Neither Doug nor I like to cook much. From time to time, we’ve invited friends to our condo for wine and cheese. Home cooked dinners typically involve the pizza stone, frozen dough, and toppings hastily found in the fridge’s remote vestiges. For routine sustenance, we patronize the numerous restaurants that populate our suburban corridor. Many are within walking distance, and several deliver their full menus to nearby condo dwellers. A Thai place recently opened a block away, and it promised speedy delivery. Living in the Washington, D.C., region has a lot of positives, yet amazing cuisine isn’t one of them. It’s hit or miss, and restaurants have a short shelf life, mimicking the attenuated attention spans of the young urban professional clientele.
A few moments later, Clarence had been fed, at least his first course before the human food arrived. He hunched over his bowl, wolfing down doggie food as hurriedly as he could. I sat in our comfortable armchair sipping a local Chardonnay, taking a moment to savor the crisp tartness of the vintage. I had changed from my work clothes into a pair of shorts and an old t-shirt with the slogan “Don’t Assume That I Cook” next to a picture of a pizza box. After locating my cellphone in my purse, I searched for the Thai place’s delivery number. In sixty seconds, we had a delicious meal of sesame noodles, green curry, spring rolls, and mango sticky rice coming our way. With its light touch and slightly fruity taste, the wine would complement our dinner perfectly.
As we sipped our libations, I recounted the day’s events to Doug, with a few select omissions. I conveniently left out the detail in which I was almost uncovered as a snoop and had to seek refuge in Representative Jessop’s bathroom. I also “forgot” to mention the sinister phone call at the end of the day. Was withholding information the moral equivalent of lying? In this instance, the ends justified the means. We had to keep up the hunt for Langsford’s killer, and if Doug knew about the threatening phone call, he would make sure my gumshoe days were history, no pun intended.
Doug agreed the evidence of Jessop’s association with Carter Power was suspicious, while still falling short of the smoking gun needed to pin Langsford’s murder on the guilty party. After our food arrived, we sat at our sleek black dining room table and discussed tomorrow’s wake. To my surprise, Doug said he would accompany me.
Don’t get me wrong. Doug was a supportive significant other. He enthusiastically endorsed my off-the-wall idea four years ago to join Senator Langsford’s tough reelection campaign. At the time, he had recently accepted an appointment as an assistant professor at Georgetown and was completely absorbed in writing his first book. Because of his fixation on tenure, I didn’t know if it even registered I was gone from Washington for six months straight during the campaign. He flew to Boston for a visit whenever he took a rare day off from working on his manuscript.
After Senator Langsford won the race, I lobbied the senior campaign staff about a policy job in Washington, D.C. Langsford’s reelection meant I would have a job and hopefully a career in the same city as Doug. It didn’t take long for the pieces of the puzzle to fall into place. The same day Senator Langsford was sworn into office for another term as senator, I took the federal employee oath and joined his staff.
Academics have a love/hate relationship with politics. Some prominent professors apply their intellectual knowledge to public affairs, and the highest level of policymakers seek out their expertise. Most of these professors are economists, political scientists, or international affairs experts. It’s the rare historian who deigns to derive scholarly relevance from current events.
Doug’s research was steeped in academic debates concerning the historical periods, people, and institutions he studied. His primary audience was other academics. While his colleagues weren’t oblivious about what transpired in the world around them, academic careers did not typically soar due to the latest buzz from Capitol Hill.
Given this divide, Doug supported my career as a Senate staffer simply because I needed a job in D.C. Besides, working for the Senate was a prestigious position that served routinely as adequate cocktail conversation fodder at the various events we attended around town. Those two reasons surely contributed to his approval, but Doug went beyond such perfunctory encouragement. He routinely asked about the trials and tribulations of my work and kept abreast of the various lively characters I encountered daily. All the while, he refrained from injecting himself into my Capitol Hill life, always one step comfortably removed.
The arrangement was almost perfect. There was one wrinkle, which I avoided discussing like the plague, even with Meg. All that was missing was an engagement ring on my finger. Good things come to those who wait, and I had waited patiently. Doug’s reluctance to take the plunge was a sore point. Since he was otherwise devoted, I tolerated his commitment phobia … for now.
So naturally I was taken aback when Doug mentioned he would accompany me to Senator Langsford’s wake. Doug usually came with me to “official” events, such as a holiday party or an office picnic. Somehow, Senator Langsford’s funeral seemed more intimate than those other occasions, and I hadn’t expected him to come. Nonetheless, he was intent on attending, which led me to wonder whether his father had urged him to go, perhaps to represent the family and keep an eye on me. My recent brush with the law still didn’t sit well with the family. That couldn’t bode well for future wedding bells, either.
We made our plans for tomorrow, which included picking up Meg before heading out to McLean for the wake. After confirming that the car did indeed have gas, we decided to watch a made-for-TV mystery movie. The rest of the night passed peacefully, with Clarence happily snoozing between us on the sofa, snoring softly as we gave him all the attention he felt he deserved. As I watched the movie, that nagging feeling colored my thoughts once again. The plots for these cable movies weren’t terribly sophisticated. This particular mystery featured a sleuth who figured out whodunit after realizing one of the suspect’s stories contained a key detail that was woefully out of place.
I, too, had an annoying and persistent feeling a key piece of information resided in my brain, just beyond the grasp of consciousness. Maybe I should have ignored those thoughts, turned off the television, taken an Ambien, and gone to bed. Instead, I kept trying to unearth the fuzzy detail eluding me.