DC By the Book

Excerpt: I cross the street, which is empty in their wake. Most of the National Press Building’s lights are still on, as reporters for outlets across the globe type away to beat their deadlines. Editors are waiting in Tokyo, the masses are curious in Mumbai, the public has a right to know in London. The sheer volume of information being churned out of that building is unfathomable to me, the weight of it, and also the waste. As if people needed it.

Excerpt: After nine days of waiting for the hags to show up, of sitting in my terrible motel room and venturing out only at night to learn the city, watch Chaudhry, and scout the locales without leaving a trance, I finally allowed myself to roam about by day that afternoon. The Department would have condoned it, as I was supposed to limit my appearances to errands of strict necessity, but I was bored, and I figured that by wandering the National Mall I would be just another tourist cloaked in anonymity.

Excerpt: Walking along a reflection pool at the base of the Capitol building, I saw a young woman carrying her toddler, a little black girl in a pink sweater, her hair braided with white beads. Residue from cotton candy encrusted the girl’s lips, and I thought of myself, She’s two, maybe three. I wanted to know her name, look her up in my databases, see if by any chance she would be one of the survivors. It was incredibly important to me.

Excerpt: She follows my eyes to all the cops and security guards who stand at the gates of the White House and atop nearby buildings, their hands griping rifles, their chests think with bulletproof vests. The stand there and pretend not to watch the ghosts floating away from their territory.

Excerpt: It was a warm night and Leo drove with his windows down, the city drolly exhaling in his face. He wound his way through D.C.’s bingo board of alphabetized and numbered streets until he reached the Whole Foods, whose opening here in Logan Circle, when Leo was stationed in Jakarta, had officially jump-started the gentrification process a few years back. He barely recognized the neighborhood.

Excerpt: It was one of Washington’s dirty little secrets, how diplomats sometimes brought over servants from their home countries, usually immigrants there, whom they paid slave wages or no wages at all. Sometimes the servants were kept locked in the house, or were beaten, or worse. Diplomats immunity protected their ambassadorial bosses, as did the fact that, usually, no one ever saw the servants or had any idea what was going on inside that charming Tudor in Palisades.

Excerpt: He’d been back in D.C. for weeks and hadn’t done anything more social than see a few movies alone and then loiter in Kramerbooks hoping to bump into a hot-librarian type. Which never happened. Most of his friends from the Agency were stationed abroad, or were too busy to meet up, or were distrustful enough to concoct excuses.

Excerpt: Tasha thought of all the fanfare and press and Hollywood stars surrounding the dedication of the World War II Memorial, and of its prime location beneath the Washington Monument, and she was struck and saddened by the contrast with this place. A memorial that hardly anyone knew existed, not even a lifelong Washingtonian who had spent countless hours writing legal briefs only three blocks from here.

Excerpt: The stairs crested the hill and then descended to a long stone walkway. Before her was a wall upon which maps of Germany and France were etched. The lines and arrows represented military fronts, the moments of the armies. She stepped back and saw the sign decorating the World War I Memorial.