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in front of his face.
    “Calm down,” he said, but she was up and running for the bathroom, because punctuality was more her thing than it was his.
    He made it downstairs to his red Mercedes coupe a few minutes later, cranked up some music and drove south to his town house on 34th Street, where he indulged in a long, leisurely shower and then took all the time he needed styling his blond hair with molding clay. He dressed, then stepped in front of his full-length mirror so he could check the fit, cut, and sheen of his gray Ralph Lauren sharkskin suit. Satisfied that his purple polka-dot tie wasn’t too much with the sharkskin, he slipped on a pair of cherry loafers and gave himself one more long appraisal in the mirror, assessing and then approving his style and looks.
    At nine he sauntered down the front steps of his row house, still unhurried and unstressed, and he climbed back into his warm Mercedes and headed off to work, music blaring again.
    Traffic on Wisconsin Avenue wasn’t too bad, but he hit his first snag of the day when he found Pennsylvania to be mired in gridlock. While he crept forward he sang along with his Blaupunkt stereo. Neil Young’s On the Beach was a 1974 release that would have been a unique listening choice for most thirty-two-year-olds, but Ross had grown up with it. Revolution music, his mother used to call it, although Ethan realized there was a certain dissonance to the concept of singing along with anti-establishment songs while driving his luxury car on his way to his government job.
    No matter. Ethan still considered himself something of a rebel, albeit one with a more realistic worldview.
    He’d been listening to his old albums since he got off work on Friday, both alone and then with Eve. She didn’t much care for them, but she didn’t complain, and he didn’t really give a damn. Eve was a brilliant but hopelessly submissive Korean girl who would walk on glass for him if he told her to do so, and sometimes Ethan liked to unplug on the weekends, to go from five p.m. Friday to nine a.m. Monday without checking his phone, his iPad, or watching any TV. He didn’t do it often, but there were times when his job was too stifling: endless boring meetings and conference calls and lunches with people he didn’t want to eat with or trips with people he didn’t want to travel with. He’d had a few months like this, his work was frustrating him and interfering with his well-cultivated self-image as a D.C. power player, and only detoxifying himself from work and inoculating himself with the music of his childhood could refresh him and get him ready to face work again on Monday.
    Eve didn’t complain; Ethan was certain she was just happy to have him to herself for two full days.
    He checked his hair in the rearview, turned up Neil Young even louder, and sang along, pitching his voice in and out of key and fighting the power the only prudent way to do so at present.
    E THAN R OSS LIKED TO tell people he worked at t he White House, and it was true, with a caveat. His office was in the Dwight D. Eisenhower Executive Office Building, next to the West Wing, and while the Eisenhower EOB housed many offices for White House personnel, it wasn’t, strictly speaking, the White House. West Wing employees distinguished themselves from Eisenhower Building employees by saying they worked “inside the gates,” while the EOB staff worked “outside the gates.” Ross didn’t see any distinction himself. He was a White House staffer to anyone who asked, or anyone who would listen, for that matter.
    He had spent the last three years here, spanning two administrations, serving as deputy assistant director for Near East and North African affairs in the National Security Council. He prepared policy papers for the President of the United States, or at least he coordinated the preparation of policy papers for the national security adviser, who then determined if the president should see a summary of them. The