.”
She gently took my hand away from her face.
“I’ve told you what I’m doing. I’ve been working toward it for over a year, and now you want to jump ship? So jump.”
She looked away. A tear pushed out of her eye. She quickly wiped it and blinked back the rest.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “You need to go. This only gets harder the longer we sit here.”
I’m not sure how long I did sit there, stunned, sick to my stomach, feeling like I might faint. Even after all those years, when I looked at her, I still couldn’t get a hold of what color her eyes were.
Then I stood. As if I were piloting another man’s body, I went to the bedroom and packed haphazardly, forgetting so much due to my haste. I left. Out the front door with Dizzy, who just thought we were going for a ride and panted happily as she pounced into the back seat. My dog and I drove through the pines toward the highway, my skin cold, my shock too deep to even fully understand what had just happened. Because it didn’t feel real at all. Not at the time. I didn’t even know where I was driving. At least I’d have to go back for my books, I told myself.
But it was the last time I’d ever see Kate Morris.
T
HE
S
IEGE
2034
APRIL 1
A light rain fell, and they came by the thousands up through the tunnels of the Metro and crossing the Potomac, surging along the sidewalks on their way to the National Mall. They wore yellow rain jackets and blue ponchos, costumes and Indigenous dress, carrying signs and placards. Artists at a face-painting station inked American flags or green and blue Earths on the cheeks of children. Quinton Marcus-McCall, a thirty-four-year-old volunteer with A Fierce Blue Fire’s mutual aid network, shuffled behind fellow concertgoers, past the security checkpoints of metal detectors, flak-jacketed police officers, ATF, and bomb-sniffing dogs. He’d driven from Detroit the week before, staying in a hotel in Maryland, and now found himself stuck behind a family with a stroller, stopped by police who were all but taking it apart searching for something. The parents looked annoyed and frantic to get in. A woman behind Quinton griped to a friend that she couldn’t believe Zeden had dropped out. When it was Quinton’s turn at the metal detectors, the crowd jostled him into Second Lieutenant Walter Pasquina, a US Marine on leave. “My bad,” said Quinton. Pasquina accepted Quinton’s apology without a second thought and went back to his phone, specifically the concert’s dedicated app, which was telling him where they might like to stand for the best view.
Walt was there with his kid sister, Kelly, a twenty-one-year-old organizer on the American University campus, about as lefty as her brother Walt was indifferent to politics. She’d rebuilt her Slapdish worlde as a shrine to Free Clay Ro, the Ohio plumber arrested and accused of domestic terrorism. Six years Kelly’s senior, Walt had basically raised her while their dad was in the Marines and their mom worked tireless hours as a suicide crisis counselor. It bemused Walt how every time he came home, Kelly was passionate and encyclopedic about another entirely new subject. He wasn’t teaching her how to cook s’mores anymore, but she frequently schooled him on issues, like why it was vital to have a habeas writ. His leave happened to coincide with the concert, and she’d talked him into joining her. “Fine, Kel, feed me your radical program, but the day after we’re going to watch the Nationals opener, no arguments.” This was pure teasing because they’d both grown up huge Nats fans.
When it had come to the attention of the Love administration that a small band of rootless climate activists had applied for a permit from the National Park Service during the waning days of the Randall presidency, the impulse was to shut it down, but then a dissenting opinion gathered strength among his closest advisors: This was exactly what they wanted. A concert on the National Mall was a perfectly acceptable outlet: A feckless pop culture trifle that allowed folks the self-expression and social media content they coveted but which blossomed and wilted within the same eight-hour period. Forcing a couple of high-profile acts to drop out would be a final embarrassment for Morris and her crew.
The concert kicked off with Beyoncé, Jack White, and Gary Clark Jr. performing a blues rewrite of the national anthem. Instead of the familiar beats of that song, White and Clark performed it almost as a hymnal, closer to “Amazing Grace” than “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Pop’s last great megastar was recovering from knee surgery, not so much as a twitch of a dance in her, and sang from a stool to the left of her costars. A bare black stage framed the Capitol Building behind them, looking drab and weathered in the gray morning. It had been cordoned off and surrounded by police vans and concrete barriers, SOP whenever any large crowd set up near the Capitol ever since ’21. People waved small American flags and cheered as the woman’s impossible voice sent the familiar words arching across the city. As the last syllable whispered away on the edge of her breath, she launched into an acoustic version of her own “Freedom,” and finally White and Clark joined her at the mic, for the obvious “Rockin’ in the Free World,” reorchestrated to sound more like a mournful last-chance eulogy than a call to action. There was feedback on the microphone. The light drizzle continued. The sea of plastic ponchos garnered real-time ridicule on social media due to the petroleum used to manufacture them.