“He what?” Gaby barked loudly enough that the barista stopped foaming the milk and stared. Gaby met his eyes and barked, “Does it look like this concerns you?” The barista took heed and kept foaming.

“It’s fine,” Cleo said. “Not fine but . . . I have some other things to deal with anyway. I’ll have a quiet weekend. Lucas has a school retreat.”

Cleo had second-guessed her decision to leave Lucas home alone sick the entire drive into the office, but what else was she supposed to do? In addition to the Tylenol and orange juice, she’d left him a note (which she realized too late he’d never read, so she texted him the same note verbatim) that said there was more orange juice in the fridge and bagels in the bread bin, and he should feel free to order in chicken soup. She couldn’t help herself and added a tip that doctors had found real research on the fact that chicken soup was a natural remedy. Lucas hated soup and would probably find her suggestion incredibly annoying, but oh well, she had to try.

“There’s another thing,” Cleo said after they had armed themselves with caffeine and headed toward the office. “Where are we on the dancing?”

“It’s harder than you would think to find just the right forum for a senator to dance.” Gaby slowed her stride as a pack of men walked past and turned to stare at her (maybe at Cleo too, but more likely her) as they went. “On the one hand, I want Veronica to see your sass—”

“Would we say that I have sass?”

“We would say that you will have sass.” Gaby laughed. “But on the other hand, I’m not so confident in your dancing skills that I really want to make this a public spectacle.”

“We could cut the dancing. I could take a pottery class. Or glassblowing.”

“You’re not taking a pottery class.”

“It’s just about the art, about me trying the art,” Cleo said, and Gaby made a face as if it should never just be about one thing when you can make it about so much more.

Cleo swung open the door to the Russell Building and held it for Gaby to enter, then for three more people—two men and an older woman—to pass through as well. She wasn’t at all put off that the men hadn’t offered. She wasn’t looking for special treatment or gentlemanly gestures.

Still, though, she didn’t much mind when the door swung closed behind her right as she saw the majority leader lumbering up the steps and asking her to hold it. She kind of hoped it smacked him in the face, bruised the crown of his nose, split open one of those dry, crusty lips.

It wouldn’t make up for anything, but at least she’d enjoy watching him taste blood.

Gaby tasked Arianna with sifting through the mail to find an invitation to something . . . arty.

“Let’s start there,” Gaby said. “Anything that might have a live band with a few boldface names. Even if I film Cleo out there on the dance floor myself. I’ll make it work.”

Arianna raised her eyebrows and surely had something to say but did not. Over the years, her staff had made it known around town that Cleo would show up for a fundraiser for a cause she believed in (or for her own campaign’s funding, naturally), but given her disdain for both small talk and art appreciation, she was not likely to waste her time on, say, pop-up art gallery shows to raise money for the homeless. She wanted to help the homeless, of course. Whichever staffer had to RSVP would emphasize this, and it wasn’t even untrue. But she wasn’t going to show up and eat cheese cubes and sip dry wine and nod at art that she didn’t understand or think was all that good to do so. She’d rather spend the night writing legislation that made a difference. Like the Jackman-McDougal Bill.

“Well, this is something,” Arianna said. “You . . . were invited to a prom?”

Gaby was midgulp in her latte and laughed so hard that she had to lean over the trash can and spit out her drink.

“I feel like that would garner bad press, like, something illegal?” Cleo replied. Then to Gaby: “What? I can’t be hot enough to go to a prom?”

“Did you even go to your own prom?” Gaby retorted once she got control of herself.

As a matter of fact, Cleo had not. She had long since dumped Matty, and no one else was interested. Besides, by then she had been accepted to Northwestern, and she was well on her way to plotting her exit out of Seattle, so she spent prom night studying the course catalog and drinking Diet Cokes and listening to her grandmother answer the questions on Jeopardy!.

“Fine,” Cleo said. “I’m obviously not going as someone’s date to prom.”

The phone kept ringing as Arianna sifted through the mail.

“Don’t get that,” she said to Cleo and Gaby, as if either of them had taken to answering their own phone lines. “It’s just more stuff about the hashtag. Pros and cons.” She looked toward Gaby. “Don’t worry—I’m still tallying them.”

They all paused and looked toward the whiteboard. The pros were creeping up toward 77 percent, but underneath, Arianna had also written in all caps and underlined: FIRST LAWSUIT.

“There’s actually a lawsuit?” Cleo asked, a little alarmed.

“Not against you,” Arianna replied. “A high schooler in Omaha who outed some big-deal friend of her dad’s. She filmed it, and it’s gotten, like, fifty thousand YouTube likes, and now he’s suing her for defamation.”

“Jesus Christ,” Gaby said. “What is wrong with people?”

“A lot.” Arianna shrugged.

Gaby turned to Cleo. “This is what I warned you about. This ‘film first’ tactic gives these dickheads an opening.”

“I know.” Cleo nodded. “But still, with Nobells, it worked.” In fact, Columbia had just issued a press release announcing the illustrious professor was taking a “sabbatical” while they investigated.

“Clee.” Gaby sighed. “We both know that just because something works doesn’t mean that it’s not reckless. Veronica Kaye knows that too. We have to be smarter, OK?”

Of course they had to be smarter. They were women.

Arianna returned to the mail pile, then looked up, remembered something, stuttered, then stopped.

“Well, I mean, something came in a few weeks ago?” She shook her head. “I’m sorry; it’s stupid.”

“You did it again,” Cleo said. “You apologized.”

“Shoot, I’m sorry!” Arianna’s face went slack. “Goddammit!”

“What was that one?” Gaby asked.

“Oh God, I shouldn’t have even mentioned it. It’s just that, well, no offense, Senator McDougal, but no one is really after you for your arts patronage.”

“Maybe I can just take a class,” Cleo said. “It doesn’t need to be a grand gesture.”

Gaby bugged her eyes like it very much needed to be a grand gesture. “What was the one from a few weeks ago, Arianna?” she pressed.

“I replied no, but maybe I can switch it. You’re here this weekend, right?” Arianna flipped through some papers in the bottom drawer of her desk.

Cleo nodded a curt yes. No delegation. Lucas on his retreat. She was begrudgingly available.

“Whatever it is, as long as it’s legal and not a prom, she’ll do it,” Gaby said, then dragged Cleo into her office. They had Bowen Babson to prepare for.

On the way to the studio for Bowen’s show, Gaby was talking a mile a minute, even faster than her usual rate. She had informed Veronica that Cleo was not only pushing through the free housing bill (Gaby had not yet figured out how to make that one sexy for the public, but all parties agreed that writing good and valuable legislation could be used to Cleo’s advantage regardless of sex appeal) but that Cleo may very well dance in public this weekend. Veronica Kaye had loved it.

“She loooooved it!” Gaby shrieked and pumped her fist in the air.

Cleo wanted to share in her joy, she really did. She knew it was no small thing that Veronica Kaye was boarding her train, going Only Forward!, but she was anxious about facing Bowen and she was worried because she’d called Lucas twice around noon and texted him three times and even figured out how to Snap him (Arianna had to help her, obviously), and she hadn’t heard back. She’d missed a call from him about an hour ago when she was on a conference call with Senator Jackman going over the budgeting of just how they were going to ask Congress to subsidize their free housing, and now she couldn’t get him to pick up.