Private Politics (The Easy Part) Read Online Free PDF Page A

plastered to his face. He’d never heard Alyse mention a guy romantically. Never heard Millie mention one, or many as it were, before. He wasn’t surprised exactly, but it stung.
    “You don’t want to bring up love lives, Frank.” Alyse had recovered and set about giving her erstwhile roommate crap. “I might not be a serial monogamist—”
    “Hey,” Parker said, “there’s no more serial about it.”
    “No?” Millie asked.
    “No. You’re off the market. Permanently.”
    At this, Millie kissed him. It was chaste enough as these things went, just enough heat to let everyone in room know she agreed with Parker. Liam glanced away when his gaze caught Alyse’s and held.
    She looked unsettled. Not unhappy, not jealous, just not normal. He wanted to push, to figure out how she felt, how long it had been since she had been kissed and whether she might consider him for one of the spots on her register, but he knew that he couldn’t and knew that the answers didn’t matter because she’d never want to.
    Seemingly confused about how to proceed, she asked after an awkward moment, “How’s the, uh, blogging?”
    Since they’d met, she had regularly asked some version of this question. Maybe she was genuinely interested, maybe she couldn’t believe he made money running a website. Hard to say.
    “It’s great.”
    He wished rather than believed that was true. Poindexter had started as a passion project, but given the state of the economy, and all the competition in digital publishing, he felt the sting of responsibility toward the people he employed. At the moment, he’d give anything for a big break. Some huge story they could own that would break them out the second tier of political blogs they’d been locked in for so long.
    Rather than getting into all of that, he said, “We’re running a bracket right now to determine the best American political scandal of all time.”
    The project was frivolous but might drive lots of traffic to the blog. He disliked how much that desire lay at the heart of his thoughts of late, but it was the reality of his field.
    Her brow furrowed. “How would you even figure that out?”
    “We came up with nominees in eight categories.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “Policy blunders, election shenanigans, lying, bribery, criminality, generalized corruption, cronyism/nepotism and, uh, sex. Of course.” He really couldn’t say the word around her without turning into himself at fourteen confronted with a newly post-adolescent Jenny Miller. An apt comparison since this crush had as much of future as that one had.
    “But how do you decide the winner of the matchups? It’s not like Watergate and Iran-Contra can meet on the field of battle.” She laughed at him now, but she looked so good doing it he didn’t care.
    “The readers will vote, but we’re setting each matchup up with essays by historians, political analysts and bloggers. It’s been a logistical nightmare. Locating all those experts, getting people on standby for the later rounds...” He trailed off and offered a grin by way of apology. He didn’t want to bore her; he worried he was edging close to the limits of her politeness.
    “Nixon and Clinton must have a lock on the final.”
    Certainly that was what the majority of Poindexter’s commenters thought. “The dark horse is really ABSCAM. It’s got everything: bribery, an awesome law enforcement sting operation, an international angle, political asylum. It doesn’t involve the executive branch, so it lacks panache, but it’ll go further than people think. Its chances were improved by a first-round upset today.”
    “Oh?”
    “Tea Pot Dome went down.”
    “Who beat them?” Parker reengaged in the conversation.
    “FDR’s court packing.”
    “That’s not an upset.” Millie wagged a finger at him. “That’s bad bracketing.”
    “Never bet against FDR in an election—who doesn’t know that?” Alyse asked.
    He could tell she wasn’t fully