“Are you okay?” I asked Wallis when he was out of sight. I was touching her face and she was touching mine. We both seemed to be checking for wounds.

“Holy shit,” she said, her brown eyes catching mine. “Holy shit, are you okay?”

“Do you want to go back inside?” I asked. “I can go and get you coffee.”

“No,” said Wallis. “I’m okay. Just stay close to me.”

“We’re fine,” Cricket shouted at the paparazzi, who’d chased the man partway down the street. “In case any of you scallywags were wondering!”

Wallis and I couldn’t help it; Cricket’s words immediately had us clutching each other, laughing until tears leaked from our eyes. Wallis kept repeating Cricket’s insult: scallywag!

“I’m getting something chocolate,” Cricket said when we recovered, and we set off down the block. “Something with whipped cream. Something with a million calories. After that encounter, I think I deserve it. Jesus, my heart is still racing. Who was that man? And why do I feel like he’s going to come back around the corner with an army behind him?”

He was one, but there were many more who followed.

I left my apartment and temporarily roomed with Wallis and Cricket on P; though I was glad we were together, I’d severely underestimated the number of people who were interested in shouting directly in our faces. They were there, the angry, the indignant, the betrayed, the taxpayers of this country, the only honest ones left in this town, on the sidewalk almost constantly, staring, taking pictures, leaving posters and nasty handwritten memos all over the front door and the stoop. We huddled inside, nervous, jumpy, wondering when the next brick would crash through.

I called Miles. I hated to do it, but I had to take some time away from the office. I’d return as many emails as I could, I told him, be on all possible conference calls. But Cricket and Wallis needed me.

But even indoors, the glorious world revealed new fears to me: the sound of my phone ringing, the flat, hard voice of the IRS, again, on the other end, the stack of Cricket’s folded bank statements, the parade of congresspeople going to the Senate floor to denounce my father on live TV, the chime of a news alert on my phone—a more courageous person, I believe, would have put the phone on silent and kept it there. But I had to check; I had to know what they were saying. Otherwise, how could we begin to defend ourselves?

That, it turned out, was the wrong question to be asking in the face of unbridled vitriol. The question was, should we even bother? The masses had already reached their verdict: we were canceled. What was the use in mounting an appeal?