West Virginia

August 1, 2020. Charleston.

Just half an hour in this city, and I’m already loving every inch of it.

Our chauffeur, an elderly black man who never seems to stop talking, looks back at us in the rearview mirror as he cracks yet another joke about hunting season. I chuckle; Irene merely stares at the two of us like we’re mildly insane.

“It’s always an honour to drive guests for the senator,” he chortles. “She does a lot of good around these parts.”

“Is that right?” I ask, eager to get a sense of a what a true local thinks about Maddie.

“Oh, that’s for sure,” he says. “Now, you hear about her early days every once in a while, when she first got here. Like a fish outta water, that’s what people say, say she was all smarmy and stuck-up and full of the kind of smarts that comes from too much school, you know what I mean?”

I nod, even if I don’t quite see Maddie in the same way as he does.

“Well, I reckon’ she gets us pretty good these days. You know that she personally held up Congress for two days to build us the Triple Tunnels? Now that’s what I call making government do useful work. I drive those tunnels every week, and I’m not even the kind of person who needs to use ‘em all that much, seeing as I mostly stay around Charleston.”

“That’s something people around here like?” I ask.

I remember the media making a big hubbub when the fresh-faced Senator Najbreit filibustered Congress her first year in office, contra orders from up above. The stunt damn near sunk her career back then, and even knowing how things have played out since, I still have trouble thinking of it as anything but a gaffe of the highest order. But seeing this man crow about it?

“Oh, we ate it up when it happened,” the driver laughs, one hand on the wheel as we cruise down the street. “Something like that? Takes guts, it does, and she stuck it up to all the cocks up in Washington, pardon my French.”


I see the smile slipping onto Irene’s face, and I wonder what she’s thinking about this whole affair. She must have made contact with a big shot or two, back when she still worked for the government. Could a meeting with Maddie have brought her into the family’s service?

“She sticks to her values,” I say. “I don’t think anyone could say otherwise about her. It’s why I’ve decided to work for her, at any rate.”

“A politician with values,” the driver agrees, nodding slowly. “Now that’s somethin’ you don’t see too often these days.”

He pulls at the edges of his trimmed beard as we stop by a red light, and then frowns at a sight in front of us.

“Now that’s the senator’s office right there,” he says, pointing at a squat building with some kind of a neoclassical architectural thing going on. “But usually there ain’t so many people in front of it, you see.”

“Protestors,” Irene says under her breath, a dark look crossing her face.

“Looks like it,” the driver says, sounding strangely pleased about the fact.

As we drive closer to the building, the scene comes into perspective: a crowd of people, skewing young, standing on the lawn in front of the office, all dressed in some kind of blue. A single news camera rolls by the side, the reporter standing there from some local station.

“Fuckin’ protestors,” I say, gritting my teeth.

“You don’t like ‘em?” the driver asks, pulling up to the curb.

“Bad personal experience,” I mutter, ignoring the curious look that the driver shoots me.

If he doesn’t know, I’m not in the mood to explain.

I give myself another second to observe the protestors. They’re harmless, I remind myself. This is America. What’s the worst that they could do? Besides, even if I’m not personally armed, I know that Irene is concealed carrying. These people are all teeth, no bite.

I pop open the car door and am greeted by a mess of confused chants and slogans. This isn’t one of Scarlet’s organised demonstrations. I step out of the car, not liking the evil eye that a few of the men close by shoot me. Irene follows out of the car behind me.

“You here to see the senator?” one of them asks, placing a hand on my shoulder. “Or are you here to join us?”

“I work for Senator Najbreit,” I say, trying to brush by him.

But another man laughs at us, sticking a stubby finger at Irene.

“This is the kind of the person of she decides to hire. Look at her. She doesn’t even have two hands,” he jeers.

“Watch yourself,” I warn, trying to get to the paved path to the building, away from the grass where all the protestors are situated.

“Or what?” the man laughs. “You ain’t got shit on us.”

In the distance, our car pulls away. I see the news camera swivelling my way, and I feel my heart drop. First day on the job, and it looks like I’m already getting myself in a massive mess. I try to make my way forwards, ignoring the camera and the people who seem to be swarming us out of nowhere. Irene subtly bodychecks a man getting too close to us, and he grunts as he stumbles back a few steps. Any outsider wouldn’t be able to tell why. I see a trace of a smirk on Irene’s face, and am reminded again of just how dangerously competent my new companion-jailer is.

But then the crowd closes in on us, seemingly surrounding us in the blink of an eye, and all of a sudden our forward progress is arrested. There are warm bodies on all sides, people waving signs, chanting “Justice From The Senator!”, although what they want justice for is anything but clear to me.

I catch Irene’s eye, but she simply shrugs, keeping her cool. The two of us stand in the middle of the crowd, unable to do anything, just standing there, waiting for the moment to pass.

It does not.

I watch as the news camera approaches, the anchor interviewing one of the protestors on the side, asking her what they’re gathered here for. She gives some rambling answer about minority rights being trampled, the climate being destroyed, the tax code being full of loopholes, and meanwhile, the crowd has only grown louder, seemingly trying to scream my ears off.

The heat of the summer sun, the sweltering bodies pressed up against me, then the flash of a camera bulb—there’s a photographer here too?—it all washes over me, causing a deep sense of discomfort. And there, off in the not-so-far distance, is the staid marble building, the senator’s office, a gleaming beacon of hope, my destination, the place where my sister lays…

With that thought, the door bangs open, and there, framed by the tall marble arch, standing with a veritable army of staffers behind her, is Senator Madeleine Najbreit.