Free Last Days of the Condor by James Grady Page B

couldn’t pretend anymore to ignore what was going on in the fishbowl.
    â€œI’m Chris,” he said. “Chris Harvie.”
    She walked away.
    As he said: “Can I ask your name?”
    Faye refused to turn around. Watched the fishbowl that trapped her tomorrows.
    Traps my today, she thought that Tuesday seven months later as après Starbucks Condor walked back to work over empty sidewalks and she walked across the cubicle-crowded, blue-lightning-bolts limbo level and into NROD’s clear-walls corral.
    â€œWhere’s Peter?” she said to her half-dozen men and women colleagues.
    â€œDid you lose your partner?” said Harris with a snide look that lied and said he knew more than he did.
    He’s not worth the bullet . Faye claimed an empty desktop computer, checked the online agent duty roster. Frowned. Saw one of the two bosses in NROD’s inner office.
    Stuck her head in, said: “Why is my partner detailed to Admin this morning?”
    The section co-commander who insisted you call her Pam checked the computer at her desk, shrugged. “Probably some data-processing glitch.”
    â€œIs it about me?” asked Faye.
    â€œWhy, did you do something wrong?”
    Faye returned Pam’s shrug, said: “ Naw. You know me, boss.”
    As she walked away, Faye heard Boss Pam say: “No, I don’t.”
    No, Faye hadn’t planned on going to that Ultimate Frisbee game the night after Sami worked a miracle, covered everyone’s ass with the Senate oversight committee and cut some deals that eventually sent her to Home Sec’s NROD in Complex Zed, but that next day she couldn’t, she just couldn’t stay in her new Bethesda apartment staring out at the autumn leaves of the political metropolis she’d need to get used to again.
    She went for a late run like she often did, but that evening she and her backpack cleared any brick surveillance, only ran as far as the Bethesda Metro before she caught a train, transferred to the Blue Line, spotted Frisbee players on the grassy Mall, walked to them and watched him watch her (and miss a catch) as she took something from under her sweatshirt, put it in her knapsack that she secured to a tree with a bicycle lock.
    He called out: “She’s with us!”
    But he cut her no slack when players switched around so they were on opposite sides. Between the post-surgery push-ups, pull-ups, and running, she was in better shape, but he never hesitated to play as hard against her as he could.
    Standing beside him as he caught his breath, she said: “So this is what people do?”
    â€œWhat people?” he gasped.
    â€œPeople our age. Normal people.”
    â€œNobody’s normal,” he said. “You know that.”
    Somebody yelled Go! They ran to and fro on the green grass under Washington’s evening sky. The ivory Capitol dome rose a few blocks beyond one side of their playing field, while a quarter mile from the other sideline rose the Washington Monument topped by blinking red lights.
    Faye had her cover story ready, a driver’s license from Ohio, but no one hit her with Washington’s ubiquitous defining question of “What do you do?”
    She thought: They’ve carved out this time from their imposed reality .
    Still, she deduced that many players were Congressional aides, that one handsome guy with curly hair worked for a telecommunications giant, a woman was a waitress waiting to hear about law school, two other women already were beginning associates in some D.C. legal factory where they’d go back to their desks and work toward midnight.
    After the last game, Faye caught a ride with strangers to the chosen burgers & beers bar, watched him smoothly cut her out of the crowd to end up sitting with her and their third-round beers at the far end of the jukebox bar where no one could hear them.
    â€œNicely maneuvered,” she told him. Told Chris. Chris