Olioke picked up his phone.

Not five minutes later, you guess, two young women in tank tops and skinny jeans from Abercrombie arrived at the front door, and Olioke brought them inside. He embraced them, his family, his two eldest Namibian American daughters, Rheinhilde and Herlinde, and the latter urged, “Hurry up, Dad, the flight leaves in three hours,” but no one seemed to particularly hurry as the aardvark was blanketed in bubble wrap, returned to the large cardboard box, taped up and sealed and delivered into Rutledge’s “borrowed” FedEx truck, which must have been—was—parked this whole time one block over, and which would carry the aardvark into the belly of an airplane leaving Dulles, which is where she is now.

The aardvark will travel via plane, taxi, flatbed truck, and another flatbed truck through four countries until she at last arrives in Olioke’s grandparents’ native village, not far at all from the place where she was rooted out from a tunnel late one night in 1875. But what is time.

The Herero, when they receive her, will not carry on or even mildly effuse; rather, donning their reappropriated Victorian garb, the skins of their enemy, they will hoist her up onto their shoulders and parade her to a local and magnificent Combretum imberbe, what is called in Afrikaans hardekool, and the wood of the hardekool is very dense, very hard and termite resistant, and it is under the shade of the enormous Leadwood tree that the Herero will quietly, without fanfare, celebrate the aardvark’s new season. Give her new life.

You are also about to be given a new life.

Months Later

“The distractions of constant questions impede my ability to serve the First District” is the official statement you offered after the first day of your hearing, which was supposed to go on for months but, once you resigned, was over. WaPo is reporting that federal investigators are still looking into your spending, have subpoenaed witnesses to appear before a grand jury next month—but your resignation prevents further inquiry from Congress.

The authorities seized your Ronald Reagan collection. (There was no comment from the Reagan family, though when the collection is mentioned, as it is occasionally mentioned on CNN, it is called “creepy.”) They seized your clothes. All of your assets. They seized the canary-yellow velvet Victorian sofa, at which point you suffered a particularly biting stab of depression and called your mother. You asked her for help, financial or otherwise, and all she said was what she usually says: “You never wanted love, never at all,” so that was a mistake, and it’s all how you find yourself renting this two-bedroom apartment in Silver Spring.

There is no light. Your new apartment is on the ground floor of an apartment complex with, you swear it, the exact same wall-to-wall as Murphy & Milliken’s, and all windows face walls except the one offering a level view of a dirt courtyard. A waterlogged picnic table. The kitchen cabinets, they stick to your hands when you open them, and the place came furnished with bulk items, your new landlord cheerfully told you, straight out of Bob’s Pit, and you cannot even remotely fathom what on earth he meant by “Bob’s Pit,” but you dare not go online to find out.