Chương 25

Gladice set her napkin beside her plate and stood.

"Excuse me for a moment," she said. She glanced at Louis.

"Louis, would you mind helping me with my evening wrap in the anteroom? I may need it later if it gets cooler." Louis stood at once.

"Of course, ma'am." They crossed the room. Once the table was behind them, Gladice spoke without turning her head.

"You'll come with me to the powder room. When I'm finished, you will wipe me. Thoroughly." Louis missed a step. He looked at the side of her face, not sure he had heard her right.

"Seriously?" The word came out sharper than he intended.

"You want me to… right now?" Gladice kept walking and laughed under her breath.

"Oh, come on. Don't look so shocked. I saw you two behind that tree, remember?" She glanced sideways at him.

"You were practically feral. So yes, I'm serious. And it'll be quick. I promise I won't make you watch the main event." Louis's face went hot.

"This is insane," he muttered.

"Probably," she agreed cheerfully.

"But you lost the bet. And I'm bored. So be a good sport."

"Fuck's sake, Gladice." He kept his voice down.

"Louis." Her voice lost the laughter.

"If you refuse, I'll mention it at the table. Casually. Just a little story about how the Dominion's heir got carried away during a youth engagement. Your father will be amused. Angelique will be livid. And I'll have a very nice story to tell my father about the fragility of certain Californian virtues." She smiled at him.

"So I suggest you stop hesitating and do as you're told." Louis swallowed. His jaw tightened, then eased. He breathed out through his nose and nodded.

"Alright."

"Good boy," she said.

"Now keep walking." They reached the marble anteroom. She stepped into the powder room alone and closed the door. Louis stayed outside, his pulse heavy in his throat. Through the door, Louis heard the steady sound of her stream striking the water. His pulse picked up. He thought of the pink panties he had seen beneath the black silk, then of what she had ordered him to do next. His cock began to harden. He shifted his stance, trying to ease the pressure in his trousers, and his shoe scraped once against the marble.

A moment later, Gladice called through the door.

"Louis. Your turn." Louis opened the door and stepped inside. Then he closed it and turned the lock. Gladice sat on the toilet with her black evening dress gathered around her hips and her pink panties down around her knees.

"I'm finished," she said.

"Come here." Louis stepped toward her. His eyes dropped between her parted thighs. He saw a neat triangle of black hair, then forced himself to look back at her face. He smelled her perfume, the floral diffuser by the sink, and the faint urine smell left in the air. Louis stopped in front of her.

"Gladice…" Gladice looked past him toward the toilet-paper holder.

"Don't be dramatic. It's just a little cleanup." He turned his head and saw the roll beside the sink.

"Wipe me," she said.

"Front to back. And try not to look too traumatized. It's not that bad." Louis stared at her and did not move. Gladice only waited. He tore off a piece of paper and folded it. Then he knelt on the marble between her thighs. Gladice parted her legs a little more. He saw her slightly puffy pussy, faintly wet. His cock hardened further inside his trousers. He leaned in and touched her with the folded paper. Through it, he felt her warmth and the dampness soaking into the folds.

The first pass left the paper wet and soft against his fingers. He wiped again, front to back. He kept his hand steady. He hated that his body wanted this. He hated that he kept going. He hated that she had used Angelique's name to put him on his knees. He hated more that it had worked. Gladice breathed out through her nose.

"See? Not so terrible. Again." Louis folded the paper to a clean section and wiped again, harder this time. Gladice's thighs tightened around him. A small moan slipped out of her. Louis went still. She looked down at him, breathing through a smile.

"Bad boy," she said. He dropped the used paper into the toilet without answering.

"Thank you." she smiled.

"Now flush it, wash your hands, and fix your face. You look like I just made you eat dirt." Louis stood and went to the sink. In the mirror, his face was red. Sweat stood at his temples. He rinsed his hands roughly. Gladice had already smoothed her dress back down. She checked her reflection, then opened the door.

"After you," she said, and held it for him. Louis stepped out. His throat worked once before he looked toward the hall. Gladice followed behind him. By the time they reached the dining room, her smile was back. They slipped back into their seats. Philip was still speaking when Louis sat down.

"Europe is not asking one question. It is asking several at once, and each has a different audience behind it." He glanced toward Harvey, then David, then back to the table as a whole.

