The following podcast contains explicit language.

All along, this was what was supposed to happen.

A novella about the inauguration, written and read by Curtis Sittenfeld.

Part 3 of 5.

Patrice and Aunt Lutty weighed in line an hour and 20 minutes for a cab from Union Station to DuPont Circle.

By 30 minutes in, Patrice wishes they'd just taken the metro, but a cab seemed better with their suitcases and Aunt

Lettie's cane. Plus, there's a rumor that one of the up escalators at DuPont isn't working,

and the stranger who told her this didn't know if the escalator was at the northern or southern exit.

The apartment she and Aunt Lettie are staying in is on 17th Street, where it intersects New Hampshire

and S. It's technically not on DuPont Circle at all, but three or four blocks north.

Patrice is curious how much her cousin Janet is paying, and also how exactly Janet and her son selected

this apartment. Was nothing available on Capitol Hill, which would have been a much shorter walk to the

mall, or was it just more expensive? Or did it seem less safe? Patrice has already decided that she and

Aunt Lettie will rise at 5 a.m. on Tuesday, with the goal of getting to the mall by 6 or 7,

they'll have to walk because the metro entrances will be blocked off for people within 2 miles of the mall.

It is dark outside as she and Aunt Lettie entered the apartment building using Keyes FedEx to Patrice's office earlier this week,

along with directions from one Gretchen J. Schumacher.

Patrice was relieved to learn the apartment's usual inhabitant was a woman because she thinks,

perhaps unfairly, that women tend to be cleaner. Though the building has two elevators in the lobby,

just beyond the glass doors of the entrance, Gretchen J. Schumacher's

apartment is on the first floor down the left-hand corridor. All the keys work, as per Gretchen

J. Schumacher's written instructions, and the apartment turns out to be tidy, if plain and not

...