Chapter 9
First Kiss hung on the wall opposite the couch.
Chad had come over on Sunday with a hammer and a level and the quiet authority of someone who knew what he was doing. Hank had offered to help. Chad had handed him the level and said, “Hold this,” which was, Hank suspected, the art-world equivalent of letting a child stir the batter.
The painting looked different here than it had in the student gallery—less like a piece of art on display and more like something that belonged.
Two figures in blue and burgundy, the suggestion of mouths meeting.
Against Hank’s bare walls, in his apartment full of policy briefs and unread novels, it was the only thing with real color.
He caught himself looking at it in the mornings, coffee in hand, before he left for work. The apartment that had been a place to sleep was starting to feel like something else.
They’d developed a rhythm over the past ten days.
Chad’s schedule was punishing—classes until three, shifts at BJ’s that ran well past midnight—and Hank’s was no less demanding, with floor votes and the appropriations markup and constituent calls that multiplied as the election approached.
They grabbed time where it existed: lunch on a Tuesday gap between Chad’s classes, a late dinner after Hank’s last vote, Sunday morning with coffee and the paper.
It wasn’t enough. But Hank had spent forty years with nothing, so not enough felt like an abundance, and he tried not to examine that too closely.
Wednesday afternoon, he left the Capitol at four-thirty—early by Senate standards, practically truant—and met Chad at the U.S. Botanic Garden.
It had been Chad’s idea.
“You’ve been here five years,” Chad had said the night before, on the phone, with the exasperation he reserved for Hank’s failures of cultural literacy. “And you’ve never been to the Botanic Garden.”
“I walk past it every day.”
“That’s worse. That’s like living next to the Louvre and never going in.”
“I’m not sure the Botanic Garden is the Louvre.”
“It’s free, it’s beautiful, and it smells like a rainforest. It’s better than the Louvre.”
So here they were, standing in the humid warmth of the conservatory while Chad pointed at things and Hank tried to retain information about bromeliads.
He was failing at the bromeliads. He was succeeding at watching Chad.
This was Chad’s territory—not the art world, which Hank had seen at the gallery, but something adjacent.
The living world. Chad moved through the conservatory the way he moved behind the bar—reading the room, noting details, alive to the textures of things.
He stopped in front of a cluster of orchids and explained something about epiphytes and host trees that Hank immediately forgot because Chad’s hands were moving when he talked and the late afternoon light through the glass ceiling was catching the blond in his hair and Hank’s brain had apparently decided that botany was optional but Chad’s forearms were essential.
You are a United States senator. You have a graduate degree. You are staring at this man’s wrists like they contain classified information.
“You’re not listening,” Chad said.
“I am absolutely listening.”
“What did I just say?”
“Something about... roots.”
“Aerial roots. They absorb moisture from the air.” Chad gave him a look. “You’re hopeless.”
“I’m attentive. I’m just attentive to different things.”
“What things?”
Hank opened his mouth. Closed it. Felt the heat climb his neck. “The, ah. General environment.”
Chad’s mouth twitched. “The general environment.”
“It’s very lush.”
“Uh-huh.”
They moved on. The conservatory was quiet—midweek, mid-afternoon, only a handful of visitors.
An older couple by the fern house. A woman with a sketchbook on a bench.
The anonymity was a relief. Hank could almost forget the rules here—the forty-eight days of discretion they’d agreed to, the careful distance, the performance of being two men who happened to be in the same building at the same time.
Almost.
In the tropical room, Chad stopped in front of something with wide, flat leaves the color of jade.
He reached out and ran a finger along the edge of a leaf, testing the texture, and said something about the plant’s adaptation to low light that Hank would not be able to repeat under oath.
And then—without looking, without thinking about it—Hank’s hand found the small of Chad’s back.
Just rested there. Natural as breathing.
Chad didn’t flinch. Didn’t move away. He kept talking about the plant, and Hank kept his hand where it was, and for about four seconds the world was right.
Then his political brain caught up.
Public. You are in public. Rule number one. Rule number literally one.
He pulled his hand back like he’d touched a stove.
Chad glanced at him. “What?”
“Nothing. I just—we’re in public.”
“We’re in a greenhouse. There’s nobody here.”
“There’s the woman with the sketchbook.”
“She’s drawing ferns, Hank. She doesn’t care about your hand on my back.”
“The rules—”
“Which we made twelve days ago and have already broken approximately—” Chad tilted his head, calculating. “Six times? Seven? Depending on whether you count the thing with the blanket on Sunday.”
