One
Boston, Massachusetts
There were bars on the window of the mayor’s office. Stark, black, and placed exactly six inches apart. The architect of Boston
City Hall had clearly intended them to be more than an aesthetic feature.
Or maybe they’d been recently installed. To accommodate the city’s newest mayor, its youngest mayor in history, who journalists
couldn’t seem to decide whether to refer to as a boy or a man. He’d seen himself called both in the same article. In the same headline, even.
JULIAN JOYCE-YOUNG III, 18, ELECTED AS BOSTON’S YOUNGEST MAYOR IN LANDSLIDE—
A dare, he’d told the late-night talk show host, sweating under his stage makeup.
Like the rest of the media coverage, it was only half true. Landon, jackass that he was, had found an article titled “notable
Joyce-Youngs” and started quoting it in a lockjaw accent. He’d amassed a small audience by the time Julian found him there,
drunkenly recounting the exploits of his ancestors to an equally drunken crowd of their fellow Exeter students.
Julian had tackled him out of his chair and snatched the phone from his hand. Lying beneath him on the patio, his grin slackly
triumphant, Landon wheezed, “None of them have ever been mayor, though.”
Later, after pitching his friend’s phone into the lawn fountain, Julian had opened the article for himself.
Scrolling through more than a dozen names of university presidents and corporate founders, federal judges and charity trustees, he realized that there was, indeed, no Joyce-Young who had ever held the office of mayor.
And the most precocious Joyce-Young of note had been thirty-three when elected to the Massachusetts state legislature.
It started as a dare.
Now a crowd was gathering on the street below. Julian could hear the rising hum of their voices from the fifth floor. He couldn’t
make out their words, but the tenor and volume communicated enough. It took him far too long to turn away from the window,
heartbeat scraping at the base of his throat.
He lowered himself into his chair. The mayor’s desk—his desk—was a jumble of loose papers and manila folders, uncapped pens
bleeding ink. Three hardback books were stacked in an unusually orderly fashion on the far left, books that Julian had never
touched. Vogue had come to do an interview and wanted to photograph his desk. His strategist, Cafferty, had advised him on what books to
pretend to be reading. A trendy biography on Thomas Jefferson that promised to “break new ground,” a memoir from an up-and-coming
congressman about his deprived Rust Belt childhood, and, for his contingent of young female fans, a collection of Byron’s
poetry.
“Make sure to show them your sensual side,” Cafferty said.
“Do you mean sensitive?” Julian asked.
“Sure, kid.”
The family photographs had also been Cafferty’s idea. Three of them, in brand-new, gleaming golden frames. His mother holding
Olivia in her lap, both of them dressed in crisp Easter white. His father shaking hands with Harvard’s dean at his graduation.
A group photo of the Exeter lacrosse team, Julian in the front row, squinting without his glasses.
Vogue was long gone. Julian turned the photos face down.
“Mr. Mayor? Can I still call you that?”
Lambert Quinn stood in the doorway. Lank-haired, snub-nosed, and with the gangly, underfed look of a scholarship student,
despite being a decade Julian’s senior. He’d been employed at the mayor’s office since his graduation from some provincial
state college, working his way up from unpaid intern to minimum-wage executive assistant.
In four months of delivering Julian’s coffee and picking up his dry cleaning, Quinn had never looked this thrilled.
Julian ignored the jape, straightening in his seat. “Get Cafferty on the phone.”
“Of course.” Quinn dipped his head and scurried off, still smirking.
As soon as he was gone, Julian bent over and pulled open the desk’s lower left-hand drawer. He took out the pack of cigarettes,
broke the seal, and put one to his lips. The gold monogrammed lighter (J.J.Y.) clicked three times before it caught.
After a single drag, Julian deteriorated into a fit of coughing. He didn’t even smoke.
And it did nothing to settle his stomach or still his racing heart. Why had he decided to take advice from Landon—whose sour-apple-flavored
vape was never far from his mouth—now? Julian dropped the cigarette and ground it into the carpet, where it left a black stain
on the Boston city seal.
The landline on his desk vibrated.
Julian snatched up the receiver. “Cafferty. Where the hell are you?”
“Hiding my face in shame, kid. Where do you think?”
“I didn’t hire you to stick your head in the sand. Get down here. Now.”
Cafferty laughed his three-packs-a-day laugh. “Not a chance. I can’t even believe you’re still there. Well, they’re going to get a hell of a perp walk out of you.”
Julian’s stomach hollowed. “The impeachment vote—”
“—isn’t going to save you. This isn’t the student council; this is real shit, grown-up shit. They aren’t going to let you walk away with just a slap on the wrist.”
“Everyone does it.” Julian’s hand tightened around the receiver. “Everyone who’s sat in this chair before me.”
“Of course,” Cafferty replied. “But everyone who’s sat in that chair before you has been some geriatric former head of the
school board or city council president or labor union rep. Someone with credentials and party support, who moved through the
system the way they were supposed to. Not an upstart from Back Bay who just got his braces off.”
“Careful,” Julian bit out. “You’re still on my payroll.”
“I’m on your father’s payroll, kid. And I’m guessing he’s your call waiting.” Cafferty let out a breath. “I am sorry it had
to end this way. But they want to make an example out of you. They don’t want people to think that you can win a major election
by flirting with the host of The Tonight Show. They want everyone to know that you have to follow the rules. Kiss the appropriate rings.”
“Then maybe you should’ve told me that,” Julian said. He hated how his voice cracked. “You were supposed to advise me. To—to
help me.”
There was a pause. Julian heard some muted shuffling. Then:
“Don’t worry. Your father will get you the best lawyer money can buy. Suarez only got ten months for taking bribes, and that’ll
probably get thrown out on appeal.”
