The Zero Game

34

“So we’re done?” Trish asked, sitting back in her chair in the House Interior Committee’s hearing room.

“As long as you have nothing else,” Dinah said, shuffling the thick stack of loose pages together and drumming them into a neat pile on the long oval conference table. She wasn’t thrilled to be stepping in for Matthew, but as she told her other office mates, the job still had to be done.

“No, I think that’s-” Cutting herself off, Trish quickly flipped open her three-ring binder and shuffled through the pages. “Aw, crap,” she added. “I just remembered… I got one last project…”

“Actually, me, too,” Dinah said dryly, thumbing through her own notebook but never taking her eyes off her Senate counterpart.

Trish sat up straight and stared back at Dinah. For almost twenty seconds, the two women sat there, on opposite sides of the conference table, without saying a word. Next to them, Ezra and Georgia watched them like the spectators they usually were. Samurai standoff, Matthew used to call it. Happened every time they tried to close the bill. The final grab at the goody bag.

Dinah tapped the point of her pencil against the table, readying her sword. Even with Matthew gone, the battle had to go on. That is, until someone gave up.

“My mistake…” Trish finally offered. “I was reading it wrong… That project can wait till next year.”

Ezra smiled. Dinah barely grinned. She was never one to gloat. Especially with the Senate. As she well knew, if you gloated with the Senate, they’d always bite you back.

“Glad to hear it,” Dinah replied, zipping her fanny pack and standing up from the table.

Enjoying the victory, Ezra hummed Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah under his breath. Matthew used to do the same thing when his office mate would come in and throw around her weight. Someone’s in the kitchen I knoooow...

“So that’s it?” Georgia asked. “We’re finally finished?”

“Actually, Matthew said you should’ve been finished a week ago,” Dinah clarified. “Now we’re in a mad scramble with a vote at the end of the week.”

“The bill’s on the Floor at the end of the week?” Trish asked. “Since when?”

“Since this morning, when Leadership made the announcement without asking anyone.” All three of her colleagues shook their heads, but it really wasn’t much of a surprise. During election years, the biggest race in Congress was always the one to get home. That’s how campaigns were won. That and the individual projects Members brought home for their districts: a water project in Florida, a new sewer system in Massachusetts… and even that tiny gold mine in South Dakota, Dinah thought.

“You really think we can finish Conference in a week?” Trish called out.

“I don’t see why not,” Dinah replied, lugging the rest of the paperwork to the door that connected to her office. “All you have to do now is sell it to your boss.”

Trish nodded, watching Dinah leave. “By the way,” she called out, “thanks for taking over for Matthew. I know it’s been hard with everything that’s-”

“It had to get done,” Dinah interrupted. “It’s as simple as that.”

With a slam, the door shut behind her, and Dinah crossed back into her office. She was never one for the falsities of small talk, but more important, if she’d waited any longer, she might’ve missed the person who, as she looked across the room, was waiting so patiently for her.

“All set?” Barry asked, leaning against the short filing cabinet between Matthew’s and Dinah’s desks.

“All set,” Dinah replied. “Now where do you want to go to celebrate?”