Straight ahead, a passing ambulance whips up Vermont Avenue. The sirens are deafening as they reverberate through the canyon of the brick alleyway. Instinctively I reach for one of my phones. I pat all my pockets. Damn… don’t tell me I left them in the -

I stop and turn around. The table of the restaurant. No. I can’t go back.

Double-checking to be sure, I stuff my hand inside the breast pocket of my jacket. There’s actually something there, but it’s not a phone.

I open my palm and reread the name off the blue plastic nametag:

Senate Page

Viv Parker

The white letters practically glow in front of me. In the distance, the siren of the ambulance fades. It’s gonna be a long night ahead, but as I turn the corner and run up Vermont Avenue, I know exactly where I’m going.

OUTSIDE STAN’S RESTAURANT, Lowell Nash slowly scanned the sidewalks up and down Vermont Avenue. He stared at the shadows in the doorways of every storefront. He even studied the homeless man sleeping on the bus-stop bench across the street. But as he turned the corner onto L Street, he couldn’t spot a twitch of movement. Even the air hung flat in the night. Picking up speed, he rushed toward his car, which was parked halfway up the block.

Again Lowell checked the sidewalks, the doorways, and the bus-stop benches. If his recent notoriety taught him anything, it was never to take chances. Approaching the silver Audi, he scrambled for his car key, pressed a button, and heard the doors unlock. He gave one last glance to his surroundings, then slipped inside and slammed the door shut.

“Where the hell is he?” Janos asked from the passenger seat.

Lowell yelled out loud, jumping so fast, he banged his funny bone against the car door.

“Where’s Harris?” Janos demanded.

“I was…” He grabbed his funny bone, holding it in pain. “Aaah… I was wondering the same about you.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“I’ve been waiting for almost an hour. He finally got up and left.”

“He was already here?”

“And gone,” Lowell replied. “Where were you?”

Janos’s forehead wrinkled in anger. “You said ten o’clock,” he insisted.

“I said nine.”

“Don’t bullshit me.”

“I swear, I said nine.”

“I heard you say-” Janos cut himself off. He studied Lowell carefully. The sting from the funny bone was long past, but Lowell was still crouched over, cradling his elbow and refusing to make eye contact. If Janos could see Lowell’s expression, he’d also see the panic on Lowell’s face. Lowell may be weak, but he wasn’t an asshole. Harris was still a friend.

“Don’t fuck with me,” Janos warned.

Lowell quickly looked up, his eyes wide with fear. “Never… I’d never do that…”

Janos narrowed his glance, studying him carefully.

“I swear to you,” Lowell added.

Janos continued to stare. A second passed. Then two.

Janos’s arm sprang out like a wildcat, palming Lowell by the face and slamming his head back into the driver’s-side window. Refusing to let go, Janos pulled back and smashed him against the glass again. Lowell grabbed Janos’s wrist, fighting to break his grip. Janos didn’t stop. With a final shove, he put all his weight behind it. The window finally cracked from the impact, leaving a jagged vein zigzagging across the glass.

Slumped down in his seat, Lowell held his head from the pain. He felt a trickle of blood skating down the back of his neck. “A-Are you nuts?”

Without saying a word, Janos opened the door and stepped into the warm night air.

It took Lowell twenty minutes to get his bearings. When he got home, he told his wife some kid on Sixteenth Street threw a rock at the car.

“THERE – HE’S DOING it again,” Viv Parker said Monday afternoon, pointing to the elderly Senator from Illinois.

“Where?”

“Right there...”

Across the Floor of the Senate, in the third row of antique desks, the senior Senator from Illinois looked down, away from Viv.

“Sorry, still don’t see it,” Devin whispered as the gavel banged behind them.

As pages for the United States Senate, Viv and Devin sat on the small carpeted steps on the side of the rostrum, literally waiting for the phone to blink. It never took long. Within a minute, a low buzz erupted from the phone, and a small orange light hiccuped to life. But neither Viv nor Devin picked it up.

“Floor, this is Thomas,” a blond-headed page with a Virginia twang answered as he shot to his feet. Viv wasn’t sure why he stood up for every call. When she asked Thomas, he said it was part for decorum, part to be prepared in case he had to spot a passing Senator. Personally, Viv thought there was only one “part” that really mattered: to show off the fact that he was head page. Even at the bottom of the totem pole, hierarchy was king.

“Yep – I’m on it,” the head page said into the receiver. As he hung up the phone, he looked over to Viv and Devin. “They need one,” he explained.

Nodding, Devin stood from his seat at the rostrum and dashed off toward the cloakroom.

Still on the rostrum, Viv glanced over at the Senator from Illinois, who again raised his head and leveled a leering glare directly at her. Viv tried to look away, but she couldn’t ignore it. It was as if he were squinting straight through her chest. Fidgeting with the Senate ID around her neck, she wondered if that’s what he was staring at. It wouldn’t surprise her. The ID was her ticket in. From day one, she was worried someone would step in and snatch it back. Or maybe he was staring at her cheap navy suit… or the fact that she was black… or that she was taller than most pages, including the boys. Five feet ten and a half inches – and that was without her beat-up shoes and the close-cropped Afro that she wore just like her mom’s.

The phone buzzed quietly behind her. “Floor, this is Thomas,” the head page said as he shot to his feet. “Yep – I’m on it.” He turned to Viv as he hung up the phone. “They need one…”

Nodding, Viv stood from her seat but carefully stared down at the blue-carpeted floor in a final attempt to avoid the glance of the Senator from Illinois. Her skin color, she could handle. Same with her height – like her mom taught, don’t apologize for what God gave you. But if it was her suit, as stupid as it sounded, well… some things hit home. Since the day they started, all twenty-nine of her fellow pages loved to complain about the uniform requirement. Every Senate page bitched about it. Everyone but Viv. As she knew from her school back in Michigan, the only people who moan about required uniforms are the ones who can compete in the fashion show.

“Move it, Viv – they need someone now,” the head page called out from the rostrum.

Viv didn’t bother to look back. In fact, as she rushed toward the cloakroom in the back of the chamber, she didn’t look anywhere but straight down. Still feeling the Senator’s stare burning through her, and refusing to risk eye contact, she speed-marched up the center aisle – but as she blew past row after row of antique desks, she couldn’t ignore the haunting voice in the back of her head. It was the same voice she had heard when she was eleven and Darlene Bresloff stole her RollerBlades… and when she was thirteen and Neil Grubin purposely squirted maple syrup all over her church clothes. It was a strong, unflinching voice. It was her mom’s voice. The same mom who made Viv march up to Darlene and demand her RollerBlades back now... and who, as Viv begged and pleaded to the contrary, personally carried the maple-syrup-covered suit back to Neil’s house, up the three flights of stairs, and into the living room, so Neil’s mother – whom they’d never met before – could see it for herself. That’s whose voice was echoing in the back of her head. And that’s the voice she heard halfway up the aisle… with the Senator dead ahead.