“I don’t count the blanket. We were in my apartment.”
“You opened the curtains.”
“The curtains were already open.”
“And my hand was already down your—”
“Chad.”
“I’m just saying. The forty-eight days are more of a guideline at this point.”
Hank rubbed his face. He was trying very hard to maintain the gravity of the situation and failing entirely because Chad was grinning at him with the uncomplicated delight of someone who found his discomfort genuinely entertaining.
“You’re enjoying this,” Hank said.
“Very much.”
“I want the record to reflect that I take our agreement seriously.”
“The record reflects that you had your hand on my ass at the Safeway on Monday.”
“That was—I was reaching past you. For the—”
“Yogurt. Yes. Very slowly. With both hands.”
He has a point. You have no defense. You are a senator who cannot keep his hands to himself in the dairy aisle.
Hank looked at the jade plant. The jade plant offered no counsel.
“Come on,” Chad said, and bumped his shoulder. “There’s a room with cacti. I want to show you the one that looks like it’s giving everyone the finger.”
They wandered for another hour. Hank relaxed by degrees—the anonymity of the place, the green quiet, Chad’s voice explaining things he’d forget and observations he wouldn’t.
In the cactus room, Chad found his obscene specimen and presented it with the pride of a curator unveiling a masterwork.
It did, Hank had to admit, look remarkably like a middle finger.
“Nature’s editorial comment,” Chad said.
“On what?”
“Everything. Take your pick.”
As they made their way toward the exit, Hank noticed a figure near the entrance—a man in a dark jacket, standing by the information desk, looking at his phone. Not at the plants. Not at anything in particular. Just standing.
Something pinged. The man was too still, too purposeful in his stillness.
“What?” Chad asked.
“Nothing.” Hank shook his head and kept walking. “Thought I saw someone.”
Outside, the October air hit them—cool, clean, the light going amber. Hank glanced back through the glass doors. The man in the dark jacket was gone.
Paranoia. DC is full of men in dark jackets.
He let it go. Or tried to.
Thursday morning, Hank walked his usual route to work. The trees along the Mall were just starting to turn—the faintest blush of yellow at the edges, fall making its case. He passed the CVS on C Street and saw Clyde in his usual spot.
Except Clyde looked different.
It took Hank a moment to identify what had changed. The army-surplus jacket was the same. The cardboard sign was still propped against the wall. But Clyde’s face was cleaner. Shaved, or close to it. His eyes were sharper, more present.
“Morning, Clyde.”
“Senator.” The gap-toothed smile. “How are you, sir?”
“Can’t complain. You look well.”
“Been trying. Got into the VA clinic for a checkup. First one in a while.” Clyde rubbed his jaw, self-conscious. “Cleaned up a little.”
“It shows.” Hank pulled out his wallet and handed Clyde a business card along with his usual ten-dollar bill. “I’ve been talking to a colleague—Roy Bathum from Ohio. He’s running a jobs program. Park Service, mostly. Custodial, landscaping, maintenance work. Legitimate positions.”
Clyde eyed the business card, his expression cautious. “Yeah?”
“It’s real. Still getting set up—placements start in November, maybe sooner. I’ll keep you posted.”
“I appreciate that, Senator. I really do.”
“Just keep doing what you’re doing.”
Hank walked on. A block later, he saw a figure standing by a mailbox. Dark jacket. Phone in hand. Not moving with the morning foot traffic.
He almost stopped. Almost turned for a better look.
Same jacket? Different person? You’re a senator, not a spy. Keep walking.
He kept walking. But the prickle between his shoulder blades stayed with him all the way to Hart.
That night, Chad came over after his shift.
Just past two a.m. It was an hour that had become theirs, carved out of the gap between Chad’s closing duties and Hank’s early morning.
Hank kept the door unlocked on nights he knew Chad was coming, which was a security habit his staff would have found alarming, and he didn’t care.
Chad came in smelling like the bar—beer, sweat, and his usual citrus underneath. He dropped his bag by the door and stood in the hallway, looking tired in a way that made Hank want to feed him.
“Rough night?”
“Bachelor party. They kept requesting Pink Pony Club and tipping in singles.” Chad leaned against the wall. “I’m too tired to take my shoes off.”
“I’ll make you something.”
“You don’t have to—”
“Sit down.”
Chad sat. Hank made eggs—scrambled, low and slow, with cream and butter, as usual—and toast, and set them on the coffee table with a glass of water. Chad ate like a man who’d forgotten to feed himself, which Hank was learning, was most nights.