According to Their Deeds by Paul Robertson

was my friend, too,” Karen Liu said. “And I was proud to be his friend.”
    “You worked with him, didn’t you?”
    Her stare shifted to distant horizons. “We accomplished so much. I could always count on his support at the Justice Department. What makes a book antique?” She suddenly returned.
    “A long time.”
    “How much do they cost?”
    “A lot.”
    She nodded. “Old and expensive. Derek must have loved them. And what can I do for you this morning?”
    He smiled, his watts to her megawatts. “I just decided that I’d like to meet some of Derek’s other friends. I hope I’m not wasting your time.”
    “No, you are not . He was a wonderful man, and we are all diminished by his loss.”
    Judging by her stature, the congresswoman had had many such losses. “I only talked with him occasionally,” Charles said. “A few times a year when he came to the shop, or I delivered a book to him.”
    “I talked with him every week. My staff worked with his staff every day.”
    “Is that unusual? That’s not the picture one usually gets of cooperation between Congress and the executive departments.”
    “It was unusual because Derek was unusual, and it has been quite different without him.”
    “Who took his place?”
    “I wouldn’t know.” A dark cloud suddenly obscured the sun. “We have been instructed that all communication will pass through the Deputy Assistant Attorney General personally from now on, and not his staff.” And the cloud became a thunderhead.
    “I’m so sorry.” Saying the wrong thing could bring torrential downpours, and Charles didn’t have an umbrella.
    “It is sorry. It is a disgrace for Mr. Borchard, who is an appointed official, to act this way.”
    “But tell me about yourself,” he said. “If you don’t mind. Derek spoke of you often.”
    Her smile flashed out like a lighthouse through the gloom, and the gloom went running for its life.
    “Mr. Beale, I am living the most wonderful life in the world.”
    Somehow, no less an answer would have been right. “Tell me how you got to Congress. It must not have been easy.”
    Every sentence brought out a different light source. Now it was a laser. “Nothing has ever been easy.”
    “But I think you don’t let that stop you. You must be quite a fighter.”
    “I have always fought, Mr. Beale. I fought my way into college, and into law school, and into every place I’ve ever been.”
    Charles had settled back into his chair. The conversation had turned into a stump speech, one that Karen Liu had given many times. But the passion was fresh and pungent.
    “I fought my way out of an alcoholic mother and a father who disappeared when I was two, and out of poverty and racism and bigotry and I will keep fighting for the people who are still in chains to poverty and racism and bigotry. That is what I have been doing, and that is what I will continue to do. You can read my biography, Mr. Beale, it’s on my website.”
    “I preferred to meet you first.”
    “Read it. Because when I looked at the world I lived in, the ghettos where I grew up, I had to do something about it. And I decided that here”—she waved her hand across the room—“ here was the place to do it. And the people who were here weren’t doing anything. So I took them on, and I won .
    “And it was not easy. I had to fight an entrenched political machine that had everything, and I didn’t have anything, and they spent every dollar and played every dirty trick they could. But they couldn’t fight the people , and the people knew who was on their side, and I won that primary by three thousand votes. And I have repaid the faith that those voters placed in me, and fought for them .”
    There was a short break for applause from the audience.
    “Ms. Liu,” Charles said, and it was far inferior to the wild cheers that should have filled the room. “I see why Derek thought so highly of you. I know how important money is in politics, and an entrenched machine