The truth was, Liz enjoyed her espressos a great deal and didn't think about Hood when she had them. His inability-- or unwillingness-- to grasp the clinical soundness of her work didn't bother her. They crucified Jesus and locked Galileo away, and none of that changed the truth of what they taught.

No, what frosted her was how he was the consummate politician before the shit hit the fan. He courteously and conscientiously heard her out and incorporated snippets of her findings into policy papers and strategies-- albeit not because he wanted to. That was what Op-Center's charter demanded. But because he didn't trust her work, she was always the first one he called on the carpet whenever something went wrong. She hated that, and swore that one day she'd leak his godless little psych file to Pat Robertson.

No you wouldn't, she told herself as she knocked on Ann Farris's door, but fantasizing about it did keep her cool whenever he turned on the heat.

The Washington Times once deemed Ann Farris to be one of the twenty-five most eligible young divorcees in the nation's capital. Three years later, she still was.

Standing five-foot-seven, her brown hair bunched behind her and tied with the designer kerchief-of-the-day, her teeth hardball-white, and her eyes a dark rust, she was also one of the least understood women in Washington. With her B.A. in journalism and M.A. in public administration from Bryn Mawr, the Greenwich, Connecticut, blue-blood Farrises expected her to work on Wall Street with her father, and then at some blue-chip firm as V.P., then Senior V.P., then the sky was the limit.

Instead, she went to work as a political reporter for The Hour in nearby Norwalk, stayed two years, landed the job of Press Secretary to the iconoclastic third-party Governor of the state, and married an ultra-liberal public radio commentator from New Haven. She retired to raise their son, then left two years after that when funding cuts cost her husband his job and desperation sent him into the arms of a wealthy Westport matron. Moving to Washington, Ann got a job as Press Secretary for the newly elected junior Senator from Connecticut-- a bright, attentive married man. She began having an affair with him shortly after arriving, the first of many intense, satisfying affairs with bright, attentive married men, one of whom held an office higher than Vice President.

That last part wasn't in her confidential psych file, but Liz knew because Ann had told her. She also confessed-- though it was obvious-- that she had a crush on Paul Hood and entertained some exotic fantasies about him. The statuesque beauty was remarkably frank about her relationships, at least to Liz: Ann reminded her of a Catholic schoolgirl she once knew, Meg Hughes, who was as careful and polite as she could be around the nuns, then uncorked her darkest secrets when they were away.

Liz often wondered if Ann confided in her because she was a psychologist or because she didn't perceive her as a rival.