Private Politics (The Easy Part) Read Free

dinner at Matchbox.”
    Alyse felt a slight stab in her abdomen. Indecisive though she might be, Linda was a nice woman and Alyse should be happy she was happy. But lately, when confronted with romantic bliss, she felt vaguely ill.
    Just the night before, she had watched her best friend and roommate, Millie Frank, wilt under attention at a dinner celebrating her engagement. She wasn’t jealous
per se
, at least not of Millie’s fiancé, Parker. He would have made her crazy, even as he’d turned Millie’s watercolor to Technicolor. No, they were annoyingly right together.
    The problem also wasn’t the demure ring her friend now sported on the third finger of her left hand. If Alyse had wanted to be engaged, she could have accomplished
that
eons ago. Steven probably would have proposed; Quentin definitely would have. But she’d never let them. She’d kept saying marriage was something to be dealt with later. Later like when she went back to New York.
    No, what tugged was the way Millie whispered in Parker’s ear. The knowing gleam in his eyes as he nodded back. Those words, those gestures, communicated volumes of intimacy. Sympathy. Communication. Trust. Things Alyse had never really known.
    Thinking about it wasn’t helpful. She was the maid of honor. She needed to be bubbly. To be fizzy. To provide discernment about the merits of gardenias and the differences between varieties of domestic sparkling whites. But now, when she thought about the wedding, she felt actively uneasy. She felt longing—and WASPs simply weren’t supposed to. Particularly not when an auditor was sniffing around.
    She shook off the introspection and crossed the now-emptying office, Fred’s list in hand. The annual audit was the first step in the end of the fiscal year crush. Close on its heels would be the annual report. Both required a complete accounting of all the money that had come in and all the money that had gone out, including the tricky subject of influencing policy.
    They did it of course, tried to get Congress to spend more money on foreign aid, but they had to be careful with their tax-exempt status. They could lobby, but not too much; they just couldn’t be directly political.
    Alyse pushed open the door to the storage room and fumbled for the light switch. The recessed bulbs came to life slowly, sputtering as if they resented her request. They probably did. They didn’t get used all that often.
    The bulbs in the storage room finally clicked on all the way and flooded the space with a too-bright light. The harsh blaze cast sharp shadows over the boxes and binders stacked before her.
    She finally located the binder she needed on the top shelf. As she pulled it down, dust fell like downy snow on her hair and shoulders. She smothered a sneeze and then batted at her gray pencil skirt and pink silk blouse with a crumpled tissue from her pocket.
    After seven years at YWR, she knew what to expect in the storage room. Dust bunnies the size of, well, bunnies, a thick blanket of filth and massive amounts of paper that really should have been digitized.
    She began flipping through the receipt letters. She recognized most of the names, big corporations and foundations that supported nonprofits. Leaders of business looking for tax write-offs. Rich folks from all over the country. Even some celebrities. All the people she’d gotten to open their wallets.
    Closing the binder in her hand, she grabbed two others, then headed back to her desk. The office was delightfully dark and quiet now. She knew from experience she had a good hour before the cleaning staff showed up.
    As she began to locate the letters Fred wanted scattered through the binders piled on her desk and started to plug them into the chart, she clicked her tongue in frustration. It was odd, so odd, that they still did so much only via hard copies. She’d been pushing for years to go paperless. It would be cheaper, plus it would make all the disclosure stuff easier. But Geri