Jumping

Condaleeza Rice sipped her blackberry/wheatgrass/fennel/liver smoothie and stared silently out the window at the dark Potomac River. She was ticked off about Nancy Pelosi, flaunting all her children and grandchildren in the House Chamber, Mrs. "I can have it all" career woman, now third in line for the Presidency. Ardua sensed Rice's agitation and sent a couple starlings up to her window to calm her down. Rice looked at the birds, then stared deeply into their black eyes. Pelosi meant nothing. Pelosi didn't even have the nuclear codes. Rice was pulling the strings of real power, Rice instilled fear, Rice forced the world's lunatic leaders to play right into her hands. John Negroponte would come over to the State Department and take over the Iraq team, freeing up Rice to go after more glamorous prizes. This was going to be a good year. She didn't need children or grandchildren--the world was her playground.

Several miles east, Sebastian L'Arche was shooting hoops at the local playground, enjoying the crazy January warmth. He had made $17,000 in the past four weeks moving Democrat pets into D.C. and Republican pets out. The east coast runs were fine, but the moves westward across the Potomac were killing him, the way those pets went berserk on the bridges. Now that business was slowing down again, he was going to have to take some trial runs further south, maybe driving all the way into southern Maryland before crossing westward into Virginia. One thing he had learned in Iraq, when dogs tell you something was bad news, they're always right. The basketball hit him in the chest. "Yo, Archie!" He had forgotten for a minute what he was doing. He must be going crazy, thinking there was something evil in the Potomac. Post-traumatic stress disorder or something.

Back at the Potomac, Dubious McGinty was watching TV in the abandoned bridgeman's quarters, twitching with PTSD while he watched the digital reenactment of the hero of the New York subway jumping in front of a speeding train to pin down the young man having seizures. Dubious had seen the reenactment five times now, and the man looked exactly like the guy who had jumped onto Dubious to save his ass back in Vietnam. But he knew it wasn't him because that guy had died saving McGinty's ass back in Vietnam. Dubious couldn't stop twitching. He kept jumping in front of Ardua, but he could never stop her. He still didn't know how. Outside, a catbird perched on the bridge was softly imitating explosion sounds that Dubious could just barely hear as he drifted into shallow, restless sleep.