Julian opened his mouth, but before he could reply, the line went dead.
It was only after he’d slammed the receiver back down that he came up with several stinging rejoinders. My father should have hired a real political consultant instead of a washed-up yes-man on his fourth wife and third heart
attack. My father will—
“The parking bill needs your signature.”
Quinn stood in the doorway again, holding a manila folder embossed with the city seal. Julian waved him in.
He placed the folder on the desk and Julian flipped it open, scrawling his name carelessly on the black line. As he shoved
it back, he smudged the III with his thumb. Quinn took the folder with far too much deftness, the corner of his upper lip curling.
Julian resisted the urge to launch himself across the desk and wipe off that smirk. He needed Quinn gone.
“Get me an espresso,” he ordered. The machine in the lounge was broken. It would take Quinn at least twenty minutes.
“Of course,” Quinn said, with that same almost-grin. As he vanished, Julian wondered if he could convincingly name Quinn as
an accomplice in his police confession. But Quinn’s closest brush with true criminal activity had been scrubbing up the Bombay
Sapphire that Julian had spilled in his office on inauguration night.
Not his office. Not for much longer.
Julian reached for the phone. His hand was shaking so violently that it took two tries to dial the number he knew by heart.
The phone rang four times. Five.
There was no hello to tell him that the call had connected, but he recognized the sound of his father’s breathing. It crackled
in the dead air between them.
“Dad?”
Another moment passed in silence, broken only by his father’s sharp inhale.
Julian’s mind swam. He tried to think of something—anything—eloquent to say, something that might defuse his father’s anger,
or armor himself against it. But all he could manage was, “I’m sorry. I—”
“I don’t want to hear apologies or excuses. You fix it. Now.”
“I—I can’t.” He could not keep his voice from trembling. “Dad, please. I need your help.”
His father was quiet for nearly a full minute. Julian counted.
“Do you think this is cute?” his father replied at last. “Posing for magazine spreads and getting drunk at galas? Did you
ever consider anything but your vanity and ego?”
The lump in Julian’s throat made it hard to speak. “No. No, I . . .”
His father let out a long, low breath. Several more beats of silence passed, spreading out time in a languid, almost unreal
way. Then: “Julian.”
He could picture his father seated at his own desk, the severe set of his mouth and the furrow creasing his brow. His eyes,
a remote blue, narrowed to slits. Hoarse and hopeful, Julian answered, “Yes?”
“There’s nothing I can do now. You made your bed. You lie in it. You’ve embarrassed me and this family enough already.”
He hung up before Julian could say another word, leaving him to listen to static.
Julian put the phone down with surprising poise. The fearful fluttering of his heart seemed to have no impact at all on his
movements. His calmness was the still surface of a lake, the frenzy of the tide fettered beneath.
He swiveled his chair to look out the window. The crowd was beginning to scatter as evening approached, so only the most dedicated
protestors remained. They had been there since 6:00 a.m., before Julian himself had even arrived—the ones who had set up lawn
chairs, hoisting their hand-painted signs that demanded his resignation and arrest. One of them, featuring a crudely drawn
guillotine, demanded his head.
THERE ARE NO ETHICAL BILLIONAIRES, it said. A rare (and only slight) overestimation of his personal net worth.
There was some clamoring in the hall, incomprehensible shouting. Julian stiffened in his seat, feeling for the panic button
under his desk, even though when he’d first taken office, he had been advised that it hadn’t worked in years.
Besides, there was no need to summon the police. There were two officers already standing in the door.
“Hello, Mr. Mayor,” one of them said. He had a nasal voice that dropped both of the r’s. “I think you know why we’re here.”
Julian’s fingers curled around the edge of the desk. “I have a feeling you’re going to tell me anyway.”
The second officer cleared his throat. He had a ruddy, pockmarked face, and the same plebeian drawl. “You’re under arrest
for embezzlement and accepting bribes. Now, we can do this the easy way, or—”
“The hard way. Got it.”
On shaking legs, Julian stood. Before he could offer them his wrists, the first officer grasped him roughly by the arm. He
spun him around, pinned him to the desk, and then cuffed his hands behind his back. It knocked the wind out of him, and dizzily,
Julian recalled that he’d signed a bill last month slashing police pensions.
The officers led him through the halls, past the desks of the city hall staffers. Most of their faces and names were a blur,
despite the fact that they’d been working under him for months, fielding calls from raving constituents and taking minutes
at council meetings. A few had the presence of mind to snap photos with their cell phones, while the others just stared. As
if they hadn’t whispered about this very moment at the water cooler. As if they hadn’t all known it was coming.
By the time the officers pushed him through the doors, into the crisp, glass-like air of New England in early March, the crowd
of protestors seemed to have swelled to twice its size. They pressed toward him in a contorted mass, film cameras clicking
and flashing, voices rising in a tidal roar.
A few words surfaced from the ocean of sounds: Traitor. Liar. Stupid kid.
Julian could have lived with being a liar, as long as he had been a good one. He could even have made peace with being a traitor. But he could not bear to go down in the annals of history as a stupid kid.
The officers continued to maneuver him roughly through the crowd. Julian managed to gain himself enough freedom of motion
to glance over his shoulder, straining to see past the protestors’ bobbing heads and hefted signs.
Quinn was standing at the top of city hall steps, Styrofoam cup of espresso in hand. This time, he didn’t bother to hide his
delight. His gleeful smile was wide enough to be unmistakable, even from a distance.
Et tu, Quinn, Julian thought as he was shoved into the back of the police car.