Chapter 2 #2
“Your standard is the standard I use.” She handed him a stack of folders. “Briefing materials for the Commerce Committee hearing at nine. Trade bill markup. Your statement’s on top—I revised the second paragraph.”
“What was wrong with the second paragraph?”
“It was four sentences long and said the same thing twice.”
“Ah.” He took the folders. “Thank you, Cath.”
“Coffee’s ready. You have the hearing at nine, lunch with Senator Holloway at twelve—she’s already confirmed twice, which means she wants something—and floor votes at two and four. Relatively light.”
“I appreciate the ‘relatively.’”
He took the folders into his office and shut the door.
Modest by Senate standards—a mahogany desk, leather chair, bookshelves lined with policy briefs and the occasional novel he never had time to finish.
The window overlooked the Capitol, and the view still felt, on good mornings, like something he’d borrowed rather than earned.
He set the folders down. Pulled out his phone.
Chad’s contact was right there—saved last night as Chad Ellsworth, which had felt presumptuous and thrilling and slightly pathetic, like a teenager writing a crush’s name in a notebook.
Don’t text him again. You texted three hours ago. At one in the morning. Like a normal, well-adjusted adult.
But he opened the thread anyway.
Hey, it’s Hank. I just wanted to make sure you got home safe. I hope that’s all right. See you Thursday.
Home safe. Can’t wait for Thursday.
Me too. Sleep well, Chad.
Three messages. The whole of it. And he’d already read them four times this morning.
He set the phone down. Opened the briefing materials. Read the same sentence three times without absorbing it.
The Commerce Committee hearing lasted two hours and fourteen minutes. Hank knew because he checked his watch—discreetly, beneath the table—eleven times. The political brain parsed testimony for inconsistencies and opportunities, while the rest of him kept circling back to blue eyes and dimples.
By eleven-forty it was over, and Hank was gathering his folders when a voice caught him in the corridor.
“Well, well. Henry.”
Warm and smooth, and it made Hank’s shoulders tighten before he turned around.
Clancy Howard approached from the direction of the Judiciary Committee room—tall, silver-haired, impeccably dressed in a charcoal suit that probably cost more than Hank’s entire wardrobe. He had the easy, proprietary stride of a man who believed corridors were built for his convenience.
“Morning, Clancy.”
“You’re looking well.” Clancy fell into step beside him, uninvited. His cologne preceded him like an advance team. “Bright-eyed, bushy-tailed. Good weekend?”
“Fine, thanks.” Hank kept walking.
“You know, I’ve been thinking.” Clancy’s voice dropped half a register—the practiced intimacy of a man accustomed to hallway deals. “We really should get together. Just the two of us. I’ve got a place in Dupont—very private, very civilized. Good bourbon. Better conversation.”
“I appreciate the offer, Clancy. I’m pretty busy these days.”
“Surely you can make time for a colleague.” Clancy’s hand landed on Hank’s shoulder. It stayed a beat too long—deliberate, testing. “After all, we bachelors need to stick together.”
The word bachelors landed with the weight of a shared secret being leveraged. Hank stopped walking.
He turned to face Clancy, stepping back so the hand fell away. The corridor was busy—staffers, interns, a tour group rounding the far corner. Public. Observed. His political brain cataloged this automatically.
“I appreciate the collegiality, but I’ll have to pass.”
Clancy’s smile didn’t waver. It never did. But something recalculated behind his eyes—cold and quick.
“Of course, Henry. My mistake entirely. Just being friendly.” He adjusted his cufflinks, unhurried. “You know where to find me if you change your mind.”
He turned and walked away. Unhurried. Untroubled.
Hank stood in the corridor and felt his pulse in his throat. He filed it away. Clancy was not a man who forgot a slight, and Hank suspected he was not a man who let things go.
He headed for lunch.
The hideaway was in the basement of the Capitol—a narrow room with wood-paneled walls, a small table, two mismatched chairs, and the faint, permanent smell of old stone and older ambition.
Every senator was entitled to one of these private offices somewhere in the complex. Most were hidden and indifferently maintained. Frannie Holloway’s had the advantage of being genuinely difficult to find, which suited her preference for conversations that stayed off the record.
She was already there when Hank arrived—a sandwich from the Senate cafeteria in front of her, a can of Diet Coke, and the look of a woman who had been waiting to interrogate someone.
“There he is,” she said, gesturing to the empty chair. “Sit. Talk. I ordered you a turkey club from the cart. No tomato because I know you’re a child about tomatoes.”
“I’m not a child about—”
“You pick them out. I’ve watched you pick them out. Sit down.”
Hank sat.
