“Take it easy, Doctor boy,” Cassie said in mock alarm, watching Kevin suck it down. “My dad told me there’s nothing so quick and fun as a champagne high or as quick and nasty as a champagne low.”
The champagne high lasted for several hours, or maybe they had other reasons to be in a good mood. Cassie called Domino’s and ordered a pizza. Twenty-five minutes later the doorbell rang, and Cassiere turned from the front door with two fresh, hot pizzas and a young woman—their neighbor from down the hallway. Betsy had made small talk with her in the elevator several times but never invited her in. “Look who’s hanging around in our hallway,” she said. “This is Margaret—sorry, I don’t even know your last name.”
“Park-O’Neil,” she said. “Sorry to intrude,” she said to the others, “but this woman dragged me in here.”
“You look lonely,” Cassie said, “and we got too much pizza and too much champagne.”
Betsy couldn’t help noticing that Kevin was very quick to his feet to shake Margaret Park-O’Neil’s hand. She had to admit that her brother cut quite a figure in his Ph.D. robes, which, besides giving him great authority, seemed to put meat on his lanky bones.
“Sorry, I didn’t know it was a formal,” Margaret said. “Should I go back and dig up mine?”
“Ooh, excuse me! Dr. Park-O’Neil,” Cassie said. She looked at Betsy. “You and me, we just got to go out and get ourselves some damn education.”
During the next couple of hours the neighbor came in for a lot of attention from Betsy’s brother. From spectating on their conversation Betsy learned that Margaret was half-Korean and half-American, an Army brat with a doctorate in East Asian history, working, naturally, for the CIA. She was a funny, down-to-earth, and likable woman who knew how to wear clothes.
She reminded Betsy strongly of an Asian-American woman Kevin had been deeply in love with for two years during his college days, whom he’d brought back to Nampa several times to meet the family, and who had eventually broken up with him, throwing him into a year-long funk. She had no doubt that, whether or not Kevin was conscious of it, he had noticed the resemblance, too.
Margaret stayed for a decent amount of time and then excused herself on the grounds that this was a school night. “Yeah. Time for all good little federal employees to go to bed,” Cassie said, carrying the pizza boxes into the kitchen and ramming them into the trash. Kevin went to the broom closet and got out the sleeping bag he always used when he was there; Betsy rolled it out on the couch and donated her spare pillow.
She noticed him standing there looking at her with his eyes glistening. She stepped closer and gravely and formally shook his hand. “I’m proud of you, Kevin. Congratulations.”
“Let’s go out on the balcony,” Kevin said.
“I’ll need a wrap,” she said. “I don’t have a robe and hood.” She plucked Mom’s afghan off the back of the couch and threw it around herself, then followed her brother out. He was leaning against the railing looking out over the lights of D.C.
“This still blows me away,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“D.C. We landed coming down the Potomac tonight. And like you told me, I sat on the left side of the plane, window seat. I can spot the beltway, and when the moon is out like tonight, I can even see the cathedral. But the view of the Mall toward the Capitol is so beautiful, I wanted to cry, and tonight I could see Lincoln’s head through the skylight and Jefferson’s hand. And then a cab ride and here I am with my sister, who I used to sit with on top of the house looking at the mountains through Dad’s old binoculars.”
Betsy felt herself beginning to sober up. A lot of questions were swimming to the top of her mind. “Kevin. How did this happen so fast?” she asked gently.
“You and me, winding up here?”
“You getting your Ph.D.”
Kevin was full of himself and champagne and the still palpable memory of Margaret Park-O’Neil. He told Betsy a remarkable story. He told her about Professor Arthur Larsen and his empire, how Kevin had, over the last year, been elevated to the point where he reported directly to the Rainmaker over the heads of tenured professors. He told a very odd story about a rogue W-2 form and how Larsen’s hotshot bookkeepers were now looking after his tax work. This was the point when Betsy’s alarm bells went off.