a big black POWER button and the car hummed quietly to life. He looked back, and the car started backing out silently, without the gas engine ever engaging. I was in love. And not just with the car, though his politics I could do without.
“My boy rails on how he’s reading all these super secret Republican polls and whatever and when the host starts nailing him on specifics, he gets even more flustered and tells him that ‘you can come up with whatever math you want, but I’m entitled to THE math.’ And I’m hearing this and the whole time thinking—‘Liar!’“
He said the last word so fiercely I jumped, and at last the gas engine engaged as he turned out onto Moreland and started heading north.
“In my job, I’ve got to pick out the truth every day—and when I heard my boy claiming we were going to win, all I heard was spinning.” He cut left onto Freedom Parkway, the car humming louder. “So I looked at the polls, at all of them—”
“And how did you get access to the super secret Republican polls?” I asked.
“Let’s just say the NSA has nothing on the DEI when it comes to information gathering,” Philip said. “They may trawl wide, but we go deep—”
“Special Agent Davidson,” I said, mock shocked. “Don’t tell me you used the vast powers of your office to fact check an NPR story! But do tell me the juicy bits.”
“Our remote viewers will do anything to settle a bet,” he said. “And as for the juicy bits… well, let’s just say I think you’ll be happy come November seventh.”
“You don’t know how I vote,” I said. He looked over at me, and we both snorted in laughter. “Hey, where are we going—”
“Does fish sound good?” he said. “Rand had a few recommendations—”
“Yes,” I said, feeling my cheek; it felt like I would be able to eat. “I’m starving—I haven’t had a bite since my trip to the dentist. The meeting with Spleen and Wulf is near Buckhead, and there’s this great place, a little pricey, called the Fish Market—”
He looked over at me again in shock. “Well, what do you know,” he said with a grin. “That was at the top of my list.”
We crested the hill of Freedom Parkway just as the sun was setting, seeing the same panorama of downtown Atlanta I’d seen with Spleen the first night I met Wulf. This time we shot towards the glittering spires and slid into the canyon of the Downtown Connector, heading north into the fairybook playground for adults that was the Buckhead Village.
“There,” I said. “Straight onto Buffered Extra-Strength Highway—”
“Buford, eh?” he said, slipping over a lane onto the long frontage road that paralleled the connector. “He said I had to check out the big fish. Is it that good? I’m on a diet—”
“If you can eat the big fish,” I said, “I’ll vote Republican.” The Buckhead ‘Village’ was technically within the city limits of Atlanta, but had its own distinctive feel: upscale shops at the feet of high-rise offices and condos, high-end yuppie restaurants side-by-side with come-as-you-are bars. As the boxy, brightly lit shape of the Atlanta Fish Market became visible on Pharr Road, I stared straight at Philip to get his reaction.
“Oh. My. God,” he said, staring up at the giant, three-story copper fish statue that adorned the front corner of the restaurant, curving towards the sky in all its grand, ostentatious Statue-of-Liberty-colored glory. “He wasn’t kidding. That’s a Big. F-ing. Fish—”
“Philip, your lane,” I said, as he started to drift over the double yellow line.
A valet took the car, and after we got our names on the waitlist, we walked—well, he walked and I hobbled on my crutches—back to the towering fish and stopped on the little bridge that climbed over its tail.
“Holy cow,” he said. “It’s got that Statue of Liberty color—”
“Ah, Philip,” I said, smiling, leaning my crutches and myself on the railing of the bridge. “It’s the copper.”
He leaned on the rail opposite me, and I stared at him… at the cleancut young Republican in his trim suit and devilish goatee, wondering how on earth I had ended up on a date with him and why I was liking it so much.
But there was a lurking weight on my shoulders, now heavier after the attack on Valentine. Whoever had done that had meant to get me… and in the confusion the police hadn’t caught the guy. That had me more worried about Wulf’s