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“Light through a window?—”
I take my feet off my desk and open my eyes. Delphi stands at the edge of the square panel of light through my big office window, her guitar slung on its strap over the shoulder of her Armani skirt suit, dark curls shining in the sun. “Someday, you’ll be lauded for your direct environmental inspiration.”
“Not necessarily this window,” she sings, turning to face me. “A metaphorical window.”
“I feel like you’ve covered Pompeii before.”
“Who said I was singing about Pompeii?” Delphi sings.
“Trembling earth,” I sing back. “Ashen skies. Those facts about Pompeii are not a surprise.”
She rolls her eyes and switches to a minor key. “Hopefully your next meeting isn’t, either.” Now the singing feels ominous. “Since it starts in five minutes.”
“What? No, it doesn’t. I’m done for the day.” I’m only sitting here because I needed a few minutes to collect myself before I moved on to what’s next. My sister Calliope’s joint birthday party with my cousin Orion is this evening. I blocked out the late afternoon so I didn’t have to pretend I’m not exhausted at the party. The gala.
“Urgent request.” Delphi gives it a little tune. “So you’re not leaving yet.”
An urgent meeting request isn’t totally unheard of in my line of work, but I don’t like it.
“I need to hire a better assistant.”
“Good luck with that,” Delphi sings. My luck with assistants other than Delphi hasn’t been good. I know it doesn’t make sense to other people that I have a CEO who also keeps my schedule on track, but if those other people aren’t involved in the process of advancing the cause of peace, then I don’t care what they think. And even if they are involved in that process, I still don’t care what they think. Outside my family, Delphi is one of the few people I’ve met in my life who’s immune to my sun-god-like glow. So she gets to be my CEO and rule my schedule with an iron fist.
Except when I need to make sudden and sometimes catastrophic changes to said schedule. Then it’s Delphi’s job to keep everyone else’s attention where it belongs—world peace.
“Okay.” I rub my hands over my face. “Who has an urgent problem that only I can solve?”
Delphi raises her eyebrows. “Chris Walsh.”
“Who the hell is that?”
Her next strum makes the hair on the back of my neck stand. “Sitting U.S. Senator Chris Walsh.”
Chris Walsh’s senate headshot flashes into my mind. His main distinguishing feature is that he’s young for the Senate. He replaced an ancient senator who always reminded me of a tortoise in the last election. Mousy brown hair. Indeterminate eye color.
“Did he say what it was about?”
“Said he was in town for a meeting at the United Nations.”
“He’s not one of the congressional representatives.”
“No,” Delphi agrees.
This could be about virtually anything, then. A good percentage of our policy and research work is at the request of various members of Congress. Research-backed policy is a cornerstone of legislation that actually furthers the cause of world peace.
And then there’s…everything else.
Though my think tank is headquartered in Manhattan, we maintain strong connections with the United States government. And many other governments. When people talk about backchannel negotiations, there’s a not-insignificant chance that they mean a meeting with me. Or a meeting in my presence. I don’t host meetings between ambassadors from foreign countries on my own behalf. I host them because some of the cordial discussions escalate to raised voices and gritted teeth and, on one occasion, a fistfight, and it’s best if that kind of thing stays out of the Oval Office.
“Crickets.”
Delphi half-giggles, half-snorts. “I’m going to put that in a song.”
“Go right ahead. You can give me a cut of the profits when your first hit single has the word crickets in it.”
“You don’t need a cut of the profits.”
“It’s the spirit of the thing.”