"With the Collective, the concern is whether military seriousness eventually hardens into political inflexibility. With the Dominion, the concern is whether technological depth and executive centrality eventually outgrow the language of partnership. With both of you together." He paused.

"The concern is whether North America is quietly becoming coherent again in a form Europe did not choose." Louis sat down and kept his face still. His pulse beat in his ears. He had washed his hands, but he could still feel the wet paper against his fingertips. He reached for his water glass and drank. Angelique did not look at him. Then, while Philip kept speaking, she looked at him once. Her face stayed calm. The corner of her mouth tightened once, then she looked back to Philip.

This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source. Gladice sat beside him and unfolded her napkin again. She smoothed it over her lap, reached for her wineglass, and turned her attention back to Philip. David drank before answering.

"That would depend on what one means by coherent."

"It always does," Philip said. Harvey set his glass down.

"Europe can sneer all it wants. They don't have as much room as they think. Canada and New England like hiding under the EU blanket. Good for them. They like the markets, the credit, the treaties, all that clean Brussels bullshit where everyone gets paid and then pretends it was about values. But they still live here. If this continent goes to hell, they don't get to watch it from across the ocean." He turned slightly toward Constantine.

"They can act like they're across the ocean when Brussels is listening. They're not. The map still puts them right here with the rest of us."

"Maps are harder to lie to," Constantine said. While the leaders spoke, Gladice lifted her glass, angled it toward Louis, and leaned close.

"Tell Angelique," she said under her breath, "that I'm not done with you yet. She'll understand." Louis stopped with his hand on his water glass. His fingers tightened around it. Angelique looked toward them once, then back to the table. Louis leaned toward her and repeated the words quietly.

"She says she's not done with me." Angelique shook her head once. Then she spoke without turning her head.

"My glass." Louis reached for the bottle. The glass touched its rim once before he steadied his hand. He refilled her glass and kept his eyes on the rising wine. Judith was watching them. She looked from Gladice to Louis to Angelique. The corner of her mouth lifted, then settled. She turned back to Constantine.

"Canada understands this better than New England does, I think." Jessamine glanced at her.

"Because it is less sentimental?"

"Because it has less luxury," Judith replied.

"Canada became European by decision. New England became European partly by temperament. One of those survives pressure better." Maria's mouth curved.

"That is an elegant distinction."

"It is a practical one," Judith said.

"Ottawa understands the arithmetic. Canada can join European institutions, borrow European language, and enjoy European approval. But it still has the Great Lakes under its windows, the St. Lawrence in its throat, and a long border with a continent that has not finished breaking." She took a sip of wine.

"New England, on the other hand, has more childish vanity. It thinks EU paperwork has made it less North American. They have not." David looked faintly amused.

"You do them the courtesy of taking them seriously."

"I take everyone seriously," Judith said.

"It is one of the reasons my husband is still alive." Under the table, Gladice pressed the side of her shoe against Louis's ankle and held it there. Louis did not move his leg. He kept one hand beside his plate and looked toward his mother. Angelique's hand lay beside her plate. Her fingers had stopped moving. Philip said, "New England's problem is not merely sentiment. It is scale. It believes EU membership has made it larger than it is. Sometimes it has.

On trade, on currency confidence, on legal architecture, certainly. On hard questions in its own neighborhood, no." He looked around the table.

"Canada's problem is almost the inverse. It understands scale perfectly well. What it does not always admit in public is how much of its strategic breathing room still depends on what the rest of us do with this continent."

"Hell," Harvey said.

"We always end up back at Dixie." Before Philip could answer, Angelique moved her glass toward Louis.

"Louis, the water is a touch warm. Would you be so kind as to have it refreshed?" Louis rose at once. His chair moved back quickly.

"Of course." He took her glass and crossed to the sideboard, where a chilled carafe waited. When he returned, he set the refilled glass beside her plate. Angelique gave him a nod and reached for the glass. As he straightened, she looked at him once and spoke under her breath.

"Thank you. And do try not to smell quite so much like someone else's amusement when you sit back down." Then she looked back to her father.

"The difficulty," Philip said, "is that Dixie makes every other political question look more temporary than it really is. It encourages everyone to imagine that if the terror state were somehow contained cleanly enough, the rest of the continent could return to the normal business of arguing over trade, procedure, and sovereignty." He lifted one hand.

