Page 11 of Evolved

“You seem to be pretty good with just about every other person you’ve ever met.” He slips the car into gear.

He’s right.

I can talk to almost anyone—provided I understand the terms of the conversation, what they want from me, what their angle is, how I can provide it. But when it’s not clear … like with him, I freeze.

“Perhaps if you tell me what you expect, I’ll know how to act.”

He sighs, a quiet noise in a quiet car as we drive up a silent wet hill through a silent wet city. “What about if you just treatme like a friend?” When I don’t respond, he adds, “You ever had one?”

Gina, but she was thirty-six years older than me and a coworker. I did love her though. Gran, but she’s my grandmother and my boss. “Not really.”

His face sobers, though he doesn’t look away from the road as he drives past Judiciary Park with its statue of Abraham Lincoln, long and lean and vaguely censorious. “How’s that possible?”

“I was homeschooled. And I lived at home during college, then went straight into internships, started working, and … I … all I know is work.” There weren’t ever a lot of women my age looking to befriend me. At least not genuinely. Usually, people just wanted a favor from the granddaughter of Viola Wagner. “Haveyouhad many friends?”

“Mmmhmm.Friends. Family. I was a busy guy at one point.”

I brush imaginary dirt off my knees. “How do we start? If we were to decide to be friends?”

“Call me Knox.” I swear there’s a laugh hiding in his words.

“Call me Ottilie. Or even Tilly. Might be faster in an emergency.”

He wets his lower lip thoughtfully. “Ottilie.”

That has my heart doing something stupid. “What else? What do friends do in the apocalypse?” I ask.

“They take any remaining socks out of their mouths for a start.”

I pantomime removing a sock from my own mouth and tossing it away.

A dimple I’ve never noticed before appears on his left cheek, just to the side of his lips, and a second later, he laughs, and my skin warms at the gentle, chuffing sound.

I realize I’m smiling too, almost grinning, like I didn’t just failto write a single word on a post-it note, like he didn’t just fix it for me.

“Good,” I say, though I’m not sure if I mean it as a way to end this conversation or a way to keep it going.

“Good,” he says back, and then neither of us talks for a long time.

Not until we go through the empty gates at the White House, close them manually behind us, drive up the hill to park in a place no one ever did before, near the South Lawn, where we climb out.

He meets me by the door to the Palm Room, and just before we go inside where Gran will be waiting, dinner ready since it’s her day to cook, he extends his hand, palm up, fingers spread wide, and after a slow moment, I drop my hand into his. It’s firm and warm, big, hard. Very different from mine. And while I’ve shaken thousands of hands, this feels different.

And up close, his eyes make me lose track of the conversation if there is one. Though maybe there isn’t. He’s not talking. Neither am I.

I can smell him, too, and the air of him in my lungs makes me feel… deeply … alive, like every breath is full of vitality and virility.

We stand like that, hands together, not a handshake, more like if hands could hug.

“So what happens next?” I ask.

“Whatever you want. Just …” His pause makes me think maybe he was about to say something to the effect oftreat me like a friend, but remembered I’ve never really had one who was my equal for age and position. “Just talk to me, say what you need to say. And I’ll do the same.”

“Okay.”

WE’VE TAKEN TO SLEEPINGin the Map Room—so named because during World War I, Franklin Roosevelt, a cousin of the man in the painting in the Roosevelt room, had massive maps pasted all over the walls. I saw black-and-white photographs of it once, a weary-looking man in uniform, the western front mapped out behind him.

Ripping those maps down must have felt good when they did, but now I can’t help but regret that they’re gone. It reminds me of what we’re doing now—using a formal room in a utilitarian way, an unusual one, unique to the time, born of emergency.

---