Frances Holloway was sixty-one, silver-haired, sharp-jawed, and entirely too perceptive for Hank’s comfort.
She’d represented Colorado for three terms, sat on Appropriations and Foreign Relations, and had earned bipartisan respect by being smarter than most of her colleagues and less interested in pretending otherwise.
She was also a Democrat—the other side of the aisle, a fact that made their friendship a source of perpetual fascination for the press and perpetual irritation for their respective party leaderships.
Hank had once overheard a colleague describe them as “the Senate’s most confusing lunch date.
” He’d taken it as a compliment. He suspected Frannie had arranged for him to overhear it.
Hank didn’t care about the optics. She was the best person he knew in this building, and the fact that they disagreed on tax policy and health care and most things that involved a roll-call vote didn’t change that.
“You sounded strange on the phone this morning,” she said, studying him over her Diet Coke. “Happy. It was unsettling.”
“I’m allowed to be happy.”
“Of course you are. It’s just rare enough to be noteworthy.” She pushed the turkey club toward him. “Eat. Then explain.”
Hank unwrapped the sandwich. Took a bite, chewing, aware that he was stalling and aware that Frannie was aware that he was stalling.
“I went out last night,” he said.
“Out where?”
“BJ’s. In Dupont.”
Frannie set down her Diet Coke. “Henry Fortner. You went to a gay bar.”
“I did.”
“Alone?”
“Alone. I circled the block three times first.”
“Of course you did.” She was smiling now—not the performative smile she used in hearings, but the real one, wide and slightly crooked. “And?”
“And I met someone.”
“Henry.” She reached across the small table and squeezed his hand. “Tell me everything.”
“His name is Chad. He’s a bartender there. And he’s—” Hank paused, searching for the right word, aware that the English language had not been designed to accommodate whatever was happening to him. “He’s an art student. At GW—the Corcoran School.”
“An art student. How old?”
“Twenty-three.”
Frannie’s eyebrows rose. “Well.”
“You can say it.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything.”
“You were going to say cradle-robber.”
“I was going to say good for you, and then I was going to think cradle-robber very loudly.” She grinned. “When are you seeing him again?”
“Tomorrow night. Dinner. I’m picking him up at six-thirty.”
“Where are you taking him?”
“I don’t know yet. Somewhere casual.”
“Ted’s Bulletin, 14th Street. Good food, reasonable volume, not overtly romantic. Low pressure.”
“That’s perfect. Thank you.”
“I know things.” She took a bite of her sandwich. “Does he know what you do?”
Hank looked at his turkey club.
“Henry.”
“I told him I work on the Hill. Policy. Paperwork, mostly.”
“You told him you’re a bureaucrat.”
“I told him I do paperwork. Which is not untrue.”
“It is profoundly untrue. You are a United States Senator.”
“I’m aware of my job title, Fran.”
“Then act like it. You can’t start something with this man based on an omission.”
“I’ll tell him. Just—not on the first date. It’s too much. The security concerns, the press, the closet. I don’t want to dump all of that on him before we’ve even had dinner.”
Frannie studied him for a long moment. Then she softened—just slightly, the way she did when she was conceding a point without admitting it.
“Fair enough. But don’t wait too long. Secrets are corrosive, and you’ve been marinating in them for forty years.”
“Noted.”
“Now.” She leaned back. “Speaking of things you should do. Dianne’s looking for someone to fill a seat on the arts subcommittee. Funding, grants, NEA oversight. I suggested you.”
Hank frowned. “I don’t know anything about arts policy.”
“You don’t have to. You just have to care enough to learn. And it would be good for you—it rounds out your portfolio. You can’t be trade policy and veterans’ affairs forever.”
“Did you suggest me before or after I told you about Chad?”
“Before, actually. This morning, when you sounded suspiciously human on the phone. But the coincidence is delightful, and I intend to take full credit.” She pointed her sandwich at him. “Say yes.”
“Fran—”
“One meeting a month. Low commitment. You’ll learn something.”
Hank thought about Chad talking about painting—the way his face had changed, the light coming into it, as if art weren’t something he did but something he was.
“All right. I’m in.”
“Wonderful. Meeting’s next Tuesday at ten.” She paused, and her expression shifted—something underneath the briskness, something she kept locked down because sentiment was a liability in this building. “One more thing. And I want you to hear this as your friend, not as a colleague.”
“That’s never a good opening.”
“You deserve to be happy, Henry. You’ve spent forty years being careful and responsible and closeted, and you deserve to stop. If this boy makes you feel something, don’t run from it.”
“I’m not running. I circled the block three times, but I went in.”