The result in 2024 was the election of President Ian Wrightman. Ian Michael Wrightman was a career politician who until that time had been considered such a lightweight he had to be tethered to his Senate desk to prevent his floating away. While he lacked substance, he did have the distinct political advantage of not being one of them, whichever them you supported.

But that was not what I was thinking about when I woke up that morning, July eleventh. Jenny had stayed over that night and as usual was up before me. I had laid in bed watching with silent admiration as she slipped into her professional life. She glanced at me and, seeing I was awake, smiled. We made plans to meet for dinner unless, as always. She kissed me lightly, wrinkled her nose, picked up her briefcase, and was gone. The warmth of her next to me dissipated slowly.

“Cher,” I said when she was gone, “come here, please.” Mighty Chair rolled to the side of the bed, red and white side lights blinking happily as if saying good morning.

I almost beat the sunrise to the gym. The first embers of the morning were sneaking into the night. About half the members of the Light Brigade were already there, clacking away on the weight machines, grunting with pleasure. Although the mandatory face-mask rule had been lifted years earlier, several people still wore the popular designer coverings. “So you’re keeping banker’s hours now?” Hack Wilson greeted me. Hack was my friend and workout partner. He was built like a mountain range but moved with the ease of a Steinbeck sentence. As we got to work, the banter was the stuff of daily life: relationships, new restaurants, Netflix series, kids leaving for sleepaway camp (his), work, vacations, and eventually, politics.

The wisps of optimism that had greeted President Wrightman’s inauguration were long gone—blown away by the random breezes of time. As we’d feared, the structural damage done by the pandemic and other natural and unnatural disasters had continued to reverberate throughout the entire world. Wrightman had made temporary repairs where that was possible and had slowed the decline in other areas, but his attempts to rebuild vital international relationships, restructure the economy to relieve the pressure on the middle class, salvage affordable healthcare, and begin healing the chasm ripping apart the nation had pretty much failed. The country was stagnant, as if 350 million people were stopped at a traffic signal, waiting patiently for it to change. In one of my columns I had written that Wrightman reminded me of the caretaker at a graveyard, who dutifully clipped the grass once a week to preserve the illusion of life.

So our once-hopeful workout conversations had transitioned into complaints and jokes about his ineptitude.

By the time I’d finished, the summer morning had sucked the air out of the city. It was typical Washington weather: 91 degrees, 100 percent humidity, no chance of rain. On the way to my office, I stopped at Nonna’s. As usual, there was a long line at the takeout window. “The usual?” George asked. “The usual,” I told him. “Cher, good morning,” he said.