“Caveman,” she snapped.
“Battle-axe,” he returned.
She gasped.
He hit the button to roll down his window to pay for parking.
Of course, her being her, she did not let it go and they were barely riding free on Peña Boulevard when she stated, “You could have just swung through arrivals and avoided parking fees altogether.”
“I was picking up someone for my brother, woman or not, and my momma and daddy, both Chaos through and through, raised me better.”
He heard her huff.
But she said not a word.
Yeah.
That shut her damned mouth.
In fact, it shut her mouth so good, she was silent for so long, he got tweaked enough to look her way.
She had her head turned and was staring out her side window.
And she was a serious pain in the ass, but the look on her face that he caught even in profile, which wasn’t annoyed, frustrated, obstinate or haughty, but something softer, and definitely something concerning, made him wonder what she’d been doing in DC.
And if maybe something that happened there, or was the reason why she went there, was not only putting that look on her face, but also putting her in a shit mood.
These thoughts being why he asked, “You okay?”
He’d turned back to the road, but he glanced and saw she’d done the same and was looking out the windshield when she answered, “I will be when you drop me off.”
Right.
No.
“We don’t get along,” he pointed out the obvious. “And we don’t have to. This is a one-shot deal, this time we’re spending together. It’s soon gonna be over, so set that aside because I’m asking genuinely. You okay?”
She didn’t answer.
“Right. Whatever,” he muttered.
She said nothing for so long, they were nearing the highway when she finally spoke.
“My trip was unfun. And I’m supposed to compartmentalize, and usually, I can do that. But this time, I’m not finding it easy.”
“I know you’re Carolyn’s sister. I know you don’t let shit go. I know you got serious issues with the way people deal with their carry-ons. But other than that, I don’t know dick about you, Georgiana, so gotta say, I don’t know what any of that means.”
“The story I’m on,” she explained. “The story I have to write tonight and turn in so they can post it in the morning. It’s not a fun story. And I should lock it tight where it’s supposed to be, until I let it out to write it, and then lock it back up and move on. I can do that, normally. I’ve actually been on worse stories, and I could do it. This time, for some reason, it’s messing with me.”
“Story you’re on?”
“I’m a journalist.”
That explained the not-letting-go part of her personality.
“The Post? The News?” he asked. “Westword?”
“No. Online. National. Or international. The Worldist. We’re redefining news. Or bringing it back to its roots. Like Vice on HBO. Where it’s about news, information. Not graphics and makeup and hairstyles and graying men with bushy mustaches standing up in front of screens with attractive women thirty years younger than them who’ll be cast out the second they reach a certain age, but the guy will be up there until he keels over. News that is not news because it’s shaping a narrative, even if that narrative is hooey crafted carefully to gain ratings. But a narrative isn’t news. Isn’t information. It’s a point of view. And news does not have a point of view.”
Well, shit.
He’d heard of The Worldist, and after getting over its relatively stupid name, he’d checked it out. When he did, not only for their video reports, but their written ones, for the last year or so, if he wanted the real story, he went there. To the point he had a subscription.
“That’s the problem,” she carried on. “My job is not to have a point of view. My job is to gather facts and write them in a manner they’re relayed in a way that people can understand them. The end. But this story, I have a point of view. It happens. I’m human. But this one…”
She had more to say, she just didn’t say it.
“What’s this one?” he asked quietly.
“The student loan crisis.”
“And?”
“Well, there’s aid. Not a lot of it, but there’s aid. The thing is, you can’t tap into it if your parents have money.”
“Yeah, and that makes sense.”
“Yeah, it does. The thing is, some parents aren’t parents. But the aid agencies regard them as parents. So, say your mom looks after you in all ways, including financially, and you’re barely scraping by. But you want to go to college. She can’t pay for it. You can’t pay for it. You apply for aid you can’t get because your dad’s a high-powered attorney in DC, who makes seven figures, but he’s not given you or your mother a single dollar or even seen your face or asked to do so since he took off when you were two years old. But his salary is calculated, and you have no shot at aid. So you have two choices. Don’t go to college, or eventually start your life weighed down by crippling loans. And it’s alarming how many kids pick door number one.”
“College isn’t the only choice and it isn’t the only road to a good life,” he told her.
“You’re correct,” she replied. “But schooling to learn to be a plumber, an electrician, a hair stylist, an HVAC tech, a vet tech, a massage therapist, and the list goes on, isn’t free either.”
She was right.
“So, you’re back from DC after meeting with a filthy-rich, deadbeat dad whose kid is deciding not to go to college because he’s a deadbeat,” Dutch surmised.
“Yeah. And he wasn’t big on the way our chat went, and I assume with his demonstrated prowess in the courtroom he has a great command of the English language, but in communicating that to me, he chose to use words far worse than the ones you use.”
“You blindside him?” he asked.
When she answered, the snap in her tone was back.
“Of course not. I told him the article I was working on and why I wished to speak to him. Prior to me flying out, he had a great many things to say about ‘making your own way in the world,’ when he’s a trust fund baby, his college and law school were paid for by his folks, and his parents also have chosen not to claim the results of his first marriage, a marriage they did not approve of. He thinks she…his daughter, that is…will improve her character by having to work for her future. Not that he has any clue what her character is, considering when he left her, she couldn’t form sentences.”
Dutch was of a mind, if you had it, and it didn’t make them spoiled brats, you gave it to your kids. Otherwise, what was the point of having kids in the first place, if you didn’t give them the things they needed to have a decent life? If you didn’t give them whatever you had to in order to give them a good life from the start until you dropped dead.
What his mother had given him and Jag.
What Hound had given them.
What Chaos had given them.
But bottom line, no kid of his would be a kid he’d ever walk away from.
“He was unprepared for the fact that I was prepared,” she went on. “Benefit of the doubt, it was my age. But the truth of it, it was probably my gender and he underestimated me. So he didn’t think I’d dig and find out that, being a five-hundred-dollar-an-hour attorney and all, he’d managed to come out on top every time the mom took him to court to get some support. He stuck to the line he had no responsibility for a girl he did not know, he did not want, even before his wife got pregnant, something he alleges he told his wife before she conceived against his will, and was happy to allow to be adopted, if his ex would simply move on and stop harassing him. How this made it through in this day and age, I have utterly no clue. Accept he makes a lot of money, he comes from even more, and knows the legal system and those who work in it like the back of his hand. Credit to the woman, she didn’t give up, until the trying nearly bankrupted her and she had no choice but to go it alone.”