Ethan had insisted that he give a full two weeks’ notice, and it wasn’t that Gene didn’t want to, it was just he knew any notice of any kind would be followed by appeals to reconsider—from Bambi, from Ben Miller, from the handful of Congressmen who knew him by name. He didn’t want to confess where he was going to them, although he knew it would come as no surprise. He didn’t want to have to endure their eleventh-hour promises to pull strings. It had taken him a long time to make his decision and they had stood on the sidelines waiting for it. The time to pull strings had passed.
His first day as a corporate lobbyist had been exactly like any first day he had at any other job he had ever worked before. Paperwork, paperwork, more paperwork. All done digitally and in triplicate. Then an endless series of new accounts that needed to be configured, passwords assigned, multifactors enabled, profile photos uploaded, and so on and so on until the IT person was exhausted.
His second day at work was a raw information dump. Because he wasn’t working for Ethan exclusively he had to familiarize himself with as many of the partners as possible and all the firm’s biggest clients. It was a proper mix of non-profits, petrochemicals and pick-up work from the in-house government affairs departments of big business. There was a lot to know.
His sister kept texting him. Then his brother sent him a message—mostly complaining about him getting back to their sister—but he didn’t have a single brain cell to spare processing any unessential information. He would get back to them later.
Most of the people giving him orders on his second day were other GRAs. Because he was the new kid and also several years younger than most of them, their mentorship took the form of back alley bullying. If they could have figured out a way to hang him upside down and shake his lunch money out of his pockets they would have. Instead, they settled for sending him on wild goose chases through the most disorganized OneDrive Gene had ever seen.
He didn’t even see Ethan until three in the afternoon, at which point Gene was so hopped up on Red Bull he was probably vibrating.
“Hey! Hey-hey-hey,” Catching him in the hallway heading North while Gene was trudging South. Rather than turn, Gene simply hopped backward after him. It worked for two or three minutes before he had to fling himself into a spin to avoid tripping and falling over. “What about my LDA registration?”
Ethan didn’t even shorten his stride. He might have been amused, who could tell anymore? What Gene really wanted to say was: “Why didn’t you come wish me a good first day?” but with so much caffeine in his system he had zero confidence that he could pull off the right tone.
“We won’t do that until we absolutely have to.”
“And when is that?”
“If you hit 20%”
20%—LDA stood for the Lobbying Disclosure Act. It was the federal regulation that required individuals lobbying the federal government to publically disclose their activities. Anyone can go talk to a government official, but once you spend more than 20% of your time being paid to persuade government officials you needed to disclose.
20% of his time spent lobbying.
“They showed you how to use the time tracking system?” Ethan asked.
“Yes.” After a fashion. If yelling at him for not knowing some arcane web app from 1995 even existed counted as “showing him.”
“Well, that’s how we’ll know. Our lawyers will tell us when it’s time. If you get there at all.”
“Are you thinking I won’t?” Is that a challenge? “I’m not just going to give up, you know.”
Ethan suddenly stopped. He put his hand on Gene’s shoulder to keep Gene from ricocheting back. “I’m thinking most of what you’ll be doing is preparing things for our lobbyists to use. That’s what most of our GRAs do their first year. I’d be shocked if you even had time to leave this office for a coffee.”
That turned out to be pretty accurate. If Gene wanted a challenge he had it now. His third day he was so underwater trying to play catch up he barely managed to drag himself out at seven. In the back of his mind he kept thinking 2% … 2% … 2%…
So far he had not touched a single one of Ethan’s projects. He only had three months. How on Earth was he going to pull this off?
It was from that sorry state that he had decided to walk home. It was a clear night, no longer cold but not yet blisteringly hot. Crickets and cicadas were busy tuning themselves like different sections of an orchestra, their hum blotting out the noise of traffic at distant intersections.
There weren’t many cars on K street itself, which is what made the lone black car stand out. It pulled up alongside Gene. The windows tinted solid black. His own dumb expression stared back at him. He allowed himself to hope that this was a ride home and a pep talk. He didn’t need it … much, but just the offer of one would remind him of all the reasons why this was the right decision.
As the backseat window rolled down, Gene felt his insides knot up and bile creep up his throat. Instead of the blue eyes he assumed would look out at him, they were dark, framed by pale skin and the slight sheen of slicked-back hair.
“Get in,” Guy said.
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