Page 127 of See You Next Tuesday

Anya wasn’t really sure what she was doing in Los Angeles, or why she’d agreed to come here, or how long she would stay. Jo’s old donor in Brentwood—the one they’d all stayed with the night of the Jeff Rooney fundraiser—was a bigwig Hollywood showrunner, and she’d called Jo to ask if there was anything she could do to help after they suspended the campaign. It turned out her newest show was a political soap opera on basic cable, and she was happy to offer Anya a job as a story consultant. It was a landing spot, something to do for a few months to get over the heartbreak of the campaign. Anya stood to make more money in six months on this job than she had on any campaign she’d ever worked, and the studio put her up in a posh furnished apartment near the lot. Wooden furniture and everything, a view of the Paramount gates and the Hollywood sign behind them. They gave her a car too, but it was an easy walk to the studio and a cute nearby neighborhood with a string of fancy shops and restaurants, so Anya rarely drove. She was only a few blocks from a great little pasta place that had a TV at the bar. She liked to go there after work to drink a glass of Nebbiolo and eat a big bowl of Bolognese while she watched baseball. The apartment was too quiet to spend much time in. It was nicer than any place she’d ever lived, but god, she hated living there.

Kira and Simone were still in DC. They’d stayed longer on the campaign to wind things down, to handle the office closures and take care of the staff, and to help Jo with anything she needed. Anya had been welcome to stay too, but after she broke up with Gabe, she needed to get away from that campaign and everything it represented. It all hurt too much. She needed a clean start.

Unfortunately, moving to the city where Gabe grew up, and where they’d first talked about their real feelings for each other, was not an ideal escape.

That night at the wedding, she’d been so sure that ending their relationship was the right thing to do. She expected to feel some measure of relief afterward—sadness too, of course, even crushing devastation—but at least the decision was made, the matter resolved. She could start the thorny work of processing what had happened so she could begin to move on.

But she felt no relief. No comfort. Not even the blanket of numbness that cushioned her from the excruciating pain after her mother died. She felt this loss every day, every hour. She thought about texting Simone to ask if she’d made a mistake, or even calling Gabe to say how much she missed him. But then she’d see him on CNN, or quoted in The New York Times, the face of Andrew Wheeler’s campaign. The press around the campaign had died down for a while after Jo withdrew, but now they were only a week out from the Democratic convention in Chicago, so it was all kicking back into gear. Every time Anya saw Gabe on TV, she’d be furious with him all over again, and inconsolable for Jo all over again, and she’d track the growth of his beard or the look in his eyes and try to glean absolutely anything about what it might mean, how he might be doing, whether she had harmed the person she’d loved most in her life beyond repair. But he always looked fine, exactly like his old self. She didn’t understand how he could look so happy when she didn’t even feel like a human being anymore—just an amorphous blob of misery and regret, attempting to emulate human form for enough hours to do her job, to partake in any form of distraction, until the pain overwhelmed her again and all she could do was crawl into bed and cry until she fell asleep.

“Hey, kiddo.” It was good to hear her dad’s voice. Watching baseball on the phone with him was the only thing she currently liked about her life.

“Hi, Dad.” Anya smiled at the bartender as she topped off Anya’s glass of red. Her name was Eleanor, and she’d taken kindly to the sad woman who always sat in the corner of the bar. “How was your day?”

“Eh, not too bad,” Walt answered. “The hydrangeas are already getting brown.”

“You need more rain.”

“And less heat! You know it was ninety-seven degrees on the golf course last Saturday? That’s reason enough to leave Chicago.”

“I’m not sure the golf courses are so much cooler in New York,” Anya joked. “What’s the update on that?”

“My brothers are all highly in favor of me moving, no surprise. And the firm has a Manhattan office, so I could work there if I wanted, or I could think about retirement.”

“You? Retire?” Anya scoffed.

“Would give me more time to get back to spying,” Walt reasoned. “We could open a father-daughter outfit. Become hard-boiled PIs in our old age.”

“So now I’m moving to New York too?”

“Come on, Anya, the clients are counting on you,” Walt goaded her. “We’ll wear pinstripe suits and fedoras and catch ball games on the weekends.”

“When crime takes a break, so do we.”

“Precisely.”

Anya laughed, then her phone started buzzing against her ear. She looked and saw Simone’s name flashing. “Oh, actually, Dad, can I call you right back? Simone’s on the other line. Just want to make sure it’s nothing urgent.”

“Sure thing. Tell her I say hi.”

Anya pressed the button on her phone to switch calls. “Hey! What’s up?”

“Are you watching the news?” Simone’s voice was tense.

“No, I’m at a bar watching baseball. What’s going on?”

“Tell them to turn on the news.”

“What channel?” Anya asked.

“Every channel!” Simone huffed impatiently.

“Hey, Eleanor?” Anya put her hand over the phone. “Would you mind turning on the news?”

Eleanor looked at Anya like she was being insane. “The Dodgers are on.”

“I know, I’m so sorry,” Anya apologized. “Just for a second?”

Eleanor clicked over to CNN. Ruth Minkow was talking in one box as they ran footage of FBI agents carrying cardboard boxes out of a mansion. The chyron on the lower third of the screen read, Breaking News: Andrew Wheeler Indicted on Federal Corruption Charges.