He racked his brain and tried to calculate what had brought her here.
Shopping, possibly, but as he looked up and down the street and studied the environment, it struck him as more and more unlikely. The array of expensive, upscale Georgetown shops was out of character for a tight-fisted bargain hunter who liked to brag to her friends about all the great deals she bagged at Wal-Mart and Kmart and Dollar stores. Her pretensions aside, Julia had an accountant’s soul. Life for her was a never-ending tug-of-war over who got to keep the highest percentage of the margin.
She would be hungry at this hour. But he doubted she had driven forty minutes through rush-hour traffic to find an overpriced restaurant in the most crowded district of the city. Possibly she was meeting a date, and that eventuality unsettled him greatly. It would mess up everything. This was Julia’s night to rise and shine.
He thought of all the other details and notations in her file and a hunch began to take shape. He looked both ways again, then swiftly crossed the street and walked into Clyde’s. The bar was packed with young men and women, mostly wearing suits and business attire, hefting drinks, chattering and chuckling, ogling one another, and posturing in ways they hoped would attract the opposite sex. He wandered through the bar pretending to search for someone he was supposed to meet. But no Julia in her blue serge suit. Possibly she was in the ladies’room, so he loitered nearby, gave that five minutes, and then departed in a huff.
A block down was Nathans and he made a beeline for the entrance. An almost identical scene, another upscale meat market filled with horny young people willing to pay seven dollars per beer on the off chance they might get lucky. He searched the tables first on the possibility that she was having dinner with a date. No Julia in a blue suit at the tables. He progressed to the bar, where women aspiring to be picked up mostly congregated. After two minutes of fruitless searching, he caught a flash of dark blue at the far end of the bar, right below a pair of ancient rowing oars hung on the wall to give the utterly false sense of a sporting clubhouse. He moved across the floor and improved his angle. Bingo-it was indeed Julia in her blue serge suit, perched on a tall barstool, a mixed drink of some sort held daintily between two fingers of her left hand. A man stood beside her, gripping a longneck, bouncing nervously on the balls of his feet and chortling at something.
The man was in his late thirties, balding, chubby, with a long, pointed nose, and his posture and gestures suggested he was trying hard. Her posture and flat expression suggested he was trying much too hard.
He maneuvered through the thick crowd until he was directly behind the man chatting with his Julia. Was this a date going sour or merely a stranger attempting a pickup? That distinction mattered. It mattered greatly.
The man was waving his longneck through the air and saying to her, “… and the senator was all over me to get it fixed. I have lots of friends in the White House, and you know what?… If he hadn’t pissed me off, I might’ve picked up the phone and handled everything.”
Julia nodded and said, “Uh… okay.”
“Know what I did?”
“No.”
“What I did was tell the senator I didn’t like the way he approached me. I told him I wouldn’t lift a finger. You should’ve seen him. Guy’s got hair transplants, you know. I swear to God, his face went red from here to here.”
He rocked back on his heels and chortled loudly. Julia took a long and serious sip from her drink.
“So, anyway,” the guy asked, “what did you say your name was?”
“Julia.”
“Uh-huh. Ever been up on the Hill, Julia? I could get you in, show you the corridors of power, introduce you to a few senators.”
“What a thrill,” Julia replied. Funny, she didn’t sound the least bit thrilled.
The important question was answered. He leaned across the bar and used his elbow to push back the man hitting on Julia as he yelled, “Julia? My God, it’s been what? Ten years?”
Her eyes shifted to him and she blinked a few times. He winked at her and said, “You don’t remember me? The prom? Senior year in high school?”
Julia’s expression became even more confused, so he widened his smile and added, “Gosh… Tom Melborne? Maybe you don’t recognize me without my tuxedo.”
Julia seemed to catch on. “Tom? Oh God. Please, I’m sorry.”
He edged closer to her, using his body to force the Senate staffer to back away a few more steps. He said to Julia, “What are you doing in Washington? Last I heard, you were going to… oh, gosh… I’m embarrassed-”
“University of Delaware,” she answered, smiling.
“Of course.” He looked at the staffer. “I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude. Are you Julia’s boyfriend? Husband? Date?”
“Uh, no. We just met.”
He put a hand on the staffer’s shoulder. “We went to high school together, until my mom and dad died in a car accident… right after the prom.” He glanced at Julia and said, “That’s why I dropped out. I’m sure you wondered, and… I guess I should’ve told you, but I… Hey, look, I didn’t want your sympathy. You had your life, your great future, and I had to raise and care for my four younger sisters. You didn’t need that. They’re all doing great, by the way. Jessie, the youngest, remember her? The one in the wheelchair? She just started college.”
Julia had her face stuffed inside her drink. She bit her lip, glanced up, and said, “I always wondered what happened to poor, sweet little Jessie.”
Uncomfortably shuffling his feet, the staffer was looking like the deflated third wheel he had tacitly become. He studied the intruder, his competition, and realized without a doubt that he was dealing with a number one draft pick. He saw a tall, broad-shouldered, blond-haired man, slightly older than Julia, with a square jaw, blue eyes, and the kind of sculpted looks that could get him any woman in this bar, or any other.
The staffer backed away, saying, “Well, uh, it was nice to meet you, Julia. That offer to show you the Hill is still open.”
She looked down at the floor and mumbled, “Thanks… honest.”
The staffer melted back into the crowd and they erupted in chuckles.
“The name really is Tom,” he said. “Tom Melborne.”
“And I’m really Julia… Julia Cuthburt.”
They giggled some more.
He said, “You owe me. Another three minutes and he would’ve been pelting you with stories about how he and the Speaker of the House play golf together every Sunday. That’s where he advises the Speaker on how to run the country.”
She chuckled. “Did you really have four little sisters?”
“Of course. And do you really plan to go visit him on the Hill?”
She stole another sip from her drink and he could see her eyes studying him, liking what she saw, and wondering if this was all there was. A white knight saves her from a horny dragon and then drifts off into the night, leaving her to the next hungry Hill staffer, or lawyer, or civil servant. The city was filled to its bowels with all three and she was long past the point where she found them entertaining.
He smiled at her and asked, “Would you care for another drink? Perhaps you’d like to hear how poor Jessie is really doing.”
She gave him a smile that was half yes, and half bald relief. “Rum and Coke would be great.”
He waved at the bartender, ordered hers, and a scotch on the rocks for himself. As the harried bartender rushed off, he asked her, “So, what do you do?”
“I’m an accountant at a firm here in Washington. Johnson and Smathers. Maybe you’ve heard of it.”
“Never. But I’m not in business.”
“Are you in government?”
“Sort of.”