“Always, or occasionally?” Josh smiled. “Remember, we’re culled from the best and brightest at Eli.”

“Supposedly,” Nikolos added in a growl.

“Why wouldn’t some of those people end up being leaders? That’s why they were chosen.” I sensed a certain personal bias in his tone. “It stands to reason that if there are budding leaders here, the society will sniff them out. But the country’s not fixing the vote.”

Demetria snorted. “I’ve seen some stuff that would make you think otherwise.”

Josh turned to her. “You and I are going to have to have a conversation about how the electoral college works.”

“Later!” cut in Odile. “Right now, we’re talking about the patriarchs.”

And on it went. We’d move a bit farther into the realm of “getting somewhere,” only to be sidetracked by personal differences and petty squabbles. I still wasn’t sure we’d sold either Nikolos or Omar on the idea of fighting back, and even Benjamin looked like he could go either way. Nikolos appeared to be remaining with the group only under duress, Omar watched the entire proceedings in stony silence, and Benjamin seemed as if he was waiting to see where the chips landed before making a choice.

George, it should be noted, played footsie with me under the table.

Which wasn’t to say he was devoid of input. In fact, it was George who first came up with the idea of approaching the patriarchs on their own turf.

“Where does the board of trustees meet?” he asked, twirling his glass on the tabletop.

“New York Thity,” Clarissa said through a mouthful of nachos. (We’d decided to eat. I was pleased to see that the rail-thin Clarissa in fact did.)

“Then let’s set up a meeting with them. A real one. Not running up to them in the street in the middle of their demonstration like a couple of schoolkids. They’re businessmen. We’ll treat them like that. Boardroom, coffee urns, and all.”

I excused myself to go to the restroom. A couple of schoolkids? Is that what Malcolm and I had looked like this afternoon? No wonder they’d dismissed us so easily.

In the bathroom, I spent a long time looking in the cracked, rusted-out mirror above the sink. There was probably a line forming outside, but I didn’t care. Who was I kidding, in conference with these other Diggers? I was chock-full of outsider conspiracy theories that were beginning to sound increasingly ridiculous every time I uttered them in the company of people who actually had a clue what they were talking about. Line up all of them, all of their astounding accomplishments, and then look at me. What did I have to offer next to these superstars? I belonged in Quill & Ink, not Rose & Grave. If the patriarchs had an argument to make against the female taps, the weakest link to attack was…me.

The door burst open, revealing a gang of drunken sophomores. “Omigod,” said one, rushing in. “I gotta pee so bad!”

I barely made it out of the way.

Back in the narrow, dark corridor that sloped upward to the split-level body of the bar above, I paused. Maybe I should call it a night. I wasn’t adding anything of substance to the proceedings, and I doubted my presence would help them achieve a moment of brilliance. At the phone booth, I stepped up on the stool and peered over the split level through the railing at the booth where the other new taps sat. Josh and Demetria were in a heated debate about something, Benjamin was tapping his feet impatiently on the floorboards (got a perfect view of that from my vantage point), and Odile and Nikolos appeared to be in the midst of a discussion decidedly not about the society—unless there was important Digger lore to be found in her cleavage.

“Hey, boo,” said a voice behind me. “What are you doing?”

I started and nearly tottered off the stool. George steadied me with hands on my thighs.

“Careful there,” he said as I stepped down onto shaky legs, mindful of the four and a half 312s I’d consumed.

“You shouldn’t be using that name,” I said, trying to catch my breath and failing. Wasted effort with George Harrison Prescott around. “Not outside the confines of a society function. I’m afraid I’m going to have to fine you two dollars.”

“What name?” He stepped a little closer, pinning me between the phone booth and his body.

“You know. My society name.”

“Oh,” he said softly. “That’s not what I said.”

“What did you say?” I tilted my chin up in defiance.

“Boo.” His eyes glinted copper behind those glasses. “Just ‘boo.’ It means sweetie, honey, my girl. It’s a hip-hop endearment.”

I swallowed. My girl? Play it cool, Amy. “You’re not hip-hop.”

“My darling boo,” he said, “I’m so very, very hip-hop.”

And though I’d been imagining this moment for quite some time, the only thing I could think of as he kissed me was that the Yellow Pages were jabbing me in the spine.

And then, as if he knew it, he slipped his arms around my back and cradled me against him in a manner that chased all thoughts of telephone directories and patriarch battles right out of my head. Oh, yes, the man was hip-hop. “Player” was the term I was looking for, but my mouth was too busy to form the word.

There was a whole mess of reasons I shouldn’t have been doing this, but for the life of me they were hard to recall with George Harrison Prescott’s tongue in my mouth. He tasted like pomegranate juice and—I finally recognized the other ingredient. Honey.

Okay, Amy, focus. You had a list. What was it?

WHY YOU SHOULDN’T MAKE OUT WITH GEORGE HARRISON PRESCOTT

1) Oh, boy, are you in public right now.

2) George has a list of female conquests as long as the phone book he’s protecting you from.

3) I didn’t want to have to remind you of this, but you do have a rather unfortunate history with one-night stands.

4) Have you forgotten entirely about a very sweet young man named Brandon?

5) He’s now in the same society as—Oh my God, he has his hand up my shirt!

One flick of the wrist and my bra snapped open. In the hallway. Surrounded by drunken sophomores who’d be sure to tattle it around and a few feet away from a whole table full of fellow Diggers. Who knew what would happen if they saw us making out like a couple of—

“Schoolkids,” I whispered, pulling away.

“What?” George looked at me, pupils dilated, stained lips wet and inviting.

“You said I acted like a schoolkid when I confronted the patriarchs this afternoon.”

He laughed. “That was you? I didn’t know. I wasn’t there, just heard about it later.”

I remembered when he’d shown up at the meeting. He’d probably had his report from Poe. The jerk. Figures we wouldn’t have come off in glowing terms.

George traced his hand down my back. “Oh, Amy, that takes balls. Very sexy.”

“Balls are sexy?”

“Women who act like they’ve got them are.” He leaned in again, but I stopped him.

“George, what about the meeting?”

“Pretty much over. We’re going to New York next Friday to present our case to the patriarchs. Josh et al. are setting up the parley. Benjamin is getting a van.”

“And the seniors?”

“We decided to present ourselves as full-fledged Diggers, not the newbie taps who need seniors to babysit us.”

That made sense. “Amazing that everything came together the second I left for the bathroom,” I said ruefully. See? They didn’t need me.

“Why do you think I came to find you? It’s no fun up there without you.”

“Right, because I’m the joke.”

He looked puzzled. “Hardly. You knew everything about the backstory today, understood the whole argument, even before we did. The seven of us are here tonight because we don’t want you girls to be second-class citizens. Come on, boo. We need you there, too. You’re going to write our manifesto. You’re the writer in the club after all.”

This time when he tried to kiss me, I let him. Right. The writer of D177. What were a few mistaken beliefs in overblown Digger mythology compared to that?