"It will not." David glanced at him.

"You sound sure."

"I am." Philip met his eyes.

"Because the real question for the Americas has never been the future of the Holy States. It is whether, once the immediate danger is managed, North America can sustain a plural order at all. The old United States was a failure of accommodation. It died from the middle outward. What we build now must be better at sharing space without surrendering identity. Europe is not sure we can do that. They are not sure they want us to try.

And they are certainly not eager to discover that our answer might be something they have no model for." Gladice shifted in her chair and glanced back at him. Louis stood. She leaned back into Louis's hands.

"A little straighter," she said. Louis put his fingers on the chair back. Before he could move, Angelique spoke.

"Louis, sit." She did not look at Gladice when she spoke.

"If Sergeant Simington needs the chair adjusted, I'm sure she can ask the staff." Gladice laughed once.

"Of course," she reached for her glass.

"I wouldn't dream of overworking him before dessert." Louis sat back down. Several faces turned his way. He kept his eyes on the table. Harvey cleared his throat.

"The Central Union," he said, "gets written off too damn easily for a country sitting where it sits." David nodded once.

"Because it doesn't market itself."

"Because it doesn't need to," Harvey said.

"Half this continent has spent eighteen years inventing flags, slogans, founding myths, all that state-building bullshit. The Union didn't have to. They just kept good old American country habits and the damn thing holds their people together." Maria glanced toward him.

"You say that as if you admire it."

"He does," Constantine said, smiling.

"Doesn't mean he wants to live there." He raised his glass to Harvey.

"Not while they still ban gambling." Harvey laughed.

"Hah! I admire them. But I also know they could bore a man to death before the first drink was poured." Philip let out a small laugh.

"A distinction many people fail to make in time."

"Also," Harvey added, "they don't need to look pretty to keep the lights on. That's rare these days." David said, "Which is why they are easy to ignore until everyone needs them."

"More than needs them," Harvey said.

"They're a shock absorber. If Denver fails, the machine starts having fewer places to absorb shock." Louis reached for his bourbon, then stopped with his fingers around the glass. Angelique spoke beside him.

"I think you should drink it." He turned toward her. Angelique was looking straight at him. Her face did not soften. He drank. The liquor burned in his throat. He set the glass down and looked back toward the conversation. Jessamine turned the conversation toward the Great Lakes Alliance.

"It must irritate Chicago," she said, "to see the Dominion and the Collective look more comfortable with one another than either of you looks with them."

"Chicago dislikes anything that works before it has been authorized," Constantine said.

"The Alliance does not object to comfort," Philip said.

"It objects to comfort outside its machinery. Chicago is Aegis with elections and an army. It is less at ease with charisma, personalized executive power, or any arrangement that depends too heavily on informal trust." David said, "And yet they buy from you." Constantine smiled.

"People become practical when the shelves empty." Harvey lifted his bourbon.

"Chicago won't change its mind. It'll buy what it needs and invent a clean name for it afterward."

"Quite," said Constantine. Judith swirled her wine once.

"There is something ironic, though. They distrust the Dominion's style of governance. But if you look at how the Alliance actually makes decisions, it is not so different from us in the end. A small number of powerful actors manage a complex system through a combination of institutions and direct negotiation. The form is different. The function is recognizable." Maria said, "Chicago will hate you for saying that." Judith looked at her.

"Chicago would invite me to lunch and hate me after dessert." The table laughed. Louis glanced at Angelique. She was already looking at him. Her face was still hard, but not as hard as before. She looked at his hand. It was clenched beside his plate. Then she looked back at his face.

"At least try to sit like you belong here," she said softly.

"I'm trying. She doesn't make it easy." Angelique's mouth moved once.

"No. She doesn't." She turned back to the table. Louis's shoulders eased slightly. For once, Gladice did not give him another order. Dessert came in small plates: apple tart, chocolate mousse, and ice cream. The wine kept flowing. Around the oval table, the voices grew louder. The wine had done its work. People interrupted more easily and laughed at cruder jokes.

Louis sat, feeling the warmth of Angelique beside him, the dark amusement of Gladice at his other side, the weight of his parents across the table, and wondered what kind of person he was supposed to be when every version of himself seemed to be performing for someone else. He looked at the mousse in front of him and thought it would taste like shame. He ate it anyway.