Chapter 31

The stage was high enough for George to acknowledge the caliber of dignitaries in attendance, and in truth, he thought them all to be self-obsessed snobs. If his mother hadn’t been unavailable, him representing her would be the last thing he’d done. The interior of the summit hall was more beige than a psychiatric ward, only given life by the chandeliers littering the high ceiling.

Plump cotton-covered seats were arranged in an expanding semi-circle from the foot of the stage up until the edges of the entrance. George basically zoned out as he sat amidst three hundred and sixty houses of representative underachievers and ninety Senate members, their stand-ins more like. It couldn’t piss him off that most of these senators weren’t here in person. But where was his mother?

The incessant clicking of cameras, the overzealous press coverage, the fake smiling of politics; these were things he was already used to; these were things he grew up around. The summit meeting was cent