Too wound up to sleep, Emily went for a walk on the Mall. She moseyed down to visit her old pal Honest Abe, sitting in his pillared marble cabin as he stared out over the Reflecting Pool, and glared at the Capitol where Congress had fought him almost as hard as the South.
She parked her butt on Abe’s front porch and watched Washington wind down for the night. A cart vendor wandered by and enticed her into three tiny scoops of truly exceptional lime gelato as the sun set. The air temperature dropped, and she soon regretted the cold gelato. It was chilly, at least to her desert-thinned blood. No one else looked dressed for the near-Arctic blast.
Tourist buses of bantering high-school kids poured through in shorts and t-shirts, harried parent chaperons dragging behind. Occasional local coup
