During much of the ride, Hayley remains preoccupied and mostly quiet. In her head, she runs the lines she will deliver to Scott. This breakup shouldn’t be too big a drama given how long they’ve been seeing each other. Hayley ponders the expression “seeing one another,” such a useless and overtly benign euphemism. Whoever can truly see another person? People wear so many masks they can’t even see themselves, let alone their significant other. She and Scott have been fucking each other for less than a week. Easier to think of their relationship in those more accurate terms, given what she is about to say.
“Sure you’re okay?” he asks her.
Hayley shrugs and plays a card she’s dealt before.
“The FBI interviewed me again today.”
“I heard they were on the premises. Questioning you?” he asks with some surprise.
“Peter Hall,” she tells him, nodding. “Wanted to know if I’d noticed anything odd or out of place.”
“Did you?”
“No. But Udall thinks his death might be foul play. They found traces of anesthesia in Hall’s system.”
“Okay. So the FBI can worry about it.”
Hayley says nothing. She finds herself staring at the BMW’s black faux-leather dash in front of her. Among the scuff marks there, she sees a dusty imprint of the boot, an exact match of the print she found in the snow outside Hall’s residence, down to the distinctive linear x’s and dashes above an array of squares.
Scott sees Hayley gaping at the boot print on the dash. In that instant, he links this fixation to her inexplicable Internet search for boots just a half hour earlier. At the time he had thought nothing of it. Now she’s similarly transfixed by the presence of a boot print on his dash. “What?” he asks.
“Nothing,” she responds. “The whole business, it’s just upsetting.”
“Must be,” Scott responds, but his voice has gone strangely hollow and vacant. He focuses on the road ahead as the vehicle begins to cross the Key Bridge.
Hayley feels time elongate, stretching like taffy between the present and an unreliable future. Each heartbeat thuds with anticipation and dread. The game is up. No longer a question of breaking off a brief love affair, this is a stark matter of survival. She is in the jaws of the lion.
Without announcement, Hayley unlatches her seat belt and reaches for the door handle. She has managed to push the door halfway open when Scott reaches across her and pulls it closed again. Then, with the same hand, he withdraws a combat knife from an ankle sheath and thrusts, with the intent of driving it deep into his passenger’s chest. Hayley raises her backpack, which she had in her lap, and blocks his attack. The knife’s blade pierces the pack’s fabric and becomes hung up when Scott tries to withdraw it for a second attempt. Armed only with her fists, Hayley smashes her balled-up right hand into Scott’s face, bringing a constellation of stars to his vision.
The BMW sedan veers right and crashes through the masonry balustrade on the north side of the bridge. Flying off the span as if choreographed by stunt artists, the vehicle arcs elegantly through the air and splashes into the Potomac, front bumper first. It floats for a moment, but water quickly floods inside through a shattered windshield. Within seconds, the BMW sedan has submerged and sinks toward the riverbed.
Scott and Hayley continue to fight as the car fills with water. Holding her breath, Hayley reaches again for the door handle in the dark murk of the Potomac water. She is halfway out the open door when Scott grips her arm from behind and hauls her back inside. With his other hand, he tries to undo his own seat belt and succeeds, but the retracting belt becomes ensnared around his neck. He must release his grip on Hayley in order to free himself. Unencumbered, Hayley pushes off from the car seat and jets out the open door, swimming toward the glimmer of lights above.
Hayley comes to the surface underneath the bridge, choking and gasping for breath. The current carries her south, away from where the car entered the water and on the opposite side of the bridge from where people have gathered to observe the aftermath of the accident. No witnesses interviewed later by the authorities recall seeing anyone surface from the submerged vehicle.
She swims the few dozen yards to the river’s edge and clambers onto the bank, water dripping from her clothes, face, and hair. Both shoes are missing, but otherwise she is completely unhurt. There isn’t a bruise or cut on her. Checking the inside pocket of her jacket, Hayley retrieves her phone. Miraculously, it remains fully operational.
* * *
THE RECENTLY BUILT condos at 3303 Water Street, in the words of its promotional materials, are “modern to a T.” They’re also extremely expensive, on the highest end of condo valuations in the District of Columbia. Prices hover between two and three million dollars, with $3,000 a month HOA dues, for 2,200 square feet of above-average construction and “ultra-luxury” fixtures with a panoramic view of the Potomac River. The majority of residents are lawyers and lobbyists. There is only one low-level White House aide residing at 3303 Water Street, Asher Danes, whose father purchased the condo as an investment. Sparing his only son the indignities of lesser accommodations was the primary consideration, however.
Asher eats his takeout dinner from Tono Sushi delivered to his door by Uber Eats and watches the emergency vehicle lights flashing on the Key Bridge, prominently visible through floor-to-ceiling windows that define the living space. A television nearby is tuned to MSNBC at a low volume. Getting home from another grinding workday, Asher prefers to tune out. Eat, a little reality TV, then sleep. It’s the same routine every day. On weekends, if he isn’t at the White House, Asher is sleeping, recharging for the week coming up.
He has become disillusioned working in the West Wing, his unhappiness so acute he’s considered quitting. Sure, Asher would like to be the first (openly) gay president. He loves politics as much as ever, motivated by a keen desire to help people and change the world for the better. His problem with the White House is its current occupant. Asher was an early supporter of Monroe but has become disenchanted with the administration’s agenda as it evolved into actual policy. In his time since working there, Asher has exchanged exactly zero words with the president. He suspects Monroe is homophobic.
Asher isn’t sure what he would do if he quit and moved back to Greenwich. No doubt his parents would love to have him home. Eventually, he will get hired by some random political candidate to help with his or her campaign for some random congressional seat or another. But Asher really would prefer not to take that easy way out. He craves a more dynamic and directed confrontation of his dissatisfaction. Gifted with a prodigious intellect, good looks, and an effortless wit, Asher Danes perceives he has coasted through life without breaking a sweat.
In this moment, while idly picking at the remnants of his sushi dinner and watching the hectic activity on the distant Key Bridge, Asher decides to run for political office himself. He doesn’t know where exactly. New York, where his father is a high-powered lawyer? Or Connecticut, where he grew up? Either place provides possibilities for a state senate or congressional seat in the next two years. In this way emotionally reinvigorated, Asher calculates a timetable for declaring his political intentions.
All of it will require considerable research, of course, a time-consuming endeavor that would be impossible while also working in the West Wing. If he’s serious about any of these ideas, Asher must quit his job at the White House. He muses on the potential of making a declaration of his resignation. Can it be spun as a protest of Monroe’s policies? All of this speculation gets Asher’s blood moving, passionate again for the first time in weeks. He doesn’t worry about upsetting his parents. Prone to bragging about their son, the White House aide, they’ll be undoubtedly even happier to boast of their son, US representative from New York’s Seventeenth District.